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Don't Let Your Boss Catch You Reading This
Stony Stevenson writes "iTnews is running a piece on the culture of cyberslacking in the business arena. Studies worldwide suggest employees spend about a fifth of their work shifts engaging in personal activities. Most of that 'wasted time' is, of course, spent online. From the article: 'A recent survey by online compensation firm Salary.com showed about six out of 10 employees in the United States acknowledged wasting time at work. About 34 percent listed personal Internet use as the leading time-wasting activity in the workplace. Employees said they did so because they were bored, worked too many hours, were underpaid or were unchallenged at work. Firms all over the world are concerned about potentially harmful effects of surfing they deem to be inappropriate may have on their company's image.'"
My employees are free to spend as much time as they want in the office surfing any site they want do: slashdot, porn, the anarchist's cookbook, whatever. It is useless to me to tell them what they can or can't do when they've met their personal goals for projects.
I also pay my employees differently than most consulting firms. We pay close to minimum wage, plus a very large bonus on each project. I've never had anyone quit, and I've never had anyone complain about their monthly paychecks. By offering a large portion of a project's profits, I know my employees won't waste my money (in salary), won't have to lie on their time sheets, and they'll do the best job they can do because they won't want to go and finish a punch list without pay or handle warranty work at a low rate. It is win-win, and a big reason why I'd prefer full 1099's than W2's if the IRS didn't prevent us from working that way.
When you're salaried or on wages, the employer has to focus a lot more on containing the employee and sending them in the proper direction, constantly. We have zero managers at my company, just consultants. It works fine. Our customers love us because we're 40% cheaper than others in the industry but we excel at handling their needs.
So this all lets me "not care" if an employee decides to spend all day long on the web, and only 1 hour on a project. If the customer is happy, and the work is good, and they do it quickly and correctly, they'll make a killing on the profit sharing, and they'll have a ton of free time to kill at the office if they want to be there. Our top employee works 2 days a week, I think, and earns a very respectable income. He can now spend 3 days at the office playing some MMOG, or go home and sleep. I could care less, the customers are happy.
No, we're not hiring.
When I first started at my office job during college, I was so used to being in the basic service industry that I didn't fit in right away. I was used to just taking a task, doing it, and immediately going back to the boss for the next thing. I didn't realize that the culture I was in was for slower progress on tasks and there wasn't a need to rush and be essentially managed by the boss every second of the day.
Just some things to think about. A lot of people don't realize that for a lot of American workers, and 8 hour day really means 8 hours.
This is more or less where my company stands on things...as long as you aren't looking at "innappropriate material" (porn and such) and you get all your work done by the end of the day, they don't care....you could spend 5 hours a day on the internet just screwing around, and as long as you finish everything assigned to you before the time you are supposed to leave, you won't ever be talked to about it.
Living With a Nerd
Management is usually exempt from these things.
Our old IT manager wanted his surfing taken out of the firewall logs so I happy obeyed.
Last year we get a call from our ISP that SPAM is coming from our site. I searched the logs to no avail, we found the PC doing the most surfing and my boss accused them of doing it on purpose. In the meantime, I kept looking at current packets going out....you've guessed it by now....the IT manager had the spam producer on his PC. He never noticed his anti-spyware/virus was out of date.
Lucky for me, I had in writing, his policy of exempting himself so it wasn't my problem.
Always get this weird stuff from your boss in writing because it will always come back to get you if you don't.
If management had to obey the rules of the lowly workers, the Internet would be free for all to use (as it is at my company now).
void r() { printf("recursion is "); r(); }
I do spend most time I should be working "researching" interesting information (the eating habits of horseshoe crabs, super Mario bros. villains, Cambodian cuisine, etc.) and I have no problem getting work done. I used to feel guilty about it, but by now I realize it's part of work, so I work, slack off, work some more, slack off twice as much time as I worked, and repeat. There's too much to "learn", and 8 hours a day work get too much in the way of it. I say find a way to make a living that doesn't take up too much time, and enjoy the rest of your life.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
My company has an authenticating web proxy that users must use to access the internet, and they track personal web use in this way. We also have a VPN that can dial in to the corporate network from home, which is also authenticating but which traffic statistics, for obvious reasons, aren't monitored.
