Our Unpaid, Extra Shadow Work
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
His vilification of these so-called "shadow jobs" boils down to this vague and indirect reference to an increase in "fatigue". I don't find any substance to this. The point of ATMs and ticket machines and self-service gas is that human labor is usually inefficient. You pay for human labor by the hour. It doesn't matter if the CPU time during that hour is 1 minute. In almost all cases, a human worker will entail wasted VARIABLE costs. On the other hand, if the bank buys too many ATMs, the waste is for the most part a fixed cost.
And notice, the quality of service can sometimes _improve_ with machines! E.g., without ATMs we would still have to be concerned about whether we could make it to the bank on time before it closed to withdraw cash or deposit a check. In all of the cases mentione, the combination of machine and human labor allows the seller to satisfy more customers at less cost. Now, it's possible that we are also sacrificing something. But to be honest, in all of the examples that he mentions, I personally do not feel any sacrifice.
What is plainly true, however, is the rise in such self service. And the question of how this affects us, is interesting. I would speculate that one of these effects is an increase in anti-social behavior.
Airport check-in machines are a fantastic thing because it speeds up the process. The airport can have ten times as many machines as desks, and that means your check-in will be about ten times faster. That's a lot of time saved that you can use for something else.
And you can still have service personnel and machines at the same time. I can check-in at the desk or through a machine. I can withdraw money by going inside the bank, or use the ATM outside. I can do the self-checkout in a store, or have it done by a cashier, and so on.
What is plainly true, however, is the rise in such self service. And the question of how this affects us, is interesting. I would speculate that one of these effects is an increase in anti-social behavior.
And this, I suspect, is what Illich was most interested in. (I've not read this particular book, however).
Do you live right next to a bank? Until very recently, the closest bank branch was about 10 blocks away from my home. The ATM 2 blocks away (in a closet-sized retail space too small for a real bank) saved me miles of walking.
My company has a homegrown A-B testing platform. Without getting too far into the technical details, the process typically occurred as follows: A business unit would suggest a performance increasing hypothesis to the statistical analyst ("let's change the font size from 12 to 14, I bet that'll increase conversions"), who would clarify the hypothesis into a statistically correct terms ("let's set 1% of our traffic to size 14 font and segment the resulting revenue this way") and submit a ticket to the engineering team, who would set up the test using XML, then ran a script that would convert that XML into MySQL insert statements, which populated a table that the web application would read from.
Then we had layoffs and engineers were canned. To mitigate some of the work for the engineering team's now reduced staff, I gave all the analysts the necessary permissions to set up and execute the XML -> MySQL translation themselves. On the one hand, they appreciate the direct control. On the other hand, they've fucked up production more than once with malformed XML and the like, which is something they never had to worry about before, which in turn has caused huge headaches for my team.
Is this 'shadow work'? All I know is that my company used to employ more people, and both engineers and analysts were happier. Now nobody is happy, even if the productivity per person is higher, except maybe our executives who have squeezed out more productivity out of fewer employees.
Hmm, maybe I should see what those OWS guys are babbling about after all.
The author's position on "shadow work" appears to be opposition to productivity and self-reliance, along with a pining for servants and dependence.
If I'm paying them a fair wage for their time, how can you call me a burden on society? Is your boss a burden on society when he tells you to do your job?
Are you against all forms of division of labor or just the convenient ones?
When I buy tickets on the internet, I get charged a convenience charge... costing me more for doing it myself. When I drive myself, I have no doubt that everything in, it costs me more than catching the bus.
Unfortunately these are all things that aren't necessarily obvious. "Doing it yourself" is a great idea, but it's not necessarily cheaper.
Self-checkout works because it's cheaper not only cheaper indirectly (through lower prices) but directly as well: The customer is given the choice of waiting in line for a human or doing it themselves, and they can ponder all of the economic variables, like their preference for not doing manual labor versus the value of their time.
I'm not sure how old you are, but gas stations used to have 2 prices. One price for self service and one for 'full' service. Over time I'm guessing more people used the self service to the point where even offering full service didn't make sense.
Bagging the items will be optional, or you can just bag them yourself as you shop.
Now, interestingly, I really shouldn't be there. The cost of shopping for groceries on a whole is _very_ expensive, time wise. I would rather sit at home (or do something else productive) than walk around the grocery store and wait in lines for 45-75 minutes.
However, I still don't use grocery services, and I know very few people per capita willing to let others shop for their groceries, even though many of them bring home over $75 an hour. Why is this?
That said, I recently hired a servant to take care of all those things that I don't like to do (I live in a low-wage country). Shopping, Cleaning, Laundry etc. About $400 a month, although it could be a lot less. Wouldn't go back.
