I don’t recall how I came upon it, but I have spent far too much time mulling the various messages offered by the essay You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss. In an effort to move on and get something productive done today, I hereby announce my intention to fob off at least a few of them on to you readers.
I suppose I should make it very clear at the outset that more than a few points in the essay resonate with me. And I suppose some context for those who don’t want to click through would be helpful before I go further:
Technology tends to separate normal from natural. Our bodies weren't designed to eat the foods that people in rich countries eat, or to get so little exercise. There may be a similar problem with the way we work: a normal job may be as bad for us intellectually as white flour or sugar is for us physically.
I began to suspect this after spending several years working with startup founders. I've now worked with over 200 of them, and I've noticed a definite difference between programmers working on their own startups and those working for large organizations. I wouldn't say founders seem happier, necessarily; starting a startup can be very stressful. Maybe the best way to put it is to say that they're happier in the sense that your body is happier during a long run than sitting on a sofa eating doughnuts.
Though they're statistically abnormal, startup founders seem to be working in a way that's more natural for humans.
I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I'd only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They're like different animals. I suspect that working for oneself feels better to humans in much the same way that living in the wild must feel better to a wide-ranging predator like a lion. Life in a zoo is easier, but it isn't the life they were designed for.
I think I’ve railed enough against HFCS and processed foods for the appeal of the food metaphor to be obvious (while also wondering how much of a hypocrite that makes me). But I’m having a very difficult time swallowing that first sentence: Technology tends to separate normal from natural. I know it isn’t a clean line, but isn’t our development of technology what separates us from most other animals? Given our development of big brains and fondness for solving puzzles, doesn’t that strongly suggest that technology is natural for us, in a large sense of both words?
Where does one draw the line between things that are and aren’t technology, anyway? Corrective lenses were a technological advancement way back when ... now they’re hardly given a thought. Surgery to correct poor vision is probably considered pretty hi-tech, though. What about woven, dyed fabrics, which offered a lot of advantages over slinging hides together for clothing? Non-tech now, but not so millennia ago ... maybe in a few hundred more years plastics will no longer seem techy. So I am just not seeing a separation between “normal” and “natural” that the author seems to see. He also clearly isn’t a Luddite, which makes the scene even murkier for me.
The author focuses specifically on programmers in much of his essay, and seems to present a dichotomy: startups and small companies are best for man working in accordance with his nature, yet big companies are where most programming jobs are. And large companies, with their hierarchical structures, are killer for human creativity. Another quote:
... [A] large organization could only avoid slowing down if they avoided tree structure. And since human nature limits the size of group that can work together, the only way I can imagine for larger groups to avoid tree structure would be to have no structure: to have each group actually be independent, and to work together the way components of a market economy do.
That might be worth exploring. I suspect there are already some highly partitionable businesses that lean this way. But I don't know any technology companies that have done it.
This essay was written in March, 2008, and revised in June. So, am I missing something, or is there some reason why the Linux model—or to be more specific, Red Hat or Canonical—don’t work as examples of tech companies that have successfully avoided the tree structure, at least at some point in their development? I thought the whole distributed model of open source software is an example, but it could be I am unenlightened as to the real goings-on. Or maybe I’m trying to compare apples and soft-shelled crabs ... I don’t know.
But seriously, when you think of “natural” humans today, what comes to your mind? Is technology necessarily unnatural? (And if you answer in the affirmative, would you be willing to try to live in a more natural condition? What would your parameters be for that?) Are big companies the only way to accomplish some of the amazing things that have been accomplished in the past century (give or take a few years)?
And forgive me, my friend, but it didn’t occur to me until I was electronning that last paragraph that this entire issue seems custom-tailored for a Technopagan to address. No pressure intended, however.
Very short
I may write more later, but two quick points:
1) Humans are, and our near ancestors (Neanderthals, Homo heidelbergensis, etc) were, user and developers of technology. It is what the Homo genus does. Period. It is natural to us.
2) Large organizations on the other hand..... Here we need to think a bit deeper. Clearly they are nowhere near optimal for accomplishing their stated purpose, yet people seem to keep creating and supporting them. Why?
Now that I read it.....
