(April 24) – “You’ve probably heard it yourself. Somebody mentions the “new economy.” And depending on which way the NASDAQ composite is blowing that day, somebody else asks, sarcastically, ‘Is there still a new economy?’,” writes Tim Rice in today’s New York Times.
“Of course there is. The new economy isn’t just stock mania. It’s about the new ways of doing business—often, old business—using new information technologies. But not everything new is wonderful. And if the recent stock market uproar has any lasting benefit, it may be the destruction of some new-economy myths—beliefs whose accuracy went unchallenged as long as everyone believed without question that they would get rich.
“The myths, now debunked, include these:
-A goatee confers business acumen.
-Vesting is the young man’s Viagra.
-Everybody loves Take Our Dogs to Work days.
“For now, let’s consider only the last item. In a recent article in The New York Times, Laura M. Holson and Katie Hafner reported signs of worker disillusionment in dot-com land. Evidence included the case of Carla De Luca, a former CNN producer who had gone to work at a Silicon Valley start-up company. De Luca left after growing disenchanted by what she considered a forced-fun work style that included a ‘dogs welcome’ policy.
“A person doesn’t have to dislike dogs to understand why some employees, already doing their best to get along with the other bipeds, might find it beyond the call of commerce to work alongside their colleagues’ animals. Dog lovers, though, tend to have a blind spot on these matters, like a friend of mine who fondly recalled working at a Silicon Valley company with a dog-friendly policy.
“‘People don’t bring pit bulls,’ she said, as if terror were the only criterion for objection. ‘They’re usually big, friendly dogs, like golden retrievers. The worst that’s going to happen is they wag their tails and knock over your coffee.’ Of course, for workers lacking the dog gene, spilled coffee may be precisely the point. (Or at least part of the point. Allergies, odors, saliva, fleas, the effect of shedded fur on an all-black wardrobe—these also figure in.)
“Maybe the issue isn’t really career dogs versus stay-at-homes, though. Instead, the question may be what the panting presence of man’s best friend tells us about a certain school of new-economic thinking.
“Start with the new casualness. Given the dog’s longstanding role in popular culture—Rin Tin Tin, Timmy and Lassie—it’s understandable how canine companionship came to symbolize the good feeling that the new workplaces were meant to have. (For the record: Apple Computer, the archetypal Think Different high-tech company, banned all pets two years ago, in response to a growing number of employee complaints.)
“Then there’s the renegade free-spiritedness implicit in the new, new ways of doing business. This may trace back to that guy in college — since Woodstock, every campus has had at least one — who never seems to be in class but can always be found on the central quad teaching his bandanna-wearing mixed-breed to catch a Frisbee. We now know that Frisbee Man was a Web entrepreneur in training.
“Maybe the key to the dog code lies in the mathematics of Internet time. Dogs pack seven years of their lives into a single calendar year. Those working at Internet companies like to think they’re packing seven years of their lives into a single day. The dot-com mantra — 24/7/365 — speaks either to a constancy of purpose or the inability to get one’s work done during normal business hours.”