Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric • Hacker News Board

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#61

Post by hectorr » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

ellius wrote: post #41

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…

I think he made the mistake of ignoring half the connotation of the word. "Barbaric" really implies a combination of two underlying ideas. He's right insofar as the 9-5 is backwards and unsympathetic to human beings, which I think is his point. He's wrong in that it isn't physically brutal. The problem is he picked a word with a complex connotation when he needed a simpler one.

That's true, but language is constantly evolving. I actually think we need a cultural shift in how we perceive work. The high intrinsic and extrinsic value we place on it served a lot of communities really well for millennia, but things really are changing these days with robotics and narrow AI. Language is one of the main tools we have to work with.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#62

Post by return0 » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:12 PM UTC

I 'm sure there are plenty of people in HN who don't work 9-5 or work independently. It's an upgrade; for me its a kind of upgrade that one does not want to reverse (like moving from a small town to a city). 'Barbaric' is obviously hyperbole, but quitting the 9-5 lifestyle is a change promised by technology that hasn't yet been realized. Sectors like IT could have pioneered this shift, but for some reasons it did not happen (much like most IT workers do not work remotely, even if it's technically possible). I do think that work schedules deeply affect the structure of cities, and it would be nice to see some alternative arrangements, even as an experiment.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#63

Post by jackhack » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

mantas wrote: post #21

goalieca wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can bum around and live off welfare. Quite a few people have pulled that off and seem to enjoy it.

Enough so that in Hawaii, for instance, they are providing airline tickets to those who will volunteer to leave the island (and its welfare system) and go be a burden on the mainland, instead.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#64

Post by jackhack » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

yawz wrote: post #26

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…

> the way most humans in history--and many still today--have had to scrimp for survival, working long hours in the fields, barely achieving subsistence, sharecropping for feudal lords or tyrannical landlords. We should have never left our hunter-gatherer lifestyle. :)

Because nothing beats dying at the ripe old age 30 with a toothless mouth, body failing of undernourishment and disease (especially parasites), common death in childbirth, the slightest infection becoming a death sentence, and so on.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#65

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

RUG3Y wrote: post #56

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #51

Look, we all know there are much harder jobs than a 9-5 office job. However, I think an interesting question is: How necessary is the job? How much does the job satisfy human needs, or contribute to human well-being? If it simply doesn't, if its only function is institutional, why should we consider it anything less than barbaric, or even perverse? Institutions such as businesses exist to serve people, after all, and…

If my job, and even the entire company I work at, disappeared today, not a single soul would notice. Or they might casually notice, but their life would not be affected in any meaningful way. The work is soul destroying, I'd love to be doing something better.

Yep. There's immense dignity in doing something that society really needs done, even when it's hard work. There's also immense degradation in working hard when you secretly know society doesn't need you, and you're just doing it so someone you think is delusional will pay you.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#66

Post by jackhack » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #7

What a load of shit. All the more clear as I'm traveling in a 3rd world country where people actually have to deal with difficult working conditions. I see people in their mid 70's doing long days of physical labor on a farm for dollars a day. Ask them how barbaric the 9-5 desk job is. As the other commenter mentioned, hyperbole like this only ever damages a cause. I think there are probably better ways to do work an…

a load of shit, indeed! This degree of hipster self-pity is intolerable. I couldn't make it more than half-way through the stupid article.

"Barbaric." I wonder if he realizes how insulting and patronizing that is. I wish he could have met my grandfather, who worked his life in a coal mine literally scratching out a living six long days a week before dying of lung cancer in the 1950s.

A man who lived in a company house, was paid in script, money that could only be used at the company store to buy good at inflated prices. A man who was shot at with cannon and rifle by the us government for daring to challenge this status quo and try to form a union (see "WV mine wars" for details).

Vacations? Unthinkable. Benefits? no. A paycheck that was just enough to stay alive until the next one came along? yes.

The idea of fulfillment from one's work was probably not even a concept to daydream about. Leisure time didn't exist. It was called "resting" and it's what you did when not working.

He would have seen the cushy desk job of the average HN reader as paradise itself, the "stress" of meetings or deadlines as literally laughable compared to the very real stresses and dangers he "enjoyed" : mine collapse, poisoning by noxious gases, explosions, fire, or cancer.

Load of shit. That's the perfect description.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#67

Post by nindalf » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #44

jerf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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"." As opposed to what, though? Hunter-gatherers may or may not have had a lot more leisure time, depending on who you ask, but they didn't hunt and gather together in family groups all the time, and while many people use their words to sing the praises of this…

1) I think you're understating the amount of free time people had in the past, especially with respect to hunter gatherer societies. 2) Joining an autonomous hunter gatherer society obviously isn't possible now, because they doesn't exist. The paraphrased "it's your choice, if you hate the 40 hour a week routine so much, just become a hunter gatherer in the Rockies" line doesn't cut it. Even when hunter gatherer soci…

That is an extraordinary claim you're making, that people had to be forced to remain within agricultural societies. Of the scholarship in this area that I'm familiar with, nothing supports this. If you're aware of research that suggests otherwise, please share it.

