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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @02:01PM (5 children)
A 9 to 5 job will not give you an 80 hour week. I don't care how you slice it.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 07 2017, @02:23PM
Shitty employers will and they will exploit as much as they can. Ie if they can't they won't.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday April 07 2017, @03:50PM (1 child)
That was my comment, not the author's. I have never worked for a company that didn't go on and on about work-life-balance and 10-6pm schedule, but in reality expected you to be on call 24/7. Even the Clinton Foundation; That fucker Doug Band, Bill Clinton's butt-boy, sent me text messages asking for digital trivia at midnight while I was dealing with a recently born infant.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @08:08AM
Chill brah, he asks everyone for that. Just send him a link to xhamster next time.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday April 08 2017, @02:08AM
A 9 to 5 job will not give you an 80 hour week. I don't care how you slice it.
It's easy. You get paid for working 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. You get to keep your job by working 7 to 7 Monday to Friday and 8 to 6 Saturday and Sunday.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1) by sonamchauhan on Saturday April 08 2017, @11:57AM
Problem is, some employers expect you to work full time 9-5, then work part time 5-9.
Mine doesn't; not with me, not yet. But that's the way the wind is blowing for plenty of people. Unless you push back -- tell 'em work's not free; that you intend clawing back time spent outside hours. (Yes, use those phrases - they're intentionally colourful without being impolite).
Just don't expect to rise; not fast, not at all. Make your peace, make your plans, sharpen your tools, diversify your income; make life anti-fragile [wikipedia.org].