## Metadata - Author: [[mataroa.blog|Mataroa]] - Full Title:: The Failed Commodification of Technical Work - Category:: #🗞️Articles - Document Tags:: [[company-culture|Company Culture]], - URL:: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/the-failed-commodification-of-technical-work/ - Finished date:: [[2023-11-24]] ## Highlights > it turns out that even if you don't hold the quality of the output in particularly high regard, the optimizations and discipline required to ensure that two different acne-ridden teens with wildly varied education levels, separated by oceans, are capable of producing the same burger are *non-trivial* to say the least. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hg0t8hszggjyb6szy5p5zp61)) > The pitches were *entirely* focused on something I wouldn't have noticed prior to reading all those books - they were focused on the reproducible delivery of work that was *good enough* to accomplish business objectives, without having to rely on all those pesky technicians to be good enough to do the job correctly. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hg0te50jzjehqkyxmky0fs2d)) > Or in another context: > > If you buy a BurgerMaster 5000, you can just drop any teenager behind this thing with thirty minutes of training, and they're going to be able to turn out a burger that's good enough to sell! It's going to be the same burger every time, wherever you ship it! ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hg0tf6j8yfvyvydpn3j6713g)) > we haven't figured out how to commodify a lot of this work ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hg0tgkg94j94d2qt14sda35c)) > There's plenty of work that consists of simply churning out widgets faster, and I'm happy to see that work disappear (so long as we find a way for people to continue living healthily without it), but it must be acknowledged that many of the things we value in society come from an ill-defined, more vital place, and there is an intersection of that spark with the realities of production ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hg0tjt5emq19dyq002196dkb))