Re:Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'
by Terretta on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @11:46AM
(#22119132)
Serfdom is a better metaphor. Microserfs was published in 1994:
“The plot of the novel has two distinct movements: the events at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and the move to Silicon Valley and the "Oop!" project.”
”The novel begins in Redmond as the characters are working on different projects at Microsoft's main campus. Life at the campus feels like a feudalistic society, with Bill Gates as the lord, and the employees the serfs. The majority of the main characters...are living together in a "geek house", and their lives are dedicated to their projects and the company. Daniel's foundations are shaken when his father, a longtime employee of IBM, is laid off. The lifespan of a Microsoft coder weighs heavily on Daniel's mind.”
”When Microserfs first came out, most people thought it was a tightly focused anthropological look at a tiny group of historically transient information workers in the American Pacific Northwest. It turns out they were forming a template of the way everyone else in the world works in and around information. As time went on it became a lot broader, instead of a lot narrower, which is what happened with Generation X.”
“The plot of the novel has two distinct movements: the events at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and the move to Silicon Valley and the "Oop!" project.”
”The novel begins in Redmond as the characters are working on different projects at Microsoft's main campus. Life at the campus feels like a feudalistic society, with Bill Gates as the lord, and the employees the serfs. The majority of the main characters...are living together in a "geek house", and their lives are dedicated to their projects and the company. Daniel's foundations are shaken when his father, a longtime employee of IBM, is laid off. The lifespan of a Microsoft coder weighs heavily on Daniel's mind.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs
Turns out the author was onto something:
”When Microserfs first came out, most people thought it was a tightly focused anthropological look at a tiny group of historically transient information workers in the American Pacific Northwest. It turns out they were forming a template of the way everyone else in the world works in and around information. As time went on it became a lot broader, instead of a lot narrower, which is what happened with Generation X.”
— Coupland, The Times, June 1998