I head up a department with a guy like this and an maybe provide some insight. In general, I think it's fine to do what is asked of you in your employment contract and little else. That said, if you ever want to excel, get promoted, a raise, etc - that will get you nowhere. Some people are fine with that however.
That said, this becomes problematic in a professional environment where your business itself tends to mature over time. Unfortunately, while the guy on my team is still performing at the levels he was 5-6 years ago, the needs of the business have matured and become more complex. What that means is the guy no longer presents a benefit for the team and will likely be gone inside of a month or two.
Is his pay level still at what it was 5-6 years ago? Because if the needs of the business mature and the employees need to do more, they should be paid more.
If the needs of the business change and the employees just need to do something DIFFERENT, not necessarily MORE, then that's on you to make that happen.
Nope. His pay is significantly higher now. Not to mention benefits, etc.
My point to OP was really that you'll always come across people doing the bare minimum. They eventually kinda weed themselves out. I prefer to try to up my game as there's less competition at that level.
What if people just do good enough to keep the job thou?
Lets face it we all have to work just for the pay check
But would that still be considered bare minimum?
Unless you are both "Manager status" and make over 55k a year you cannot be salaried in the US without overtime compensation.*
*In moooost cases.
I am one of those exempt cases, unfortunately.
Ow hurts to be exempt my dad has an exempt job but sometimes they take advantage I feel bad for people who have to work overtime or be on call constantly and not get paid for it.
Sounds like Slavery
I head up a department with a guy like this and an maybe provide some insight. In general, I think it's fine to do what is asked of you in your employment contract and little else. That said, if you ever want to excel, get promoted, a raise, etc - that will get you nowhere. Some people are fine with that however.
That said, this becomes problematic in a professional environment where your business itself tends to mature over time. Unfortunately, while the guy on my team is still performing at the levels he was 5-6 years ago, the needs of the business have matured and become more complex. What that means is the guy no longer presents a benefit for the team and will likely be gone inside of a month or two.
I mean some people just want a job not a career?
Is this place all about making people always advance not that theres nothing wrong with that but not everyones going to be career oriented
Advances in tools, markets and elsewhere mean that the world is always moving forward, so if you're not doing some level of development to improve yourself, you'll fall further and further behind. If you care about doing a good job and doing things the right way, you probably won't have any issues, it's when people don't think about what they're doing and why they're doing it that's the problem.
I head up a department with a guy like this and an maybe provide some insight. In general, I think it's fine to do what is asked of you in your employment contract and little else. That said, if you ever want to excel, get promoted, a raise, etc - that will get you nowhere. Some people are fine with that however.
That said, this becomes problematic in a professional environment where your business itself tends to mature over time. Unfortunately, while the guy on my team is still performing at the levels he was 5-6 years ago, the needs of the business have matured and become more complex. What that means is the guy no longer presents a benefit for the team and will likely be gone inside of a month or two.
I mean some people just want a job not a career?
Is this place all about making people always advance not that theres nothing wrong with that but not everyones going to be career oriented
Those people will have a much harder time staying employed at decent institutions.
Even if you want 'just a job', it'll turn into a career if you do it long enough. You can't have 'just a job' for decades at a time, it's your career whether you like it or not. At that point you'd be doing yourself a favor by adapting to changing technologies and practices.
Edit: just to add to this. If your whole approach to jobs is 'work to live,' that's fine, but you'll still have a career that you maintain in order to pay your bills. And you still need to show some growth to retain this career. You can't expect to have a set of skills, especially in the tech sector, that will will be useful and in demand forever.
What does "doing the bare minimum" even mean? I've worked at places where the bare minimum was showing up on time and not drunk, though most places have a much higher bar than that.
I've never seen anyone fired for "not doing the bare minimum", usually it's cause they fucked up, several times.
"Bare minimum" usually doesn't get you fired, technically, but you're first in line for layoffs. Though honestly layoffs are more a gamble than anything, since there's only so much dead weight to slough before the healthy portions have to be cut into.
A smart person will be able to do the needed work in a timeframe that feels unfair to other employees.
I always got claims of laziness when the reality was that I required a fraction of time to complete the same tasks that other employees needed far more time to complete. I was always signed out for being "lazy". Whatever.
A smart person will be able to do the needed work in a timeframe that feels unfair to other employees.
I always got claims of laziness when the reality was that I required a fraction of time to complete the same tasks that other employees needed far more time to complete. I was always signed out for being "lazy". Whatever.
