Poo management. If work can’t be done in a work day, it’s just poor management.
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
188 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
59207 readers
2520 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I'm upvoting this for the typo. Never change it.
Heh. Alright. I’ll leave it and take my lumps.
Poo lumps
Corn
Also never change in general
That typo is pretty damn accurate TBH.
Mobile. Ugh. I didn’t even notice.
This ultimately has little to do with management and far more to do with people actually caring about what they're doing and wanting to get deliverables finished
Wouldn’t be rushed to get deliverables finished if it wasn’t a management issue.
I literally am one of these people. I work on weekends and late on weekdays because I genuinely want to accomplish what I'm aiming for. My boss literally does not care if I ever even log in if I don't have a meeting, because she knows I am going to be accomplishing things without her input, direction, or motivation.
I'm sure you've had a real shitbird boss or five. We all have. But that's not why professionals generally work hard. You don't get to this level if you aren't passionate.
This is true for most technology always-on businesses... Also why they get paid a ton in most cases
But should it be true? Why should businesses people work for expect or require them to use more than the minimum amount of time required for a full-time job, which should be lower anyway?
As an almost FAANG sized company engineer, I stay because I have work to do.
They ask me: Hey RedditWanderer, how much money /people and how long will it take to do this? I'm free to say whatever number, but I need to hit it. And when I don't, I often feel personally responsible that I wasn't able to foresee delays. They pay me a lot to get it right so I work a lot to look like I'm right.
On top of that the studio is like a 4 star hotel. Running late and would like to finish this one thing? That's cool they'll cook me food and pay my cab home. Got this project right? Here's $80,000 worth of stock as bonus. Don't feel like working today? Then just don't come to work. It's all about the social contract that they'll let me do whatever I want because they'll know I'll do as much as I can.
I'm not saying it's the proper way to do anything, and I definitely don't expect my teams to stay late. Ideally I do my job well and nobody (aside maybe for me) needs to feel like they should work later.
It's definitely not the proper way to do anything if you have a family. You should not have to choose between being a present parent and being paid what you're worth. But a lot of companies, Google included, take a dim view of people who refuse to work as many hours as they can.
I get to choose though. I have unlimited time off/sick days, roll into work at whatever hour I want and can take time that I need to do other things. Nobody is forcing me to stay, and I had the opportunity to tell them how long it would take. I am also free to call it off and extend if I need.
I work a lot, but the company isn't enforcing bad work life balance. Imagine if you had a job where your boss paid you hundreds of hours of overtime beforehand, and left it to you to decide when and if to take it, would you not sometimes do overtime when you feel it's your responsibility?
You may get to choose. All those people whose bosses tell them they're needed to come in on the weekend again do not. It's not legal to enforce overtime, but it's done in practice all the time.
Yeah thats definitely not ok, but in recent years I find work life balance, or at least the facade, has been a bigger part of company pillars. It's really taboo to ask someone to stay past 4pm no matter what time they started. Nobody on any of my teams, and none of the teams I've ever been on have had mandatory overtime (that's illegal in Canada for the most part unless they're paying double bubble). Given we are salaried they can't pay us overtime, so they pay us "ahead of time".
I think you're right, the pursuit of profit should not go against how we live as a society, but a lot of these FAANG workers are really cushy. I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel bad for the factory worker who is at risk of losing his job if he doesn't do OT because he is short staffed and they are threatening to move the factory. I don't feel bad for well paid engineers who decide to stay.
I would caveat your comment about FAANG workers being cushy. The majority of their workforce these days are contracted versus permanently hired on with the company proper. Those contractors/subcontractors get treated like disposable shit.
I would say that it is not the proper way even if you have not a family
The sad reality is that a lot of people evade parenting by spending way too much time at their work. To some extent using work as an excuse to spend less time educating and spending times with kids.
So you either get the social stigma of not willing to have kids, or you do get some kids and actually don't want to spend time with them ?
Obviously, some parents find the right balance between the two and actually care about the kids enough to keep work in check but I'm starting to think that's more an exception than the norm.
Sorry if this is rough to read or offensive. As I said, I work 39h a week and most of the higher ups at work do 41/42+ hours a week easy. It's obvious than they choose work before education. There is a point where it's just physically impossible to be there for your kids while spending that much time work. Don't even get me started on these higher ups spending so much time working even when they do get home.
I'm starting to think that's more an exception than the norm.
This is a really assuming comment, lol. Are there people like that? Absolutely. Is it the norm? Highly doubtful. Without some hard data, can't really say one way or another, I suppose.
