January 1, 2001

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Did Internet Time Really Change Our Work Culture?

By Chris Murphy

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hen it comes to choosing a symbol for the insanity of Internet time's work culture, there are only two real candidates: stock options and cell phones.

Cell phones symbolized the need to be always working, always accessible, always multitasking. Stock options provided the reason to do it: If you kept that cell phone on around the clock today, then tomorrow you just might be rich enough to never have to work again.

The gold-rush mentality of Internet stock options may have lost its luster, but don't be surprised if it returns in another guise, says Jeanne Harris, who has been studying E-business managers as a senior research fellow for consulting firm Accenture. "In every generation, there's some cool industry that has an impossible workload, and lots of people flock to it," Harris says. "You work your tail off, hope for a big payoff, and if it doesn't work out, well, you're young, you can start over."

Harris points to investment banking in the 1980s and corporate law in the 1970s as professions that emerged as the path to striking it rich for the people who could tough out the pace and pressure. "In 1900, entrepreneur shopkeepers were sleeping in their stores," she says.

Paul Cooper knows that hard-work reality well, having spent the past five years patiently building his Internet company, Perceptual Robotics Inc. The company has some of the laid-back trappings that became cliché for Internet offices--while interviewing a job candidate once, Cooper realized he'd been twirling a squirt gun throughout the conversation. But lately, he believes prospective employees are hip to the fact that just signing up with any Internet company and working long hours won't guarantee success. "A lot of times prospective employees will have done a lot of due diligence on our company," he says. "There's a certain cautionary approach by employees that wasn't there 18 months ago."

Harris says that the people regretting the endless hours they sacrificed to an Internet business are those who were motivated by getting rich quick. And she's not so sure the lessons of today's downturn will last that long. "All it might take is a few hot days on the Nasdaq for everyone to forget it again," she says.

Internet time, here we go again.

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Illustration by Brian Raszka

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