Kudos

Euan referenced this post by Andy in his blog. I’m just copy pasting here:

“Imagine a machine that you can put into any country and when you turn the handle, generate jobs. Not regular jobs, but microjobs: short jobs that you can do at home are done and when you are paid you go on a short holiday and you have the certainty when there is another microjob waiting for you. That is living a la carte.”

Andy is referncing Pajamaproject as his example for a microjobs marketplace. I think Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is very similar, and could be expanded to include human generated jobs.

But comparisons aside, what I really like about the microjobs concept is that it makes me think of Grid Computing.

Grid computing relies on a master machine that delegates jobs to worker machines. The program is built in a highly multi-threaded design so that each thread could be run under a process on one of the workers. The master is in charge of delegating the jobs and collecting results. 

Sounds to me that’s how your normal workplace would function. You have a boss that delegates tasks to his employees. The employees work really hard and the boss takes all the credit. Maybe we’ve finally found a way to realize the work-from-home methodology that was so hot during the late 90′s.

What would it take to make a Human Grid? Could a Human Grid make the workplace obsolete? Will we all work occasionally from home, and spend our lives hopping from vacation to vacation, as Andy suggests?

I really hope so, but don’t hold your breath.

The reason workplaces have not fragmented into home based employement is because many corporate tasks require that employees know about the corporate’s:

• Cluture, ethics, brand and ethos.
• Infrastructure, regulations and policies
• Partners, other employees, competitors and customers

Also, there are many practical reasons, starting with Information Security and ending with access to hardware, applications and tools.

For example, I dont see any corporate delegating creation of graphics for it’s website to a transient home worker if that means the whole world can know what tomorrow’s marketing strategy is going to be.

Microjobs are cool, but if you’re looking for a career with the bigger companies don’t count on it happening just yet.

פוסט זה פורסם בתאריך 2 בApril, 2007 בשעה 4:26 pm בנושאים Jobscape, management, Trends. ניתן לעקוב אחרי התגובות בעזרת RSS תגובות. לא ניתן להגיב לפוסט.