I'm prety fuck-idle, so I kind of skirted the border of this zone at my previous job wrt to internet time, leaving a little early, etc, but the mutterings were quelled when the head of sales in the department I worked in loudly remarked "[V1m] has beaten all his targets this year, he's always squeezed more stock out of Demand Planning when we really needed it, and the customers fucking love him. I don't give a shit what hours he works." Leaving work at 15:45 most days. Good times. helped that my manager didn't really care what hours I worked as long as I didn't cause him any extra work.
I know how to take a hint though, so after that I made a point of using my ample free time (honestly, most jobs are subject to ridiculous amounts of optimisation if you take a good look at them and oh, I don't know, maybe actually talk to the people you're dealing with) to occasionally conspicuously help people in my position in other departments. Plus which it's amazing what you can get away with in most jobs if you're discreet about your laziness, and just straight up ask nicely for things you want. Oh and make sure your work actually gets done. As soon as you start causing aggravation for other people, you've burned that bridge so hard you may as well bring some meat and have yourself a BBQ. But the flip side of that is that even an occasional unsolicited offer of help can yield disproportionately huge rewards if it's carefully made visible equally carefully framed so as not to become part of your ongoing role.
Basically it can be pretty OK to be lazy if you're prepared to put a small amount of effort into laying the groundwork. Being a sullen dickbag about it is not the way to go.
I head up a department with a guy like this and an maybe provide some insight. In general, I think it's fine to do what is asked of you in your employment contract and little else. That said, if you ever want to excel, get promoted, a raise, etc - that will get you nowhere. Some people are fine with that however.
That said, this becomes problematic in a professional environment where your business itself tends to mature over time. Unfortunately, while the guy on my team is still performing at the levels he was 5-6 years ago, the needs of the business have matured and become more complex. What that means is the guy no longer presents a benefit for the team and will likely be gone inside of a month or two.
I mean some people just want a job not a career?
Is this place all about making people always advance not that theres nothing wrong with that but not everyones going to be career oriented
Those people will have a much harder time staying employed at decent institutions.
Even if you want 'just a job', it'll turn into a career if you do it long enough. You can't have 'just a job' for decades at a time, it's your career whether you like it or not. At that point you'd be doing yourself a favor by adapting to changing technologies and practices.
Edit: just to add to this. If your whole approach to jobs is 'work to live,' that's fine, but you'll still have a career that you maintain in order to pay your bills. And you still need to show some growth to retain this career. You can't expect to have a set of skills, especially in the tech sector, that will will be useful and in demand forever.
Depends what you mean by tech jobs as well.
Some tech jobs are repetitive while some require a greater amount of continuing education
Software Engineer, Network/System Admin, Engineer yeah sure..
Help Desk, Desktop, and Business Analyst not so much.
There may be changes but most of can just google whatever we don't know and catch up real quick with the changes.
Some of us don't live to work either.
"Bare minimum" usually doesn't get you fired, technically, but you're first in line for layoffs. Though honestly layoffs are more a gamble than anything, since there's only so much dead weight to slough before the healthy portions have to be cut into.
Not always true
Its probably is more in a Type A Private Sector company but even highly paid ambitious IT pros get laid off as well.
I head up a department with a guy like this and an maybe provide some insight. In general, I think it's fine to do what is asked of you in your employment contract and little else. That said, if you ever want to excel, get promoted, a raise, etc - that will get you nowhere. Some people are fine with that however.
That said, this becomes problematic in a professional environment where your business itself tends to mature over time. Unfortunately, while the guy on my team is still performing at the levels he was 5-6 years ago, the needs of the business have matured and become more complex. What that means is the guy no longer presents a benefit for the team and will likely be gone inside of a month or two.
Is it his business or does he have a stake in the company? No? Then it's not his job to figure out what needs to be done. If they need him to do more than what's in his contract, renegotiate the contract. Or hire more people. People "growing into" multiple roles is how they get overworked, exploited or become too idiosyncratic for the company to go on without them.
Also, every employee should get at least one raise yearly and tied to inflation, regardless of their productivity (well, past a certain level). You shouldn't have to do more just to maintain the same purchasing power, that's not fair. Well, it's not only not fair, as profits go up due to better technologies and so on, getting the same salary year-over-year is just getting less wealth, proportionally, from the company. For the same work! That's devaluing effort.
I head up a department with a guy like this and an maybe provide some insight. In general, I think it's fine to do what is asked of you in your employment contract and little else. That said, if you ever want to excel, get promoted, a raise, etc - that will get you nowhere. Some people are fine with that however.
That said, this becomes problematic in a professional environment where your business itself tends to mature over time. Unfortunately, while the guy on my team is still performing at the levels he was 5-6 years ago, the needs of the business have matured and become more complex. What that means is the guy no longer presents a benefit for the team and will likely be gone inside of a month or two.
