Does he have any regrets? “Not at all,” he says. “Quite the opposite, actually. I’m very happy with feeling that I’ve done the right thing.” He adds: “I mean, if I’d started a company, that wouldn’t have been because I wanted to start a company. I concentrated on the technical side because that’s what I wanted to do.”

My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine.

This is my view of management as administration—as a service corps that helps the talented individuals that build and sell products do their jobs better. Attempting to see management as the ultimate decision makers demotivates the smart people in the organization who, without the authority to do what they know is right, will grow frustrated and leave. And if this happens, you won’t notice it, but you’ll be left with a bunch of yes-men, who don’t particularly care (or know) how things should work, and the company will only have one brain – the CEO’s. See what I mean about “it doesn’t scale?”

I work at a real estate office. We primarily sell houses that were foreclosed on by lenders. We aren't involved in the actual foreclosures or evictions - anonymous lawyers in the cloud somewhere is tasked with the paperwork - we are the boots on the ground that interacts with the actual walls, roofs and occasional bomb threat.

When the lender forecloses - or is thinking of foreclosing - on a property one of the first things that happens is they send somebody out to see if there is actually a house there and if there is anybody living there who needs to be evicted. Lawyers are expensive so they send a real estate agent or a property preservation company out to check. There is the occasional discovery of fraud where there was never a house on the parcel to begin with, but such instances are rare. Sometimes this initial visit results in discovering a house that has burned down or demolished, is abandoned or occupied by somebody who has absolutely no connection with the homeowner. Sometimes the houses are discovered to be crack dens or meth labs, sometimes the sites of cock or dog fighting operations, or you might even find a back yard filled with a pot cultivation that can't be traced back to anybody because it was planted in yet another vacant house in a blighted neighborhood. The house could be worth less than zero - blighted to the point where you can't even give it away (this is a literal statement, I have tried to give away many houses or even vacant lots with no takers over the years) or it could be a waterfront mansion in a gated golf community worth well over seven figures that does not include the number "one". Sometimes they are found to have been seized by the IRS, the local tax authority, the DEA or the US Marshal. Variety is the rule. The end results are the law.

Scientists have known for decades that the human brain has trouble simultaneously processing more than one stream of information. A growing body of more recent research has reinforced the notion there are serious cognitive challenges posed by various kinds of multitasking.

There was, however, a hitch. People accustomed to working for subsistence reacted in an unexpected way to higher wages. Once they earned enough for food, shelter and clothing, they felt satisfied, and they quit to enjoy their leisure, which was, after all, a novelty to most of them. It had to be taken away if capitalism was to grow at top speed. What if people were given motives to buy luxuries – things they didn’t absolutely need? Then no one would ever feel content. Who would eat with a pewter spoon if he could aspire to a silver one? Who would wear linsey-woolsey if she could toil a few hours longer and buy silk? Work could again be endless.

But luxuries are not a matter of life and death, and they left room for a new kind of doubt. Freed from absolute necessity, the growing middle classes were able to consider work for its own sake. Was it good in itself? If it seemed tedious, was a nicer spoon sufficient compensation?