My childhood friends started saying that anyone working after noon on Friday is disorganized and I think it’s beautiful.
It don’t matter how organized I am, my boss sees I’m done by noon on a friday he’ll give me more service calls, shop time or some other job to do.
Wow, Sounds like you really need to work on your time management skills.
That’s where you’re going wrong, you still need to pretend you’re doing work
That’s why you develop the talent of looking busy while not doing shit.
That’s not the type of job they are referring to.
They’re referring to jobs where you have overarching goals and deliverables but aren’t logging actions to the event, or to the hour.
I’ve had jobs like yours and steady, dependable, maintainable pace is the way to get through the week. Don’t over promise, don’t look available for random new tasks.
At my current gig I have tasks issued at the 2 week level, and aside from very rare requests for assistance or discussion, I’m left to my to-do list, and my predetermined commitments. If I consistently meet my commitments, and show up for scheduled meetings, no one gives a shit when I actually work. It’s great but requires the right environment.
Must be nice to not have billable hours to worry about…
It is. You should try to move to a career where you sell the results of your labor, not the time it takes to achieve them. Easier said than done, I know. Good luck!
I think I would have to get a govt job in my career path to be able to do that. I’ve considered it, but idk if I really want to or not.
Until recent times, I’ve always thought a govt job was a good thing to have.
Still is, but the constant threat of government shutdowns, in the US at least, as of late, make me feel you need to live below your means and keep a decent chunk of 3 to 6 months pay, because you could suddenly be without pay for a good chunk of time because some idiots think they score political points, or will get their way, by hurting citizens.
That’s a very good point… it seems like every time the national budget is up for renewal, those Republican clowns threaten to fuck everyone over. Bastards, the lot of them!
How about also, “Wow, seems like you need to work on your resource planning skills,” when a manager tries to demand unpaid overtime?
I’d straight up tell a boss that asked for unpaid overtime that their failure to allocate resources is money out of my pocket if and only if you want to hear from the DoL.
Unfortunately, many jobs that do this are salaried exempt.
Now, whether they are miss categorized is a different story. That’s why my wife’s old workplace is going to get some attention from the IRS and DOL when she finishes her month’s notice.
Normalize I ionizing so you can have more frank discussions with management with more protection.
My coworkers give me shit for not working late all the time. Like, I work late when I absolutely have to or get permission to make up missed time. I refuse to stay just because lol.
At my last job, I would clock-watch like a kid in school and bolt out of there when it got to be 5. No fucking way was I staying there any longer than I had to.
Soon I’m going to be part of our safety management team, I respect this type of attitude. I don’t want all of our employees being exhausted all day, that’s dangerous. Go home, get rest, relax, come back 100% tomorrow. Any other attitude is unsustainable and irresponsible. I do appreciate the need to SOMETIMES work overtime. I’d really like to understand the positive feedback loop that’s involved with excessive overtime but that’s not my specific field of study.
Same tho. Like, I do my job well when I am expected to work and work over when absolutely necessary. I think that’s good enough lol.
Them mofos need to get a fuggin life
Ikr??
I had someone boast that they had all their vacation days at the end of the year because they were so “devoted”. I just said it seems they have bad time management since this time off was included in schedules.
So very illegal around here.
Is here too. So they had to take a whole month off in one go due to bad planning of holiday time.
what a tool
I end up with a lot of extra because I get comp time instead of overtime and we’re critically understaffed.
Not a meme.
that is true
true that is
Is that true?
Here’s my view as an executive, if my folks regularly add hours to their day/week to get their job done they’re not good at their job. If they’re good at their job they know how to prioritize and they also know how to optimize and automate constantly so they can do more with less. They also do their form of zero base reporting or zero base budgeting constantly to get rid of what was once important that no longer is.
To be fair in senior leadership a 40 hour week probably isn’t going to happen but you should swing between 55 hours and 30 hours depending on the week and average it to the mid to high 40s.
I suspect this isn’t going to be a popular post, and I accept your down votes but would also like to hear your contrary view along with it if you don’t mind.
