Slashdot Mirror
How to Fake A Hard Day at the Office
futileboy writes "There's a great article in the WSJ about how to use technology to avoid work, while giving the impression of working. At the bottom of the article is "A beginner's guide to making it look like you're working when you're not." "
Having this story posted on Slashdot is like having an article on a paid porn site called, "A beginner's guide to masturbation."
Just watch office space. Lots of hints
my favorite method is the BOSS key
-m
...is my best friend.
Life in Orange County
If you need help getting motivated, just get onto a project whose code you can share w/ your own projects.
/. with ghostzilla.
Then again, it might be easier to IM friends and browse
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
1. How to fake a hard days work at the office
2. How to find a new job after they figured out you
faked a hard days work at the office.
If you use MS products to try and fake a hard day at the office, it would probably just be easier to put in a good, honest day's work.
Learn from the best, learn from Wally.
-jfedor
Is it possible to fake a hard day and read slashdot at the same time? I hope so.
Today's violation of copyright:
... If everybody does that, the company goes bankrupt," says Stuart Gilman, director of the Ethics Resource Center in Washington.
(Let's hope they consider it a free sample)
Shirk Ethic: How to Fake
A Hard Day at the Office
By JANE SPENCER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
David Wiskus gives new meaning to the term "working lunch." The Denver tech-support worker installed a program on his Handspring Visor hand-held that allowed him to manipulate the screen on his office computer from a booth at a local diner.
As he lingered for hours over burgers and fries, he could actually open windows and move documents around on his screen via the hand-held -- creating the impression to anyone who walked by that the diligent Mr. Wiskus had just stepped away from his desk.
It has never been easier to be a white-collar slacker. While the uninitiated are still grousing about how mobile technology has created a 24/7 work culture and sabotaged their private time, a savvier crowd has moved on to a more rewarding pursuit: using technology to make it look like you're working when you're not.
The tactic isn't new, but the tools have gotten a lot more powerful. Executives have long discreetly asked their secretaries to flip on the office light to make Friday absences less glaring; leaving a jacket on the back of your desk chair is also an old trick.
But the latest generation of office accessories, from cellphones to the RIM BlackBerry, have brought a new level of sophistication -- and a host of new strategies for manipulating perceptions of your diligence.
The new options allow people to do far more than send e-mails from the beach. Services like GoToMyPC.com -- similar to one Mr. Wiskus used on his hand-held -- let you operate your office computer by remote control. You can even move the cursor on your screen, opening documents and printing them on the shared office printer.
Other strategies involve using existing technology in new ways. E-mail timers, a standard feature in Microsoft Outlook, let you send e-mails hours after you have gone to bed -- a painless way to suggest to the boss that you are burning the midnight oil. (In Outlook, open up a message, go to "options," and fill in the "do not deliver before" option.)
Instant Message programs, a more-immediate form of e-mail now used by millions of employees, can also be reconfigured. Typically, if you haven't touched your computer in a while, the people you chat with online see an "idle" message next to your name. Diehard slackers can crack into the program settings to make themselves appear perpetually available.
Psychologists call these games "impression management," a field whose rules have been transformed now that so many people communicate through technology rather than a handshake and a conversation. In some ways, the e-mail that arrives at 11 p.m. is the modern sign of a dedicated worker.
But others see all this as yet another legitimate technology that has been hijacked by people with skewed ethics. "If you're out playing golf, and you look like you've spent four hours in the office.
Even some lower-tech tools, such as call forwarding, have grown more sophisticated, making it a snap to answer your desk phone from your daughter's soccer game or the pedicure chair. Phone company SBC Communications Inc. currently offers five different call-forwarding services, including a new one that lets you transfer your phone to different phone numbers throughout the day.
E-mails Read by Jenni
Services like Yahoo By Phone also let you pick up your e-mail from afar, even without a hand-held gadget. For $4.95 a month, a computerized voice named Jenni will read your messages aloud over the phone.
Wireless e-mail gadgets like the Palm Tungsten W and the BlackBerry can also be tinkered with to help cover the tracks of an office absence. E-mails sent from a BlackBerry, for example, automatically sign o
how to use technology to avoid work
Buy a vibrator.
Best Windows Freeware
So, from what I read, it seems like an aweful lot of "wor" to not actually do any work. Manipulating the screen from your hand-held, sneaking around flipping on and off lights, printing phantom documents to the printer... It seems like you are doing just as much work as you would actually being in the office, except it's relativly unproductive...
