Efficient work force

Janne mentioned yesterday that the head of a recycling company was eager to hire former farmers. Over the last couple of decades a lot of farmers in Denmark have had to stop because small farms cannot produce enough surplus to give a decent income. They used to large or medium farms, now they're simply too small. So many farmers have had to find a job.

A similar wave hit the country when industrialisation started kicking in and women in large numbers began joining the work force. I remember reading about egg-packers in a factory in literature classes in high school. The point is that those women were also valued because they were used to work for themselves and thus act responsibly and conscientious.

I think there's a parallel here to open source developers who have run and nurtured their own projects. It shows that they care.

Whether there really is a difference, I don't know. I haven't met that many non-open source developers and in any case I'd think that discipline is much more important in non-creative factory work.