FASTER YOU FUCKERS - The ILX Work & Productivity Thread

i guess the alternative is 6 scrums of 2 people each.

to be fair, occasionally one of us will chip in with a solution to other people's problems. but that mostly happens in a skype window.

http://www.france24.com/en/20151014-france-32-hour-working-week-campaign-cgt-union

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/14/work-chinese-americans-jeremy-corbyn-highlands-holiday

nuh-uh in print compounded by the fact it's in a british paper is making me ia

“Jeremy has led the party off into the wilderness and then taken a hike in the Highlands,” lamented the reliably oppositional MP Simon Danczuk on hearing the news.

Cunt.

My workplace bought into this management consultant team who has brought in this whole spiel based on... Transactional Analysis.

I find the whole "bring in elements of therapeutic technique to the workplace" tedious at best and utter spurious wank on the whole.

I don't really know how to engage with this kind of discourse. In therapy settings, it's fine to say "I don't find this helpful, can we try another paradigm" but when it's enforced on you as part of your job... Ugh.

(In another part of my life, someone keeps trying to talk to me about "enneagrams" and seriously, I don't even know how to begin with that, except maybe to counter "well, you're a Sagittarius so you fall for every wank-word bingo going, but I'm an Aries so I tend to be slightly more sceptical about personality tests based on numerology and mysticism." Which would be extremely unhelpful.)

for most places this is a terrible idea, but my office genuinely does need therapy.

if somebody started talking to me about "enneagrams" i would make them listen to egg.

It's annoying because really, there are totally such a thing as dysfunctional workplaces. (Ironically, this is one of the least dysfunctional places I've ever worked.)

The problem is, that approaches that are suited for helping dysfunctional people do not always work for dysfunctional systems. Even though systems are made of people, totally well functioning people can create really dysfunctional systems, and dysfunctional people can create and use perfectly functioning systems.

excellent series of tweets here:

https://twitter.com/SolHughesWriter/status/740472383262298112

(1)Some 19th century work abuses that are back:

(2)"travelling time": then-19thC miners only got paid when they got to the coalface, not when they crawled to it through tunnels

(3)"travelling time": now SportsDirect staff didn't get paid while they waited in the warehouse queue for security checks

(6) in 19th Century many workers had to buy from over-priced "Company Store" (like in the song '16 Tons'). Was outlawed by the 'Truck Acts'

(7)SportsDirect staff had to use overpriced cash card and terminals from firm to get their wages - for a fee - a modern 'Company Store'

(9) "The Pen" "The Call On System".In 19th, early 20th Century jobless would gather in a 'Pen' for possible hiring (eg docks).

(10) Zero Hours contracts, with hire-by-day-by-text wait-by-the-phone are a modern "pen" for day- hiring at the gate.

(12)Specific older laws like the Truck Acts were repealed because nobody thought employers would be so bad again (!)

(13) "The Sweating System" or "Piecework" 19th Century home workers were paid by eg each shirt they stitched. Caused grim exploitation

(14) Modern 'piecework' like pay-per-parcel delivery jobs are often nominally 'self employed ', but "sweated" below minimum wage rates

(15)finally, a 'Middle Class' 19th century labour practice. 1880s teachers were "paid by results", with wages set by class exam results

(15) teacher 'payment by results ' creeps back, even tho' 19th century system abolished as it caused cheating, ignoring weaker pupils etc.

Good stuff.

Yeah very neat

Case closure rate up 50% this month tho guys

this all seems pretty nightmarish (though some ppl on twitter were questioning whether the badges could really do all the things claimed in the article and suggested that some of this might just be the Humanyze guy talking up his product?)

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/bosses-track-you-night-and-day-with-wearable-gadgets-kdn8068ql

Employees of at least four British companies, including a major high street bank, are already carrying “sociometric badges”. The credit card-sized badges are worn around the neck and include a microphone for real-time voice analysis, a device that tracks the wearer around the workplace, a Bluetooth sensor to scan for proximity to others and an accelerometer to check physical activity.

Brauer said the next development would be “biometric CVs”, with job applicants required to present evidence from monitoring to show they are biometrically qualified.

“The basic premise we’re working from is the augmented human being,” he said. “That will be the optimal productivity unit in the workforce.”

