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August 15, 2004

commodity

8 Comments

I drew this one on the train to work the other day. “Com­mo­di­fi­ca­tion” is a sub­ject that inte­rests me. Why it hap­pens, how it hap­pens etc.
I do know it’s hap­pe­ning to a LOT of people’s careers, far too quickly for their liking. And a lot of peo­ple don’t know what the hell to do about it. They just assu­med that once they got to a cer­tain rung in the lad­der they’d be able to coast for the rest of their lives. Appa­rently not.

8 Responses to “commodity”

1. Brenda says:

   August 15, 2004 at 9:03 PM

   I hap­pen to have one of those jobs “ordi­nary peo­ple” don’t usually unders­tand (hell, we spend most our time trying to figure it out our­sel­ves, for this very pur­pose). Any chance you’d offer this design in the busi­ness card offe­rings? I’d buy a bunch, really. I bet I have some friends who would too.
2. john t unger says:

   August 16, 2004 at 12:16 AM

   Hugh,
   Thanks for visi­ting and com­men­ting at my blog. Made my day!
   You might be amu­sed by my thoughts on the com­mo­di­fi­ca­tion of com­mo­di­fi­ca­tion, part of a lon­ger work that I’ll be pos­ting when I get time to edit it a bit more tho­roughly.
   Check it out here: http://johntunger2.20six.co.uk/archive/2004/08/16/i1v8kstxned0.htm
3. Hamish says:

   August 16, 2004 at 9:43 AM

   Cor­po­rate Rule:
   If you allow the demys­ti­fi­ca­tion of what you do to hap­pen, then others will unders­tand. Thence com­mo­di­ti­sa­tion, etc. Kinda explains why there is very little straight talk in cor­po­rate life, espe­cially amongst the middle ranks. Want a straight ans­wer to what hap­pens in the com­pany, ask the mail boy or ask the CEO in pri­vate, and gene­rally they know and can explain it. Ask the middle of the curve and all you get is obfus­ca­ted bullshit.
   The middle class is under threat per­ci­sely because you only need a few smart hands on the tiller, and e-mail covers what used to be the role of ranks of middle mana­ge­ment, i.e. com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The older army guys I have wor­ked with called it com­mand and con­trol. It works well, because it also allows the build up of cor­po­rate memory. “We won’t do that because we did it before, and it had nasty con­se­quen­ces that weren’t obvious…“
   Still, that can be com­mo­di­ti­sed. Only bad thing is that ever­yone who knew anything about the orga­ni­sa­tion has been fired, and the cheap McJobs that replace them are not going to allow the crea­tion or dis­se­mi­na­tion of new ideas. So, sud­denly you get a cor­po­ra­tion which is a low mar­gin one trick pony. Works fine if you want to be Wal­mart or Dell, but inno­va­tion like in the Pharms busi­ness or the high end IT stuff, you’re whac­ked. The one trick pony will fail, but not until the exec team that are currently in charge have taken out the cash, and gone to play golf with the other deni­zens of their gated eth­nic mono­cul­ture com­mu­ni­ties.
   Carly Fio­rino (HP CEO) springs to mind.
4. Greg Hurlman says:

   August 16, 2004 at 12:48 PM

   Don’t for­get the programmer’s coro­llary: If an ordi­nary per­son *thinks* he unders­tands what you do, you’re already half­way to beco­ming a commodity.
5. hugh macleod says:

   August 16, 2004 at 12:49 PM

   Sure Hamish, but that could be a good thing. Makes the dino­saurs die quic­ker.
   Perhaps we’d get used to a model where a cor­po­ra­tion, ins­tead of las­ting 30 – 100 years, lasts 5 or 10?
   Although what that would do to Wall Street, I have no idea.
6. mike says:

   August 16, 2004 at 5:46 PM

   “Com­mo­di­fi­ca­tion” just means you’ve been doing a fairly mecha­ni­cal job that has sud­denly been expo­sed to com­pe­ti­tion, either auto­ma­ted or human. Like when uns­ki­lled UAW wor­kers sud­denly noti­ced that robots or Malay­sians could now do their job just as well. Or when pro­gram­mers who hadn’t upgra­ded their skills in a decade found out that a fresh high school gra­duate with the right tools could pro­duce in a few minu­tes an appli­ca­tion that took them a month.
   I work in a govern­ment IT shop, surroun­ded by unio­ni­zed coders who don’t see why they should be for­ced to learn anything new when COBOL and DB2 have ser­ved them so well for for so long. Surprise!
7. Alan Gutierrez says:

   August 18, 2004 at 9:26 PM

   Unio­ni­zed coders? Talk about prima-donnas! How does that work at all?
   Recently, I had a woman tell me that I had to explain what I did to other peo­ple in fif­teen words or less. She didn’t call it this, but its the ele­va­tor pitch. Make the con­nec­tion.
   I know full well there are no con­nec­tions for me here in New Orleans, which is in part why I choose to live here.
   Not ever­yone should be haw­king them­sel­ves to every­body they pass in the street. Maybe if what you do is a com­mo­dity that’s the way to go, but if you wan­ted my ser­vi­ces, you’d know where to find me.
   Hmm… Think I’ll post this on my blog.
8. thermocarb says:

   October 29, 2004 at 8:26 PM

   Hello there,
   Iwas brow­sing the web and found this blog. Some inte­res­ting quo­tes. Keep them coming!
   Alice
   ther­mo­carb