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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?"
my work list hasn't grown too bad. we're a government contractor and we're on site, which cuts down on requests to work overtime much (because the building isn't open late much. We can't stay without a federal employee here). Not that I work overtime anyway.
But, what I have noticed is a reluctance to spend much on training/extras. I've read attendance at industry shows/dev conventions is down. I've talked to other people from my former company and all agree that it's tough to get the authorizations approved for travel and classes and stuff.
It just goes along with the "less pampering" attittude. There's a bunch of guys they could hire to do your job (at least until you get detailed business knowledge that is tough to replace).
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
The formula that more correctly explains this phenomenon follows.
Fewer Employees + Same Work + Greater Threat of Layoff + Derth of Other Jobs = Higher Productivity
You see, there are additional contributing factors to the equation that offer significant motivation to the Fewer Remaining Employees. If you aren't more productive, there are numerous others that are presently unemployed who will happily be more productive. Basically, if you don't watch your ass, you're out of there!
I mean this ideology has been in the military for years...well since the 80's and the draw-downs. They claim that the military is more stream lined, yet they have put our military in the Middle east, Kosovo, Korea, and in Africa. They are doing more now then during the Cold War with a hell of a lot less people.
Some might complain that the military has been getting some phat bonuses, but do you know the President Bush also cut about 75,000 people from the military to do this? I just ask that you don't forget the military when is comes to these issues.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
I am Chinese, and I have the following things to say about the "Crisis = Danger + Opportunity" link.
:). It took me quite some time to parse the writing. You can see a better version of the word here:i s
First of all, the guy's handwriting is Not Very Good, or at least he was writing in a calligraphic style which I've never seen before
http://www.mandarintools.com/faq.html#cris
That same page says that the story about "crisis equals danger + opportunity" is not true. "Danger" and "Opportunity" were not the original meanings of those characters. The web page does not say, and I do not know, what the original meanings are. I speculate that "Danger" originally meant "guarded" or "careful" and "Opportunity" originally meant "craft, intelligence", but don't quote me on that.
I am inclined to agree with the web page and place this under the "interesting coincidences of the language which are taken way out of proportion" category.
A blurb from the book quoted in the review:
Read the review for more info.
This is a stupid westerner's interpretation of the etymology. Ask a person who speaks Chinese, or better yet, actually study some linguistics. When the character for "crisis" came into usage, the first part was indeed "danger", and the second part had many readings, one of which was opportunity, but more commonly "danger" again. This kind of simplistic etymological game-playing makes a lot of assumptions that aren't true about the Chinese language. To quote an English equivalent to this: when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.
I've certainly seen this before. It's happened to me, and to several other senior people at that company since I left. They encourage people to work hard, praise their efforts, and make it clear how valuable they are during the project. As soon as it's done, they fire the most senior people and replace them with college fresh H1B's. The H1B bit kinda violates the law, but who gives a shit about that anyhow?
In the end, we pulled it off and emerged successful on the project, and we were regarded almost as heroes in house. We are regarded as can-do people that can rise to a challenge
I bet the senior people who were axed before you did the same thing, were regarded as heroes, etc. It's quite probable it'll happen to you too.
Unless you have no choice, working long hours at a company like this is just plain nuts. Your hard work & loyalty will _not_ be rewarded in the long run. After they dump you, they'll hire someone else who'll be telling this same story on /. in 6 months.
Crisis != danger + opportunity (well, not quite...)
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
The Word Spy this week had a term for this phenomenon:
Ghost work
"After a round of layoffs or firings, the work that used to be done by the former employees and that must now be handled by the remaining staff."
If it isn't true, don't say it. If it isn't helpful, don't say it. If it's true and helpful, wait for the right time.
While the added work load can be overwhelming at times, I find it rewarding to have a broader responsibility for other areas of the company that I would not otherwise have had the opportunity to be involved with.
If you are in a similiar situation, I have some recommendations for coping with the challenges of handling your increased work load.
Good luck!
I might also add that I think people with colleagues that have been axed work harder and take on more responsibility with no additional pay just to try and keep their own jobs. In the end what suffers is their health and the quality of their work.
Your company puts big heaping hunks of your money into 401k investment firms. In turn, these institutions talk to your boss's boss's boss and tel l them about "market expectations". When your company does not make it's earnings goals, they treaten to unload stocks, which would sink the price and your company. Your boss, and you too, have their savings wiped out.
