4 ms·

I'm a contractor, so i work in a lot of different companies and get to experience a lot of different ways of working. I am by far the most relaxed and productiv

I'm a contractor, so i work in a lot of different companies and get to experience a lot of different ways of working. I am by far the most relaxed and productive in the companies that are closest to ROWE (Results Only Work Environment). If i know what i need to do, how to achieve it and and left the hell alone to do it where and how i want, i generally perform excellently. The daily "standup" google hangout as a check in on how progress is going works well. When i'm expected to be in the office every day, given funny looks if i pack up my shit at 5pm, asked where i was if i didnt eat lunch at my desk, then quite frankly, i generally leave the contract early. So yeah, its all about the place you work rather than the specific job you have. Being a contractor gives me the opportunity to move around and get a wide range of experience, which i enjoy. It also has the added benefits of being better paid and when you finish the contract, work related stress goes away. Might be worth trying?

jobserunder 8y ago
>When i'm expected to be in the office every day, given funny looks if i pack up my shit at 5pm, asked where i was if i didnt eat lunch at my desk, then quite frankly, i generally leave the contract early. This. I'm the same way. Now I only take 100% remote contracts and now I'm 2-3x more productive than my former office-going self. Fun tip: When someone asks "Where are you?" Then the correct answer is: "Who wants to know?" There are 2 exceptions: 1. It's your Mother asking. She has a right to know because she gave you life. 2. Your employer, when you are on the click. Because they are paying for your time. Since I always bill by the hour and time everything to the minute as I go...I can answer them "Where am I" and send them a URL to the thing that I worked on. If they are asking when I'm explicitly not billing... then either: A) I ghost them immediately and terminate the contract B) Ghost them the day after and send them back files after wiping everything clean. This is the value in having multiple streams of income (rental properties, small contracts and passive income)
- pxndx 8y ago
  Yeah, there's nothing like already being rich. This is terrible advice, not everyone has rental properties or passive income.
  - adamcharnock 8y ago
    Indeed they don’t, but that doesn’t make this bad advice. S/he is explicit about their financial security, and this advice may be useful to some.
  - jobserunder 8y ago
    I'm not rich. But I am pulling in about $800/month in passive income from an investment of about $30k into a multiplex and living for free. If more people saved 30k to buy a multiplex (and lowered their standard of living) instead of buying a 40k vehicle (and accepted driving a $5k used vehicle)... then they would also have the same security of pulling income. It will only take a few years of sacrifice and careful saving to achieve this. But it is worth it.
gumby 8y ago
>When i'm expected to be in the office every day, given funny looks if i pack up my shit at 5pm, asked where i was if i didnt eat lunch at my desk, then quite frankly, i generally leave the contract early. This is doubly right on. I am the opposite of the original questioner: I like the high stress environment where I feel like we're all pulling hard on some intense goal+. BUT I like it when we're a team thus I don't care if someone is leaving or coming when they are; I just care that if I toss a ball their way they'll know what to do with it and if someone tosses a ball my way I will know what to do with it. That we're all working to get the job done -- which is no excuse for bullshit monitoring each other. The other doubly right on: again, I'm not a contractor but I've hired plenty and they don't pretend to be committed to our large goal, only what they signed up for. And that's totally fair. A contractor (generally has to) has to hustle for business but has an easier time firing a customer they don't like. + original question was a good one and I was interested in the replies even though I don't seek out the same thing.
DanielBMarkham 8y ago
Same here. I'm also a contractor and have seen scores of different work environments. Maybe hundreds. I also specialize in making tech teams happier and more productive, so how people feel about their work is something I've been tracking and learning about for a while. "Stress" is a weird word. I've seen people with jobs I thought were skate that were totally stressed-out. I've also seen people with jobs I'd never take who thrive. Maybe discomfort is a better word. From what I've seen, all jobs involve some amount of discomfort. The critical factor is whether or not you feel in control over it. I was on a short gig with a client a few years back where I was hired by the QA department. They were having problems with quality, but it really was about trust, attitude, stress (discomfort), and interpersonal relationships. I was only there for a few weeks, but I never had a week with that client where they didn't complain about something. I wore jeans, which broke the dress code. Jeans were common all over the company, but for some reason this particular group cared about a dress code. I left an hour early because there was nothing to do and I didn't want to waste their time. They wanted me there until 5 every day. It was seven or eight things like that over a few weeks. They were probably one of my top five worst clients ever. It was sad because when I worked with the dev teams there was this feeling of helplessness. It wasn't that things sucked. Things suck all the time. It was that they didn't feel like they had control over it. Instead it was just random sucky stuff showing up and everybody having to react. All the time. It destroyed trust and made things miserable. People ended up in little cliques, controlling information flow and making sure somebody else got blamed for things. I pointed out that there were some severe environment issues that we needed to fix right away. Then I was corrected and told that they only wanted 1 or 2 tech topics from me, not advice on making a better work environment. I was happy to leave. That unpredictable, out-of-control, low-trust-environment is what destroys lives. (and team productivity). All of those adjectives are relative, however, and I've never seen a case where things couldn't get better. If people want things to get better.
wallflower 8y ago
> When i'm expected to be in the office every day, given funny looks if i pack up my shit at 5pm, asked where i was if i didnt eat lunch at my desk, then quite frankly, i generally leave the contract early. Let me add if they require you to punch in and punch out on their awful ADP time tracking portal for lunch time...

