I have one of the most exciting jobs one can have, being an academic, and still in Spain the system does as much as it can to make it a tedious toil.
We are always swamped in huge piles of bureaucracy, it's difficult not to be caught in some evaluation or other that requires you to spend months devoting countless hours to mindless paperwork (for the last one, I literally submitted a more than 1800-page PDF. I'm not exaggerating, I just checked). There are so many evaluations (6-year research evaluations from the Spanish government, research complement evaluations from the regional government, evaluations of research centers, evaluations of the PhD program, 5-year Docentia teaching evaluations, accreditations for the countless positions in the scale, with the subsequent evaluation for the position itself...) that we are subject to several a year, each with their own CV format and their own forms incompatible with the rest and asking for different things. And then there is the day-to-day bureaucracy where buying a computer can mean filling 10-15 different forms.
Paperwork takes most of our time and being able to do some "real work" feels like a reward that one has to earn. Still the real work is rewarding, but I wish it were like in other countries (say northern Europe, the US...) where real work can be most of the time. (And why didn't I migrate? Because of attachment to my place and my loved ones, like many people here. If work were my main driver in life I'd have been out of here long ago).
As for the experiment, I hope it achieves success but I wouldn't hold my breath. Under the current political climate, I'm afraid even if it's an undisputable success, the moment a right-wing government is voted to office they will tear it down because it's "communism", "handouts", "will turn us into Venezuela" or something like that. It's difficult to achieve anything with the current political polarization (and the main party that was between both blocs, currently in danger of extinction).
We are always swamped in huge piles of bureaucracy, it's difficult not to be caught in some evaluation or other that requires you to spend months devoting countless hours to mindless paperwork (for the last one, I literally submitted a more than 1800-page PDF. I'm not exaggerating, I just checked). There are so many evaluations (6-year research evaluations from the Spanish government, research complement evaluations from the regional government, evaluations of research centers, evaluations of the PhD program, 5-year Docentia teaching evaluations, accreditations for the countless positions in the scale, with the subsequent evaluation for the position itself...) that we are subject to several a year, each with their own CV format and their own forms incompatible with the rest and asking for different things. And then there is the day-to-day bureaucracy where buying a computer can mean filling 10-15 different forms.
Paperwork takes most of our time and being able to do some "real work" feels like a reward that one has to earn. Still the real work is rewarding, but I wish it were like in other countries (say northern Europe, the US...) where real work can be most of the time. (And why didn't I migrate? Because of attachment to my place and my loved ones, like many people here. If work were my main driver in life I'd have been out of here long ago).
As for the experiment, I hope it achieves success but I wouldn't hold my breath. Under the current political climate, I'm afraid even if it's an undisputable success, the moment a right-wing government is voted to office they will tear it down because it's "communism", "handouts", "will turn us into Venezuela" or something like that. It's difficult to achieve anything with the current political polarization (and the main party that was between both blocs, currently in danger of extinction).