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U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

washingtonpost.com

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Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#641

Post by int_19h »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #620
StillBored wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, this is because the people writting GUI's these days are mostly incompetent, or hamstrung by "web" technologies. Early GUI's didn't have the problem you describe because they were designed as discovery mechanisms to the underlying function. AKA, the idea was that after clicking File->Save a dozen times you would remember the keyboard accelerators displayed on the right hand side of the menu. Or if nothing else,…

I think it’s less about the design being bad and more about simplicity as a goal overriding everything else. So learning an interface is frowned upon. Every interface must be designed as if the user has never seen it before. Which is ok, as long as there’s also an alternative path which may take time and effort to learn but leads to increased efficiency and productivity. Unfortunately, that alternate path takes a lot…

For Microsoft stuff in that time period, the scripting was meant to be done via OLE Automation (VBA is really just a scripting language with OLE Automation as the underlying object model). And it was much more pervasive than Office - remember the time when Microsoft products were all "Active ..."? Third-party apps were encouraged to do that as well, although few did.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#643

Post by happymellon »

komali2 wrote: post #595
blooalien wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno if they are saying that, but I wholeheartedly endorse this idea. Add the "client side junk" (fancy Javascript stuff, etc.) as enhancement on top for those who want it after the required functionality is being properly and reliably served by the "core technologies". Serve the need properly first, then make it "nice".

I had a coworker tell me that javascript should be added like color: stuff that makes it nicer to use for those that have it turned on, but not necessary for those that don't have it at all (or can't see color). Kind of a hard core position in my opinion considering it's ignoring the sometimes advantages / use cases for client side code (like complicated SPAs where the user is explicitly buying into the idea of runni…

In the same sentiment of 99% of companies are not Google and do not need Google's infrastructure.

99% of web applications are not Figma and probably do not need any client side JavaScript. The amount of JavaScript that's actually just wrong is incredible.

1. I don't care what your client side validation thinks. That is my email address.

2. Why are you serving people all of the news story if you are going to then hide it? We can block the JavaScript and read the news.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#644

Post by PointyFluff »

lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

Hi. Medical professional here.

You are high if you think we are better off with paper than an ePCR.

Sometimes we have to default back to paper, some times the pt record system goes down.

When that does happen, it's a literal fucking nightmare in the ER.

We plan on it happening and we train for it happening, but ePCRs have made our lives so much fucking easier. Simple fucking fact.

Have you ever had to read the pissed off notes in a hand-written chart from the last nurse who has been working 48 hours straight, taking care of 12 critical care pts? Huh? Give that a try sometime.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#645

Post by [deleted] »

lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#646

Post by happymellon »

worthless-trash wrote: post #550
hnick wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the push to make software accessible (in a new-user, not disability, context) and intuitive has made complexity the enemy. Instead of having software that grows with the user's capability, features are hidden from the top layer of interactivity or just cut entirely. I was at the post office here in Australia a few years ago and saw the screen. It was one of those DOS-era full screen red and blue text inte…

For future reference (and anyone following along later), that is an "ncurses" terminal application. You should see the customized JBHIFI terminal + keyboard.

So should we be doing demos in Bash, with an ncurses or gum workflow before going back to write the proper system in C?

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#647

Post by [deleted] »

PointyFluff wrote: post #644
lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

Hi. Medical professional here. You are high if you think we are better off with paper than an ePCR. Sometimes we have to default back to paper, some times the pt record system goes down. When that does happen, it's a literal fucking nightmare in the ER. We plan on it happening and we train for it happening, but ePCRs have made our lives so much fucking easier. Simple fucking fact. Have you ever had to read the pissed…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#648

Post by robocat »

anotherrandom wrote: post #208

The more you measure productivity, the less productivity there will be. Employees spend a good amount of time documenting their productivity for nonsense like performance reviews, and that is a lot of time that could have been spent doing actual work

Classic counterintuitive anecdote where measurement increases productivity: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect “The Hawthorne Works had commissioned a study to determine if its workers would become more productive in higher or lower levels of light. The workers' productivity seemed to improve when changes were made, and slumped when the study ended. It was suggested that the productivity gain occurred as a result of the motivational effect on the workers of the interest being shown in them.”.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#649

Post by Eleison23 »

warbler73 wrote: post #247
nradov wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some healthcare provider organizations now employ medical scribes who follow physicians around and do all their EHR data entry. This is expensive, but can be cost effective because then the physicians have more time to perform billable procedures.

The least capable doctor's time is worth $300/hr. The scribe is paid what, $25/hr? This is so much like hearing of engineers that will not hire a $20/hr maid due to egalitarian reasons so they squat in filth or waste all their free hours cleaning, all while capable and willing cleaners starve. Insane.

I live below the poverty level. I receive Section 8 funds for housing. The Section 8 inspections and quality standards are so important to me that I hire a cleaning service about 6 times a year to make sure everything in here is spotless, because I'm really not that psychologically or physically capable of cleaning everything, even if I had limitless free time to do it. The maids cost about $130 a visit and they're worth their weight in gold, just so I have peace of mind and a consistently clean place to live. The City thanks me for it, too.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#650

Post by radium3d »

lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

I'm a web developer, and about 2 years ago my company implemented a new note taking policy that takes up a very large portion of my time, makes me feel like I'm untrusted and I just don't feel as happy as I did before. We are required to write a note of everything we do through the day with time spent and submit it by the end of the day. This is in addition to our project management system where we already track our time and write our detailed notes on what we do for each task. Prior to the policy I was able to finish work on time, now I dread the note portion of my day and I usually end up spending an hour or so at the end of the day to write up my "journal" of the day. I also have zero extra time which I used to use to learn new skills and techniques. It's an absolute waste of time and is destroying my urge to learn new skills that used to help improve the company's processes and efficiency.
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