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Office work is increasingly just adult daycare much of the time. Even in manufacturing I'm seeing more folks killing time in rest areas or meeting rooms because

Office work is increasingly just adult daycare much of the time. Even in manufacturing I'm seeing more folks killing time in rest areas or meeting rooms because the work is getting done faster (but they're not going to say so and get laid off for doing a good job), and a demand for acting/performative rituals ensnares higher performers in these practices to maintain the guise of "work" for out-of-touch managers and leadership still nostalgic for ye olde days of men in suits and casual harassment in the workplace. Honestly, I'd much rather we drop the whole pretense of appearances and fixed schedules in favor of shorter, flexible work weeks with a handful of fixed appearances (generally meetings/standups/lunches) to ensure folks stay on the same page. For all their crowing about technology changing how we work, they're staunchly opposed to actually letting that happen and mandating the same fixed structures we've had since being an Industrial Powerhouse in the early 1900s. The workers want to modernize. It's leadership that's the problem.

nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
> Office work is increasingly just adult daycare much of the time. And the 'metrics' for productivity are completely gamed, in any direction, at any time arbitrarily. Management/those that set these policies can 'turn up the heat' or relax them at any time, without warning. I've been on both sides of this. Sure, you can hit some metric if some real product is produced, like widgets or something, but even in that hypothetical example, what if someone is top producer but skimps on quality or something resulting in a shorter lifespan of the product? Before I left a recent employer a very (statistically and materially; i.e he was both very good at 'playing the game' and actually doing, you know, skilled work) high performer was PIPd (for "low performance"). In the previous half-decade+ he was there, he got 'exceeds' and top rankings every single year and was presumably paid more than the managers but was forced out, likely due to pay and internal politics. I take most measures of 'productivity' to be totally fake, just based on my experience.
- stego-tech 1y ago
  > I take most measures of 'productivity' to be totally fake, just based on my experience. Same. Having worked everywhere from tiny storefronts all the way up to the SV Big Leagues, "productivity" and "performance" as a measure is complete bullshit. The only measure that matters at the end of the day is corporate profit, and so long as the company is earning more than it spends while compensating workers to thrive in their communities, then any other measure of human capital is irrelevant. Instituting KPIs for human capital only leads to the most toxic people thriving in an organization, because they have no compunction gaming the system for their own ends. Remove the KPIs and force management to deal with interpersonal conflicts and skill gaps again, and suddenly your org will start dropping bad people and retaining good workers. EDIT: Adding that, especially in technical fields, KPIs will miss substantial improvements 100% of the time because they only measure what the business wants to measure. No KPI can accurately track replacing a six-month timeline for bespoke OS images with a 15 minute Packer pipeline, and most managers can't or won't recognize the outsized impact of such a contribution. Worse yet, organizations overly dependent on measuring human capital via KPIs will penalize such an efficiency gain, because it harms those gaming the KPIs for their own ends. Stop measuring human capital with KPIs is the lesson, here. Evaluating performance is literally why you have managers.
no_wizard 1y ago
>Office work is increasingly just adult daycare much of the time. Even in manufacturing I'm seeing more folks killing time in rest areas or meeting rooms because the work is getting done faster (but they're not going to say so and get laid off for doing a good job) This brings up a good point, one I have observed myself. That efficiency is ultimately punished, not rewarded. I think the term office politics should have been a signal of this, but it alluded me for a number of years while I was building my career. Once I slowed down and started to be a little more performative, only then did the promotions start coming in. The only logical reason I can track is that its because in the act of slowing down and being more performative, is that I started talking more with others in the company up and down the hierarchy and became known as a do good affable guy (which admittedly, I actually am!) In short, people like me and that matters alot, and my actual performance beyond being slightly better than my peers, mattered little. Yet, me being personable - and I don't mean simply courteous, on time, using good verbal language etc but more akin to befriending - is what paid the dividends for my career. This runs directly counter to what is supposedly valued[0]. [0]: Let me be clear here, I'm not saying people who are productive but mean, grumpy and don't work well with others shouldn't have that taken into account. There is at least some minimum of good social courtesy and discourse required, especially when working with others. I'm talking about how pseudo friendship is valued in and above being productive, while someone with good social graces and metrics (quality work etc) but doesn't network consistently does worse

nyarlathotep_ 1y ago

> Office work is increasingly just adult daycare much of the time. And the 'metrics' for productivity are completely gamed, in any direction, at any time arbitrarily. Management/those that set these policies can 'turn up the heat' or relax them at any time, without warning. I've been on both sides of this. Sure, you can hit some metric if some real product is produced, like widgets or something, but even in that hypothetical example, what if someone is top producer but skimps on quality or something resulting in a shorter lifespan of the product? Before I left a recent employer a very (statistically and materially; i.e he was both very good at 'playing the game' and actually doing, you know, skilled work) high performer was PIPd (for "low performance"). In the previous half-decade+ he was there, he got 'exceeds' and top rankings every single year and was presumably paid more than the managers but was forced out, likely due to pay and internal politics. I take most measures of 'productivity' to be totally fake, just based on my experience.

stego-tech 1y ago
> I take most measures of 'productivity' to be totally fake, just based on my experience. Same. Having worked everywhere from tiny storefronts all the way up to the SV Big Leagues, "productivity" and "performance" as a measure is complete bullshit. The only measure that matters at the end of the day is corporate profit, and so long as the company is earning more than it spends while compensating workers to thrive in their communities, then any other measure of human capital is irrelevant. Instituting KPIs for human capital only leads to the most toxic people thriving in an organization, because they have no compunction gaming the system for their own ends. Remove the KPIs and force management to deal with interpersonal conflicts and skill gaps again, and suddenly your org will start dropping bad people and retaining good workers. EDIT: Adding that, especially in technical fields, KPIs will miss substantial improvements 100% of the time because they only measure what the business wants to measure. No KPI can accurately track replacing a six-month timeline for bespoke OS images with a 15 minute Packer pipeline, and most managers can't or won't recognize the outsized impact of such a contribution. Worse yet, organizations overly dependent on measuring human capital via KPIs will penalize such an efficiency gain, because it harms those gaming the KPIs for their own ends. Stop measuring human capital with KPIs is the lesson, here. Evaluating performance is literally why you have managers.

no_wizard 1y ago

>Office work is increasingly just adult daycare much of the time. Even in manufacturing I'm seeing more folks killing time in rest areas or meeting rooms because the work is getting done faster (but they're not going to say so and get laid off for doing a good job) This brings up a good point, one I have observed myself. That efficiency is ultimately punished, not rewarded. I think the term office politics should have been a signal of this, but it alluded me for a number of years while I was building my career. Once I slowed down and started to be a little more performative, only then did the promotions start coming in. The only logical reason I can track is that its because in the act of slowing down and being more performative, is that I started talking more with others in the company up and down the hierarchy and became known as a do good affable guy (which admittedly, I actually am!) In short, people like me and that matters alot, and my actual performance beyond being slightly better than my peers, mattered little. Yet, me being personable - and I don't mean simply courteous, on time, using good verbal language etc but more akin to befriending - is what paid the dividends for my career. This runs directly counter to what is supposedly valued[0]. [0]: Let me be clear here, I'm not saying people who are productive but mean, grumpy and don't work well with others shouldn't have that taken into account. There is at least some minimum of good social courtesy and discourse required, especially when working with others. I'm talking about how pseudo friendship is valued in and above being productive, while someone with good social graces and metrics (quality work etc) but doesn't network consistently does worse