It seems to me the way to go would to be use virtual offices where people can do REAL work from the coffee shop or from home without having to feel guilty that they aren't in a cubicle. Why is that concept so hard for many companies to understand and implement?
Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, huddling over a wireless doodad, trying to remotely connect to your desktop, when you can plan a script in advance at your desktop, with a real keyboard and display, and save the script for reuse later.
:)
That said, please take the wireless approach - I work for a company that makes wireless doodads
no matter what my personal opinion is.... i have a dream that one day someone will let a thread ride, without a ms or *nix comment. ok so it will never happen, but a dream is a dream
This article makes it appear to be a lot of work to avoid...work.
It seems like it would be a lot more exhausting trying to appear to work and worrying about getting caught - especially since a lot of the "avoidance" such as checking and responding to email and voicemail actually IS work - than it would be to just work at the office.
I guess some people just need to feel that they are getting away with something.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Add a bunch of fancy titles to your name, including every known Microsoft cert you can get by using cram session, and maybe some of the new Linux certs as well--- and "consult".
Leave the real work for the grunts whom you are helping, and learn how to ask open ended questions to techs who don't express themselves like "normal" people do, so that they come up with their own answers. Don't forget, if you get into a bind, you can always check your resources and go ask on the internet, and just bring them back the emails/posting using the biggest words. More than likely this will cause a light bulb to go off above those tech's heads, and they will go code away for you. (While you consult with that cute secretary down the hall, of course!)
Articles like this may seem cutesy, but the sad fact is that corporate leaders see this and assume all IT workers are/can or will do this. This furthers the mistrust some corporate types have of IT managers and workers.
Worse, it'll make it easy for corporate leaders to rationalize moving *YOUR* IT job to India. The article doesn't seem too funny now, does it.
Damnit, my boss is a /. reader. Thanks for blowing my cover Taco! =P
--
mcpsoaak
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
Don't have it automagically send out on the tens or fives.
I liked to keep it on the odd minutes.
1 am is nothing, the 3 or 4 in the morning message have that feeling of really busting your ass.
I always liked Apple Remote Desktop for my control the machine from afar.
Hell I could sit at my Mac at home, remote in, turn on Virtual PC and admin the Novell Network.
(Un?)wittingly copied to /. of course. They manage to plug the RIM BlackBerry Handheld, GoToMyPc.Com, and Yahoo By Phone -- even going so far as to provide prices for the latter two items. Unfortunately the wsj does not appear to have an online advertisers index so I can't just look it up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The sudden realization of the real reason behind all the dupes on Slashdot... posted by Taco, nonetheless.
Quintus malus puer est.
I really don't care how hard you work as my employee. All I care about is results. If I need a project working flawlessly by next week, and its done, I don't care if you spent half the time playing Quake.
As a programmer myself, I know that code often gets done in spurts, and that a break (especially a nap!) can improve productivity quite a bit.
The problem is there are some people who can do it, and some that cant. If you aren't the type that can do it, you really can't fake it. The people you work for and work with all know what needs to get done. They won't be fooled by late night emails. When the due date arrives and you arent done, they will know you weren't up to snuff.
Had this article come out about a year ago, I might have used some of these techniques just to prove to some people I was doing the work that I was legitimately doing.
On my present job, I am blessed with having a boss that allows me to set my own hours. I typically come in at the crack of dawn (6 AM), have lunch at my desk, and leave by 2:30PM. Combine this with needing only 5 hours of sleep a night and it gives me lots of free time (handy considering my wife and I have a new house with landscaping that is in awful shape, so I suppose "free time" is really a misnomer here :) ).
About a year ago, though, I had trouble with people from other groups thinking I wasn't working my 40 hours a week (which I was), and a whispering campaign started. My boss fortunately stood up for me, since she knows I work those hours, but I had to prove it to everyone else. So I got in the habit of answering all my email from the previous day the moment I got in at 6AM.
Finally one of the ones that I suspect complained about me tested me by coming in early and dropping in at my desk at 6:15 AM. Surprise, surprise, I was actually there like I said all along.
I haven't had any trouble since.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Scott Adams has covered this topic many a times in several of his books and comics :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Regular readers of the WSJ don't need this advice any more than /. readers.
Most have trancended to such an advanced state of slacking that they can appear/disappear at their desks at will. They can read e-mails via mind control, and need no lowly cheater devices. Mere mortals fear their omnipresence! Bwahahahaaahahaa!
