The infinite workday: more work hours and less employee privacy

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The infinite workday: more work hours and less employee privacy

19 June 2025

Microsoft is calling it the infinite workday.

Based on telemetry data, gleaned from apps including Microsoft 365, the American tech company has found the workday has been gradually becoming longer, and work-related activities are increasingly seeping into the weekend. This for people supposedly working Monday to Friday, between nine o’clock in the morning, until five o’clock in the afternoon.

According to some of Microsoft’s findings, workers are reading emails as early as six in the morning during the week. The same workers may still be on deck well into the evening, attending online meetings, called to cater for colleagues spread across multiple timezones. In addition, workers are more frequently checking email messages during the weekend.

So much for work-life balance, which I’ve always seen as a theoretical construct. Not for real. Bullshit. My workday looks tame by comparison. But the accumulation of the telemetry data used to compile Microsoft’s report is also concerning. Not only are people working longer hours, they are also being surveilled. Some degree — who knows how much precisely — of information about their use of various Microsoft software, is being gathered.

The case for adopting something like LibreOffice, an open source variation of Microsoft products such as Word and Excel, becomes all the stronger. This won’t rectify the problem of working extended hours and weekends, but at least workers won’t have large tech companies keeping tabs on them.

Australian productivity falls, despite record long hours being worked

30 May 2025

Bronwyn Herbert, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

Australians have been working record-long hours, which contributed to the productivity slump, the Productivity Commission report found. Those additional hours performed by workers have not been matched by business investment in systems and technologies that would allow them to work efficiently, according to the report.

In some sectors the apparent decline in workplace productivity can be attributed to a lack of investment in new technologies, including AI. But that’s only part of the problem, and workers also need to be upskilled, if productivity rates are to rise.

I imagine it will be of comfort to some people that upskilling workers is being suggested, by employer advocates no less. This as opposed to the idea that much greater use of AI be made to somehow pickup the shortfall in productivity.

AI will take the work it wants to do, leave the rest for people

28 May 2025

Is AI going to take work away from people? It’s a question on the minds of many. Dror Poleg argues AI bots will only be interested in certain “high level” tasks, leaving plenty of work for us:

One might argue that even if we have superhuman software, older software or weaker AI models could still perform trivial tasks cheaply. But this misses the crucial point of opportunity cost: any marginal unit of energy that could tip the scales in finance or warfare would always be too valuable to waste on trivial tasks. As long as energy and computing resources determine competitive outcomes, there will always be something better to do with them than waste them on tasks humans can handle.

The question here though, what sort of work will be left for people? Tasks we want to do, or are forced to do, as we’ll have no choice?

Cafes in the United States seek to discourage remote workers staying all day

22 May 2025

Some coffee shops in the United States have begun cracking down on people who use their place for hours, maybe even all day, as an office. Some store owners are imposing time limits on remote workers, switching off WI-FI, or blocking access to powerpoints.

Fair enough too. Australian cafe operators are acutely aware of the challenges of running a profitable business, and having someone hogging a table all day, only makes matters worse.

Some owners hope a table will generate perhaps forty dollars an hour, on the expectation several parties occupy that table over the course of an hour. It seems doubtful to me that a remote worker, sitting at a table for, say, eight hours, would even spend forty dollars all day.

Is artificial intelligence taking work away from freelance designers, developers?

14 May 2025

Serbia based SEO consultant Nenad offers a grim assessment of the industry:

The number of available jobs is dwindling. Companies are tightening their budgets and relying more on AI to handle basic tasks. Why hire a freelancer for graphic design when you can get an AI to whip up something decent in seconds? Decent? Yesterday I tested a new Ai service called Readdy, and I got a landing page in 5 minutes that looks like a $1,000 job (5 years ago).

I’ve been hearing anecdotal reports locally (NSW), in recent months, of freelance design and development professionals taking on gig-economy work, point-to-point driving, and food delivery, to help make ends meet. There’s people saying AI will bring about new work opportunities in time, but it seems like there will be a fair few job losses before that happens.

You can learn a lot about work when working at an art gallery

11 December 2024

Henrik Karlsson worked for several years at an art gallery in Denmark. The work seems more varied, and entrepreneurial, than some of us might think:

Ie. you don’t say, “This is my job and that thing is outside my area”—no, if the value you are trying to promote requires you to go outside your role and learn new skills and politick to get the authority to go ahead: then that is your job.

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The way we treat service staff says much about who we are

25 July 2024

Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:

I suspect restaurant and cafe customers have little idea of the profound, quiet stigma directed towards service workers. There is an assumption in this country that wait staff above a certain age are where they are because they lack the skills or gumption to “get a proper job”.

