Why do people waste so much time at work?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32829232

by fredley • 11 years ago

162 214 11 years ago

bbc.co.uk

aapje• 11 years ago

We all know the answer is HN.

sgift2• 11 years ago

HN time is not wasted.

Roritharr• 11 years ago

[citation needed]

sitkack2• 11 years ago

Because if they got their job done and left they would be fired. If they got their job done, they would be given more work. So one takes the maximal amount of time to do a task given the requirement that they be in the office for 8+ hrs a day.

diamondback• 11 years ago

"My only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."

exizt88• 11 years ago

If they have 8 hours of work time and finished their tasks in 6, does that mean they have exhausted their usefulness to the business? Why not spend these 2 hours doing some small miscellaneous tasks?

nicky0• 11 years ago

Laziness

justincormack2• 11 years ago

Often lack of infrastructure, or communication about what needs doing. Traditional businesses are poorly documented, and not transparent, so knowing what you might do and how is often extremely difficult.

_pmf_2• 11 years ago

Why not spend these 2 hours doing some small miscellaneous tasks?

Because managers get a malus for allowing too much non-accountable hours for their managees.

corobo• 11 years ago

Because if you fill those extra 2 hours Bob's managed to accrue with more work Bob will be sure to inject a few more HN/Reddit/etc visits into his 8 hours next time. There's rarely any motivation, gain or benefit in taking on extra work in your standard 9-5 job

LLWM6• 11 years ago

Because now you are responsible for all followups on those small miscellaneous tasks, and those might come up when you don't have two extra hours in the day.

FLUX-YOU2• 11 years ago

Why not spend these 2 hours doing some small miscellaneous tasks?

Because that's scope creep and it can create the expectation that it's part of my job, so then I'll be responsible for it. Down the line, if one of those misc tasks becomes the ire of someone else and my name is attached to it (comment, commit, etc.), they'll contact me further down the line, perhaps when I'm dealing with something of my own. Then, at least, I have to explain that I don't maintain that and in the worst case (which has happened), I have to fight to not be responsible for it right then.

There's a balance in having your name associated with 'things' in a business. Some people might be good at being a know-it-all, being well-known, and handling everything (why aren't they running their own company?), but you'll increase your chances of interruption the more wide-spread your name is.

omouse3• 11 years ago

Yep this exactly. Do you want to do 10x more work for the exact same amount of pay or do you want to stretch out the work by a half hour here and there, get it done but at a good relaxed pace when your creativity can be brought to full bear on the tasks?

Parkinson's Law, which was a sarcastic joke about bureaucracy, only really happens when employees are not engaged in their work or they're forced to be in the same spot for 8+ hours a day. I have 10 things to do within 2 week "sprints". Should I get everything done in a first week (maybe work a few hours on the weekend if need be) and then be tasked with more tasks and not get rewarded for this at all? Or should I just do 5 things the first week and have fun on the weekend and then finish the other 5 things later?

This is why hourly pay and salaries are crap. You aren't getting paid for value; you're getting paid to sit in a chair (even if you work remotely) and you're getting paid so that the competition doesn't hire you away.

nshepperd• 11 years ago

In this respect, entire occupations might be considered phoney - from life coaches to "atmosphere co-ordinators" (people hired to create a party vibe in bars) to "chief learning officers" in the corporate world.

People hired to create atmosphere in bars might be "phoney" in an object-level sense, but as far as their job goes presumably they do provide an actual service to someone, by causing more people to visit the bar.

davidgerard2• 11 years ago

It's still a Bullshit Job. http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

The answer to the BBC news story's question is: "because our jobs increasingly have more and more bullshit."

Anderkent7• 11 years ago

People creating a vibe in pubs doesn't feel like a bullshit job. They're providing a service to other pub goers, making it a more pleasant place.

You can't ignore pleasure and satisfaction of other people when considering a job is useful or not. In the end, those are the goals of anything we do; that the job does it directly rather than indirectly (by say improving industry, which makes life easier, which means people have more free time, which provides happiness/satisfaction) doesn't make it 'bullshit'

Foomandoonian• 11 years ago

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller, 1930

erikb4• 11 years ago

Let's say we all agree that the global amount of resources are enough to support all of us without work, just for simplification.

