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Cubicle Blues Blamed On IT
Ant wrote to us about depression and the cubicle blues. That's what the International Labor Organization, the UN's labor and human rights agency, says at least. They say that around 1 in 10 employees is either depressed, has anxiety, or is burnt-out -- do you find that to be true?
Imagine rewriting a kernel for the twelfth time, but this time with a view from atop on of the plateaus in the Grand Canyon, or possibly on the beach in Cabo San Lucas?
Possibly to save a bit of money, the company can just wire in a row or group of cubicles and have them all the same views and automatically change scenes every so often!
It'd be cool!
--
Vote Homer Simpson for President!
For the record.. I have an IT job, in a public company, in a company in the IT sector. Lots of engineers, programmers, etc.
I keep reading all these horror stories about Silicon Valley and how 'horrible and stressful' working there is. 80 hour weeks....
Yet I hear so many people moving there saying 'but I can make $100,000 a year'.
Hey.. that's twice what I make.. but wait, I only work *gasp* 40 hour weeks..... and I'm NOT stressed out.
I also know that if I decided to work 80 hours a week, like at a second job, I could make that hundred grand a year, and I would be sick and unhealthy and stressed out.
There are several things needed to make you happy at work.
1) Job Security. You can't feel 'good' about work if you worry about every single thing you do causing you to get fired.
2) Personal Security. You have to feel confident about your own abilities, and not dig yourself into a job that's over your head.
3) Good coworkers. If you end up working with backstabbing moneygrubbing coworkers.. well, what do you expect?
4) Good managers/management! Yes.. VERY important. Managers who realize that programmers are not 'programming machines' that can go 40 or 80 hours a week. Managers who realize that you will get just as much quality code out of programmers who work 40 hour weeks and are expected to actually code for only part of that.
5) Good *company* management. If everyone is on the same playing field, things work fine. If corporate guys set deadlines for engineering projects, of COURSE there is stress! If software managers set deadlines on software without any idea of what is involved, same thing. Stress.
Best example I've seen of proper behavior is this:
corporate (marketing) says they want this new feature added to the product. Corporate asks VP Engineering. VP Engineering talks to his managers. (hardware guys, software guys, project managers). THey all go back to their respective groups, gather input as to what is involved, and get back together to tell the VP Engineering how long it will take. Project managers indicate when a good time to start it is.. etc. VP Engineering calls back and says 'You can have that two years from now, unless you want to shelve some other stuff. HEre are the main reasons we can't do it.
And *NOBODY GETS MAD ABOUT IT!* This is how things should work.
The programmers and engineers aren't overworked, the deadlines are reasonably met, the managers take responsibility for their departments....
According to the NIMH, about 15% of the general population suffers from depression or anxiety. If that's the case, then it seems like IT workers are above the curve.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
I've done farm work, pumped gas (outdoors in the Canadian winter), served food in busy restaurants, and did janitorial work. While each of these suck in their own way, none compares to the stress and bad health effects of office work (sitting still for that long each day causes all sorts of problems from muscle wasting to poor digestion).
Sure, there is the chance of mishaps (or asshole customers), but you're busy moving around and don't have time to focus on them. They happen, it sucks until you heal (or calm down), you don't really think about it otherwise.
Office jobs tend to put one in the role of "professional worrier". A programmer worries about bugs, a secretary worries about schedules and messages, and a manager worries about everything. The push to efficiently do non-mechanical work in isolation that requires human evaluation and judgement is brutally stressful in a way humans were never meant to deal with (the normal pattern being: spend a few minutes figuring out how to do something and worrying about how it can go wrong, then work for several hours simply following the plan you thought out).
Go work on a farm or even pushing a mop for a while, you'll sleep better, eat better, put on muscle, and have generally better health (after a short but rough initial period of adjustment). Unfortunately, you can't get paid well that way, and may find it unsatisfying for other reasons.
Office hours should be shorter than labour hours and breaks should be more frequent; the mind tires more quickly than the body. Frequent meetings without rigid agendas should be scheduled with the recognition that they serve a social meeting/group therapy function that is as important as the information sharing function that is normally considered their purpose. It might also be much healthier not to hire janitors for office buildings, but to have people clean their own work areas. It is relaxing, mechanical work that gives your body a chance to pump lymph around and your brain a chance to shut down for a moment to recouperate.
(sitting around all day worrying about everything) != (good working conditions)
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in the IT world get stressed out because they *don't recognize that they get stressed out, or what makes them stressed out until it's too late*.
