fawny.org: Tissue of lies

You are here: fawny.org > Tissue of lies

Updated: 2000.12.24

Tissue of lies

Jobs – and employment practices – in the New Economy stink

Each year, when Christmas rolls around, one’s mind turns to the big lies of the New Economy, like:

  • We’re facing a huge labour shortage!
  • New Economy employers offer state-of-the-art, ergonomic, healthful, progressive working conditions!
  • The New Economy hires on merit!

What’s the reality?

  • We’re facing a shortage of very young workers, preferably immigrants from China or India, willing to work 70-hour weeks for peanuts. Also, employers’ job advertisements are laughably unrealistic, compounding error after error: They don’t know what they’re looking for, and they stubbornly stick to the exact letter of the requirements, preferring to leave a job unfilled (“We’re facing a huge labour shortage!”) rather than rewrite the spec to reflect what the work really needs.
  • Only the richest New Economy workplaces provide the sexy Æron chairs and free massages for which the biz is notorious. In nearly all other cases, we’re talking el-cheapo Windows clones, cubicles, fluorescent lighting, and, in one case I’m personally familiar with, mouldy ceiling tiles.
  • The New Economy hires the popular kids its managers never actually were in high school: You get in if you’re “our type of people.”

Yeah? So?

I’m building up a small inventory of articles documenting the tissue of lies of employment in the New Economy. You’re free to disagree. But generally the people who disagree have ideal jobs in dream offices. And, I mean, you people can fuck right off.

  1. Stood up by Microsoft
  2. Does the New Economy require a benevolent society? How many drug overdoses will it take before we all agree?
  3. Jo(k)e-Jobs: Laughably unrealistic and overdone Internet job advertisements