The joke
The oldest interview question, asked by the thing most likely to make it hard to answer. The candidate's ambition has shrunk to one word.
The irony
For about a century the job has been how organisations buy work: lots of tasks bundled into one role, with a title, a place on the chart and a salary. Ambition meant a bigger title. If the bundle comes apart, "where do you see yourself?" stops being about climbing a ladder. It becomes about what you can do that someone needs, and whether a machine can do it too.
So what?
The flagship paper argues that the unit of change is the task, and the bundle called a job is coming apart. We also set out the case against, and it bites hardest here. People may lose bargaining power when they're described as a set of capabilities. And if the small tasks go, so do the apprenticeships where people learned the trade. We don't think those worries have been answered yet.
If your job came apart into tasks tomorrow, which ones would you fight to keep? Tell us in the comments, or respond to the paper.
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