I'd Bitch, But I'm Comfortable In My Chair

[LK]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36152262/ns/business-washington_post/

[bhodi]

Ignoring it's a total fluff piece...

In the high-salary realm of management consulting firms, which hire hundreds of young adults annually, executives say the youngest employees are far more likely to request flexibility to work from home or during off-hours.

Working from home or off hours does not equal laziness, which is what they're trying to imply.

[schild]

Let's try this again, to be more... correct.

Working from home means avoiding meetings. This is huge. I probably get twice as much done in half the time.

[Prospero]

Yeah fuck them. Perish the thought people decide that family is more important than vacationing in Cabo every year.

[01101010]

Strangely, ever since we started going web-based with psychological assessments which allow me to fix shit here at home, I find myself working more and getting shit done well before the deadlines. Problem is I am still required to go into work everyday. Thursdays especially due to all day meetings. Shockingly, they have begun to pass around an attendance sheet at a few of these "team" meetings which was implemented by some outside source. Its like fucking high school again - hell I never even took attendance when I taught at Miami. Blah... that article makes me weep a little.

[Merusk]

C students run the world, and C students have to put in extra hours to get shit done.  They also fail upwards because they're the ones who learned how to work people in school.  Look around your typical office.  How many of the folks who actually get shit done get promoted?  How many who are marginal and have a tenuous grasp of anything but the 'big picture' and handwave 'petty details' like regulations or company policy are their bosses?    It's a depressing number in all the corporate offices I've ever worked in.

[Chimpy]

Shit, the people who fail miserably and have no concept of anything, especially the big picture are the ones I always see failing up.

[MahrinSkel]

While you're busy getting things done, they're busy taking credit and dodging blame.  The higher you look, the more that's the defining attribute of success.  Anybody who is just good at their job can have a bad day, and if they haven't set up a fall guy for it (having been too busy trying to actually *do* something), that's the end of their career path.

--Dave

[Righ]

Shit, the people who fail miserably and have no concept of anything, especially the big picture are the ones I always see failing up.

In some companies (such as a former state telecoms company somewhere near mainland Europe) it is an actual corporate philosophy. You promote the imbeciles who fuck up at their job until they are in a position where they cannot cause any more damage. As a result, senior management is a vast pool of bumbling fools who spend their time in meetings that do nothing and on expensive business trips that keep them out of the way. Every few years they cull the ranks and eject these burkes with fabulous golden parachutes, whereupon they go on to join the competition, only to be given roles where they can and do cause terrifying amounts of damage. It is a very successful system.

[Jeff Kelly]

I actually tried to construct a sensible reply to the msnbc article. Then I decided it to be to much work and I stopped bothering 

Seriously that piece is one of the more stupid things I have read this month.

The premise is wrong: Working longer hours != a strong work ethic. First a lot of older people I know are at work for 60 hours or more but that doesn't mean that they are working 60 hours or more each week. I'd rather only be at work for 45 hours each week and actually work for those 45 hours (fuck meetings btw) than being at work for 60 hours and then wasting the time on extended lunch breaks, surfing the web, pointless meetings and chatting up the secretarial staff.

"Boo hoo young people don't put in as many hours as we do" Yeah grandpa but we prefer to actually work for those hours we are at work because compared to you we actually want to go home to our family at some point.

Second young people have finally realized that their jobs are never safe, that they could be fired at any moment, that how others evaluate their performance is seldom a real measure of their quality of work. Usually the most lazy ass kisser gets better reviews than the people who actually get any real work done. Even if they are reviewed correctly, if the management decides that it needs to save 5 cents your job will go to a nice young Indian or Turk or South African or someplace else where they currently outsource jobs to.

