
Douglas Coupland: The nine to five is barbaric - freddyc
https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2017/mar/30/douglas-coupland-the-nine-to-five-is-barbaric?CMP=fb_gu
======
bmmayer1
Hyperbole like this makes it difficult to take his arguments seriously, even
if he makes some good points about the changing nature of work.

Really, barbaric? Having set work hours in a steady job with regular pay in a
safe workplace with benefits usually included, including paid vacation?

It's such a dramatic leap forward from the way most humans in history--and
many still today--have had to scrimp for survival, working long hours in the
fields, barely achieving subsistence, sharecropping for feudal lords or
tyrannical landlords.

Sure, work is changing, and many people are lucky to be able to detach from
such schedules with exciting and unknown results for the future workplace. But
those of us fortunate enough to have had access to 9-to-5 jobs would be tone
deaf to act like it's such a traumatic experience, when so many people in the
world would be so grateful to have such an opportunity.

~~~
jgrahamc
_Really, barbaric? Having set work hours in a steady job with regular pay in a
safe workplace with benefits usually included, including paid vacation?_

I don't think it's hard to see that as barbaric. Think of it as "I am forced
to be away from my loved ones for most of the daylight hours and most days of
the year excluding these permitted 'holiday' periods".

~~~
jerf
"Think of it as "I am forced to be away from my loved ones for most of the
daylight hours and most days of the year excluding these permitted 'holiday'
periods"."

As opposed to what, though? Hunter-gatherers may or may not have had a lot
more leisure time, depending on who you ask, but they didn't hunt and gather
together in family groups all the time, and while many people use their words
to sing the praises of this time period their actions suggest they don't
really want that, since they could still have it if they wanted it enough. Not
to mention many of these hunting trips often spanned multiple days from what I
gather. I suppose militaries had a lot of cohesion, as long as you don't mind
defining "loved ones" as "my squadmates". Family farms still generally would
end up with the family cut in half between the women and men, assuming the men
even stayed together. Etc.

I can't off the top of my head think of a time period where there wasn't a
large portion of the population separated from at least half their family for
long periods of time.

The current situation isn't perfect, but let's be precise about what we're
comparing it to, and when exactly it supposedly existed and was widespread.

~~~
scarmig
1) I think you're understating the amount of free time people had in the past,
especially with respect to hunter gatherer societies.

2) Joining an autonomous hunter gatherer society obviously isn't possible now,
because they doesn't exist. The paraphrased "it's your choice, if you hate the
40 hour a week routine so much, just become a hunter gatherer in the Rockies"
line doesn't cut it.

Even when hunter gatherer societies did coexist with more sedentary
civilizations, states had to constantly fight to control the bodies and labor
of the people it ruled, because they constantly were calling it quits to join
the hunter gatherer societies.

The transition to agricultural, state dominated societies was a slow,
contested, emergent property of collective violence, not something most
individuals wanted.

~~~
jerf
"Joining an autonomous hunter gatherer society obviously isn't possible now,
because they doesn't exist."

Yes, they do, even now. Of course, they're so inconsequential on the world
stage that you don't hear about them much, but yes, they exist.

Now, you have the problem that they probably won't accept you, and will
probably eventually try to kill you if you seriously set up next to them and
start truly doing the hunt-gather routine.

But then, that's the authentic hunter-gatherer experience too.

(I don't believe the garbage about how peaceful they supposedly were. It is
logistically ludicrous.)

~~~
scarmig
No one is claiming that hunter gatherers were peaceful. It weakens your
argument to try to put words into people's mouths. I might as well say, "well,
why are you claiming that there's no crime or inequality in modern society?
There obviously is!!!1!"

And no, they don't. Sure, you can find a random tribe in the barren wastelands
of the Kalahari that's ostensibly "hunter gatherer," but they are much more
integrated into the economy of South Africa than any hunter gatherer society
would have been two thousand years ago. Most people born into those hunter
gatherer-lite societies spend at least some time working in the capitalist
economy.

Compare that to millenia ago, where hunter gatherers occupied some of the most
economically productive regions of the world. It's an apples and oranges
comparison.

------
anm89
What a load of shit. All the more clear as I'm traveling in a 3rd world
country where people actually have to deal with difficult working conditions.
I see people in their mid 70's doing long days of physical labor on a farm for
dollars a day. Ask them how barbaric the 9-5 desk job is.

As the other commenter mentioned, hyperbole like this only ever damages a
cause.

I think there are probably better ways to do work and as we move towards the
connected future I think many of them will increase in popularity, but that's
due to an increase in options from our already very open ended lives, not some
struggle against imagined barbarity.