The first time I was really stressed out (I was 22 years old, working at some ISP) I went to the doctor complaining that I was having trouble sleeping, got frequent headaches, and noticed that I was generally getting irritable. I thought it was my diet or I had a tumor or something. After talking to him, describing work... he said 'You are simply stressed out'.
And it was *MY FAULT* for getting that way.
So.. here are my simple guidelines for not getting stressed out.
1) When someone gives you tasks/objectives at work, and a deadline, TALK TO THEM. If it can't be done during reasonable working hours, TELL THEM SO, IMMEDIATELY. Don't just assume they won't budge.
2) You aren't doing your job right if you can't do it in about 8 hours a day. You are either a crapppy programmer, or WAY overextending what you should be doing.
3) Eat Good Food!
4) Drink lots of water.
5) Don't drink too much booze.
6) Don't do recreational drugs during the workweek. The odd beer is okay. Stay off the weed, it makes you stupid. Save it for the weekend.
7) Take your holidays.
8) Communicate!
Also Overcomming (sic) Programmer's Block? (BTW - I submitted the article as "how to overcome programming stuckness?").
While I may have more to be concerned about since I have a mental illness, I find that dealing with moods and emotional concerns to be of profound importance in my work.
On the other hand, as I say in the Metro San Jose article that's linked to from above, one of the reasons I chose to be a programmer (or rather, continued to be a programmer after I'd been doing it for a while) is that I find that being symptomatic is rarely an impediment to working as a programmer - it is sometimes, but not all the time.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
I look forward to going to my cube. I think it's the fact that after lunch everyday there seems to be some sort of cube war.
Cube War:
Throwing an object into the other person's cube in order to hit them or keyboard.
Rules of Cube War:
1. Object thrown must be of the stuffed or "stress ball" variety. Computer expos commonly give away free balls and cup koozies.
2. Object must be lobbed from a sitting position into the other person's Cube.
3. hitting a person in the head is perfect. Hitting a person's keyboard in order to make a mistake is bonus.
Management making completely uninformed decisions is what causes a lot of stress. And once a project rolls out, clueless clients make up most of the rest of the stress. And both the clients and the management do not know how to express their problems or requests well enough so that everyone will actually know what is going on, and what is required.
People should plan for problems as well, which is another major lacking. Plan for that project to blow out, plan for the service to fail, plan for disaster. Doesn't have to be by much, but a few days here and there make a HUGE difference to the stress on the people working on it when there are those last niggling things to rectify that just won't dissapear!
This is what happens when people get into areas they have no understanding of. Up and beyond their level of competence. Wether it is because of lack of training or because they just don't know is no excuse. It exerts pressure on the people that the problems fall onto, and that is usually the technical staff. It is more prevalent in the IT Industry, but it happens everywhere.
It is amazing just how many managers really do act like the PHB's in Dilbert.
Can you tell I had a really bad day today?
I once came back to a yellow cubicle. And I mean yellow. My co-workers had covered EVERY surface with yellow Post-It notes. Then they arranged the keys on my keyboard (the QWERTY LINE) to read: FEAR US!
Have YOU ever unstuck about 10^4 Post-It notes? It's a Zen-like experience!
EMUSE.NET
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I've been a contract developer for over 10 years now. I've worked in a cubicle for about 7 years. As far as hours worked go, I'm a contracter - I get paid for every hour I work, period. If you're working 80 hours a week on salary, then, well, your an idiot. If you're depressed because your in a cube, well, your an idiot. If your staying in a job you are unhappy with, then, well, your an idiot.
If you are depressed, you need to either a) GET OVER IT or b) get happy drugs from the doctor. Sorry, but this article seems like yet another way for people to shift responsibility for their attitude and actions to others. YOU are responsible for your happiness. Period. YOU are responsible for you attitutde. Period. IT is to blame for black moods? Whatever. You are to blame for staying in the situation if you can't handle it.
The Game Guy
Human nature, though, tends to lead us to accomplish more and live and work in a better environment. The rich boss of your Fortune 500 company didn't say "I make six figures now, so I'm going to just calm down and cool off, because I have it better than most people". No -- of course not! He said "I want more. I want better. This is good, but I deserve more". And now he's probably making eight or nine figures -- and still plowing along, from his big office, company limo and private jet.
No matter how good anyone has it, they usually strive for something better. It's just human nature. When I was stuck in a tech-farm making $11/hr, I thought I'd be happy finding a permenant gig making at least $50k. I figured that I'd feel like I finally "made it" once I hit that point.
