I became a programmer in 1988. There was no email  really at the time but it was still chaotic. (Email definitely made it more so.)  Administrative staff efficiency was boosted 10x by things like spreadsheets and word processing so they individually became more responsible for a larger number of tasks.   BUT each output still had to be verified by hand either by proofreading or checking the math with a hand calculator before it went up the chain to the director. There were way more things to worry about for the average clerk... instead of having one set of numbers with their name on it a day, they had 10... each represented an opportunity for mistakes or failure. Programmers became blue collar workers with production quotas.  I went from working on a single project at a time to 4 or 5 simultaneously. In addition to becoming support for all the projects I had completed that were in their implementation phase.  The social atmosphere in offices evaporated overnight... there was just more work to do, ironically.  Water cooler gab sessions disappeared. People started breaking down on the job and getting clinically symptomatic. One poor woman started obsessively cleaning her work area with bleach any time some stood near her desk. It became an anti-social, zombie world of wide eyed stress victims.  Truly horrible.  There was no oversight by management as their jobs had not changed that much, remaining outside the digital production loop.

I became a programmer in 1988. There was no email  really at the time but it was still chaotic. (Email definitely made it more so.)  Administrative staff efficiency was boosted 10x by things like spreadsheets and word processing so they individually became more responsible for a larger number of tasks.   BUT each output still had to be verified by hand either by proofreading or checking the math with a hand calculator before it went up the chain to the director. There were way more things to worry about for the average clerk... instead of having one set of numbers with their name on it a day, they had 10... each represented an opportunity for mistakes or failure. Programmers became blue collar workers with production quotas.  I went from working on a single project at a time to 4 or 5 simultaneously. In addition to becoming support for all the projects I had completed that were in their implementation phase.  The social atmosphere in offices evaporated overnight... there was just more work to do, ironically.  Water cooler gab sessions disappeared. People started breaking down on the job and getting clinically symptomatic. One poor woman started obsessively cleaning her work area with bleach any time some stood near her desk. It became an anti-social, zombie world of wide eyed stress victims.  Truly horrible.  There was no oversight by management as their jobs had not changed that much, remaining outside the digital production loop.

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