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What “work” looks like

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: What “work” looks like

#31

Post by eru »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #15

Boss: "Hicks, how come you're not working." Bill: "There's nothing to do." Boss: "Well, you pretend like you're working." Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs". Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker colluding in a game. I think what constitutes work exists…

The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped.

Btw, even if they are a problem, their impact on the economy pales in comparison with restrictions on migration and construction.

Re: What “work” looks like

#32

Post by mostertoaster »

i_dont_know_ wrote: post #21

I agree with the message overall: impactful work might not 'look' like work, but I'm not sure what the author's deal is with conflating 'collaboration' with 'meaningless meetings'. I guess I've just had different experiences, but for me, 'collaboration' means 'understanding that this project/task does not exist in isolation and looping in those relevant stakeholders early to make sure they decide with you as opposed…

I was thinking his point was how there is a lot of collaboration that isn’t actually useful, just as there is a lot of sitting at your desk “working” that isn’t useful.

It doesn’t mean you never sit at your desk and work, just that sitting at your desk doesn’t mean you’re working. Likewise for collaboration.

Re: What “work” looks like

#33

Post by FriedrichN »

Because humans are social beings, we need to signal to the others that we belong to the group and are doing our part. Our loyalty is prized more than our effectiveness or efficiency. It doesn't matter how productive you are, the feelings of the group are more important.

You can see this in many places in our society. The security theater in airports don't make air travel that much safer, but it does send a signal to the group "look, we're doing something about it!". Same goes for the war on drugs, notoriously ineffective and seemingly only makes things worse. The hunt for benefits fraud is often not quite effective, hurts the ones that actually need the benefits, but the fear of the freeloader is big enough one must be seen to be tough on fraudsters. Or school, where doing what you're told is much more important than any learning you might do along the way. Or the way China is now burying itself with Xi's everlasting reign.

If you think humans are meant to be effective and efficient, you are very much mistaken. Everything we manage do, we do in spite of it.

Re: What “work” looks like

#34

Post by hansel_der »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #18
nonrandomstring wrote: post #15

Boss: "Hicks, how come you're not working." Bill: "There's nothing to do." Boss: "Well, you pretend like you're working." Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs". Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker colluding in a game. I think what constitutes work exists…

>Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs". Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker colluding in a game. For years (5+), at my job there's often nothing to do, so after lunch I just go home, and declare 4 hours worked that day (8-12, instead of normal 8) at the…

  > I feel kinda blessed.
you should

Re: What “work” looks like

#35

Post by carlmr »

Test0129 wrote: post #16

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck…

>When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck on some stupid thing I didn't understand and slamming my head against the paper/book/whatever didn't help. Again, a quick nap and I was good (or at least better than I was).

I remember doing this, too. I would often nap 2-3 times a day in crunch time and sleep less during the night, solving many problems.

I think the problem as you say is the performative part of work, and napping really doesn't look good in that sense.

Since COVID WFH I often also nap instead of eating lunch, which is a double power boost, since a big lunch can make you almost comatose.

Re: What “work” looks like

#36

Post by bmcmaste »

I agree. Packing people in a room to "brainstorm" doesn't work.

In Design Thinking, team members diverge and ideate privately. Later the team converges by discussing ideas as a group to refine or combine ideas.

Re: What “work” looks like

#37

Post by leobg »

FriedrichN wrote: post #33

Because humans are social beings, we need to signal to the others that we belong to the group and are doing our part. Our loyalty is prized more than our effectiveness or efficiency. It doesn't matter how productive you are, the feelings of the group are more important. You can see this in many places in our society. The security theater in airports don't make air travel that much safer, but it does send a signal to…

FriedrichN? Is that an allusion to Nietzsche? It would certainly be fitting the sharpness of your observation. Wouldn’t be surprised to find the thought you expressed here in “Human, All Too Human”.

Re: What “work” looks like

#38

Post by b4je7d7wb »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #18
nonrandomstring wrote: post #15

Boss: "Hicks, how come you're not working." Bill: "There's nothing to do." Boss: "Well, you pretend like you're working." Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs". Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker colluding in a game. I think what constitutes work exists…

>Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs". Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker colluding in a game. For years (5+), at my job there's often nothing to do, so after lunch I just go home, and declare 4 hours worked that day (8-12, instead of normal 8) at the…

I do the same, but report 8 hours. I automated this task in every job that required to report hours. I refuse to work in a clock in clock out fashion.

Thankfully I now have a job that autoreports 8 hours. I never even opened the software to edit hours.

Re: What “work” looks like

#39

Post by rjbwork »

jjzhiyuan wrote: post #23
dark_star wrote: post #4

Software development is creative work. Creative insight can come anywhere, any time. Better ideas can make difficult things easy. And make the impossible– possible. So the most important thing on a software team (or really any team creating high technology products or services) is an environment where team members feel safe to be themselves– psychologically safe, where they can try out new things, make mistakes, fail…

Can't agree more :)

Just FYI, you're being downvoted because generally on HN you should just upvote if you have a contentless agreement comment to post, AKA a "this"-style post.

Re: What “work” looks like

#40

Post by nonrandomstring »

eru wrote: post #31
nonrandomstring wrote: post #15

Boss: "Hicks, how come you're not working." Bill: "There's nothing to do." Boss: "Well, you pretend like you're working." Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs". Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker colluding in a game. I think what constitutes work exists…

The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped. Btw, even if they are a problem, their impact on the economy pales in comparison with restrictions on migration and construction.

> The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped.

I think that's true and it's a shame Graeber's choice of language basically offends. Who wants to hear that their job is "bullshit"? And let's face it, sometimes we feel good name-calling all those people whose work we don't understand.

Unfortunately that over-hyping subtracts from real and serious questions about why we're burning resources (human and material) doing perfomative acts.

Even the things you mention, like mobility and development regulation can be "perfomative", as "acting out" of things we think we ought to be seen to do but no longer have the courage to examine.

This is down to the cult of "the system" as a Big Other, which must be appeased - something I'm not sure Graeber articulated well. But it was a key step in the unravelling of the Soviet system, and I think we are repeating it now in the West.

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