Here I am a year later, making closer to six figures doing something I enjoy (but wouldn't want to do forever) and it isn't enough. I still want something more.
Luckily, I not only work for one of the top three giants of this industry, but I get to telecommute from out of my house, 600 miles away.
In an age when most of our jobs could be done from home, it seems like a petty issue of control by run-of-the-mill upper-management to leverage their power by making sure their employees are working right under their eyeballs in a little cube in a building that nobody wants to be confined in.
Management should grow up and remember that employees have lives. If they can do the job from home and consistantly perform well under those circumstances, by all means -- get off your high horse and send them home. You'll save them and yourself stress and money and probably increase productivity and loyalty. Since I've been telecommuting, other companies have offered me substantially more but I've turned them down. I like where I am. But if I were doing this same job from a cube in a big stuffy building like a drone, I'd have taken the other offer already.
Hell yeah, we have life much better than a lot of people. We could be digging ditches or flipping burgers. Not that those jobs are insignificant, but I for one have tried the back-breaking labor thing. I'll pass, thank you. I've done the burger-flipping thing in highschool, too -- talk about a brain-drain. I have to be somewhere that I'm more than a turning mechanism for a spatula.
What written law says that if you do a job for someone, it must be done in a specific place between certain hours under a million other constraints that have nothing to do with the direct job? When was the last time Double-Day or Viking told Stephen King that they'd like to publish his book, but only if he came to their business between 8am and 5pm every weekday and typed away at his laptop in a little cube down the hall from the editor's office?
It just seems rediculous. Sure, you have to be on-site to pour a foundation for a house or cut someone's brain open and poke around, but you can write code or documentation or QA a product from anywhere. Some things can't be done remotely, but life is short and as long as the job is accomplished to the employer's satisfaction, they should clue in and be a little more flexible. If you're a billionaire businessman, your company problem means everything to you. But most of your employees couldn't give less of a fuck. It's just a paycheck. And no matter how many stock options you give them or how much ass-kissing you do, you may not be able to buy their loyalty -- and certainly not their lives. You may find that a competitor is going to woo your top performers away from you not because of a bigger paycheck or a pinball machine down the hall from their office, but by simply letting them do their job in the most productive and comfortble manner possible.
Okay. I'm done ranting. I have it pretty good, too and don't want to fuck with my karma too much (real life karma, not Slashdot karma!).
---
seumas.com
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
The fact is that the IT industry is nothing special when it comes to white-collar work - you'll find stressed and harried individuals in any office. But it's still a hell of a lot nicer environment than working in some factory or sweatshop is like a large proportion of people do.
The fact is that sure, working in an office under battery farm conditions isn't exactly going to be good for your stress levels and comfort, but it's still an improvement on what you could have expected even twenty years ago. People back then would have been amazed at some of the things that people are complaining about today, and they'd have a point.
Whilst we may bitch and moan about where we work, remember that a) most of the world works in conditions we wouldn't keep a dog in, and b) most of the rest of our country's work in conditions we wouldn't work in. Really, despite all the whining, we've got it good.
I don't think it has anything to do with IT as a phenomenon in itself. I think it has more to do with the common drive present in nearly all non-communist non-socialist individuals to achieve a high level of success in whatever their chosen field happens to be. Often though, when people climb to the top of their respective ladders they realise that the view isn't so good after all, and they wondered why they bothered to expend the effort to climb up there in the first place.
Thoughts such as this often lead to depression, and when on top of this you're expected to every single day except for perhaps four weeks of the year, go to work and do as your boss tells you, even if a lot of the time whatever your boss happens to be telling you to do is just plain stupid, this also leads to stress.
I think it's very shortsighted to blame this entire phenomenon on the IT industry. As far as I can see it isn't a problem that occured because of the IT industry, it's a problem that has been exposed because of the nature of the world today.
Fifty years ago , the amount of information available to your average person was not nearly as high as what is available to your average person today. I think this amount of information and the fact that so many people out there are absorbing it is perhaps leading to a critical mass of people wondering what the hell it's all about.
Another reason IT might be getting blamed for this is because people in this industry have an even higher amount of information than your average person who perhaps only researches subjects that they've specifically seen on their local news program via a search engine.
Nearly everyone who I've ever worked with in this industry, if not keeping their brains occupied with the intricacies of their chosen profession, seem to me to be primarily dissatisfied with their lot in life. Yeah, sure, you've got your moments where the whole thing just sounds like an excerpt from a User Friendly comic strip, but when all that's over, nothing really makes any sense anymore.
But hey, I don't have any answers.
