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I don't agree with the title, even though it's the original from the source. The author argues that technology has made us more productive, and as a result we

I don't agree with the title, even though it's the original from the source. The author argues that technology has made us more productive, and as a result we spend more of our time doing ancillary tasks (e.g. writing emails, attending meetings) and that since this isn't directly producing value, it's reducing productivity. I'd argue that as the work has become more complex-- designing software is not as easy as say manufacturing the same widget 200 times each day-- the planning tasks (e.g. writing emails, having meetings) have grown, though perhaps not entirely linearly. The author also implies that people are spending more time now looking busy and being busy, perhaps over fears that if they completed their job in 16 hours and spent the remaining 24 hours of the work week twiddling their thumbs, they would be fired.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
But they DO complete their jobs in 16 hours. It's an interesting number - 40%, or about 1/e. It's the thrash point for classic half-duplex Ethernet segments, the level to which you want administrative workers loaded, etc. Exceeding 40% makes collisions go up.
passivepinetree 10y ago
I totally agree with your point about looking busy. But that just means there's a management failure somewhere, right? Shouldn't management recognize such an abnormally productive employee and a) let them go home after their work is done, no matter when that is, or b) give them more work to do (and a corresponding salary increase)?
- mrob 10y ago
  Letting them go home means risking having less people in the office when the manager's boss shows up, which will lower the manager's prestige, and risks harming morale of the other employees. Giving them more work risks having their department fail if the employee leaves for any reason. Subtly encouraging them to waste time is the safest choice.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    This.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  such an abnormally productive employee It's not ab-normal. Source: Dilbert.com (seriously, the cartoons are based on real work life and not fiction), countless surveys (just two examples: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/fashion/25busy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/fashion/25busy.html and http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/20/most-americans-are-unhappy-at-work/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/20/most-ameri...), and each time the topic comes up (on reddit for example) the thread explodes and it's almost all negative and "Me too!" when somebody says their job is just like that. I've seen it all over my own career too which let me spend most of my time in other companies and not in one and the same office (I'm an IT freelancer, but it was true even when I was employed). b) give them more work to do There were several Dilbert cartoons about exactly this sometime during the last few months. Examples for fun: 1) http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-12-21 http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-12-21 -- 2) http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-05-17 http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-05-17 -- 3) http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-01-01 http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-01-01 -- 4) http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-14 http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-14
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kogepathic 10y ago
  > Shouldn't management recognize such an abnormally productive employee Using what metric? This is really hard to implement in reality, especially when the average corporate management has no idea what engineers spend their day doing. > b) give them more work to do This already happens. See companies looking to hire "heros" > and a corresponding salary increase Hah! Yeah, maybe at your company. Mine would work you 80 hours per week for peanuts if they could.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    So they at least wish to communicate that they have no idea of the value you provide? Not unusual, but quite disturbing.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    Oh, and in an exit interview for a layoff once: - He: I never see your car in the parking lot after hours. - Me: Yeah, I've been done with everything I was given for months now. Please note - it was a layoff exit interview.
  - passivepinetree 10y ago
    Alright, you're right. Maybe I was being a little idealistic. I don't think in reality things would happen that way. But we can dream, right?
- dageshi 10y ago
  Isn't that basically called "being freelance"? If the work's done by the required deadline then you're free to do what you want?
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    As a freelancer I have some jobs that are like that, fixed cost and my problem how long it takes me, but most clients prefer if I'm onsite and that means I get paid to spend 8 hours a days in their office. I have the exact same problem, I spend half the time looking busy. Or I could go home and only get half the money.
fsloth 10y ago
"the planning tasks (e.g. writing emails, having meetings) have grown, though perhaps not entirely linearly." Or is it because of the cult of Process and Bureaucracy? Skunk Works is/was one of the badassest engineering units in world history. They did projects that made sense, they had high individual responsibility, very flat organization , and encouraged communication between disciplines above all. The book "Skunk works" by it's former director Ben Rich contains as an epilogue a lamentation to the new way of doing things by lengthy meandering process and bureaucracy with an inflated middle management - instead of just doing things right. The book is the best book on the subject on how to do great technical things - but not by way of theory, but by of example. And I can tell you, it does not contain an inch of Scrum, six sigma, RUP or any of that. They had a simple high level process, and then they drilled down on specific processes on per project basis, as needed.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  > The book is the best book on the subject on how to do great technical things - but not by way of theory, but by of example. The most pressing question is how well these techniques can be exported. Joel on Software gave us a great take on this quite a few years ago: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/01/18/big-macs-vs-the-naked-chef/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/01/18/big-macs-vs-the-na... Basically, the best 'process' for a small team of smart, skilled people is for someone to hand them a blank check and a vague goal, and turn them loose for a few months. This is basically what Skunk Works did, and the results were exceptional. With a bigger team, or a less brilliant team, or a team less skilled at execution, blank checks and no guidance is far more likely to produce overspending and wasted time. Six Sigma doesn't have a hope of improving efficiency over Skunk Works, but it was at least intended to provide a minimum efficiency better than "screwing up a lot". The best cases are certainly hobbled by Process, but most of the world is too big and dysfunctional to match the best case. (None of which is to say that Skunk Works style projects are bad - I still think we need more of them. In particular, pseudo-startups without the time and fundraising pressure can be uniquely effective.)
  - fsloth 10y ago
    Skunk works did not have blank cheques nor did they have vague goals. One reason to their success were explicit vehicle operational targets for each project. But skunk works was not only a small crack team of engineers, although this is what they are famous for. They built and operated several vehicles, with 'normal' personnel.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

