JA Westenberg

Modern Work Fucking Sucks.

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/modern-work-fucking-sucks/

Modern Work Fucking Sucks.

It’s Monday morning. The first thing you see (yes, before you see your kids, your partner, even your coffee) is a Slack notification. That Slack notification leads you to a Confluence document, which is supposed to prepare you for the upcoming Zoom meeting. In the Zoom meeting, you’re

westenberg.
Dec 11, 2024 at 10:13amMicro.blog
Show threadmirabilosDec 11, 2024

@Daojoan this!

Real work — the kind of work that builds things, solves problems, or pushes ideas forward — needs, craves, demands focus. It requires uninterrupted stretches of time to think deeply, experiment, and iterate

Show threadraijinDec 11, 2024
@Daojoan Making charcoal used to be a career. A person would gather a bunch of wood, set fire to it, eat lunch, have a cigarette, smother the fire, then fuck off for the rest of the day. The next day was shoveling, breaking, sorting by size. The next days, they sold it and made enough to secure food and shelter. Today, we ask, "where is the glory in that?" We call it drudgery. Your article describes the shitty "modern" drudgery and the lack of tangible outcomes: not even a burnt chunk of wood.
Show threadScott FDec 11, 2024

@Daojoan I agree.

Although I am a Jira Admin (sorry) and it’s something that can be done well…or not (usually more a case of business asking for the wrong things).

I view any claims “easily integrates with…” with huge skepticism in any system.

While I can see systems either specialise (good for some people) or try and do everything (“good enough” but users always think it’s designed for a different type of user), I can see how this “shattering of systems occurs”. You move away from a “good enough” all-encompassing system and then discover all the different ways your users were using the system you thought you knew - and how the replacements don’t do that.

…then eventually someone doesn’t want to pay all those bills and they try and standardise again (sigh).

Show threadVissDec 11, 2024
@Daojoan
Show threadMichael MatuteDec 12, 2024
@Daojoan I hope this was just storytelling for effect and not some person's (yours?) reality. Yes every system you named is good not great but there's no sane reason any one company should be trying to use all those at once.