Then what about distribution of these resources? I feel many people work to fight over that distribution, not just to produce. E.g., there might be no $1000/h lawyer who would think that they produce even $100/h worth of resources. But they might still work 80h/week (or make the impression) to get a bigger share of the pie that is already there.

_pmf_2• 11 years ago

Then what about distribution of these resources?

The point is that this is an entirely separate question.

On a global scale, it's hard to find a worse distribution scheme than the currently used scheme, so any arbitrary distribution is better than the current one (in which the powerful take increasingly more).

bgilroy262• 11 years ago

Excess labor was traditionally consumed by planning grander festivals.

trgn• 11 years ago

Indeed. Things used to be more delightful, because we could, we had the time. Elaborate festivals and parties are a great example. It is a great loss.

There was a human touch to so many of things that surrounded us. People wore beautiful clothes, tended to their houses, put effort in the elaborate rituals of the domestic and public sphere.

I always have to think of that walking around older southern cities in the US. From dainty modest shotguns to gingerbread victorian family homes, to stately mansions, each of them were carefully crafted, using materials pleasant to the touch and sight, with ornamentation that arose naturally, and even though sometimes elaborate, never garrish, always human. And this extended from the large architectural features - the columns and turrets - all the way down to the doorknobs and furniture. I imagine this architecture as an physical manifestation of daily life.

(I could pick any time & place to illustrate this, just nothing after WW1 in the West, when the machine aesthetic took over).

Well-tended gardens, week long festivals and carnivals, washing and mending your Sunday clothes on a lazy Saturday evening, shopping for fresh ingredients and preparing multi-course meals for the family ... These things take time. It requires human effort, something a machine can never replicate, time that somehow we don't have any more, even though productivity is so much more higher than it used to be. Perhaps we are wasting that time doing the ritual of work.

dylanjermiah• 11 years ago

What's an example of a proposed technological break through which can do the work of the adult population?

chippy• 11 years ago

1 drone replacing 50 soldiers on the ground?

douche3• 11 years ago

Self-driving cars, travel websites, self-checkout lines, Amazon's automated shipping centers, the first fast-food restaurant that lets you order with a touchscreen instead of having your order taken incorrectly by a minimum-wage drone, possibly Watson as a replacement for low-level customer service/tech support

dsr_• 11 years ago

Past technological breakthroughs: The combine harvester. The cotton gin. The water-powered loom. Factory robots. Clothes-washing technology in general.

Proposed technological breakthroughs: Self-driving trucks and cars. Warehouse robots. Supermarket robots. Automated drones.

Every efficiency advance not matched by an equal increase in demand reduces the need for people to have jobs.

jotm3• 11 years ago

"Cool story bro. Say that again when you can't pay your rent or even buy some food." - Me.

I think everyone should experience that for a few weeks, it changes your perspective on many things.

jnbiche• 11 years ago

The quote does not imply this is the way things are, it's talking about what he believes things should be.

Yes, of course many people have to work nonsense jobs now or else they'd starve, but that's because we don't have anything like basic income. With basic income, the lack of food and shelter you refer to wouldn't be an issue -- at least for citizens of the country with basic income.

sagichmal2• 11 years ago

You completely miss the point of the quoted passage. You should read it again.

bobdathinker• 11 years ago

"If we're gonna "understand" each other, first we gotta make 'em suffer like we're sufferin'! Like when they stop a fight because someone got injured! But I know that'll never happen… that's why there'll always be war. It always rains here and I hate it. It's like this whole country is a big crybaby. I'm going to change it… and protect everyone!"

http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Yahiko

nathanvanfleet• 11 years ago

Going back to school and dilly-dallying is mostly only really going to be viable if your parents are the ones who earned a big enough living to support you. I know people like that.

Maybe corporations should adopt poor people or commission huge parties or works of art.

Hytosys• 11 years ago

This quote reads as advocacy for unconditional basic income. I don't think education would ever be considered "dilly-dallying" in a society where poverty is generally impossible.

sillygoose7• 11 years ago

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living

Right, because valuable things don't actually cost anything to produce! That's why they can just be (automatically) handed out by some big Magic Nanny-Fairy Machinery.

We should all just get whatever we want, because we deserve it!

msutherl• 11 years ago

Indeed, some people don't deserve to survive.

noonespecial2• 11 years ago

No, we should all be able to get whatever we need because for the first time in history, we can.

