Productivity tools created new bureaucratic make-work instead of streamlining work

Evidence

On TikTok and Instagram, tech employees offered “day in the life” videos in which they spent most of their energy silently attending online meetings and deciding which snacks to eat in the micro-kitchen. The tools meant to streamline work—email, chat, and video calls—had, by 2023, just created more bureaucratic make-work. Microsoft’s Jared Spataro noted, “It sometimes seems as if the modern worker spends more time talking about work than actually working.” Academic Cal Newport gained traction with his call for “deep work” and “slow productivity,” as employees sought to reclaim focus from the chaos of hyperconnected offices. The original tech hacks needed their own counter-hacks. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 711

The tools meant to streamline work—email, chat, and video calls—had, by 2023, just created more bureaucratic make-work. Microsoft’s Jared Spataro noted, “It sometimes seems as if the modern worker spends more time talking about work than actually working.” Academic Cal Newport gained traction with his call for “deep work” and “slow productivity,” as employees sought to reclaim focus from the chaos of hyperconnected offices. The original tech hacks needed their own counter-hacks. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 711

Categorization

• CANDY: ‘Spending more time talking about work than actually working’ and tech workers filming snack decisions are amusing, shareable observations about the 2023 tech workplace.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 711
• XREF: connects to: Rational productivity and social control are welded together in new forms of manipulation — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 551; Time-saving technologies become the means of extracting more labor time — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 451