I don't know why I know that.
Irony: When slashdot posts an article about avoiding work.
As ridiculous as it sounds, it works.
Of course, George didn't seem to have that much success at work so YMMV on this nugget of advice.
Then spend a year surfing the web to test it :)
I can already hear it.
"want to see a huge horse c0ck in a tiny teen c*nt?"
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
I read this somewhere on the 'net, so don't give me credit for it.
Step 1: You must have an office with a door, otherwise this won't work.
Step 2: Scatter some paper clips about the office, making sure to get some under your desk.
Step3: Close the door and lie down on the carpet. Place your feet firmly on the door and reach for a paperclip under your desk.
Step4: Sleep the day away.
If someone should try and opne your door, you will be jarred awake and you can say that you dropped some paper clips and were just reaching for them.
--
From my own personal experience, this works very well.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
This one is simple but it really works. It comes from two simple observations:
- If there are serious looking stuff on screen and you use the keyboard a lot, it looks like you're working.
- Your boss has probably no idea what you're doing with all the terminals windows. (Besides if you're like me they are using tiny characters that can only be read by the one sitting in front on the monitor)
So just use lynx to browse the web, (re)play the great classic infocom games, code fun little games and then do the gameplay tests, read ebooks. Just make sure that emacs is open with the current official coding project loaded and NOT always on the same page.
Easy, have fun!
True warriors use the Klingon Google
"If you're a boss, and you send e-mails at all of hours of the night, the subtle message you're sending employees is, 'I'm working, why aren't you,' " says Anne Warfield, a career coach in Edina, Minn.
Poop. If I believe the email time was not caused by exchange choking all day on viruses, I conclude that the boss does not have his shit together. These days everyone is just hanging on to their job at companies and you are lucky if your company is at 60% capacity. The only reason to work late is make work, usually the kind that's laid down to make life hell before firing a bunch of people.
There is no substitute for real work and everyone knows the difference between it, slacking and make work.
I'm not recomending that everyone "wipe the counter" whenever they are underutilized, but cleaning the desk is not a bad idea. Everyone has some down time, and NYC desks are filthy. When that five minute's worth of work is done, there are plenty of things to do with yourself besides sit in a dinner for three hours. You might read trade publications, email your family, hit slashdot and do other normal things. Sitting in a dinner for three hours, that's like punishment.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"GoToMyPc.Com: Download software to your office PC that allows you to control your work computer screen over the Internet from anywhere. You can even operate your mouse remotely. Costs $19.95 a month."
Why pay $19.95 a month when there is VNC ?
Seems a bit silly to me... And of course there is SSH if you are not part of the Borg.
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
Maybe the person who modded Zentec as a troll is a high school or college kid laughing at how funny the story is, how clever you are, and how concerned all of us old fogies are about what's happening in IT.
But when real life jumps up and bites you in the ass, it's not so funny. I know a lot of people who are out of work right now and making very painful decisions about their future (i.e. - do I stay in IT or become a shoe salesman so I can keep up with mortgage payments).
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Ever had this happen to you?
* On a project deadline, they feel your timeline to build the servers can be cut down from a 2 weeks to day, to make the project on time?
* Engineering forces a product down your throat, best of the customer blah blah. And forget to include an admin interface? Places the server 150 miles away, and puts it in a DMZ so you cant remotely manage it.
* Vendor builds a unix box, on the oldest version of an os known to man, and wont run any standard tools, and the only monitoring is a log file with "ERROR" in it.
* Customer is down, on a new service that dropped form the sky into your lap... No support tools, no access, and your Manager is asking why you are taking so long. Dont even think of asking for documentation.
* Your manager learns a new technology buzzword, and all the sudden, you have 10x more paperwork, and nothing has changed.
* The software you run crashs all the time, causing outages. The vendor blames you, and points to internal documentation they wrote "last week".
* Vendor A blames Vendor B for not following the SPEC, but your service is down, and neither will help you get it back in service.
* You call Tech support in the middle of the night to find out your contract number isnt correct, doesnt matter you are the biggest customer and have super duper platnium support. Call back tomorrow.
* In all staff meeting, managlement tells the staff about new work methods, which happen to just only affect you.
* You ask a question to one manager, and 2 hours later, an All Employee email goes out about the same subject, that everyone should have already known!
