Topic: The man-hour is the destroyer of souls
Discuss!
In my world, it’s other way around…
The Hour of Man is the Destroyer of Souls. 
my shirt of smiting +20 is the destroyer of souls
Bureaucrat be damned!
we saw you
slacking off
you’d better shape up
or fuck off
you can’t make a living
at living
what do you think this is
a free country?
you’d best do the math
your time is our liability
your sanity costs us money
we don’t care if it improves your quality
we want massive bulk quantity
you should be a one man factory
you should maximize units
and minimize man-hours
minimize your happiness
and maximize our gains
if we don’t see scars, bruises and tears
it’s quite obvious that you haven’t worked hard enough
your personal life would be our private property if we had the means
but regulations keep getting in the way
a free market would fix that fast
until then we’ll stick to sheer intimidation
at any rate, it seems we miscalculated
you don’t fit our impossible mold
security will now escort you to the gutter
we’re still looking for a better model
and when we find him
we’ll send you the bill
wow BYTE!
This is almost literally what I scream at my Renoise screen often
You yell at Renoise as if it were a sentient employee that you really don’t like? O.o
And then I say:
…sorry Renoise 
It’s not you, it’s me 
Souls don’t exist therefore man-hours do not destroy them.
EDIT: by the above admission one may logically infer I am a man-hour. I am not a man-hour.
When I say soul, I’m not referring to a religious ghostly presence (anyone who knows me knows I’m agnostic)… I’m referring to a person’s essence… they’re livelihood… their creative drive… all that stuff.
So your statement is bluntly:
Working destroys your livelihood.
Depends on your job, cap’n. My man-hours boost my creative drive.
Besides, lesson one: YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB. If you let your job
destroy your personal essence, there’s none to blame but yourself.
And don’t we work so we can afford to live? Sounds like your statement
is the other way around: live to work. Also a personal responsibility.
I disagree. Man-hours don’t destroy souls. Before this topic I didn’t
even know man-hours existed. I strongly believe it’s a matter of
perspective and attitude. You let yourself become a wage-slave, it’s
not like you were dragged from your village to work in some random
office building.
To put this all into perspective, I was recently wrist-slapped for not being productive because I was seen (once) browsing the web. This got me thinking heavily about the “thought police” and the expectations of most employers. I wish I as lucky enough to be able to work at what I love to do all day, but that just wouldn’t make me enough money to live. At least not in this town.
Lucky you, BYTE, you’ve just discovered (probably yet another in a long series of examples proving) that your wrist-slapping boss is a bit of a wanker.
If you are fortunate enough to have the discretion, and have been considering it already, change job to something you actually like. You’ll go high places if you’re working for the right people (which often comes with the territory of selecting a job you like; your domain probably attracts people just like you). And if you have a passion for the work.
It’s ridiculously hard to find an intelligent worker who cares enough to fully apply himself. Obviously, you would be ridiculously valuable if you fit the bill.
(Then of course, there are the Aspergers’ crowd, who are fucking good workers, but have terrible social skills…)
Turns out btw, that a study has recently found that slacking off actually increases productivity.
within a reasonable limit of less than 20 per cent of their total time in the office 
No shite… the only time I spend more than that is when I’m stumped on a problem and I need to let my subconscious sit back and crunch ideas.
you let your subconcious sit back for nearly 2hours? 
or do you have really short working hours
I’m a programmer… sometimes the problems are significantly complex that it takes a while for my brain to automagically come up with a sollution.
Consider this… what’s more important:
- The work you do
- The environment of the work you do
I’d choose 2 over 1 any freaking day. I work at a publisher, I make schoolbooks.
It’s the most challanging work, it’s not the most creative work. But the environment
is awesome, we have a lot of fun, my co-workers are almost as insane as I am, which
makes days fly by, despite the work not being something I’d ever imagine myself doing.
I know I’m lucky I found this job, but it made me realise that, no matter what work you
do, be it secret agent, rockstar or astronaut, if the place you’r working at isn’t conform
your identity, you will either change it or lose it. I’d say: move on! I’d rather be a fulltime
poop-scooper than president of a tropical island, if the environment I work at doesn’t
somehow connect with who I am.