Your Job Feels Pointless? Workplace Democracy Could Fix That
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- Опубликовано: 17 дек 2023
- In order to save the workplace (and your sanity), we must graduate to Capitalism 2.0, also known as Super Capitalism. Here's what that means.
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I'm a teacher and lately my job feels meaningless because nobody cares about education, from the students to the authorities everyone is just playing along and pretending we have "education"...
kids feel this sense of meaninglessness as their parents realize everything is in a slow spiral with no way out and no sense anything will ever get better. Why worry about math or history when your civilization is going to collapse (for the poors) a bit more every year
And yet some silly people wonder why a kindergarten teacher decided to twerk for money...long,long,long before Tik Tok and OnlyFans.
@@override367 They're not kids. I worked with kids from 12 to 15 and that was good. Now I'm working in high school (15-18) and they don't know how to read or answer a basic question. I'd be relieved if they thought about how bad the world is
Go teach at a good private school if you want to teach children of parents who value education.
@@VaclavSir This is a big part of the whole goddamned problem! Education shouldn't be for-profit and privatized - certainly not *at the expense of public education!*
"Supercapitalism -a system so much more capitalistic, that even workers get to sit on company boards" - I'm literally dying lmaoooo
He does not know that capitaists are a class , but that is ok , he is gonna find out eventually , like he was smart to point of getting this far.
@@gscsilvavaladares7065 No no, it was a joke from his side. Yknow, going so faar capitalist that you become socialist
yeah dude really had me going there for a second. literally right up until the VERY end when he says "Democratic Capitalism" and you're like OH NO this guy doesn't GET it, and then .1 second later with 'SUPER CAPITALISM' (lol) you realize he FULLY fucking gets it. Man's a fellow traveler at the very least. @@franekkus546
@@franekkus546 shhhhhh....
@@franekkus546We go to the good system chasing more shiny gold coins that beside from the gold itself, have no value
Bro advocated for the first steps of market socialism by calling it "super capitalism" amazing. I can now share this with my dad.
That's a Vaush thing. You could also appeal to conservatives by calling it "distributism", a functionally similar economic model that was inspired by Pope Leo XIII.
@@Kirbyoto2098 I see
Its not real socialism imo
@@mint8648 Yeah I know. However global logistics require markets at this moment in time.
So in the short term we can take the first steps and have workers run all the companies.
Effectively eliminating the bourgeois class. THEN we can work towards decommodification.
😂
I tend to compare IT supporting jobs to janitors. No one cares, when the work is done properly, but everyone notices, when the work is not done. So, I urge everyone, thank your IT support for every completed request, and thank your janitors for their work.
Or housewives
It also takes the same degree to obtain both jobs
@@puzzardosalami3443clean a bunch of poop or pay 300 for comptia a+
It baffles me that we live in a democratic society, yet people spend 1/3 of their time in a place that's inherently anti-democratic.
competition is a thing
And we claim we are free, but for most of our waking hours we are not in charge of how we spend our time, what we do with our minds and bodies, who we associate with, or what we produce. Not very free.
@@bartek4321 competition between feudal kingdoms was even more fierce.
its always hilarious to me that people claim they would die for democracy while spending half of their life licking their bosses boots so their family could survive for another day
@@voinekku yeah, the thing is kingdoms fought so hard that they all collapsed, corporations share the cake so coops can make youtube videos at best - either corporation is more efficient or there is a global conspiracy of youknowwho to stop coops from happening
"Not my circus, not my monkeys." - average office worker
Also an average stockholder
Just the average human
Based Polish wisdom
TLDR by Adam: Worker-Co'ops are a Thing
Many have covered htem
Go watch
You should see the circus where i worked as starting electrician.
In my first job out of school, I worked a lot, tirelessly, to make impossible deadlines given insufficient resources. At the end of the year I got a "good job" but no raise or bonus or anything because of "corporate goals". Then I did the same thing the next year and got a "good job" but no raise or bonus because of "market conditions". I then realized I was just fooled twice. Shame on me.
Sadly, the more effective way to get rewarded for good work at a company, is to put that good work on your CV and apply to other places (yes, while working at the company, and only giving your notice when you got an offer you like lined up), the lack of urgency in finding a new job (because you still have one) also helps a lot when bargaining for your new compensation, try a number that looks absolutely wild to you, and if it's a no, unless you really want that job, you lost nothing, if it's a yes, well, congrats, maybe you still lowballed yourself, but maybe you'll be better appreciated in a place that understand your value.
Get another job.
@@bobfg3130 I did
I am currently in a similar situation. Not enough people on my team to get work done without a ton of stress, and all I get is a "good job" for doing something right. Also my "raise" this year was about 1%, i.e. about 4% short of inflation, i.e. I took a 4% paycut. I'm not a lazy individual, I mentally struggle doing work that I don't benefit at all from, both financially and emotionally. When one of those motivators falls short my entire motivation falls to the ground.
@@GabrielPettier I liked my fast food job more than my current job where I am a software tester. I liked the people I worked with at my fast food job, we got to have some fun during slow hours, I got to share ideas with managers, I got to sneak some leftover food at times; it was far more meaningful to me than my current job.
Honestly, one of my biggest life goals is to create a worker co-op in the media industry. There's so many ambitious people out there who get creatively drained by corporate structures...
That's basically indies these days. Often times, the CEO is whoever happens to be the lead dev
So there is a CEO.
Once you allow that corruption takes over soon.
Look at Mondragon the biggest coop.
It acts exactly like an asshole corporation. Tax havens, child labor, exploitation, everything.
I wish you good luck. As an artistically-inclined person who is turned off from turning it into a job due to the nature of these corporate structures, an option like the one you're describing would be basically a dream.
Well , this is Socialism , a form of Socialism , is still a work in progress actually.
i think your project starts at an union. you should go for it.
Because our jobs is not for changing a world but to profits of owner
*the world
I always had a theory that what if we sent what we know to the very beginning the very moment human become "smart"
And they remove everything that's pointless and instead of just being about themselves is about everything and everything that's use has to have a point
So for example we want electricity but instead of digging for coal we went to the materials that use for nuclear power but the catch is we only take what we exactly need
So we use plastic when we absolutely needed
No killing unless needed etc etc
Would the world still be better not just environment wise but...humanity
Tv and games won't exist cause your wasting metal, plastic and glass that could be used for better energy supply
Other kinda of foods won't exist
As we already say about improving earth but...what exactly more important
The planet, the animals or even the humans
North Korea is waiting for you.
this
this has much more to it than profit/no profit lol. Even throughout capitalism there were various forms of work. Armchair leftists give me brain cancer every time
Hit the nail right on the head. I was 95% sure I could automate 50% of my work at my last job. So, did I?
Fuck no, all I'd get is a pat on the back and my boss would get the praise for making his team more efficient.
Worse, I've heard on two different occasions from different friends who aren't programmers by trade but can do some programming, that they worked toward making a system to eliminate huge portions of their job, the repetitive bits that can easily be automated, and when their middle manager higher ups found out, they gave them this whole speech that revealed they didn't want the software to come to light because it could cost people jobs. Seems society isn't quite built right if it is more important to give people a job for job's sake rather than one that helps contribute value, and once all the things that need doing are done, we distribute that remaining time as leisure.
