Re:Updating classic workplace sabotage techniques
by parasubvert on Tuesday May 17, 2016 @04:08AM
(#11711980)
"It is a sweatshop because management is trying to impose a rigid pace of work and a surveillance scheme on employees."
Sorry, that's nonsense. Instead of "rigid" and "surveillance", I'd say "disciplined" and "actually managed". As opposed to "do whatever you'd like" and "unmanaged".
What's the difference of a disciplined culture and a rigid culture, or surveillance vs. actual management? I'd say it's whether the employees actually WANT and VALUE these things.
In my experience, everyone here WANTS a strong discipline of TDD, pairing, CI/CD, 8 hour work day, etc. And everyone WANTS a strong product manager and product owner that knows what's going on with the latest stories, bugs, and velocity. It makes for a better product, team, and morale.
It is a sweatshop because management is trying to impose a rigid pace of work and a surveillance scheme on employees.
The word "sweatshop" is traditionally (AFAIK, don't have access to OED right now to confirm) associated with garment cut-and-sew workshops, which are organized exactly like an open plan programming office: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sewing+factory&t=ffsb&iax=1&ia=ima...
The false dichotomy you present (you are either working exactly like we tell you to work when and how we tell you to work, or you must be slacking off) is exactly the kind of rationalizing used by sweatshop managers who are trying to break unions or deskill workers. I recommend reading David Noble's _Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation_ and Ellen Rose's _User Error: Resisting Computer Culture_ to learn more about how and why these efforts are used, why they are counterproductive, and to learn how to recognize when management is trying to apply them to your work as a computer programmer.