I agree but.....
Lets start with all that junk food, which I haven't eaten in many, many years. Yeah, it is bad for humans. Yet the places where people eat this stuff also have some of the longest life spans. This does not mean that the person living in North America who eats a bag of potato chips watching TV and washes it down with two liters of soft drink (with HFCS) is the person living longer. But it does seem to indicate that one needs to have the freedom to choose between many alternatives, some of them bad, so that you can get the good.
Likewise jobs. We know a woman who worked for the DMV of some US state for 40 years. Apparently in the same job all that time. There are many like her, and there have been throughout history. Don't rock the boat, let me live my life quietly, don't make me work hard, don't ask me to think outside a very small box. They do not produce much, they do not demand much. This is also part of being human. In fact it is the vast majority. For every person that has a burning desire to build something new or to create there have to be a thousand that just want to plod along.
Left Libertarians rightly rail against the Inclosure Acts. These were passed to force people into the money economy, mostly as factory and farm labor. Prior to this it is estimated that people worked 10 to 20 hours a week. Because they could. Likewise, some estimates of the hunter-gather work week also put it at 10 to 20 hours. In other words, our ancestors, for the most part, plodded along.
Some of them did not. The bright and ambitious made new tools, found new ways of doing things. But these have always been the minority. As long as they are free to do things their way, the vast majority should be free to live in their small boxes.
It should come as no surprise that many smart people also choose the path of least resistance. Why struggle, when you do not have to? It is not an issue of intelligence, but of personality. Some people cannot stand having a boss, most people want one.
Finally, to answer Sunni's question:
Probably not. But it was the method used and until we implement another we will not know for sure.
Coming from a caveman-with-a-computer....
I think technology is looked at with suspicion until it becomes familiar enough to go unnoticed.
I like to look at the world and pretend I need to be prepared to deal with the sudden disappearance of plastic of every sort. I do realize that is silly, and hypocritical in a way. I normally use steel knives, and even the stone tools I have made and used owe their existence to either books or modern vehicles that have allowed me access to those with "primitive knowledge". Technology is absolutely unavoidable and completely natural for humans to create and use.
Early humans at some point probably grunted their disapproval at those who were using the new technology of "language" or "bipedalism".
"Technology tends to separate normal from natural."
What's natural and what is normal?
Is there a functional difference between a hammer and a rock?
Does tool steel and tungsten contain some strange matter from an alternate universe?
If we're truly a race of toolmakers, I defy anyone to show me something unnatural. The unnatural and the supernatural don't exist, for the simple reason that if we naturally-existing humans can perceive it or use it, it is by definition part of our milieu.
That's not to say that some tools are not damaging. It's just to say that technology is as natural as the materials it uses.
"What's natural and what is normal?"
I think that might primarily reside in the user, not in the product or technology itself.
An entire industry such as plastics, e.g., is not "natural", yet we can accept plastics (or I can, up to a point) as a part of "natural" technology, emanating as it does from the human mind; whereas a tyrant who utilizes tasers I refuse to accept as "normal" or the taser itself as "natural", though a very normal, natural phenomenon such as electricity is utilized. (Animals could/would never 'think up' an equivalent product to apply to their fellow species or even their enemy.)
It often depends on the scientist/technologist/company policy (or those who fund them!) that determines if a natural or unnatural use of technology takes precedent. Yet too often the technology itself gets blamed for its use.
I guess I still have an
I guess I still have an issue with that "natural" and "unnatural" distinction. It's a topic that comes up quite a bit with the Pagans I meet online.
For example, one of the gadgets I use frequently is a Palm TX. It's made of plastic and metal and glass. Among many other things, there's a program in there that tells when the sun will rise and set based on my location.
Is that unnatural?
Even though the plastic and glass don't "exist in nature," the materials to make them certainly do. How is that different from making a shell or a feather?
We're toolmakers, "changing" nature is what we do naturally.
As for the original essay, I think it's too easy to say "natural = good" and "unnatural = bad." I don't think the answer is in the size of the company either. We all know small companies that are just as dehumanizing as the big international conglomerates. On the other hand, big companies have produced radical and profitable solutions.
