I would be interested to know how many business have told employees that if they want to work at home on their own machines and not use the premises and IT the business has already paid for, then they can resign their waged/salaried position and become a contractor charging fee for service? Have many employees chosen this route? I imagine this would depend a lot on the nature of the work.
Computers are universal tools. Much work relies not on the skill of using a computer but output driven by knowledge, literacy, numeracy and creativity using rudimentary word processors, spreadsheets and communication software. Information and data manipulation processing are the next level up where the quality of work does require skills at least with, say, writing, database queries.
There is also the issue of who owns the toll if the tool is software and who owns the output. This is more complex than it was in Marx's day.
Bloody good point (although as a pro-Taylorism mostly-Marxist I could quibble .... )
I am wondering if a lot of workers use the laptop-independence (tools) to best advantage especially because it frees up family time / income. Here in Wollongong (e.g.) people often travel two or more hours to work in Sydney.
WFH there's four plus hours, thirty dollars (petrol) and toll fees of $15-20 a day to spend on / with family.* At a time of high interest rates and appalling skyrocketing rent costs, such 'independence' is valuable, eh?
* = Yes, yes there's public transport for some but those running NSW trains etc hate trains and public transport so the services are limited (and trains are packed).
I had a Microsoft Teams meeting with two colleagues on Monday to decide how we were going to mark the essays that were due that day, and we all remarked on how pleasant it was to be able to do this without having to do (in my case) a 90 minute round trip from home in Brisbane's inner southern suburbs to the campus in Brisbane's middle circle of south-eastern suburbs.
On days when I work at the Gold Coast campus of my employer, I take my laptop with me and use the travel time on the train for tutorial preparation. However the trip home is usually spent less productively.
I strongly suspect that AI is a threat here. Bosses were previously leaning on the threat 'if your job can be done remotely, it can be done remotely from India". I think even if you're relatively pessimistic about AI, it's plausible that a large slice of work from home jobs will be do-able by AI. Even if there remains a quarter of each job that can't be done that way, one can employ a single, very skilled human instead of four skilled humans. Even if there is a quality reduction, the insanely low costs (1 million words for a dollar! Essentially zero compared to wages), make it attractive. Hence the possible new threat "if your job can be done from home, it can be done by AI".
Also worth noting that the way AI is developing, it is an inherently centralised technology. Even as it becomes possible to run powerful models on personal computers, it remains the case that there will always be better models that can only run on supercomputers, and for a lot of types of work, it is desirable to have the edge. This threatens the creation of a small number of players with monopolies of scale, and their fingers in each and every industry.
A fun machine to think about. Do you need an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine with an 8nm imprint resolution? Perhaps there isn't room for one in your garage, as it's the size of a double-decker bus, but 20 manufacturers of semiconductor chips have ordered one. Precisely one company in the world makes them, ASML in the Netherlands. The advertised price is $380 million. Not a misprint. https://www.techpowerup.com/319071/asml-high-na-euv-twinscan-exe-machines-cost-usd-380-million-10-20-units-already-booked
What is the relationship of this machine to the very highly qualified engineers who will be the only humans allowed near it? Surely not slaves, any more than a fighter pilot is a slave to their plane. It looks more like a supertool,
An anecdote in support of Karl and John. As a young man, the great Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping moved to France in 1921. He worked as a fitter in a large plant of the armaments and heavy industry firm Schneider. IIRC he was the only Communist leader to have spent time on the shopfloor of a cutting-edge capitalist enterprise; Ho Chi Minh’s experience washing dishes in Paris restaurants would have taught him plenty about exploitation, but nothing about capitalists mobilising resources to make big and complex stuff that really works. A fitter is a skilled craftsman who fixes complex machines using simple tools. Deng was so good at it that when he was purged in the Cultural Revolution after decades of piloting a desk as a high Party functionary, and exiled to a rural backwater, he was able to earn a decent living as a fitter again.
Many IT workers are like fitters: they tend to complex machines using tools, not micrometers and lathes but spreadsheets, code debuggers and the like. Much future work will look like this.
How will AI change this balance? If workers have their own AI app they may become more productive and demand higher wages. The AI app is then a working tool. But if the firm provides standardised Ai platforms. the workers may be paid less as more administrative work is done by using AI software. This is already happening in publishing firms.
Again the ownership of the AI technology will determine the impact of its usage on workers’ remuneration.
Agreed. AI tools are cheap enough for individuals so the control issue is in favour of workers. But the question of whether they are skill-enhancing or skill-replacing remains open.
I would be interested to know how many business have told employees that if they want to work at home on their own machines and not use the premises and IT the business has already paid for, then they can resign their waged/salaried position and become a contractor charging fee for service? Have many employees chosen this route? I imagine this would depend a lot on the nature of the work.
