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The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#51

Post by dymk »

noduerme wrote: post #46

Funny. I just had this conversation about ennui, probably not an original one, with a colleague who told me she wrote a thesis on ennui in college: Why did George Jetson go to work every day? Was it just to have a reason get away from his family? Wasn't the goal of that society that no one had to work, and everyone could be creative and leisureful all the time? Did George want to buy a newer robot? Was he cheating on…

I like the Culture series take on post scarcity societies. Sure, the super AI ship could build and maintain and plan everything, but what’s the point in that if all the humans are bored to tears?

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#52

Post by bombcar »

esaym wrote: post #4

>Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break. There's an experience that lives rent free in my mind as well. As a teen, I worked at a bait shop that was on the Gulf coast. They sold mostly live shrimp but had other live stuff for bait as well. Salt water was pumped from the ne…

One I remember is knowing if Windows 95 was going to lockup and crash just by hearing the hard disk start to thrash - with SSDs swapping to death is silent.

And with many of these the difference between a journeyman and a master is the journeyman is saying “it’s never done that” whilst the master is already running.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#53

Post by noduerme »

esaym wrote: post #4

>Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break. There's an experience that lives rent free in my mind as well. As a teen, I worked at a bait shop that was on the Gulf coast. They sold mostly live shrimp but had other live stuff for bait as well. Salt water was pumped from the ne…

Why is there an apostrophe after "workers", and why has it caused me to read this six times?

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#54

Post by eastbound »

dredmorbius wrote: post #30
esaym wrote: post #4

>Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break. There's an experience that lives rent free in my mind as well. As a teen, I worked at a bait shop that was on the Gulf coast. They sold mostly live shrimp but had other live stuff for bait as well. Salt water was pumped from the ne…

A friend working at a photocopy shop could hear a paper jam from one high-speed copier when taking a break across the street. They'd be in the shop, opening the machine covers, before it came to a complete stop. Well-running equipment almost always has a characteristic sound and rhythm. Variations from that become quite apparent.

I hear my computer’s processor when it’s processing. It’s like a modem sound, but high-pitch.

All of us used to rely on the HDD distinct sound to know when the games were finished loading ;)

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#55

Post by Aeolun »

dymk wrote: post #51
noduerme wrote: post #46

Funny. I just had this conversation about ennui, probably not an original one, with a colleague who told me she wrote a thesis on ennui in college: Why did George Jetson go to work every day? Was it just to have a reason get away from his family? Wasn't the goal of that society that no one had to work, and everyone could be creative and leisureful all the time? Did George want to buy a newer robot? Was he cheating on…

I like the Culture series take on post scarcity societies. Sure, the super AI ship could build and maintain and plan everything, but what’s the point in that if all the humans are bored to tears?

I like that they have the ability to achieve immortality using a variety of means, but barely anyone avails themselves of that. After hundreds of years of life they’re just done.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#56

Post by jseban »

civilized wrote: post #28
JohnBooty wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible It's because the whole damn process of developing software in a company bigger than a garage is just a giant mess of productivity-busting bullshit all day, every day. Meetings, alerts, waiting for CI, waiting for builds to complete, whatever. There's no flow. I experience flow at my job maybe once or twice per mont…

Most of that is self-imposed and unnecessary.

Yeah and by people like the person who wrote the article, which I find ironic, that the article complains about being "forced" to work efficiently robbing the work of it's social and human aspects, yet people in the comments here, and elsewhere, are complaining about literally the opposite thing: being forced to work inefficiently and suffer from these forced "human" aspects of socialisation with people they can't choose freely.

Gives me the feeling that the author really tries to misuse the workplace for lifestyle, meaning, socialising etc which they really are responsible for themselves in their free time.

People just want to get their work done and proceed with their own lives outside of work, I think maybe this individualism is actually what the article is complaining about.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#57

Post by a_t48 »

noduerme wrote: post #49
pm90 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who work closely with machines develop an instinct for how it operates. If you think about it, all mechanical machines are state machines (in the CS sense) and if you’ve had to work with and fix shit long enough your brain commits those experiences to long term memory.

I like this. It holds true for looking at code to some extent - what people call "code smell". But the main difference would be that failure modes in CS tend to be binary - a piece of code produces the expected result or it doesn't. And unless you do something to the environment, it doesn't wear down over time. Whereas your car's brakes don't go out all at once (hopefully), and yet it's guaranteed to happen eventuall…

> And unless you do something to the environment, it doesn't wear down over time.

Disagree here (at least in spirit?) - code smell can also point to maintainability issues - if the codebase is continually changed some code is more likely to break than others.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#58

Post by Aeolun »

civilized wrote: post #28
JohnBooty wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible It's because the whole damn process of developing software in a company bigger than a garage is just a giant mess of productivity-busting bullshit all day, every day. Meetings, alerts, waiting for CI, waiting for builds to complete, whatever. There's no flow. I experience flow at my job maybe once or twice per mont…

Most of that is self-imposed and unnecessary.

Don’t think so. These things are par for the course if your dev team is several hundred people and -above all- focused on keeping things running exactly as they were before. Communication and waiting becomes 90% of your job.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#59

Post by bombela »

eastbound wrote: post #54
dredmorbius wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend working at a photocopy shop could hear a paper jam from one high-speed copier when taking a break across the street. They'd be in the shop, opening the machine covers, before it came to a complete stop. Well-running equipment almost always has a characteristic sound and rhythm. Variations from that become quite apparent.

I hear my computer’s processor when it’s processing. It’s like a modem sound, but high-pitch. All of us used to rely on the HDD distinct sound to know when the games were finished loading ;)

ahah same. I think we hear the coils that are used to lower the voltage for the CPU. They are modulated based on the current demand.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#60

Post by noduerme »

>> We have to collectively reject the engine of endless growth, and the aspiration for infinite productivity, before it breaks us all.

Or, y'know, not be so fragile.

My generation, GenX, didn't get to where we are as semi-successful slackers by whining, we did it by actually just arranging our own gigs and either accepting or rejecting the abuse of the capitalist system on a case-by-case basis. Appealing to the collective "but we're all so fucked, we're the first generation to have lower economic prospects than our parents" was fun for movie plots, but not something that would make us quit a job.

It took two things to reach this point of maximalist outrage at the unfairness of working: 1. Boomers raised their kids to be snowflakes, 2. Then Boomers got old and started using their kids as beasts of burden.

That's really all there is to it. Obviously, if you're stuck in that situation you want to tear down the whole system, but what do you think would happen if "we" rejected limitless growth and endless productivity? Nothing in this piece suggests a replacement for the drive to work, or the virtues of working and earning. Nothing in it contemplates what a society without those virtues might look like or what meaningful thing would replace the continuity of work in peoples' lives.

You want to hang out with GenX'ers? Okay, here's me at 22: DUDE I DON'T WANT TO WAKE UP AND GO TO WORK. AGAIN.

Here's me at 40: Thank God I kept going to work.

You'll feel the same way. Hopefully. If our economic and political system manages to digest the double demographic humps of an elderly, uptight conservative group of selfish fools and their entitled, progressive and whining children.

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