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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 14/09/2026

The first management consultants were Taylorists; con artists who charged bosses vast sums of money to stand over workers with stopwatches, timing each step of their jobs to the instant in order to produce a mandatory choreography of "the best way" to do the job: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienti...

en.wikipedia.org

Scientific management - Wikipedia

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 14/09/2026

None of these "scientists" knew anything about how to do the job, and critically, they *never asked the workers* why they used an "inefficient" technique to accomplish a task.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 14/09/2026

Rather, Taylorists concerned themselves with getting workers to move like precision machines, transforming the factory floor into a stage upon which workers pantomimed "efficiency" for bosses who *also* didn't know how to do the workers' jobs.

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JudithFlanders @judithflanders.co.uk · 14/09/2026

When I worked at Penguin in the 90s hugely expensive management consultants came in to ‘help’ us (copy-editors) do our jobs better. They were APPALLED to discover our ‘toolkit’ consisted of pencils, erasers and our brains. How the hell were they going to monetize that, was their dilemma.

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iplayguitarbad.bsky.social @iplayguitarbad.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I believe they convinced the workers to put forth their best efforts to show how quickly they could perform *at their best*, which almost definitionally is not sustainable. The Taylorists then extrapolated from that brief "best effort" performance, what they believed workers could do all day...

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