I think the "sabotage" techniques suggested by the author actually benefit companies whose main product is built by intellectual labor. Companies care a great deal about controlling workers: to get them in line, to squeeze labor from them, to weed out motivated folks whose interests don't align with profit, to shut down rabble-rousers, etc. Since the dawn of work, workers have resisted working, and Agile, etc. are just the new strategies management use to control this new group of creative workers.
Yup, open offices primary benefit is surveillance and control. Management is happy to sacrifice individual productivity for more control over workers.
Surveillance is a useful tool for sucking surplus value from our minds. Open offices make ordinary workers (slackers) uncomfortable because of constant surveillance by management, but work isn't about making workers content. Work is about dominating workers so they produce.
An added benefit of the panopticon pen is that it's harder for devs to slack, sabotage, and organize. A watched worker is an easily controlled worker.
Social media is work, just like housework is work, and it's about as dull as waged work too. Work is a relationship where some entity extracts surplus value off your unpaid labor.
I like the forced, scrolling text: makes you slow down and pay attention, but also not switch tabs halfway through and get distracted.
Why do people assume these are always the same thing?
If you read a book at 1/10 your normal speed, I imagine your reading comprehension would drop significantly. It's harder to focus on something when you're constantly distracted by its inappropriate speed, and it's harder to get value out of it when you can't process it in a normal way because you're constantly waiting for the next step.
Yeah! Math Prof has definitely chosen a side. He obscures that move in a fluff of "politics is complex, decisions are difficult." But politics is everything, and he's engaged in politics knee-deep while pretending not to be. "All I care about is education" calmly states the unwitting Math Prof as education is destroyed to become a hollow commodity for those who can afford it. He's obscuring his politics and hiding that fact that he wants a continuation of the current state of things.
There's a weird fetishism of education. Yeah, optimize yourself for education, remain constantly, obsessively learning so you can become a more valuable commodity. It's that entrepreneurial spirit! The spirit of life itself! (What about playing? Save that for a social media platform that valorizes your free labor.)
Yeah, get it! Shoplifting is also worthy challenge, though, that I feel the author underrates. Scams and shoplifting are two ways toward the same goal: exiting the store with goods without paying for them or getting caught. Sticking stuff in your pants or purse is a pretty simple move, sure, but it has its subtleties. And plus there's a bunch of complexities to worry about like security tags, snitching customers, loyal employees, security guards, loss prevention officers, and cameras.
I'd made a faraday cage with tin foil in my backpack to thwart the tag alarm system, and tested it out on a large retail electronics store. So yeah, maybe it doesn't require the social skills needed for the author's cons, but it did require technical skills.
That said, that was a long time ago when I was a troubled kid. Now I'm a voluntaryist, and I see that stealing doesn't fit with my set of values. Perhaps I picked up some valuable lessons while experimenting with anti-values.
As for the author, it seems that he never really grew out of it. It's clear that he derives pleasure from cleverly conning people. It's a shame, because that mental energy could be used for good instead of what amounts to scummy behavior.
There is so much more pie to be had when you can bake it yourself, rather than having to con it from others.
Woah, I followed pretty much the same roadmap as you, except I took the (Python-based) CS600 class at OpenMIT instead of Udacity's CS101. And my year was 2013. I really enjoyed Udacity's CS253 on web development, even if the particular technologies introduced in the course aren't very popular.
Since then, I've been switching gears from Python to JavaScript by learning Node and Angular. I don't view Python as a waste of time, because I think it is a great first language to learn particularly for CS fundamentals. Starting out, I may have been discouraged learning JavaScript as a first language. OOP isn't so straight-forward in JS, and there aren't as many learning resources for algorithms/CS-theory stuff in JS as there are in other languages. Also, learning server-side web development fundamentals with Node.js may have been a struggle, perhaps because there aren't as many resources devoted to beginners and docs as there are with Python/Django. Plus the asynchronous stuff. I'm struggling to learn AngularJS, although it's just straight up difficult I think.
I still need to figure out how to interview well. I have a decent GitHub/portfolio, so I'm generating a good number of interviews despite having 0 professional experience in the field and no CS degree (I have a math degree though). I've had about 20 technical phone screens/interviews not including take-home assignments, and I'm getting better at them. But I'm clearly not there yet, since nobody has offered me a job.
I wish the author had addressed worker sabotage too. More on that here: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/manual-override/