I mean some people just want a job not a career?
Is this place all about making people always advance not that theres nothing wrong with that but not everyones going to be career oriented
Those people will have a much harder time staying employed at decent institutions.
Even if you want 'just a job', it'll turn into a career if you do it long enough. You can't have 'just a job' for decades at a time, it's your career whether you like it or not. At that point you'd be doing yourself a favor by adapting to changing technologies and practices.
Edit: just to add to this. If your whole approach to jobs is 'work to live,' that's fine, but you'll still have a career that you maintain in order to pay your bills. And you still need to show some growth to retain this career. You can't expect to have a set of skills, especially in the tech sector, that will will be useful and in demand forever.
Depends what you mean by tech jobs as well.
Some tech jobs are repetitive while some require a greater amount of continuing education
Software Engineer, Network/System Admin, Engineer yeah sure..
Help Desk, Desktop, and Business Analyst not so much.
There may be changes but most of can just google whatever we don't know and catch up real quick with the changes.
Some of us don't live to work either.
So at what point do you consider your duties to be exceeding the bare minimum? Because Googling things you don't know certainly can be considered to be above the bare minimum.
Jobs in general aren't black and white, live to work or work to live situations. It's all a grey area, and you need to find something where you're comfortable. There are jobs out there that might result in you working 45-50 weeks once in a while that you genuinely enjoy and jobs that have you working 35 hours a week every week that make your eyes bleed from sheer boredom.
Judging potential jobs solely on how much is expected of you is very short sighted, especially if you're young.
A smart person will be able to do the needed work in a timeframe that feels unfair to other employees.
I always got claims of laziness when the reality was that I required a fraction of time to complete the same tasks that other employees needed far more time to complete. I was always signed out for being "lazy". Whatever.
I'm prety fuck-idle, so I kind of skirted the border of this zone at my previous job wrt to internet time, leaving a little early, etc, but the mutterings were quelled when the head of sales in the department I worked in loudly remarked "[V1m] has beaten all his targets this year, he's always squeezed more stock out of Demand Planning when we really needed it, and the customers fucking love him. I don't give a shit what hours he works." Leaving work at 15:45 most days. Good times. helped that my manager didn't really care what hours I worked as long as I didn't cause him any extra work.
I know how to take a hint though, so after that I made a point of using my ample free time (honestly, most jobs are subject to ridiculous amounts of optimisation if you take a good look at them and oh, I don't know, maybe actually talk to the people you're dealing with) to occasionally conspicuously help people in my position in other departments. Plus which it's amazing what you can get away with in most jobs if you're discreet about your laziness, and just straight up ask nicely for things you want. Oh and make sure your work actually gets done. As soon as you start causing aggravation for other people, you've burned that bridge so hard you may as well bring some meat and have yourself a BBQ. But the flip side of that is that even an occasional unsolicited offer of help can yield disproportionately huge rewards if it's carefully made visible equally carefully framed so as not to become part of your ongoing role.
Basically it can be pretty OK to be lazy if you're prepared to put a small amount of effort into laying the groundwork. Being a sullen dickbag about it is not the way to go.
Yeah I sometimes get asked if I need anything to do at work because I finish tasks in about 70% of the time expected. It's almost gotten to the point where if I don't dick around a little bit I'll get scolded for "not looking busy". Thought I feel it is a sign of poor management to consider "looking busy" to be better than doing and completing actual, meaningful work, but that's not my job so I can't worry about that part.
I head up a department with a guy like this and an maybe provide some insight. In general, I think it's fine to do what is asked of you in your employment contract and little else. That said, if you ever want to excel, get promoted, a raise, etc - that will get you nowhere. Some people are fine with that however.
That said, this becomes problematic in a professional environment where your business itself tends to mature over time. Unfortunately, while the guy on my team is still performing at the levels he was 5-6 years ago, the needs of the business have matured and become more complex. What that means is the guy no longer presents a benefit for the team and will likely be gone inside of a month or two.
I mean some people just want a job not a career?
Is this place all about making people always advance not that theres nothing wrong with that but not everyones going to be career oriented
Those people will have a much harder time staying employed at decent institutions.
Even if you want 'just a job', it'll turn into a career if you do it long enough. You can't have 'just a job' for decades at a time, it's your career whether you like it or not. At that point you'd be doing yourself a favor by adapting to changing technologies and practices.
Edit: just to add to this. If your whole approach to jobs is 'work to live,' that's fine, but you'll still have a career that you maintain in order to pay your bills. And you still need to show some growth to retain this career. You can't expect to have a set of skills, especially in the tech sector, that will will be useful and in demand forever.