I made software that did this, haven't told anyone how I have been crushing my coworkers productivity numbers. I haven't told them because I know my soulless ass company would fire 30 people into the sun if they had access. I made everything off the clock so it's my software and they only have rights to use it so I can use it at work.
@@codingkriggsofficial yes exactly, why don’t we as a society use the full potential of automation and then distribute the earnings to ensure everyone can live at least a decent life first and THEN look into luxuries instead of just making new soulless redundant jobs
I'm living that same situation right now...thing is...I've already automated part of what we do in our department, yet my bosses want to give me none of the credit.
You'd get a pat on the back? Luxury! Actual recognition for a job well done is an absurdly rare luxury, in part because bosses can't let on that employees are capable, but also because bosses almost never can tell when a job is well done or an employee competent. Managers, on the whole, are incapable of management.
As someone who stumbled his way into a worker co-op, gotta say that work still sucks sometimes, but I feel like I'm actually part of a team rather than a cog in a machine
how does one stumble into such a position? asking for a friend
A friend of mine had a very compelling theory: If you do not reap the fruits of your labour, then you do not care about your labour. When I work in an office, the fruits of my labor are condensed into some spreadsheet that someone somewhere will glance over and it means nothing to anyone.
I work as a programmer in IT, and it's great. Actual productive work is like 4 hours a day, the rest of the time you can do whatever you want, sleep at home remotely, game, do pet projects - nobody cares until stuff works. Can recommend :)
Overall, working for 8 hours isn't needed in like 80% of jobs nowadays, especially in office ones. This standard is 100 years old and is absolutely outdated
I work in RnD department in a factory. Everybody is supposed to get lunch over with in 30 minutes. We often stay there for an hour, especially if our boss is there (he likes to talk a lot and often it's about work, you could say that as researchers we are still working hehe). In the morning, I usually spend 30-60 minutes just procrastinating unless there's something actually urgent to be done. Quite often I catch myself being less productive than I could have been. And you know what? I get everything done properly and on time. Our whole team (~10 people) is like that and we are constantly having positive influence on the whole company. When problem with some product needs to be solved, it's usually upon us to solve it and everybody is counting on us. More often than not we are just doing whatever we want to and the company benefits from it.
And yet we have to sit there for 8 hours. I could easily be there for 6 hours and absolutely nothing would change, except me procrastinating less and having more time.
Btw: Our team works so efficiently primarily because our director has an overall policy of "do whatever you do unless you are arguing, only then I'll make the final call" (plus he's doing his best to shield us from the upper management bs). You could say we are run semi-democratically, at least as a team. My own experience says the video is on point.
So your team isnt agile?
I have probably 90% of my worktime used productively in one or the other way^^ still backlog never ends.
I told myself, i need to step it back a bit, when i use my brain 7h a day for work, im just tired the rest of the day. But i always dont dare to "cheat" more then a single digit % amount of whatever time into my worklogs.
for the past few years i’ve been a software engineer at [huge company] and i probably average 60 hr/week, along with 24/7 oncall shifts just to meet expectations. its miserable and im looking my hardest for a new job. someday im hoping for that sweet 4 productive hour per day job, thanks for giving me hope!!!
@@maddyonline oof that doesn't sound pleasant at all, I hope you'll find your place where you'll be able to chill and slack off 😅
@@certaindeath7776 Agile as we know it is a very busywork-focused approach (you're always supposed to be working on *something*). It doesn't necessarily solve everything.
As another IT Support guy, this is far, far too relatable. I used to work retail before this, and I will say, this is still better. I get paid enough to live. I don't get screamed at or infantilized. I get to eat or use the bathroom whenever I want. But aside from that, I often just sit in my office, and wonder why I'm here. I live alone, so, instead of resting on the weekend, I do a bunch of chores, and then Sunday night comes, and I'm just filled with anxiety, b/c I didn't get the rest I needed, and it's about time to sit around for hours wondering what the point of it all is all over again. Honestly, this looks like a hopeful dream, and while it may be possible, I'm really just trying to fund my way into the career I actually wanted from the time I was a kid.
Same here, but game dev. The minute company enters a stock market it's a downhill from there. It stops being a fun project (that made millions before entering the stock market btw), now it's a game of satisfying the investors. And what do bosses do to satisfy the investors? Anything (as long as it doesn't hurt them personally - actually funny thing, we had massive layoffs this year, the CEO left too - he took like 5m$ for leaving, while saying to everyone that he's leaving because he felt bad for firing all those ppl - I also want to feel that bad lol). Then comes middle management, that despite them trying their best to keep up apiriences of usefulness and actually doing their job, they are absolutely useless for the most part. My team didn't have a producer for 2 weeks now bc they were on a sick leave, and somehow the team didn't collapse, company is still there, the people are doing their thing. Curious right? And sure, there is a need for couple of them to make business decisions, what to develop, what are the priorities etc. But no company needs an army of middlemanagement bs workers that are stuck in an endless loop of meetings that could be an email, that prevent them from actually being with the teams down in the trenches. Oh, and hiring people as seniors or leaders, with no prior consultation with the team. FFS! Then being surprised that the team that spent years (and some of the members being mid, even though they have 100x the project knowledge the new "seniors" and "leaders" will ever have) in the project are upset. And then there are people like me, who are one person in a company that does this one specific thing, that in theory isn't bothered by any of that, (apart from unique caseses) and we can just shake our heads in disbelief of how idiotic the structure and decisions crowling out of that structure are.
Reading this has brought me a feeling of not being alone. Thanks for sharing.
I have a degree in computer science and I am definitely not happy with my software job. Too top heavy company, no say in what I do, doing my work well doesn't benefit me directly.
Same here. I've been working as a software engineer for about 2.5 years now, and it's fine. The pay is alright, it's remote, and not usually very demanding, but my work really boils down to just adding the feature requested by the designer, or fixing a bug. I get paid the same whether I solve 10 issues in a day or just 1, and while I have reason to believe our product is genuinely helping people because of the very nature of it, I am completely disconnected from our customers--even having the disembodied voice would be a big step up. I don't know who, or how many people use our product, or what they think, and I have little input on design decisions. Before my job I took a lot of pride in designing and writing clean code solutions to solve problems for my own projects, but I very rarely use these skills in this job. As a result, my contributions are fairly generic, I don't take much pride in them, and I don't feel like I bring much of anything special to my role. The quality and styling of our code is also very inconsistent, and speed of writing code seems to be prioritized over writing really good code, so it often takes much longer than expected to add simple features or fix simple bugs because we have a huge amount of technical debt. It took me over 2 years of working this job for me to realize why I have struggled so much with motivation and self-esteem in the context of my job.
I want to find a new, better job, but I am struggling over what I can use from this job in my resume when my work essentially boils down to just doing what I'm told to do and checking off a list of tasks. I guess I could talk about getting work done on time, and efficiently, but it would be nice if I could say that I did something that increased productivity, decreased bugs overall, contributed to sales, or user engagement.
@@SynthAirnot very job allows for this but ask to take on more senior work. Even if you don't get paid for it here, you can legit put it on your resume. Or ask for adjacent work. Look at transferrable skills. Ask how they get these feature requests. Talk to customers. Think of it as adding bullet points to your resume. I've made some diverse moves in IT based on bullet points. Was half the IT dept at a construction company. I took on the scheduling program integration and the report writing experience there got me a job at a non-profit. Portable skills means when you find the job that fulfills you, you have something to bring to the table.