Computers are universal tools. Much work relies not on the skill of using a computer but output driven by knowledge, literacy, numeracy and creativity using rudimentary word processors, spreadsheets and communication software. Information and data manipulation processing are the next level up where the quality of work does require skills at least with, say, writing, database queries.
There is also the issue of who owns the toll if the tool is software and who owns the output. This is more complex than it was in Marx's day.
Bloody good point (although as a pro-Taylorism mostly-Marxist I could quibble .... )
I am wondering if a lot of workers use the laptop-independence (tools) to best advantage especially because it frees up family time / income. Here in Wollongong (e.g.) people often travel two or more hours to work in Sydney.
WFH there's four plus hours, thirty dollars (petrol) and toll fees of $15-20 a day to spend on / with family.* At a time of high interest rates and appalling skyrocketing rent costs, such 'independence' is valuable, eh?
* = Yes, yes there's public transport for some but those running NSW trains etc hate trains and public transport so the services are limited (and trains are packed).
I had a Microsoft Teams meeting with two colleagues on Monday to decide how we were going to mark the essays that were due that day, and we all remarked on how pleasant it was to be able to do this without having to do (in my case) a 90 minute round trip from home in Brisbane's inner southern suburbs to the campus in Brisbane's middle circle of south-eastern suburbs.
On days when I work at the Gold Coast campus of my employer, I take my laptop with me and use the travel time on the train for tutorial preparation. However the trip home is usually spent less productively.
I strongly suspect that AI is a threat here. Bosses were previously leaning on the threat 'if your job can be done remotely, it can be done remotely from India". I think even if you're relatively pessimistic about AI, it's plausible that a large slice of work from home jobs will be do-able by AI. Even if there remains a quarter of each job that can't be done that way, one can employ a single, very skilled human instead of four skilled humans. Even if there is a quality reduction, the insanely low costs (1 million words for a dollar! Essentially zero compared to wages), make it attractive. Hence the possible new threat "if your job can be done from home, it can be done by AI".
Also worth noting that the way AI is developing, it is an inherently centralised technology. Even as it becomes possible to run powerful models on personal computers, it remains the case that there will always be better models that can only run on supercomputers, and for a lot of types of work, it is desirable to have the edge. This threatens the creation of a small number of players with monopolies of scale, and their fingers in each and every industry.
I hope that workers act fast.
A fun machine to think about. Do you need an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine with an 8nm imprint resolution? Perhaps there isn't room for one in your garage, as it's the size of a double-decker bus, but 20 manufacturers of semiconductor chips have ordered one. Precisely one company in the world makes them, ASML in the Netherlands. The advertised price is $380 million. Not a misprint. https://www.techpowerup.com/319071/asml-high-na-euv-twinscan-exe-machines-cost-usd-380-million-10-20-units-already-booked
What is the relationship of this machine to the very highly qualified engineers who will be the only humans allowed near it? Surely not slaves, any more than a fighter pilot is a slave to their plane. It looks more like a supertool,
A more outré interpretation would be that of an acolyte to deity or avatar. Try Kipling's McAndrew's Hymn: https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/content/mcandrews-hymn
"From coupler-flange to spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God--
Predestination in the stride o' yon connectin'-rod.
John Calvin might ha' forged the same -enorrmous, certain, slow -
Ay, wrought it in the furnace-flame : my "Institutio." "
An anecdote in support of Karl and John. As a young man, the great Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping moved to France in 1921. He worked as a fitter in a large plant of the armaments and heavy industry firm Schneider. IIRC he was the only Communist leader to have spent time on the shopfloor of a cutting-edge capitalist enterprise; Ho Chi Minh’s experience washing dishes in Paris restaurants would have taught him plenty about exploitation, but nothing about capitalists mobilising resources to make big and complex stuff that really works. A fitter is a skilled craftsman who fixes complex machines using simple tools. Deng was so good at it that when he was purged in the Cultural Revolution after decades of piloting a desk as a high Party functionary, and exiled to a rural backwater, he was able to earn a decent living as a fitter again.
Many IT workers are like fitters: they tend to complex machines using tools, not micrometers and lathes but spreadsheets, code debuggers and the like. Much future work will look like this.
Let's add GenAI to this cocktail as it gets murkier
How will AI change this balance? If workers have their own AI app they may become more productive and demand higher wages. The AI app is then a working tool. But if the firm provides standardised Ai platforms. the workers may be paid less as more administrative work is done by using AI software. This is already happening in publishing firms.
Again the ownership of the AI technology will determine the impact of its usage on workers’ remuneration.
Agreed. AI tools are cheap enough for individuals so the control issue is in favour of workers. But the question of whether they are skill-enhancing or skill-replacing remains open.