If individuals would like to pursue even more (ie the things they want), they should be free to do so, so long as those wants don't occlude the afore stated needs of others.

The interesting thing is that we (humanity) could now actually do this if we wanted to. In the past, the laws of physics (and our lack of knowledge) prevented this. Now only politics do. The "Magic Nanny-Fairy Machinery" is real, and it looks like in the end, all it will require to operate is natural resources. We are piss poor at equitably distributing preexisting natural resources amongst ourselves.

rorykoehler9• 11 years ago

Every time there is any thread about anything remotely socially progressive you are there espousing your highly conservative viewpoint. This made me curious and I am really trying to understand what life experiences could have led you to have such views. I have a few questions that might help paint a clearer picture if you would be so kind? If you decide to answer please answer honestly.

Where did you grow up? What were your parents jobs? How much did your parents earn in yearly income? Have you ever not eaten for multiple days on end because you couldn't afford to buy food? What do you work as? How much do you currently earn? How do you personally calculate the cost and value of a good or service? Do you understand the difference in the meaning of the words 'want' and 'need'?

learnstats2• 11 years ago

Translation:

Sillygoose should get whatever they want for playing the game of capitalism the luckiest and the best (but mostly the luckiest), and everybody else who is unluckier or less good should suffer, to provide for all of sillygoose's wants as cheaply as possible, rather than having their own basic needs met.

mistaken• 11 years ago

I don't think that having jobs is the problem. A lot of people can benefit from having jobs. Ideally a workplace should provide a way to develop people, a stable income and clear goals. It is also less risky for the employer (doesn't have to search for someone when a task needs to be done) and the employees (stable income). I personally like to work in an environment where I can decide what has to be done, how to do it, but many people wouldn't want to take this responsibility or would have a far less incentive to work if they don't have to earn a living. In an utopia perhaps we could abolish jobs, if everybody knew what they wanted to do and what they were good at.

rorykoehler9• 11 years ago

The issue is that from birth most of us are conditioned, through education and culture to not take this responsibility. Most of those who beat the trap have their passion squeezed from them through poverty or dreary corporate jobs that consume them.

You wouldn't believe how many people ask me what people would do if they didn't have to work due to guaranteed basic income or some such. Why do I even have to answer that question. People can do whatever they want. It's not my or the systems job to to tell people what to do. If a person is lazy and the only way they can get motivated is by the threat of starving then that's their problem however I would still much prefer to live in a world were people have the option to be lazy and not faced a threat to their basic survival than what we have now where people are highly driven, working multiple jobs, but socio-economic circumstances mean they are trapped in a poverty cycle they can't escape from.

I agree with your premise regarding the workplace providing a way to develop people and to give people a chance to organize around clear goals however I also think this should be decoupled from income stability. Any income earned in the workplace would be a bonus on top of the bare minimum needed to survive which should be provided. How can we say we are civilized when we let people starve, be homeless and deny them access to medical help when they need it because they aren't wealthy enough. The world as it is now is so absurd. Someday (soon I hope) we will look back on this period in human history with bemusement.

mtbcoder• 11 years ago

Ideally a workplace should provide a way to develop people, a stable income and clear goals.

This can only happen when you have a working, stable government that is investing in its citizenry, infrastructure, education, etc. What worries me tremendously these days, at least from my US perspective, is that the very definition of "stable income" is constantly changing as income inequality expands and we put in place policies which really only benefit the wealthiest corporations and individuals.

eli_gottlieb• 11 years ago

Ideally a workplace should provide a way to develop people, a stable income and clear goals.

Why? Employers hire people because they, the employers, have goals (possibly very unclear), and their goals require more work than they can do alone as one person, and so they hire people to whom to delegate the work (this can happen recursively). Employers really aren't concerned with personal development or the employee's income as a matter of necessity, only if they happen to be unusually humane and personable, or the labor market happens to be unusually tight.

benihana2• 11 years ago

So basically 9,999 people are completely dependent on the work of one person for them to survive and prosper. Sounds really rosy, for everyone involved.

Anderkent7• 11 years ago

Those 9999 people would be completely fine if they were born earlier. We enable some people to be incredibly productive, at the cost of other peoples ability to support themselves.