I recently quit my job of 15 years, and became a nurse assistant for a nurse bank. This means I have no contracted hours, and can choose to work as much or as little as I want. A 12 hour night shift will net me about £220, so 3 of those a week is about £660, with the rest of the week to do what I please. Very little training required, and most of the nurses and patients that I work with are really thankful for what I do. There is also no shortage of work, there will always be a shift for me. It can be a tough job, with high levels of patience and professionalism required, but I never go home feeling that my job is meaningless, because it's easy to see that it's not. And if a shift nearly finishes me off, then I just don't have to work the next day if I don't feel like it. Can recommend.
Unfortunately this sort of reliance on agency workers due to the tories not taking the long term spending decisions on training and recruitment they were warned they needed to take is costing the NHS absurd amounts of money and does need to end.
And I don't mean nebulous we need more staff I mean the NHS, many of the professional bodies etc were all warning about it for the past 15 years or so.
But it won't end soon cause even if Labour sort the problem the tail is going to last for a long time.
@@mytimetravellingdog While you make a good point, I would like to clarify that I do not work for an agency. I work for an internal department called Staffing Solutions, within one NHS Trust. So I am bank staff, not agency staff, and can only work for this one NHS Trust. The only extra money that I get is as part of the European Working Time Directive, and is to compensate me for the fact I'm not entitled to annual leave or sick pay. If you thought that the pay I quoted in my original comment sounded like a lot, it's because I only work night shifts.
You may want to work that way. But, then you have no right to complain about anyone else working as a nurse assistant doing things the way THEY want and demanding whatever pay THEY can get away with.
And the solution is simply nurses and medical people need to stop giving services to Tory politicians and Tory voters, or charge them a billion dollars, the same way lawyers/barristers charge wtf THEY want.@@mytimetravellingdog
@@theultimatereductionist7592 I don't know what you mean, sorry. Why would I complain about anyone else working as a nurse assistant? The NHS needs a ton more. I also don't negotiate my pay. I feel like you may have misunderstood.
One potential reason why many people aren't abroad with the idea of worker coops could be that Hungary under the Rákosi and Kádár regime ruined their image, by nationalizing them and no longer running them like an actual worker coop. The most infamous case was the Agricultural Coop, which was originally a very well run coop (and started the trend of naming Hungarian coops after animals - Hangya Termelőszövetkezett, or Ant Agricultural Coop), but after that it was a coop in name only.
ALL worker coops are "in name only". Over time the original "workers" become "more equal" than the new workers turning a good idea into the same old crap.
Commies who promote this crap just want capitalism but with THEM in charge.
While you are right this is just a tiny part of the whole picture, which is affecting all of us, mankind.
Not a Hungarian thing, actually. Most socialist regimes did the same thing, including the USSR, Yugoslavia and Cuba.
I don't think that's the reason why cooperatives aren't more popular nowadays.
Try to not ruin a good thing as an authoritarian "communist" challenge (IMPOSSIBLE , Gone Wrong, Gone Sexual)
Kolhozes have gone to shit fairly quickly when the goal shifted to looking good on paper so that the serfs could appease their feudal lords which in turn meant the feudal lords could appease their kings, who in turn could appease their emperor. ( I left out the other 10000 layers of feudal lords between them)
@@sigmamaleaffirmationhypnob7340 There is a big difference, if people are forced to cooperate (as in any totalitarianism, or as still today in "democracies" at workplaces - if you do not cooperate, you will kicked out and eventually starve to death), but they are evolving to a mind level, where they can leave the individualism-totalitarianism, than they can learn, how it is possible to cooperate. But it is a long and hard way - but there is no other option, if we want to survive.
I actually once figured it out for myself, not only the whole meaning part but the fact that most of these office jobs are born from the simple human nature part of DISTRUST. I've worked (and still do) in compliance, finances, credit control, IT etc. All of these jobs would have never been a thing if it would've not be a billion rules and paperwork to ensure that your company is not fucked over by another company. Simple as that. And then they send us questionnaires asking us if our jobs are meaningful to us and what can they do to make it better. Nothing. The simple fact that these jobs exist - its a mistake in on itself.
and p.s. - I also once was fired for simply improving the FAQ part on our website. Once it was up, the number of tickets halved. I was out the next week.
that p.s. is soooo fucked up 🤦🏿
When a company is based on firefighting, preventing fire doesn't allow anyone to be credited to have extinguished the fire, therefore is not valued.
So ultimately, the culture change doesn't happen.
Follow DMAIC process steps to make sure what you do have a meaning. You should be able to do it better than your managers or consultants. Map your processes and improve them in your spare time, that's the way to go.
true, but would it be better to not have the jobs at all? tbh many of these companies don't even need much of a human workforce, many jobs are just there for governmental reasons
Nah dude. They come from the fact large organisations are incredibly complex.
Part of that complexity is fixing mistakes, auditing for errors and ensuring people don't steal your stuff but it's hardly the majority.
For example. IT, what part about IT apart from cybersecurity has anything to do with distrust? Most of it's building IT infrastructure and maintaining IT infrastructure. Do you think complex software and hardware set ups organisations need just magically appear?
Similarly mistakes happen far far far more than malicious actions. Say we worked in a world of perfect trust most of what you complained about would be required because people would just get stuff wrong all the time.
@@kingartifex tell me you are a teenager who has never worked a job without telling me a teenage who has never worked a job.
Even In a job at a small business where I know my work matters. I feel this so much
Yeah... I work in the technical department of a rather small company and for several reasons the company needs my expertise and my labour but... I just can't do it anymore. It's not that my work is meaningless or in any way superfluous. The company and its customers need me and what I do but i miss the feeling of it meaning something to me.
Philosophers have been on that discussion since the industrial revolution, work in which you can't see the result of your labor is horrible
I'd gladly work at a local bike shop or something. My office job is so awful
My man explained the S word without ever saying the S word. Mad respect.
TLDR by Adam: Worker-Co'ops are a Thing
Many have covered htem
Go watch
real
Shhhhhhhhhh
nah, dude's centre-left at most. He refuses to even consider planned economy or other superior ideas
@Fnider You've got to do both. Planned economy without worker democracy is just state capitalism, and workplace democracy without a managed economy or true democracy over state actions is just the nordic model. You might be OK with that in the short term, love him or hate him Deng's 'Socialism with Chinese Characteristics' is working exactly as intended, and maybe they'll stick to their word and achieve True Socialism by 2050, but in the meantime brutally cracking down on labor / strike actions is diametrically opposed to the socialist model. @@Fnidner
Working for strangers made you depressed. Working for yourself and your loved ones gave you euphoria. I think we all know where this is heading.
I went freelance photographer since 2017. Yeah the money isn't great at first, and there are plenty of insecurities, but overtime i got recurring clients, my portfolio getting better, i can charge more per work. Now I'm very happy with my work. Just doing everything alone sometimes can be lonely
Freelance is the best. I'd potentially argue that in the US, it's really only feasible for people with no kids and in good health (such as myself), and potentially with a partner who also has a reasonable income stream.
