Work – Page 5 – Ephemerality

March 28, 2017

Irony

You know commercials–those annoying interruptions that beg for attention and cloud the world with digital noise? Yeah, I only watch Netflix now.

You know web ads–those annoying interruptions that beg for attention and cloud the world with digital noise? Yeah, I use ad-blockers now.

You know junk mail–those annoying interruptions that beg for attention and cloud the world with digital noise? Yeah, I filter all such emails to junk and delete them automatically.

Okay, I’m not opposed to their concept, more so their execution. Commercials have gone to extremes to be loud and annoying, to vie for an emotional reaction rather than provide any product information, not to mention their increasing time slot allocations have broken shows up to the point of being unwatchable. Web ads are laden with 3rd party scripts, which pose security risks, and creepily track you. Junk mail just fills up my inbox.

Now my wife, who seems far more willing to accept advertisements as part of the way media works (probably a healthier attitude), has no problem with enduring commercials, letting ads track her, and deleting hundreds of emails a day. But she does have that uncanny ability to multitask tirelessly until blood leaks out of her eyes–an amazing difference in how our brains differ for sure, and something I’ll never understand. While apparently sitting idle, her thread count resembles that of a malware infection–all those oddly-named daemons no one quite understands. And boy does she have a lot of daemons …

Heh, Linux joke. Did I beat that one to death? Good.

Moving on from my rambling, if you weren’t already aware, I work in Marketing now. Specifically I manage…wait for it…sending automated EMAILS!

No no, I don’t send spam. I send carefully crafted messages, coordinated between us as the bank and the merchants as our clients. There’s also a lot of legal checks in place that determine who can receive emails, as well as various ways to opt-out of the communications altogether. And besides, as is in the case of my wife, some people appreciate the emails and the offers they contain.

But, me being the cranky old man, as I’ve mentioned, do not care to receive these. Therefore, it is through a twist of fate that any email campaigns I manage, I also have to personally review. So while I’ve limited my exposure to marketing emails on a personal level by deleting them, on a professional one, I’m forced to read them anyway.

Cruel cruel irony.

–Simon

March 23, 2017

Effort Quotient

There comes a time in every man’s life when he thinks: “Huh, this job sucks. Why am I here?” And it is indeed a very good question. Blessed not are the proletariat masses who punctually arrive at work, only to question the work they do, and by extension, the meaning of life. But rather than pass a joint and write poetry, I will continue my series on Quantitative Philosophy and instead enlist the field of mathematics to answer these questions.

Actually, I’m just going to calculate whether or not your job’s compensation is sufficient for its level of stress, and subtly suggest whether or not you should seek alternate employment. How will I do this? Why, the same way I compile data for all subjective forms of human existence: polls.

And don’t you judge me, all you MBAs out there. In my experience, employers have carefully calculated just how little they can pay for a given job, and they do this well, otherwise we wouldn’t have minimum wage laws. This is merely an extension of that philosophy, only calculated from the employee’s side instead.

minumwage

We will start with a job’s variables that make it less desirable, or as I will translate: things which cause stress (Stress Factors). Through discussion, the common complaints and therefore sources of job stress are:

Superiors
Suboordinates
Customers/Clients
Coworkers
Self (Internal stress, related to self-actualization)

headvice — This albatross is experiencing job-related stress (‘BRING ME THE EPIDERMAL TISSUE DISRUPTOR!’)

Financial compensation is obviously the primary negator, but a broader perspective of that is what we do with the paycheck that negates the stress. Therefore, we start with the weekly net income, and from this figure subtract the negators (or, negators from the negator–double negatives). Again, using poll data, I have narrowed these variables to:

Weekly gross income of minimum wage (because you have to be making more than minimum wage to have disposable income, and this is a base figure for which we all weigh our financial success)
Weekly estimated cost of alcohol consumption (substitute your drug of choice)
Weekly estimated cost of luxury edibles (fine dining–a universal constant)

The assumption being made is that the minimum required amount of excess finances to achieve happiness with an average stress level of 65% at a weekly net income of $450. This sets the baseline…or at least it did. Minimum wage has gone up considerably since I made this calculator, so the explanation is no longer consistent with the math. Now it appears that for the given salary, a job caps at about 25% the maximum level of stress a job could offer. This is a pretty low level of stress. In any case, here is the formula:

(0.14(net income – (sum of negators)))/0.5(sum of stress factors +1))

And as before, the formula is scaled, this time to range from 0-5 (5 being the ideal job), with each stress factor receiving a rating of 0-10, 10 being the most stress. Inputting my own figures, I receive a 4.33. Hmmm, I’m not so certain that this has scaled well with time, or if it’s entirely linear. A job with a maximum stress level appears to only require a weekly net income of ~$585, and I would not be a stock broker for less than $60K a year. But it does appear that I’m on version 6 of this calculator as of 1/7/16, so it may be due for an update. Also, it doesn’t account for an area’s cost of living, so adjust the minimum wage accordingly.

In any case, give it a try and find out where you rank. I can tell you with certainty that if you rank below a 1, scaling issues aside, your job sucks and you need to find a new one (I told you I would give a subtle suggestion). Now stop reading this and get back to work!

https://moorheadfamily.net/data/Effort%20Quotient%20v6.xlsx

–Simon

March 10, 2017

Dungeon

One day, I will have a proper office. It will have pleasant lighting, all the electrical and Ethernet hookups I could ever want, a coffee machine, a decanter of fine bourbon, an array of computer monitors, a big comfy chair, and a giant oak executive desk. A man can dream.

decanter — According to TV, having this in my office means I’m important

Until that day, I work in the guest room. The desk, a quaint antique writing desk, was not designed with computers and their multitude of peripherals in mind–nor, apparently, a full-size human. Hunched over, I diligently complete tasks for my employer, requiring frequent breaks to stretch the kinks from my abused spine.

Our old townhouse had a room for this purpose, and for that purpose it did indeed serve, until a little person came along. My iMac was then shoved into a corner of the living room, while the computers we’ve purchased since have all been of the laptop variety, necessitating temporary setups and mobility.

When we purchased our house, the basement was a big selling point. It was full-sized, yet unfinished. I saw the potential. And yet, it’s become a giant storage/playroom. The former kitchen table has been ingloriously relegated to serving the creative needs of a developing mind, and consequently one side is now covered in paint. Then last night I thought: “Why am I squished into a corner of the house while the kid gets all the space?” So now I understand the concept of man caves.

I’ve never been so at-odds with my wife that I felt the need to create a room and hang a “no girls allowed” sign on the door, but now with my work-at-home time, I’m very quickly understanding the appeal of a single room for which the purpose is not family-oriented. Imagine a room where I could set something down, and it would actually be there the next time I needed it.

In the meantime, my daughter will just have to learn to share. I turned the craft table, and converted one side into a desk. Now I toil away in the drafty basement, but dammit, I’m not banging my knees every time I shift my posture.

–Simon