I’d say there’s also something to be said about an overbearing workload. If everyone is constantly struggling to get things done in time then more staff could be needed. But yeah, if it’s the same ones over and over and only them, then investigating why makes sense.
If the majority of the people the majority of the time have the same result then it’s the system not the people.
So yeah it could be a systemic issue, it’s my job to prevent or correct that.
Look to the managers. They often suck, and shit rolls downhill.
Agreed! Luckily they’re fairly easy to replace as long as you don’t build systems that won’t allow them to fail.
A decade or more before COVID my favorite tool was to let everyone work from home. Those that sucked at their job wouldn’t get anything done. HR would just ask we bring them all in and I’d refuse. If they can’t be trusted to work without supervision they can’t be trusted to work with it.
Now keep in mind we have to be reasonable people and not driving our people beyond reasonableness.
Now keep in mind we have to be reasonable people and not driving our people beyond reasonableness.
Ditch your suite, and go into executive exclusive consultancy.
Just paraphrase the quoted section for each individual thick skull, and maybe teach them that softening the skin around your eyes and giving the beleaguered high performers bringing feedback a knowing look doesn’t violate business needs.
Then you won’t have to worry about posts starting with “as an executive” going wrong.
Well, no not really, but I know a board that needs to internalize that sentiment.
The problem is you need a executive body that already agrees with you to select you from their choices of consultant. We’re not rational creatures and are our personal biases make it so we’re more likely to hire the consultant that reflects our preconceived ideas
I’m not sure why you got a down vote for saying someone should help change the whole system but here is an up vote to help fix it.
And bottom line that won’t work. It won’t because American organizations are dictatorships and dictatorships always end up that way. I do what I can to fight it but I know my efforts have limited impact outside of my departments.
For some “light” reading, try The Doctors Handbook and Cultish. Both amazing books that do a great job outlining why the systems work the way they do and changing the system is what’s needed to change the default output.
Germany to an extent and some Nordic countries do a good job of this on paper. I can’t say I’ve read enough to speak intelligently about their solutions though.
if my folks regularly add hours to their day/week to get their job done they’re not good at their job
Or they have too much work
In a broken or toxic system, yup that very much could be it.
I can see that you’re engaging thoughtfully and in good faith, but that’s a pretty glaring omission from your original post.
Even in organizations that are healthy in many ways for most people, there can still be people who are stretched thin and don’t feel empowered to throttle their workload for whatever reason.
Culture for most people begins and ends at their boss. And if they don’t feel empowered it’s often because of their boss and the culture their boss creates.
This topic like most are more nuanced than this, sometimes it’s that person’s own history and issues and not the bosses, like maybe past locations are childhood and so on. But this things aren’t really something a boss can do anything about. The boss is responsible for creating a healthy environment that encourages healthy boundaries and the measurement is that they are getting the results from the majority of the people the majority of the time.
Is the measurement that they’re getting the results, or is it that they aren’t working extra hours? “Getting the results from the majority of the people the majority of the time” is exactly how I’d expect an executive to handwave employees burning out due to the kind of environment we’re talking about. Not everybody is going to manifest visible problems at the same time, so it will just look like a handful “not working out” every once in awhile, which is to be expected.
It could describe a healthy environment equally well… But my point is just that your formulation (“Results from the majority of the people the majority of the time”) doesn’t seem to me to have the ability to distinguish between a healthy and a toxic environment.
The phrase applies to negative results not positive ones because the rest of the phrase is it’s not the people it’s the system which implies a problem not a good result. Going through all the details of the system is more than I’m willing to type. If you’d like to know more these are a few of my favorite resources.
Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
Beyond Command and Control by John Seddon
First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham
The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman
Dare to Lead by Brene Brown
The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker
You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Oh, sorry for misunderstanding you. I’m used to “getting results” as referring to achieving measurable business objectives, but the meaning changes completely if you meant the opposite, and I’m not sure I follow what you’re saying in that case.