* You accept a new project, no training, no tools, no documentation, and its now production. Then they fire the Project Manager, Engineer and consultants the day after.
* Marketing sells wizzbang new product, forgetting to see if its really possible.
I tell you, the reason Dilbert and BOFH are so popular, its almost like real life....
and probably will be your best friend Ghostzilla it is such a noble browser.
That was maybe 20% of a real story. None of those methods could be used more than a couple times before you got caught. Send mail at 2am, then the guy that really was there at 2am tells the boss you weren't there. Doh! And one of the examples wasn't even trying to get away with anything but was a great example of being able to stay in touch even while away!
And don't think your hard working peers will let you get away with it either. Good luck with that slacking guy, I'll just take your job when your booted out thank you!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
This is especially a problem for programmer-types who need to get uninterrupted concentration, and can't do that in the daytime because they have cubicles rather than offices.
I tend to check my email before going to sleep, and one of my coworkers in Boston often gets started early in the morning - we've had email conversations at 2am on occasion.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm sure there's one out there somewhere (in a galaxy far, far away).
Seriously, there's got to be a way to trick everyone into thinking that you are at school while your at home coding or whatever.
Welcome to America, where appearances are much more important than anything else. Productivity my ass.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
the other day I was playing nethack at work, thinking that if I'm going to play a game it ought to be one without fancy graphics or anything too out of the ordinary from typical unix like work.
A couple minutes later the boss walks by my desk, drops his jaw in amazement and says, "Is that Rogue???" He was fairly impressed having not seen the game in years and asked for a copy of the source code.
I remember an old Windows 3.1 program called Job Saver. It came in the book Windows Sound Funpack as shareware. It played .wav files randomly, with specified frequency (how often), and among the default sounds were 3 different wavs of keyboard clicks, coughing, throat clearing, and computer beeps. It could be set to go off automaticly at after a certain time of Inactivity.
:) Google isn't turning up anything on it, so it seems to have disappeared.
Not sure if anyone actually tried it at work though
Crack the settings in your Instant Messenger program and disable the "idle" feature, which tells coworkers if you're online. (In AOL Instant Messager programs, go to "preferences," then "privacy.")
I thought this is aimed at people who use computers at work, not retards?
... then the employer is screwed anyway. Only a totally mismanaged outfit would judge an employee by how busy they look. If management actually cares about whether employees are earning their pay, they're keeping close track of what they're working on and whether they're delivering on time. They're not going to be fooled by Ferris Bueller tricks.
Typically, if you haven't touched your computer in a while, the people you chat with online see an "idle" message next to your name. Diehard slackers can crack into the program settings to make themselves appear perpetually available.
... hang on ...
Sheesh, in MSN you can "crack" this setting by going into Options and unchecking the checkbox for 'My Status'
i.e. setting "Show me away when i'm inactive for 'x' minutes.
I wish 'cracking' other Microsoft products were this easy
In a cube. With people interrupting me. And annoying me. Whenever I have a long task to complete: programming, writing a scientific paper, etc, I took my cell phone and my computer to Starbucks and WIFIed in. No one knows where I am, and those are my most productive times. I won't work any other way!
GoToMyPC.com is not a bad program solely since it is "in thousands of popup and banner ads." It's a web-based app that includes a file-transfer component (TightVNC does not) and encrypts sessions.
For more information, CNet has a review. Please read it.
For more information, click here.
I noticed that myself - who would pay $20 for a friggin glorified VNC system? If the dynamic-IP adress is a problem, then just get a dynamic-IP redirection service like dynip.com - that's $25 per year for a big, user friendly business.
Great, I can replicate their service for 1/10th the cost, and could set it up in five minutes flat. Don't even have to memorize an IP address. Not to mention that with the IP redirection, you could also set up an FTP so you could get your files locally.
Hell, I don't see why anyone should ever need to use such a service. With ICQ2Go, Webmail service, and MSN I can log in to all my communications systems at any net cafe or handheld. I can keep in touch just fine - I only VNC to my machine to use the compiler.
Holy crap. I've been working in IT consulting for seven years and I never ever even thought that those emails I get at 1 AM were faked. Although they usually weren't (since I would reply and get a response immediately), no doubt some of them were.
This reminds me of the advice another ten year consultant gave me--no matter if you're busy or not, always claim that you're doing more work at home or at the hotel. He would declare almost every single night that he was working in the hotel. And we would all naively believe him. He later confided to me that he spent most of those nights in the strip club.
a Beowulf cluster of threads that do not have a ms or *nix comment.
