Just one hundred years ago we could see O’Henry’s little secretaries typing for ten hours a day. Weak and deprived of rights, they could be easily dismissed, experience sexual harassment or encounter health problems. They had nobody to be protected by, nobody to turn to. Dark rooms, bad air, and sitting for whole day. It was cruel, but innocent world. Hours, after work, spent in front of windows of an underwear store, cheap food and little dark rooms with gas lighting in the evenings. When she stepped outside her office, she forgot where she worked, she stayed alone with herself, she was on her own planet, she was in her own world.

Today we can see the same girl in front of the same underwear store with a mobile phone in her hand giving orders to bank or suppliers. Life has changed. Rhythm has changed. Conditions have changed. For good or bad? Our little hero can’t be dismissed anymore, just because boss’s wife doesn’t like her. She can’t be forced to make things she doesn’t want to do. There are days when she works for 16 hours, twice more than she should, but she is paid for these hours. Her office is cozy, bright, and comfortable. She can be promoted. She can be s

New technology has raised productivity growth and it has also improved the quality of jobs in organizations with high performance work systems. Computerized offices provide us with economy of time and place (no need in dusty archives anymore) in preserving and finding information. In short, the combination of technology and high performance workplace practices leads to more skilled work and high quality jobs for workers in different fields (Eileen Appelbaum, 2001). But there is a dark side as well.

Obviously, these simple solutions do not solve our main problems - working for many hours and of lack of privacy during and after the working day, but they certainly make our existence more pleasant and bright.

At its best, this is the world of a shared capitalism, where employees have a real stake in their company and everyone contributes and benefits from success. At its worse, this is an insecure rat race, where employees work long hours for fear of losing their job, and hope of winning the big promotion or salary increase. And it is not just that low paid unskilled sweatshop put in long hours. The “Live to Work” vision has a consistent logic. It combines high incentives and inequality to create supply pressures for hours of work. It fits a society with highly unequal skills. It has developed in US in response to changes in technology, trade, and institutional developments (Bodin, 2001).

Talking about new advantages of office working conditions it’s important to touch upon the insurance subject and plenty of new employment laws that protect us today. When applying to a new work place we are mostly provided with pension, health insurance, sometimes stock options, and other benefits. In addition there are new laws, which don’t allow to employer to dismiss a person so easily as it was once (recall O’Henry’s hungry girls buying socks for their last few pennies). It’s all to provide us with benefits, training, and a secure future.

There are reasons to believe that a workaholic society will be a belle vie society in the modern knowledge economy. If Live to Work scientists/engineers put in more hours than their Work to Live peers, surely their firms will do betters.

Probably, we should change our approach to business in common. There are two competing visions of the future world of work. “The Live to Work vision is associated with the substitution effect of neoclassical economics. It hold that economic change raises incentives, which increases the marketization of activities, increases hours worked, limits economic security and creates high inequality (Bodin, 2001)”. It is a workaholic vision of paradise – the US of 2000. Israel is approaching it as well.

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