10 things to read about labor and work
Over the past few years, I realized that more and more of my interests had become focused on organizational theory. I was fascinated by structures and how people work together and how labor vs. management retain power. It’s the natural result of being in management for a while — you become interested in what you’re doing, even if you can’t quite help it.
This summer, I got to curated a little gallery exhibit of art, writing, and a single short film about “Work, Meaning, and Identity.” I could have used a more interesting title! But the exhibit itself was arranged in concentric circles, exploring 1. the relationship of the organization and the market 2. the relationship between the worker and the organization and 3. the relationship between the work and the self.
Here are some of my favorite (interesting and fun) sources that I found in my research.
The Visible Hand of Management: In my opinion, middle management is the worst kind of management. It lacks both the humanness of the line manager and the business accountability of the executive. In most organizations, they do not bear responsibility either for the work getting done, nor for the ultimate aims of the organization being attained. They, for lack of a better term, are simply an organizational relay and coordination cost. The incentives of middle management can pollute the organization: they are incentivized to expand their scope instead of expanding the organization’s reach, they structurally should pass the buck (up or down), and they’re compensated to look after their own ends. For the great individuals in middle management, I find they move up or down really fast. This book outlines the history of middle management’s evolution.
“Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, John M. Keynes: Keynes said we’d have a 15 hour work week, thanks to all of the labor saving automation. However, he was worried: what would we do to fill the time? What would we do to give ourselves meaning?
Studs Terkel, Working: The problem with the argument that it’s stupid to look for meaning in work, a form of false consciousness to find purpose in your job, is that it’s wrong. In 1974, Studs Terkel published “Working,” a compilation of more than a hundred and thirty interviews with Americans talking about what they do all day, and what they think about it. It was a study, he explained, of Americans’ search “for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”
An anti-motivational poster: I don’t agree with this piece, but it’s well written and explains the Gen Z work fatigue/attitude very rationally. Haley argues about economic exploitation and makes some salient points, including: “We should dispense with ‘work ethic’ as it’s currently understood, and we should replace it with something way better: taking pride in and deriving meaning from the nature of our work itself, not from the mere ability to perform it without complaining.”
You weren’t meant to have a boss: Ah, Paul Graham. I can never meet him because I idolize him too much. This essay makes a few spurious anthropology/ev bio-esque claims about why humans are not meant to work at big companies, but there is a fundamental truth in that your surroundings, more than your innate potential, determine your growth trajectory.
Organizational Slime Mold: And on that topic, the iconic emoji flipbook by Alex Komoroske on how Google is a slime mold, instead of a tops-down military organization, and the price it pays for its moldiness.
What people used to do after work before cell phones: “Recently, a number of my younger coworkers expressed shock that I was able to complete a master’s degree while I held a full-time job. It was easy: I worked at a literary agency during the day, I got off work at 5 p.m., and I studied at night. The key was that this was just after the turn of the millennium. “But what would you do when you had work emails?” these coworkers asked. “I didn’t get work emails,” I said. “I barely had the internet in my apartment.”
Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization: The eight metaphors of organization — the eightfold path!
Automation & Job Retraining Paper: The theory of prosperity around automation relies on two premises: 1) that it will redistribute, but not eliminate jobs 2) it will produce more that we all can share. The follow on from #1 is that we will be able to re-train — that if your job as a PM gets automated by tara.ai (who has been coming for my ass since 2019), you can fall back on retraining as a designer (as an example.) Turns out…retraining fails. Until now, job redistribution has relied on the coal miners aging out, rather than their successful retraining as software developers or home healthcare workers. What’s going to happen when the cycles get even faster with AI?