@@innercityprepper Freelance work is not a systemic solution
@@innercityprepper i gotta tell you, it's not all rainbow and sunshine. First years are rough, There are drought months even after all this time, during COVID-19 my income dropped to 0. But if you can persevere long enough to withstand the first rough years, being a freelancer can be fulfilling, financially and mentally. I can only speak from my own experience or course
@@idiotandco.1750 I understand that. I said it's the best. Not the solution.
i could guess your age by this comment. freelance is shit, it doesnt have any social safety nets. It is normal employment that has to incorporate more flexibility that gives workers more freedoms without taking safety nets away.@@innercityprepper
I work in corporate compliance for a major finanical institution.
My job is to create/present memos and surveys on things we shouldn't do cause they are illegal. While entire departments exist with mountains of funding to do those very things.
My job is making and checking boxes our corporate overlords just ignore. Help me.
I feel you. I'm tier 3 tech support in job title, but my job's been reduced to "ask another team to run reports so that you can present those reports to product managers" and "escalate issues to backend teams for analysis".
I know there's this idea of this dream job where you only have to do a couple hours of work a week, but that gets old really, really quick. I'd find something else, but I like being able to pay rent.
Write a fake survey condensing every stupid they ask you to do and maybe read bullshit jobs that's kinda what the book is about
@@BB-te8tc
I'm confused why can't you search for other jobs?
Just apply for other jobs and if you get one just quit your current one.
@@MrDavibu my tangible job skills are mostly highly specialized to the product/service we sell. I'm afraid that if I apply elsewhere, they'll just see "customer support" and that I'll only be applicable for entry-level jobs at a greatly reduced pay which would leave me unable to pay rent.
That, and I'm competing with all the much more qualified people who were laid off.
If you work for a publicly traded company I would say unionize if possible.
This summer I had a summer job in a tool company. If I did my job slower but 100% correct, my bonus was cut. If I sped up and did poorly, but did more faster, unless the customers didn’t complain too much, it was fine. I felt terribly and against my own will to treat customers less than desirable but I had to, because that’s what the company wanted. After I was done with the work, I really couldn’t care less about the workplace
It's a process. We want to do 100%, but in the end, that isn't always correct. Sometimes less is more - as long as it is in check.
But this insight only comes with time.
Having worked at an employee run cooperative where we discussed and participated in the decision making I can say it is mostly exactly how Adam describes it being more fulfilling. The only catch is having more involvement makes it a harder blow when the business goes in a direction that you are vehemently against, especially if it turns out to the detriment of work conditions or wellbeing of the business.
It’s related to the “great man” myth that we see in history; the dude who was there when the cool thing happened seems to end up being lauded for it, when (let’s be honest) it had about 0.005% to do with him and his wonderful leadership - it was a complicated interplay of circumstance, huge effort on the part of a vast group of people, and a mix of foresight and luck.
Also: worker Co-ops are based as fuck.
I'm so flabbergasted that people think that Steve Jobs actually invented and developed the iphone. I can't comprehend their stupidity.
I like the idea that great men did great things. Gives me something to strive for
@@civilengineer3349 not saying they didn’t but (for example) “Winston Churchill won the Battle of Britain” is a bit of a fucking stretch.
Something like “Van Goch painted Starry Night”, I can happily live with - he did and it’s my favourite painting.
It’s different.
@@civilengineer3349 you don't need an absurd fantasy to be inspired.
Also, it gives you a warped sense of how much a single person can accomplish by themselves, which will dilute you into thinking you're worthless or lazy when you inevitably fail to match what you think "great people"
@@agoo7581 a great point. I agree!
as a 3d artist, my end point for my career is just setting up a worker coop (and a federation if the business expands) and have a job where i am not just a cog.
Why just the end point?
Sounds fun.
Your office job story is very relatable to me. I used to work as a cyber security analist on my last job, and everything you said applies to it...
We worked like 4 hours and procastinated after, since we had nothing to do, but, i was a idiot and tryed my best to do as much as i could, sometimes even working alone in a team of 6 since i was the only one trying to actually make a difference. One guy literally did not work a single day since he got hired, he'd just do his college works and watch youtube... now, after that context just take a guess who got fired after making some suggestions... not him, i did. Thats the pure meritocracy working i guess
Analist 😂😂😂
Stopping at 4:28 to chime in.
This reminds me of a documentary I watched on global “Blue zones”. Places where people were living longer than the norm, and by a fair amount. At one of them on an island in Greece, they found that one thing the old islanders were doing among other things was just being productive.
A lot of the people on the island were older, they also farmed their own crops and animals, that and they shared with the others on the island too. So, all of them, even the oldest of the old, were necessary cogs in the machine that kept the island working (because obviously, they’d share what they made). So it makes sense that the meaningful work you did for yourself in those two tasks gave you the most joy.
Those two tasks, no matter how small, made you feel important, they made you feel useful. Working a desk job typing on a keyboard all day and seeing none of the results in the real world (I.e., away from your desk) gives you none of the satisfaction due to the massive disconnect. You’re not feeling your work, your work isn’t sitting right there in front of you, there’s no accomplishment, just more work.
I've been a web developer for almost 30 years. I was never really "MISERABLE" at work but definitely knew I wasn't as happy as I should have been doing my job. Then I took the plunge and went full-freelance (7 years ago) and I have never been happier about work. The problem wasn't the work or the clients, it was the overwhelming sense of my time being wasted going to and from work (I'm in the USA), going to meetings I didn't need to be in, and energy wasted doing cringe team building/company propaganda stuff. Now that I work for myself I care much more about my work, the quality of it, and I know I don't need to satisfy some middle management know-nothing.
Middle management and the several layers of it is the worst, covid lockdowns showed this.
All they do is head counts, office politics, and manipulating the numbers and statistics to satisfy the next level.
I enjoyed my fast food job more than I do my software testing job. I felt a sense of purpose at my job at fast food, even if we had some really busy hours and shitty days, my work was directly benefiting a person not too far away from me. My current job serves no one but faceless nameless corpos and clients I don't know or give two shits about. At my fast food job I was making someone a meal for the day that could make their day and give them some comfort food.
I strongly recommend the video 'Worker Democracy' by Unlearning Economics. It's an hour long video going through the different variations of worker co-ops, and the policies that encourages them.
Great video Adam
Seconded
It's a fantastic video. Couldn't recommend it enough for anyone seeing interested in a deep dive on the topic.
Oh yeah, let's ignore economics, Turkiye shows us great how well it works.
@@justanordinaryaccount9910 What does Turkey have to do with Worker Democracy?
@_jpg it has to do with "unlearning economics" and it (surprise, surprise) ended with record high inflation.
If you want to know what's realistic for an engineering project, you talk to the engineers. If you want good ideas for marketing purposes, you talk to the marketing department. The idea that we're forcing THEM to conform to the ideas of an out of touch CEO that doesn't know how any of this shit works is actually kind-of insane.
The primary driving force of a CEO is to justify why they exist when they contribute nothing of value to the company.
If the CEO is not communicating with the departments then they are an incompetent buffoon. The point of the CEO is to consolidate all of the information from each of the departments and then concentrate it in a meaningful way to create profit. A CEO who does not do these things creates an uncompetitive company that will surely be overtaken by its competitors- if free market processes are liberal enough to allow that.
