Microsoft Hamster Wheels

Charlie Stross questions whether the 50000 jobs that Microsoft Vista will allegedly create is actually a good thing.

Of course, the usual analysis of employment trends we get in the press doesn't usually go as deep as to question the need for jobs (that jobs are virtuous is taken for granted) so it shouldn't be any surprise that ZDnet's report that Microsoft Windows Vista could create 50,000 jobs in the EU alone is framed in tones of breathless approval.

Stop and think about it. The PC market is pretty much saturated in the developed world; we are no longer buying our first PC, we're just upgrading regularly for the faster processor/new features. So what does this really mean?

Microsoft are predicting that this ravenous new operating system will demand the sacrifice of 50,000 extra human lifetimes to keep offices across the EU running. That fifty thousand people are going to be sucked into the thankless task of software support and system administration for no functional gain -- not to bring the benefits of computing to new users, this is simply to keep the wheels turning. It's money for digging holes in a field and then filling them in again: pointless make-work that should be automated out of existence rather than lauded.

The post is a bit of an anti-Microsoft pro-Linux rant, and the comments thread lapses into entirely predictable calls for everyone to join the Church of Scientology, sorry, use Apple Macs. But there's a good point; are all 'jobs' really worth doing? How much human potential is wasted doing what are essentially unnecessary tasks?

I've often wondered about the overall efficiency of the IT industry; what proportion of time is actually spent of activities which directly advance the mission of the business? I suspect the figure is alarmingly low even in the best-run organisations; when it gets to the badly-run ones I wonder if it approaches zero. I'm talking about real horror stories such as some of those mentioned in The Daily WTF, or organisations where entire projects are routinely abandoned part-way through, or where backstabbing political types deliberately engineer the failure of projects in order to set up rivals as fall-guys.