「競爭力」的迷思

今天看到的一段話引起我很深的感觸。

Quote from a slashdot comment under the topic "Internal Microsoft Email about Life at Google"

Re:Who died and made you boss?

(Score:5, Insightful)
by Techguy666 (759128) on Wednesday June 27, @12:21PM (#19664409)

If someone likes working all the time, why not respect that and move on with your life?

As long as it doesn't intrude on my life, I'm all for that. However, if you work 24/7 and our mutual boss wants to know why I'm not accomplishing 20 tasks a day, that gets annoying and your work habit is affecting me. If our mutual boss decides to make you the "norm" and expects everyone to follow suit, then you've created an environment for burnout and your work habit is affecting me. If you get in the habit of working 24/7 and you catch a cold and come in to work anyway, and I catch your cold, your work habit is affecting me. You infect me with a cold and I'm staying home, dammit. You infect other, saner, people and they'll stay home too.

Allowing someone to behave detrimentally in a work environment sets a dangerous precedent because nobody works in a bubble; it changes the work culture to one that benefits the organization unequally over the individual, it creates health risks, and combined, potentially skews a society's economy. That's why I care if *you* work yourself to the bone. You're not only my colleague but you're a barometer of the world around me.

這是個很常見的問題，以公司的角度，只要他們可以將員工設計成可替換的零件，那麼零件的損壞對於公司就沒有重大的影響。如此一來，公司的最佳選擇就是極度壓榨，把健康搞壞也沒問題，再替換就成了。對大公司而言，替換的人選可是排成長列。（我之前的主管就是明證）

但以員工來說，這樣的文化會造成兩難。如上文所述，假定你每週工作七天，一天24小時隨時待命，而共同的老闆質問為何我無法每天完成二十項工作，這就很討厭，你的工作習慣就會影響我。而如果上司決定將同事的態度視為「正常」而要求其他人效法，那麼你就創造了一個讓大家燒乾的環境，那麼你就會影響到我。而如果你因為過度工作而感冒，還堅持來上班而傳染了我，我以及其他被傳染的正常人就得待在家，而這也影響到我。

這種有害的工作習慣先例一開，所有人都會被影響。這把工作文化轉變為對公司有利，但對個人不利。除了健康風險，事實上這也潛在地搞壞了上班族行情。只要有一人這樣做了，那麼他就成為整個環境中評估大家好壞的準繩。

這是個典型的 Prisoner's dilemma（囚徒困境）。如果大家合作，那麼成果對於團體（員工）是最佳的，然而由於總會有人思考自身的最佳利益而非群體的，最終結果反而對團體不利。在目前的台灣，這問題無解，因為我們鼓勵 work harder 而非 work smarter. 這也是為何我們工作時間長而薪水低。這也是為何我們的「競爭力」總是那麼高。廉價勞工誰不要呢？