🤖 optimal productivity unit 🤖
That's good fodder for https://www.reddit.com/r/latestagecapitalism

Sometimes completely separate passages in books you're reading obliquely illuminate each other. Over the last few weeks I've had Michael Powell's autobiography - wildly titled A Life in Movies - and Diane Coyle's history of GDP - equally capriciously titled GDP - on the go.

In GDP Diane Coyle writes that before the second world war GDP was a gauge of the national economic output, a set of statistics collated in part to analyse the great depression. what wasn't included in this was government spending on welfare and armaments, which did not appear as part of the productivity figures but as depletions.

The Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply, established in 1941, found that its recommendation to increase government expenditure in the subsequent year was rejected on this basis.

...

The first American GNP (gross national product) statistics were published in 1942, distinguishing between the types of expenditure, including by government, and permitted economists to see the economy's potential for war production.

The economist Kuznets - who had argued that GNP should represent national economic welfare rather than just output - said that this method 'tautologically ensured that fiscal spending would increase measured economic growth regardless of whether it actually benefited individuals' economic welfare'.

Nevertheless as it was in governments' interests in the US and across Europe Kuznets lost. A complete statistic understanding of productivity was an outcome of the second world war - maybe it's best embodied by Keynes' How to Pay for the War.

He fulminated in this about the inadequacy of the statistics available to him for calculating what the UK economy could produce with the available resources, what would be required for mobilisation and conflict, what would be left over for people to consume - and how much their living standards might need to fall.

There's nothing wrong with this sort of analysis, but as Diane Coyle makes plain, the perception of GDP as the main useful method of measuring a nation's worth, dangerously loads policy against things that are not accounted for in it, and can ignore the fact that GDP is not welfare.

I thought all this very interesting. I've got a very tenuous narrative that's intended to lead up to the current FASTER YOU FUCKERS business methodologies, which includes the use of statistics in 19th century French medicine, and Benjamin's observation about the death of experience in the first world war, and how statistics was able to replace experience, with good and bad consequences. But one thing I've never been able to bridge is why we didn't really see the application of the statistical world to business - scientific management - until after the second. The great depression, the revolution in measuring productivity, and the second world war are a set of dots which help join the gap.

Michael Powell describes the film I Know Where I'm Going, made during the same few years as the changes to GDP, as in some way a farewell to a pre-war world. One which was less materialistic than the post-war one - he may not say materialistic, I can't find the quote, but the sentiment's similar. The representative of this world is Catriona, played by Pamela Brown.

There's a scene towards the end where the main character - Joan Webster - asks her 'If you're saddled with responsibilities that you can't get rid of, why don't you sell Erraig (her house) and Torquil could sell Kiloran? Then you could do what you like.'

Powell was renowned for not wasting film, so the fact Pamela Brown's answer 'Yes, but money isn't everything' took an unprecedented 22 takes for Michael Powell to be satisfied drew a huge crowd into the studio.

Of course, what was wrong was not the way the line was being read by Pamela: it was the line itself. When Wendy said: "You could sell Erraig and Torquil could sell Kiloran," Pamela should have answered: "Yes, but then we'd only have money." See?

When, many years later, I told Pamela this, she hit me.

Michael Powell was in love with Pamela Brown, and Emeric Pressburger felt it skewed the picture. Powell was forced to agree, both feeling that her performance was 'too romantic', so a load of footage of her ended up on the cutting room floor. This is completely f'ing heartbreaking, because i would watch I Know Where I'm Going over and over again just for Pamela Brown.

I had made it visually clear that Catriona had been in love with Torquil ever since their childhood together. This subplot had to go. No doubt people who loved the film, and who have seen it many times, will howl with anguish when they learn what they have missed (yes). But Emeric was firm and I have to admit that he was right. One glance from those great eyes of Pamela's early in the film told the whole story rather better than I could, with all my shots of her among the heather and the lochs. And yet, I wonder...? One still photograph survives from this whole sequence, and it was taken by me. It shows Pamela in the Castle of Moy, as she watches Torquil read the Curse upon the stone. It has an eerie power.

This counterfactual, this still that was never part of the film, like the counterfactual unspoken line 'yes, but then we'd only have money', seems to express a different, a similarly counterfactual world, or one that still exists, available but unavailable, outside of the grip of the productivity and statistical evaluations of worth.

(i'm aware this sort of romanticisation can be immensely bogus, but Pamela Brown ffs!)