I often see this nostalgia about how much better things used to be, compared to how bad it is now, whether that time period is 5, 25, 100 or in your case, 10000 years ago. This usually glosses over the very real downsides of living in any of those time periods. In the case of hunter gatherer societies here are some problems that we no longer have to deal with once we moved to agricultural societies with central authority. In no particular order

1. Vagaries of food. You had to constantly find food, because storage wasn't easy. You could have a few months where you had plenty of food but a difficult week could see some friends and family die of starvation. This was a very real danger. Compare that with what a difficult week looks like today. This led to

2. Constantly moving. You could never stay in one place too long. You really like the area you're currently at? Too bad, move on before food sources dry up here. What if the new place is not as good and food is difficult to find? Too bad, keep moving. This led to

3. Leaving behind people. If a person could not walk at the pace of the group, they would be left behind to die. There was no quiet corner they could retire to, they had to walk or die. Not just old people. If a person broke their leg, and couldn't walk for a couple of months, they would be left behind to die.

4. Safety. If you lived in a large group with strong fighters this wasn't a problem. But if you didn't, or encountered a larger or more skilled group of fighters, you could see everyone in your group killed except for younger women. That's less of a problem in societies where a central entity has a monopoly on violence.

There is absolutely no doubt that all of these factors led to a high mortality rate. Once people moved to agricultural societies that were relatively safer and had relatively stable sources of food, the population exploded. The choice that people made was not forced upon them. Indeed it would have been difficult to do at a time when society had just started to change and central authority was still weak. Rather it was just people choosing the safe, stable option rather than the interesting one.

The interestingness of being a hunter gatherer is what modern societies find attractive - eating different things everyday, moving to a new place every couple of weeks, almost like a constant vacation. But it ignores the constant spectre of death that hangs over every such society.

My understanding of this topic is based on Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I highly recommend it.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#68

Post by mercer » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:47 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #22

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".

"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"." As opposed to what, though? Hunter-gatherers may or may not have had a lot more leisure time, depending on who you ask, but they didn't hunt and gather together in family groups all the time, and while many people use their words to sing the praises of this…

I wrote a long response, taking a wider and wider perspective, and trying to be nuanced and yet opinionated, until I realized that if all this climate change stuff that's been posted on HN these past weeks/months is true, and I have little reason to doubt it, the only discussion worth having to me seems to be on the level of 'should be work towards a global government, and if so, how tyrannical can it be to still be worth the alternative of mankind disappearing?'

I'm not being snarky or theatrical, or judgmental; this is something that's cropping up all the time and I'm kind of wishing someone wise would tell me I shouldn't be as worried as I am about climate change fucking shit up on a level that dwarfs pretty much everything else.

And to be clear, I personally love spending time discussing the ins and outs of, say, The Lord Of The Rings, and I'll keep doing that to stave off depression. But for both good and bad I'm starting to wonder if I should go all-in on working toward solutions - if any - to playing a part in preserving humanity.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#69

Post by sidlls » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

pavement wrote: post #9

Not that I'm one to disagree, because day jobs are fucking bullshit, but... I worry that as advanced technology continues to unfurl evermore convenience into our lives, how spoiled will we become?

It's interesting that you choose to use the word "spoiled" here. It is a testament to how firmly entrenched the class system is.

Re: Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric

#70

Post by unprepare » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

jackhack wrote: post #66

anm89 wrote: post #7

What a load of shit. All the more clear as I'm traveling in a 3rd world country where people actually have to deal with difficult working conditions. I see people in their mid 70's doing long days of physical labor on a farm for dollars a day. Ask them how barbaric the 9-5 desk job is. As the other commenter mentioned, hyperbole like this only ever damages a cause. I think there are probably better ways to do work an…

a load of shit, indeed! This degree of hipster self-pity is intolerable. I couldn't make it more than half-way through the stupid article. "Barbaric." I wonder if he realizes how insulting and patronizing that is. I wish he could have met my grandfather, who worked his life in a coal mine literally scratching out a living six long days a week before dying of lung cancer in the 1950s. A man who lived in a company hous…

Ahh yes, the always tired retort of "people in the past/in a different place have it worse, so you have no right to complain"

totally legitimate argument, im sure your grandfather fought hard for there to never be better working conditions for his grandchildren, and would hate that working conditions have gotten better and continue to improve.

have you ever complained that something tastes bad? dont forget theres starving children in africa, so you aren't allowed to complain about your food tasting bad, because someone has it worse, right?

Have you ever been thirsty and asked someone for water? that gall on you! people die everyday from dehydration, you being thirsty is just hipster self pity, you aren't going to die, so you aren't thirsty