E-Mail Timers
Yeah. Okay. Most users barely know how to send regular e-mail.
BlackBerry
That's why bb mailboxes are separate from regular mailboxes.
GoToMyPc.Com
Aside from probably getting you fired, every good admin blocks crap like this at the firewall. The only out from your PC is through the proxy and firewall. The only way in leads to the DMZ.
Instant Messaging
Also blocked at the firewall. Get to work!
Yahoo By Phone
You can't forward your mail an SMTP address, only local accounts.
Call Forwarding
Not our phones.
If you RT(F)A, a lot of these "techniques" are just ways to do your work while not at your desk.
... time to check what's new at ThinkGeek.
They suggest having emails fired off automagically in the middle of the night, using a blackberry to send email from the car, using GoToMyPC (which I assume is a VNC-type thing), getting calls forwarded to your cell, or picking up email with Yahoo by phone "to make sure you're not missing anything urgent".
The fact that you are doing all this from your car, the massage parlor, the park, or the deck of a cruise ship is kinda irrelevant. You are still *doing* it: still checking email and phone calls. Still manipulating documents on your PC. Just not in the office.
I guess some companies aren't savvy enough to realize that employees -- particularly IT employees -- don't necessarily need to be at their desks to do your job.
True shirking would be not doing your work. Or having an Inflatible You to stick in your chair and fool the PHB.
Hrmm
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
According to George Costanza, the best way to fake it is to look and act annoyed. And, quite honestly, it works. Just sigh a lot and run your hands trough your hair (or lack thereof). People always think that you're working hard if you're annoyed.
>Seriously, if I'm managing you and you are getting paid to do 8 hours of work, then you are going to do EIGHT HOURS OF WORK.
:o)
You manage a McDonald's, right? Cause that's a fast food pit ethic!
Always fresh, always ready, right now, right away. Tastes great, even late! Have it your way, right away! Would you like fries with that? Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us!
BTW: If you were managing a maintenance team, would you go around breaking things so that there'd be work to do? Well, it seems you already do, so what the hell...
I'm glad you exist, though. I'm opening a company, and it's nice to know that I won't have a hard breaking some of my competition. TNX+1E6!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
...I use is to set the timer in the BIOS to boot the computer at 0900. When I roll in around 0920 it looks like I've already arrived and I'm just away from my desk somewhere.
Sure, your tech grunts can do clever things with remote controls, cron jobs, and the like, but it is upper corporate class who salivate over Blackberrys, get slick Centrino laptops, and as the article mentions, have secretaries who actually do the tedious, time-consuming work for them.
These same alpha types will always be contempuous of the mere technology worker, irregardless of how much of a mental slave he is willing to be. They do not like it when the servant classes weild any kind of power.
-------------------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Dam, maybe i'll get to read this when i get my tps reports done.... now where is my stapler ???
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
Way back when a Mac Plus was state of the art, there was a Space Shuttle simulator/game, that had a panic button for when the boss walked by. Hit that button, and a fake spreadsheet would cover the screen. :)
1. Deactivate the screen saver and energy saving features of the monitor. This gives your cubicle that fresh 'just stepped out' feeling all day long. No need for remote control products. If you don't like leaving your computer unlocked, set the screensave to a screenshot of your desktop with some important looking spreadsheet open.
2. When leaving early, use the stairs, or if in a taller building use the stairs to go to another floor to wait for the elevator. Nothing like getting caught by the boss at the elevator banks at 4:15.
3. If you can, ride your bike in to work every once in awhile. You'd be suprised how impressed people are by that shit. It gives the impression that you are dedicated and athletic - the boss will think that these qualities will transfer to your office work - coworkers will think you have a life outside of work, and be jealous, thus increasing your status in their eyes. Make sure to leave your bike helmet and gear prominently displayed in your cubicle to maximize the benefit.
4. Use dialup and remote control products to send emails on the weekend. The time of an email can be too easily overlooked - the date not so much. It's easy to log on for a few minutes on the weekend. Saves some Friday emails to respond to.
5. The time you leave work is much more important than the time your arrive. Nobody cares that the idiot that leaves at 3:30pm actually gets into work at 6am - the general perception will be that he's a slacker. Even if you get in at 10am, if the boss sees you hanging around at 5:45pm, you'll look dedicated.
6. Try not to carry a backpack or bag - on days when you don't need a coat this allows you to enter late without making it look like you just got there.
