OT. Jobless Employed...

[Dean Hoffman]

This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
<https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do>

 

[Ricky]

On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 2:22:20 AM UTC-4, Dean Hoffman wrote:

This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do

Who cares?

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Don Y]

On 5/28/2023 11:22 PM, Dean Hoffman wrote:

This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do

It\'s been like this (to some degree) since... forever.

The folks who DO the work are ASSIGNED (more) work.

You (as a manager) surely wouldn\'t want to assign something
to someone who won\'t produce! You\'ll, then, be asked why you\'ve
kept the dead wood on staff if you know it wasn\'t competent.

SWMBO would recount one of the managers in her department who
would \"arrive early\", turn on the light and computer in his
office... and, then LEAVE CAMPUS to go work at his second job!
This was an open secret. His boss (SWMBO\'s as well) figured it
was easier to just tolerate this than to take action.

It\'s only money. And, not *your* money!

The standing joke was how they would cover for him if there had been
a biological hazard on campus and everyone had to be \"accounted for\":
\"Where\'s Ted??\"

Talking with a friend who is a manager at a local Home Depot,
he claims they have to *applaud* the young folks who show up
for work.

\"WTF? You mean you don\'t FIRE those who fail to show up?\"

\"Too hard to get replacements. The ones who don\'t show up
have effectively quit. So, we focus on motivating those who
*do* show up to CONTINUE to show up!\"

Wow.

Of folks who do work, I think the estimate is now that you
only get 6 hours of work from them in an 8 hour day. And, that
may be a high figure!

[This was one of the reasons clients would cite for offloading
design efforts: if it\'s *your* time/money, they figure you
will shepherd it more carefully.]

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 2:22:20 AM UTC-4, Dean Hoffman wrote:

This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do

Learn the difference between shirking and idling. Idling is about work environments that have been intentionally structured in such a way there\'s no need for anyone to have their nose to the grindstone for eight hours daily. The idlers are victims. Shirking is finding ways to avoid work that clearly must be done, and that can be done any number of ways, some of which can make the employee look like a superstar to clueless management, although they produce absolutely nothing.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 28 May 2023 23:22:16 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
<deanh6929@gmail.com> wrote:

This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do

With physical deliverables, designs or assembled boards or faucets
that work or waffles on tables, performance is pretty obvious. A lot
of business stuff is fuzzy and productivity simply can\'t be measured.

I know several too-highly-paid people who work from home and, I\'m
convinced, are perfectly useless. They have long Zoom calls to share
the uselessness.

Big software companies are laying off people in increments of 10K, and
I suspect customers won\'t notice any difference.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-laid-off-twitter-workers-value-tech-jobs-work-2023-5

Why would a web app like Twitter need tens of thousands of employees?

\"Customer service\" is mostly robots now.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 10:01:41 AM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Sun, 28 May 2023 23:22:16 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do
With physical deliverables, designs or assembled boards or faucets
that work or waffles on tables, performance is pretty obvious. A lot
of business stuff is fuzzy and productivity simply can\'t be measured.

I know several too-highly-paid people who work from home and, I\'m
convinced, are perfectly useless. They have long Zoom calls to share
the uselessness.

Big software companies are laying off people in increments of 10K, and
I suspect customers won\'t notice any difference.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-laid-off-twitter-workers-value-tech-jobs-work-2023-5

Why would a web app like Twitter need tens of thousands of employees?

\"Customer service\" is mostly robots now.

Seems a lot of people are coming forward, now that they\'re laid off, about getting 6-figure salaries for doing nothing. Their main challenge at work was finding ways to keep themselves occupied. Apparently the finance industry has a lot of that going on too.

There could be very good business reasons for this kind of thing. An example would be a company that relocated and worked a deal with local government for a time limited tax avoidance with the proviso they hire so many locals.. So they hire away without regard for the necessity of it. The same thing can also give a company bargaining power when negotiating work for the government.

Vox article was written by a simpleton.

 

[Wandere]

That was me.

You\'re supposed to bring enough resources to win the battle. You wouldn\'t buy a printer that made lots of noise and took all day to print. I think a lot of the people who dominate meetings are like that. They work long hours have a lots of issues to discuss because they\'re struggling to do their job.I worked weekends at times. Usually in the beginning of the project when no one else would be there. I was analog, the interface to reality and my stuff must be done first. But then I went into support mode. I was the eye of the storm. I had PCB board designers, technicians, programmers and vendors all working on my stuff. I would read text books and charge part of my time to education. My bosses knew that I had free time and I would get the sustaining work and the compliance work. Part obsolescence, etc. The kind of stuff a lot engineers hate to do. I was also the relief pitcher. Brought in to help on the weird problems.

I then quit that job to go look for new challenges. At the new job, I got in trouble for charging time to education; so I quit. At the next job, I played the game and looked busy. Designed a CCD camera nobody wanted. Wrote an optics program for simulating lenses. The engineering head wanted to know why we didn\'t just buy a program to do that. I didn\'t tell him I was bored.

Engineers don\'t pick tomatoes. An engineering company is a bunch of smart people coming up with good ideas. Google had some rule where people could use part of their time to do what they want. I don\'t know about that, but I think engineers should charge part of their time to education. That way management knows what they are doing and their employees keep improving. They also have the resources in reserve to win the battles.

 

[Don Y]

On 5/29/2023 10:52 AM, Wanderer wrote:

Engineers don\'t pick tomatoes. An engineering company is a bunch of smart
people coming up with good ideas. Google had some rule where people could
use part of their time to do what they want. I don\'t know about that, but I
think engineers should charge part of their time to education. That way
management knows what they are doing and their employees keep improving.
They also have the resources in reserve to win the battles.

