Children and work

Having children is pure disaster for companies. Sure, it seems like a neat idea, but young couples never consider the full implications of having children. Having children is one of the worst financial mistakes that can be made. They take a lot of resources to raise, they take away from productive work time, and drain the company of valuable manpower. Raising kids is an all around losing proposition.

This is one important thing to keep in mind when hiring. You want workers who will be able to put in a lot of time and work hard to earn your company money. If you find out that a potential employee plans on having children in the near future (particularly for potential female hires), you may want to consider moving on to the next candidate.

La Famiglia

One thing that drives me nuts is the constant chatter I hear about people trying to strike a balance between family and work life. For me, I don't see there being any need to strike a balance. The workplace is the home, and the company is the family. The boss is the patriarch who oversees the family. When you can look at things from this point of view, the conflict between home and work disappears.

This is the reason why companies need to hire either foreigners or single (unmarried) workers. Workers who are single don't have a home life to worry about, so they can devote themselves to working and advancing your company. Foreign workers tend to be willing to sacrifice most things--family included--to get ahead. I particularly like hiring the foreigners from poor, yet educated countries. They work hard, work long hours, and are usually a lot cheaper to pay than domestically trained workers.

Central Falls: a model for reform

Recently, Central Falls High School fired its entire faculty and staff due to atrocious test scores and graduation rates. I only wish that we could see more of this sort of action at more schools. In fact, I wish I could see this sort of decisive actions at more companies. Workers are on the whole a lazy lot. They are only around to soak up a pay check while pretending to do something productive. When they get unionized (like teachers), things only get worse. They want to get paid for doing basically nothing.

The mass firings at Central Falls is an opportunity to turn around its sorry underperformance due to its underworking teachers. Clearly hiring people interested only in their salaries is a mistake. I propose that we migrate the students to computer based instruction. Computers can work continuously, don't require a salary or benefits, and provide completely subjective metrics. Intelligent tutoring systems can ensure that every student learns the necessary material to complete their education. When we can remove the meddling, error-prone human teachers from the education process, we can finally progress to a subjective, results-driven education to train our children to become productive workers.

The sin of underwork

A recent study has shown that bored workers are at higher risk for disease. The science says it: boredom will kill you. Working is actually good for your health since it prevents the deadly boredom from setting in. I take it upon myself to make sure that all of my workers stay constantly busy. If they're constantly working, there's no worries about them suffering from the ill effects of boredom or developing any of the bad lifestyle habits associated with boredom.

Starting them younger

There seems to a debate on how young to start children in a formal school education.  I say the earlier the better.  Starting at 5 years of age is already too long of a delay.  We should start children as soon as they can handle solid foods.

The arguments for starting children in school later hold no water.  Spending more time at school than with family prepares children for the reality of working life.  The parents need to spend more time at work than with family, so there's no point in holding the children out of school for family life reasons.  Children become better socialized to the corporate social structure and disciplined into a hierarchy better the sooner they start school.  Acclimating them to this sort of social structure prepares them for working life sooner.  The sooner children start school, the sooner they can start learning skills that make them useful in the workforce.

Having the children in school earlier is also good for the parents.  With the children at home instead of school means that the parents can't be at work.  This is a serious drain on productivity.  The sooner we get children into schools, the sooner we get the parents back to full time productive work.

Modern Life

The fast pace of modern life has advanced society in many significant ways. Most of these changes have been great for business. Here are some of the realities of modern life that have made my life as pointy haired boss better:

1. People getting married later. When employees aren't distracted by something as silly as a family, they can spend more time getting work done.
2. Higher divorce rates. Again, without the distractions of a marital relationship and family, employees can better focus on the important things, like getting more work done.
3. Fewer community ties and friendships with neighbors. It's much better that interpersonal interactions be work related. When there are relationships to people outside of the workplace, those are more distractions that take away from on-the-job productivity.
4. Smartphones. I love my employees having these. That way I can e-mail and call them whenever I want something done. There's no reason I can't leverage their labor even if they're not in the office.
5. The demise of the sit down dinner. Having an employee say they couldn't talk because the family was having dinner annoyed me to no end. Now that we've come to our senses and started ignoring the inanity of listening to what junior did at school, all my employees now have no excuse for not answering my calls at home.
   
6. Fast food and prepackaged industrial foods. These have been a boon for my business. Having my employees waste so much time doing something as time-wasting as eating always annoyed me. With packaged and fast food, they can get their sustenance much more efficiently and get back to work.
7. Internet. The internet has made it possible for me to outsource most of my development to overseas workers, who are far cheaper than the overpaid domestic programmers. It's allowed me to lower my costs and solidified my control over my remaining domestic employees; since they now know that they are so easily replaceable by outsourced labor, they don't complain about the extra workload I give them.

Some people may long for the "good old days." I say that today is pretty good.

External Control vs. Self Control

Studies show that self-control comes in limited quantities.  People can exercise so much willpower before it's exhausted.  This can be a decidedly bad thing for the workplace.  Workers are constantly tempted to chat with their co-workers, show up late, leave early, take long lunches, surf the internet, call their buddies on the office phone, etc.  There are just too many distractions that the hordes of underlings apparently can't resist.  From my own experience, most of my employees have pathetic willpower.  I ask them to work a mere 10-12 hours (not even half the hours in a day!), and they never make it.  They always make excuses of being tired, hungry, and burned out and start wavering in their duties.

But just because employees have limited self-control doesn't mean they can't have external will forced upon them.  If you learn to micromanage effectively, you can prevent your underlings from partaking in the distractions and keep them focused on working.  Where worker self control is lacking, external control can be imposed.