Tech giants have long been the “cool” places to work, often depicted in movies as having huge warehouse style office, filled with employees appearing to be doing anything but “work”. However, the reality is that tech giants, along with creating all the new gadgets and services that we’ve come to enjoy, they’re also the leaders in reintroducing something that was all the rage just a few hundred years ago- serfdom. Why not just live at work? Apparently companies see a better investment in providing material things that are supposedly intent on keeping you less stressed while your at work, while, even on the broad international scale, wages have been stagnant for over a decade. Companies are making the choice, do we give employees more money from the historic profits we’re enjoying, or do we pay to give them things that make it easier and less stressful to simply just stay at work longer, or indefinitely? After all, who really wants to deal with that LA traffic commute twice a day? Why not just stay at work, Monday through Friday and just just really nice hotel rooms the other two nights?
I’m convinced this will be the next hot work/life balance trade off startups will offer, especially considering the astronomical rise of housing prices. Corporations will eventually learn they can take advantage of the housing crisis [they caused] by overly inflating the costs of all material goods, by simply saying hey, poor people, why don’t you just skip that whole homeownership thing, that’s just for stuck up rich people anyway, and just come live with us?? So, this hypothetical situation i just described, would really just be a modern version of serfdom. But instead of kings and queens, you have corporations running the land. Corporations that price you out of homeownership, while offering you food, water (beer in the case of Yelp), and shelter, for your work/services. Instead of fields of wheat and barley, you’ve got server farms with data lakes, formed by data clouds. Does that possible reality sound alarmist? Well, wake up Sister Mary Clarence, we’re already in it. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/11/google-sleep-pods-yelp-beer-work-leisure-offices