"But society came and paved over the place where all the roots and berry plants grew and killed the buffalo and dynamited the caves and declared the tribal bonding rituals Problematic. This increased productivity by about a zillion times, so most people ended up better off. The only ones who didn’t were the ones who for some reason couldn’t participate in it.

(if you’re one of those people who sees red every time someone mentions evolution or cavemen, imagine him as a dockworker a hundred years ago, or a peasant farmer a thousand)

Society got where it is by systematically destroying everything that could have supported him and replacing it with things that required skills he didn’t have. Of course it owes him when he suddenly can’t support himself. Think of it as the ultimate use of eminent domain; a power beyond your control has seized everything in the world, it had some good economic reasons for doing so, but it at least owes you compensation!" http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/

toolz3• 11 years ago

Human nature is curious. People want to invent interesting things, that should be self evident to anyone who has been around open source software. You make it sound like 9k people are ganging up on some poor unsuspecting person to make them invent things to keep the world turning.

3princip• 11 years ago

Arguably this is (almost) already the case. How many people work to supply you with food and water as a percentage of the entire workforce? These are essentials without which you could not survive, yet very few people (in developed countries) actually do that work.

floppydisk8• 11 years ago

We tried this idea, in America, at the Jamestown Colony. They initially established it in a "socialist" vein wherein everyone received an equal share of the proceeds (food, etc) regardless of their contributions to the colony. The colony barely survived because people lacked the incentive to work and produce because there was no advantage to them working more than their peers. Why should I work to produce an excess when Billy Bob sits on the dock all day and receives the same share I do. When they lifted the socialist mandate on redistribution, production at the colony skyrocketed because people were rewarded for their effort.

Everyone has to put a roof over their head and food in their belly. If we create a culture that tells people they don't have to work to receive those benefits, it will disicentivize people to actually work (why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day?) and engage in production activities. Supporting a society necessitates producers create more than what they need, but if you create a system that takes what it deems the excess from the producers without compensation or reward and doles it out, the producers will stop producing and we'll back at Jamestown all over again.

Anderkent7• 11 years ago

why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day?

There's a lot of room for manouver between 'everyone gets exactly the same amount no matter their contribution' and 'everyone must be productive (net-positive on the society) to sustain themselves'.

So, reasons you might contribute when even the sky-gazers can survive at a decent level:

1. Because the extra pay lets you do more fun things

2. Because you enjoy the work

3. Because the extra status you get from your work contributions is rewarding

4. Because you like the people you work with

5. Because you're one of the one in ten thousand people who can leverage the technological progress to make significant contributions, and feel something of a noblesse oblige

6. Because you don't even consider what you're doing work (you were just playing around with maths and theory, and suddenly new discoveries!)

jacalata2• 11 years ago

Most people argue that technological advances made since Jamestown mean that we literally absolutely don't need everyone to work, because we are no longer an impoverished subsistence society.

TheOtherHobbes2• 11 years ago

There was nothing "socialist" about Jamestown. Many of the initial settlers were aristocrats who had no experience of work, and no interest in it.

Unsurprisingly this didn't end well.

If we create a culture that tells people they don't have to work to receive those benefits, it will disicentivize people to actually work.

We already have a culture like this. Those who believe they own an entirely imaginary thing called "money" believe they're entitled to live off the efforts who don't.

It would take an outbreak of unreasonable optimism to claim this is the most efficient and productive of all possible systems - especially considering it's notorious for its many completely predictable failure modes.

tormeh• 11 years ago

I think there's a middle ground to be found here. What if everyone gets the necessities and some basic niceties, and the most productive get the rest? You'd be working for luxury and status, as opposed to necessity, but isn't that motivation enough?

douche3• 11 years ago

I support the idea of a basic income, but only if it is a replacement for the system of piecemeal welfare programs and tax-breaks that we currently have. The entire system could get so much simpler than it currently is.

You get your basic income check for X dollars a month. If you work a job, run a business, whatever, in addition to that, you get taxed Y% on your earnings, excluding the basic income amount. No deductions, no write-offs, no tax-shelters. If you wanted to have a progressive sliding scale tax rate, fine, although that makes it more complicated than a flat tax.

HR Block and Intuit would scream, but if you could do your taxes with just your W-2 and a four-function calculator, how many billions of dollars could we avoid wasting and invest in a more productive sector of the economy?

