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Silicon Valley is a captivating place. That is partly private: I virtually all the time have heat, sunny climate there, a deal with for guests from London. There are a great deal of attention-grabbing individuals to fulfill. When you get away from the freeways and undistinguished shed structure, the countryside is gorgeous. I’ve been getting there twice a yr, be taught rather a lot, and all the time benefit from the journeys.
It’s also after all one of many cultural epicentres of the fashionable world, and never essentially for the great. Pretty just lately I learn The Thinker of Palo Alto, by John Tinnell, which was a glimpse into how totally different it may need been. My newest learn is Work, Pray, Code: When work turns into faith in Silicon Valley by Carolyn Chen. It’s a extremely attention-grabbing ethnography of tech staff, partly – because the subtitle suggests – taking a look at how their work has grow to be the nurturing group locations of worship was once; but additionally on the manner variations of Japanese religions have been co-opted by tech companies to make their workforces as productive as may be by way of successfully mind-altering processes.
The primary a part of this seems on the wrap-around ‘maternal’ employers, whose HR features largely are about ordering in wholesome meals, offering concierge companies, ensuring the office has a health club and a dentist and yoga lessons. Many tech staff hardly go away the embrace of their campus or HQ. All their life and their efficient household is there. If works is life, no want to fret about their ‘steadiness’. The HR justification is that this wraparound care prevents burnout and makes life much less aggravating – though after all anticipating fewer hours of labor could be much less aggravating too. Chen factors out although that the separation of ‘life’ and ‘work’ has been a phenomenon of the commercial age.
The second half is using meditation and mindfulness as a deliberate firm approach to make sure staff are centered and all the time at peak productiveness. Government teaching is a part of this; senior or excessive potential staff are taught find out how to be their ‘genuine’ selves and uncover their objective and keenness (which coincides with elevating funding funds or transport new merchandise). I don’t suppose I’ve it in me to be conscious, not that I wish to fully mock the entire phenomenon; however there’s something deeply creepy and late-capitalism about it being your employer who is anxious together with your non secular well-being and genuine self so that you’re obsessed with your life/work.
Work, pray, code is a really attention-grabbing perception into elements of Silicon Valley work and life. There are many particular person tales, which is after all fascinating. I discovered it forged a thought-provoking mild on this unusual place that has formed the fashionable world.
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