If you’re in the mood for a snarky critique of Capitalism, Leigh Claire La Berge’s Fake Work will tickle your Funny Bone. La Berge writes about her time working for a consulting company where the work was “fake”–like producing spreadsheets that were sent to the company archives never to be seen again. After La Berge gets a promotion, she finds herself jet-setting on the firm’s dime to thirty-minute lunch meetings in Johannesburg.
My favorite story in Fake Work was when La Berge gave impromptu lectures to Japanese executives about limiting liability at the end of the world. The end of the work world As We Know It is approaching as Artificial Intelligence is causing massive layoffs of white collar workers. I feel sorry for College Students now attempting to find work in a world where AI will be performing the tasks of an entry level worker.
Is Capitalism a joke? We’re about to find out in the next couple of years as the impact of technology transforms the workplace. I was reading about the current projects to convert New York City office space into luxury apartments because so many workers in NYC now work from home. I’m afraid “Fake Work” will soon become “No Work.” GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Prologue: The Almost End of the World — vii
Phase I: Taking Inventory — 1
Chapter 1: Millennial Transitions — 3
Chapter 2: Quality Assurance — 16
Chapter 3: “Il n’y a pas de hors-texte” — 28
Chapter 4: Write What You Know — 43
Chapter 5: Teamwork — 58
Phase II: Media and Mediations — 75
Chapter 6: My Putative Promotion — 77
Chapter 7: A Total Bitch and an Absolute Fraud — 94
Chapter 8: A Tepid Marxist and a Bubble Popped — 108
Chapter 9: My Joke of a Promotion — 123
Phase III: Contingency Planning — 143
Chapter 10: Continental Comportment — 145
Chapter 11: Frequent Fliers — 160
Chapter 12: Floods and Fires — 179
Chapter 13: The End of the End — 191
Afterward: Weeks and Decades — 203
Acknowledgements –209
NOTES — 211
I think we have to figure out how to make a world where people don’t work. Or work very little.
Patti, I think work is important for Mental Health. People who don’t work seem to drift into dysfunction.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m glad I’m old. Meanwhile, I highly recommend Magnus Mills’s novel, THE SCHEME FOR FULL EMPLOYMENT, where a work system is rolling along until…differences of opinion enter the picture.
Deb, full employment is going to be hard to achieve with Artificial Intelligence…
Rampant capitalism is not joke, and has never been. For capitalism to work for the people, it must be moderate.
That being said, the book appears to promulgate the “buff and turf” philosophy found in Samuel Shem’s HOUSE OF GOD. Also, that’s one hell of a nifty Dell map-back.
Jerry, capitalism will embrace Artificial Intelligence where robots work 24/7 and there are no salaries or benefits to pay for.
Jackie: “I thought you said this book was funny. Doesn’t sound very funny to me. ”
Face it, we’re doomed.
Jeff, if you consider absurdity funny–and I do at times–then FAKE WORK is funny.
AI won’t replace plumbers and mechanics! I hope!
Bob, plumbers and mechanics are safe…for now.
AI is still a joke, over-promised results and frequently “delusional” results. Dependence on it will be the ruination of businesses unless its improvement curve rockets upward…which it hasn’t begun to do despite promises that it might. But thank goodness fools are making Reductions in Force already…I suspect few of them are entrusting their investment portfolios to bots, as yet.
Todd, Artificial Intelligence is slowly creeping into the workplace. As the software gets better, it will replace a significant segment of the work force.
Though, at the moment, we are being a sold a bill of goods that claim to be AI, but is basically falling over sideways in several ways, beyond what I touched on above. But any excuse to “save” salaries and use temps and such to correct the “AI” product, till such time as it actually works in any means as it’s meant to work, will suffice.
The AI slop that Google spews out regularly is from a Highly visible example of the software from one of the more technologically advanced and wealthiest companies in the world, for obvious example.