@@spehhhsssmarineer8961 You would think so, but it turns out when you're in a position with all the power and not much oversight, you can just keep failing without any real consequences. Even worse, because the only real pressure is to keep growth up for investors, most of the time failure just results in cutting the cost by dumping Employees if necessary... even if they're the same people that were pushing against the bad decision in the first place.
There's just so many examples of this, like when animators fought against the Bad CG Sonic design from the trailers internally, watched the studio put it out anyways, and after the backlash when it was finally fixed those same employees were fired before the end of the financial quarter so the company could report higher profits.
The incentive structure of supply and demand based on successful and unsuccessful product launches is just completely fucked when things push for large short-term gains at the cost of long-term profits.
I mean, remember the Google Stadia? Absolute dogshit idea. Any engineer can tell you it was a disaster waiting to happen. People absolutely knew it would be a flop internally. Even just on announcement people were predicting it'd be a mess. And then it came out, and it turns out streaming entire games across the country didn't work, so it ended up being a giant flop.
There's no way around it, the people making that call were complete idiots. But because it's Google and they basically run a monopoly in multiple areas, they just shrugged and took the hit. Nothing changed and no lessons were learned, people just got scammed by a crappy product by a corporation that paid shitloads in R&D just to put out a complete miss that everyone saw coming a mile away.
And if you don't get a situation like that and things do start feeling a bit shaky, you can just do what EA does and keep buying smaller companies that used to be moderately successful to get their IPs and workers. That way, instead of fixing the problem of stupid people doing bad practices that tick people off, you give the company a boost while making OTHER IPs suffer the consequences of working under stupid people that want to do bad business practices that tick people off.
This isn't really something the free market can fix, I think. Because the problem isn't the market itself. It's how we structure these companies in the first place and how much power the CEOs wield because of that structure. You can't remove the problem people, and when things go bad they have plenty of options to stay afloat by screwing other people over.
@@spehhhsssmarineer8961 "a ceo who does not do these things" you've just described the vast majority of ceos...
@@cptmiller132 If that was true we would see a lot more failed companies. The problem is that instead of hiring competent CEOs businesses will just lobby the government for legislation that protects them.
I'm a nurse and feel like I'm in prison. I don't get to actually help patients in a meaningful way, I don't see patients actually recover, and patients are mean to me about 25% of the time for many different reasons. Oh and the work is hard. But idk what else to do I got mouths to feed
Thank you for your service!
Yeah, it's really weird right. It's almost as if the workers owned the means of production they would actually care, and invest themselves into the company, because they'd directly benefit from their own labor.
*cough cough* socialism *cough cough*
is anything stopping them from doing so?
But actually owning the jeans if production not that soviet block shit where the government controls everything and just calms itself the workers
every time people try on a grander scale, the CIA happens to drop off 69 boxes of weapons next to the most psycho folks in that area that happen to dislike that idea.
The then emerging military dictatorship happens to be friendly towards US business interests.
really odd
well they have these things called wages/salaries and if the pay is good then people are invested because they’re getting paid well, if not, go to where they’re paying well, if they’ll have you, but then at that point it’s a you problem
King Arthur Flour is fully employee owned and it won it's current market share because it operates arguably the best flour mills in the United States.
All this talk of Ai rendering low level jobs obsolete, the true potential is making all the suits redundant. We are on the threshold of either a post-scarcity dream or a oligarchic nightmare. Should be interesting.
Ugh. This hits hard for me. I'm coming up on a bit of an employment crisis and I'm really struggling to figure out what direction to take. Nothing seems attractive, but starving isn't an option.
If your job feels meaningless, then it probably is...
love this!
That's like 99.9% of jobs. 0.1% of jobs that innovate things for better are either paid dirt at university lab or done in a secrecy.
@@drill_fiend1097around 40% are meanless actually
@@drill_fiend1097
Idk upkeep of basic societal functions sounds pretty meaningful
@@realhumanbean7915 blue collar jobs that are essential for running society like construction, maintenance, long distance trucking are extremely understaffed and suffering from shortage of workers. Sad but true.
EVERY WORKER, A MEMBER OF THE BOARD!
The main difference between running a country and running a company is that the companies are run for profit (to the investors / owners, not employees) and government doesn't need to turn a profit for some external entity. Worker cooperatives are a perfectly fine way to start and run new businesses, but it's not a structure that would benefit the investors of the existing companies. I would also like to hear how coops would function as publicly traded companies or in markets that require significant VC investment to be viable.
Well that's kinda the thing. The investors, owners, and workers would all be the same people, so if you want more money to go into the company, there needs to be public investment. Instead of an entity that just wants more profits to fund the company, you would have people who have a more direct stake in societal issues.
It’s almost like you were alienated from your labor
I am so excited to see worker coops expanding over time. I really love seeing how you bring great ideas into focus, from things like this to the dangers of residential zoning to how much of an absolute chucklefuck Elon Musk is, you have a remarkable propensity for having great ideas and expressing them in clear, helpful ways.
Coops are still a part of the bigger feodal system which is we told us was "free".
People who are interested in supporting cooperatives should look into investing with a cooperative fund. Cooperative funds provide low-interest loans to cooperatives specifically. Some examples include the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast (US), the Cooperative Development Foundation, and Shared Capital Cooperative.
They have been here for more than a 100 years, clearly they are not as competitive as Adam suggest.
@@frantisekhajek6775 I suspect they are not as competitive because they tend not to exploit their workers and generally don't use tactics like: selling below cost to out-price their competitors. That doesn't mean that authoritarian companies are better, unless you mean better for investors.
@@boydvanoosterhout7966 Then this makes it worse for the costumers, everything has a downside.
Really liking this "super capitalism" idea; letting workers control the companies at which they work is not only very effective and democratic but also sounds a lot more fulfilling. Really a good way to introduce/encourage good social norms in the workplace. I wonder if there's another word to describe this more social organization of the economy...oh well, it'll come back to me eventually.
it's a great idea, a real SOCIAL good . get everyone in the COMMUNITY to work for a common obective. i agreee this super capitalism 2.0 should have a word for it . hmmmm well it's good for all people so maybe peopleism? nah , that doesnt flow off the tongue. oh well im sure we'll collectively come up with something ;) ehehehehe
Ah it's on the tip of my sickle
This whole super capitalism idea seems to work well with good COMMUNication between the workers.
Hmm... employees having a meaningful say on the means of production? Where have I heard that before?
It's so supa we forgot the capitalism
For anyone looking to learn more about workplace democracy, I'd highly recommend the Unlearning Economics video on the topic
That's a great channel
This is exactly what I needed. I work at an international bank for research and development.
Make hundreds or thousands of new potential products, interfaces, systems, etc just to be thrown into a bin.
I felt like I was lazy and my work was bad, even though my supervisor complimented me on my work, I felt lied to and worthless.
Literally 2 / 1000 of my ideas caught on and they were ideas i made in a few minutes without much care.
Weeks felt like days and days like seconds. Dreaded going to work.
Scared for my boss to see me, because I thought she would fire me on the spot. Apparently she thinks positive of me, but I don't believe it.
I had one panic attack in the first 3 months of working here. I was stressed 24/7
Now looking at my work, thinking im the co-owner of the company gave me the power to go on, but deep down i know its a lie. A lie that might help.
