Half of IT Workers Sleep on the Job

Stony Stevenson writes "According to a new online survey by Harris Interactive, more than half of IT workers say they've fallen asleep at work, while nearly half of techies also are apparently in the mood for love. Forty-seven percent of tech pros admit they've kissed a co-worker, according to the online survey of 5,700 U.S. workers, including 163 techies. The survey didn't indicate if those work taboos were committed by the same respondents, but in both cases, men were more likely to admit doing both. Forty-nine percent of male techies say they've fallen asleep at work, while only 35 percent of women admitted doing so."

Comments

Half of IT Workers Sleep on the Job

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and the other half is here posting on Slashdot!

Re:Overworked and out of our element

[Lonewolf666]

One other thing that people forget is that frequently the problems that crop up that programmers and IT folks have to fix are problems that may not have occurred had the work force been better rested. Near the end of a particular development cycle, we were working 12 to 14 hour shifts 6 or 7 days a week, alternating between folks during the day and folks at night. Near gold, it was basically a team would come in and have to fix the bug caused by the folks the earlier 12 hour shift caused fixing another bug. Everyone was so overworked that nobody could make rational steps towards fixing things properly. Seemed to me that we could have finished off earlier were we not pressed into 'work every hour you're awake' mode for the last 4 weeks. You end up causing problems that you then have to stay up even more hours to fix.

That is confirmed by lots of studies. A nice summary can be found at http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php.

But most managers have obviously never heard of that...

Re:Organizational Productivity & European Unem

[syntaxglitch]

I'm not sure I understand the later concept -- how can organizational productivity be maximized if individual productivity is compromised?

Even if individual productivity per hour is lower, people are working more hours. Let's say that, on average, the individual does 5 units of work per hour with a 35hr week, but only 4.5 units/hr with a 45 hour week. In the first case, the worker is more efficient and accomplishes 175 total units. In the second case, his average productivity is lower, but the total is 202.5. As the hours per week increase, each additional hour adds progressively less to the final total--perhaps at a 60 hour week, he gets only 3 units per hour done, making the week's total only 180, less than if he'd worked only 45 hours.

This is simplified for the sake of example, of course. Obviously this only applies to salaried workers, as well. For workers paid hourly, the company benefits more by LIMITING the hours worked to the personal productivity peak, because it means they get more value for the money spent.

This is really pretty interesting, though. It might also speak to what I've always thought was a paradox regarding European unemployment. Theoretically, because of the increased vacation time and less demanding schedules, an organization might need to hire more workers to keep the number of man-hours the same. But if the workers are actually more productive per hour of work with a lighter schedule, an organization might neither need more workers or more worker time....

They'll still get less done overall than people on a typical American schedule, of course, but not as much less as one would at first think.

Also, communication and organizational overhead often makes adding more staff less helpful than one would think. For details, read The Mythical Man-Month, something else that foolish management often ignores.