It may surprise you to know that pirates weren’t especially ethical people. Aside from sinking and plundering ships, they also engaged in the ad hoc enslavement of those they didn’t kill. If you were a man, expect floggings and forced labor. If you were a woman, expect far worse out of public view. The featured image on this entry is from the account of such an incident in 1756.
Indentured servitude came about as a more “humane” alternative, because that was legal and self-inflicted subservience. One of my ancestors, Edward Doty, was an indentured servant of Stephen Hopkins. Knowing what I know about Edward from Plymouth Colony’s records, I imagine Mr. Hopkins got just what he deserved for engaging in the practice. Edward tended to be… a handful. His court records alone involve offering a seemingly unending series of corn bushels to those he’d wronged.
Now, in the 21st Century, runaway executive greed is the new standard by which people are reduced to property. The current push toward Artificial Intelligence is really just a poorly-disguised effort to do away with human employment at the maximum possible extreme. People complain about “rights” and “breaks” and “family” all the time, but a robot will cheerfully rivet wheels onto a car until it melts into slag. And artists? Pfft. Isn’t DALL-E just as good… assuming you want it to render a religious icon using crustaceans?
I have been unemployed for about a year and a quarter now thanks to the 21st Century’s unfortunate deification of executive greed. Did you overstaff during the pandemic? Lay ’em all off, accept no responsibility beyond a token statement, and then don’t backfill the positions. The survivors will be duly motivated by the threat of unemployment in this job market. You know, the job market the executives created through their reckless pursuit of unlimited growth?
The landed gentry of Silicon Valley have even started referring to laid-off workers as “table scraps” and “damaged goods.” No matter how many times recruiters try to preach the virtues of experienced techs, the suits shut them down. Those in charge of making decisions don’t want more humans. They want more automation. And the executive leaders calling for that have become just as cold and aggravating as the half-assed Machine Learning systems they’re pushing.
For the first time in my nearly thirty-year career, I am thinking of leaving the technology space. I’m fifty-two, so I’m a suspect job candidate based on my age. Everyone wants an eighteen-year-old prodigy with an attitude and the equivalent of twice his age in experience. (Oh, and technical certifications. Lots of them.) Note that I used male pronouns. Women are also regarded with suspicion by the Tech Bro Empire. But it gets worse.
Most of the jobs advertised today are not actual jobs. They’re what people call “ghost jobs.” In essence, companies insincerely list vacancies for the following purposes:
- If your staff is overworked, it’s a great way to play-act at hiring help for them. Just look out if they discover the deception.
- However, if your staff are overworked and complaining about it, ghost jobs are also a great way to intimidate them into silence. The job market is awash in candidates. Any of them could replace you. Do you still want to unionize now?
- Ghost jobs are also useful for fooling investors into thinking your company is growing instead of stagnating or shrinking. Pay no attention to the financial statements behind the curtain.
So I’m laid off from an industry that no longer wants me, and most of the jobs I’m qualified for aren’t even real. Imagine sending out hundreds of resumes over the course of a year as you desperately try to figure out what money you’ll use to pay the bills. In my case, it’s my retirement funds. I can’t worry about the future when the present is an awful mess.
Worse still, the government is basing policy on these fake listings. “The job market is booming, so we can cut interest rates!” The last jobs report I saw stated that 254,000 positions had been created. Great numbers, right? Only the truth lies in the details. Most of the positions created were in food service, construction, and healthcare (where countless nurses quit due to pandemic-era burnout). Also, there was no vetting of that number when it came to ghost jobs.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report tells the actual tale:
Employment showed little change over the month in other major industries, including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; retail trade; transportation and warehousing; information; financial activities; professional and business services; and other services.
That’s a whole lot of nothing for the vast majority of educated professionals. So what the hell can I do in the face of all of this? It’s time to think about alternatives to traditional jobs. Sorry, I didn’t go to college to flip burgers, and I challenge you to pay your mortgage, car loan, and credit card on those wages. Like chewing celery, it takes more energy than you receive in return.
Now I’m trying alternate strategies that don’t involve an employer. I’m writing a book. It’s a memoir of my time during the Dot-Com Crash and the years immediately after it. I’m taking advanced fiction writing courses to burnish my skills. I’ve got some other projects in mind, too.
Sure, I’m applying for entry-level writing and editing jobs in parallel with this. I have very little confidence in those avenues because of ghost job listings. And yes, Machine Learning and Generative Artificial Intelligence have taken a huge bite out of those fields, too. Fortunately, GenAI technologies have been failing gloriously and publicly for a while now.
It’s scary to think about switching careers at my age. It’s scarier to think about returning to an industry that’s so flagrantly dishonest and broken. Maybe, with a little creativity, I can be my own boss.
I promise to treat myself better than the old ones did.
And now, so that I can end this post on a cheerier note, please feel free to laugh at this high-quality, totally-not-trash gallery of images generated by Microsoft Designer’s GenAI using the following prompt:
An angry information technology professional searching for work. He has a rabbit on his head and carrots in his ears. The house is on fire. Photorealistic style.