~~~
jackhack
a load of shit, indeed! This degree of hipster self-pity is intolerable. I
couldn't make it more than half-way through the stupid article.

"Barbaric." I wonder if he realizes how insulting and patronizing that is. I
wish he could have met my grandfather, who worked his life in a coal mine
literally scratching out a living six long days a week before dying of lung
cancer in the 1950s.

A man who lived in a company house, was paid in script, money that could only
be used at the company store to buy good at inflated prices. A man who was
shot at with cannon and rifle by the us government for daring to challenge
this status quo and try to form a union (see "WV mine wars" for details).

Vacations? Unthinkable. Benefits? no. A paycheck that was just enough to stay
alive until the next one came along? yes.

The idea of fulfillment from one's work was probably not even a concept to
daydream about. Leisure time didn't exist. It was called "resting" and it's
what you did when not working.

He would have seen the cushy desk job of the average HN reader as paradise
itself, the "stress" of meetings or deadlines as literally laughable compared
to the very real stresses and dangers he "enjoyed" : mine collapse, poisoning
by noxious gases, explosions, fire, or cancer.

Load of shit. That's the perfect description.

~~~
unprepare
Ahh yes, the always tired retort of "people in the past/in a different place
have it worse, so you have no right to complain"

totally legitimate argument, im sure your grandfather fought hard for there to
never be better working conditions for his grandchildren, and would hate that
working conditions have gotten better and continue to improve.

have you ever complained that something tastes bad? dont forget theres
starving children in africa, so you aren't allowed to complain about your food
tasting bad, because someone has it worse, right?

Have you ever been thirsty and asked someone for water? that gall on you!
people die everyday from dehydration, you being thirsty is just hipster self
pity, you aren't going to die, so you aren't thirsty

see also:

>Fallacy of relative privation ("not as bad as") – dismissing an argument or
complaint due to the existence of more important problems in the world,
regardless of whether those problems bear relevance to the initial argument.

~~~
majewsky
Not every opposing argument is a fallacy. I observe the grandparents [1] as
trying to put things in perspective, which is a very reasonable followup on a
decidedly opinionated original article.

[1] Grandparents as in comment hierarchy, not as in coal miners.

~~~
unprepare
i never said every opposing argument is a fallacy, but this one definitely is.

what our grandparents experienced is irrelevant to discussions on how working
conditions should continue to improve.

Would you have told the men starting the UAW that they should stop because
their grandparents had to work longer hours and that they have no right to
complain? Thats idiotic, its fallacious, and its not even an opposing
argument, its an attempt to stop a conversation.

------
d357r0y3r
If nine to five is barbaric, what does that make jobs requiring you to wake up
early and stay late? This guy seems to have a chip on his shoulder because of
some bad workplace experiences and now seems to think every job sucks.

Jobs with regular, stable work hours are not simply there by corporate decree.
People actually like having that predictability in their lives. It makes it a
lot easier to budget your time when you have that block of time carved out
where you're making money.

Now, this guy would say hey, you could work half the time if you quit your job
and started your own business. Well, that doesn't match up with the experience
of any of the business owners I know (they regularly work 12-16 hour days),
but even it was true...now I have to run and operate my own business. I can't
just show up and do good work and take home a paycheck. I have to deal with
insurance, I have to deal with payroll, or I have to pay someone to deal with
all of that. If the only benefit I get from that is saying, "but at least I
don't have a boss," it's not even close to worth it.

------
filereaper
Rather than going down the barbaric tone. When it comes to 9-5 jobs, I keep
going back to city infrastructures.

Where I live in Toronto, all the highways and subways get clogged as everyone
needs to make it to the office for 9-5. Everyone then complains about poor
infrastructure, but then all cities keep building for a short burst peak
traffic. Infrastructure is overbuilt for other times.

I can understand a lot of it is due to having kids (schools let out around
4pm) so everyone tries to streamline dropping kids off and picking them up
from work.

I really wish everyone can try for a staggered approach to deal with
congestion. I don't have a hard sync like picking up kids or anything like
that yet so I avoid the normal envelopes around 9-5.

Many initiatives like Smart Cities are being rolled out but yea... I'm not a
huge fan of the common 9-5 pattern.