LLWM6• 11 years ago

Well, yes. Most people who suggest such things aren't considering what it would take to get humans to work because they assume all the work will be done by robotic slaves.

quesera• 11 years ago

Bucky Fuller always inspires disagreement, but I think you'd have a difficult time making the case that the Jamestown Colony from the year 1607 is in any way relevant to this discussion.

mcphage3• 11 years ago

"We tried it once 400 years ago, and it didn't work then, so clearly it won't ever work."

roflc0ptic• 11 years ago

"The colony barely survived because people lacked the incentive to work"

To be clear, the people in the colony barely survived because people lacked the sense of self preservation required to work. You're positing that this occurred because they had to share their output; the tellings I've heard were that the aristocrats wouldn't work until another governer (John Smith) came in and made them work on fear of death.

The idea that anything about this situation was socialist is not well founded. The idea that the terrible outcome is proof positive of anything in particular is not well substantiated. I prefer it as a story of exactly how far the entitlement of the rich goes: those used to controlling the means of production would rather die than give up their positions of privilege. But it's not proof of my ideological position, and it's not proof of yours. It's just anecdata. The rest is just conjecture, not backed up empirically.

dbingham• 11 years ago

Comparing Jamestown to today is nonsense. Technology has advanced so much further it's not even funny. We are now capable of nearly completely automating factories. Sure there still have to be people to do that automation and to maintain the machines, but it doesn't take very many people to do that.

With industrial agriculture, 2% of our population is producing the vast majority of our food. With experimental ecology based agricultures, we could see a form of agriculture that takes even less work (it's based on perennials, so you don't have to plant every year) to produce just as much or more. If we can sort out automated recycling we will reach a place where we no longer need to mine. Mass transit on rails just begs for automation and provides people an easy way to get around.

We are shockingly close to a post-scarcity society. Not quite true post-scarcity, where no one needs to work and automation produces all we need, but a society where we very small handful of people can produce enough for the rest of the world.

We'll still need a system that rewards those people, yes, by why punish everyone else? Why force everyone else in working increasingly pointless jobs just because we need to reward the few people actually working necessary jobs? And interestingly enough, we aren't currently rewarding the people working the necessary jobs. If the economy rewarded people according to the importance of their work, farmers would be paid like financial executives.

The other part of this coin is that, while there are absolutely lazy people in the world, there are just as many people who will naturally gravitate towards doing some sort of "work". I would argue that most people would get bored and dissatisfied just sitting on the couch watching television all day. Instead they'll spend their time pursuing their passions. For a lot of people this would probably be "useless" art -- music, theater, fiction, etc. But, hey, if we already have enough people doing the useful things, then why not?

But for others it will be things like science, engineering, invention, and so on. The first several generations of scientists were men and women of leisure. They were wealthy aristocrats who didn't have to work if they didn't want to. But they did work. They choose to work. They choose to do often incredibly monotonous data collection because they were fascinated by the natural world.

There's no reason we couldn't have a world where the vast majority of us are free to pursue whatever we wish. And I'm willing to bet that, in that world, we'd see an explosion of innovation and discovery.

cryoshon• 11 years ago

Irrelevant example. Jamestown is ancient history, per-industrialization and also by definition of the former, pre-post-industrialisation. Jamestown knew nothing of assembly lines, tractors, robotic fabrication, office jobs, and knowledge work. They never managed to actualize their population's hierarchy of needs enough to reach those levels.

We're far, far beyond needing to strike the earth to get fed each day. The real "producers" are mostly machines which extract value from the earth and process it for end-use. As far as the people who own the machines, they are a mere fraction of the human race... seems a bit silly to accommodate them excessively at the expense of everyone else's well being.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 11 years ago

The colony barely survived because people lacked the incentive to work

This is a narrative, not a plain fact.

Many people continue to do work without incentive. They feel demotivated, they don't need the money and can go live in mom's basement. They do it out of boredom, even habit or inertia.

Also, it can be difficult to determine people's incentives, they're not always aware of those themselves, so short of telepathy you can't always claim to know whether one is there or not.

Lawtonfogle7• 11 years ago

What about a little of column A and a little of column B?

Work gets rewarded, but you have enough to survive (but not thrive) even if you choose to do nothing?

IkmoIkmo3• 11 years ago

It's funny the people championing 'incentives for work', thereby turning 'redistribution of wealth' into some kind of mortal sin, simultaneously brand inheritance (redistribution of wealth by bloodright/nepotism) as a 'death tax' and act as if it's the worst thing ever.

