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During Uni. I worked very briefly as a hand for construction workers, via a temp agency. The most common task was to clean up the work site, and one fall we wor

During Uni. I worked very briefly as a hand for construction workers, via a temp agency. The most common task was to clean up the work site, and one fall we worked on this very long apartment project - I'm not sure exactly how long it was, but we only worked on the sides. Huge scaffold wrapped the building, and I'd walk around collecting trash. My first day on the job, I worked pretty fast. I collected all the trash I could find, and when I was done, I sat down for probably 10 minutes trying to figure out what to do next. We were few people, and the worksite was pretty big. During lunch, I get a call from my supervisor at the temp agency - she sounds worried and asks what is happening? Apparently one of the construction managers had briefly observed me sitting down, and immediately called my supervisor to inform her that I was not working, and that this arrangement was not working out. They wanted to booted off, and replaced with another temp worker ASAP. We agreed that I'd work "extra hard, and walk the extra mile" rest of that shift. One hour into next part of the shift, I find out that there's not much more to do. All the trash has been collected - and I have 3 hours left. I kind of just say fuck it to myself, and start walking from one side of the project to the other, carrying the same bags of trash. I'm doing this non-stop for 3 hours. I continue doing this for the next days, whenever I'm out of actual things to do. My supervisor calls me, excited, and says I'm now getting glowing reviews from the site managers - and asks me if I want to extend the contract by 4 weeks. Years later I end up working for a shitty firm that monitored keyboard activity, your desk presence (via movement sensors on the desks!), and a range of other frightening KPIs. Once again, I end up "refactoring" code all day long - essentially just moving blocks of code up and down, doing no real change to the code. I got "exceeds expectations", but soon jump ship.

emsixteen 4y ago
> that monitored keyboard activity, your desk presence (via movement sensors on the desks!) [..] Hoooooly toxicity. Good to hear you jumped ship, that sort of environment can't make for a good working environment.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Again, one of the instances that make me so happy to live in a country with strong labor laws. Those things are simply illegal over here.
  - Viliam1234 4y ago
    > Those things are simply illegal over here. Let me guess, your Skype/Teams icon still changes color when you stop moving your mouse for sufficiently long time, and you are technically prevented from changing this setting...
- willnonya 4y ago
  While i agree this comes about for 2 reasons. Managers who do not really know how to manage people. Workers who lack the work ethic to be left unsupervised feeding back into the first item.
  - skydhash 4y ago
    If the workers lack the work ethic, you let go of them. Either that their output is valuable enough that work ethic (aka being present 9-5) does not matter that much, or they just don't care about the job to actually do it. I've been under that kind of supervision (not so extreme) and the only result was feeling dread about actually working.
Thlom 4y ago
Reminds me of the story I heard while working constructions. There as this guy that no one ever saw working, but they could see him walk around sometimes with tools so assumed he had shit to do. Until they one day found him sleeping in a pile of insulation in the basement. Turned out he had been doing this for years. Slaked off in a hidden corner of the construction site most of the day, but made sure to take a stroll through the site with some tools from time to time for appearances.
ovi256 4y ago
Your experience tells me this is possible, at least, when management has no visibility into your real productivity. Either through lack of interest or time to supervise results - the construction site manager. Or through lack of skills - the software job where you did pointless refactoring. At least the construction site manager had a point - morale is contagious, and you being seen sitting around by other, busy workers would not have been good for their morale.
- willnonya 4y ago
  This feeds into the failure of the article to grasp that just because the reason isn't obvious to you does not mean there is not a valid reason behind it.
durnygbur 4y ago
Your job was to be (cron)jon checking periodcally for items to be garbage collected and visually reporting the state of the collected garbage. We all write cronjbos like this. Mundane but hey, you were a student temp worker.
agumonkey 4y ago
Can't say I've observed that too. The adult world is littered with blur. It's an extremely strange (and exhausting) game equilibrium. And people, just like you do, realized that, and now as non stupid agents, .. game the metric. In many companies, different kinds of employees took advantage of this blur / lack of vision (or plain stupidity some would say).. to delay work and only do it when absolutely required, and ranting about all the 'hard word' they have on their plate. Anyways, I personally hate this way of life and am curious if it's possible to be excellent and honest and not having to deal with theatrics. Maybe i'm fighting windmills.
- random_kris 4y ago
  I increasingly feel so. And when you raise a point people are Always going for the work/life balance excuse or something stupid
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    wlb is not the worse in my book, although I kinda get what you mean.. if it's thrown out like a knee reflex to avoid doing anything. economics/politics is one that gets me a lot, to be doing the normal job they'd ask for more. it's a neverending cycle. another factor i've seen is fear, people won't change because everyday someone see someone else slacking a bit, so why work if they don't.. causes a race to the bottom. a strange form of distributed equilibrium. and people implicitely know this but nothing changes. and this accumulates at nation scale where politicians will say that to improve economy or job quality, it would require so much resources, money or else.. when in fact it's mostly a mental switch that has to be flipped.