~~~
test1235
Another complaint I have about 9-5 is I can't find time to do certain things
because everyone all works the same hours. Certain services such as doctors
appointments are only available while I'm working, or if I need contractor
services at home, again, only available while I'm working. Luckily I work in a
city centre so I can do some things in my lunch hour, but if you happened to
work out of town (e.g. business park), or if the thing you need to do takes
longer than an hour you're shit out of luck.

~~~
jhoechtl
In former times it was perceived to be ok to see your doctor during the
'regular' office hours. Go figure

~~~
majewsky
It isn't? I do that regularly here in Germany (although of course I coordinate
my appointments to not conflict with important meetings etc.).

------
nasalgoat
At first blush, I was aghast at the idea of no weekends. Then I realized I am
essentially on-call 24/7, even on vacations, as I'm the primary infrastructure
person at my company. Yet, because it's well designed and managed, I do tend
to have that free time.

The problem becomes when you don't have that free time because of constant
work issues. I can't say a future without 100% free time is such a great
place.

------
eli_gottlieb
Look, we all know there are much harder jobs than a 9-5 office job. However, I
think an interesting question is:

How _necessary_ is the job? How much does the job satisfy human needs, or
contribute to human well-being? If it simply doesn't, if its _only_ function
is institutional, why _should_ we consider it anything less than barbaric, or
even perverse? Institutions such as businesses exist to serve people, after
all, and doing things the other way around has been at the heart of some of
the 20th century's major atrocities.

[http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/)

>Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative
responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible
vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk
of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good
at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then
discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish.
Neither does the task really need to be done – at least, there’s only a very
limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so
obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be
spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the
fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there’s endless piles of
useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it’s all that
anyone really does.

~~~
RUG3Y
If my job, and even the entire company I work at, disappeared today, not a
single soul would notice. Or they might casually notice, but their life would
not be affected in any meaningful way.

The work is soul destroying, I'd love to be doing something better.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Yep. There's immense dignity in doing something that society really needs
done, even when it's hard work. There's also immense degradation in working
hard when you secretly know society doesn't need you, and you're just doing it
so someone you think is delusional will pay you.

------
taude
First, I was a big Douglas Coupland fan when I was young. Especially because I
was working at Microsoft shortly after Microserfs came out, and his writing
resonated with my then 24-year-old male brain.

However, I just don't think his idea will ever scale to the general populace,
though. He says, "people with internet brains are capable of doing huge
amounts of work, quickly and from anywhere. " Yeah, probably a few. I think
his opinion might be biased because he's an artist who has commercial success
(he's essentially made it as a business owner/entrepreneur, which we know not
everyone is capable of).

Anecdotal evidence: I'm currently working in an office where there's no way
people around here could function without the same daily routine, without
micro-management, without hard deadlines, etc. Yet, the company still manages
to exist and be profitable.

He does make some other good points, if you can look past the
flamboyant/hyperbolic sound bites: * “Always have an actual skill as a back-
up, that’s very good advice.” * More part-time jobs/partial employment

------
tabeth
I personally disagree with premise (though a few points I must agree with), I
think the real problem is the lack of satisfaction in general. Because some
capitalistic societies are obessed with growth, we've created problems for
ourselves that are not only pointless, but exist in part, to employ drones of
people, who due to their own life circumstances, cannot say "no."

Once all jobs serve a visible, real purpose and those working said jobs can
feel the satisfaction of being a part of the "cause", this problem will
continue. 9-5 or not.

One example of this may be flipping burgers at McDonalds, versus stocking
planes that ship food rations to war-torn nations. Funny how similar the jobs
are, yet the purpose differs.

~~~
pc86
In my area McDonald's is a pretty large employer of physically disabled
people. Not a single one of them has the dexterity or strength to load a
plane. Coincidentally I know some people who work at my local airport and they
don't have any idea what they're loading or unloading or where it's going to
unless they happen to speak to the pilot.