I think most people under 35 have made similar experiences, absent fathers that worked 50 hours or more to make a living for their family only to be sacked at 50 regardless. A world with no job security whatsoever regardless of your individual performance (which gets harder to measure each year anyway) and everybody knows some people that have put their private lives on the line for a "career" only to be empty handed at 45 or 50 after his job went to someone younger and/or hungrier preferably in Asia and his wife left him with the kids (if he actually got the time to date and get married in the first place)

Only an msnbc piece could try to construct a realistic assessment of modern business life into signs of a lazy and entitled generation. I say that young people have a better sense and a more realistic understanding about business than the older people with "strong work ethics" do. This leads to them focusing their energy on other things. Work smarter not harder. Search for jobs that allow for a better balance between work and life. Don't put up with most of the day to day business stupidity just because it was always done that way. Don't work your ass off for 70 hours each week when it means neglecting family and friends because many of those 70 hours are wasted time anyway and working that hard doesn't mean that you are more likely to keep your job or make a career anyway.

This is a good thing! It means that we might get away from measuring people's performance by how many hours they have clocked and maybe focus more on how to be more efficient and how to bring work into a better balance with life. A very important necessity if we want the young people to actually have a family and kids.

If this is a sign of an entitled or lazy generation then hell yeah let's be lazy and entitled. It's better than being stupid, lonely and poor because you spend all of your money on alimony after your second divorce. But that's just an opinion of somebody from the lazy and entitled generation so don't bother.

[Polysorbate80]

A little devil's advocate here.  My wife and I are both employers, and one of the bigger issues the last few years hasn't been us willing to be flexible for employees, but the employees being flexible for us.

Before you castigate me for being a dick, let me explain.  My wife's company provides care & services for disabled individuals.  She's not asking people to work more than 40 hours a week, but she needs employees able to work on the client's schedule, and do so on a regular basis, since it's vastly less effective for the client's needs to keep rotating different staff in and out.  That's difficult to do when a significant portion of the staff want to pick and choose exactly what hours they work, but those hours don't match client needs.  Edit to add:  and often those hours of availability change from week to week or month to month.

I do sometimes require more than 40 hours a week, but a portion of our work (video production) is event-driven.  The work happens when the events happen, I can't reschedule it.  The company roster has about three times the staff needed to actually work our largest events, and even then it's a struggle much of the time to fill slots in the schedule because so many of them can't or don't want to work at any given time.  The work suffers for it as well, since I'm never sure who's going to be available for a given event and always wind up having retrain folks at the last minute, or fill roles with people who frankly are just unsuited for them.

Minor peeve:  people who get hired on to work and then complain that they're not allowed to take their vacation the very next week to go skiing  

[01101010]

In some companies (such as a former state telecoms company somewhere near mainland Europe) it is an actual corporate philosophy. You promote the imbeciles who fuck up at their job until they are in a position where they cannot cause any more damage. As a result, senior management is a vast pool of bumbling fools who spend their time in meetings that do nothing and on expensive business trips that keep them out of the way. Every few years they cull the ranks and eject these burkes with fabulous golden parachutes, whereupon they go on to join the competition, only to be given roles where they can and do cause terrifying amounts of damage. It is a very successful system.

Problem is they do not teach that anywhere or else I would have taken that course. I completely agree. I guess shit really does float to the top eventually.

[Merusk]

Poly: If your roster has 3x the people needed, fire them all and hire independent contractors.  It's what everyone else does. 

J.K. you're exactly right. I've held that very notion the entirety of my working career, and I'm 36.  My dad was one of those 70+ hour a week guys who got promoted to a divisional President position. He turned a division losing 4mil a year into one making 2 mil in two years.  However, his boss set him up as the fall guy by fudging numbers in a report to stockholders my dad said they couldn't meet.   Dad was scapegoated and fired in year three.  I learned that there's no loyalty, executives are all shits and working so much your kids wonder why you're home before 8pm on a Saturday gets you nothing.

Loyalty? Ha, Fuck that noise. I work for myself, your company just happens to be giving me a paycheck this week.  I'm my own business, and you're my client. It's my own damn fault if I don't have another client to work for or with at the same time.

[Polysorbate80]

Poly: If your roster has 3x the people needed, fire them all and hire independent contractors.  It's what everyone else does. 

Those "independent contractors" would wind up being the same darn kids :P  It's not costing money if they don't work, but it's still irritating to try to find people to work on a Friday evening.