I'd be a lot more inclined to be a bigger proponent for incentive based economies if we all started on a level playing field with equal opportunity. The reality is far from it, and we get phenomena like the working poor, millions of people with jobs, sometimes multiple, who can barely scrape by, in the same economy where others are born literally a millionaire without any basis in merit.

Obviously there has to be a balance in incentives, but I'm inclined to say the US has lost some sense of that balance.

digikata2• 11 years ago

One could argue that the current economic system has shifted to increasingly taking labor from the vast majority of producers while providing a minimal amount of compensation, all while a tiny slice get a vast amount of compensation.

Because most producers simply don't get enough of a margin above subsistence, a wide range of society dosen't have the resources to make investments in new businesses (or new personal investments) and our economic potential suffers. If too much of the economic excess is concentrated into too few hands we end up with an inefficient command economy.

What the BBC article describes to us should strongly hint to us that the current work arrangement is a local maxima in the efficiency of our social/economic system, and that other arrangements should be looked at to yield better social and economic benefits. And honestly, I think that labels such as "Socialism" and "Capitalism" have done a lot of damage in the short-circuiting of analysis of economic systems (ie. in the vein of "This is socialism" we we know that doensn't work...). We really have to move beyond classifying into those broad categories and deciding policy based upon what broad camp one believes in.

mikekchar2• 11 years ago

To be honest, people pay me to do a job, but I am a fraud. I don't work for a living. Somewhere on a piece of paper my name is printed and it says that I will receive a sum of money each month in exchange for some effort at programming computers or some such thing, but I never really pay attention to it.

I program computers all day. It is quite an enjoyable pastime and I look forward to it almost all the time. Although it would seem like it is better to selfishly work on my own personal projects all the time, I have found that if I do things that other people like, it makes them very happy. I really enjoy making other people happy. It is fun.

I have not always thought this way. At one time in my life, I tried to limit the amount of things that I did for other people. I wanted to make sure that I always prioritised my goals above theirs. I would feel resentful if I were forced, through the circumstances of living, to do things that were not of my choosing. I demanded compensation. No matter how much compensation I received, though, it never seemed enough. Let's face it, I was giving up my time -- my life -- to further goals that were not my own. How much money should I receive to give up my life? I have never been able to answer that question.

I suppose there must have been a day where I changed. If there was, I can't recall it. Whatever happened, I started to realize that I was enjoying what I was doing. Not all of it, of course, but at least some of it. I went to my boss and I said, "If you have more things like this, can you please let me do it?" He was quite pleased to hear my question and readily agreed. Over time, I asked for more and more things that I enjoyed and my boss gave me more and more of those things. Eventually, virtually everything I was doing were things that I enjoyed.

There have been times where I was stuck in situations that I didn't enjoy. Most of the time it is because I lacked some skill to do a task, or because I lacked the ability to interact gracefully with certain people. These are big challenges for me. I enjoy challenges and I push myself to see if I can overcome them. Some days I give up and sleep, or play video games or cry. The next day I am usually ready to try again. I have crossed some big mountains this way and it is something that makes me very proud.

It has happened to me that I have found myself in situations where I just could not cope with what was going on. In those cases, I have simply gone somewhere else. I'm lucky because I live in a rich and free society where I can do what I please. I admit that I fully utilise this freedom and feel sad for others that can not do as I can do. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty, but should a seed planted in rich soil struggle because other seeds are not so lucky? I think there is no point in making life any harder than it already is. I will take my luck wherever I can get it.

In this way I have found that I can align myself so that people pay me and I do not work. I'm not saying it's easy. It has taken me decades to work out how to do it for myself. I just think that it isn't as hard as many people think it might be.

giuscri• 11 years ago

Can I ask you which country do you live in?

Uberphallus• 11 years ago

In my case it's the lack of documentation about a huge system (ecosystem, I'd rather call it), in contrast to an overengineered methodology and process, which involves mandatory code reviews by people unfamiliar with the code and 6 test phases before production.

If I crank 10 lines of code a week I consider myself lucky, and it won't take less than 3 weeks for them to hit production.

