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Why do people waste so much time at work?

• aapje 11y ago
  We all know the answer is HN.
  • sgift 11y ago
    HN time is not wasted.
    • Roritharr 11y ago
      [citation needed]
      • sz4kerto 11y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9603608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9603608
      • sgift 11y ago
        It is an intristic part of every tech job to stay informed on new technology, trends in the industry and possible problems arising. HN provides information on such topics (and more), so reading HN is not wasted (and even if it was wasted time, it wasn't as wasted as the 50th meeting for the same shit topic because no one wants to make a decision). Acceptable?
      • mcphage 11y ago
        How else would we learn about this week's Javascript-Framework-Which-Will-Solve-All-Our-Problems? Or next week's? Or the week after's?
• sitkack 11y ago
  Because if they got their job done and left they would be fired. If they got their job done, they would be given more work. So one takes the maximal amount of time to do a task given the requirement that they be in the office for 8+ hrs a day.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • diamondback 11y ago
    "My only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
  • exizt88 11y ago
    If they have 8 hours of work time and finished their tasks in 6, does that mean they have exhausted their usefulness to the business? Why not spend these 2 hours doing some small miscellaneous tasks?
    • nicky0 11y ago
      Laziness
      • niklasni1 11y ago
        Laziness is just another word for having your priorities in order.
        • Anderkent 11y ago
          I know you're probably saying it tongue-in-cheek, but not really. I'm a fairly lazy person; it bothers me to no end. I wish I could do more work more reliably, but I can't (yet! growth mindset). A degree of laziness might look like having your priorities in order, but they're not really the same thing
          • niklasni1 11y ago
            If you feel like it's a problem and you're trying to fix it, I honestly wish you nothing but the best of luck. Personally I'm wary of being obsessed with being productive -- especially at work. I had a bit of breakdown towards the end of my university days, due to setting some unrealistic requirements for myself. I wasn't allowing myself time off because I had 'quotas' to meet, and that took a toll and I had to basically hide away for a few months, while it dawned on me that the quotas didn't come from anywhere and I needed to calm the fuck down and get my priorities in order. Now I have a regular job and I'm doing OK. But I don't let my time estimates rule me, I make time for breaks, and I don't stay after hours unless there's a deadline. And honestly even now I hope to knock a few hours off my weekly contract soon, because I feel like I'm spending too much time at a desk working on other people's projects (for money) when I could be, you know, baking bread or reading Wikipedia or hanging out with friends (if they weren't all at work, that is). In contrast, I have a co-worker who seems to love staying till 8 in the evening closing Jira tasks being "productive". Hatever. That's not where I want my wrinkles to come from. edit -- I suppose maybe you're right, though. What I mean is maybe more that "what looks like laziness from one perspective can be called prioritizing from another". Less sound bite-y, though.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• nshepperd 11y ago
  > In this respect, entire occupations might be considered phoney - from life coaches to "atmosphere co-ordinators" (people hired to create a party vibe in bars) to "chief learning officers" in the corporate world. People hired to create atmosphere in bars might be "phoney" in an object-level sense, but as far as their job goes presumably they do provide an actual service to someone, by causing more people to visit the bar.
  • davidgerard 11y ago
    It's still a Bullshit Job. http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ The answer to the BBC news story's question is: "because our jobs increasingly have more and more bullshit."
    • Anderkent 11y ago
      People creating a vibe in pubs doesn't feel like a bullshit job. They're providing a service to other pub goers, making it a more pleasant place. You can't ignore pleasure and satisfaction of other people when considering a job is useful or not. In the end, those are the goals of anything we do; that the job does it directly rather than indirectly (by say improving industry, which makes life easier, which means people have more free time, which provides happiness/satisfaction) doesn't make it 'bullshit'
      • davidgerard 11y ago
        I would disagree. Emotional labour is the essence of many a completely bullshit job.
        • matt_s 11y ago
          The pub should A/B test having the person there, and not there, and look at the bar sales. That would determine if it is bullshit or not. If the person creates a vibe that gets more people there, e.g. patrons texting friends to stop in, or increased bar sales by people staying longer then it might be worth it. Of course if the bar hired bartenders that created an atmosphere of fun whilst doing their jobs then that would be even more profitable.
• Foomandoonian 11y ago
  "We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller, 1930
  • erikb 11y ago
    Let's say we all agree that the global amount of resources are enough to support all of us without work, just for simplification. Then what about distribution of these resources? I feel many people work to fight over that distribution, not just to produce. E.g., there might be no $1000/h lawyer who would think that they produce even $100/h worth of resources. But they might still work 80h/week (or make the impression) to get a bigger share of the pie that is already there.
