Expecting programmers to problem solve for 8 hours is stupid

Post by sleepysysadmin » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 11:46 AM UTC

BuckRogers wrote: post #46

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #36

My last job, an msp, expected 100% of our time to be billed out. You didn't get lunches or breaks. If you got your work completed quicker so that you could hit the washroom or go for lunch, you were rewarded with more work. Furthermore, I was on-call 24x7 and near daily would be called for help afterhours. This wasn't smb stuff exclusively. This was federal governments, hospitals, prisons, fortune 100s. All of which…

You were dealing with a very toxic person, who said a lot more about you behind your back then you were aware of. I’ve lived a lot of the same stories. Although yours may be the worst I’ve ever heard, simply because I’ve never been fired. But bits and pieces of your story are in just about every job I’ve had. I’m no longer confused as to why a lot of people simply don’t want to work anymore. Getting enough money and…

If you're curious to read what a rougher week was like: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/a7zjvr/my_toxic_m...

You might ask why I didn't bail before? I didn't even interview for a single job. I was pretty sick. Had major surgery and chemo shortly after that week. It was a couple months after that week where I got fired.

They had about 30 techs and >20 techs quit and were fired after that.

Post by Viliam1234 » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #78

Viliam1234 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are in an org that actually lets people work great flexible hours you won't advertise it too much, for fear of attracting workers whose primary goal is to slack, or getting a reputation an org of slackers. This reminds me of: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ... > The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community wh…

Honestly, that's kind of what I've begun to think of (axiomatically) as where government needs to step in. When society's collective interest is in an equilibrium which it's no one's individual interest to move towards, the incentives need changing. I have no idea how to fix it, but you're spot on that you can't change it individually unless it's all at once. Or if we somehow figure out a better incentive structure s…

I could imagine some collective action not organized by government, for example to write a "6-hour day manifesto", share it on networks, have people sign it, wear t-shirts, choose a day when you celebrate the idea... i.e. gradually introduce the idea to the general public. (Perhaps even edgy t-shirts, such as "I only work 6 hours a day, but I spend 8 hours at work to appear busy. And so do you.") So that people notice that others share their opinions.

Sometimes memes have power (but it is difficult to engineer them properly). I believe that jokes contributed to the fall of Soviet Union, so perhaps jokes could make 8-hours day go away. Just imagine if average people would start saying: "So, you also work at a company where people pretend to work 8 hours a day? Me too." Maybe if laughter became an automatic reaction to saying "8 hours", something would change.

Re: Expecting programmers to problem solve for 8 hours is stupid

Re: Expecting programmers to problem solve for 8 hours is stupid