Depends what you mean by tech jobs as well.
Some tech jobs are repetitive while some require a greater amount of continuing education
Software Engineer, Network/System Admin, Engineer yeah sure..
Help Desk, Desktop, and Business Analyst not so much.
There may be changes but most of can just google whatever we don't know and catch up real quick with the changes.
Some of us don't live to work either.
So at what point do you consider your duties to be exceeding the bare minimum? Because Googling things you don't know certainly can be considered to be above the bare minimum.
Jobs in general aren't black and white, live to work or work to live situations. It's all a grey area, and you need to find something where you're comfortable. There are jobs out there that might result in you working 45-50 weeks once in a while that you genuinely enjoy and jobs that have you working 35 hours a week every week that make your eyes bleed from sheer boredom.
Judging potential jobs solely on how much is expected of you is very short sighted, especially if you're young.
Everyone's going to be different on what they define jobs and careers especially in terms of pay, responsibilities, and hours worked.
There is no universal answer or definition. But in the real world. most people just work to earn a paycheck.
Of course the higher up you climb the ladder the more responsibilities, hours, and money. This is mostly what it applies to.
I don't think I do the minimum at least not all the time im sometimes in the middle and while tech jobs can be interesting, there's definitely more to life than just work. But just because I don't want to work long hours doesn't mean I want to do the absolute minimum either.
and whats wrong with googling in the tech field, its how some of us find the answers and learn while resolving issues.
Heck if you don't know something google it, something almost every IT pro should know
+1
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
A smart person will be able to do the needed work in a timeframe that feels unfair to other employees.
I always got claims of laziness when the reality was that I required a fraction of time to complete the same tasks that other employees needed far more time to complete. I was always signed out for being "lazy". Whatever.
I'm prety fuck-idle, so I kind of skirted the border of this zone at my previous job wrt to internet time, leaving a little early, etc, but the mutterings were quelled when the head of sales in the department I worked in loudly remarked "[V1m] has beaten all his targets this year, he's always squeezed more stock out of Demand Planning when we really needed it, and the customers fucking love him. I don't give a shit what hours he works." Leaving work at 15:45 most days. Good times. helped that my manager didn't really care what hours I worked as long as I didn't cause him any extra work.
I know how to take a hint though, so after that I made a point of using my ample free time (honestly, most jobs are subject to ridiculous amounts of optimisation if you take a good look at them and oh, I don't know, maybe actually talk to the people you're dealing with) to occasionally conspicuously help people in my position in other departments. Plus which it's amazing what you can get away with in most jobs if you're discreet about your laziness, and just straight up ask nicely for things you want. Oh and make sure your work actually gets done. As soon as you start causing aggravation for other people, you've burned that bridge so hard you may as well bring some meat and have yourself a BBQ. But the flip side of that is that even an occasional unsolicited offer of help can yield disproportionately huge rewards if it's carefully made visible equally carefully framed so as not to become part of your ongoing role.
Basically it can be pretty OK to be lazy if you're prepared to put a small amount of effort into laying the groundwork. Being a sullen dickbag about it is not the way to go.
Yeah I sometimes get asked if I need anything to do at work because I finish tasks in about 70% of the time expected. It's almost gotten to the point where if I don't dick around a little bit I'll get scolded for "not looking busy". Thought I feel it is a sign of poor management to consider "looking busy" to be better than doing and completing actual, meaningful work, but that's not my job so I can't worry about that part.
IME there are two types of management. One cares how much you achieve; the other cares how much you sweat.
I head up a department with a guy like this and an maybe provide some insight. In general, I think it's fine to do what is asked of you in your employment contract and little else. That said, if you ever want to excel, get promoted, a raise, etc - that will get you nowhere. Some people are fine with that however.
That said, this becomes problematic in a professional environment where your business itself tends to mature over time. Unfortunately, while the guy on my team is still performing at the levels he was 5-6 years ago, the needs of the business have matured and become more complex. What that means is the guy no longer presents a benefit for the team and will likely be gone inside of a month or two.
I mean some people just want a job not a career?
Is this place all about making people always advance not that theres nothing wrong with that but not everyones going to be career oriented
Those people will have a much harder time staying employed at decent institutions.
Even if you want 'just a job', it'll turn into a career if you do it long enough. You can't have 'just a job' for decades at a time, it's your career whether you like it or not. At that point you'd be doing yourself a favor by adapting to changing technologies and practices.
