What happens with the competent retire, burn out or opt out? It's a question few bother to ask because the base assumption is that there is an essentially limitless pool of competent people who can be tapped or trained to replace those who retire, burn out or opt out, i.e. quit in favor of a lifestyle that doesn't require much in the way of income or stress.

These assumptions are no longer valid.

Feeling this one in companies I interact with and my own life.

Labels: work

In a bigger piece about how difficult it is to get any research done, there is this gem in the comments:

My last job had a motto “Nothing we do is worth getting hurt for” On the one hand, I agree, it was just a paycheck to me, I didn’t want to risk my life for the shareholders and they didn’t want to pay my insurance. On the other hand, some day I’d like to do something worth getting hurt for.

Labels: work

We're losing rest days, and we think we like it, but we are probably worse off.

But Sunday, the weekend day that even Puritans blocked off for worship and rest (a Puritan poet once pondered “over whether closing a stable door that was blowing in the wind constituted an act of work which would profane the Sabbath”), is also beginning to look more and more like just another day of the work week.

Hat tip to L. for this one.

Labels: trends, work

Closely related!

“It is necessary to reaffirm that employment is necessary for society, for families and for individuals”, said the Pope. “Its primary value is the good of the human person, as it allows the individual to be fully realised as such, with his or her attitudes and intellectual, creative and manual capacities. Therefore, it follows that work has not only the economic objective of profit, but above all a purpose that regards man and his dignity. And if there is no work, this dignity is wounded! Indeed, the unemployed and underemployed risk being relegated to the margins of society, becoming victims of social exclusion”.

Reminds me of an article I read a while ago, about a problem with welfare programs being that they assumed all utility came from consumption, but in reality for humans, much utility comes from production.

Labels: work

Don't try to be perfect, just try to do it again and again, getting a little better each time.

It’s not just art studios where repetitions matter. Whenever you put in consistent work and learn from your mistakes, incredible progress is the result.

This is why I force myself to write a new article every Monday and Thursday. I can’t predict which articles will be useful, but I know that if I write two per week, then sometimes I’ll hit the bullseye.

Labels: a full life, work

Inspiring! If I accomplished one of the eleven things that TR did, I think I would be happy.

In addition to all of these tangible accomplishments, Roosevelt infused vitality into every aspect of his life. He practically bounded from room to room, giving hearty handshakes, slapping backs, and grinning ear to ear. Even as he got involved in politics, he exercised regularly and took up boxing, tennis, hiking, rowing, polo, and horseback riding.

I'm working on my grin.

Labels: a full life, work

A little from the book Mystic Microsoft on when Kraig, still an atheist, found his mission at Microsoft.

Yes, that was it! I felt joy and I wanted to share it! And by sharing it, I wanted more than anything to awaken that joy in others. This, I realized, was my real mission at Microsoft, even, in a sense, my personal ministry. My position within Developer Relations, my responsibilities, the very technologies I worked with—everything!—these were vehicles not for The Gospel, but for sharing joy. After all, joy is what we are all really seeking in every activity. To lovingly share one's inner light and awaken joy in the hearts of others is perhaps our highest outward responsibility as human beings.

Labels: religion, vocations, work

I hope that by now I've communicated the nature of my own arrogance in the whole matter. I didn't like the way things kept changing, especially after I'd committed myself emotionally to one way of doing things. Attachment is a sure-fire recipe for frustration.

From Mystic Microsoft, Chapter 2.

Labels: computers, quotes, work

There's a Woodworking StackExchange that some folks are trying to get off of the ground. I personally like the action on DIY as I'm usually trying to repair a fence or whatnot, but I'm all for knowing more about fine craftsmanship.

Labels: technology, work

Indeed I have often achieved much satisfaction with a little gardening or weeding.

Even more deeply, it’s important to connect with the corporeal world around you. I’m convinced that rudimentary manual work in the garden, the fine motor motions of sculpting, and the flight of hands across a (piano) keyboard all feed back to that part of our engineering selves that connects to the real world.

Labels: work

Besides my dignity, that is. Agreed, the "Open Hardware Summit" doesn't have a lot to do with religion or any of the other topics nominally on topic, but I think that the idea of a producer or tinkerer culture is an important one and that we should do whatever we can do create new and interesting things in the world. If procreation is our helping God to bring new people into the world, surely learning how to knit is helping God to bring interesting clothes into the world. Ok maybe a stretch, but still tinkering and hobbying around are an important way to grow as people and to, if one is lucky, to make the world a slightly better place, even if it only improves your attitude a little.