But they DO complete their jobs in 16 hours. It's an interesting number - 40%, or about 1/e. It's the thrash point for classic half-duplex Ethernet segments, the level to which you want administrative workers loaded, etc. Exceeding 40% makes collisions go up.

passivepinetree 10y ago

I totally agree with your point about looking busy. But that just means there's a management failure somewhere, right? Shouldn't management recognize such an abnormally productive employee and a) let them go home after their work is done, no matter when that is, or b) give them more work to do (and a corresponding salary increase)?

mrob 10y ago
Letting them go home means risking having less people in the office when the manager's boss shows up, which will lower the manager's prestige, and risks harming morale of the other employees. Giving them more work risks having their department fail if the employee leaves for any reason. Subtly encouraging them to waste time is the safest choice.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  This.
Noseshine 10y ago
such an abnormally productive employee It's not ab-normal. Source: Dilbert.com (seriously, the cartoons are based on real work life and not fiction), countless surveys (just two examples: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/fashion/25busy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/fashion/25busy.html and http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/20/most-americans-are-unhappy-at-work/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/20/most-ameri...), and each time the topic comes up (on reddit for example) the thread explodes and it's almost all negative and "Me too!" when somebody says their job is just like that. I've seen it all over my own career too which let me spend most of my time in other companies and not in one and the same office (I'm an IT freelancer, but it was true even when I was employed). b) give them more work to do There were several Dilbert cartoons about exactly this sometime during the last few months. Examples for fun: 1) http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-12-21 http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-12-21 -- 2) http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-05-17 http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-05-17 -- 3) http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-01-01 http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-01-01 -- 4) http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-14 http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-14
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kogepathic 10y ago
> Shouldn't management recognize such an abnormally productive employee Using what metric? This is really hard to implement in reality, especially when the average corporate management has no idea what engineers spend their day doing. > b) give them more work to do This already happens. See companies looking to hire "heros" > and a corresponding salary increase Hah! Yeah, maybe at your company. Mine would work you 80 hours per week for peanuts if they could.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  So they at least wish to communicate that they have no idea of the value you provide? Not unusual, but quite disturbing.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  Oh, and in an exit interview for a layoff once: - He: I never see your car in the parking lot after hours. - Me: Yeah, I've been done with everything I was given for months now. Please note - it was a layoff exit interview.
- passivepinetree 10y ago
  Alright, you're right. Maybe I was being a little idealistic. I don't think in reality things would happen that way. But we can dream, right?
dageshi 10y ago
Isn't that basically called "being freelance"? If the work's done by the required deadline then you're free to do what you want?
- Noseshine 10y ago
  As a freelancer I have some jobs that are like that, fixed cost and my problem how long it takes me, but most clients prefer if I'm onsite and that means I get paid to spend 8 hours a days in their office. I have the exact same problem, I spend half the time looking busy. Or I could go home and only get half the money.

fsloth 10y ago

"the planning tasks (e.g. writing emails, having meetings) have grown, though perhaps not entirely linearly." Or is it because of the cult of Process and Bureaucracy? Skunk Works is/was one of the badassest engineering units in world history. They did projects that made sense, they had high individual responsibility, very flat organization , and encouraged communication between disciplines above all. The book "Skunk works" by it's former director Ben Rich contains as an epilogue a lamentation to the new way of doing things by lengthy meandering process and bureaucracy with an inflated middle management - instead of just doing things right. The book is the best book on the subject on how to do great technical things - but not by way of theory, but by of example. And I can tell you, it does not contain an inch of Scrum, six sigma, RUP or any of that. They had a simple high level process, and then they drilled down on specific processes on per project basis, as needed.

Bartweiss 10y ago
> The book is the best book on the subject on how to do great technical things - but not by way of theory, but by of example. The most pressing question is how well these techniques can be exported. Joel on Software gave us a great take on this quite a few years ago: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/01/18/big-macs-vs-the-naked-chef/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/01/18/big-macs-vs-the-na... Basically, the best 'process' for a small team of smart, skilled people is for someone to hand them a blank check and a vague goal, and turn them loose for a few months. This is basically what Skunk Works did, and the results were exceptional. With a bigger team, or a less brilliant team, or a team less skilled at execution, blank checks and no guidance is far more likely to produce overspending and wasted time. Six Sigma doesn't have a hope of improving efficiency over Skunk Works, but it was at least intended to provide a minimum efficiency better than "screwing up a lot". The best cases are certainly hobbled by Process, but most of the world is too big and dysfunctional to match the best case. (None of which is to say that Skunk Works style projects are bad - I still think we need more of them. In particular, pseudo-startups without the time and fundraising pressure can be uniquely effective.)
- fsloth 10y ago
  Skunk works did not have blank cheques nor did they have vague goals. One reason to their success were explicit vehicle operational targets for each project. But skunk works was not only a small crack team of engineers, although this is what they are famous for. They built and operated several vehicles, with 'normal' personnel.