[Yegolev]

Meetings are replaced by teleconferences.  My new boss lives in Charlotte, NC and the rest of the group are spread around the nation.  One lives in Vegas.  One poor bastard lives in Toronto.  I decided to stop going into the office but I am in more meetings than before.  At least I don't have to dress up, nor do I have to lug my laptop around to conference rooms.  Hallway ambushes are a thing of the past, also.

[Strazos]

Maybe affect their pay rates with time differentials, so the more unpopular shifts/times are more lucrative?

[Pennilenko]

Those "independent contractors" would wind up being the same darn kids :P  It's not costing money if they don't work, but it's still irritating to try to find people to work on a Friday evening.

Not really aimed at anyone, just the Friday night comment made me desire to get the following off my chest.

I find it irritating, when an owner of a company asks his employees to work on a Friday night because of short sightedness, poor planning, or bad/unrealistic promise making. There are so many industries that treat their workers like indentured servants. Work to live people, Not live to work.

[rattran]

Maybe affect their pay rates with time differentials, so the more unpopular shifts/times are more lucrative?

Withhold love and affection from them until they're ready to do your bidding.

[Khaldun]

A little devil's advocate here.  My wife and I are both employers, and one of the bigger issues the last few years hasn't been us willing to be flexible for employees, but the employees being flexible for us.

Before you castigate me for being a dick, let me explain.  My wife's company provides care & services for disabled individuals.  She's not asking people to work more than 40 hours a week, but she needs employees able to work on the client's schedule, and do so on a regular basis, since it's vastly less effective for the client's needs to keep rotating different staff in and out.  That's difficult to do when a significant portion of the staff want to pick and choose exactly what hours they work, but those hours don't match client needs.  Edit to add:  and often those hours of availability change from week to week or month to month.

I do sometimes require more than 40 hours a week, but a portion of our work (video production) is event-driven.  The work happens when the events happen, I can't reschedule it.  The company roster has about three times the staff needed to actually work our largest events, and even then it's a struggle much of the time to fill slots in the schedule because so many of them can't or don't want to work at any given time.  The work suffers for it as well, since I'm never sure who's going to be available for a given event and always wind up having retrain folks at the last minute, or fill roles with people who frankly are just unsuited for them.

Minor peeve:  people who get hired on to work and then complain that they're not allowed to take their vacation the very next week to go skiing  

So, do you compensate appropriately for these rather particular requirements? I think it's fine when people who are hiring for demanding positions pay commensurately. What's not cool is people who want employees to not have a normal work-to-life pattern but don't pay substantially better for it. In that case, what they're basically looking for is people who have no choice--and expecting people who have no choice to uncomplainingly accommodate unusual hours or working conditions is unrealistic.

[Azazel]

Based on my knowledge of these CRU positions (in Australia) the pay starts at Minimum Wage, and can scale a little upwards depending on experience, extra qualifications, etc. I applied for one of those positions quite a few years ago, and the gist was basically "you work the hours when we want you to work for the award rate (aka Min Wage)". I chose other ways to spend my time, since I wasn't absolutely fucking deperate - which is the only way I'd have been willing to take that job. Since then I've known others who have worked in that industry, and yeah, it's pretty much the same.

I get the difficulty of covering those sessions, but OTOH, the work is generally shit as is the pay. (Aside from the long overnights of sitting around - hope you have a laptop or book). Nobody wants to be helping a disabled adult person to take a shit on a Friday night for minimum wage. This is why you need such a large pool of casual staff. (I'd guess at least some are students trying to make ends meet?)

[Aez]

Shit, the people who fail miserably and have no concept of anything, especially the big picture are the ones I always see failing up.

In some companies (such as a former state telecoms company somewhere near mainland Europe) it is an actual corporate philosophy. You promote the imbeciles who fuck up at their job until they are in a position where they cannot cause any more damage. As a result, senior management is a vast pool of bumbling fools who spend their time in meetings that do nothing and on expensive business trips that keep them out of the way. Every few years they cull the ranks and eject these burkes with fabulous golden parachutes, whereupon they go on to join the competition, only to be given roles where they can and do cause terrifying amounts of damage. It is a very successful system.

