2 ms·

> They have a lot of time on their hands because there are so, so many people in administration. Not so polite take: most of them could be replaced by a 20 lin

> They have a lot of time on their hands because there are so, so many people in administration. Not so polite take: most of them could be replaced by a 20 line shell script.

hooverd 2y ago
such as?
- Henchman21 2y ago
  I feel like if you just piped stdin to stdout you would have a solid start on it
bombcar 2y ago
Actually, they can't. Their job isn't to do whatever is on the description, their job is to give someone for their boss to have in his little fiefdom. Lord of the Shell Scripts doesn't ring as fun as having 20 employees, even if the shell scripts do more.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > their job is to give someone for their boss to have in his little fiefdom. In my friends' case, he didn't really want a little fiefdom or even to be a manager. The problem was that they made it clear that the only way to get promoted and move up the salary ladder was to become a manager of a team. So by converting his one-person role into a job that had to be done by several people, he could justify hiring a team underneath him and therefore getting a significant raise and better title. It's weird to hear them describe how everyone seemingly knows the game is broken, but they're open about how it needs to be played.
  - chillfox 2y ago
    Yep, pay is directly tied to how many people are under you. And it should be no surprise that this is how it works. The operational side is hired by the academic side which is even more crazy. It's made up mostly of people who have never had a job outside of school (they went to university and then never left) so it's high school drama all of the time.
- MichaelDickens 2y ago
  In that case, even better: lay off all the subordinates, and replace the boss with a 20 line shell script.
chillfox 2y ago
lolz. Having worked at a university your job isn't to get shit done. Your job is to make managers happy, usually by attending meetings, being knowledgeable, polite and always available. Your manager's job is to inflate headcount for the executives, so their empires grow and their ranking among other executives improves. People at the higher levels literally use words like empire and fiefdom (of x) to refer to departments instead of the departments name. The first few years I didn't understand this, so I would suggest automations and process improvements at meetings, my manager was always unhappy with me when I did this. I was literally told once that there was value in a human doing a task when I suggested we automate something that could be done with about 5 lines of code. Eventually I understood and improved. I would automate some tasks silently and then use the freed-up time to prepare for meetings and generally being a better team member. After starting doing this I frequently got highlighted as one of the top 3 team members.
- hooverd 2y ago
  Weird. I work a university and we love our self-service and process automation. Could be that it's a land-grant university and we don't have an unlimited endowment to blow.
  - chillfox 2y ago
    Where I was we had a self-service system as well that the university was very proud of. It's just that a lot of the things you could do on there would create a task for a human on the backend instead of having the computer just do it.
- hibikir 2y ago
  Note that this isn't limited to universities: Larger headcount's make promotions easier everywhere. A modern trick is to hire remote workers from abroad: I might not need 5 people, but 5 remote devs from Mexico are much more affordable than 5 US employees, and they sure mean one can justify someone in the US that is already here becoming a dev lead.
Workaccount2 2y ago
My mother works at a state university as a secretary for about 15 years now. Her job, especially after the pandemic, is pretty much to forward one or two emails a day to her boss. $70k/yr, lush state benefits, pension, all that stuff. The workday is 7 hours officially, but only 3-4 in reality (she comes in a few hours late and leaves a few hours early). 3 days in office, 2 remote. Basically unlimited PTO days too, since they are already generous in allotment and unused ones roll over. She loves it, obviously. Her boss loves her too, they chit chat all day when together, so she isn't getting laid off. But man, the inefficiency and waste is unreal.

> They have a lot of time on their hands because there are so, so many people in administration. Not so polite take: most of them could be replaced by a 20 line shell script.

hooverd 2y ago

such as?

Henchman21 2y ago
I feel like if you just piped stdin to stdout you would have a solid start on it

bombcar 2y ago

Actually, they can't. Their job isn't to do whatever is on the description, their job is to give someone for their boss to have in his little fiefdom. Lord of the Shell Scripts doesn't ring as fun as having 20 employees, even if the shell scripts do more.

Aurornis 2y ago
> their job is to give someone for their boss to have in his little fiefdom. In my friends' case, he didn't really want a little fiefdom or even to be a manager. The problem was that they made it clear that the only way to get promoted and move up the salary ladder was to become a manager of a team. So by converting his one-person role into a job that had to be done by several people, he could justify hiring a team underneath him and therefore getting a significant raise and better title. It's weird to hear them describe how everyone seemingly knows the game is broken, but they're open about how it needs to be played.
- chillfox 2y ago
  Yep, pay is directly tied to how many people are under you. And it should be no surprise that this is how it works. The operational side is hired by the academic side which is even more crazy. It's made up mostly of people who have never had a job outside of school (they went to university and then never left) so it's high school drama all of the time.
MichaelDickens 2y ago
In that case, even better: lay off all the subordinates, and replace the boss with a 20 line shell script.

chillfox 2y ago

lolz. Having worked at a university your job isn't to get shit done. Your job is to make managers happy, usually by attending meetings, being knowledgeable, polite and always available. Your manager's job is to inflate headcount for the executives, so their empires grow and their ranking among other executives improves. People at the higher levels literally use words like empire and fiefdom (of x) to refer to departments instead of the departments name. The first few years I didn't understand this, so I would suggest automations and process improvements at meetings, my manager was always unhappy with me when I did this. I was literally told once that there was value in a human doing a task when I suggested we automate something that could be done with about 5 lines of code. Eventually I understood and improved. I would automate some tasks silently and then use the freed-up time to prepare for meetings and generally being a better team member. After starting doing this I frequently got highlighted as one of the top 3 team members.

hooverd 2y ago
Weird. I work a university and we love our self-service and process automation. Could be that it's a land-grant university and we don't have an unlimited endowment to blow.
- chillfox 2y ago
  Where I was we had a self-service system as well that the university was very proud of. It's just that a lot of the things you could do on there would create a task for a human on the backend instead of having the computer just do it.
hibikir 2y ago
Note that this isn't limited to universities: Larger headcount's make promotions easier everywhere. A modern trick is to hire remote workers from abroad: I might not need 5 people, but 5 remote devs from Mexico are much more affordable than 5 US employees, and they sure mean one can justify someone in the US that is already here becoming a dev lead.

Workaccount2 2y ago

My mother works at a state university as a secretary for about 15 years now. Her job, especially after the pandemic, is pretty much to forward one or two emails a day to her boss. $70k/yr, lush state benefits, pension, all that stuff. The workday is 7 hours officially, but only 3-4 in reality (she comes in a few hours late and leaves a few hours early). 3 days in office, 2 remote. Basically unlimited PTO days too, since they are already generous in allotment and unused ones roll over. She loves it, obviously. Her boss loves her too, they chit chat all day when together, so she isn't getting laid off. But man, the inefficiency and waste is unreal.