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On Point On Slacking
Wellington Grey writes "This week the NPR show On Point has an excellent episode exploring slacking and the American work ethic. (note that it's audio) It touches on some issues that may be of interest to geeks such as outsourcing, the church of the subgenius and the eternal conflict between wanting to be a lazy bum and wanting to work hard. What do slashdotters think: does America need more slack or more work?" It is summer vacation after all, right?
What do slashdotters think: does America need more slack or more work?
Hmmm. Which category does slashdot fit into? That's what I thought...
This guy's the limit!
Sincerely,
Your boss.
No, that this question is even being asked shows we're still burdened by the remnants of a Puritan work ethic. Compare the average American worker to those in other post-industrial economies and you'll find that we work more hours per week and get less vacation time per year.
One of the major differences between Americans and people from other countries/cultures isn't in how much we work but rather in how we spend our free time. Some of us are remarkably sedentary. There may also be stark differences in how hard we work while "on the job", but I've found that, overall, American workplaces are continuing to push for higher productivity from fewer workers. This trend forces each individual worker to be more productive by working harder or working smarter (sometimes both). It's getting hard to slack on the job in many fields.
Seriously, we need more vacation. If we got more vacation, we wouldn't need to slack off at work at all. We'd be rested enough to do our jobs. But we don't get nearly enough. We're not slacking - we're dog tired, burnt out, whatever you want to call it. Give us more time off and I'll bet productivity will go up more than enough to compensate.
And cut out PTO while you're at it. Only thing that does is lump your vacation days and your sick days together. It'd be a good idea if we got enough of them but we don't. So every time someone at the office gets the flu, they think "If I take sick days off I'm losing vacation days - and I want to go to the Bahamas this year" and come to the office anyways. And get everybody sick.
Stop treating time off like a loss to the company - it isn't. Healthy and happy workers make for a better company.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
My friend just got back from a 10 day business trip in China, and he had one piece of advice:
:}
"Learn to speak chinese, because these people are going to take over the world!"
It's not the Europeans we have to worry about, it's the Chinese and the Indians (from India, not the reservation!) that are going to rule the world.
They aren't "held back" by the same morality and environmental issues we are. When they want to build the largest dam in the world (which is an engineering marvel that will put out as much electricity as 15 nuclear power plants combined), they just do it, and don't worry about the environmental, social, or historical implications.
China has 35 people for every one of ours, so they could invade with nothing but chopsticks and probably win. But they also have huge natural resources and are progressing very, very fast. Their navy will be as big as ours by 2012 (though not as advanced).
Be afraid, be very afraid. (I say that only partly in jest)
Oh, yeah, and they're bringing the bird flu with them...
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They aren't "held back" by the same morality and environmental issues we are. When they want to build the largest dam in the world (which is an engineering marvel that will put out as much electricity as 15 nuclear power plants combined), they just do it, and don't worry about the environmental, social, or historical implications.
It's exactly that type of attitude that will keep them from succeeding. They cannot continue to abuse their native population without reprecussion. There WILL be an uprising, which will cause more than enough instability to take them down a few rungs of the super power ladder. It might not happen tomorrow, or even in the next decade, but it will happen.
The environmental problems, well, that partly goes along with abusing the population. The people will get tired of having to blow all of the soot out of their nose first thing in the morning; people will continue to get pissed when they're forced to move because a regions about to be flooded by a huge hydro-elctric dam. And sooner or later, some big project is going to result in some sort of ecological disaster which the gov't there won't be able to cover-up and ignore.
Of course, regardless of what happens in China and India, the US is going down the tubes.
my pet machine
Since no one modded you down as troll, I'll respond. I'm only working part time right now (hence the time to post on slashdot) but "back in the day" as a developer I routinely worked 60 hour weeks. Some of us worked 80-100. Very little of that was slack - we were in constant "panic mode" most of the time, and many people burned out, quit, lost their marriages, etc. It was impossible to accomplish everything that was needed to with unrealistic deadlines, and new requirments hitting the desk at 5:00 on Friday that absolutely had to be completed by Monday morning because the ad campaign was already going out, etc. Trust me - the 80 hour work week was not a myth.
I've found that in all of my jobs there are people willing to work and do their job and their are people who will just do what they need to get by.
Interesting. Are you saying people should do more than they should be paid to do? Personally I subscribe to work smarter, not harder. I find that people that are preceived as working hard do well.
My dad was a workaholic. He was a lawyer in the morning, fixed computers in the afternoon and worked on mainframes at NASA during the night. (He believed what the Navy told him...i.e. that he only needed 4 hours of sleep.)
My parents got a divorce after 24 years. 24 years sounds nice except I was 14 and I have to wonder if I and my mother would have had a better relationship with my dad if he had just cut back on the working....been around the house more.
Then there was my father-in-law. He's dead now. He worked multiple jobs too to take care of the family (3 daughters.) He died at 47 from colon cancer. His big plan was to retire and enjoy life.