There is something of a time loss if you can't keep up with the cashier, but that's not often much of a problem. The few times I or my husband have started bagging stuff in grocery stores here in California, though, we've gotten strange looks - and often, at Trader Joe's, where the cashier often bags after scanning everything - words of thanks.
n.b. I don't want to criticize engineering choices from afar, but if people can bork production with malformed XML, that suggests opportunity for further process improvement to either check XML or render it unnecessary. Visual Website Optimizer, for example, mostly abstracts that away.
P.P.S. Quantify the problem to management, fix it, get heavily rewarded. You could even use the proceeds to take a trip to Wall Street, if that floats your boat.
- I gave font size as very easy example, and there are dozens of products that make that very easy. But a lot of our testing ends up being very heavily backend-oriented (e.g. "let's try this new optimization engine combined with this optimization engine"). So any third party tools probably won't be plug and play unless we made some fundamental changes to our web applications.
- And I have quantified making those changes long before the layoffs (although I had another in-house solution in mind, not one that used third-party tools), because even if 1% of engineering time is spent executing scripts like robots, that's 1% that could be better deployed into a profit center for the company. The problem is, like I'm sure many engineers understand, is dealing with executives who don't quite grok the technical limitations of the current system, and who have a hard time prioritizing anything that doesn't directly lead to more money in the bank account.
- And this is my main point... so we had layoffs, and ended up coming to a defacto more efficient solution, which would be okay if me or anyone else involved in this solution was compensated accordingly. Instead it's executives that will get lauded for cutting costs, even though the current solution now introduced a high risk of impacting our ability to actually execute on the aforementioned initiatives that would lead to directly more revenue.
- So basically, what I'm most frustrated about, is this: I had a proposal that would have improved an inefficient process. That proposal got ignored, then we had layoffs, then we were forced to improve on that inefficiency in a way that wasn't that much more efficient. If we ultimately get this all to work, the executives get bonuses for increasing profit by lowering headcount. If it doesn't, they get cut loose with what I assume is some generous compensation package.
I'm not trying to just rattle some populist chains here or complain about "the 1%." My point is, it's not the actual elimination of jobs and creation of 'shadow work' that is a problem, but the context of which is eliminated. In most cases it sucks for the people whose jobs got eliminated, and it sucks for the people who now have do the shadow work because they're not seeing the rewards of the new efficiency (e.g. lower prices at the grocery store). Instead, some layer of people highly detached from the process typically gain the most benefits.
Does anyone here have a good understanding of that belief? I wonder whether it's universal, or correlates with being a non-programmer, or with growing up without computers, or with bad experiences due to poorly-designed user interfaces. I've haven't talked with enough people who share that feeling to figure it out.
Most times I see it stated as fact, but this article does attempt to justify it, though the explanations were unsatisfying. Perhaps the lawyer doesn't view bagging groceries as losing control and taking on extra work: it may be an improvement over passively waiting in line, which is its own kind of work. She could then say that the technology is letting her take control of checkout, instead of waiting for a cashier, which was the bottleneck that customers previously couldn't avoid no matter how much shadow work they were willing to do.
The computers can track, measure and grade everything they do. For example, when I go to Target, I can't help but notice that their checkout screens have a pass/fail system grading whether the checker has processed the person quickly enough. In other places, computers may even make decisions on who to fire based on the rules fed to it. For example, the computer's report might say that employee #12345 has high average call lengths. They don't care if it's because that phone rep was unusually helpful. The computers enable them to enforce their policies to the letter. Even if the rules present no win situations at times, they'll just fire the guy for breaking the rules and hire someone new.
So like I said, the computers are never going to control us. We'd hack the damn things if necessary to do things right. But for the people at the bottom of the food chain, a computer might already be their boss.
So like I said, the computers are never going to control us
I don't buy that "never". It's not that black and white. Computers are making high-level decisions already, for example, what about automated trading algorithms? (especially those based on AI).
What if the shareholders that control public companies are, at least, heavily motivated in their decisions by computers?
Then it will be the computer allocating capital, and what choices do humans have? We just follow the way that our computer algorithms point to the profit.
Sure, strictly spoken there will still be humans in control. But in the worst case they will have at most a ceremonial function, to explain in human terms what the numbers say. If they decide to not follow the computer's "advice" they take a great risk.
That's one of the reasons many people feel that we live in a "machine state" (an automated bureaucracy with humans trained as mere robots) these days, or that is going to happen...
We, the hackers, would (by definition) simply hack any computer trying to control us. Granted, it's not quite so black and white as that, but I think that the HN crowd would be able to do something if their workplace tried some of the computer monitoring crap that is currently foisted upon those at the bottom of the food chain.