I've been so committed to slacking, as it were, that I committed significant time to creating a backwards web gateway for myself using an automated dial-in from home, which creates a remote ssh tunnel to my work computer that forwards certain port traffic back to a proxy server on my home network. So now at work I just set my web proxy to the localhost at the specified port and surf backwards through the VPN, only using our corporate web-proxy to do job-related surfing.
And all so I can slack. Never underestimate the laziness of a programmer.
You ask people to spend the majority of their waking life, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 hours a day 5 days a week, in a little cubical, and you're surprised that they aren't hard at work for that entire time? They're people. They should be able to occasionally talk to people and read things that interest them.
It's part of time management -- both on the parts of the worker and the manager.
I have a co-worker who constantly complains she's busy but spends a good portion of her day talking to other co-workers who aren't doing anything, takes personal calls at least two to three hours of the day, and spends most of the rest of the time playing Hearts while complaining loudly how busy she is. At least she looks like she's working for a portion of the day, I work with another douchebag that literally stares at the screensavers he just downloaded (they come on after 15 minutes of inactivity -- gives you an idea of how much work he does) and takes over an hour to type a three line e-mail.
I'm no perfect wonder (here I am posting on Slashdot) but I do take my breaks when queries are running and I'm out of paperwork to do. I also come in about 20 minutes early (a direct result of a final bus that my wife takes to work daily and my not feeling the need to sit at home for 5 more minutes and then rush to work) and may or may not start work immediately. That time is then spread throughout the day for various activities.
But this all comes down to a problem with managers not managing properly. If they expect people to work 8 hours straight, then they better have the work available to be done. The three examples I've outlined above reach from one end of the spectrum to the other. Managers should have the skills to properly motivate all three of those people. If not, they've failed in their job and are probably busy surfing websites, reading their AOL e-mail, and leaving work early to bid at an auction on a lake home they don't need.
I'm just guessing here, but...
When the network takes a dive, he's the one working nights and weekends to get it back up, while you're at home playing WoW or watching Firefly on DVD.
If he never puts in the time, then he is a slacker and I hope he gets canned. If he is like most other netadmins I know, he probably logs a crapload of time when everyone else is away, yet he's still expected to put in face time during the workday. In cases like that, he's probably judged on network availability and other metrics. When all is going well, he has slack time. When all is not going well, he could put in a couple hundred hours in a couple of weeks.
If I were your manager, I'd be wondering how you found time to look at your netadmin's time in the ticket logs if you are already so busy--just something to think about.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
The problem is in both cases poor management.
Most managers are still in the 20s, where mindless conveyor belt work did actually work along the lines of "more hours == more productivity". Yes, it increased accidents as well, but unskilled labour is easily replaced. Throw the injured one away, grab the next guy from the street.
It does not work in at least minimum skilled labour situations. And even less so where skill plays a key role. More hours only means more errors, and programming is an error prone occupation in the first place.
Hiring more people would solve it. This would cost money, though, and so managers loathe doing that. Instead, they try to squeeze more hours out of their employees. This does not work out, though. In no field.
Use one admin where you'd need at least one and a half, and you'll see errors skyrocket. I was in the lucky situation to be the second admin in an environment that needed only one. Productivity increased incredibly, simply because we had time to sit down with the people and explain some things to them. The trouble ticket count dropped to an all time low 2 months after we started.
