Speed Up

I often find myself writing that I often find myself writing something that I’ve already written.

Well, here’s something I’ve written about a few times, but this time it’s backed up by some proper analysis by some actual clever people (who don’t just pretend their stuff is all true just because they’ve written it on a blog, like what I do).

Anyway, here’s an article about Speed Up.

It’s the concept of companies making huge amounts of money by laying off lots of employees then making the people who are left work much harder to cover the shortfall. So they take loads of cash off the wage bill but still get the same output.

Ever worked very long hours?

Ever worked weekends?

Ever wondered if you could stop doing that if only your boss employed some more staff?

That is Speed Up, my friends, and it’s killing people.

And now I wonder if that’s another reason for the ‘ageism’ of advertising (and other jobs): perhaps it’s just the industry compressing a 40-year career into 30 years. Perhaps people end up so burnt out by what they’re asked to do that they’re too shite/disillusioned/resentful to carry on.

Or perhaps we’re all big jessies and if we had to go down t’pit for 18 hours a day for 2 and 6 we’d know what real work was.

One of the two.