That said, I wonder if middle management types won't start to vanish a bit more. I mean, they already let the computer make almost all of their decisions for them. At some point, they have pretty questionable utility. Sure, maybe they want a babysitter or two, but they hardly need a full management crew if the computer does all the work.
We had impersonal, narrowly-defined performance metrics for low-level workers long before computers (see any assembly line, or the increasing speed of the meat packing lines in The Jungle). That the metrics now tend to be tabulated by computer may have extended the practice to more fields, but doesn't seem like a fundamental shift.
Does that mean that the U.S spends about 1% of its productive time as a population merely to comply with the tax code? If so, that's really an indication that the tax code is ridiculously over-complicated.
I cannot imagine how long it takes someone with property, 401ks, etc.
Of course, most of the compliance burden is on tax professionals working for business.
I do wish we went to a simpler base deduction then flat rate past that (something like $20,000 deduction per taxpayer then 20%).
I honestly have no problem flagging down a redshirt for help at Target. They're everywhere with their Secret Service headsets and automated customer service PA system.
Wal-mart, OTOH... well, there's a reason why I haven't gone there in almost 5 years, and the cockroaches crawling on the stock pallets and in the grocery aisles are but one.
Businesses substitute technology for workers, from salad bars to checkout kiosks.
Now, take into account the US's common labor arrangements -- salaried and hourly employment (as opposed to piece work, commissions, etc.). Let's say you are paid a fixed salary. The benefit of spending a Saturday in the office doing extra work to impress the boss has an uncertain payout far in the future -- one which might rationally be discounted. However, the benefit of finishing one's own basement instead of shelling out an extra few thousand in labor is tangible and much more immediate. It is no wonder mid-level salaried employees show-up at Home Depot on weekends. The lot for hourly employees is worse. For some strange reason, the US requires that they be paid 1.5x/hour for work beyond a 40 hour week. 2x on Sundays. This is a huge dis-incentive for an employer to offer his existing employees the opportunity to work weekends when business is heavy. It might be possible for someone to pick-up extra, part-time work in areas where he has expertise, but this work often is hard to come by. So, Home Depot flourishes and basements are finished with off-kilter walls.
Personally, I have had multi-month periods as a software contractor where a client said, "work as many hours as you can, please!" So, every hour not working had a real, easily-quantified opportunity cost. I would have been crazy to have mowed my own lawn. It would have been nice to have been able to purchase other "services" like a doctor's visit without a wait. I even tried to offer the doctor's office a premium to be seen in a high-priority queue, but most insurance plans don't allow such upcharges on top of pre-negotiated rates. You can probably look at my HN posting history and figure out the periods when I had effectively unlimited earning potential -- there are huge gaps where I barely had anything to say.
My uncle recently retired as a plumber. He is in his mid-60's, and the physical part of the job got to be too much for him. Imagine a service like oDesk where my uncle could sit in front of his computer and be paid by the hour to consult with DIY-ers on their plumbing problems. A guy with a leaky faucet could wear a camera on his head, and my uncle could give him instructions as he took the thing apart. Let's say 1/2 hour of consulting was required @ $50/hour. My uncle would be delighted to earn even 2/3 of that in retirement, and the guy doing the work would have less applied time than if he had to wait at home to let the plumber in. Furthermore, 1/2 hour is less than the plumber's expected commute to the customer's house.
How many in-home shadow work tasks could be done more efficiently if the physical labor was separated from the knowledge aspect of the work?
I believe that those changes are the result of companies competing in a free market. They are the consequences of consumers choice and are beneficial.
Nonetheless, the article highlights a good point about one hidden cost of automation. A cost important to take into account in product/service design. If too high it would hinder market acceptance of a product.
Now I understand better why automation is less used by companies in their business. I would be interesting to understand what other subtleties and hidden cost should be taken into account.
Quite the opposite: this is all the dull, menial stuff that distracts people from their primary tasks. These are jobs that were "supposed to" get automated out of existence and didn't. The store has not automated the bagging of your groceries. This only frees up an employee by having you do it instead.
Usually this is caused by job cuts, where an increase in low level employees could actually make the highly paid more productive.
But why have a $200 lawyer do admin work? That makes no sense whatsoever.
More importantly, a professional can't fill the tank any faster than I can, and on modern cars, it's less important to check the oil every fill-up. (Still a good idea, but it's not as important as it used to be.) So from my perspective, why should I pay extra to have someone else do the task, no matter what the wage differential?