Which of course made management realize that two admins are by no means necessary anymore and one can easily handle that...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
At my first real job, this side of the college world, I tried my damndest to make sure I was keeping busy 95% of the time I was on the clock. (Working a tech support line and burning CD patches for the shipping dept to send out.) As they inevitably do, things slowed down during a lean month and it became impossible to keep busy all the time. The real problem occurred when I asked my manager for more duties; since by 3pm I had finished all of my tasks for the day. My manager was incensed at the idea and wanted to know if I needed to resign or a new job. In the business world, managers don't care if you're wasting time or working efficiently. All they care about is if the work assigned to you gets finished in the timeframe they required. If that means you spend 2 hours in the morning checking your e-bay auctions, so be it. Who cares, the numbers on their reports are all within spec. Yet, 6 years later I'm the manager now and I'm perpetuating the somewhat hypocritical business world.
Block access to the web, and people will go back to other topics (as if they don't already)--who's on Dancing with the Stars, LOST, some YouTube video, their pets, beading hobby, weekend at the lake, et. al. ad infinitum.
Let's face it. People are not going to be 100% productive 100% of the time while they are at work. As other posters have noted, there are different dynamics depending on the type of job, but I won't go so far as to suggesting that similar slacking does not exist for those in the lower-end wage brackets. The biggest way slacking occurs there is through productivity slowdowns.
Sure, it might only take an enthusiastic new employee 15 minutes to clean the breakroom, but it becomes clear very quickly that doing so makes the rest of the employees look bad, since they are allocated 30 minutes to do the job. I knew a guy who went to work (with his buddy) at a silo manufacturing facility many years ago. They got the hang of it soon enough and were soon completing nearly two structures a night. The pace was fair, and they were able to hold some great discussions while they were working. After a couple of weeks, they wondered how many silos they could make if they shut up and focused on the work. First night that way, they made five. The next night, they made seven. After about a week like that, the union steward showed up and told my friend and his buddy that, "it is physically impossible to build more than 2.5 silos per night." Excitedly, they told him what they did, but the guy just repeated his line. For the rest of the summer, they built 2.5 silos a night. Neither opted for full time jobs with that place.
It's not a union thing--it's an establishment thing. Once people have an accepted "norm" for how something is done, it's hard to break away. That's one reason why "face time" is still valued (in some offices) more than productivity. Viva la revolution!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
This is something that is pretty well understood in jobs that are creative like programming or writing. You simply cannot be creative all the time. When something grabs you, and you're inspired by it, you might go all night without sleep in order to keep working on it. At other times, things are flat. You might force yourself to hammer out 2 or 3 hours worth of material, but it's not great output even then.
After being in that kind of business for a number of years, you learn to find a way to become moderately creative more or less every day. The presence or absence of inspiration is still a factor though. So we put ping pong tables up at work and just accept that we're not going to be 100% creative 100% of the time.
It's not that non-creative jobs have higher productivity, it's that lapses in productivity aren't understood or recognized. People I talk to who work in non-creative jobs are often astonished at the all the time we "waste" at my company. They just don't think about how much of their day is spent BSing at the coffee station, or surfing eBay, or any number of other time wasters people do.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Luckily, with the way our company and our "teams" are structured, each person is assigned specfici tasks to do and are trained to do those tasks...as such, unless you have been trained to do something, they could be short 5 people and they STILL won't ask you to help out.
It sounds assbackwords, I know, but in doing it this way people are EXTREMELY proficient at what they do...our revenues are massive, and our clients are always happy...not to mention you never get someone who is "luke warm" about their job...if you don't like what you are doing, you are simply moved to another role.
Living With a Nerd
I do some minor IT work for the evil phone company ( yeah I know, boo hiss, I hate em too :) )
It is a Union Company. If you are not management, you have to abide by the Union
rules, regardless if you're actually a member or not.
What this means is, I can be the most brilliant employee the company has, the
absolute star performer. Or, I can be the employee who can't even boot their own computer
without calling the help desk.
Our pay will be the same.
That alone is a serious motivation killer. You can single handedly double the companies income
but when layoffs start, he who hath more seniority ( even if he is a complete idiot ) will
stay and you'll be on the street.
