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===The [[fear]] of redundancy=== | ===The [[fear]] of redundancy=== | ||
Hands up who has not had these misgivings: | Hands up who has not had these misgivings: | ||
“If I take on this project, and it fails, I won’t have my old job to go back to and I will be [[out of a job]].” | |||
“If we fix this process, these people will be [[out of a job]].” | |||
“I fear they are going to outsource my role and I will be [[out of a job]].” | |||
“The machines are coming, and we will soon be [[out of a job]]. But I will hang on as long as I can, and hopefully see out to retirement.” | |||
On the other hand, who has not felt the following: | On the other hand, who has not felt the following: | ||
“This process is ludicrous. It adds no value. It wastes everybody’s time, and creates hours of unnecessary paperwork. While we waste our time on this, something genuinely serious could blow up, we will be blamed because we didn’t anticipate it, and we’ll all be [[out of a job]]. But there are too many vested interests for it to ever change.” | |||
“These documents are far too complicated. Even the lawyers who negotiate them don’t understand them, and the operations teams wouldn’t have a clue. There is a real risk of operational failure because no-one understands what is going on, and if that happens we will all be [[out of a job]], but there is no appetite to spend even a small amount of time or money to fix it: we don’t have the bandwidth are too busy keeping the manual processes going.” | |||
“We can’t manage this risk properly because our systems are archaic, they don’t talk to each other, the process is far too manual and we spend all our time on the defensive and handling operational risk incidents. If something blows up we will be [[out of a job]], but we have no mandate to fix it.” | |||
===The [[Graeber paradox]]=== | ===The [[Graeber paradox]]=== | ||
{{quote| | {{quote|''If I fix broken processes, machines will do everything, and I will be out of a job. If I don’t, nothing will work properly, and I could be out of a job.''}} | ||
This is the dilemma of modern professional work. Call it the [[Graeber paradox]].<ref>So named for {{author|David Graeber}}’s book, [[Bullshit Jobs: A Theory]], which once almost got me fired. Long story.</ref> Being but ants on the planet’s face we are, at some stage, doomed. Our mortal frailty will get us in the end. We are damned if we do, damned if we don’t, and since damnation lies at a point up the road, which ever path it takes, we choose not to move forward ''at all''. | This is the dilemma of modern professional work. Call it the [[Graeber paradox]].<ref>So named for {{author|David Graeber}}’s book, [[Bullshit Jobs: A Theory]], which once almost got me fired. Long story.</ref> Being but ants on the planet’s face we are, at some stage, doomed. Our mortal frailty will get us in the end. We are damned if we do, damned if we don’t, and since damnation lies at a point up the road, which ever path it takes, we choose not to move forward ''at all''. | ||