They like you being weak, you accept less pay and worse conditions. Profittable. Too anxious or tired to make a fuss.
I picked up my first actual job ever at an electronics service shop around two or three months ago. I have quite a bit of electronics experience just because I tinker with and fix a decently wide array of things both for myself and my friends. While I certainly prefer doing my own projects and stuff on the free days (I work three days a week) seeing customers happy after a successful repair is almost as good as doings a good job for a friend. I even had a few situations where a local customer popped in and dropped me some chocolate which was really cool! While I ain't doing too bad financially since I get a significant portion of my income from just being efficient with my resources and selling off extra things after upgrades I feel like the positive client interactions are are doing more for my wellbeing than the money I get from my workplace lol. And certainly a chocolate bar bought with earned money < gifted chocolate bar :P
Wow that’s relatable! I felt like that every damn day in my boring office jobs and couldn’t imagine doing such meaningless work forever. The waiting was awful. I did my work in a few hours but still had to sit there all day to get paid.
Now I’m an independent online teacher and blogger, and I LOVE it! I do my work whenever I want to and have so much freedom. I decide what to do, work more efficiently, care about what I do and I can never go back to the hamster wheel!
Happy you got to escape!
Coool... Now imagine the millions of people who would LOVE to be an online teacher and blogger, but there isn't room enough for millions of online teachers and bloggers...
Now what will happen if millions actually succeeded? You'd earn no money.
You are speaking from a significant position of privilege that is a combination of actually trying and pure luck, while many many many people also attempt and fail, daily.
And you speak of it as "escaping", and calling it the hamster wheel, thanks for looking down on us who can't "escape"...
@@jshowao-rw1dh I never said that. Get over yourself
@@jshowao-rw1dh Yeah, and it annoys the hell out of me.
People like Adam does this kind of thing... despite him "disliking classism", this is the same kind of classism.
It also doesn't take into account the large portion of people who don't want any responsibilities, that slog through work because it is required to do so.
In general, the amount of jobs that each individual will love, vs. the ones that have the luck + skill to attain the job they love, is very very much in the lovers favor...
We can't all be Twitch Streamers... We can't all be successful researchers only researching the things we love, we can't all be working at the most lovable job in the exact conditions that we prefer... We can't all be successful business owners...
Personally, I prefer a "sloggy" job, I prefer keeping my intellectual endeavors to my private life. I easily get stressed having responsibilities and having to think about what direction the company should go...
Instead of being happy about where they are (OP here and Adam), and they have gotten successful in a way they love, it reeks of looking down upon those that don't want that or is incapable for a variety of reasons.
To add to the hamster wheel metaphor, hamsters actually require much larger cages, many inches of bedding, and shouldn’t have any vertical tubes or any of the crap you’d see in a class pet cage. In other words, we’re all very much like hamsters in that the higher ups think we should conform to an unhealthy standard and have brainwashed us to the point where we think it’s normal regardless of what we actually need to thrive.
Fun fact
Xi jin ping is better
Nice move there addressing the most common objections which hold no ground, makes the message only stronger.
I strongly agree my brother.
Smarter Every Day posted a video recently talking about how NASA was run during the Apollo program. The guys running the show adopted this philosophy of encouraging everyone to know as much as possible about the whole project and to have the confidence to speak up about any concerns or issues. And this was credited with issues being identified that otherwise wouldn't have, lives being saved and the whole program being an incredible success. He was actually chewing out some of the leadership there for questionable decisions on the Artemis program. It seems that there's this tendency for top down decision making in organisations to make the whole stupider than the sum of it's parts - even in NASA which had previously learnt this lesson. The soviets once rammed one of their space stations into a death spiral during a failed docking procedure ordered by some boneheaded general. The people who knew better weren't empowered to question the stupidity of their superiors. A democratic check on power seems like such a good solution to these kinds of problems.
lmao reminds me of the challenger and like. how the engineers were ignored by the higher ups that it was too cold to launch and the orings wont work. and i think we all know what happened
I remember some former buisness man who actually ran his very large companies like that. His name was Kazuo Inamori. He emphasized the need to explain your companies philosophy to your employees. This allowed him during crisis'es, to keep employee's in the company while paying less until the crisis is done. His hours talk is on wikipedia.
My friend used to manage a bunch people (not sure which field anymore) and had a straight forward way for people to improve their position. He says he had the lowest turnover in the industry - because the people knew what they were doing and how to improve their position. When the upper management pushed him on the high salaries he just pointed at the employees and said: Look we have a team of highly skilled, motivated and experienced people and that was that.
So, I guess that's how I'd like to boost the engagement of this video...
I can relate SO MUCH to everything you say here.
Most of us lack meaning in our life and that slowly destroys us. The worst part is when you get older and you have no energy for what you really like.
Side note on coops: Unfortunately my experience with those is they implode thanks to infighting over power and control
That's why a standard precedent is required.. and also laws..
As someone with many family members that have benefited from Mondragón cooperatives, I’m glad that you give them a shoutout. People need to know more about these. People deserve agency of their lives
holy mother of god, baldurs gate 1 music. Truly a man of culture
And AoE music as well. Adam really knows his boomer gamer culture.
I love you content. But here...
In Spain (I'm Spanish) we have had many cooperative companies and many of them have failed. Even Mondragón has had huge issues.
An example are orange field management cooperatives. We have a few of those. And every now and then we lose a lot of money because the management can't be as professional as we would need, or the cooperative is not big enough to compete, or many other reasons. It is better than nothing but it's far from perfect.
At the end, that model may work in a local, even national level, for a worker intensive industry if intense growth capital is not needed, but with the employee ownership also comes responsibility. in our experience, It's nearly impossible to update systems, machinery and others because the same workers that may lose their jobs vote against it, groups form to protect tehmselves, and without an authority that has lots to lose the company can and will go down.
I don't wanna say cooperatives never work. They may work for some low investment industries... but I would never call it capitalism 2.0. It exist and if fails a lot too...
Statistically, cooperatives succeed more than a standard business. I would also imagine that they don’t receive as much external investment because investors don’t have much control. The existing system is at odds and is generally against it.
In America workers co-ops tend to last longer than traditional businesses, none of them reach the major monopoly status but they are a lot more reliable than our startups
I highly recommend the video "Worker Democracy" by Unlearning Economics. It's an incredibly informative dive into the pros and cons of various worker coop structures and addresses some of the drawbacks like Mondragón, while highlighting research on more successful worker democracy policies.
Coops still work well as small businesses, and tend to last long imo. It's the opposite for a bigger scale. The only big business I know that has few co-op aspects in the US is REI.
We need this experimental country where the capital growth isn't the priority. I wonder how it would perform internationally after sustaining itself. But thats a very stretched dream haha
The home renovation thing really hit home. I felt the same thing, which I really needed after a few months unemployed.
Thought-provoking vid, thanks for doing it. You might just have a point with coops being a possible way out for solving job meaninglessness, however, don't forget that coops are not immune to mismanagement and failure. I live in Italy, my local coop supermarket chain went bust several years ago due to mismanagement. It cost lots of jobs, but, more importantly, it cost the partners all the savings they had sunk into it. It took almost a decade of trawling through the courts (in part also because of the dysfunctional Italian legal system) before the Italian state and Region Friuli (where I live) reimbursed the partners... and only a fraction of the investment at that.
