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Fewer Employees + Same Work = Higher Productivity
LiamRandall writes "Time magazine has an article discussing the effects that recent layoffs in corporate America has had on remaining workers. While I'm glad that I haven't been laid off (like 1/2 my group) I'm overloaded with all of my new responsibilities.
On one hand I feel very fortunate to still have a job- I feel some what guilty complaining given that the computer industry is second in layoffs. While some former coworkers of mine got the axe because upper management didn't understand what their contributions to the company were, others were dead wood anyway. The Chinese symbol for crisis is danger + opportunity; in these turbulent times do you find yourself rising to the challenge or being overloaded with responsibility? Is your to-do list growing exponentially? What new work are you faced with and how are you dealing with it?"
As Homer would say...
After all, I believed all the figures about profits from big companies when they put the losses into the profits column!
Lisa Simpson: "Dad, do you know that the Chinese use the same word for crisis and opportunity?"
Homer: "Yup - crisi-tunity!"
So does this Time article also mention that workers will be more productive if you switch to chains instead of leather whips? Does it give any indication of the minimum amound of gruel and / or pizza necessary to kee an IT worker productive?
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
I don't do work - I'm a manager.
Whips + Threat of Impending Pain = Greater Productivity.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
But you have to admit he got the "posting self-congratulatory remarks on chat sites" dead on.
Let's see.. Official job title: Webmaster (4 web sites to maintain)
/only/ IT person in the building)
Unofficial job titles:
Director of IT (the real one quit 2 months ago, and left me as the
Help Desk
Access DB programmer
System Administrator (Linix AND Novell AND Win2k)
Telecommunications Administrator
Everyone's bitch
lay me off? haha I wish they would actually.
and people wonder why the hell I'm always in a bad mood when I get home from work.....
Lifted from a Dilbert book the chapter was on downsizing - Your workforce goes from "Lean and Mean" to "Skinny and Pissed" ..
Gotta watch out when you overload an already stressed workforce....
For 5 years, programmers, web "designers" and system administrators surfed porn sites claiming it was research, posted self-congratulatory remarks on chat sites and general did little if any work at all. Now they are being required to justify their enormous salaries and all they can do is whine about their "exponentially" grow TODO list. Cry me a river.
From a different perspective I can generally agree with you.
As a functional analyst, there are many data application related initiatives that I *could* do myself. However, the technicals have a fit if any functional proposes to even make their own analysis tools.
Solution: I just do it myself and have stopped bothering to bring it up to the techies. When a result is needed, I have the answer in seconds instead of weeks, i.e., I do not have to print out report after report and "hand jam" them into a spreadsheet when a few simple select queries in Access on my desktop will do.
BTW, the last time I had a request for a new report, I submitted the PCR and provided, for my poor "over worked" coworkers, an "example" of the output I was looking for along with an Access query that would provide the correct result.
The technical lead came back with "if the functional has already developed it, he should be the developer for the PCR". My reply that it was just an example, not in Oracle but in Access, as stated plainly on the request, I am not a developer I am a functional, I don't know *your* system, seemed to just bounde off the tech lead.
Essentially, she wanted the tech group to get the charge number, hours, money and the solution. The techies finally completed the report generator in a few months, with me testing.
No thanks, I will just do my own data mining. If I had my way our entire "tech staff" would be replaced by 3 UNIX admins to keep track of some file servers while the rest of us do the real work.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Well, I've got a team of 2 people. One writes 52 lines of code per day, the other 48. I fired the second guy. The average productivity of my team went up (and a whooping 4% - do the math - ... ). Hurray! I never saw it coming.
And another thing: Did YOU know 1+1=2?
Well, at least you aren't bitter ;-)
Could not finding a job be releated to your capitalization and grammer?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
"oh you hate your job, there's a support group for that, it's called everyone and they meet at the bar."
-Drew Carey
Please give your mod points to others, Im at the cap. They will appreciate it more
You can work 6-7 hours a day for years, work between 2am and 6am and call that 8 hours, do very poor work, if it's work at all, and update your home blogs and still not get fired. All you need to do is be in your chair. Uh-oh, the boss is coming, better get back to work.... 8-)
/me reads post with mis-spellings complaining about grammar.
pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet pot.
Sorry, you have to quote Homer in order to get the Simpsons Karma Score Bonus.
Ah, okay, got it.
D'oh!