The combination of that with long builds and releases (30min minimum) makes me always have something to do, but I'm always waiting for something to be able to move on (build to be finished, answers from experts, validation by QA...). That's where HN and r/programming kick in.

mdpopescu• 11 years ago

I sincerely hope this (10 lines of code a week) is hyperbole. I would be fine with 3 weeks to hit production - not everybody works on a SaaS, I've had six months release cycles - but... not writing code?

marktangotango• 11 years ago

I've probably not even gotten 10 lines a week at some jobs. One gig was mostly all ad hoc reporting stuff, with a lot of cut and paste of previous impls. Another place I and two others spent a year on a project that should've taken 2 months, I didn't write any new code at all for at least 6 months of that project. Specifically there was a lot of back forth, requirements changes from the business owners, on the part I wasn't involved with, before the project went live.

This was typical for the first 10 years of my career until I took a lead position. Now I work all the time, and I focus on organizing and coaching up my team so I don't have to do as much.

Lawtonfogle7• 11 years ago

When the code base is bad enough, fixing a bug can take a small code tweak but days to discover and days more to test. Especially if refactoring bad code isn't an option at the time.

erikb4• 11 years ago

I don't think it was ever different. The idea that there should be enough time to sleep and have hobbies, that's the new thing. Just because our parents already experienced these privileges doesn't mean it's an old topic.

And if something like this happens so regularly, so naturally, I think instead of logically arguing about it we should worry more about how to handle that. I'm thinking about that other article were sales people were working together to make it looks like they all would work 80 hour weeks.

Last but not least let's not forget that our bosses also actually don't care abut our work hours. Caring would mean that they would need to look at hour work schedules and time tables, etc, instead of going to the golf club. For them it's more important that they can make a good impression on their bosses and customers as well. As long as we deliver that impression they don't mind that we all act like we are working 80 hour weeks, including them.

izietto• 11 years ago

Because working hours are inhuman.

boothead• 11 years ago

I'm reading this at the moment:

http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

Some extracts from the intro:

"And it’s not only at the bottom of the pyramid. There is a dirty secret I have discovered in the fifteen years I have spent consulting and coaching organizational leaders: life at the top of the pyramids isn’t much more fulfilling. Behind the façade and the bravado, the lives of powerful corporate leaders are ones of quiet suffering too. Their frantic activity is often a poor cover up for a deep inner sense of emptiness. The power games, the politics, and the infighting end up taking their toll on everybody. At both the top and bottom, organizations are more often than not playfields for unfulfilling pursuits of our egos, inhospitable to the deeper yearnings of our souls.

This book isn’t a rant about large corporations gone mad with greed. People who work in government agencies or nonprofits are rarely more exuberant about their workplaces. Even professions of calling aren’t immune to organizational disillusionment. Teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their field of vocation in droves. Our schools, unfortunately, are for the most part soulless machines where students and teachers simply go through the motions. We have turned hospitals into cold, bureaucratic institutions that dispossess doctors and nurses of their capacity to care from the heart. "

"The way we try to deal with organizations’ current problems often seems to make things worse, not better. Most organizations have gone through many rounds of change programs, mergers, centralizations and decentralizations, new IT systems, new mission statements, new scorecards, or new incentive systems. It feels like we have stretched the current way we run organizations to its limits, and these traditional recipes often seem part of the problem, not the solution.

We yearn for more, for radically better ways to be in organizations. But is that genuinely possible, or mere wishful thinking? If it turns out that it is possible to create organizations that draw out more of our human potential, then what do such organizations look like? How do we bring them to life? These are the questions at the heart of this book. "

rorykoehler9• 11 years ago

Also reading this. Great book.

robg• 11 years ago

Stress makes the brain lose focus.

webtards• 11 years ago

Because we are playing the game. Some call it presenteeism, other call it face time, some even view it as the boss owning your ass during the work hours. But basically, we don't really give a fuck for the organisation, for the team, for the project, for the job. We just do enough to keep the gig until something better rolls along. We know you would have no hesitation to cut jobs and other such when it suits, so don't expect any more from us.

normloman• 11 years ago

Before we get into a discussion about basic income and drones making us obsolete, can we talk about cutting hours? First, lets get back to the standard 40 hour work week. That'd be a big step. And after that, can some of us work less? Half of my day is spent browsing the internet out of boredom. I'd get more done if the day was shorter. Better yet, let me telecommute and set my own hours. You'll get the same results out of me, if not better, and I'll be a happier fellow.