This is why I did not buy into my company's 401k plan. It's good when it's good, but I got in at a market peak. Did the US economy really grow five fold in the 90s? No, it did not, in fact manufacturing and other important segments contracted as we sold our souls to Chinese imports. John Kenedy senior got out of the market when a shoeboy gave him stock advice. The year was 1929. Today, shoeboy is a troll and his alterego, streetlawer, will be happy to give you stock advice. I wish those two would do something interesting, their advice is evidence that they are underutilized and that we are all have less than we think we do.
The 401k "managers" second guessing my company and creating incentives for my bosses to get rich quick with bonuses, unrealistic expectations, and other silly games has undone many great companies. Look forward to more accounting fraud, bankruptsies and other badness. The last place I worked had it's "grateful" people working 12 hour days to keep their jobs but they got fired anyway. Something really stinks about that.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'd probably suggest that your production was almost cut in half - that's if the number of lines of code (hastily) written is any metric to swear by.
Also, Managers of groups of one often get marked as redundant. What was your company doing making you lead a team of two? Isn't that 5±2 people short of a real team? Shouldn't you be nervous right now, or do you work for IBM?
Any developer who says they're getting 25 hours of on-task time a week is either in the top 0.1% or smoking crack.
Developers getting 3 hours of on-task time a day are doing just fine as long as the code they write during those 15 hours a week is well designed and well tested and...
The reality for developers is, in a 40 hour week: meetings, trips to the restroom, casual conversations, personal errands and phone calls, getting settled in, sitting back and massaging the wrists, etc... All prevent you from working a full 40 hours in a week. And if you try, you'll burn out. Taking breaks is a good thing.
The best you can do as a dev manager is: work to make sure that communication is effective (vertical and horizontal), team and individual goals are clear, and the time spent on-task is synchronized so that people can work together most of the time and aren't interrupted by other people who aren't on-task.
Still, if you get 20 hours of on-task work a week fro each employee (only 50% of the time spent in the office), you're going to have rather amazing results (because your team will be in the top 5% in high tech according to SEI research).
So stop griping about 3-5 hours a day. That's the range from normal to exceptional. Expecting 8 hours a day is about as sane as being upset because you aren't using your laser printer to it's full monthly capacity.
Regards,
Ross
Actually, even by the measure of dollars paid per dollars of product (the manager's idea of productivity), according to this Bureau of Labor Statistics report - productivity goes DOWN with layoffs.
Quote:"Information technology professionals have been working longer hours but achieving less throughout 2000 as the turnover rate has grown dramatically, according to a study conducted by the Stamford, Conn.-based IT consulting firm Meta Group. It found that information technology professionals in the United States are working an average of 2,157 hours per year, up 36 percent from 1999 levels."
That study is a bit out of date - 2000. But if we are working harder now - 2157 hours per year in 2000 is already an average of over 41 hours per week - without vacations. Didn't people die for the 8 hour day?
Productivity for whom? Working faster doesn't mean I like the code I'm writing, or that I'm able to do the best job I can on the servers I'm maintaining (just two right now as a consultant). The folks that are still doing tech support where I used to work are swamped and aren't able to do their job. Their customers are complaining but it isn't the lone customer service person's fault: management blew the business plan and the workers have to handle the heat.
. This sig unintentionally left blank. I meant to put something here, but I'm busy.
Well...
When it-department i was working at last year got cut down, we who remained had to work between 10 - 15 hours a day to keep up.
After a few weeks of that, you actually get *less* done in 15 hours than you used to do in 8.
So the idiot who cuts down to much actually ends up shoting him/herself in the foot.
You'll also alienate the emplyees and end up being hated by them.
Not that every person in such positions actually care what their personell thinks about them, but if you're a company in a small town, you'll eventually end up being unable to employ new staff, since rumors about bad companies spread quickly.
Anyway...
I got burned out in a couple of months and quit.
That was over a year ago now and I'm still not recovered.
But at least I didn't have one of those idiotic "can't work for competition" contracts.
Not that it would have mattered, since I got so tired of working with computers that I've decide to make a career change.
My tip is to quit *before* you get burned out.
It's a hell to get your act together again after it has happened...
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)