Employment does not exist to fulfill your personal sense of self worth. You're
providing a service to someone who is paying for it. In fact, most of those
jobs that _do_ fulfill your personal sense of self worth often pay less due in
part to that.

~~~
jhoechtl
Get money out of the equation and everything changes dramatically!

~~~
pc86
If only everything was free and nobody had to work for anything.

------
innocentoldguy
Perhaps the word "barbaric" is a bit much, but there is certainly an element
of truth to what he's saying about the office being obsolete; at least in some
professions.

For example, I am a software engineer, and there is literally no reason
whatsoever for me to go into an office everyday. None. I am more productive
when I'm remote, and working where, how, and when works best for me. I also
have no emotional need for social camaraderie in the workplace, which some
people do. My family meets my emotional needs, so I don't need social
constructs foisted upon me by my employer. Being social for the sake of being
social drains the life out of me and makes me less productive. I've worked in
offices and I've worked remotely for almost 30 years, and remote work, at
least for me, has proven time and again to work best.

While "barbaric" may be a hyperbolic choice of words, when describing the
9-to-5 grind, I do have to say that the reasons typically given for forcing
engineers to work in a modern, open-office environments (e.g. "We need to
collaborate") are shallow at best. These environments have been proven to
cause more problems than they solve, so in this case, I'll have to side with
Coupland, in spite of his embellishments. The collaboration excuse is
especially annoying when we still use Slack to communicate, even when we are
sitting two feet from each other.

------
gdulli
He's been a successful author for over 25 years. I wonder if he really has
much experience in a 9-5 career. When he was in that career, was he unhappy
because it's an objectively bad experience? Or had he not found good jobs? Or
was he never committed to that career because he dreamed of being a writer?

I enjoy my 9-5 career. I realize I'm lucky because I have a better experience
than most, but I'm not singularly lucky or gifted to be in my position. I
don't think I'm one of the few who doesn't consider it "barbaric."

I don't think it's necessarily universal to place a high value on "freeform
scheduling" like he says and having structure to the day does have benefits.

> "Most people who work in tech – 99% – don’t want to look at the implications
> of what they are doing"

My work boils down to the difference between someone seeing one ad vs.
another. I need money to live and this is what I'm good at. I don't pretend
I'm making the world a better place but it's equally overdramatic to say the
implications make the world worse. For better or worse or society is about the
freedom to sell things and all the propserity and inequality that comes along
with that. For all their flaws, a shift away from those fundamentals would
take generations and people don't agree what they should be replaced with and
there's no guarantee the replacement would be better.

------
mynegation
This piece reeks of entitlement. If you love programming or speaking at
conferences, sure you don't mind meshing it all together or follow necessary
irregular schedule. But there are many people who just want to sell their
labour and skills for money and go to their favorite hobbies - whatever they
are - without money attached to them, be that woodworking or playing with your
dog. Free scheduling should be an option, many people would like that, but
calling the other option "barbaric" is tone deaf

------
didibus
I totally understand the people who think barbaric is too strong a term, but
I'm not sure why they believe physical labor is such a terrible job. I've had
physically harsh jobs before, construction, military, and they could also be 9
to 5, or sometimes they were more seasonal, it wasn't any worse. It was better
in some ways, since the physicality of them made me stronger and probably had
good mental effects on me. It was great to actually be out during the sunny
hours of the day.

The 3rd world countries have it worse argument is a fallacy, the existence of
a worse condition does not negate the negatives of another and we should be
smart enough to address issues with both and improve issues with both
simultaneously.

Having said that, I'm not sure the structure he describes sounds any better to
me. At this point, I just wonder why work is still at the center of our lives.
It seems possible to me with today's technology to organize a society in a way
where we finally redistribute back the gains of automation and optimisation
made in the last 200 years. I would love a society where you're free to work
as little or as much as you want. Or where everyone is a part time worker. You
can get two jobs if you want to work more. I don't have the answer to how it
would all work, but I'd love to see a discourse about the possibility.

------
Bartweiss
> Most people who work in tech – 99% – don’t want to look at the implications
> of what they are doing. They just want to hit their milestones and that’s
> it.

That's a hell of a strange line.

As far as I can see, people in tech spend way more time looking at the
implications of tech work than anyone else does. (Except, perhaps, people like
Coupland who are make their money from doing so.) Tech workers are responsible
for much of the endless conversation on web privacy and AI risk and automation
and gamification and all the rest. Which is how it should be, presumably - I
assume architects spend more time looking at the implications of building
design than the rest of us.