Edit: just to add to this. If your whole approach to jobs is 'work to live,' that's fine, but you'll still have a career that you maintain in order to pay your bills. And you still need to show some growth to retain this career. You can't expect to have a set of skills, especially in the tech sector, that will will be useful and in demand forever.
Depends what you mean by tech jobs as well.
Some tech jobs are repetitive while some require a greater amount of continuing education
Software Engineer, Network/System Admin, Engineer yeah sure..
Help Desk, Desktop, and Business Analyst not so much.
There may be changes but most of can just google whatever we don't know and catch up real quick with the changes.
Some of us don't live to work either.
So at what point do you consider your duties to be exceeding the bare minimum? Because Googling things you don't know certainly can be considered to be above the bare minimum.
Jobs in general aren't black and white, live to work or work to live situations. It's all a grey area, and you need to find something where you're comfortable. There are jobs out there that might result in you working 45-50 weeks once in a while that you genuinely enjoy and jobs that have you working 35 hours a week every week that make your eyes bleed from sheer boredom.
Judging potential jobs solely on how much is expected of you is very short sighted, especially if you're young.
But in the real world. most people just work to earn a paycheck.
Excluding retail, food service, and similar low skill, low wage abusive type work, [citation needed].
People work for meaning as well. There have been 2 people I know of at my company that were getting paid VERY well that left due to frustrations around not feeling like they had work that gave them personal satisfaction. They both quit without any other job lined up due to the mental toll that took.
We want to be paid, yes, but we also want to feel accomplishment and challenge.
But in the real world. most people just work to earn a paycheck.
Everyone works for the paycheck, but that's not necessarily all they are getting out of it. I would die inside if I was not challenged or otherwise find some sense of satisfaction out of what I spent the 8-10 hours a day away from my wife, kids, and home. "Doing the best I can" is right up there with "not being a dick" as things I do to live the good life.
Will echo that this seems D&D or seeking validation and not a thread about HA.
Another perspective I would take is this. If you have a team with one guy or indeed girl who clearly doesn't a shit, well then maybe your team has a shitty member, oh look you know where I'm going with this one, it's p obvious.
A smart person will be able to do the needed work in a timeframe that feels unfair to other employees.
I always got claims of laziness when the reality was that I required a fraction of time to complete the same tasks that other employees needed far more time to complete. I was always signed out for being "lazy". Whatever.
I'm prety fuck-idle, so I kind of skirted the border of this zone at my previous job wrt to internet time, leaving a little early, etc, but the mutterings were quelled when the head of sales in the department I worked in loudly remarked "[V1m] has beaten all his targets this year, he's always squeezed more stock out of Demand Planning when we really needed it, and the customers fucking love him. I don't give a shit what hours he works." Leaving work at 15:45 most days. Good times. helped that my manager didn't really care what hours I worked as long as I didn't cause him any extra work.
I know how to take a hint though, so after that I made a point of using my ample free time (honestly, most jobs are subject to ridiculous amounts of optimisation if you take a good look at them and oh, I don't know, maybe actually talk to the people you're dealing with) to occasionally conspicuously help people in my position in other departments. Plus which it's amazing what you can get away with in most jobs if you're discreet about your laziness, and just straight up ask nicely for things you want. Oh and make sure your work actually gets done. As soon as you start causing aggravation for other people, you've burned that bridge so hard you may as well bring some meat and have yourself a BBQ. But the flip side of that is that even an occasional unsolicited offer of help can yield disproportionately huge rewards if it's carefully made visible equally carefully framed so as not to become part of your ongoing role.
Basically it can be pretty OK to be lazy if you're prepared to put a small amount of effort into laying the groundwork. Being a sullen dickbag about it is not the way to go.
Yeah I sometimes get asked if I need anything to do at work because I finish tasks in about 70% of the time expected. It's almost gotten to the point where if I don't dick around a little bit I'll get scolded for "not looking busy". Thought I feel it is a sign of poor management to consider "looking busy" to be better than doing and completing actual, meaningful work, but that's not my job so I can't worry about that part.
See, my approach here wouldn't be to give you "busy work". I would try to give you meaningful work however. Granted, I work in a services organization wherein consultants bill time similar to a lawyer. If I can crank out more utilized time from my team because somebody is more efficient, that's a win. Over time that more efficient person will be doing more work but they'll also be recognized for that in the form of a pay increase, a promotion, etc.
IME there are two types of management. One cares how much you achieve; the other cares how much you sweat.
Man, I can't agree with this more.
I can't tell you how negative the move from one to the other was at my last job.
I went from a great set of managers who expected a lot, but cared about the results. They knew your name, were interested in what you did, and if your area of responsibility was doing well, they would absolutely know and care about it.
