I got a bad rating this year for being slow. We have about an average of 4 hours of meetings everyday. I'm not sure when they want us to get work done. I'm tired of working hard and not it not paying off. I work, but don't go too fast. So I have been called out and punished for it.
They just gave you a huge sign that they want to let you go. The paperwork has already been filed, they are just waiting the legally appropriate amount of time to fire you. Clean up your resume now and start applying for new jobs.
I thought the sign was when I got a 1.5% raise for year end today. So a 4.7% pay cut.
Long time manager here. I call this "work-shy" and it is neither ubiquitous nor rare, I'd guess about 10%-20% of all employees, and it's certainly not unique to software or even to white-collar work. You should think of this as a problem. Even if it's not for your boss or your teammates (and it will be, eventually), it is for you. It is soul-crushing to fill up the hours. Two pieces of advice: 1) The "good" solution…
The alternative is to embrace minimalism / the FIRE lifestyle and hopefully skate by long enough to not have to work by the time the company folds and live off of investments -> then into retirement). I think most "underwork" on the job is a motivational issue and stems from one of a few overlapping reasons: 1) No way to promotion/advancement (dead end job) 2) Overqualified and bored 3) Unclear goals, no feedback, an…
Sure, but you could also find a job you like better and embrace FIRE doing that.
> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Yes exactly this, especially at larger companies. I know a few of those developers, and they sit right near me... They find a way to make any task take forever... If it was a smaller company they would be called out, but at my [very, very] large company - its very hard to get f…
I had a coworker at a government job that clocked in doing no work for 6 months. They were going to PIP him when I left but he's still there now.
It's also the government. There are generally more barriers to firing someone than to hiring them.
I got a bad rating this year for being slow. We have about an average of 4 hours of meetings everyday. I'm not sure when they want us to get work done. I'm tired of working hard and not it not paying off. I work, but don't go too fast. So I have been called out and punished for it.
> We have about an average of 4 hours of meetings everyday. That would be the entirety of my workday. You should complain about this, meetings are incredibly costly to a company and must have a limit.
> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Yes exactly this, especially at larger companies. I know a few of those developers, and they sit right near me... They find a way to make any task take forever... If it was a smaller company they would be called out, but at my [very, very] large company - its very hard to get f…
What is IC? Google tells me Interstitial Cystitis, but my hunch tells me it's something else.
Honestly, I've had to deal with the Terrible far more than I've had to deal with the Meh. That said, in the org I'm in now, Meh will get you moved on to something "new" pretty quickly.
Large companies have a tendency to throw up all sorts of impediments to actually getting shit done. Simple tasks can take 3 weeks because there are 7-9 dependencies throwing sand in the gears. This not only provides plenty of cover for not getting stuff done it also saps the motivation to get it done quickly. Like, if X team sits on your request for a week that prevents Y feature from getting out are you really gonna…
> Large companies have a tendency to throw up all sorts of impediments to actually getting shit done. early in my career i once worked for a spinoff of a very large tech company and was involved in a collaboration with the mothership, so to speak. my boss pulled me aside and explained to me. "here's how this goes. time here does not work like time there does. what happens in one day here takes two weeks there, and if…
Absolutely mirrors my experience when our small company was acquired by a large multinational of French origin. Why is France significant? Because their corporate culture is extremely hierarchical and centralised, similar to how their country is centralised like few others.
Used to be we could turn small web apps into production in the course of a week. Nowadays even the most minuscule of features of an existing app will take a year to implement, because "central" will involve several project managers, somewhat related staff, external consultants, etc. etc. into the mix who spend a few months creating power points and excel tapestry under the banner of "change management" before even involving one programmer. Then, when they finally decide that the coders must be involved, stuff gets done quickly and without fuss, and often much less complicated than what was planned for us.
Then they spend another few days sending each other congratulatory emails about how successful the project ended, apparently ignorant to the fact that they managed to spend a year on a feature that could have been implemented and tested in a week if they hadn't been involved.
I think there's also something to be said for passive processing. Sometimes I'll know I need to write some code or some function and I'll just think about it in the back of my head while doing other things, sometimes for a whole day or two. Then I'll sit down and write it in like 20-30 minutes. Did I work 20-30 minutes, or have I been working for a day or two? I would say a day or two, and the 20-30 minutes was the t…
Adding my voice to this one. I think a lot of work 'normal people' i.e. the PMs the non-technical management, the sales people etc. really don't get how we techies work. Because they have to do 'active' work all day long to keep on top, they think everyone is like that, where in reality we are really efficient in short bursts. I can ponder a deliverable for days and then just churn it out over a few hours, only takin…
And, ironically, much of the work that the "normies" do is something tech guys could to hundred times faster. It's stuff like manually copy-pasting numbers from a crappy proprietary software A to a crappy proprietary software B or entering numbers from some system to Excel while it could be done by just directly pulling the numbers from the database the system uses.
Seriously, modern work is all about knowing what to do and how to do it rather than putting in a large number of hours executing a straightforward task.
The same could be asked about upper management. They earn 10x our pay, so their output is 10x more value than our work, and they work 10x harder, right? In our normal 8 hour work day, they must work 80 hours. Except a full day is 24 hours. Why is the onus always on the bottom workers to be honest? Why are we trying to feel guilty about our working hours vs how much we're paid? Because it's clear salary is not tied to…
The whole point is the compensation is not based on how hard you work but the value you provide and what the market will support. Of course upper management works roughly the same hours as everyone else, but they also have far more responsibility.
Ah yes, the incredible value of providing feedback on proposals and signing off on initiatives.