    • _pmf_ 11y ago
      > Then what about distribution of these resources? The point is that this is an entirely separate question. On a global scale, it's hard to find a worse distribution scheme than the currently used scheme, so any arbitrary distribution is better than the current one (in which the powerful take increasingly more).
      • msellout 11y ago
        On a global scale? I thought all those Hans Rosling "Mind the Gap" videos were telling us the world is increasingly equal.
        • 11y ago
• Uberphallus 11y ago
  In my case it's the lack of documentation about a huge system (ecosystem, I'd rather call it), in contrast to an overengineered methodology and process, which involves mandatory code reviews by people unfamiliar with the code and 6 test phases before production. If I crank 10 lines of code a week I consider myself lucky, and it won't take less than 3 weeks for them to hit production. The combination of that with long builds and releases (30min minimum) makes me always have something to do, but I'm always waiting for something to be able to move on (build to be finished, answers from experts, validation by QA...). That's where HN and r/programming kick in.
  • mdpopescu 11y ago
    I sincerely hope this (10 lines of code a week) is hyperbole. I would be fine with 3 weeks to hit production - not everybody works on a SaaS, I've had six months release cycles - but... not writing code?
    • marktangotango 11y ago
      I've probably not even gotten 10 lines a week at some jobs. One gig was mostly all ad hoc reporting stuff, with a lot of cut and paste of previous impls. Another place I and two others spent a year on a project that should've taken 2 months, I didn't write any new code at all for at least 6 months of that project. Specifically there was a lot of back forth, requirements changes from the business owners, on the part I wasn't involved with, before the project went live. This was typical for the first 10 years of my career until I took a lead position. Now I work all the time, and I focus on organizing and coaching up my team so I don't have to do as much.
    • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      When the code base is bad enough, fixing a bug can take a small code tweak but days to discover and days more to test. Especially if refactoring bad code isn't an option at the time.
• erikb 11y ago
  I don't think it was ever different. The idea that there should be enough time to sleep and have hobbies, that's the new thing. Just because our parents already experienced these privileges doesn't mean it's an old topic. And if something like this happens so regularly, so naturally, I think instead of logically arguing about it we should worry more about how to handle that. I'm thinking about that other article were sales people were working together to make it looks like they all would work 80 hour weeks. Last but not least let's not forget that our bosses also actually don't care abut our work hours. Caring would mean that they would need to look at hour work schedules and time tables, etc, instead of going to the golf club. For them it's more important that they can make a good impression on their bosses and customers as well. As long as we deliver that impression they don't mind that we all act like we are working 80 hour weeks, including them.
• izietto 11y ago
  Because working hours are inhuman.
• boothead 11y ago
  I'm reading this at the moment: http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/ http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/ Some extracts from the intro: "And it’s not only at the bottom of the pyramid. There is a dirty secret I have discovered in the fifteen years I have spent consulting and coaching organizational leaders: life at the top of the pyramids isn’t much more fulfilling. Behind the façade and the bravado, the lives of powerful corporate leaders are ones of quiet suffering too. Their frantic activity is often a poor cover up for a deep inner sense of emptiness. The power games, the politics, and the infighting end up taking their toll on everybody. At both the top and bottom, organizations are more often than not playfields for unfulfilling pursuits of our egos, inhospitable to the deeper yearnings of our souls. This book isn’t a rant about large corporations gone mad with greed. People who work in government agencies or nonprofits are rarely more exuberant about their workplaces. Even professions of calling aren’t immune to organizational disillusionment. Teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their field of vocation in droves. Our schools, unfortunately, are for the most part soulless machines where students and teachers simply go through the motions. We have turned hospitals into cold, bureaucratic institutions that dispossess doctors and nurses of their capacity to care from the heart. " "The way we try to deal with organizations’ current problems often seems to make things worse, not better. Most organizations have gone through many rounds of change programs, mergers, centralizations and decentralizations, new IT systems, new mission statements, new scorecards, or new incentive systems. It feels like we have stretched the current way we run organizations to its limits, and these traditional recipes often seem part of the problem, not the solution. We yearn for more, for radically better ways to be in organizations. But is that genuinely possible, or mere wishful thinking? If it turns out that it is possible to create organizations that draw out more of our human potential, then what do such organizations look like? How do we bring them to life? These are the questions at the heart of this book. "
  • rorykoehler 11y ago
    Also reading this. Great book.
• robg 11y ago
  Stress makes the brain lose focus.