The best justification I can see is that he's just restricting a general,
Stugeon's Law observation (90% of everyone don't look at implications) to one
specific field.

There ought to be a name for making a true observation, but singling out one
instance of it for no particular reason. It happens damned often.

------
return0
I 'm sure there are plenty of people in HN who don't work 9-5 or work
independently. It's an upgrade; for me its a kind of upgrade that one does not
want to reverse (like moving from a small town to a city). 'Barbaric' is
obviously hyperbole, but quitting the 9-5 lifestyle is a change promised by
technology that hasn't yet been realized. Sectors like IT could have pioneered
this shift, but for some reasons it did not happen (much like most IT workers
do not work remotely, even if it's technically possible). I do think that work
schedules deeply affect the structure of cities, and it would be nice to see
some alternative arrangements, even as an experiment.

------
xherberta
Highlights:

 _while most people like the notion of free time, actually having to deal with
it is horrible. It’s a deal with the devil. At least when they’re employed
they don’t have to deal with the freefall; the nothingness of free time._
(Sounds Heiddegerian - the dread that comes with freedom)

 _...This constant influx of news and data means we’ve come to perceive time
differently. The future used to be a far-off thing, but now we experience it
at the same time as the present, he contends..._

Obvious: _“The winners in this labour force will be the people who have an
actual skill,” he says. “Always have an actual skill as a back-up, that’s very
good advice.”_

------
majewsky
> Always have an actual skill as a back-up, that’s very good advice.

This advice from Coupland is the best part of the article, because it uncovers
the intended audience: telephone sanitizers. [1]

> Most people who work in tech – 99% – don’t want to look at the implications
> of what they are doing. They just want to hit their milestones and that’s
> it.

This statement actually works for about every profession.

[1] If you don't get the reference:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golgafrincham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golgafrincham)

------
noir_lord
Interesting read.

I was born 1980 so I straddle the web when it hit mass market adoption.

The differences are indeed marked, my father did the same job for 20 years, I
can't imagine that now.

------
mstade
This article was a difficult read for me due to all the hand waving and "in
the future so and so will happen." That said, I have a lot of respect for Mr.
Coupland. Microserfs is still one of the best books I've ever read, and really
hits home in so many ways.

------
jhoechtl
What would be his answer when I tell him that a nine-to-five hour job would
mean more free-time and vonsiderably less stress to me while being at least as
productive as now, constantly sheduling things for latency instead of
throughput?

------
chasing
Different strokes for different folks. I imagine some people enjoy the
structure. Other people don't. That's why some people enjoy life in the office
while others enjoy writing objectively crappy novels like "JPod."

------
pavement
Not that I'm one to disagree, because day jobs are fucking bullshit, but...

I worry that as advanced technology continues to unfurl evermore convenience
into our lives, how spoiled will we become?

~~~
sidlls
It's interesting that you choose to use the word "spoiled" here. It is a
testament to how firmly entrenched the class system is.

~~~
pavement
I'm not sure we understand each other.

If there comes a moment when no single individual knows how to perform
essential tasks, because automated sytems have been doing such tasks for us,
and then those systems stop working, we'll notice serious problems emerging
unexpectedly.

------
Avshalom
Of course it's actually 7-6 with the commute and lunch

~~~
pc86
My lunch is included in my day but I know that's an extremely rare situation.
The 4-mile, 10-minute drive is pretty nice too.

But serious question: do you think your employer should pay you to commute?

~~~
Bartweiss
> But serious question: do you think your employer should pay you to commute?

In a practical sense, most employers should or do. Not for your personal
choice of commute, that's on you, but an employer in downtown LA or rural
Nebraska does end up having to compensate people for living somewhere so hard
to get to.

~~~
majewsky
When I talked to my brother (a civil engineer who's doing his fair share of
driving to remote working locations all across Germany and beyond) about the
prospect of autonomous cars, he said that he wouldn't want to have one of
these as a company car, for the same reason he wouldn't want to go by train:
Under German law, when you're driving the car yourself, it counts as work
time. When you're being driven by the car (or when you're going by train), it
counts as free time. So if the location was 5 hours away, he would lose 10
paid work hours if the car was driving him instead of the other way around.

