Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Gunax 1776 days ago
Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo...

Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary.

--Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson.

1 comments

This, and the futures of Daemon and Freedom(TM) absolutely terrify me. It makes the banging sound in my brain of creating additional income streams, improving retirement, and security, louder and louder.

Each and every one of us are expendable.

Glad Im not the only one with this terror, I suppose