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b4/09/79/b4097992436e1170cfa5914da5cdd8d3--film--beams.jpg

incidentally she suffered painfully from arthritis all her life, which led to a slightly odd gait, which Michael Powell first noticed at the theatre.

Specialists persuaded her to take the famous, or infamous, gold treatment for arthritis which consists of injecting gold into the veins. The treatment gives you a fighting chance if you are prepared to suffer tortures.

A grotesque version of the analogies above. More Pamela:

https://reelclub.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/ikwig1.jpg

amazing staff meeting today at work as the head of our business gave a talk about some of the changes happening to a group of people, some of whom had recently seen colleagues lose their jobs in a round of off-shoring. tin-eared management speak to a large group of young, immediate post-university staff. started talking about how why automation and industrial change happened at them. one great woman stood up and asked him not to explain capitalism to them. he responded by saying it was nothing to do with capitalism, and that it was the way of the world, she said that it was capitalism, but that didn't matter and that she, among others, was just asking him to listen to people who were saying they were worried about their jobs. he went on to explain that 'history and industrial revolutions or evolutions' lol were based upon standardising and automating that which could be standardised and automated. another person responded by saying that their jobs hadn't been automated, they'd been off-shored, and off-shored badly (true and often seems to be true) and he responded by saying eventually all their jobs would be automated and this was inevitable.

he genuinely couldn't see outside his tiny technocratic, managerial head, i mean it was totally blank to him that capitalism could be seen as a thing. i think he felt he was being 'courageous' by being 'honest' and not showing any sympathy. it was all fascinating. and all very very bad obviously. woman got a round of applause tho. scenes.

lol when is his job being automated? I am pretty sure it could be successfully done (unlike many other jobs).

And all in this in the anniversary of the October revolution too.

the demand for thoughtful, capable managers greatly outstrips the supply.

day 1 of 2 done for prince2 practitioner and its such wordbollocksy sham

he went on to explain that 'history and industrial revolutions or evolutions' lol were based upon standardising and automating that which could be standardised and automated.

I can just see this man reading some MBA textbook or popular management book that offers this pearl of wisdom and him thinking, 'why, this explains quite a lot!' and then, because he has only room in his head for one explanation, it quickly morphed into 'this explains everything!'

this is excellent news: please report back from the front darragh (keeps autocorrecting to “farrago”).

i keep meaning to revive this thread, sort out the OP formatting, and pull together the various faster u fuckers stuff lying around in my bookmarks.

Is that the Irish version of PMP? Which is the biggest waste of time and money I (er my employer) ever spent. Fucking racket, these certs.

it

as far as i can glean

is something the british govt came up with then privatised

pmp calls for aiui hundreds of logged hours of proj mgmt, this calls for to to remember the interlinking jargonomics of several roles several themes several products and several processes, each of whom ought to have been ambushed on the road to st ives imo

i actually see a bit of value in the dept/service having one understood and defined method its just pointless when i know from experience that it will all be fotd upon first contact with the enem user

It also requires that you pass the most jackassed of all exams, which I say as someone who has taken all manner of jackassed exams in multiple fields.

My current place of work (where I consult, my actual employer fortunately is blessedly free of management consulting shenanigans) is implementing something they refer to as WoW which in their jargon is "way of working" and not what everyone else thinks when they see WoW.

It is like some unholy amalgamation of agile and POP and Tony Robbins, this thing. God only knows what the organization paid PWC or some other hacks for this thing.

i would find it hard not to say it christopher walken style like waaOOOuuw

I mean i find it hard not to say wow like that at the best of times but if you wave that second w in my face you best believe im giving it the two eyebrows

oh oh can we talk about consultancy firms

when im not studying for a regurgitation tomorrow lunchtime like

Oh I'm surrounded by 20 year old PWC babes in the vicinity of my workstation (and they are total babes, totally adorable and lovely) and afaikt they spend their days putting together ppt decks about managing shit when it is clear that they have only ever managed ppt. But it is cute and gross at the same time when they all gather in the VPs office, the VP with the Harvard MBA who has some sort of beardo jeans and puffy vest thing going on. The only shit in his office are a bunch of management books of the kind that make me want to die.