If something wasn't going right, they would be there at any time to discuss it and help you find a way to get things working the way they should.
Then we all got moved under another set of managers who only cared about the metrics.
They couldn't care less who you were or what you did. All they cared about was that every employee needed to fill their days with as much externally billable time as possible, and they were ALWAYS looking for more ways to bill the same hours to multiple contracts to increase profits.
What you did was completely meaningless to them. Everyone could love you, the work you are doing could run as smooth as butter, but they didn't care. All their cared about was how many hours they could throw at you from as many different contracts as possible.
If you worked your 40-50 hours a week on 1-2 contracts you were useless. Even if you were busting your ass. They wanted you on 4+ contracts even if you did nothing meaningful.
A smart person will be able to do the needed work in a timeframe that feels unfair to other employees.
I always got claims of laziness when the reality was that I required a fraction of time to complete the same tasks that other employees needed far more time to complete. I was always signed out for being "lazy". Whatever.
I'm prety fuck-idle, so I kind of skirted the border of this zone at my previous job wrt to internet time, leaving a little early, etc, but the mutterings were quelled when the head of sales in the department I worked in loudly remarked "[V1m] has beaten all his targets this year, he's always squeezed more stock out of Demand Planning when we really needed it, and the customers fucking love him. I don't give a shit what hours he works." Leaving work at 15:45 most days. Good times. helped that my manager didn't really care what hours I worked as long as I didn't cause him any extra work.
I know how to take a hint though, so after that I made a point of using my ample free time (honestly, most jobs are subject to ridiculous amounts of optimisation if you take a good look at them and oh, I don't know, maybe actually talk to the people you're dealing with) to occasionally conspicuously help people in my position in other departments. Plus which it's amazing what you can get away with in most jobs if you're discreet about your laziness, and just straight up ask nicely for things you want. Oh and make sure your work actually gets done. As soon as you start causing aggravation for other people, you've burned that bridge so hard you may as well bring some meat and have yourself a BBQ. But the flip side of that is that even an occasional unsolicited offer of help can yield disproportionately huge rewards if it's carefully made visible equally carefully framed so as not to become part of your ongoing role.
Basically it can be pretty OK to be lazy if you're prepared to put a small amount of effort into laying the groundwork. Being a sullen dickbag about it is not the way to go.
Yeah I sometimes get asked if I need anything to do at work because I finish tasks in about 70% of the time expected. It's almost gotten to the point where if I don't dick around a little bit I'll get scolded for "not looking busy". Thought I feel it is a sign of poor management to consider "looking busy" to be better than doing and completing actual, meaningful work, but that's not my job so I can't worry about that part.
See, my approach here wouldn't be to give you "busy work". I would try to give you meaningful work however. Granted, I work in a services organization wherein consultants bill time similar to a lawyer. If I can crank out more utilized time from my team because somebody is more efficient, that's a win. Over time that more efficient person will be doing more work but they'll also be recognized for that in the form of a pay increase, a promotion, etc.
The worst part is they ask "Need something to do?" and there isn't even anything that needs to be done, because I did it. So I just make up some shit and look busy. It's frustrating at best, sometimes.
IME there are two types of management. One cares how much you achieve; the other cares how much you sweat.
Man, I can't agree with this more.
I can't tell you how negative the move from one to the other was at my last job.
I went from a great set of managers who expected a lot, but cared about the results. They knew your name, were interested in what you did, and if your area of responsibility was doing well, they would absolutely know and care about it.
If something wasn't going right, they would be there at any time to discuss it and help you find a way to get things working the way they should.
Then we all got moved under another set of managers who only cared about the metrics.
They couldn't care less who you were or what you did. All they cared about was that every employee needed to fill their days with as much externally billable time as possible, and they were ALWAYS looking for more ways to bill the same hours to multiple contracts to increase profits.
What you did was completely meaningless to them. Everyone could love you, the work you are doing could run as smooth as butter, but they didn't care. All their cared about was how many hours they could throw at you from as many different contracts as possible.
If you worked your 40-50 hours a week on 1-2 contracts you were useless. Even if you were busting your ass. They wanted you on 4+ contracts even if you did nothing meaningful.
As someone who started managing people for the first time ever in the last few months, I'm certainly struggling with this. For a few years now I've been struggling with stress and my workload, in situations where I know I'm working hard and it's never enough and going home after 8/40 hours means more things go undone. I have usually felt pressure(mostly but not entirely self-inflicted) to work extra hours.
As a manager, I really want to save my employees from doing that, and looking at timesheets so far, it seems like they mostly are going home and not staying late, but because I've been partly brainwashed by my past experience, I simultaneously resent them because I've consistently been working through lunches and/or staying late.
