Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
-
Capitalism does resolve this, although not always as quickly or humanely as necessary.
It's understandable that within big companies "void pockets" are created which essentially do not produce any value. People who just chat at the coffee machine faking reports to seem busy, or people who put in effort and are convinced they are useful, but could be replaced by a script written in 10 minutes by a junior developer.
Good leaders seek out these pockets an optimize them away, or the company is put out of business by a smarter competitor.
Example: There are more and more banks which start out as a mobile app, and then request a banking license, cutting out all the "fill out form 325, fax it to headquarters, where it will be processed by our Fortran server" inefficiency crap.
The shortcomings:
1. Capitalism itself doesn't provide humane rules to deal with displaced workers.
2. Humans actively resist change in favor of perceived safety, even when it prolongs suffering. -
@bittersweet oh damn! that last one!
I ended up quitting my first job for many reasons, but this talk still haunts me:
"our workers need to input this data and they tab a lot because [...]"
Me: "ok... Where do they get the data from?
"A standard model compiled via web, sent via mail and then printed for them."
Me: "..."
Them: "..."
Me: "how about we make the import automatic?"
Them: "but then what will our workers do?"
To this day I am still impacted by this dialog... Not much for the stupidity from a business logic point of view (there are many bad companies, and this is not the only one I met in my career), but rather for the implications our job has and for the fact bs jobs are a thing because we are SO used to the capitalism that the bad guys are the ones removing boring tasks, rather than the shitty system which forces you to do a repetitive and automatable task and which reduces you to a shell doing a job a machine could do... And thanks for the wasted paper/ink, global warming ain't gonna get worse on its own!
rant
wk248