Are you paid to look busy? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#21

Post by dsirijus » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

id wrote: post #14

dsirijus wrote: post #9

My employee next to me is working hard. I'm in elinks in terminal on HN and on IRC, with vertical split of htop in tmux. He thinks I'm working hard too, with all those numbers, columns, scrolling output and blinking cursor. I feel so bad right now. I'm going to go actually work.

You should actually feel bad if the two of you are working on the same thing.

We do, and I found another way to not feel bad - I started drinking.

At least I'm not pretending to work anymore! Win-win.

Thinking out of the box like a boss.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#22

Post by ryandrake » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

“We should 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

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#23

Post by keypusher » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:12 PM UTC

No, I'm not, and it's one of the things I enjoy about programming. Some weeks I work 30 hours, others I work 60. But if I did the things I committed to doing this week, then I go home. Why sit in the office and pretend to be working? It makes no sense.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#24

Post by xr09 » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:12 PM UTC

dsirijus wrote: post #9

My employee next to me is working hard. I'm in elinks in terminal on HN and on IRC, with vertical split of htop in tmux. He thinks I'm working hard too, with all those numbers, columns, scrolling output and blinking cursor. I feel so bad right now. I'm going to go actually work.

When reading stuff like this I wonder, how do the Windows folks manage to do the same? A browser disguised as Visual Studio? doubledesktop.exe? I'm so thankful for my *nix with all these little toys.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#25

Post by tormeh » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:13 PM UTC

higherpurpose wrote: post #17

There's a saying in my country for this: "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work" - meaning the salary isn't great, and they're getting what they're paying for.

I've heard that one too. It's brilliant! I don't think it's really what we're talking about here though.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#26

Post by tormeh » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:14 PM UTC

Combine this with how miserable low-rank work like shopping bag packers and store work is, and you have a great clusterfuck of a society.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#27

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:17 PM UTC

xr09 wrote: post #24

dsirijus wrote: post #9

My employee next to me is working hard. I'm in elinks in terminal on HN and on IRC, with vertical split of htop in tmux. He thinks I'm working hard too, with all those numbers, columns, scrolling output and blinking cursor. I feel so bad right now. I'm going to go actually work.

When reading stuff like this I wonder, how do the Windows folks manage to do the same? A browser disguised as Visual Studio? doubledesktop.exe? I'm so thankful for my *nix with all these little toys.

[deleted]

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#28

Post by BenSS » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:17 PM UTC

Roboprog wrote: post #15

Is my job a bullshit job? No, but... I'm miserably reminded every week when I do my TPS^H^H^H timesheet just what proportion of my job is bullshit activity that I have to get through so that I can get to the part where I am actually going to work on something that will matter to someone. ("Look! I actually spent almost 10 hours this week [designing/] writing [/testing] code!") Knowing what needs doing is of course im…

Does your manager know that so much of these meetings a redundant? A good manager insulates other employees from this kind of meeting brutalization and avoids adding to it if at all possible. Unfortunately, there are many managers that think they exist to hold meetings.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#29

Post by igl » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

xr09 wrote: post #24

dsirijus wrote: post #9

My employee next to me is working hard. I'm in elinks in terminal on HN and on IRC, with vertical split of htop in tmux. He thinks I'm working hard too, with all those numbers, columns, scrolling output and blinking cursor. I feel so bad right now. I'm going to go actually work.

When reading stuff like this I wonder, how do the Windows folks manage to do the same? A browser disguised as Visual Studio? doubledesktop.exe? I'm so thankful for my *nix with all these little toys.

Visual Studio has a browser ;)

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#30

Post by reboog711 » Sat, May 10, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

Roboprog wrote: post #15

Is my job a bullshit job? No, but... I'm miserably reminded every week when I do my TPS^H^H^H timesheet just what proportion of my job is bullshit activity that I have to get through so that I can get to the part where I am actually going to work on something that will matter to someone. ("Look! I actually spent almost 10 hours this week [designing/] writing [/testing] code!") Knowing what needs doing is of course im…

I had one client; where I stopped working for two weeks because of an administration issue. Throughout that process; I was pressured heavily to continue working without resolution. Things were falling through the cracks and it looked bad on the department [and me and my manager] to have these problems.

Well, we eventually sorted out the administration issue on a late Friday; and as a customer service gesture I worked over the weekend to catch up.

I caught up on the two-week backlog that was crippling the department in four hours. It was at that point I realized how much time I actually 'work' for this client verse how much time I spend in meetings with them.