Personally I'd rather see less GNP and more GNH (Gross National Happiness) Working hard should never be a goal. Working smart and being happy should be.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Then you've obviously never met a factory worker as I used to be, and as such, I have to say this is BS. 30-40 hours? You try that shit on an assmebly line --- the work literally never stops coming, not even for a minute. You don't have time to think, you barely have time to breathe. Don't give me this "you should work harder" shit; you truly cannot work any harder in a job like that because you have to work as hard as you absolutely can to keep up at all. If you don't keep up, you don't keep the job. Vacation? 1 single week a year and you have to have been working there at elast 3 years to get paid for that vacation. Or don't factory workers count? Because if there weren't any factory workers you wouldn't have even half of everything you have now, inlcuding the parts in your computer.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
My company recently instituded a use-it or lose-it policy wrt vactions. We used to be able to carry over past the fiscal year, now we can't.
Now, at the start of the fiscal year, we file a plan for the next 6months, and file a second one half way through the fiscal year that leaves us at zero balance by end of fiscal year.
I'm taken a 'screw you' policy -- if I've booked vacation (because they made me) and they won't allow me to carry it over, their deadlines are their problems.
Admittedly, they can and do give special permission in a few cases to carry over. But if I had to book it 6 months in advance, and I actually scheduled/paid for something, I take the position that if you hadn't forced me to book it so long ago, I wouldn't have paid for it and be on the hook for it.
It's a stupid policy, but I'm happy to make them die by their own sword as it were. "Oh, sorry, I've got a flight booked, you should schedule your deadlines when I schedule my vacation. You've known for months I wouldn't be here."
Take your vacation. It's good for you.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I grew up thinking "9 to 5, an hour for lunch" was normal and expected. At the time (early 80s) it probably was. Little by little, it has eroded, a half hour here, fifteen minutes there. Most "normal" workdays are 8 to 5, half hour for lunch, and staying late is expected -- if you take off right at 5 in most places, you're going to get some looks.
Remember when only certain, time-critical jobs required people to carry pagers? You could tell someone was a doctor or a stockbroker if he was carrying one. Everyone else left work at work. Nowadays, you're expected to answer your cellphone at any time day or night if the boss calls.
Vacation time gets slowly whittled away. Years ago, maybe you accrued one day of vacation per month. Then it was half a day. Then you couldn't roll those days into the next fiscal year -- use 'em or lose 'em. (You probably lost 'em.) Sorry, it's for "productivity" reasons. We need more "productivity" from our worker bees. I don't think you're typing as fast as you could be. With another 3wpm you could save thirty seven seconds per quarter, you slacker. Is that a personal call I see you making? You're not on the interworldwebnet, are you? That's a productivity loss! Why aren't you being productive? I know you've been here since 8am, worked through lunch, plan to stay late, and probably take client calls from your cellphone while sitting in traffic, but goddammit, be productive!! Work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger!
Americans work insane amounts. (I realize we are not alone in this, so cork it.) It's especially insane when you realize that "productivity" hasn't really increased that much. We show up earlier, stay later, take less breaks, but in any given day, the average office yob only has so much to do. Now they just have to spread their bit of work over nine hours, instead of seven or eight.
The push for almighty profit has taken a lot away from society. Contrary to what conservatives love to believe, there is more to life than making money. Not long ago I was listening to some doofus on the radio prattling to the host about what a lazy bunch of losers France was. His justification for this was that their economic growth isn't as fast as ours.
There seems to be an awful lot of this mentality, and it sickens me. Sure, they get tons of free time. What is it, eight weeks of vacation a year? Ten? 35 hour workweeks or something? In other words, time to enjoy life and do something you enjoy? Oh, but their economic growth isn't as fast as America's! WHO GIVES A SHIT?
Most people are not doing anything so important that it requires five eight-or-nine hour days. I have my doubts that most people would admit that, but that's another problem in our culture of profit profit profit -- that we tie our identities so intrisically to our jobs, that it feels insulting to hear that what we're doing really isn't all that important. But I'm telling you, and all the other Joe Timesheets and Eddie Punchclocks out there, that really, if you only wrote TPS reports four days a week instead of five, nobody would notice. Things would still get done.
I take that back -- the only people who would notice are those who directly profit from your efforts. So while 99% of the workforce would like to go the fuck home and enjoy what life has to offer, we're trapped in soul-crushing hellholes by the 1% that controls these things.
Right now it's a beautiful day outside. I can see it from my window. I could be out there sunbathing or reading or falling in the water as I try to learn to use a kayak or getting sighed at by my friend as he tries to explain for the tenth time the difference between these knots as we prepare to go rock climbing. I could be playing with my cats, throwing Frisbees at my girlfriend's dogs, or just taking a nap. Instead, I have to stay here. There is nothing for me to do in the office today, but I have
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