There is no motivation to be the ' better / faster / more efficient ' employee because there is
no justification for it. As a result, your more efficient employees will appear to be goofing
off more, yet still seem to be able to get the same amount of work done.
*shrug*
Agreed. The only time I can truly code for 8 hours straight is with a nice nap at around hour 4 and then back up and fresh at it. That's straight coding.
A lot of this job is research and "surfing" and "slacking" aren't the same thing. If I'm reading about a development platform that has potential, but has nothing to do with my current work, am I slacking? I don't think so. It's an investment in myself, and in turn my employer, for me to be a better developer across the board. You never know where you'll find a great idea that will change it all.
And then there is the recovery of a mind that's been stressed. Would a person take a break after a test? I would put forward that programming can be this intense sometimes. You haven't done anything physical but you feel spent when finished.
Very few programmers have longevity in the industry (beyond 10-15 years) because of the high stress level. Managers should be doing more to relieve this stress and keep their investments around. I never understood why computing throws away wisdom so easily, instead using green-horns who will work their brains fried just to impress the boss man. It may work in the near term, but long term it's detrimental.
All true. Another situation: the manager will temporarily run out of work they need done, and allow people to come in late, surf the web, and generally slack. That sounds bad, but when there is work to be done the workers are more likely to run right through it. For me it's a welcome change of pace, and I know when I can slack and when it would be helpful to work a little OT and not mark it. It evens out over time, and it sure is nice to have the freedom that ebb and flow allows.
We have a tracking proxy here too. I set up an old P3-550 in my basement. It's running a proxy, and zebedee.
At work, I run the other side of zebedee with a key on a usb drive. Point your browser to localhost:8080 and you're ready to rock! To the admins, they just see a stream of traffic to some webpage at notmy.real.address.com:443.
Another great slack tool is VMware. Make virtual disks with fun stuff on them and take them to work. Or bring in books in pdf format on your usb drive. Music and movies, if you're daring enough. Use VLC Portable for that. Leaves no trace on your PC.
Another good tool is AutoHotKey. Perfect for making custom panic/boss keys.
I guess the whole point of this is that employees, if motivated enough, will be able to slack off at work. No matter what.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
That's why you need dual monitors, multiple desktops on each monitor, and your own proxy server
Damn right. I brought in a pc from home so I could have two computers at my desk. I've had two on my desk at home for years and it's pretty painful for me to work without having two these days. We are an all linux shop (except for workstations). Why we don't have linux workstations is beyond me. So I just had to bring in a linux desktop for the orfice. My pc has an openvpn connection to my home router which is also running squid. It's the perfect setup.Seriously, dual monitors allow people to work and play a lot better than a single-monitor setup. That's probably one reason why people are more productive with 2 monotirs - you can shove all the "personal stuff" to one side, and keep an ey on it without actually having to stop working on what you're doing.
I've been slacking at my job a *lot* lately. We even have this retarded timesheet system where you itemize every 15 minute block of your day to some project. If you don't book your 8 hours, it's deducted from your pay (even though we are all on salary), so naturally you book your time even if you aren't doing anything. Lately I've been doing about an hour of real work per day, and spending about 10 minutes filling out my timesheet. It really goes to show that no matter what system is in place, if someone wants to slack, they will slack, and get away with it. My brother is even a better slacker than I am. He got awards from his company and bonuses and everything. Mostly he played robotron and choplifter in mame. Oh, and xblast, and crack-attack are fun too.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
No, what he has is a communal office for independent consultants. They get paid by the job, but he runs the show - bringing in work and doling it out. It's a bigger-company with individual talents - good to keep clients happy (we have lots of support), but you get targeted experts. He makes money herding the cats. The pay thing is just to keep the government happy.
