The Stripy Strudel's Journal

Some work just for money, others achieve immediate satisfaction from doing the job, and for others still it's important that their work is of use to someone. Isn't it nice to know that a person becomes a little more happy, content and healthy from what you do for them? It's easy to feel something like this when you work as a hairdresser: a man comes shaggy-haired and leaves with a trendy haircut, saying thank you to you as he looks in the mirror. It gets harder if you repair hairdressing equipment. A man wouldn't have his haircut without this work as well, but he doesn't experience it directly.

There seem to be different kinds of services: some of them are rendered to a person directly, and some are only indirect. For a more detailed classification of services by this principle let's consider the following set of rules.

1. Services rendered to a person directly are first order services.
2. Services rendered to subjects rendering nth order services are services of order n+1.
3. Production of goods is comparable to rendering of services. For example, baking bread is rendering a first order services.
4. Performing work as an employee is considered rendering a service to the employer if the nature of the service is substantially different from what the employer (the enterprise) renders to its consumers. For example, an employed hairdresser renders a first order service, but a packer at a confectionery renders a second order service to the enterprise because this service (packing) is different from the service rendered by the enterprise to its consumers (supply of finished confectionery articles).
5. Reselling of goods or services without introducing a qualitative change in their nature doesn't increase the order of service.

I work for SWsoft, Inc, a company that makes web hosting automation software. Here is how I analyze the order of my service:

1. When browsing a website, an internet user consumes first order services from the content author. (Of course, there are specialized websites for those who render specific services of various orders, but our web hosting automation software are not specifically tailored for hosting of such websites, so this fact doesn't increase the order of the service.)
2. The author uses a web hoster's service to host the website. This is a second order service. The end user mentioned above doesn't experience this service directly.
3. The web hoster routinely uses the automation software made by our company. Even though sometimes content authors use it as well, it's targeted at those who sell web hosting services, and contains specialized tools for this. Therefore, the web hoster consumes a third order service by purchasing our software.
4. Finally, I personally render a fourth order service to the company by working as a software architect. My output is not finished software, it's substantially different from what the company offers to the consumers, so my services are of the fourth order.

This concludes the chain because there aren't any special goods or services targeted at software architects for web hosting automation products. Even though there are products targeted at software architects in general (such as Rational software), they aren't specific to architects in this particular branch and therefore have a lower order.

The higher the order of services, the narrower the specialization of labor. Higher orders become possible only with overall advancement of the industry characterized by increased branching of trades. I'm not sure if it's for good or bad, but I'm sure that there wasn't anything like fourth order services a couple hundred years ago. High order services make the service circulation chain longer. For example, in a small 19th century town the shoemaker would fix the barber's shoes, and the barber would shave the shoemaker's beard. The chain was two persons long. The distance could be bigger between some other professions, but not a lot. It's much harder now to trace the circulation of services between a web hosting automation software architect and a lawyer in an auditing company.

Back to the original topic: the opportunity for satisfaction from realizing that your work is useful quickly diminishes with the growth of the order of services. Starting with something like the third order, it's nearly impossible, so those who render such services have to look out for other ways of getting satisfaction. For example, to me the work itself is interesting as an abstract task that I'm constantly solving.

The original entry in Russian features a poll: Your work. It is possible to vote in the poll after logging in to LiveJournal; registration of LiveJournal accounts is free.

What kind of work do you do? Examples: fixing televisions, writing articles for a financial magazine, driving a subway train.

What order are the services you render? (1…6)

What is the primary source of the satisfaction the work brings you?

• Knowing that I'm doing a useful job.
• The very process of working.
• Knowledge, experience, or physical form I gain.
• Communication with colleagues, partners, clients.
• Money.
• My work doesn't bring me satisfaction.

Please don't vote if you haven't read all of the above. It's also interesting if you trace your service chain in a comment like I traced mine.

UPDATE: The average service order according to the poll participants is suspiciously close to π.

По-русски: Трудиться на благо тех, кто трудится на благо народа