Labels: technology, work

The voluntary weekly Shabbos lasts only one day, while this enforced Shabbos, occasioned by a volcano in Iceland, lasts longer; or so it seems. However, unlike the voluntary Shabbos, the gift granted weekly, the enforced Shabbos is sudden, unpredictable, and not likely to return soon.

But it does leave a lesson, does it not? Human beings are viscerally dependent on the technology that they themselves create. Ironically, that which is designed to free us of burdens — such as air flight — becomes a necessity whose interruption does not leave us with a sense of peace, but of inconvenience, anger, even desperation.

I think one of the major losses in the breakdown of discipline in the modern world is the inability to abstain from technology. I'm sure some of my faithful readers at this point are saying, "Behold, the pot notes that the kettle is black". Guilty as charged, to some extent. But starting in college when I stopped doing my homework on Sundays, I've realized that disconnecting for a little while is important for allowing meaningful connections to your work and to God.

Besides, my technology is all really old technology - my most recent purchase being an IBM RS/6000!

Labels: jewish, technology, trends, work

Aka twitter saved my back.

Apparently some doctors in backwoods types of places can be more interested in their careers than their patients.

Labels: economics, work

Even if someone has it coming, it may not be a good idea to give it to them.

Labels: work

I guess the point is that A), it's noble, and B), it's hard to outsource being a plumber to India. Not to mention that it's satisfying to work with your hands.

Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work.

Labels: trends, work

Dubbed the "phantom of Heilbronn", the woman was described by police as the country's most dangerous woman.

Investigators had connected her to six murders and an unsolved death based on DNA traces found at the scene.

Police now acknowledge swabs used to collect DNA samples were contaminated by an innocent woman working in a factory in Bavaria.

In my life I have often been quick to jump for the most exciting answers rather than the more mundane and likely answers. It's more exciting to imagine that God has some plan for your life where you have to go to the Moon to save Earth from invading space monkeys. It's less exciting and infinitely more likely, as I believe Mark Shea once pointed out, that God's plan for your life is to set the dinner table for your family every night for fifty years.

We tend to be drawn to the flashy rather than the plain in work as well. Being a doctor is good. A youth who wished to skip college and become a carpenter or some such, I think, would be discouraged in many communities. Of course, with God being a carpenter and all that argument is a little hard to make with a straight face.

Perhaps striving for a simpler answer will also be more likely to yield a correct answer.

Labels: religion, work

The dream of the defiant hero, standing alone to face down life's adversities dies hard. The great irony is that many men think they are emulating the Lone Ranger even as they sit home watching him; sifting endlessly through cable channels, beer in one hand, remote in the other. Evidently, in an interdependent world, the sole qualification for claiming self-reliance is not "solving the problem," but never asking for help.

Not surprisingly, male identity is still closely linked to the job. Unlike Depression-era people, we no longer ask "Are you working;" rather we want to know "What do you do?" Your job title or occupation immediately stratifies you in the social bedrock. And when that identity is lost, there is an urgency to replace it with something of stature. When nothing is available, says Dokoupil, "men humiliated by their loss of work often compensate by reasserting their worst hyper-masculine impulses, doubling down on old alpha-male stereotypes." In past recessions, that has meant finding refuge in sports and popular culture, hitting the bottle or the gym, and vilifying women as the cause of the problem. Not much has changed.

Times are tough, but isolating will only make them tougher. If you can't take care of your finances, you have to take care of yourself. IT is insular by nature. Coding can be a solitary pursuit, and developing a relationship with a computer is less demanding and more predictable than the messiness that comes with people. To get through the rough patches, IT professionals may have to make a conscious effort to reach out.

Isolation can indeed be a great temptation for some, ie me, but must be resisted. After all, if you're a member of the City of God, you can't spend your time out in a cave somewhere. Monks living in caves of course have an exception due to the fact that they spend their time praying and are thus in constant contact with the City. Sort of a spiritual telecommuting, in a way.

Labels: economics, family, work

Don't eat and take busses seems to be what it's about.

Labels: fun, trends, work

A year before, I had responded to a Friday plant disaster that left inventory and manufacturing untouched but destroyed the office space and all computers. Thanks to spare equipment and offsite backup tapes, our Monday morning shipments went out on time, saving the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. This event opened the purse strings a bit, and I was allowed to purchase a backup server to use in case one of the other factories had a similar disaster.

. . .

At one point, the VP of Finance asked the CIO why I still worked there. To his credit, my boss said that although I was not going to be involved in the ERP planning, I would be instrumental in the installation and training. I, of course, brushed up the résumé and prepared for the inevitable.

Sigh.

Labels: work

If you happen to be in Florida construction, something tells me you get a few more bonus points with God for showing up to your job on a daily basis.

Labels: humor, work