• webtards 11y ago
  Because we are playing the game. Some call it presenteeism, other call it face time, some even view it as the boss owning your ass during the work hours. But basically, we don't really give a fuck for the organisation, for the team, for the project, for the job. We just do enough to keep the gig until something better rolls along. We know you would have no hesitation to cut jobs and other such when it suits, so don't expect any more from us.
• normloman 11y ago
  Before we get into a discussion about basic income and drones making us obsolete, can we talk about cutting hours? First, lets get back to the standard 40 hour work week. That'd be a big step. And after that, can some of us work less? Half of my day is spent browsing the internet out of boredom. I'd get more done if the day was shorter. Better yet, let me telecommute and set my own hours. You'll get the same results out of me, if not better, and I'll be a happier fellow.
  • winter_blue 11y ago
    I totally relate to you. I'd myself personally prefer going half-time (20 hrs/week), with the option of working extra hours. (Perhaps a 5-hours-a-day 4-day work week.)
• pinaceae 11y ago
  because I pay you for 40h of productivity per week, not a fixed amount of output? for the latter, consulting/freelance exists. if you get paid for 40h per week, the expectation is to devote those hours to the benefit of the employer. do your tasks, if you have time to spare, think of other benefits - improvements, better ideas, learn, etc. people that finish a task and then wait to be given another are the bane of the workplace. you never hire them at startups, but at some size they creep in and kill, kill, kill any company. walk into HP, Oracle, IBM today and you'll see them, in droves. that is why you can lay off 30% workforce at that size with no sizeable impact on your customers.
  • matt_s 11y ago
    There is likely a certain organization size where many sub organizations or groups exist and work gets to a mode of waiting on so-and-so to do that thing. Big companies like to organize around what they perceive as efficiency - putting common workers together and having common practices, etc. This leads to a waterfall delivery model where in order to x, y and z you need three different groups and they all have requests coming in all directions. Small companies, including startups, simply don't have that org structure so you would never see that behavior since it isn't needed. This isn't a type of person, it is a type of organization structure. That is why you hear it being so common across completely different businesses of similar size. There is a good model in larger companies where you have entire vertical areas of responsibility as a group or organization. They are held accountable for delivering something in total and don't have many other groups to interact with for delivery. Kind of like a startup or small company inside a company. Many upper management types don't like this because they are seen as something they can't control. I've heard the Virgin companies are organized in this manner.
  • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Are you paying hourly or salary? If salary, you are paying for what should be able to be done in 40 hours a week, but if it takes 45, you expect it to still be done, no? So if one can get it done is 35, why do you expect 5 more hours to given free?
    • 11y ago
• caseysoftware 11y ago
  I think this involves setting some clear boundaries and expectations. I learned some things while I was consulting that I've carried into everything since: - After a certain time each evening (7pm for me), stop sending email. You can still write and respond to it but schedule it to go out the next morning. If people see you respond at 2am, they'll begin to expect it. - Do the same for weekends. Schedule email for Monday morning. If people see you respond on Saturdays, they'll begin to expect it. - Only check email every N hours. I've found N=3 or 4 is best. This is the hardest for me. If you respond to every email in minutes, they'll begin to expect it. - If you're not explicitly on the To line, filter it from your inbox. I have an "other stuff" folder where email goes if I'm not explicitly on the To line. I check this folder 1-2 times/day at most. If something is important to me, address it to me. - Have a fixed todo list each day. If someone brings you a task, put it at the end of today so it often ends up tomorrow and communicate that. (Obviously, if something is really important, you can shift the order but that should be an exception, not the practice.) If you drop everything every time someone asks, they'll begin to expect it. - Leave the office at a predictable time each day. I try to leave by 6pm. If you occasionally stay late, they'll begin to expect it. - Don't answer your phone the first time someone calls. I always wait until their second call or if they email/text/dm too. If you're always-accessible, they'll begin to expect it. - Don't take your phone into the bedroom at night. I leave mine charging on my desk at the other side of the house. If you answer your phone in the middle of the night, they'll begin to expect it.
  • caseysoftware 11y ago
    I should note two extra benefits from not always being available: - many problems often resolve themselves - those people who would rather ask someone instead of google, tend to learn to google.
• GBond 11y ago
  I'm surprised no one mentioned Holacracy yet. As others have mentioned, doing "just enough" work is a by-product of a inefficiencies of the hierarchal approach of managing via command and control. Holacracy instead is network centric. I don't know if I completely buy into the effectiveness of Holacracy but I can see how it it is better motivating to Producers. For example, I tend to write better code knowing that it will be peer-reviewed by another dev I respect.