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What Do You Do at Work?

Posted by Cliff on from the reading-slashdot-doesn't-count dept.

mabhatter654 asks: "With all the talk of 'inefficent' and 'uncooperative' American workers, what do most Slashdot readers actually DO at work? Currently, I'm one of those 'IT' workers at a small manufacturer. Yes, I'm called the 'SysAdmin' but that changes monthly. I'm responsible for the companies network, AS/400, website, PC troubleshooting, phones, etc. But...I also get pushed into other things like ISO compliance, Quality issues, as well as babysitting the shop floor/nite QC on 'off' shifts on a regular basis. Of course, the 'SysAdmin' work suffers...when you spend more than half of your day on other tasks. But that does make me part of the inefficent IT problem that bosses like to talk so much about now days. I'm curious how many other Slashdot readers 'multitask' in non-IT rolls while officially still in that capacity. I'm looking for your 'title', company size, and both IT/non-IT tasks you perform. Also, Does 'multitasking' add more or less value to your position at the company. i.e. the IT tasks that don't ever happen versus helping management in another department? Oh yeah, how about those hours too! How much overtime do you put in and how much of that is due to the other work?"

4 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Inefficient hours? by phamlen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Interestingly, I'm having a discussion with my boss's boss who wants to know why we don't get more work done on projects. I've tracked our time and it comes out to about:

    • 50% of work time on "projects"
    • 30% of work time on "interrupts" - projects/requests/issues that aren't formally planned
    • 20% of work time on email, project planning, organization, (reading slashdot), etc.

    His response, predictably, was "Only 50% of time on projects? I can't believe you are only 50% efficient."

    So, as a simple solution, we've started using RequestTracker It's a simple ticketing system, and everything in the "Interrupts" list goes into the system (otherwise we don't work on it.) And then each week I give a nice list of all the "other things" we worked on. It's been very useful defending my "efficiency."

    1. Re:Inefficient hours? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Interestingly, I'm having a discussion with my boss's boss who wants to know why we don't get more work done on projects. ...
      Ahhh, you should come to the large IT department where I work. A couple of years ago, someone in higher management worked out that too much time was being taken up by unproductive administrivia, and managed to get a directive put out that made percentage of time on project-related activities one of the metrics on which departments and subdepartments were to be assessed.

      The result? In our department, the 'admin overhead' time reporting codes that had alerted higher management to the problem were promptly restricted to staff with designated administrative roles. Listening to barely-numerate line managers haltingly reading the text of their PowerPoint(tm) presentations is now being charged to projects (and so to the business sponsors who fund us). And we've achieving record highs in the proportion of time we're spending productively on those projects!

      I'm not making this up: this actually happened. Interestingly, the business side of the company has just imposed a major reorganisation on the IT department. Seems they weren't so easily fooled.

  2. Anything my client needs... by computerlady · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...as long as it's not illegal or immoral and he's willing to pay my price. And I'm not trying to be funny.

    In the last year, that has included IT security auditing, training on various office apps, database development, needs assessment, small network administration, technical writing, etc.

    Title- owner. Company size - one. Being self-employed means plenty of non-IT tasks like bookkeeping and janitorial and marketing and purchasing. Hours? Depends. When business is good, I put in 80 hour weeks. When business is not so good, 40-60 hour weeks. But then I pretty much take off all of November and December and a couple of weeks in the summer.

    I love my job. My boss is a bitch, but her profit-sharing plan is awesome -- I get 100% of the profits.

    --
    computerlady - a brand new Slash-daughter - alone, but no longer invisible, in the /. world
  3. Push that paper by spike_gran · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work in aerospace at a big US firm. We still have developers onshore: many of the US government contracts disallow foreign workers for security reasons.

    Amazingly, most of my day is not spent working on software, but, on software process. There is all of the overhead involved in keeping our work instructions up to date and our software processes documented so that were are compliant with ISO 9000/1, and CMMI level 5. All of our specs and testing must be formally documented to keep up with DO-178B and contractual obligations.

    Because the govt is the customer, there are bi-monthly presentations of our progress, with all the PowerPoint that that entails. The government has their own separate safety team that monitors our team, so a lot of time is spent interfacing with them.

    As a consequence we are rather inefficient. To deal with that inefficiency we spend a lot of time in Six Sigma meetings tryings to come up with ways of automating work and creating reusable frameworks. These meetings are truly valuable (see, I'm not totally cynical) but they do take time and require their own documentation.

    (The sad thing is that once all this process is up and running, the ISO/CMM documentation makes is so much easier for the company to treat coders like cogs in the machine or to move their jobs offsite. I am so thankful for the government security rules that make my job US citizen only. Whether or not we can keep our California site from moving to Nebraska or some such is another question...)