jobserunder 8y ago

>When i'm expected to be in the office every day, given funny looks if i pack up my shit at 5pm, asked where i was if i didnt eat lunch at my desk, then quite frankly, i generally leave the contract early. This. I'm the same way. Now I only take 100% remote contracts and now I'm 2-3x more productive than my former office-going self. Fun tip: When someone asks "Where are you?" Then the correct answer is: "Who wants to know?" There are 2 exceptions: 1. It's your Mother asking. She has a right to know because she gave you life. 2. Your employer, when you are on the click. Because they are paying for your time. Since I always bill by the hour and time everything to the minute as I go...I can answer them "Where am I" and send them a URL to the thing that I worked on. If they are asking when I'm explicitly not billing... then either: A) I ghost them immediately and terminate the contract B) Ghost them the day after and send them back files after wiping everything clean. This is the value in having multiple streams of income (rental properties, small contracts and passive income)

pxndx 8y ago
Yeah, there's nothing like already being rich. This is terrible advice, not everyone has rental properties or passive income.
- adamcharnock 8y ago
  Indeed they don’t, but that doesn’t make this bad advice. S/he is explicit about their financial security, and this advice may be useful to some.
- jobserunder 8y ago
  I'm not rich. But I am pulling in about $800/month in passive income from an investment of about $30k into a multiplex and living for free. If more people saved 30k to buy a multiplex (and lowered their standard of living) instead of buying a 40k vehicle (and accepted driving a $5k used vehicle)... then they would also have the same security of pulling income. It will only take a few years of sacrifice and careful saving to achieve this. But it is worth it.

gumby 8y ago

>When i'm expected to be in the office every day, given funny looks if i pack up my shit at 5pm, asked where i was if i didnt eat lunch at my desk, then quite frankly, i generally leave the contract early. This is doubly right on. I am the opposite of the original questioner: I like the high stress environment where I feel like we're all pulling hard on some intense goal+. BUT I like it when we're a team thus I don't care if someone is leaving or coming when they are; I just care that if I toss a ball their way they'll know what to do with it and if someone tosses a ball my way I will know what to do with it. That we're all working to get the job done -- which is no excuse for bullshit monitoring each other. The other doubly right on: again, I'm not a contractor but I've hired plenty and they don't pretend to be committed to our large goal, only what they signed up for. And that's totally fair. A contractor (generally has to) has to hustle for business but has an easier time firing a customer they don't like. + original question was a good one and I was interested in the replies even though I don't seek out the same thing.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago

Same here. I'm also a contractor and have seen scores of different work environments. Maybe hundreds. I also specialize in making tech teams happier and more productive, so how people feel about their work is something I've been tracking and learning about for a while. "Stress" is a weird word. I've seen people with jobs I thought were skate that were totally stressed-out. I've also seen people with jobs I'd never take who thrive. Maybe discomfort is a better word. From what I've seen, all jobs involve some amount of discomfort. The critical factor is whether or not you feel in control over it. I was on a short gig with a client a few years back where I was hired by the QA department. They were having problems with quality, but it really was about trust, attitude, stress (discomfort), and interpersonal relationships. I was only there for a few weeks, but I never had a week with that client where they didn't complain about something. I wore jeans, which broke the dress code. Jeans were common all over the company, but for some reason this particular group cared about a dress code. I left an hour early because there was nothing to do and I didn't want to waste their time. They wanted me there until 5 every day. It was seven or eight things like that over a few weeks. They were probably one of my top five worst clients ever. It was sad because when I worked with the dev teams there was this feeling of helplessness. It wasn't that things sucked. Things suck all the time. It was that they didn't feel like they had control over it. Instead it was just random sucky stuff showing up and everybody having to react. All the time. It destroyed trust and made things miserable. People ended up in little cliques, controlling information flow and making sure somebody else got blamed for things. I pointed out that there were some severe environment issues that we needed to fix right away. Then I was corrected and told that they only wanted 1 or 2 tech topics from me, not advice on making a better work environment. I was happy to leave. That unpredictable, out-of-control, low-trust-environment is what destroys lives. (and team productivity). All of those adjectives are relative, however, and I've never seen a case where things couldn't get better. If people want things to get better.

wallflower 8y ago