Picking up from part 1 and part 2
"Lab Rats: Why Modern Work Makes People Miserable" author Daniel Lyons claimed that there are four main elements to our misery at work.
- Low salaries
- Constant change
- Lack of job security
- The dehumanization
Before we talk about the second reason there is such misery at work which is constant changes. Let me ask you a weird question:
What makes a mouse depressed?
It sounds like a weird off topic question, but bare with me.
In order pharmaceutical companies would sell antidepressants to people they needed first to try them on mice first. But how could you make a mouse depressed in the first place? Mice are simple creatures, they don't ask for much. Some cheese and a wheel is all they require and it is all good. After many attempts to make a mouse depressed, scientists figured out a really easy and simple way to make a mouse depressed.
The Unpredictable Chronic Mild Stress Protocol
Or UCMS protocol for short. This protocol basically operates as follows, you take a mouse out of his cage into a new one. You then change his sleeping hours, make him listen to sounds of vultures making it nervous that they would come to eat it. Then do things like moving the cage around a little bit, change its eating time. All of these changes are simple changes that don't threaten its life or cause it any physical illness, however, these random and unpredictable simple changes affect mice's mentality.
Slowly, the mouse starts to stop cleaning itself, gain weight, stops making its bed, and stops running its wheel. The mouse starts feeling what is known as anhedonia or the inability to feel pleasure in normally pleasurable activities. Not only that UCMS protocol affects a mouse mentality, but also physicality as it leads to weaken its immune system and increase its Cortisol level, a chemical produced when under stress. Cortisol, when produced in high levels, could lead to deadly illnesses such as heart diseases and depression.
Constant changes
Modern work, when it keeps implementing changes, puts employees under a simple, unpredictable mild chronic stress that could lead employees into depression. Companies these days always talk about stuff like RESTRUCTURING, DOWNSIZING, and REORGANIZING. Simply put, there are people who WILL BE FIRED, CHANGE THEIR POSITIONS, and TAKE ON EXTRA WORK. Also add to that the constant trends seeking to make more money and reduce cost, because you might not have heard but
Cost reduction is the new sexy
Running a business is considered art, not smelling fart. All of that changed when Frederick Winslow Taylor, the godfather of management science, came to the scene. In an experiment he conducted in one of the steel factories. Taylor divided work into simple and specific steps while timing the workers as they do. His actions led to increase in production up to 4 times without adding a simple employee or buying a new machine.
Frederick came to fame when he published his book "Principles of Scientific Management" in 1911. The book became the top seller in management science in the first half of the century. Taylor was the right man at the right time, his writings came to province during the rise of big U.S corporations, ones which no one had the experience to run. Corporations like General Energy, Standard Oil, US Steel.
Also during that time universities started offering degrees for MBA, Mational Basketball Association, sorry, Master of Business Administration. Your golden ticket to success in the business world, however no one knew what to study so they started studying Frederick's book. Taylor was considered a man ahead of this time, so much so that his principles created the term Taylorism.
P.S
I should point out before we proceed that in 2009, in an article posted on the New Yorker, Jill Lepora claimed that many workers objected to Taylor's methods and got fired as a result. Also, when Taylor presented the factory with his bill for 2 years work of 100,000 dollars, around 2.5 millions in current money, so they also fired Taylor. Jill also claimed that Frederick has falsified his numbers so he would prove the success of his experiment. Frederick is a pretty known and respected man in the field, but I just wanted to highlight that there were disagreements to his findings.
A Crowded Stage
Enter Stage Right: Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker had a really famous book "The Practice of Management", if you study in the business field then you would have definitely at least heard his name mentioned couple of times. He had a famous quote "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it"
Enter Stage Left: Japan's Toyota Production System
Enter from backstage: Lean Manufacturing
Enter from the crowd: Just in time manufacturing
Enter from the ceiling: Six Sigma
So on and so forth. Every couple of years, a new person comes out with a new book that has a new theory in business. Business managers from all over the world would chase it to implement it. So many things are happening, just imagine this scene where someone is holding a notepad asking you questions like "Where is the stabler?" then puts down the time it took you to find it, or writes something in the notepad after telling you to move your computer wires.
Later on you would find that your salary got deducted because of this man, because after all companies want efficiency. All of these systems and theories were made in order to improve production. But in the 21st century the conversation also shift toward something else:
Improving a worker's knowledge skills.
Nowadays companies want you to know how to program, know different languages, have presentation skills, basically, you need to be a knowledge worker. This part was one that baffled software and programming companies in 1990s, as many projects that cost millions of dollars would fail because of the long time period it takes to set up. For example a bank could as ask a software company for a software of sort, the company would take two year, by the time they hand it over the bank already needs something newer.
The speed of technological, economical, and social changes have led to a need for a faster programming changes. In 2001, 17 veteran engineers gathered at a ski resort to find a solution to this problem. Three days later they released a statement with 12 principles written on one page that changed software development forever, calling it the "Manifesto for Agile Software Development". The goal of this manifesto was to keep up with big projects by dividing it into smaller steps and to hand in a valid code within weeks and not months or years like before.
Today, Agile became its own industry where thousands of people make a living. Agile has its own books and certificates, researches and coaches so you can implement it. The 12 principles that fit on one piece of paper developed to become its own Agile certification programs. Now we have Agile books, Agile coaches, featuring on fancy magazines, Harvard business review encourages company to apply the Agile principles.
If you would go on Amazon and search "Agile" you would find 4000 books all about agile. The manifesto made with the intention of simplifying software development became the manifesto that many companies use, regarding of their type. Now we have Agile lawyers, Agile marketeers, and Agile HR.
What is the problem then? Since it is a a good thing, why not have people follow it?
The problem
Well, that manifesto, which started as a means to simplify and reduce bureaucracy, became complicated and filled with bureaucracy. This is not according to me but rather according to Martin Fowler.
Who is that? You are probably just quoting your friend.
No, Fowler is one of the 17 engineers who created that manifesto. Fowler, when asked about the current Agile climate, said that 90% of it is bullshit.
Are you serious, Amir?
Not me, it is him who is saying. Fowler said that the process turned from a simple efficient system to develop software into a means to make a living created by those coaches and advertisers encouraging people to apply the manifesto. The manifesto is promoted as the magical solution for any problem.
Company owners and shareholders chase any solution that would make them the most money. In the end, companies chasing that prefer having less employees to do so in order for them to reduce cost as much as possible. Add this to the previous Taylorism, the different manufacturing systems, and the constant changes in pursuit of those systems and changes and you would get a headache as an employees.
All of that leads to pressure on employees caused by lack of job security if you can't keep up. Something I will touch on in the upcoming part.
In Summary
Much like mice or rats under the UCMS protocol, employees and workers have been suffering unpredictable chronic mild stress at work due to the constant changes implemented by companies seeking to reach more profits, more efficiency, more money, and less cost production. One day you could show up and discover the days off have moved to Tuesday and Wednesday, another day you find out there are less hours of work, the next more hours, one day there is less work overload, the next more work overload.
All of those factors are a danger to an employee's mentality and also probably the reason there are 304 suicides committed in 2018 in America alone, an 11 percent increase from the year before and the highest since the Bureau of Labor of Statistics started tracking those cases 26 years ago.