7. If you are planning to be late, call people and leave random unimportant voicemails early in the morning. When you see them at 10am they'll think you were there all along (note, some voicemail systems reveal the source of the call, so be careful).
8. Slacking in the middle of the day is much better than showing up late or leaving early. People are paying the most attention in the morning and at quitting time. Arriving early and leaving late will give the semblance of dedication, even if you are taking 2 hours lunches, and hour long trips to the bookstore in the afternoon.
9. Find a sleep hideout. Most places, especially larger corporate offices, have some nook or cranny where nobody goes in the afternoon. Maybe it's a corner of the caffeteria, or perhaps a storeroom somebody forgot to lock. These places are great for sleeping off a hangover, or just reading the newspaper when doing so at you desk would be too conspicuous.
10. When pushed for work, create documentation. Management loves documentation, and doesn't realize how little time it takes to create. A well formatted ten page document with a table of contents and some nice graphics might take a day to create, but the boss can easily be convinced you've been working on it for many days. Frequently submit 'drafts' to the boss (which he will never read) - this will make the boss feel guilty for holding you up, and give you an excuse to take more time.
incidentally, he started http://www.slackersguild.com. its been mentioned before on Slashdot when the For Dummies guys threatened the place for their Slacking for Dummies article
Let's just ignore the security implications of using this PoS for a minute and consider the fact that I would imagine most companies NOT allowing incoming access to the users' desktops. gotomypc.com gets around this by establishing the connection via an intermediate. If I worked on the IT staff and saw this it would definitely me a trip to the woodhouse to the idiot who setup it up. Course we block this crap at my place.
There's this commercial (british, by the sound of the actor's accents) for drink called Smirnoff Ice.
:)
It starts with this guy leaving a car late at night and saying goodbye to his friends (they've obviously been partying), after which he enters a corporate building. He finds what appears to be his desk, sits behind it, places some papers on the desk and rests his head comfortably on the keyboard. The next morning he is woken up by his boss who walks by and says "Been working all night, have you? We need to discuss your salary!", after which the "hard working employee" shows a big grin on his face with the token "As Clear As Your Conscience®" sparkle.
Many commercials are crap, but I found this one to be pretty funny.
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
Good old tricks,
but I would just suggest the free VNC instead of the quoted GoToMyPc.Com which costs $19.95/month.
It has versions for PC, unix, PDAs, etc.
{Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme}
If there is one thing George showed me it is that angry people look busy...
Also for everyone who though Dilbert was like life in an office take a look at The Office
get a job doing something you enjoy.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
If you really think that the corporate world doesn't know the producers from the dead-weight, especially in _this_ economy, you're sorely mistaken. I get projects thrown at me almost daily, and right now I wouldn't have it any other way. Right now, I consider myself _privileged_ just to have a job (and doing what I enjoy I might add); and as such I'm busting my hump just to help my company (and my job) achive it's goals.
The slackers out there that are hiding behind their bash scripts, are sure to be disovered and their jobs are sure to get passed along shortly thereafter.
I'm not quite sure what the Win/MCSE crowd is going to do though. I highly doubt that Win/MCSE certification/experience are going to be in high demand anytime soon...
Especially with *nix/*BSD kicking in the door like it apparently has been.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
The reason is that WinVNC, TightVNC etc. use port number 5800 and another one (I forget) for command and screenshot transmission. If you are behind a firewall and have only port 80 enabled, then you have no luck, you can't access anything outside. Yes, true, VNC has a way to change the port number to 80, but if you look closely at the documentation and what people says on usenet, you will find that it DOESN'T work without a bit of code hacking. (in some tight proxy env. this won't work either)
While GoToMyPc will simply do what it says, you can use a browser with port 80 opened to access your pc at home, nothing else. That's why it is still useful.
...by Jason Blair, formally of the NYT
Most places, this will get you fired as soon as confidential/company proprietary info gets forwarded outside the firewall and you get caught.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Yes sometimes you need a break every couple hours so I tell my boss. A good one will know that it will increase productivity. I am not a workaholic but I love the satisfaction when I am done.
Its great to kill time and I do not feel uncomfortable doing it obviously. After all someone is paying you? How does it feel that someone is handing you money while you do nothing?
If you were at a Mcdonalds and ordered a BigMac, would you be happy seeing the staff just sit there after you paid the cashier? Same is true from a company owner or manager standpoint.