One thing I'm a bit unsure about is how to go about implementing such ideas on global-scale corporations without sinking them. More thinking to do....
Don't we have that a little with the "Betriebsrat" in Germany for bigger comapnies? Where the workers elect their representatives to sit on the board? Those can be quite powerful.
Yep, and this was the main reason why the German economy bounced back much faster than the US one after the crash of 2008 - because in Germany, companies didn't fire half of their workers, but instead the unions (and the Betriebsräte of some bigger companies) actually agreed for the workers to do "Kurzarbeit" (half-time or less jobs, and as such keeping everybody employed, just with less salary) instead, so when the crisis was over, the companies just had to upgrade those jobs back to full-time jobs, and had all their needed - and well trained - workers already there, while companies in the US first had to hire new staff - and then to train it again.
@@IgorRockt I'm glad then. I didn't think the Kurzarbeit Model model too special. It was a win/win for all sides. Somewhat unsettling to think that it was ...
@@HungrigerHugo89 That (the win/win) was the idea behind these laws - if the employees are actually well informed about how the company performs, since their representatives are part of the board of directors, they are able to ask for more if the company is performing well - and to accept some lower wages (or less work hours) in bad times, to keep the company afloat.
Ludwig Erhard was quite a clever man, and very well educated in regards of economics, and Konrad Adenauer was intelligent enough to listen to him and his idea of the "social market economy".
Hey, here's an idea:
Let's collectivize the means of production!
Uhhhh, no, let's not do that
@@DaroZuoWhy not?
man, that job you described on itself sounds like euphoria compared to horrible working conditions here in japan..
How to get hardcore capitalists on board for communism without calling it communism 👀❤
I quit my job last year as a banker at Merrill Lynch after learning about worker cooperatives. It have been a year later and I finally got a job in something employee ownership related. ESOPs. I have learned a lot about worker ownership this past year, and I hope to spread it to the world. Great video, Adam!
You're a really cool person! Thanks for doing good work.
5:00 exactly what I feel in my current employment: working more efficiently will only have 2 results: I'll get more work to do for the same pay or i'm getting fired (or someone else is while the rest does more work for the same pay)
Feel free to start a co-op, depending on the country, there are even tax advantages to do so.
3:30 Adam was so motivated he chopped down the trees outside and built a nice orange building
Ay Adam, imma write this before I watch this video. I recently applied with Deutsche Bahn and will be starting my next (and hopefully final) carreer as a train conductor. I'm hoping to leave all the bullshit that I suspect this video will be about behind and do something I want to do and feels good to do. You and your videos played their part in my choice of work. I will always be a sucker for internal combustion engines, I'm just way too hard-wired to love and enjoy them and to work on them. But from now on this will be a mere hobby, as something wasteful and egoistical should be.
Keep doing what you do, you make a difference!
Trains also run without passengers: Subsidy's. Passengers are actually a nuisance because then you have to run your trains on time.... Government pay's anyway because they have to be green and provide "alternatives" to cars....
@@bastiaan7777777 First of all, I don't understand your point in regards to my comment. Second of all, it's not subsidised, it is state owned. And it HAS to be, because you can't leave something as important as a nation wide railway service to private companies, who will just squeeze every last penny out of it, let everything rot, scratch stations that'll not give them enough customers - basically make life miserable and rail services unusable for most people. If you think governments do this "because they have to be green" you still haven't got the point and I won't be able to explain it to you.
@@therwfer There is my point: if it is state owned, then what is the point of checking tickets?
@@bastiaan7777777 I wish we could get past this, but society isnt ready. Still, this has nothing to do with governments green washing, which in turn has nothing to do with my comment. All you wanna do is nice and easy Bahn bashing, everybody can agree on that right? LOL they late again.
Great work Adam, as a self employed full time single parent, self employment is the only way I can do it. It is so hard but the payoff will be worth it someday.
Wow i never realized that workplaces are like living under a dictatorship
One of the most important videos in modern times! More people should see it
I am retired now, but I had two fantastic jobs in my career. For three years, I worked at a company that reverse-engineered integrated circuits. I wrote software to help automate this. I was given a ton of freedom to embark on the R&D project. I loved the work and the challenge and especially the freedom I was given.
Next, for 19 years, I ran my own small company, providing anti-spam software and services. We peaked at 12 employees and had extremely low turnover because it was a great place to work.
After selling my company, I had three different software development jobs. After the third one, I was completely disillusioned with software development and more generally, the entire high-tech industry. Software development was a mess; everyone thought they'd be the next magical billion-dollar IPO; and the business model of the tech industry is essentially customer-hostile.
I know this doesn't really relate to the video content. :) I agree that more employee control over companies would be a great idea.
Most modern day democracies are not governed by the people for the good of the people, but by an elite for the good of the elite ;
so your example falls kind of flat.
The global trend is in the opposite direction :
a decline in education and employee benefits, less regulation and more power to corporate lobbies,
all to lower the cost of the workforce and increase profit.
The upper class cannot conceive that employees could manage the ship better than them,
that would go against their internal narrative that they are intrinsically superior and deserve their spot at the top.
In other words/short: make the workers own the means of production.
I was an intern as IT Support and intends to go back into it once graduated but I don’t really have this issue. I did feel like my work is repetitive, but the work they do are considered essential due to my clients also being deemed essential workers, so I felt like there is a purpose. My pay is quite decent for a student, there are decent benefits like lunch breaks, sick leave and paid time off, and no stress of overtime work, or getting abruptly fired. Both my internships were like that, and the secret is that my team is in a union. They mandated those above conditions, so employee retentions were really good. Most reasons why my colleagues would leave is either better job position elsewhere or internal promotion to a related field like software dev or server management.
"Retirement" *cries in American*
It really confuses me how people say average person shouldn’t have a say in his company despite having related skills and knowledge. Yet the same people are perfectly fine with average person having a say in the affairs of state
I can relate to Adam. My life and work became much more productive since I started decorating my brand new apartment, making of it a nice, cozy and safe haven for me, my family and any friends visiting me.
Man this resonates with me. I work as a scientist in a diagnostics laboratory, and I HATE my job. (Side note: If you have loved ones keep them away from working in the NHS). The other day, I completely sanded down, filled, re-stained, and varnished an old table. No one will enjoy that table but me, and no one saw the absolute state it was in before hand. I did the entire thing by hand (no electric tools) and I enjoyed that far more than a day at work. I actually achieved something. I've done restoration bits like that before, and I love it. Same with gardening etc. I would rather work a job that benefits the community than a job that, ok, provides a result to the patient, but is so mismanaged it's impossible to do well.
My friend told me once, ok, imagine than now you get paid to do that you like it so much as a hobby now, then automatically that becomes into a *JOB* then you'll hate it again.
And that's kind of true in my case, I hate "to work", the imposed part of it, "I have to" work, is not optional as I'm not rich, so I hate it because for me a job is nothing else than a prision
Yeah feel that Office bit... Tried it once and noped straight out again. My brain needs something that stimulates both, mental and physical work.
I now have a (to me) meaningful job as animal care taker, but it barely pays the rent and the shelters are constantly struggling. Basically high stress low income environment and constant danger of loosing it entirely, not to mention the animals you grow fond of.