A healthy company will have a balance. There will be something that "goes through the motions," and there will be something that can introduce drastic change quickly. Even the best companies will have their drones, they have to just to go through the daily business that pays for the next step.
An answer
Another way of looking at all of this is to ask one of my favorite questions: Is it voluntary?
- NonE
Not following you here.
I don’t see how the concept of voluntariness fits in with technology, and what’s natural or unnatural.
Is technology really the issue?
That is a thought provoking essay, but I wonder why he hinges the problems of working in a large company on technology. Do large companies use more technology than startups? In both settings aren't people sitting at desks in front of computers eating fattening scones from Starbucks? It's hard to see why technology is taking the rap for the difference between small and large companies.
If technology (systems for solving problems) isn't a natural phenomenon, then what do we make of the incredible air conditioning systems in termite nests or the way lions work together to bring down an antelope or the way weaver birds build their nests or the orginazation of ants and bees? I have to doubt that it's technology that's the problem for Graham's caged lions - it seems more like their problem is that they've been imprisoned.
When I first read the article I liked the title a lot - you weren't meant to have a boss. The self-sufficiency of it appealed to me. But I found after I read it that I was not so sure. It might depend on the person and the boss. I have worked for someone either as an employee or an outside contracter for my whole adult life. I really like the person I work for and consider him one of the benificent forces in my life. Was he ever a jerk? Sure, just like me. He was also an incredible mentor and friend.
Yeah!
I think you nailed it, Ellen—at least for me: it’s a seductive message he offers. But some people simply don’t have a good constellation of abilities for being a successful entrepreneur or leader. There’s nothing shameful about that, of course ... but this kind of thinking may lead some to think there is. And that there’s something wrong with them for being a better employee than employer, etc.
And, while it can be the case that a job may become a functional equivalent of being caged, that’s possible no matter the type of work, viz., the startup entrepreneur may come to see his work as confining and unfulfilling, just as an assembly line worker might. Or not. Not every assembly line worker sees the monotony of his position as a bad thing.
Assembly line worker
A friend of mine years ago was an assembly line worker in the plant that manufactured the machines which I designed. We were sort of on the opposite ends of the spectrum of work in that context. I thought, designed and created new ideas - he drilled holes in pieces of steel, mindlessly, day in and day out. He was a very intelligent guy and enjoyed his job in that it WAS mindless and therefore allowed him to make a living while simultaneously creating ideas in his head all day long. He developed, but sadly was unable to successfully market, one of the most fun games I've ever played.
- NonE
Technology is a product of human interests
First of all, Sunni, MORE LIKE THIS! I love your treatment of these kinds of fundamental issues that precede the normal libertarian / anarchist rhetoric of rights, liberty, etc. If we want people to be free, there is no choice: we must ascertain what that means in the context of the human condition, and not simply talk about "the state" and "the free market" as clinical abstractions. You're so on the same page as I on these matters it's uncanny.
WIth regard to the role of technology, I was heavily influenced by Kevin Carson's invocation of Lewis Mumford's work. He talks about how technology can go in a centralized or decentralized route depending on how political interests see fit to finance it. At different points in history, elites had an interest in one or the other mode, but the technologies that arise from either motivation are markedly different.
But it's even more fundamental than that, really. It's like what Derrick Jensen says: if you see a river or stream as your source of water, and a landbase as your source of food, you will fight to defend it to the death, because it's all you know. If you see a grocery store supply chain as your source of food and a tap as your source of water, you'll fight to the death - even of the planet - to defend that, because it's what you know. Similarly, we develop technology as a consequence of how we see ourselves and how we construct our interests. Technology alienates us from the natural modes of labor, I agree - but it's because so much technology is funded by industrial, corporate interests who have a very particular view of what it means to be productive, profitable, successful. Just because they are dictating the motivations for technology, though, doesn't mean they are right - about realizing their own ends or whether they have the correct conception of worthwhile ends in the first place.
A lot of what you're seeing in the open source and hacker community, for instance, is an effort to take back this technology for ends and interests that are different from those corporate, centralized, managerial ends. Technology as we know it is a result of humans, and because of that, humans can also change it into something we'd rather know instead.