I have no respect for people who do this. Especially in this economy like another poster mentioned "gives an incentive to kick your job to India". American workers are more productive if they have more experience but if they do not apply themselves what is the point? Would not Indians will provide a better value then?
Its also not fair that I am unemployed, applying to subway and starbucks, and live at home with my parents in total missery, while those reading this make 65k a year and piss off on the job. I would work for 20k right now doing help desk type stuff.
Hmm, come to think of it, if any Las Vegas employers need help and are having trouble with slacking employee's feel free to respond.
http://saveie6.com/
Some employees are hard working, self motivated go-getters that are willing (under the correct circumstances) to burn the proverbial "midnight oil" in order to accomplish a goal. Other employees are pay-check collectors that look for hand-outs and will come up with a dozen excuses of why they can't accomplish their assignment in a reasonable amount of time.
What I've learned is that you'll never convert members of the latter group into members of the former. Very rarely does a slacker suddenly find inspiration and become a hard worker. I'm sure this isn't news to whoever might be reading this.
But why do we (as members of the hard working croud) care? Assuming a strong ethical standard exists in your management chain, slackers will either be terminated or reassigned to meaningless tasks while you enevitably rise up to the next level of the food chain. So what good does it do you (other than personal frustration over seeing a coworker shirk while you work your tail off) to try to convert those that don't want to be converted? Come on, give up!
On the other hand, hard workers can easily by exploited if the management chain is also a collection of slackers. In this situation they will either be slow to recognize your talent and hard work, or what's worse they'll recognize and exploit it (that's when you get pigeon holed into a task you don't necessarily enjoy or feel passionate about, but are responsible enough to take up the reigns because "it has to be done by someone"). When this happens, *you* (the reader) become the sucker in the situation, and need to find a new job.
Don't let yourself be taken advantage of as a hard worker when all around you are putting their AIM clients on "Always Active" - find a new job. Until you do that you will never be happy.
Hope this helps someone...
Do it for da shorties
15. "They told me at the blood bank this might happen."
14. "This is just a 15 minute power-nap like they raved about in the last time management course you sent me to."
13. "Whew! Guess I left the top off the liquid paper"
12. "I wasn't sleeping! I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm!"
11. "This is one of the seven habits of highly effective people!"
10. "I was testing the keyboard for drool resistance"
9. "Actually I'm doing a "Stress Level Elimination Exercise Plan" (SLEEP) I learned it at the last mandatory seminar you made me attend.
8. "I was doing a highly specific Yoga exercise to relieve work related stress."
7. "Darn! Why did you interrupt me? I had almost figured out a solution to our biggest problem."
6. "The coffee machine is broken...."
5. "Someone must've put decaf in the wrong pot."
4. "Boy, that cold medicine I took last night just won't wear off!"
3. "Ah, the unique and unpredictable circadian rhythms of the workaholic!"
2. "I wasn't sleeping, I was trying to pick up contact lens without hands."
And the #1 Thing to Say If You Get Caught Sleeping at Your Desk is...
1. "Amen..."
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
There's a significant difference between the two products.
With VNC, you must have access to your machine. If it's behind a corporate firewall that doesn't allow inbound connections (i.e., virtually all firewalls unless you personally control them), VNC isn't going to work in this scenario.
GoToMyPC, though, utilizes a type of push technology. You run a 'client' on the PC you want to remote control. Said 'client' establishes a connection to the central servers at GoToMyPC.com via HTTP (since many corporate firewalls allow outbound HTTP access without issue).
Then you, from the remote machine, go to the GTMPC(had to give up typing the whole thing) servers with YOUR web browser, and they do a form of proxy that, voila, allows you to communicate with a machine inside the coorporate firewall.
It's also a serious security breach that I suspect many companies would frown on if they found you using it -- ultimately, everything passes though GTMPC -- do you trust them with all your data?
Steve
- I generally come in at least 15 minutes late. I use the side door, that way Lumbergh can't see me. And after that I just sorta space out for an hour.
- Space out?
- Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working.
Problem is, it is not that easy to satisfy such a boss. There's never just one simple rule you can obey and forget. There are always dozens of strange little policies that interfere with your job, and even each other. People who obsess over that kind of trivia do so because they're out of their depth. Their rules aren't an expression of any actual management policy -- they're symptoms of performance anxiety.
