Getting what you want

Every time that I take a moment to contemplate the forces that shape and move our societies I cannot avoid feeling amazed. On the one hand it is incredible the amount of cooperation that each village, each region, each country, has managed to amass on the way to becoming what they are today, in many cases over several centuries. On the other hand the changes within the society and of one society with respect to its neighbors provide for constant needs to readjust. It is certainly possible that this trend has accelerated somewhat thanks to the information technologies and the constant flow of information, but even in more primitive human groups there are multiple ways in which a shock can produce waves on the surface of the society and require an adaptation under threat of bringing about its own destruction.

It is an old truism that any change has its winners and its losers: raising the temperature on the thermostat will probably please the grandmother who always has cold feet, but will be harder on the teenage grandson, who is always sweating. And when it comes to societal changes there is a huge difference in the amount of influence that different groups can have in the adaptation or rejection of a proposed change. For instance, unions were originally grounded to provide the workers some leverage against an employer that could, for the most part, grab any unemployed person in the street and have them working profitably within a few days. What can easily be done for a few employees becomes a much serious issue when the whole stuff threatens with quitting if their joint demands are not met. Of course, these unions can also be misused to the point of bringing the company into bankruptcy (which is a very negative outcome for the workers) rather than yielding a bit on their demands (which is a less negative outcome).

Photo: Nicolas Nova

The situation with the coronavirus pandemic has actually showed how bad the work of the unions was in the sector of hospitality (the fact that they were almost entirely absent), because workers have been  systematically and severely underpaid for years, particularly with the excuse of tips, but not exclusively. The failure is obvious in the fact that many former hospitality workers which were let go when the venues were forced to close their doors are not willing to come back to their former jobs or, if they do, at least not for the wages that they were receiving three years ago. And the most surprising fact is that these realization has happened independently in the heads of many, many workers, not organized by any one union. Of course, when everybody was earning low wages, the only option was to take the low one or not to work, but now that there is a high demand for waiters, it is the moment to negotiate the price upwards.

My friend Jerzy has recently had a couple of interviews with a company that is hiring, and he was surprised to get an offer about 30% higher than his current job, particularly considering that he has not done the kind of programming that they are requesting in more than three years. Discussing the situation with him, the only logical explanation that I could find is that they are so desperate to find someone who can do the job that they are not only making quite a powerful offer but also taking people who do not have shiny CVs as long as they can credibly carry out the task.

One of the disadvantages of the recent spreading of remote working is that the risk of having your job off-shored as increased significantly, as Jerzy pointed out: if you are going to spend most of the time sitting at home doing the programming, what prevents the employer from hiring instead someone a programmer in India who will earn one third of your salary? The answer, from my point of view, lies in the ease of communication, not only from the linguistic point of view but also from the cultural one: the working practices are not universally uniform and there are going to be disconnects between the expectations on one side and the ability to deliver on the other. In Europe and North America it is very common that an employee will go ask their supervisor if they feel that they do not have enough information to accomplish a task, and that is exactly what the supervisor would expect, so that the unproductive time of the worker is minimized. In some Asian countries, on the other hand, the worker would not dare to bother the supervisor and instead try to find a way to figure it on their own. Only upon direct questioning by the supervisor would they admit that they did not have enough information to accomplish the task. Under these assumptions it is normal that supervisors frequently asked their workers if they are adequately provided with information, so that they do not end up investing a lot of time in pointless research.

This problem with the flow of information is pervasive nowadays, but much more so in scientific endeavors, where everybody has a clear understanding that they are working at the bleeding edge of the technologies and it is entirely possible that some things are not completely polished (or even exist at all). Furthermore, many scientific research projects are also under financial and time pressure, so they not only have to complete a loosely defined task, but they have also meet their schedule and budget. Under these demanding circumstances the communication becomes extremely important, not only with respect to the things that are said, but also for those that do not need to be said. Having a common culture (understood in a wide sense as a collection of shared practices and beliefs) can be a lifesaver, because it reduces significantly the communication requirements: if you can accurately predict what your boss (or a colleague, the case is the same) is going to say in response to a given question you do not even have to bother them with the question.

The key of this case is actually having such an intimate knowledge of your co-workers, a point that is not easy to reach, certainly not in all possible conversations. Still, if you have spent enough time working together you will be able to anticipate the answers in an increasing fraction of situations, particularly if they tend to repeat themselves. An the current pandemic has demonstrated that, even if it entirely possible to keep working remotely, the performance is not the same and, what is worse, it does not even improve the way it usually does for on-site work. Being face to face with your colleagues can really foster a level of understanding and communication that boosts your chances of getting exactly what you want. Either you choose to spend the time together at the office, or you will eventually spend hours on the phone with an off-shore subcontractor that, even if they are cheap, will take a huge amount of time (theirs and your) to just understand what you expect from them. What is your experience on this topic? Comments are welcome below. Have a nice evening.