The thing you’re not accounting for is that work that primarily involves thought, which is what “office drones” are doing, aren’t productive in the same way that physical or service jobs are.
Looking off into space thinking is part of the work. People average about four hours of productive work in an eight hour day.
The thing you can’t do is get rid of half the people and then expect the other half to magically be eight hours productive per day. Businesses keep trying and weirdly it just tanks their output.
AI is not the panacea that so many people think it is. Do you feel happy when you need help with something you bought and you get an AI trying to offer you helpful articles or tips? I don’t. Do you want the same level of service from the entity that controls where your paycheck gets deposited or fixed your HSA contributions?
If you definition of work is butts in chairs typing, office workers don’t do too much work. But that’s a very naive definition of what most office workers are actually doing.
The thing you’re not accounting for is that work that primarily involves thought, which is what “office drones” are doing
Found the office drone.
Our office drones are not “thinking” for half the day like you, and input and manipulate data. You could also include half these “managers” too who sit in an office sending emails all day, and never hit the shop floor.
Given that office drone would cover any job that isn’t service, manufacturing or laborer, it’s not exactly surprising that you’d find one. I’m a software developer.
It’s almost always best to assume that other people’s jobs actually take some form of skill, because they always do. People get paid for a reason. Otherwise you fall into the trap of calling huge swaths of work “unskilled labor” and thinking they don’t deserve much pay, just because they’re just moving stuff around on the shop floor.
What do you think those emails the managers are sending are, if not work?
You don’t understand though, because it’s not physical (software of any kind) and even if it is (any hardware) because you aren’t constantly doing something it’s not work!!
As an admin who got push back from the sales team, everyone has… Unique perspectives on what is and isn’t work.
I know exactly what those emails are because I have to deal with them asking me if a wagon that I’m looking at has arrived yet.
So I email them back telling them that it’s arrived (they knew that already because goods-in already updated the checking in sheet) and they get to validate their job somehow by asking me, shit.
It’s quite amazing how they keep their jobs.
Experimental solution proposal:
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Fire all management. They’re expensive and exponentially less productive. Their stupid large offices and pricey desks also waste space.
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(Office) workers collectively do the thing they do without being micro managed and stuffed into pointless meetings.
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???
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Probably profit, actually. But then how would the “in-club” kids reap all the rewards without working? :( :( :(
If it is so easy to be an office drone, why weren’t you able to get a job like that?
Is it maybe because it involves skills you aren’t aware of?