Thanks for the recommendations. I will look at those.
I know lots of senior management and companies that only do a 40 hour work week. if you are doing 55 there is too much work for the staff employed.
It’s a swing, see, 30 - 55. In 2023 I averaged 46 hours a week with a low of 30 hours and a high of 57 hours. That’s excluding the 5 partial weeks due to PTO and the full weeks off due to PTO and holiday weeks. I feel this for me is a healthy amount.
If you want to put in more time, thats on you obviously. But I see CEO/CFO and othe4 senior management doing 40, and employees doing the same. it has to be driven top down as a culture. Thankfully I’m in BC so management/salary gets extra hours paid, but I still don’t want them.
You’re right, for sure.
But also you mention the petty tyrants, keep in mind they demand from us what they voluntarily give. When executives associate dedication with 45 hours week averages they demand we show dedication too.
I think there’s something serious to be said for even executives attempting to move all of our society towards a shorter work week. Though I acknowledge that that doesn’t fall into something any one person can do. I also am not sure whether it’s more likely to arrive top down or bottom up.
I think this is a great point. One thing I haven’t mentioned is I’m clear with my folks if it only takes 20 hours to get the job done they can do whatever they want with the rest of the time, they’re exempt afterall. I’ve only had one person fully take me up on it and he was referred to as 7’ Jesus. To be clear he was 6’6” but I guess rounding was fine. And he only worked about 25 hours a week for me but killed it with what I needed and was happy.
Most people work about what I do but they know they can take time for themselves wherever and regularly do.
One person has a new born and doing half Fridays for the foreseeable future which I think is great. I encouraged more but that’s all she wants.
Free advice: Don’t do unpayed overtime and it will regulate itself. I work 36h/week and if there was too much work planned for me in a 2 week sprint I use the overtime to get a free Friday now and then.
Everything above 40h/week is unhealthy, at least for me, it is! In the near future I will ask for 32h/week; had that in a previous job and it was fantastic.
I sort of do that and have most of my career with my people. If I’m aware they’ve put in a bunch of hours I’ll ask them to take time off on me. I’m sure I’m not always aware and I know it’s against company policy but I’ve never been busted for it. But I don’t make it an official policy just to stay on the safe side of company policy. I’m sure if someone found out and complained I’d not be able to do it anymore.
Are you hiring!?
Once the hiring freeze is over we should have two positions in one of my departments open. Both requiring heavy automation, AI, analytics skills.
Important question: Pulumi or Terraform?
For me, it’s very much cyclical: when there is a project going, there are so many people counting on you that pretty much every minute counts, and the cost of mistakes is always high. It’s during these times that time management skill is critical and you need people on the team who’s job is to manage everybody’s time and make sure things gets done, but even with that, the long hours are unavoidable. I don’t think it’s something to brag about, it’s the nature of the job.
But when there is no project going, it feels like there is really not much to do all day, sometimes even the task of finding things to do is a struggle, so you do whatever you want until the next project starts.
Aren’t you taking a break from movies?
From acting.
Producing is still work.
I always wondered how bragging about how long you worked was considered by some as a good thing. The “higher ups” must have used some fancy tricks to get people to think that way. It never worked on me though :)
I always wondered how bragging about how long you worked was considered by some as a good thing.
Somebody invented “Employee of the Month” and our competitive habits took over.
I never thought about this before, but if I worked somewhere and they gave me an ‘employee of the month’ award, it would piss me off because it would make me feel like I was being a kissass somehow.
Management was handing out bullshit busywork recently, and some people were complaining. Then some guy was like “they pay my salary, so I do whatever they want!”
What kind of bullshit wage slave mentality is that? I am the vendor in this scenario, my employer is paying for the privilege of using my services. There can be terms and conditions from both parties of that deal, and if they’re incompatible the deal is off.
Ah I have the attitude of “you’re free to pay me engineer money to do this, but I’m leaving at 4 whether I was productive or doing weird bullshit you decided on.“
Sure, if there’s a business need for cleaning the office toilets I’ll stop coding and do it for a day.
