Talk:The future of office work: Difference between revisions

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→‎Kyla Scanlon’s argument

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 === Kyla Scanlon’s argument ===
-[https://kylascanlon.com/ Kyla Scanlon] is a whip-smart Generation Z “content creator” who makes short-form videos, podcasts and blogs “analysing the economy with a human-focused lens”.
+[https://kylascanlon.com/ Kyla Scanlon] is a whip-smart “content creator” whose short-form videos, podcasts and blogs “analysing the economy with a human-focused lens” have earned her hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Recently she came to TikTok Girl’s defence.  TikTok Girl, she says, is ''right''.<ref>https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-tiktok-girl-is-right-modernity</ref>
+Scanlon starts with some potted anthropology — agrarian societies worked during daylight hours and gave up their circadian rhythms only when forced to by the industrial revolution — and it took Henry Ford (not ''usually'' a Gen Z pin-up, but still) to recognise he would get more out of his workers by paying more and asking less.
-Scanlon’s style, which has earned her hundreds of thousands of subscribers, is well-informed but also funny, off-beat, wry and ''millennial''.
+So, Scanlon tells us, was born the nine-to-five.  The industrial world has, arbitrarily, stuck with it ever since. But the nature of how we now ''are'' — networked, digital, online — and what we now ''do'' — we’ve pivoted from production of goods to delivery of services — means [[this time it’s different|it’s different this time]].
-Being of Generation Z — ''just'' — it is no surprise Scanlon sides with her cohort. And her own career to date has prescribed the idealised millennial life experience: she is 25, self-employed with a Bloomberg column and a podcast.
+Let’s take this history as read and park questions — such as how TikTok Girl would have liked the average day out in the agrarian fields, or ''who'' stuck with the eight-hour work day, since it definitely wasn’t the financial services industry or their professional advisors<ref>The EU got so worked up about the long hours that it legislated the “Working Time Directive” in 1998, limiting weekly work hours to ''forty-eight''. Professionals have habitually opted out of it ever since.</ref> — but as we do, a bit of tough love: an eight-hour day downtown with a commute each side of it is ''no great imposition''. It might be ''dull'', sure, but that is not the question. You can’t cure boredom by working from home.
-But that makes her an outlier, not an archetype: few attain that degree of freedom and self-determination at all, let alone aged 25, so she barely represents the [[lived experience]] of even her immediate cohort — affluent, educated, young Metropolitan professionals — let alone the young people of rural China or even metropolitan Istanbul.
+So are there other reasons to think things have changed? Scanlon argues that, since we now deliver services rather than making things in a factory, jobs ''can'' be delivered remotely.
-Still, she tells us not to snigger: TikTok Girl is ''right''.<ref>https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-tiktok-girl-is-right-modernity</ref>
+{{quote|
-She starts with some potted anthropology — agrarian societies worked during daylight hours and gave up their circadian rhythms only when forced to by the industrial revolution — and it took Henry Ford (not ''usually'' a Gen Z pin-up, but still) to recognise he would get more out of his workers by paying more and asking less.
-So was born the nine-to-five, Scanlon argues, and the industrial world has, arbitrarily, stuck with it ever since. But the nature of how we now are — networked, digital, online — and what we now do — we’ve pivoted from production of goods to delivery of services (“B2B SaaS”) — means [[this time it’s different|it’s different this time]].
-Let’s take this history as read and park questions — such as how TikTok Girl would have liked an average agrarian day in the fields, or who, exactly, stuck with the eight-hour work day, since it definitely wasn’t the financial services industry or their professional advisors<ref>The EU got so worked up about the long hours that it legislated the “Working Time Directive” in 1998, limiting weekly work hours to ''forty-eight''. Professionals have habitually opted out of it ever since.</ref> — but let’s be clear: an eight-hour day in an air-conditioned office with a commute each side of it is ''no great trial''. It might be ''dull'', sure, but that is not the question. You can’t cure boredom by working from home.
-But are there other reasons to think things have changed? Scanlon argues that, unlike production line jobs, services jobs can be delivered remotely.
-{{Quote|
 I eat my peas with honey<br>
 I’ve done it all my life<br>
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 None of Scanlon’s reasons are new. Circadian rhythms have been out of whack since threshers collapsed in a heap in front of the fire in the seventeenth century. Max Weber’s “iron cage” of hierarchy, rules, and process has been with us since, well when Weber noticed it, in 1904.
 === Jemima Kelly’s argument ===