Life without Facebook - Day Two

I'm pretty much talking to myself here.

When I was on FB, I knew that a number of people would scan me in the feed, even if they didn't read me, but, here, on the perimeter, there are no stars (to quote Jim Morrison).

Today, I worked a lot on any number of things but I'm suffering under some sort of lurgi that is making my brain really fuzzy. I had a good gym session, and good run, today, but my head is still full of clag. Basically, there's some sort of virus in the household that is stopping us sleeping and, without sleep, I'm pretty much useless.

I note that FB has been sprung planning some pretty nasty data harvesting. Well, frankly, what did we expect? They have to make money.

I suppose this is what always puzzles me when people are surprised that businesses do 'short-sighted' or 'bad things'. If I walked up to you and said "Look, I know you gave me $10, in 100 years it will be $1000 but you can't have it until then," you'd tell me to get lost. Business has to think in the relatively short term because we all do. Business is supposed to turn a profit and give money to all of the owners. The role of most businesses is not 'be nice to each other and smell flowers'.

Yes, of course this has the potential to lead to bad behaviour, but most people play a sufficiently restrained version of the game that we can pretend that social values are important. There are businesses discovering that long-haul planning may have merit, especially when dealing with ethical or social equity issues, but the sad fact is that a lot of them are going to be outperformed by assholes.

Your choice: be an asshole and probably make money, or be a nice person and potentially be a poor schmuck. Hey, before you have a go at me, I'm borrowing obvious attitudes and terminology from other cultures. I value all work that is (a) fundamentally ethical and (b) done well. I've shovelled stuff for hours, I've sat in a trench for days, I've been unemployed. A job done well is good work. (Obviously, serial killers and paedophiles, you can be as bad at your chosen profession as you like. Do something else, you assholes.) If you are doing a good job, and can live on your income, then you should be happy - but, for many, many, reasons, you probably won't be unless you meet some other requirements.

"Pimp My Ride" is an interesting TV show. Not "give me a working car" or "repair my vehicle" but "fix it up and make it look good because I am defined by my vehicle". Yes, that's a little unfair but, seriously, have you listened to a lot of the comments? Fixing the car is useful, pimping it up is pandering to cultural issues that are, at best, short-term wish fulfilment.

The clock is going to strike midnight at some time, and your pimped ride will either age, fall apart, get trashed or get stolen - where a normal car might just have run safely for 5-10 years. Ok, I can't quantify relative happiness but any properly working car is better than no car, and the longer you have any car the more benefit you get.

I've discussed salary, in loose terms, with my colleagues in the US. Frankly, their answers astound me. Not because of the amounts, but because of the range between academics. Your salary is heavily related to your perceived worth and your ability to ask for the right amount in the right way. Some academics can vary in salary, same institution, same rank, by 10s of thousands of dollars, or more.

Want to know what I earn? Go to my workplace's website, look up salary and search for Academic salaries. If you're my grade, then that's what you get (with some small loadings for additional duties). Even with variations, we're talking less than 5% variation.

What does this mean to our community? It means that I don't _have_ to compare myself to my colleagues. If I go for promotion then I go to the next promotion grade. Nobody else has to lose.

Now, when I walk about this, people often say "Where's the incentive?"

Wait, what?

Have you seen my salary? Or my 24% superannuation? Or generous leave package? Or 6 months of sabbatical every 3.5-4 years?

If I'm _not_ working for that, then I'm defrauding my Uni, my students and, ultimately, the taxpayers of Australian in a roundabout way. You want me to beg for more money because, if I manage to con my boss into paying more, my prostitute gland will kick in and make my work dick bigger?

Worse yet, you want me to go to my boss, line up my colleagues in order and belittle each one, or big man myself against each one, to justify why I'm worth 100K more? How is that useful to anyone or psychologically healthy? How will I work with them afterwards?

The incentive for me is my job. If I wanted a heap more money, I'd go back to industry. And 80-hour weeks. And on-call. And no sabbatical. And less super. But I'd have more money. And that's what counts.

Right?

Look, let's just say that I don't get it. To some people, if there's no personal reward, they won't do anything. That's just how their brains work. If you do something for them, without asking for reward, they'll take it as their due, often adopt your work as their own, and then resell it for profit. Hey, if you're dumb enough to give stuff away...

However, if you're giving stuff away in the secret hope that reward will come your way, but you never say anything, then you actually are being a schmuck. Either give it away, charity or whatever and never think about controlling it, or negotiate its value.

Don't be one of the losers who mutters and mumbles after the fact when, yes, someone did a bad thing but, seriously, you shouldn't be surprised because you actually knew that they were an asshole. Sometimes people blindside you and that's not right, and I wish that it weren't true, but these days you have to prepare yourself for disappointment when undertaking business dealings with people. Hey, if you're wrong, you can be happy because they're nice. If you're right, you can be happy because you're right!

Schulz, in Charlie Brown, described the secret of happiness as having "a convertible and a lake". If it's a nice day, you can drive around in your convertible. If it's a rainy day, you can think "Hey, it's filling up my lake".

I can't change people. If I build a system that depends upon better people, I need to slap myself. So, what I do, because I can't change people and I haven't thought of a better system, is that to maximise my own happiness, I give stuff away sometimes. I try to let things go. I try not to compare myself. I accept that every organisation may have some less effective cogs (harder or easier at different times). Sometimes, despite this, I'm still at least a bit of a schmuck.

But you may be different. I just hope that, whatever you do, it actually makes you happy, and doesn't make any other people sad. Because, if your happiness depends on the unhappiness of other people, then you're probably being a schmuck.