Cliché on young high-tech employees glamourous workplace. When talking about hazardous working conditions, we usually think about smoggy

Transcription

1 Cliché on young high-tech employees glamourous workplace or What holds true to young high-tech workers in the 4th industrial revolution When talking about hazardous working conditions, we usually think about smoggy huge construction sites, where laborers work hard day by day without personal protective equipment and starvation wages. There is no doubt that conventional workers need better working conditions, but does that necessarily mean those in high-tech industry don t? Wang came across Nguyen - an old friend from college in a casual night bar. Nguyen is drinking alone and seems to be low-spirited. Wang: Hey dude, it s been a while. How is it going? Nguyen: Ah, everything is fine. I am just.. kinda bored of my job. I ve just come to realize my job is not perfect as I thought it would be. Wang: What? That s so confounding. I ve heard that you re working as an IT guy for some rising tech company, right? You nerd couch potato work in luxuries: conditioned air, well-paid for just sitting and typing something in front of the monitors all day long, what do you have to complain?

2 Nguyen: Yeah of course everybody says that. Even I also thought I would never have to complain anything about my job, but when you get down to it, you will see the truth. To be precise, we are not that different from those traditional workers out there. High-tech employees, huh, it s just a flashy alternative name for workers in this 4th industrial revolution, no more no less. Our working conditions are not safer than those traditional one neither. Wang: You serious? You guys don t have to work in polluted environments, all you have to do is just sitting and typing, then receive sky-high salaries. You guys don t even have to lift an arm! How the heck can your working condition be not safe?! A (sigh): Yeah that s what is most commonly stereotype or assumption about our job, especially our working environment. For you, a hazardous working condition must be a smoggy factory or construction site, where workers have to work hard day by day without personal protective equipment, covered in sweat and dust, with starvation wages. Well that s true in the past industrial revolutions, but now it s changing. Obviously that the traditional workers working conditions are dangerous. But because physical exploitation is too obvious, people tend to forget that there s another type of exploitation: mental exploitation. Wang: I don t really understand. Are you trying to say that you are being abused or something?

3 Nguyen: Kinda. Mental exploitation is much more subtle than its physical counterpart: some of us even haven t realized that they are being exploited yet. You know, it s no doubt that our physical working abilities are not abused. Instead, sometimes they are even overindulged in comfortable physical working conditions, high salaries and so on, like you ve mentioned. But a leopard cannot change its spots, the employers have never been nice. It s just because our physical working abilities are nothing to compare to mental ones. I will give you a simple instance: in this modern era, rather than pay hundreds of factory workers low wages, the capitalists would just fire them all and pay one technician generously. Then he can operate the production lines that is equivalent to the workforce of thousands of people for them. That s killing three birds with just one stone: first, they don t have to deal with hundreds of protestants who always demand a better working condition and higher wages. Secondly, treating one guy well is always more economical and easier than paying a hundred of people, right? Thirdly, the employers will no longer be criticized as exploiters anymore: who can judge them if they pay their employees well and bring them good physical working condition? Wang: Well, that s true, but despite that s not quite fair for those traditional workers, isn t it an advantage for those high-tech ones like you? I understand that your mental working ability is undoubtedly valuable, but I still can t see how can it be exploited?

4 Nguyen: This is the point: what we spent is so much more that what we ve been paid. Moreover, the employers take advantage of our not-so-adequate education to force us to work more and more. Wang: What you just said? Spent roughly one-third of your life learning and studying things in school as well as college, how can you be not adequately educated? Nguyen: It may sound ridiculous at first, but take a closer look. Despite of the huge amount of information that we took in in schools and colleges, most of us are lacking essential skills. Teachers and lecturers taught us pretty much everything: history, chemistry, geography, physics, maths, and so on. Most of them have turned out useless after school, but there s one little simple but essential thing that almost none of us are taught properly: How to know if we are overworking, and how to protect ourselves from it? Wang: What? That s absolute non... Nguyen: Yeah, nonsense, right? But that s only for those traditional workers. Obviously, they would know when they re overworking: muscle pains, dyspnea, low blood pressure, cold sweat, et cetera. Now when it comes to those in high-tech

5 industry, the problems become a lot trickier. Instead our muscle, all the time we use our brain to work. Overworking does not leave harmful effects on our physical, but our mental health. And speaking of mentality, they include many severe psychologic symptoms, not just biophysical one: amnesia, anxiety, irritability, stress, and so on. Of course, their treatments are much more challenging and those symptoms are much harder to recognize. This leads to another bigger problem: in most cases, we don t realize that we re overworking until the mental symptom become severe. That is not to mention those biophysical ones, such as bone and joint problems since we just sit all day. Obviously no school teaches us how to sit properly, which posture will harm our backbones, how to protect our eyes from eyestrain while staring at the monitors day in day out.. Wang: Okay I got it. But when compare to those traditional workers, you guys still have lots more advantages, am I right? Nguyen: I can t agree. Through the last two centuries, the development of machinery had significantly changed the way people work. The assembly lines replaced their position in factories, which makes the process faster, cheaper and more reliable. Now workers in modern factories are not involved in heavy, dangerous physical phases anymore, but those require complexity and flexibility, such as quality assurance, placing blocks or operating machines. On the contrary, I m pretty sure that until the end of this industrial revolution there will be no

6 computer program intelligent enough to do programing work as well as other high-tech jobs since they are just too subtle and sophisticated for them. So that a high-tech employee, such as a programer like me, will have to do almost all by himself, with an insignificant help from automatic programing programs, because they just can t do those complex work like coding, testing, bugs fixing, maintaining those codes, et cetera. So, somehow we can say that now some traditional jobs are even more effortless than ours. B : Hmm.. That seems to be reasonable. So, what should we do now? Nguyen: Contrary to what people usually say, the truth is we high-tech employees have our own problems with working conditions, and we are vulnerable to exploitation as well. Normal people and even some of us are looking down on the latent dangers in our working conditions, despite the fact that it can significantly affect our benefit, or even their health and safety. To be honest, we can work much more efficiently, but those dangers must be got rid of first. Things must be changed. First come the awareness of the high-tech employees themselves. They have to take responsibility for their own health conditions. Perhaps some of them think that being young and passionate means they are invincible, and that s ridiculous. Those fools also have to appreciate their work more, they are much more valuable than they thought. On the other hand, other people s awareness plays a big role here, too. Public opinion is a powerful weapon that can be used to

7 fight for a better working condition for all of us, as well as a fairer society for everyone. The government adopted some laws related to this, but not so many people have heard of it. They should find a way to make those law more popular. Some people don t even know that they have those rights. Propagandizing and making those laws more effective should do it. Only then those problem can be solved completely.