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Coupland is talking backstage at Konica Minolta's Spotlight Live event on the future of work in Berlin this week where he was a star speaker. He says the collapse of the idea of a job for life means his generation, Generation X, and later ones think very differently about work than those born earlier. "They don't perceive [a job] as being a guarantee of long-term security – that's the profound difference, he says. "There was a point when the idea of the job for life disintegrated. Now no one has any expectation of lifetime employment."
Work as we know it is coming to an end, he told the audience in Berlin, as cloud-based technologies and ever-faster download speeds are making the office obsolete. Our working days are becoming interspersed with leisure and home activities. We will need to learn to adapt to a freeform schedule, which will present a psychological challenge to those who crave structure. But Coupland believes we should not mourn the loss of the traditional office routine.
"The nine to five is barbaric. I really believe that. I think one day we will look back at nine-to-five employment in a similar way to how we see child labour in the 19th century," he says. "The future will not have the nine till five. Instead, the whole day will be interspersed with other parts of your life. Scheduling will become freeform."
Nine-to-five sounds great to people whose employers expect them to work 80-hour weeks...
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 07 2017, @01:35PM (2 children)
You're not a masochist, you just have Stability weighted heavily as one of your criteria for what qualifies as a Good Job. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It simply is what you want.
Me, I did the whole self-employed thing during my twenties and thirties. It was a damned fine gig if you didn't mind playing free time by ear and having to seriously hustle to keep food on the table at times. In my forties I prefer something where the bounds of my effort are firmly defined; even at the expense of lower pay, less authority, idiot/asshole bosses, and limited potential for advancement.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @05:29PM (1 child)
What kind of self-employment did you do? Hourly jobs or weeks-long gigs? I'm curious because I'm in a regular job and thinking of going the self-employment route. Would you say the stability of being employed is better than the freedom of self employment?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 07 2017, @10:40PM
Contracted out as a systems/network admin to SMBs and schools primarily. Depended entirely on the job as to how much work was involved; sometimes it was a month of no days off and sometimes it was a half hour of hand holding over the phone. Quite often it was feast or famine, so you'd better be good at saving your money and budgeting. Also, until you get well established (several years) business will not come knocking at your door, you'll have to go to it; be good at selling yourself or don't go this route.
If you're young to middle-aged, can do it, and it sounds like something you'd enjoy, I highly recommend it. If your idea of a good day at work is not either attempting to hustle up some business or working your butt off, it's probably not for you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.