There’s an old aphorism that goes something along the lines of “watch the way the person you’re on a date with treats the staff of the restaurant you’re dining at.”

The general idea being that if someone looks down on, or treats hospitality staff poorly, you might want to think twice about having a romantic relationship with them. The way they treat someone — in this case, likely a complete stranger — says a lot how they treat everyone else. Including you.

But it seems to me this wisdom can be applied more widely. Anyone — anyone at all — treating hospitality staff poorly, or other service workers for that matter, doesn’t seem to be worth the time of day. Unless, that is, a server threw hot soup in their face, or something, for no good reason.

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cafe, psychology, trends, work

Telstra redundancies, AI robots come in, the future is now

24 May 2024

Australia’s largest telecommunications company, Telstra, announced this week it was making about three thousand employees, or ten percent, of its workforce redundant. About three hundred people were sent home straightaway — hopefully with some sort of pay-out — while the remainder will depart between now and the end of the year.

This is terrible news for those who will now be looking for new work, at a time when the seasonally adjusted Australian unemployment rate has also been rising. Telstra cites the need to cut costs, and claims the mass layoffs will produce savings to them of three-hundred-and-fifty-million dollars.

The thing is, when cuts are made to the workforce — allegedly in the name of saving money — the work once carried out by the three-thousand people who have been let go, does not necessarily evaporate. Accordingly, in the past companies laying off large numbers of staff have out-sourced some of this work to lower-cost providers.

Or, have said advances in technology will make up for the shortfall in staff. In this instance however, advances in technology includes the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered software:

“AI and cloud computing and robots, you know they can be far more efficient and effective in the network,” telecommunications consultant Paul Budde said. “So therefore, what you start seeing is absolutely replacing humans [with] this new technology … that is seriously happening.”

Telstra’s move has stoked fears of a wider adoption of AI “solutions”, for companies looking to reduce their headcount. It could be argued the Telstra situation is a one-off. The telco’s customer base has been declining for decades as people make use of internet based call services, and move away from landline phones. Other Australian companies, therefore, especially large enterprises, are likely not quite facing the same challenges as Telstra.

But does that mean they’re not looking at the cost-cutting potential of incorporating more AI technologies into their operations? That, unfortunately, remains to be seen.

Workers using cafes as offices may reduce their profitability

3 April 2024

Malcolm Knox, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:

Then there are rents, insurance, equipment and other fixed costs. In a Sydney suburb near me, a new cafe is paying $5000 a week in rent. At $1000 per 7am-to-1pm shift, they need to be selling 300 coffees a day to make it worth their while. That’s nearly one a minute. They don’t often make money on food, which requires more infrastructure such as cooking, storing, plates and so on. It’s all down to their coffee price.

Cafes are a great stand-by for the WFH crowd, an office away from the home office. They’re somewhere to work, be in the company of others, while enjoying a coffee. Or two. Or three. In fact, the more the merrier, so far as the cafe is concerned.

But as much as I love the idea of working in a cafe, I do so infrequently. And then in short bursts — an hour tops — and I will buy at least one coffee and a cake — valued at maybe a little more than ten dollars — to make my stay at least partially worthwhile for the cafe. But even then, I’m short-changing the owners, as they’re hoping to earn closer to forty dollars an hour on the table I occupy.

Running a cafe you see, is an expensive undertaking, and WFH workers who buy a single cup of coffee, and expect to have the same table to themselves all day, are doing the cafe a distinct disservice. I’m fortunate to have a couple of hot-desk options if I don’t want to work at home, virtually negating the need to use a cafe, something I’m sure owners are grateful for. Instead, I’ll come by for a take-out coffee, and be on my way.

Doing anything for a living even dishwashing by Dugald Jellie

19 September 2022

Writers in Australia are often forced to work several jobs to support their craft, something Evelyn Araluen, winner of the 2022 Stella Prize, could tell you. Some of the roles aspiring creatives take on — and washing dishes may, or may not, be among them — doubtless would not be their first choice, but are usually a vital means to an end nonetheless.

Then again, force of circumstance may see anyone end up taking on work they are overqualified for, but need regardless. Melbourne based fifty-something Dugald Jellie writes about taking on dish washing duties at a busy cafe, after finding himself in need of work, any work:

How I got here might be a cautionary tale. The choices we make. A few wrong turns, a misstep, some bad timing, and now I work between four sinks — in the kitchen, front-of-house — stacking plates, hands wet, at the bottom of the food chain, a tea towel slung over my shoulder.

Recommended reading for a Monday morning.

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economics, work

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