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Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

theguardian.com

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Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#11

Post by d357r0y3r »

If nine to five is barbaric, what does that make jobs requiring you to wake up early and stay late? This guy seems to have a chip on his shoulder because of some bad workplace experiences and now seems to think every job sucks.

Jobs with regular, stable work hours are not simply there by corporate decree. People actually like having that predictability in their lives. It makes it a lot easier to budget your time when you have that block of time carved out where you're making money.

Now, this guy would say hey, you could work half the time if you quit your job and started your own business. Well, that doesn't match up with the experience of any of the business owners I know (they regularly work 12-16 hour days), but even it was true...now I have to run and operate my own business. I can't just show up and do good work and take home a paycheck. I have to deal with insurance, I have to deal with payroll, or I have to pay someone to deal with all of that. If the only benefit I get from that is saying, "but at least I don't have a boss," it's not even close to worth it.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#12

Post by mynegation »

This piece reeks of entitlement. If you love programming or speaking at conferences, sure you don't mind meshing it all together or follow necessary irregular schedule. But there are many people who just want to sell their labour and skills for money and go to their favorite hobbies - whatever they are - without money attached to them, be that woodworking or playing with your dog. Free scheduling should be an option, many people would like that, but calling the other option "barbaric" is tone deaf

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#13

Post by xherberta »

Highlights:

while most people like the notion of free time, actually having to deal with it is horrible. It’s a deal with the devil. At least when they’re employed they don’t have to deal with the freefall; the nothingness of free time. (Sounds Heiddegerian - the dread that comes with freedom)

...This constant influx of news and data means we’ve come to perceive time differently. The future used to be a far-off thing, but now we experience it at the same time as the present, he contends...

Obvious: “The winners in this labour force will be the people who have an actual skill,” he says. “Always have an actual skill as a back-up, that’s very good advice.”

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#14

Post by Doxin »

kevincennis wrote: post #6
jgrahamc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, barbaric? Having set work hours in a steady job with regular pay in a safe workplace with benefits usually included, including paid vacation? I don't think it's hard to see that as barbaric. Think of it as "I am forced to be away from my loved ones for most of the daylight hours and most days of the year excluding these permitted 'holiday' periods".

"Forced" doesn't seem like exactly the right word.

It seems pretty fitting to me. Work or don't eat. Technically you could decide to starve of course, but it's at the very least coercive.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#15

Post by goalieca »

kevincennis wrote: post #6
jgrahamc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, barbaric? Having set work hours in a steady job with regular pay in a safe workplace with benefits usually included, including paid vacation? I don't think it's hard to see that as barbaric. Think of it as "I am forced to be away from my loved ones for most of the daylight hours and most days of the year excluding these permitted 'holiday' periods".

"Forced" doesn't seem like exactly the right word.

I wouldn't go to work if I didn't have to. It can feel like prison some days. Forced is the right word.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#16

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jgrahamc wrote: post #4
bmmayer1 wrote: post #2

Hyperbole like this makes it difficult to take his arguments seriously, even if he makes some good points about the changing nature of work. Really, barbaric? Having set work hours in a steady job with regular pay in a safe workplace with benefits usually included, including paid vacation? It's such a dramatic leap forward from the way most humans in history--and many still today--have had to scrimp for survival, wor…

Really, barbaric? Having set work hours in a steady job with regular pay in a safe workplace with benefits usually included, including paid vacation? I don't think it's hard to see that as barbaric. Think of it as "I am forced to be away from my loved ones for most of the daylight hours and most days of the year excluding these permitted 'holiday' periods".

And every weekend. And evenings and mornings. And the kids are at school anyway.

This is such a first-world sad-sack complaint.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#17

Post by filereaper »

Rather than going down the barbaric tone. When it comes to 9-5 jobs, I keep going back to city infrastructures.

Where I live in Toronto, all the highways and subways get clogged as everyone needs to make it to the office for 9-5. Everyone then complains about poor infrastructure, but then all cities keep building for a short burst peak traffic. Infrastructure is overbuilt for other times.

I can understand a lot of it is due to having kids (schools let out around 4pm) so everyone tries to streamline dropping kids off and picking them up from work.

I really wish everyone can try for a staggered approach to deal with congestion. I don't have a hard sync like picking up kids or anything like that yet so I avoid the normal envelopes around 9-5.

Many initiatives like Smart Cities are being rolled out but yea... I'm not a huge fan of the common 9-5 pattern.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#18

Post by fsloth »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #2

Hyperbole like this makes it difficult to take his arguments seriously, even if he makes some good points about the changing nature of work. Really, barbaric? Having set work hours in a steady job with regular pay in a safe workplace with benefits usually included, including paid vacation? It's such a dramatic leap forward from the way most humans in history--and many still today--have had to scrimp for survival, wor…

Chained to a desk from 9-5 is inhuman if the work is not intrinsically motivating. From quality of life perspective I'm not sure if it's much better than generic hunter gathering.

The fact that it's materialistically much better than scraping living by in some hellhole does not validate the concept.

The fact that it's a safer and a healthier work environment than some other does not mean it could not be better.

Sadly, it's the status quo. Yes, calling it barbaric is hyperbolic - but the end is not to find out the specific philosophic understanding of the condition but to create propaganda and motivation to find something better.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#20

Post by gdulli »

He's been a successful author for over 25 years. I wonder if he really has much experience in a 9-5 career. When he was in that career, was he unhappy because it's an objectively bad experience? Or had he not found good jobs? Or was he never committed to that career because he dreamed of being a writer?

I enjoy my 9-5 career. I realize I'm lucky because I have a better experience than most, but I'm not singularly lucky or gifted to be in my position. I don't think I'm one of the few who doesn't consider it "barbaric."

I don't think it's necessarily universal to place a high value on "freeform scheduling" like he says and having structure to the day does have benefits.

> "Most people who work in tech – 99% – don’t want to look at the implications of what they are doing"

My work boils down to the difference between someone seeing one ad vs. another. I need money to live and this is what I'm good at. I don't pretend I'm making the world a better place but it's equally overdramatic to say the implications make the world worse. For better or worse or society is about the freedom to sell things and all the propserity and inequality that comes along with that. For all their flaws, a shift away from those fundamentals would take generations and people don't agree what they should be replaced with and there's no guarantee the replacement would be better.

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