In this case it’s “everyone needs to spend a few weeks getting points in the training portal, we don’t care what you do in there as long as you get points”. This clearly doesn’t fulfill any business need, people just do whatever BS is the least effort per point. And as you might expect from an internal training portal, spending 20 minutes in that thing makes me want to stab myself.
Again, if there’s a business need for it that’s a different story, but useless mandates just to jerk people around are a deal breaker.
Ok that’s fair. I’m an engineer and I’ve told my line workers consistently that I’ll never ask them to do something I wouldn’t be willing to do, and at times I do have to help out because shit happens when you’ve got a skeleton crew. Hell I spend some days fabricating my designs.
And yeah I’d love good training. Teaching me actionable skills. Or just send me to grad school or give me a subscription to my professional organization and let me read their magazine on the job. Hell, throw IEEE in there, they’ve always got something to say. But no I’ve spent days doing the training portal bullshit on everything from “here’s how to deal with the fact that technically you’re an arms trafficker, don’t do treason and don’t think about how you’re a legitimate military target” to “watch a too damn long video about workplace sexual harassment that was clearly not written by anyone who’s ever seen a factory floor” and it just made me want to bash my brain in.
See, those are needed for compliance/CYA. That has business value, so I can work with that. What I’m referring to here is just training on useless stuff for the sake of racking up points.
Modern day life is a competition, people always want to “1 up” the previous person. This is prevalent in society, don’t overthink it
Guessing you weren’t desperate to please someone. Gotta kiss ass to move up!
I think people believe it is a sign you are striving to excel or that you care about the work you are doing.
In my case I think I talk about how much overtime I work because I got insecurities about my productivity drilled into me as a child with undiagnosed ADHD. Constantly being told you don’t work hard enough regardless of the effort you put in will give you some weird hangups. I think subconsciously its about needing external validation that the time you put in was adequate, or insecurity around ‘work ethic’
I can relate to that. I’m extremely glad I broke that habit. They told me when they needed me. I did what needed to be done within reasonable expectations. My failure past that point is on workload
My time management is great. I do my job and the job of the person underneath me, because we can’t find anyone worth a damn.
Make sure you highlight this in your one on one discussions with your manager and get compensated. You’re doing two jobs- your employer should not be taking advantage of you. Get paid my friend.
Nawh he’s the problem, complain? Attitude problem. We’ll find a new guy for half the salary and not tell him what he’s getting into.
Nah, we document every fuck up, and sit him down for a come to Jesus moment
Are you all looking for work now? Lol.
I actually had to do something like that with a co worker once, we hired a lemon and nobody believed us that he didn’t do any work lol.
I honestly work at a company that would fit most ideals for the average anti-work/work-reform subscriber.
Unlimited PTO, with minimum PTO usage requirements. Free medical. They pay for my gym membership. They pay for tampons for my household. Full time remote. I hold equity in the company. Annual performance bonuses. And they disclose the financials of just about everything to employees. It’s pretty wild
Ooo wee
What about people that complain about how long they work (yeah, I do have some suboptimal time management skills, and I’m a little sensitive about it)?
Better yet, offer to help them with their time management. That way, it’s a positive and friendly offer, not an overt criticism. And it jams in a little more condescension.
My CW gets to work at 630 am despite having absolutely no reason to do so as the role she does doesn’t start until 8 and she’s just there to check people in, and stays late to sanitize her desk every day. I wander in at 829 and clock out at 423. Fuck it. I’m in a union for a reason.
My time management is poor because my project managers is even worse
Do you brag about your long hours, or do you complain about the lack of predictability from management? Only the former matches the statement in the quote.
Bragging is subjective.
Some take my bitching and moaning that I was up all night working on ____ because the project is a complete mess and they wanted it today as “bragging”.
Its performance review time, i hate myself and rent is expensive.
But my work is only measured in the time I sell them.
Snark vs snark. Just say “wow thats crazy haha”
