 talk with their patients. If those conversations go on too long, they are marked as "derelict" and risk employment sanctions.
Social workers with masters' degrees are compensated based on the number of keystrokes they generate on the job. For Unitedhealth admin workers who work from home, glitches in the system can imperil their jobs, for example, if the system hangs when you log out for the day, it can mark you as "idle" all night, killing your average score. Workers facing these problems are advised by their managers to jiggle their mouses periodically to keep the division's score from falling.
One of the most interesting part of the Times feature is the work it does profiling the pseudoscientists who created and marketed this junk software. There's Federico Mazzoli, co-creator of Worksmart, who explained the benefits of his product: "Once you see those metrics, those insights, something changes: You realize how much you waste doing nothing, or just multitasking and not accomplishing stuff."
Mazzoli seems to have either not used his product, or, if he did, did so under conditions where he was in charge of it – using it the way an athlete might use a stopwatch to time their own sprints, and not the way a boss might: to decide whether to dock your pay or fire you.
Ironically, the Times reports that Crossover's own employees so resented the company's intrusive monitoring of them (as they created and sold intrusive monitoring tools) that Crossover hemorrhaged employees and struggled to hire replacements. Eventually, Crossover had to turn off its most intrusive features so that it could keep the employees needed to make and sell its bossware product.
As the metaphor of corporate personhood has become more and more concrete (for example, through the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision, which ruled that limits on corporate political spending violated their corporate persons' free speech rights) many have pondered the question, "What sort of person is a corporation?"
But the rise and rise of bossware implies another personality archetype for the corporation: the abusive alcoholic dad, whose own life is spinning out of control and who finds comfort by seeking to control the lives of others in humiliating ways that ultimately leads to his own destruction.
Because bossware doesn't just radically reduce productivity by shifting the point of work from getting the job done to getting the boxes ticked – it also exposes the businesses who use it to existential risks. Take Office 365, the cloud-based word processing/spreadsheet/email system from convicted monopolist Microsoft.
Office 365 went from being an online version of Microsoft Office to being a bossware delivery-system. The Office 365 sales-pitch focuses on fine-grained employee tracking and comparison, so bosses can rank their workers' performance against each other. But beyond this automated gladiatorial keystroke combat, Offce 365's analytics will tell you how your company performs against other companies.
That's right – Microsoft will spy on your competitors and sell you access to their metrics. It's wild, but purchasing managers who hear this pitch seem completely oblivious to the implication of this: that Microsoft will also spy on you and deliver your metrics to your competitors.
A century ago, "scientific management experts" tricked bosses out of fat consulting fees by promising to turn managers' preference for "a smartly turned out workforce" into a scientific best-practice. This is pure empiricism-washing, where an irrational bias is encoded in mathematics and declared to be scientific truth.
Bossware companies target employers' insecurity about their workers' power to actually undermine the employers' businesses, transforming productive workers into efficient metric-satisfiers, while raiding the company for valuable market-intelligence.
The bossware problem is a boss problem, in other words. It follows that fixing the bossware problem is the workers' job, and indeed, the Times feature notes that Amazon has been dismantling its bossware surveillance in a bid to reduce its workers' support for unionization, which promises to ban bossware from Amazon workplaces.
Bosses deride unions as reducing "freedom" – but just the threat of unions delivers more freedom to workers than any right-to-work law ever could. Bossware-infected jobsites are Stalinist dystopias, where workers are punished for looking in the wrong direction or failing to hit the keys fast enough, irrespective of whether they're getting the job done.
The article attempts to apply the perception of philosophy recommended by Richard Rorty to the general reflection on law. On the ground of the metaphilosopical account of the author of Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, the most influential American thinker of his era, the paper tries to answer the question which model of the philosophy of law is to be proposed.
Metaphilosophical perspective developed by Rorty leads to perceiving philosophy of law as a public, conversational and practical enterprise, which is historically oriented and conducted in conformity with basic assumptions of anti-scientism.What did you study at university and what inspired your choice of course?
I studied Biochemistry at university. I chose it because I really enjoyed the molecular biology and biological chemistry aspects of my A-levels and had always been interested in the life sciences. Before university, I had studied a mix of science and humanities. I even seriously considered pursuing English literature, but science eventually won. Luckily, it turns out writing is still a big part of studying and working in Science.
What was your plan for after you graduated?
My plan for after graduation was quite open-ended. I knew I wanted to go travelling and take some time off, but I didn’t have a set plan for what I wanted to do after that. I wanted to stay in the realm of science and use the knowledge and skills I had gained during my degree, but also knew that laboratory research wasn’t for me. As a result, I was hoping to work at the intersection of science and business where I’d be working closely with other people.
What sparked your interest in an internship?
Internships are a great way to gain experience whilst working towards a degree. They also give insight into what it’s like to work within a given industry, which is especially useful when you are not entirely sure of what you want to. These were the main things that drew me to doing an internship, particularly given the age-old paradox of seeming to need experience to get experience. Internships are generally designed for those that are at the start of their career and may not have previous work experience. Of course, there was also the chance that I would end up enjoying the work and being offered a full-time position!
You really are given responsibility and get the chance to learn the process of taking pieces of work through to completion.
Ayming appealed to me as it offered the chance to use my technical and scientific knowledge within the realm of business, as well as to work closely with a team of consultants and be client-facing. Before finding Ayming I didn’t know much about R&D tax relief, but the testimonials from previous interns gave a great insight into what the day to day life was like; working within a great team on a variety of projects across different sectors.
What was it like working as an intern within the team at Ayming?
Being an intern at Ayming doesn’t feel like you’re an intern in that you very quickly get to know and become part of the team. Over the 8 weeks of my internship, I learned a huge amount about the world of R&D tax relief, the various weird and wonderful R&D projects, and about working as a consultant. I felt I was able to make real contributions to projects and saw work that I had completed during my internship in the final deliverables of a number of engagements. You really are given responsibility and get the chance to learn the process of taking pieces of work through to completion.
How has your internship helped with your career?
Following the internship, I was offered a full-time position which is obviously a huge help in establishing a career. Moreover, I developed my abilities in technical communication, teamwork, and adaptability through the range of different tasks and projects on which I was working. I also acquired hard skills such as using Excel, which has been extremely useful in my role as Associate Consultant at Ayming, and even helped when completing my master’s degree after the internship! These skills are thoroughly transferable to any field of work, and the understanding of the R&D tax scheme gives a great springboard for working in R&D incentive consulting.
What advice do you have for someone thinking of doing an internship with Ayming?
In the application process, learn about Ayming and what sets it apart from other consultancies. This will mean you develop and can demonstrate a real interest in the company which definitely comes across during the application. Whilst no one is expecting you to have exhaustive knowledge of what the R&D tax scheme is, do some research so you have an understanding of the scheme and the work involved in it. Finally, if you are on the internship, think about what you want to get out of it and ask! Everyone is very happy to help. I requested extra Excel training and it was incredibly helpful. You’ll also get to work with a great group of people, so my last piece of advice is… enjoy it!
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