winter_blue• 11 years ago

I totally relate to you. I'd myself personally prefer going half-time (20 hrs/week), with the option of working extra hours. (Perhaps a 5-hours-a-day 4-day work week.)

pinaceae2• 11 years ago

because I pay you for 40h of productivity per week, not a fixed amount of output? for the latter, consulting/freelance exists.

if you get paid for 40h per week, the expectation is to devote those hours to the benefit of the employer. do your tasks, if you have time to spare, think of other benefits - improvements, better ideas, learn, etc.

people that finish a task and then wait to be given another are the bane of the workplace. you never hire them at startups, but at some size they creep in and kill, kill, kill any company. walk into HP, Oracle, IBM today and you'll see them, in droves. that is why you can lay off 30% workforce at that size with no sizeable impact on your customers.

mattbrewsbytes3• 11 years ago

There is likely a certain organization size where many sub organizations or groups exist and work gets to a mode of waiting on so-and-so to do that thing.

Big companies like to organize around what they perceive as efficiency - putting common workers together and having common practices, etc. This leads to a waterfall delivery model where in order to x, y and z you need three different groups and they all have requests coming in all directions.

Small companies, including startups, simply don't have that org structure so you would never see that behavior since it isn't needed.

This isn't a type of person, it is a type of organization structure. That is why you hear it being so common across completely different businesses of similar size.

There is a good model in larger companies where you have entire vertical areas of responsibility as a group or organization. They are held accountable for delivering something in total and don't have many other groups to interact with for delivery. Kind of like a startup or small company inside a company. Many upper management types don't like this because they are seen as something they can't control. I've heard the Virgin companies are organized in this manner.

Lawtonfogle7• 11 years ago

Are you paying hourly or salary? If salary, you are paying for what should be able to be done in 40 hours a week, but if it takes 45, you expect it to still be done, no? So if one can get it done is 35, why do you expect 5 more hours to given free?

pinaceae2• 11 years ago

No, I pay for 40h of your attention. for things that don't fit into 40h there is either (paid) overtime or hiring, depending on frequency.

digikata2• 11 years ago

So why do we all set the nominal bar at 40h for a 5 day week, why not 32h and 4 days or some other mix?

caseysoftware2• 11 years ago

I think this involves setting some clear boundaries and expectations. I learned some things while I was consulting that I've carried into everything since:

- After a certain time each evening (7pm for me), stop sending email. You can still write and respond to it but schedule it to go out the next morning. If people see you respond at 2am, they'll begin to expect it.

- Do the same for weekends. Schedule email for Monday morning. If people see you respond on Saturdays, they'll begin to expect it.

- Only check email every N hours. I've found N=3 or 4 is best. This is the hardest for me. If you respond to every email in minutes, they'll begin to expect it.

- If you're not explicitly on the To line, filter it from your inbox. I have an "other stuff" folder where email goes if I'm not explicitly on the To line. I check this folder 1-2 times/day at most. If something is important to me, address it to me.

- Have a fixed todo list each day. If someone brings you a task, put it at the end of today so it often ends up tomorrow and communicate that. (Obviously, if something is really important, you can shift the order but that should be an exception, not the practice.) If you drop everything every time someone asks, they'll begin to expect it.

- Leave the office at a predictable time each day. I try to leave by 6pm. If you occasionally stay late, they'll begin to expect it.

- Don't answer your phone the first time someone calls. I always wait until their second call or if they email/text/dm too. If you're always-accessible, they'll begin to expect it.

- Don't take your phone into the bedroom at night. I leave mine charging on my desk at the other side of the house. If you answer your phone in the middle of the night, they'll begin to expect it.

caseysoftware2• 11 years ago

I should note two extra benefits from not always being available:

- many problems often resolve themselves

- those people who would rather ask someone instead of google, tend to learn to google.

GBond• 11 years ago

I'm surprised no one mentioned Holacracy yet.

As others have mentioned, doing "just enough" work is a by-product of a inefficiencies of the hierarchal approach of managing via command and control. Holacracy instead is network centric.

I don't know if I completely buy into the effectiveness of Holacracy but I can see how it it is better motivating to Producers. For example, I tend to write better code knowing that it will be peer-reviewed by another dev I respect.

Why do people waste so much time at work?

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