I wake up every morning with the knowledge that I'm making good money but for all the stress and overload, I'm not making one damned person's life significantly better in any tangible way.
So someone's email server is back up because of me. Or their HA deployment is smooth and successful. Good for them. And good for my company's reputation.
But honestly, who gives a damn? What kind of karma does life dish out for those who keep machines running so other big companies can keep the flow of information(money) moving steadily?
Even more annoying is that I have to deal with a lot of companies that completely contradict my political/ethical opinions. I'm only compelled to help WeFilterStuffSoYouDon'tHaveToBeAParent has a smooth transition between one version of a product and another because I don't want to get grief from my management. Or how about some media magnate who is known for taking over the world? Do I really have a personal interest in seeing them successful? Damn, I doubt if the person I'm working with at any given time (from whatever company I'm assisting) cares any more about it than I do either!
But for all the ranting and whining, it comes down to the personal question that almost everyone asks themselves at some point in their lives:
Am I making a difference?
Too often, the answer is no. Unfortunately, it's hard to survive on the salary of a saintly life. And if you live in the Silicon Valley or the Silicon Forrest, the desire to live with a roof over your head (even a leaking one) precludes any ambition to be generous and kind with your time and actions.
Helping big business is rewarded. Truly meaningful endeavors are not.
I bet a lot of people tell themselves the same thing I do -- Someday I'll have enough money and time to help someone.
But how many of us actually will? Perhaps we have the best of intentions, but we'll probably never be financially secure enough that we can dedicate more of our time and energy to something worthy. Some of us will do worthwhile things outside of work, but others of us have no outside of work. We're always working or resting so that we can work more.
If we can't offer anything meaningful in terms of the human condition, perhaps we can at least do something that interests us and be in charge of our own lives? A lot of us have the dream of owning our own company, pursuing whatever interest fancies us -- be it video games or some weird new peripheral device or a better snowboard or our cookie's based on an old family recipe. Even that is a far cry for most of us. Yet, it would be very fulfilling and we wouldn't have that dreaded concern that we're not really going anywhere important. It's unsettling to have the quality of your life depending on someone else's choices and decisions. Not only the quality of your life, but the individual characteristics of each day. Someone deciding when you can take a break, how long your lunch can be, what your title will be, how loud your music can be or what kind of shirt you can wear into the office... Taking control of yourself and your career can be very satisfying.
I wonder if it comforts anyone to know that their place in the world may not be to do anything truly important or meaningful. Knowing that, instead, their purpose is to waste their life away in a stressing unimportant job so that the president of their company can afford to spend more time on his yacht or founding his sixth billion-dollar corporation or buying his seventh house on a fourth continant?
Oh well. Most of us are all talk and no action anyway. I'm pretty sure I am.
---
seumas.com
I will need:1.good speakers w/sub
2.high bandwidth w/no censorware
3.herb
4.bong
5.lighter
6.a door w/sign "go away"
Then leave me the f*** alone.Youl'll get those TPS reports when you get them.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Why do people have such a hard time with this?
Computers do not "cause information overload." NEVER has anyone been innocently sitting in a cubicle and a computer started forcing information into them.
People are stressed out and feel information overload due to the WAY THEY WORK. Now, the way they work is largely driven by the way they are
managed.
So, bad management leads to bad work habits, lead to stress.
I used to work in a web production company, doing mostly sites for brands (chewing gum, lousy crap pop bands and the like). I came to the conclusion that none of what I was doing really mattered. The world did not turn into a better place because of this clever site for a fsking chewing gum brand. It didn't turn into a worse place either.
Nothing I did really changed anything. Not even the sales figures of the brands, since the competitors were making equally clever sites. The product of all my work and all the worries about deadlines and stuff was - essentially - zero. Money was just transfered from one person to another. Thats it
So apart from fighting the good fight against riaa and their hired thugs, what matters? Can you all honestly say that your job is meaningful?
Besides letting out this cynical gas, I think my point is that IMHO nobody would be stressed if they were doing truly important work. At least something that was important to themselves?
I just have to ask: after generations of worker drones saying, "I work a shit job to feed my kids" do you ever stop to think that your kids won't be doing anything that matters, either? Maybe yours will be the lucky one in a million that strikes it rich or discovers a cure for cancer, but statistically you are working your fingers to the bone so that your offspring can grow up and do the EXACT SAME THING.
With that in mind, would you try harder to follow your dreams if you never had kids? Or would you still be working 9 to 5? Why?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
What would a minor be doing working in a mineshaft? Don't they have labor laws against that sort of thing?