G.

Sampath

September 17, 2015

Updated: September 17, 2015 07:40 IST

In love with work, Amazon style

Not long ago, a gradual reduction in working hours was
considered a sign of progress. Now, productivityenhancing technology has colonised life beyond the office
and in a complete reversal of common sense, overwork has
become a badge of prestige
Last month the New York Times carried a lengthy report on what its like to work at Amazon,
the worlds biggest online retailer. It was not a pretty picture. Based on interviews with over
100 current and former employees, the article depicts a brutal workplace where people tear
apart one anothers ideas in meetings, executives weeping is a common sight, and workers
toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they
were not answered).
Amazon, according to the reporters Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, uses a self-reinforcing
set of management, data and psychological tools to spur its tens of thousands of white-collar
employees to do more and more. Employee performance is subject to continual algorithmic
monitoring. Those unable to cope with the unreasonably high productivity expectations are
weeded out in the annual staff culling.
Motherhood, caring for the elderly, cancer treatment, recovery from a miscarriage none of
these are allowed to even minutely dilute the relentless focus on work. Describing it as a
bruising workplace, the article concludes that Amazon is conducting a little-known
experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is
acceptable.
Predictably, the report caused a storm. Several Amazonians sprang to the companys
defence, terming the report misleading. But interestingly, even the defenders could not and
did not wish to dispute the basic thrust of the piece, which is that Amazon is not an easy
place to work.

Rather, they turned it around to argue that Amazon is the best place for those who love their
work. Such an employee, then, would embrace the extreme work pressure as an opportunity
to grow rather than view it as a problem.
While Amazon may represent an extreme case, it is hardly unique in presenting a pressure
cooker environment that squeezes out the last drop of value from every worker. In fact, this
is rather common in the technology and finance industries. It is the norm for most blue collar
work. And in sweatshops across the global South.
What is significant about the Amazon experiment is the evidence it offers that even white
collar work could be headed the same way. In that case, it is worth looking at the social costs
and ideological armour of a culture that not just normalises but also valorises overwork.
Working for love
Traditionally, the professional-managerial class has aligned itself with capital, and in
opposition to the working class. But in the face of increasing proletarianisation of white
collar work, sustaining the illusion of being distinct from the working classes calls for fresh
ideological engineering.
It is this ideological operation that the American cultural critic Miya Tokumitsu dwells on in
her brilliant new book, Do What You Love: And Other Lies About Success and Happiness.
Follow your passion. Do what you love. Many of us have received or proffered this advice
at some point. Most young graduates today hope to make a career out of what they love.
Allied to this idea is that of defining ones identity through work. This is the assumption
behind the question we often ask of kids: what do you want to be when you grow up?
The ideological nature of this conception of work becomes clear when we consider that for
the vast majority of the worlds workforce, doing what they love, or self-definition through
work, is not an option.
As she traces the origins and history of the Do What You Love (DWYL) ethos, Tokumitsu
expands on its pernicious outcomes.
The first and most fundamental effect of DWYL is that it divides work and workers along
class lines into those who do lovable work, which is creative, intellectual and socially
prestigious; and those who do not-so-lovable work, which is repetitive, unintellectual, and
undistinguished. Those in the lovable work camp are vastly more privileged in terms of
wealth, social status, education while comprising a small minority of the workforce.

Second, even as it divides workers along class lines, the creed of DWYL covers up this
division. According to Tokumitsu, it disguises the fact that being able to choose a career
based on what we love to do is a sign of socioeconomic class. Thats not all. By keeping us
focussed on ourselves and our individual happiness, DWYL distracts us from the working
conditions of others while validating our own choices and relieving us from obligations to all
who labour, whether or not they love it.

Indeed, nowhere is the narcissism of DWYL more evident than in the case of Steve Jobs,
whose commencement day speech at Stanford University in 2005 is a dazzling feat of DWYL
evangelism. In an essay, In the name of love, Tokumitsu writes that by portraying Apple
as a labour of his individual love, Jobs elided the labour of thousands in Apples factories,
conveniently hidden from sight on the other side of the planet the very labour that allowed
Jobs to actualise his love.
This brings us to the third aspect: the erasure of the non-lovable work and those who perform
it.
Most of us achieve public visibility via our work. When we meet someone new, the first thing
they ask is what do you do. Tokumitsu contends that lovable work is, by definition, visible
work. We are unlikely to meet anyone passionate about washing cars for the sake of it.
Tellingly, she wonders, What do those in the invisible workforce call themselves in their
social media profiles? What work-based social identities are available to those who clean
hotel rooms, stock shelves, empty garbage bins?
Next, by cloaking the exploitative dimension of paid labour, DWYL facilitates it even more.
Nothing makes exploitation go down easier than convincing workers that they are doing
what they love, notes Tokumitsu. When passion becomes the socially accepted motivation
for working, talk of wages or rational scheduling becomes crass.
Measuring passion
Fifth, if passion is the key determinant of work, how does one measure it? Sadly, the only
available measure so far is also the stupidest: the hours spent at the office. Tokumitsu points
out that the DWYL paradigm, in seeking to institutionalise passion by measuring it in hours,
has caused a runaway inflation of the work week. The 9-to-5, 40-hour work week is dead.
There isnt a salaried, white collar worker who hasnt felt the pressure to linger in the office
long after her work for the day is done. In the ultra-competitive universe of Amazon, this
translates into the anxiety that every minute spent away from work is a minute utilised by a
colleague to forge ahead. It is, therefore, only rational to spend all of ones time working.
Which is what Amazon and its many replicants want.
Last, DWYL neutralises the worker as a political category by eliminating work itself.
Tokumitsu sums it up thus: In ignoring most work and reclassifying the rest as love, DWYL
may be the most elegant anti-worker ideology around. Why should workers assemble and
assert their class interests if theres no such thing as work? In the words of political theorist
Kathi Weeks, cited by Tokumitsu, the ideology of DWYL delivers workers to their own
exploitation.
The Amabots
For all these reasons, and despite them, doing what one loves has become the unofficial
work mantra of our time. It is because they love what they do that Amazons star performers
dont mind putting in 80-hour weeks, or spending money from their own pockets for official
work. As the Times report puts it, the genius of Amazon is the way it drives [employees] to
drive themselves. There is apparently a term for those successfully socialised into the
Amazon way, the Amabot.

So, is a planet of Amabots the ultimate summit of human civilisation? Not too long ago, a
gradual reduction in working hours was considered a sign of progress. Economists used to
write about how advances in technology will increase leisure time, allowing everyone to
pursue diverse interests. Instead, productivity-enhancing technology has only enabled work to
colonise life beyond the office. In what constitutes a complete reversal of the common sense
of a century ago, overwork has become a badge of prestige.
Of course, its great if ones work is emotionally satisfying. But as Tokumitsu reminds us,
emotionally fulfilling work is still work. There is no earthly or heavenly reason why
everyone should have to prioritise work above every other aspect of life. As the very term
Amabot suggests, the DWYL ethic only dehumanises the worker, turning her into an
inferior avatar of a machine.
Tokumitsus Do What You Love underscores the importance of acknowledging all of our work
loved or unloved, passion or drudgery as work. Only then can we set appropriate
limits for it, demanding fair compensation and humane schedules that allow for family and
leisure time.
sampath.g@thehindu.co.in