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Talk:The future of office work (view source)
Revision as of 08:20, 6 November 2023
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shouldn’t she take her happiness and quality of life seriously? Why do we need to keep glorifying the daily grind as if it were an inherently worthy or virtuous way to live?}} | |||
Good questions, but again: is this time different? Who really ''glorifies'' the daily grind? We have configured the way we work — our grand game of [[Agency problem|financial services pass the parcel]] — to be an elaborate ritual formal hoop-jumping, box ticking and ticket-clipping. We have between us consented to the flawless execution of ''form'' as the highest aspiration of professional life. That’s the deal. | |||
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Gen Z, the generation born between around 1996 and 2012 — have concerns about their mental health, and are bringing those into the world of work. And for good reason: depression and anxiety among teenagers and young adults has skyrocketed. | |||
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This, too, may be their parents’ fault — we of Generation X — our fault for giving unrealistic expectations. | |||
But here’s the thing. If the highest plane to which we could aspire really ''was'' the flawless pursuit of abstract [[form]] then, and only then, ''remote working would be perfect''. Form-fillers need no ad-hoc interactions. Bureaucrats are there to ''prevent'' unplanned interactions. But we — and, I dare say, Generation Z too — hold on to the hope that professional work is something ''more'' than that. | |||
After all, full-scale [[Bring your own premises|remote working]] is the [[reductio ad absurdum]] of outsourcing philosophy. COVID was the chance to prove it out. If this really were how business worked best, overheads would be slashed, infrastructure outsourced to staff, and the risk of bumptious worker-drones like you and me having destructive bright ideas and dangerous flashes of inspiration would be eliminated. It would be some wonderful, {{Plainlink|https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/|''Brazil''-style}} autocracy, everyone chained to their own Ikea table, paying their own rent, clicking buttons while being overwatched by loving telescreens. | |||
If depression and anxiety is skyrocketing among teenagers and young adults — I have no reason to disagree — then will letting them fester in isolation really help? Isn’t community and interpersonal interaction just what they need? | |||
====Summary==== | ====Summary==== | ||
COVID has given us a vision of an adjacent possibility: a diffused, networked virtual working world where we no longer need to slog into a centralised “in person” office space. Is this the future of work, or an aberration? | COVID has given us a vision of an adjacent possibility: a diffused, networked virtual working world where we no longer need to slog into a centralised “in person” office space. Is this the future of work, or an aberration? | ||