Now, if that kind of nervous management is something you can cope with, fine. Some people, particularly those in the project management profession, make a study of handling manager neurosis. I have a lot of respect for people who can deal with shit like that. But I'm not one of them.
Bums on Seats.
If 50% of people working from home 50% of the time. (shouldn't be too hard in office land)
You've just reduced the traffic(and pollution) by 25%.
you get an extra 1hr in bed because you don't have to travel, so...
Your employees will be fresher when they are at work.
Working remotely from home is the next logical step in employees rights, calling an employee up at any time of the day or night because you know they can work remotely is the next step in corporate abuse.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
... to manipulate the screen on his office computer from a booth at a local diner. As he lingered for hours over burgers and fries, he could actually open windows and move documents around ...
This guy is probably XXL.
It can giggle all it wants. The galaxy's not gettin any of our Bourbon.
Example: A friend of mine had a job and he was a wiz. A guru. He could do anything they asked him to do. Yet he was down-sized. Why? Because he never gave the illusion that he was working hard at what he did. He did his work quickly. He finnished every task assigned to him, however he then went back to his desk and idled while waiting for the next assignment. The reality of the situation was that he worked hard and did as much, if not more than his collegues. But to his manager, all he saw of my friend was him sitting at his desk playing games on his computer. That's what his collegues saw too. When review time came around, naturally they all had bad impressions of him. He got a low rating. When it was time for lay-offs, his poor review made him one of the first on the list.
Another Example: A fried of mine, who worked with the friend in the first example, is not the sharpest pencil in the drawer. He's not very techincialy savy, but knows enough to get buy. He usually takes his time working on things and he is always bugging other people on how to do his assignments. He comes in late, around 10 am and is prone to take vacations during periods of mandatory overtime. So how come he gets a better review than my first friend? He milks his assignments, so he's always busy. He's alwasy bugging other people, so they think he has a ton of work. It takes him five times as long to do the same task as the first friend. This guy always has something to say at the meetings and always has something to tell his manager. End result is that his co-workers and manager all think he is really busy and working hard, when really, he takes his good old time doing things. I'm even skeptical about his hours, because he tells me that he gets in late and stays until the manager leaves, then he does to. Basically, his job is not to do work, but to make it look like his is doing work. He's pretty good at it too, cause he's been around for 10 years.
What should you learn from this? Perception is more important than reality. The facts do not matter. What does matter is how people interpret the facts, what point of view they have, and what conclusions they draw using the facts from their point of view. You want job security? Being an indespensible guru is nice, but if you can't be that then you have to put yourself in the position to be viewed as a valuable productive member of your organization from the view points of your collegues and managers. You can do this by communication. Make sure you talk to everyone on your team, weither it's about your assignment or theirs. Help others out with their stuff when you can. At the beginning of the day, have a question ready for your manager about your assignment and always have something to tell him that you are working. Always have a comment during status meetings, even if it is just a re-hash of stuff you have already said to others earlier in the week. The trick is, the more you talk about what you are doing, the more it looks like you are busy doing it from their point of view. Part of your job is making your peers believe you are doing a good job. This is not advice on how to slack, but how to keep your job weither you slack or not and someday it may save you from the unemployment line.
Many managers (not all) task you with items they believe are required in order for the company to make a product. These frequently come down from higher up as part of some type of corporate strategy or initiative (e.g. If we convert all 5 small databases to use 1 large MS database, we'll save on IT costs in the long run). You (the grunt) are tasked to implement according to the overall goals outlined by your manager.
However, given that your manager (and his/her manager) are multiple degrees of separation from the implementation (remember - a big part of what they care about is the bottom line in dollars), use this opportunity to explore new technologies that can be used for future reductions in cost. Pick up a programming language like perl or python, and start learning how you can automate server configuration deployments. Or, generate ghost images for the major operating systems you use so that new server installations are merely a flash of a disk. Or, start learning things like LDAP, or Active Directory so that when your boss comes to you looking for ideas for future cost cutting, you have some logs already in the fire.
As a programmer, I find downtime to be some of the most rewarding time because it gives me a chance to go back and add elements of automation that I didn't have time to implement during the release crunch. It's also a great opportunity to go back and implement unit tests for the code those-that-came-before-you neglected to write (it's interesting how most of them are now gone from our project). Don't look at downtime as a time where you need to cover your tail in order to save face (or your job) - look at is as an opportunity to plug all the leaks you've ranted to your girlfriend / wife / parents / friends for so long about.
Do it for da shorties