I'm actually having to evaluate a new employee right now, for what I think really isn't the bare minimum of work, but I'll tell you it's really difficult to judge where that line is. We weren't able to provide much training when the person came on, and individual workstyles differ and maybe an argument could be made that this particular person needs more specific direction. I think for the most part I can argue that the job posting stressed the position would require self-directed work and it's a position requiring a decent amount of experience, and so this person not ever chiming up in meetings, asking clarifying questions, or telling me about the challenges that will prevent them from meeting a deadline, doesn't cut it. But while I'm mostly sure about that, I certainly have my doubts about not doing enough to help this person succeed.
But TL;DR, this person I recently hired could be seen in some lights as doing the bare minimum, and I'm pretty certain that they need to be fired.
But TL;DR, this person I recently hired could be seen in some lights as doing the bare minimum, and I'm pretty certain that they need to be fired.
If this person is not doing enough to stop him or her getting fired, then he is, by definition, not doing the bare minimum. Has this been clearly communicated?
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
If you want to have a discussion about this you can make a thread in D&D.. otherwise I think this has been pretty thoroughly addressed here at this point.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
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What if people just do good enough to keep the job thou?
Lets face it we all have to work just for the pay check
But would that still be considered bare minimum?
Ow hurts to be exempt my dad has an exempt job but sometimes they take advantage I feel bad for people who have to work overtime or be on call constantly and not get paid for it.
Sounds like Slavery
Can't any IT worker qualified for overtime ?
I mean some people just want a job not a career?
Is this place all about making people always advance not that theres nothing wrong with that but not everyones going to be career oriented
Those people will have a much harder time staying employed at decent institutions.
Even if you want 'just a job', it'll turn into a career if you do it long enough. You can't have 'just a job' for decades at a time, it's your career whether you like it or not. At that point you'd be doing yourself a favor by adapting to changing technologies and practices.
Edit: just to add to this. If your whole approach to jobs is 'work to live,' that's fine, but you'll still have a career that you maintain in order to pay your bills. And you still need to show some growth to retain this career. You can't expect to have a set of skills, especially in the tech sector, that will will be useful and in demand forever.
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I've never seen anyone fired for "not doing the bare minimum", usually it's cause they fucked up, several times.
I always got claims of laziness when the reality was that I required a fraction of time to complete the same tasks that other employees needed far more time to complete. I was always signed out for being "lazy". Whatever.
I'm prety fuck-idle, so I kind of skirted the border of this zone at my previous job wrt to internet time, leaving a little early, etc, but the mutterings were quelled when the head of sales in the department I worked in loudly remarked "[V1m] has beaten all his targets this year, he's always squeezed more stock out of Demand Planning when we really needed it, and the customers fucking love him. I don't give a shit what hours he works." Leaving work at 15:45 most days. Good times. helped that my manager didn't really care what hours I worked as long as I didn't cause him any extra work.
I know how to take a hint though, so after that I made a point of using my ample free time (honestly, most jobs are subject to ridiculous amounts of optimisation if you take a good look at them and oh, I don't know, maybe actually talk to the people you're dealing with) to occasionally conspicuously help people in my position in other departments. Plus which it's amazing what you can get away with in most jobs if you're discreet about your laziness, and just straight up ask nicely for things you want. Oh and make sure your work actually gets done. As soon as you start causing aggravation for other people, you've burned that bridge so hard you may as well bring some meat and have yourself a BBQ. But the flip side of that is that even an occasional unsolicited offer of help can yield disproportionately huge rewards if it's carefully made visible equally carefully framed so as not to become part of your ongoing role.
Basically it can be pretty OK to be lazy if you're prepared to put a small amount of effort into laying the groundwork. Being a sullen dickbag about it is not the way to go.
Depends what you mean by tech jobs as well.
Some tech jobs are repetitive while some require a greater amount of continuing education
Software Engineer, Network/System Admin, Engineer yeah sure..
Help Desk, Desktop, and Business Analyst not so much.
There may be changes but most of can just google whatever we don't know and catch up real quick with the changes.
Some of us don't live to work either.
Not always true
Its probably is more in a Type A Private Sector company but even highly paid ambitious IT pros get laid off as well.
1 Plus to this.
So at what point do you consider your duties to be exceeding the bare minimum? Because Googling things you don't know certainly can be considered to be above the bare minimum.
Jobs in general aren't black and white, live to work or work to live situations. It's all a grey area, and you need to find something where you're comfortable. There are jobs out there that might result in you working 45-50 weeks once in a while that you genuinely enjoy and jobs that have you working 35 hours a week every week that make your eyes bleed from sheer boredom.