If housing, a basic human need in my opinion, wouldn´t keep increasing in price all the time, that wouldn´t be much of an issue, but it does. Quite a lot lately.
Pretty sure most anyone watching this video is already on board with cooperatives. The problem is a lack of access. The greater majority of workers aren't in a position to start a cooperative. Lack of funds, knowledge, contacts, etc. Would I join a cooperative if I could? Of course. However, I'm basically the only pro-labor person I know locally, and pre-existing cooperatives are relatively rare except for a few industries that I am not a part of.
They say schools are designed to look and feel like prisons, and I can certainly confirm my high school looked much like a lower security prison. Friends who lived in more dangerous areas had metal detectors, cops everywhere all the time, drugs all over, guns, all types of shit.
This is so true! My first job in software as an apprentice was at a startup with just 2 other people, and I had a ridiculous amount of control for someone who had made like 2 crappy project websites before lol. But i loved it - they'd give me ideas and just say "here's what we want, go wild with it", and all of my work actually made a difference to this app that were being making in real-time. It's the best job I've had
This reminds me of the recent headline from the CEO of Panera Bread having the audacity to complain that workers just don't care about shareholder dividends any more. As you stated here, why the hell would they care?
it might also help reduce the weight on the corporate soul-crusher if you didn't have to drive an hour both ways on stroads and freeways to get to work.
I do believe that the majority of the other videos on this guy's channel address that very issue...
Review Dan Pink’s view on motivation. It’s based on 1. Autonomy 2. Mastery 3. Purpose
I'm not even sure if he's sarcastic, or when the sarcastic started. Well done!
We all want and need to work. Just not a job. Work is only satisfying when it has a one to one relationship with your survival. Look up the mexican fisherman story which explains this sense of meaning vs alienation perfectly.
I work in a national park in the english countryside. Just got it in september. Money is terrible but i actually love my job and i sometimes even look forward to mondays. Its worth the poor pay. No job even comes close.
I've definitely entertained the idea of just quitting software jobs for something more meaningful
I've been freelancing and working on small or big projects of my own, or common ones where I had a real stake. There's "enjoyment gap" when doing something for a purpose, yes. It is better to have it than not. But its not that big of a difference. The worst thing is if you put in months before any visible result and your actions (usually tapping on keyboard) don't hook up to the dopamine that would keep your emotions in line with progress to the goal. Mowing lawns for hourly wage gave me much more satisfaction due to hands and feet employed in it and immediately visible results, than working on what I always wanted to work on with a real personal stake in it but on a keyboard in (home) office setting.
If you would like to dig into this idea further, I have a few suggestions
1. consider reading "Bullsh*t Jobs" by David Graeber
2. ORGANISE and bring forh the revolution, Comrades.
Uffff....I like the idea, but I would not use the Mondragón cooperative as an example to follow. In the Basque Country, it is known as a den ruled by nepotism. One that, instead of a few "nobles", it is a relatively large number of associates who act as terrible managers that introduce corruption (and their incompetent relatives) into the organization.
Plus, it has a large number of workers who are not given a vote in the company.
Exactly! And keep in mind that a coop doesn’t mean that there aren’t managers or people to keep everyone productive, it just means you have a say in how the company is run. Just like how we still have authorities and leaders in democracies. There are few day-to-day differences between a coop and a business run by external/singular investors. It’s just that you actually have a stake and say in the success of your company beyond the company going bankrupt/you getting laid off.
Managers are a support function, they should not be your bosses, but the people helping you do effective work, the logic is flipped in most companies.
@@GabrielPettier absolutely agree. I guess I more meant “coops aren’t total anarchy” lol.
If there are managers, then you fo not have a say.
Managers immediately become susceptible to corruption and greed.
I hope people are inspired by your video to engage in things they are truly passionate about. Their lives and the world would be a better place if they took those steps, I think.
There are some workplace democracies in the UK.
One of the oldest and biggest is the John Lewis Partnership (department stores and grocery stores). Although the JLP structure is unique; the democracy is mostly consultative with one exception; the employees vote for a board of trustees (who are also employees), and the trustee board has one privilege: to hire and fire the managing director of the partnership (and firing has effectively happened once or twice in the last 100 years--although the persons concerned resigned before they were fired).
Apart from that, managers manage in a normal way and have the final say on day to day operations (including hire and fire of employees subject to legal norms) but there is frequent democratic consultation through various levels of elected employees, and the boards do consult the trustees in detail on strategic direction.
RIverford Organic recently just became an employee controlled company/democracy; and Unipart is partially there via a largely employee held share structure.
In the US, one of the bigger democracies is Publix Supermarkets (all shares owned by employees who have same democratic rights as any shareholder, but not one person one vote I think)
I actually felt the same when I realised that, but later my enthusiam was destroyed by realization of how dumb, greedy and stubborn 90% of population is to care about anything else but their "American Dream" (that you have to be asleep to believe it)
poverty conditions greed
The Age of Empires 2 music kicked me straight back into my childhood! I know it´s wrong, but it feels like everything was so much better back then.
Thats what it was! It was bothering me lol
@@immortan-valkyrie90 My brain immediately produced random villager noises. lol
Holzer!
I have been working as a web developer for the past 4 years and I’m now struggling with major depression. I call myself the “rectangle maker”. Because all I do is building rectangles the entire day. If you take a look to any website, it’s just made out of rectangles. Rectangles with text, rectangles with pictures, rectangles with buttons inside… even this interface you see is entirely made of rectangles. And if you see something that doesn’t look like a rectangle, well TRUST ME, it’s just a transparent rectangle containing a picture. My wage can barely afford rent + psychiatrist, and I hate every second of my life. In the little free time I have, I’m just too stressed to enjoy it. I don’t wanna do this anymore, fuck you (not you, the company)
Great video as usual! Have you considered doing a video on the Tesla situation in Sweden? I think there is an important lesson to learn about the importance of unions. I don’t think enough people realise that unions are the single most important factor in making your workplace humane
I also noticed this, and have since said that my job absolutely needs to have something to do with producing or maintaining something visible, with a measurable impact on society. Even if that work is devops related. And I think I scored a job recently that has all this.
I´m very glad to see you make videos about economic democracy :D. It´s an incredibly important issue which way to often gets overlooked when discussing modern issues. Especially considering the current weakening of unions all over the world.
Also "Democratic capitalism" is certainly a way to name it
workplace autonomy or job control is needed tbh
Big tech making sure of that. Microsoft is getting obese.
The same exact thing happened to me when I was working as a remote IT engineer - after some time I suddenly realized that my work is completely mining-less.
I don’t do anything with my hands, I don’t create anything. I was just clicking button’s remotely and something happens on the server somewhere in Europe. But I don’t ever see it. It was very depressing. I had to force myself to go to that freaking office every day and sit there. I’ve stopped working and I was just creating the illusion of work.
I quit that job and moved to another country. But this time I worked as a food delivery driver for several years. And I was enjoying it a lot! I was finally doing something physically and I could see the results of my work in front of me.
Now I’m working in IT again, but this time I work from home. The job is super easy and the company is great. What better to wish for, right? But after a year - I’m depressed even more now.
I've been researching cooperatives as a viable course of action for the past few weeks, I cannot thank you enough for making this video, we need this out there. They are an existing, useful and realistic way forward that we can just do NOW