I should be clear the Harvard MBA beardo 40 something dude clearly loves his PWC babes, when they all come in to his office and show him their ppts.

iirc a good designer I worked with in the civil service got themselves put through Prince2 training because it gives you the magic words to put on a PowerPoint so that the Excel functionaries shut up and you can get on with making things.

someone left this lying around on a desk at work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)
I didn't realise there was a genre of management novels "written in a fast-paced thriller style".

I wish I was efficient and organized. Since age 13, becoming organized was always my #1 goal and I’ve never come close. Every day is a new adventure of scrambling to fix the stuff I put off the day before. But then somehow it hasn’t hindered my life too much? I don’t understand.

But yeah, the “PWC babes” sound like people I would be in awe of. Even if the powerpoints are nonsense and my way of working is ultimately more efficient, there is nothing I admire more than colleagues at work who have, like, this appearance of having all their stuff together/following through on a plan rather than improvising all day

I feel like i get cut more slack for deadline/efficiency issues than my colleagues because my role is “creative” and I don’t really think it’s fair. Don’t want to share too much about my workplace but, like—too much slack for me, i feel, is part of it

i have been project managed by accenture babes of all types and ive been keeping a shiv in my sock two years now in case any of em ever drop from on high at me again

someone left this lying around on a desk at work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)
I didn't realise there was a genre of management novels "written in a fast-paced thriller style".

― woof, Monday, 11 February 2019 23:38 (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my dear dad had some shit goin on in the late nineties and after reading the celestine prophecies he insisted that he could see the energy coming out of kindred souls' eyes for six months guys i know ye think im bad but listen im a fuckin success story given the background rly

i know i tell a story bytimes but i feel it necessary to confirm yes he actually believed this for six actual months, approached ppl in restaurants and shit when he sensed it had happened etc

Ooh i had a friend who used to work for one of those consulting firms. Man, she alwayss seemed so “with it” in college—the exact kinda person who makes me feel like i’m some starry eyed wanderer

It’s interesting to hear about your father’s foray into mysticism deems. Do you think this explains why—among ilxors—you’re on the rational/pragmatic side?

my father was a side-order to my mother treesh thats another thread.

the celestine prophecies is a mgmt/life success as novel is all, so it jogged the thought

Yeah—the mania for efficiency is definitely not disconnected from spiritual impulses—people tryin to reach a higher plane of existence and transcend ordinary human weakness

its a fuckin shortcut to understanding and/or doing the groundwork ime

my trial exam is hitting 15/28 if i had a text id be ok i think

Productivity and performance metrics can bite my fleshy flabby ass. The material my office handles comes in so irregularly that it's fucking frustrating to try to maintain a monthly hours report of 8-hour days, 5 days a week. I want to come up with a passive-aggressive way of saying this in a hypothetical exit interview.

got a two hour audit this morning and i am v underprepared. not sure where else to post this important information.

tho i will note it as a different expression of the old tension between governance and compliance and faster you fuckers productivity.

as silicon valley models of fail fast and constant iteration hit real world compliance - in medical and transport sectors to pick two obvious and salient ones - it’s not going to be pretty.

and probably worth differentiating between faster you fuckers productivity (er “operational efficiencies”) and automation (“operational transformation”). both potentially weaken compliance and quality control.

cant believe i never responded to quincies Deloitte obsvs above

yes!

we get in one of 5 firms to manage our huge projects and its all tv drama gorgeous tv drama behaving 22 year olds with swim lanes and jargon 2.0 and they are awful humans

ive been telling all of my managers we're using agile for the past three years fizzles, it keeps them happy and its as well they dont know what agile is enough to do more than ask because i sure fuckin dont know it enough to bluff if they did

excitingly this did not go... well. turns out our decisions points are not well recorded ('Yes we have that' 'Can show us?' 'How very dare you.'), and we may not be fully aligned with the rest of the company. Got another shot in two weeks' time god help me.

i fully endorse your last two posts tho darragh, they are correct in every particular.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/10/five-hour-workday-shorter-book

There's an article like this in the guardian every few months, my bosses are probably too busy to read them though.

bringing this thread into the covid age:

The co-creator of Scrum says hospitals aren't able to test as many people as a dedicated research and testing institution (that doesn't provide ICU care for any patients) because "[hospitals] are not doing Scrum". pic.twitter.com/T6GzlBL3Td

— John Feminella 🌠 (@jxxf) April 11, 2020

oh and btw absolutely *nailed* the audit second time around (by v rapidly implementing everything they said)