As an almost FAANG sized company engineer, I stay because I have work to do.
Everyone has work to do.
If you stay once in a while it's ok, shit happen from time time but if you always (or most of the days) stay, then you and your company have a problem: bad management. And that is not solved with overtime.
I stay more than I need to for sure. And I encourage people to leave. I guess I just feel like my employer isn't forcing me, as this title might imply. I know not everyone lives like me so it should definitely raise alarm bells when most people have that work schedule.
Your talk of providing estimates just reminds me of this scene from Star Trek TNG.
Geordi La Forge: I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour.
Scotty: How long will it really take?
Geordi La Forge: An hour!
Scotty: Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would 'really' take, did ya?
Geordi La Forge: Well, of course I did.
Scotty: Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.
You can argue that it shouldn't be true, but the fact that this is presented as breaking news about Google is ridiculous. This is true about many positions in the US.
The breaking news part seems to me to be the part where they got the memo saying it was basically an understood policy. That is true about many jobs, but it usually isn't spelled out so clearly, certainly not for a company the size of Google. I think it's good for workers to know for a fact that they're being exploited at every possible opportunity.
I don't get it either. I work in IT in France and do 39 hours a week. It's fairly close to that google figure.
And we have one of the most protective unions and so on here in France.
This is absolutely not unusual in EU to see people working 40+ hours a week and I'm sure there is much worse.
I agree that we should all work less than 8 hours a day, no matter the field honestly, but that's just how it is right now.
Now the main difference is we probably have much more holidays than in the US but that's a different story.
But he said they get paid more. That makes it ok for some reason.
I work for a large online retailer for 10 years and I can assure I never worked more than 40 hours per week in that time period, and I've been part of the on-call rotation for half of it.
And besides, overworking software engineers is a stupid waste of money because our productivity starts going to shit even before the 40 hours, let alone on overtime.
Me: I could be making almost double my current salary if I worked for MANGA
Dad: WHAT? So why don’t you?
Me: Where do I begin…
if I worked for MANGA
So do they pay you in first run Pokemon or what?
They obviously mean Microsoft Apple Netflix Google Applebees
it's not worth being paid the millions a year you get at Applebees to deal with the guys who drink 12 beers at Applebees
You are talking a few hours extra each week. You are also taking about 150k total comp right out of school.
If you have the ability to bust ass for a few years at Google you'll be easy to hire at every future gig, you'll learn from some of the smartest people on the planet, and have your first home by 25.
100% worth it to put time in at any FAANG.
Google itself is fantastic. Most managers are great hard-working tech folks and have your back.
The problem is that nobody in tech can even really work for eight hours a day for long periods. People who work long hours almost always pad out the actual work with non-work. And the people who live at work are typically screwing around so much that they barely get any work done.
Yes, it makes sense to do all of this as a person working there, but I think it is telling that the companies let this happen. People can only work so much. Why not get the work out of them that you can, and then send them on their way?
I will say when I was younger and started in tech I stuck around the office until 9pm every day, then I’d get beers with my coworkers. I was learning so much more than I ever did in school, and doing projects that were really fun, and I made a ton of money for myself and the company (I did not get paid near what I was worth though).
Now, after many many years, the jobs aren’t challenging anymore, and the interesting work has been split up and blocked by organizational bureaucracy (you can’t do that because it would need a team of X to build, Y to deploy, Z to support, all when the job could be a 150 line Python script with 15 mins a week maintenance).
I’ve tried startups and they’re fun, the last one my shares got diluted vastly cutting my pay, and I have friends who got acquired for less than their options cost them, taking a loss. It’s not so fun working overtime for the VCs to snatch your tickets right from your hand.
Now I’m back at a big corp again, where I spend my time optimizing tiny levers in a vast machine to make a few more bucks here and saving a few there, organizing it all by multiplying 12 columns of a spreadsheet and putting in bullshit targets.
Nowadays I wish I could work 9 to noon for how much mental energy I have.
I'm not sure if anyone commenting read the context, but this is in response to an interview that claimed they work one hour a day and screw around or work on their own startups the rest of the time.
100% true with FAANG
Every American lawyer: "Lol that's cute."
Could be an interesting experience depending on where you're at in your life but I'd lose it.
I don't think I've ever worked a salaried position and only worked 8 hours per day.
Shit even at the lowest point in my life after the 08 crisis when I worked as an Arby's manager I pulled 50/week.