Judging potential jobs solely on how much is expected of you is very short sighted, especially if you're young.
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Yeah I sometimes get asked if I need anything to do at work because I finish tasks in about 70% of the time expected. It's almost gotten to the point where if I don't dick around a little bit I'll get scolded for "not looking busy". Thought I feel it is a sign of poor management to consider "looking busy" to be better than doing and completing actual, meaningful work, but that's not my job so I can't worry about that part.
Everyone's going to be different on what they define jobs and careers especially in terms of pay, responsibilities, and hours worked.
There is no universal answer or definition. But in the real world. most people just work to earn a paycheck.
Of course the higher up you climb the ladder the more responsibilities, hours, and money. This is mostly what it applies to.
I don't think I do the minimum at least not all the time im sometimes in the middle and while tech jobs can be interesting, there's definitely more to life than just work. But just because I don't want to work long hours doesn't mean I want to do the absolute minimum either.
and whats wrong with googling in the tech field, its how some of us find the answers and learn while resolving issues.
Heck if you don't know something google it, something almost every IT pro should know
IME there are two types of management. One cares how much you achieve; the other cares how much you sweat.
Excluding retail, food service, and similar low skill, low wage abusive type work, [citation needed].
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We want to be paid, yes, but we also want to feel accomplishment and challenge.
Everyone works for the paycheck, but that's not necessarily all they are getting out of it. I would die inside if I was not challenged or otherwise find some sense of satisfaction out of what I spent the 8-10 hours a day away from my wife, kids, and home. "Doing the best I can" is right up there with "not being a dick" as things I do to live the good life.
Will echo that this seems D&D or seeking validation and not a thread about HA.
See, my approach here wouldn't be to give you "busy work". I would try to give you meaningful work however. Granted, I work in a services organization wherein consultants bill time similar to a lawyer. If I can crank out more utilized time from my team because somebody is more efficient, that's a win. Over time that more efficient person will be doing more work but they'll also be recognized for that in the form of a pay increase, a promotion, etc.
Man, I can't agree with this more.
I can't tell you how negative the move from one to the other was at my last job.
I went from a great set of managers who expected a lot, but cared about the results. They knew your name, were interested in what you did, and if your area of responsibility was doing well, they would absolutely know and care about it.
If something wasn't going right, they would be there at any time to discuss it and help you find a way to get things working the way they should.
Then we all got moved under another set of managers who only cared about the metrics.
They couldn't care less who you were or what you did. All they cared about was that every employee needed to fill their days with as much externally billable time as possible, and they were ALWAYS looking for more ways to bill the same hours to multiple contracts to increase profits.
What you did was completely meaningless to them. Everyone could love you, the work you are doing could run as smooth as butter, but they didn't care. All their cared about was how many hours they could throw at you from as many different contracts as possible.
If you worked your 40-50 hours a week on 1-2 contracts you were useless. Even if you were busting your ass. They wanted you on 4+ contracts even if you did nothing meaningful.
The worst part is they ask "Need something to do?" and there isn't even anything that needs to be done, because I did it. So I just make up some shit and look busy. It's frustrating at best, sometimes.
As someone who started managing people for the first time ever in the last few months, I'm certainly struggling with this. For a few years now I've been struggling with stress and my workload, in situations where I know I'm working hard and it's never enough and going home after 8/40 hours means more things go undone. I have usually felt pressure(mostly but not entirely self-inflicted) to work extra hours.
As a manager, I really want to save my employees from doing that, and looking at timesheets so far, it seems like they mostly are going home and not staying late, but because I've been partly brainwashed by my past experience, I simultaneously resent them because I've consistently been working through lunches and/or staying late.
I'm actually having to evaluate a new employee right now, for what I think really isn't the bare minimum of work, but I'll tell you it's really difficult to judge where that line is. We weren't able to provide much training when the person came on, and individual workstyles differ and maybe an argument could be made that this particular person needs more specific direction. I think for the most part I can argue that the job posting stressed the position would require self-directed work and it's a position requiring a decent amount of experience, and so this person not ever chiming up in meetings, asking clarifying questions, or telling me about the challenges that will prevent them from meeting a deadline, doesn't cut it. But while I'm mostly sure about that, I certainly have my doubts about not doing enough to help this person succeed.
But TL;DR, this person I recently hired could be seen in some lights as doing the bare minimum, and I'm pretty certain that they need to be fired.
If this person is not doing enough to stop him or her getting fired, then he is, by definition, not doing the bare minimum. Has this been clearly communicated?