emsixteen 4y ago

> that monitored keyboard activity, your desk presence (via movement sensors on the desks!) [..] Hoooooly toxicity. Good to hear you jumped ship, that sort of environment can't make for a good working environment.

hef19898 4y ago
Again, one of the instances that make me so happy to live in a country with strong labor laws. Those things are simply illegal over here.
- Viliam1234 4y ago
  > Those things are simply illegal over here. Let me guess, your Skype/Teams icon still changes color when you stop moving your mouse for sufficiently long time, and you are technically prevented from changing this setting...
willnonya 4y ago
While i agree this comes about for 2 reasons. Managers who do not really know how to manage people. Workers who lack the work ethic to be left unsupervised feeding back into the first item.
- skydhash 4y ago
  If the workers lack the work ethic, you let go of them. Either that their output is valuable enough that work ethic (aka being present 9-5) does not matter that much, or they just don't care about the job to actually do it. I've been under that kind of supervision (not so extreme) and the only result was feeling dread about actually working.

Thlom 4y ago

Reminds me of the story I heard while working constructions. There as this guy that no one ever saw working, but they could see him walk around sometimes with tools so assumed he had shit to do. Until they one day found him sleeping in a pile of insulation in the basement. Turned out he had been doing this for years. Slaked off in a hidden corner of the construction site most of the day, but made sure to take a stroll through the site with some tools from time to time for appearances.

ovi256 4y ago

Your experience tells me this is possible, at least, when management has no visibility into your real productivity. Either through lack of interest or time to supervise results - the construction site manager. Or through lack of skills - the software job where you did pointless refactoring. At least the construction site manager had a point - morale is contagious, and you being seen sitting around by other, busy workers would not have been good for their morale.

willnonya 4y ago
This feeds into the failure of the article to grasp that just because the reason isn't obvious to you does not mean there is not a valid reason behind it.

durnygbur 4y ago

Your job was to be (cron)jon checking periodcally for items to be garbage collected and visually reporting the state of the collected garbage. We all write cronjbos like this. Mundane but hey, you were a student temp worker.

agumonkey 4y ago

Can't say I've observed that too. The adult world is littered with blur. It's an extremely strange (and exhausting) game equilibrium. And people, just like you do, realized that, and now as non stupid agents, .. game the metric. In many companies, different kinds of employees took advantage of this blur / lack of vision (or plain stupidity some would say).. to delay work and only do it when absolutely required, and ranting about all the 'hard word' they have on their plate. Anyways, I personally hate this way of life and am curious if it's possible to be excellent and honest and not having to deal with theatrics. Maybe i'm fighting windmills.

random_kris 4y ago
I increasingly feel so. And when you raise a point people are Always going for the work/life balance excuse or something stupid
- agumonkey 4y ago
  wlb is not the worse in my book, although I kinda get what you mean.. if it's thrown out like a knee reflex to avoid doing anything. economics/politics is one that gets me a lot, to be doing the normal job they'd ask for more. it's a neverending cycle. another factor i've seen is fear, people won't change because everyday someone see someone else slacking a bit, so why work if they don't.. causes a race to the bottom. a strange form of distributed equilibrium. and people implicitely know this but nothing changes. and this accumulates at nation scale where politicians will say that to improve economy or job quality, it would require so much resources, money or else.. when in fact it's mostly a mental switch that has to be flipped.