So yeah, I think self-service gas stations make sense, and self-service groceries make more sense than making people wait in line for too few checkers (though, I think if you have sufficient checkers, professional checkers make more sense. A professional is a /lot/ faster at that job than I am)
Yeah, though 'support staff' I think, is pretty important, and it's one of the major reasons why I like having my own company rather than working for someone else. Nobody has support staff for SysAdmins, and yeah, while I recognize the need for bureaucracy and tight bookkeeping, I don't enjoy dealing with those things and I'm not very good at it. It's really nice to hand a wad of receipts to someone else and say "yeah, this was for the conference last week" and have them handle the paperwork.
At the same company, meetings typically had an official "minute taker" in attendance and a couple of days later our in-trays (physical) would contain beautifully typed and formatted minutes. I now work at a large bureaucratic software company, typically the person taking notes at a meeting: a) does a terrible job; b) earns upwards of $100K; c) contributes little meaningful to the meeting (a and c are sometimes inversely correlated). Having a pool of people who were good at taking notes and weren't attempting or pretending to participate at the same time might end up being more cost effective
If you put that much more clearly (not recorded) into the ear of someone who is physically in the room and is somewhat accustomed to listening to the personalities involved, perhaps rudimentarily familiar with technical vocabulary, names of the participants, proper nouns in which the discussion commonly traffics, etc., it might stand a chance.
If you think sending a recording of a 12-person strategy session to an off-shore non-native English speaker would actually work, my guess is that you have not tried it. :-)
It's also usually a faster to do it yourself.
When self service machines first arrived on the scene it was faster to use them because nobody else did and thus there were no lines for them even when lines for the cashier-aisles were crowded. Now more people are using them (often VERY slowly compared to a real cashier) and now the lines move significantly slower than cashier-manned lines. I no longer use the self-service aisle unless it is empty and all the non-self-service lines are occupied.
YMMV depending upon where you are and how recently self-service has showed up, but here in Southern California where they've been around for years it was a great option that turned into a very bad option once a critical mass of consumers felt comfortable enough to use them.
Also of note, particularly here, is that the usefulness of the self service devices depends a lot on their UI/UX. Around here the Ralph's stores have a system that is very streamlined, and the Vons stores have a system that sucks (you have to switch back and forth between using two different screens like 4 times if paying by debit/credit), so that factors into it as well.
This is generally a euphemism for, "I don't want to hire real support staff", and to some extent, is understandable given the low margins and race to commoditisation in the general VoIP service provider space.
And to some extent, the self-service aspect is objectively more efficient. I wouldn't want to call someone like Vitelity to order my DIDs; I'd rather just order them myself instantly on the web.
But there are certain things that you'd rather call or e-mail someone to open a request to address, and then just let go of the problem and let someone else solve it. I think porting requests rank fairly high on that list, although most of the bureaucratic complications with that are imposed by regulatory requirements--meaning, the task isn't _inherently_ "high-touch". But the point is, these, too, are things that companies are trying to keep from crossing the customer-vendor barrier.
I think anyone that can figure out how to get their customers to pay a premium for good service (at a large scale), but still actually provide said good service, wins.
Much of the time I'd simply prefer to self-serve, because it's more pleasant and faster for myself. (Note that grocery checkers don't really fit this category in the States, because they tend to be fairly well paid.)
The interesting bit here is that some companies, especially here in silicon valley, seem to be putting effort into doing more and more of this 'shadow work' for you and thus paying for it out of pre-tax money. Google's free food is the prime example, but nearly every large silicon valley employer not only will pay for public transit out of pre-tax monies, but will also provide shuttles from the train station to the office.
A company can also provide a 'company car' but, well, the tax implications of that get complicated. If you get audited and you didn't keep a careful log of personal travel, (and commuting to and from work is personal travel) and pay income tax on the miles you used for personal stuff? you are in deep trouble; this is why I own my vehicles outside of my corporation; I get reimbursed for business-related miles by the business and handle gas and maintenance out of post-tax dollars.
It's hard for people with bad credit to get loans, as it should be. People who are unlikely to pay the loans back should not be given them in the first place. In fact, many people who are in trouble now are blaming banks for giving them the money. So which is it? Should money be given freely to anyone or should creditors be selective with who they give loans?
I know a person who wanted to hire a part time personal assistant, but didn't because the paperwork was ridiculous. The economics weren't great either - you pay tax, spend what's left on a personal assistant, who then winds up paying tax again.
One way to boost the economics of hiring would be to allow individuals to hire other individuals (this would mostly be domestic labor) with pre-tax dollars with a commensurate reduction in paperwork. It would cost the government a lot less per job created than most stimulus schemes I've seen proposed.
Exactly. Right now hiring and firing is hard and expensive. One of the pieces of software I've written for my company attempts to put total costs on attrition and it's staggering from a resource perspective. One of the main drivers of outsourcing isn't the employee wage, but the cost of getting rid of a bad employee.