Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
These are posts on the corporate world from the blog Base and Superstructure. The corporate world is complex. It’s confusing to anyone not involved. Corporate life has its own characteristic forms, language, jargon, and mannerisms. Neoliberalism structures our politics and thought, and so this is also a major focus of these posts. The non-profit corporate sector is its own distinct mini-world. And, in particular, spending significant time involved in corporate life engenders a special form of ennui. All of these subtopics feed off of one another. Each is critical to thinking about corporate life and its role in the United States.
For anyone not (yet) in the know, the tech industry invented and popularized the business approach of Agile. It started in web consulting and then found its more permanent home in software development. Scrum is by far the most common way to implement Agile.
I’ll write a bit about what Agile and Scrum are. But I also want to hear about the experiences of readers.
As everyone in the corporate world knows – or should know – Human Resources (HR) departments at many places have serious problems. ‘Woke HR’ figures in as merely one among many. But it’s a new one, and maybe that’s enough. Large organizations probably need HR or something like it. And when done well, HR can do wonderful work. But actual HR in many places protects companies from external and internal criticism. And – like middle managers – it prevents communication between rank-and-file workers and executives. That’s the opposite of what a good HR department does.
However, even in a broader narrative of problems, Woke HR stands out as particularly annoying.
Senior executives claim they work a lot. How much? On average, they report working 62 hours per week. If we expand to studies including middle management, we come up with average work weeks up to a whopping 72 hours. Talk about work!
Well, yes. As we’ll see, that’s the idea. Are senior executives and other managers some new proletariat, as they want us to believe? Do they toil away at work all day like real life hero-leaders from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged? Would the world fall apart if they quit doing what they do – if the people working under them took over their roles?
Not exactly.
Editors dedicated a recent issue of Science, Technology, and Human Values to the topic of ‘ghost variables.’ Articles focused on this topic through the lens of race. The brief idea is that certain features don’t appear directly within the scientific data. However, they ‘haunt’ the data, existing as invisible traces. I think we can put this idea to good use.
Let’s look at a topic I wrote about awhile back: standardized testing. Could there be ghost variables at work? Standard disclaimer: as some of you know, I work in the testing industry. My opinion – as always – is my own and only my own.
In his new (first!) book – The Cult of Smart – Freddie deBoer argues that neoliberalism created around itself a myth of meritocratic success. He calls it…well…the cult of smart.
Let’s take a look at what Freddie has to say. The Cult of Smart gives us plenty to chew on.
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