Bingo. There are two skills spheres I have always been concerned with in my entire business life (I started a successful BBS at the age of 13 with this same mindset):
1. Those who are risk takers and are able to penetrate a market or a project early. These folks are not the most responsible in the long term (that's me).
2. Those who are responsible and are able to carry projects through to completion. These folks are not risk takers (not me).
A successful business needs a combination of both. The consultants who work with me are usually type 2, in fact I have never met a type 1 individual who competes on my level. This isn't egotistic, it is just a fact since I've been looking for a replacement for years.
Herding the cats is exactly what I do. There are 1000 projects in our markets (primarily Midwest US, Southwest US, Poland and India) that I can't reach because I can't find a way to do them more efficiently. Yet when I know what my consultants CAN do, and what they HAVE done, and what they WANT to do, I can jump into a bid or a decision process and sell our talents and come in well under budget. Most of the type 2 people I know won't take the risk of NOT having work or the risk of collections or the risk of keeping customers as contracts in the future. I'm the king of expensive dinners, bid submittals, comparison summaries and collections. I even use factoring companies when necessary to keep the cash coming in, even at a 5-11% hit. Most consultants are good at doing their job and scheduling their responsibilities, where I am not, so we work very well together. If I could find another 2-3 guys like me (type 1), we could probably take on 600% more work, but it is difficult to assess someone's abilities in the grayer business actions that I perform versus what an actual consultant does.
What it all boils down to is that I don't see the point of earning 6-10x what my average consultant earns. In most years, I am the BOTTOM of the income chart at my own company, but I also like to keep capital within the company as much as possible. Happy employees = future stability. People don't quit if they feel like they are earning slightly more than they are worth, but they'll quit if they smell the potential of earning more elsewhere.
Yeah, productivity thrives in tightly controlled workplaces where the management doesn't trust the employees.
I worked at a place like that for two years. My office was the worst. The boss claimed that they were "human beings" but in an office of 20-25 people (depending on the month), in those two years, 19 people left (apart from the boss and my line manager).
When I joined they warned me that they were a "focused team" but that hard work was rewarded with £££. I worked hard and enthusiastically, but I slipped up one afternoon when I got a cup of coffee after a very long and strenuous coding session and spent 5 minutes glancing at the news headlines on news.bbc.co.uk. The boss told me months later in my appraisal that that sort of thing makes him very angry.
Gradually things tightened, work loads became impossible, there was no planning, we got the stick when things went wrong as a result, people were threatened with Disciplinary Action when something trivial wasn't as the boss wanted (because he had messed up somewhere himself)...
The icing on the cake was the look of disbelief on my line manager's face and his physical shaking the morning I walked calmly into his office and handed in my notice. He started to humbly apologise for his behaviour but it was too late.
In the following fortnight, two more people resigned.
Stick Men
That is what most people are arguing against: normalizing the 8 hour workday against what an employee can actually produce. Who says 8 is the right number? If employees aren't working/can't work that, it sounds to me like 8 is the wrong number. 1 is clearly ridiculous. But we trust that they've done the studies and that's the best number, though from these statistics maybe that's not the case. Other studies have suggested that a 7 hour work day yields more productivity per hour, why aren't we doing that?
The truth is that if companies could make people work 12, they would (they used to) because somehow more employees is worse than maximum productive hours. I know a lot of people who work 9-10 hour days 5 days a week already. They aren't better employees by default just because they get more work done than I do. They're here more, that's why they get more done. I don't want to be here more, work is a means to an end (living), not the end itself.
I was apparently unclear. We worked outside doing back breaking labor in the heat of the day. If we were quicker than they expected, we were supposed to be allowed to finish up and stop working early, but for reasons which weren't quite legitimate, they would find additional work to fill out the time which we had made available by being efficient. It was a contractual obligation. In hindsight, I wish I had sued, but realistically, I would not have actually been compensated well enough to warrant doing so, even if I had won.
Yes, if I were coming into work early, I wouldn't do any work during that time without being paid for that. That would be pathetic.