+ Are you working in a Bullsh*t Job?
Welcome to Issue 28!
This week:
The future of work
Challenges and opportunities shaping Work:life.
📕 The New Geography of Jobs
🗒 GPTs: Custom versions of ChatGPT
🎧 Copilot and the creative process
📺 Tips to be better at small talk
Trends and signals
Emerging trends in skills, jobs and careers.
🗒 Declining productivity growth
🗒 The gig and freelance economy ‘dehumanisation’
🔍 Are you working in a Bullsh*t Job?
Know-how
Practical technology skills and knowledge to utilise today.
🗒 ChatGPT as your personal IT department
📺 How to improve your writing with Bard
If you have feedback, or future of work interests you’d like me to address in an upcoming issue, get in touch at worklife[at]edaith.com
Tina
📕 The New Geography of Jobs
This book was published 10 years ago, but the core idea is as topical as ever for exploring drivers of local economic development. Enrico Moretti, Professor of Economics at the University of California Berkeley argues that local job creation by innovation jobs – those based on developing new ideas and technologies, requiring high levels of technical expertise, creativity and problem-solving skills – exceeds the local job creation potential of other sectors such as manufacturing.
“..based on analysis of 11 million American workers in 320 metropolitan areas, shows that for each new high-tech job in a metropolitan area, five additional local jobs are created outside of high tech in the long run.”
The jobs created are both highly skilled e.g. lawyers and doctors, as well as in non-professional occupations e.g. waiters and shop assistants. This diversity of local employment follows companies in the innovation sector because high-tech workers are well paid, enabling higher discretionary spending, operations of high-tech firms require local business services, and there is a multiplier effect in job creation because high-tech firms tend to be located near each other.
🔗 The New Geography of Jobs (Harper Collins Publishers)
🗒 GPTs: Custom versions of ChatGPT
With a ChatGPT plus subscription you can now build on ChatGPT (code free) and create custom made chatbots called GPTs. It looks and feels like the standard ChatGPT experience, although the answers generated can be framed by a series of instructions that might be to focus on a certain topic, answer in a certain type of way, or to refer to certain sources of information. Essentially, what would have been done previously through iterative prompting, can now be saved as a ‘GPT’. You can also provide additional data, such as by adding documents, so that it draws from your data in its answers.
For public GPTs created, Open AI has established a marketplace which you can find and use GPTs other people have created. GPTs by OpenAI (screenshot below) include negotiation help and custom recipe making.
🔗 Introducing GPTs (OpenAI)
🎧 Copilot and the creative firm
Dentsu Creative, a global creative agency, has been a part of the Microsoft Copilot Early Access Program, being amongst the first organisations to test new AI offerings in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office suite of applications. The trial highlighted the potential for saving time on admin and paperwork as well as speeding up the design process.
For everyday operations, they use it for ideation, brainstorming and iterating ideas in real time with clients using DALL-E and ChatGPT, for scheduling, and summarising long email chains, and taking minutes in meetings.
In terms of services for clients they expect:
“what’s coming is a lot of custom experiences, a lot of custom platforms and tools.”
To get the most out of any new technology in an organisation, knowledge sharing sessions are a great tactic:
”office hour meetings, town halls, where all of the users are coming together, sharing their own tips and tricks they’ve found. So we’ve really put a lot of work into helping people know how to use it.”
🔗 How Copilot Is Transforming One Global Creative Agency (Microsoft, 17min)
📺 Tips to be better at small talk
“Be interested, not interesting.”
I don’t really struggle with making small talk, but I always found it difficult to politely end the conversation. Now I have something to try: tell the person the conversation is about to end and ask one more question.
🔗 How to Get Good at Small Talk, and Even Enjoy It (Harvard Business Review, 10mins)
🗒 Declining productivity growth
Declining productivity is not simply a symptom of COVID-19 disruptions, post-COVID remote work and the great resignation. Historic economic data indicates that productivity has been undergoing decades long cycles of decline since about the industrial revolution.
Although companies investing in generative-AI are betting on its potential boost to productivity, over the last decade workers have clocked in longer hours than ever before with little to no increase in output (equating to a net productivity decline).
🗒 The gig and freelance economy ‘dehumanisation’
3 Things Employees Really Want: Career, Community, Cause won’t be found in gig work (and it’s the same for freelancers):
“At the core of the issue are changing preferences and practices with respect to “renting” instead of “buying” talent to meet organizational objectives. For example, a survey of C-suite executives and senior managers revealed that more than 90% think that leveraging digital freelancing marketplaces is either “very important” or “somewhat important” and more than 50% reported that their expected use of digital talent platforms in the future “will increase significantly.”
From this perspective, the 40 million Americans who have rented out their services to technology platforms like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash may be canaries in the coal mine of the new world of work. What they experience today, millions more are likely to experience in some form in the future.”
🔗 Dehumanization Is a Feature of Gig Work, Not a Bug (Harvard Business Review)
🔍 Are you working in a Bullsh*t Job?
A recent study by Simon Walo of Zurich University has provided some quantitative backing to the controversial theory proposed by American anthropologist David Graeber in 2018: that many jobs are perceived as "bullshit" or socially useless.
Based on survey data from 1,811 U.S. respondents across 21 job types, the study sought to understand if workers felt their roles made a positive societal impact.
Roles in finance, sales, and management were more likely to be viewed as socially useless.
Those in business and finance, and sales were over twice as likely to see their jobs this way. Managers and office assistants followed closely.
The study controlled for factors like routine work, job autonomy, and management quality.
Even after adjustments, certain occupations still stood out as perceived to be of little societal value.
However, perceiving a job as socially useless doesn't necessarily mean it is. Factors like routine tasks and lack of autonomy can influence this perception. Addressing these factors, such as by enhancing social interaction at work or reducing alienation, can shift these perceptions.
But if some jobs are inherently seen as unbeneficial to society, broader economic system changes might be needed. Graeber suggests solutions like universal basic income, allowing individuals to opt out of roles they deem unimpactful. Policymakers might also consider regulating certain sectors or aligning them more with societal needs.
This research challenges the traditional economic perspective, emphasizing not just employment but the societal value and personal fulfillment derived from work. As the conversation around meaningful work grows, it's a call for businesses and policymakers to ensure roles don't just provide income but also contribute positively to society and individual well-being.
🔗 'Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless (Work, Employment and Society Journal)
🗒 ChatGPT: A personal IT Department
I couldn’t find a feature with Microsoft Word (to make section breaks within footnotes!) and asked ChatGPT to help. After some quick back and forth and uploading a screenshot, it was solved. It was much more efficient than Googling for IT fixes. Next time you need IT support I recommend giving ChatGPT (or an equivalent chatbot) a try.
📺 How to improve your writing with Bard
Like ChatGPT and others, Bard can be a creative AI collaborator that can help with ideas, check spelling and grammar and help create paragraphs of writing in seconds.
🔗 This Quick Tip video shows how to get started (Google, 1min)
Want to be in the know?
Comments