In 1931, the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological growth and prosperity would largely free people from work. Future generations, he said, would eventually put in just 15 hours a week of paid labor.
The opposite happened.
Though we’re wealthier today than ever before, unlike Keynes’ vision, we work more, not less. A lot more. Americans now devote around 1,700 hours a year to their employers, one of the highest totals in the industrialized world.
The sobering reality is that many people spend more of their waking hours in the company of colleagues than with their own families. If, to loosely paraphrase Aristotle, we are what we do, then most of us are laborers.
That’s who we are.
Curiously, although we spend so much time at our jobs, few places exist to discuss that central feature of our lives. Sure, we can chat with colleagues at the water cooler and over lunch, but those conversations likely are brief and lack candor by virtue of being public.
And while some places online do allow workers to rate their employers, few, if any, enable them to share insights and ideas among themselves. Or simply to kvetch.
No longer.
JobYack is a virtual water cooler that allows work-related discussions to include a limitless number of people sharing the same employer. It is a forum to “talk” intimately with colleagues about that which we spend so much of our lives doing: working. It is a place to trade “best practices,” to constructively criticize, and to reflect. Or to just yack.
But it’s more than that.
JobYack is also a venue to locate and engage others who work in same industry or sector, from auto parts distribution to hardware store management to military aircraft production—and much more. The possibilities are limitless.
JobYack’s premise is simple: through communication comes knowledge, and through knowledge comes power. Thus, JobYack is about empowerment.
Keynes’ 15-hour workweek may not have come to pass, but let’s at least make the most of the many hours we clock.
Workers of the world, COMMUNICATE!