[NiX]

Man, I'd love to telecommute. I see no point to be in this office, even during meetings. And I wouldn't get ridiculous comments from my supervisor like "People think you aren't 'connected' when you listen to your music when doing your work" or "You have your browser open too much", even though we use Google for our email.

[Cyrrex]

I found that the best part about telecommuting is the enhanced multi-tasking capabilities.  I can, for example, achieve several new levels per day on my toon in LOTRO whilst working from home.

[Aez]

It's a monument to corporate inefficiency/dishonesty. Working from home, you can probably get away with 3-4 hours per day instead of 7+ and your boss would never notice.

There's even a movement called the 4 hours work week (4HWW).  It feels too Guru/Marketing/Get-rich-with-out-working but there's a lot of good ideas and products in there:
www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

[murdoc]

I could never work from home. I'd go crazy.

[RhyssaFireheart]

I found that the best part about telecommuting is the enhanced multi-tasking capabilities.  I can, for example, achieve several new levels per day on my toon in LOTRO whilst working from home.

That's fine, as long as you manage to keep your actual work-work up during the business hours.  When you start with the "I'll do that later tonight, I've got time" routine, it's a slow slide into messed up working hours.

I could never work from home. I'd go crazy.

I thought it was great when I started working from home.  No more 2 hour door-to-desk commutes in the morning, just get up and wander across the hall to the home office...  Now I'm praying I find a new job outside the house that forces me to interact with other people face-to-face.  Working from home can be one of the loneliest things to do.  You really lose out on interactions with co-workers (yes, even if you hate them, it makes a difference) and can fall into bad work habits unless you're really disciplined.  At least, that's what's happened with me.  Now sometimes I feel like I have to force myself to leave the house since I'm so used to being here all the time.  And the dog's come to assume I only move between the bedroom and the office with the occasional trip downstairs to let him outside.

[Selby]

I've never been able to work from home.  480-600VAC high power drops and ultra chilled water systems are not standard features of my house.  Not to mention the lifts needed to move the modules around...

[Teleku]

I could never work from home. I'd go crazy.

Exactly the same for me.  I cannot get any work at all done at home.  When I was in college, if I needed to study, I would walk/drive to the school to go study in the library.  When I do on call work on the weekends, I'll actually go to the office on Saturday/Sunday to get work done instead of doing it through remote desktop from home.  There are far to many distractions in my room/apartment/house for me to do anything productive.  Home is for play, work is for work.

[murdoc]

I need the social interactions - good and bad. Agree with all the things both Tele and Rhyssa said, especially the home is for play, work is for work. I'm oncall pretty much 24/7 and unless it's a quick fix or 2am I don't tend to do anything remotely.

[WayAbvPar]

I telecommute two days a week, and I love it. There aren't many things I hate more than sitting in traffic, and getting to do that 40% less is worth it by itself. I get to sleep 2 hours later (since I don't have to shower and commute), can do fun things when I take a break/lunch, and I get as much or more done because I am not such a zombie for large parts of the day. I could do all but about 10% of my job from home, and would do it every day if I could.

[Teleku]

I telecommute two days a week, and I love it. There aren't many things I hate more than sitting in traffic, and getting to do that 40% less is worth it by itself. I get to sleep 2 hours later (since I don't have to shower and commute), can do fun things when I take a break/lunch, and I get as much or more done because I am not such a zombie for large parts of the day. I could do all but about 10% of my job from home, and would do it every day if I could.

This is why I always just move to a place with in walking distance to where ever I work.   

[WayAbvPar]

If I could afford to live near my office I probably wouldn't have to work there.

[Lantyssa]

I could afford to live within walking distance, unfortunately it's at the edge of a ghetto, a train yard, and an interstate.

[Samwise]

I lived within walking distance of work for five years, and I don't miss it even a little bit.

[MahrinSkel]

When you live within walking distance of work, and the burglar alarm goes off at 4 in the morning, guess who gets volunteered to let the cops in?

--Dave