I\'ve only worked for one \"bean counting\" firm where time was
charged to different \"accounts\". We wrote off a fair bit of
our time to things like:
- status meetings (communication within design group)
- quality improvement (reviewing \"process\")
- reading mail (requests from other members/departments)
- reading trade magazines (keep up with new component announcements)
- trade shows, conventions, continuing education (new technology)
etc.

The problem is that it\'s hard to \"measure\" most engineering tasks.
You don\'t have two \"tomato pickers\" sitting side by side whose output
you can directly compare.

And, managers are easily distracted by *apparent* activity: \"Bob
is already in the lab, troubleshooting his design; Tom is still
at the drawing board\" -- what does that tell you about Bob & Tom
that you can infer as to their effectivity/efficiencies at their
*assigned* tasks? Will you remember this observation when Tom
*completes* his task before Bob??

Also, the interactions between engineering tasks aren\'t immediately
visible. If I take on a task in software that lets the power supply
designers relax the demands on the power supply, do I get \"credit\"
for reducing their design effort (at my expense)? Should I even
*care* about their facing constraints that I could lessen? This is
particularly onerous in larger firms where designs are \"parted out\"
to different folks AS IF they were interconnectable blocks.

And, of course, management is notoriously bad at understanding the effort
involved in ANY of these subtasks -- esp managers who \"were\" engineers
(\"back in the day\"). Just as hardware/software, analog/digital folks
are usually clueless as to the domains of their counterparts.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 29 May 2023 07:44:30 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 10:01:41?AM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 28 May 2023 23:22:16 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do
With physical deliverables, designs or assembled boards or faucets
that work or waffles on tables, performance is pretty obvious. A lot
of business stuff is fuzzy and productivity simply can\'t be measured.

I know several too-highly-paid people who work from home and, I\'m
convinced, are perfectly useless. They have long Zoom calls to share
the uselessness.

Big software companies are laying off people in increments of 10K, and
I suspect customers won\'t notice any difference.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-laid-off-twitter-workers-value-tech-jobs-work-2023-5

Why would a web app like Twitter need tens of thousands of employees?

\"Customer service\" is mostly robots now.


Seems a lot of people are coming forward, now that they\'re laid off, about getting 6-figure salaries for doing nothing. Their main challenge at work was finding ways to keep themselves occupied. Apparently the finance industry has a lot of that going on too.

There could be very good business reasons for this kind of thing. An example would be a company that relocated and worked a deal with local government for a time limited tax avoidance with the proviso they hire so many locals. So they hire away without regard for the necessity of it. The same thing can also give a company bargaining power when negotiating work for the government.

One real dynamic was that terabuck giants like Google and Apple were
hiring in Silicon Valley just to keep competitors from getting the
people. That works in a region that is housing limited. Work from home
changes that strategy.

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Mon, 29 May 2023 06:59:16 -0700, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Sun, 28 May 2023 23:22:16 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
deanh6929@gmail.com> wrote:

This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do

With physical deliverables, designs or assembled boards or faucets
that work or waffles on tables, performance is pretty obvious. A lot
of business stuff is fuzzy and productivity simply can\'t be measured.

I know several too-highly-paid people who work from home and, I\'m
convinced, are perfectly useless. They have long Zoom calls to share
the uselessness.

Big software companies are laying off people in increments of 10K, and
I suspect customers won\'t notice any difference.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-laid-off-twitter-workers-value-tech-jobs-work-2023-5

Why would a web app like Twitter need tens of thousands of employees?

To be precise, Elon first laid off anyone then at Twitter who could
not provide a sample of a recently-written bit of code.

>\"Customer service\" is mostly robots now.

Yeah, often even the real human ones.

Joe Gwinn

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 29 May 2023 08:11:56 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 5/29/2023 10:52 AM, Wanderer wrote:
Engineers don\'t pick tomatoes. An engineering company is a bunch of smart
people coming up with good ideas. Google had some rule where people could
use part of their time to do what they want. I don\'t know about that, but I
think engineers should charge part of their time to education. That way
management knows what they are doing and their employees keep improving.
They also have the resources in reserve to win the battles.

I\'ve only worked for one \"bean counting\" firm where time was
charged to different \"accounts\".

I did that. I wrote a Basic+ program to fake my weekly time report.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 29 May 2023 08:11:56 -0700, Don Y
blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 5/29/2023 10:52 AM, Wanderer wrote:
Engineers don\'t pick tomatoes. An engineering company is a bunch of smart
people coming up with good ideas. Google had some rule where people could
use part of their time to do what they want. I don\'t know about that, but I
think engineers should charge part of their time to education. That way
management knows what they are doing and their employees keep improving.
They also have the resources in reserve to win the battles.

I\'ve only worked for one \"bean counting\" firm where time was
charged to different \"accounts\".

I did that. I wrote a Basic+ program to fake my weekly time report.

Yup.

One time BITD I was working about 5% of my time on a DARPA project. The
govt requirement was for everyone to keep a time sheet of their actual
hours worked, not to exceed 8 per day.

In a fit of due diligence, my management insisted that everyone write up
their hours every day, on pain of Severe Disapproval. Most unusually, they
even did spot checks.

Soooo, naturally I wrote a script (in Rexx), running as a cron job, to put
in 8 hours of non-govt work each evening, with a slightly random time
stamp. That way I could just hack it up when I actually did some DARPA
work, and wind up with a correct time sheet.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC /
Hobbs ElectroOptics Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

 

[bitrex]

On 5/29/2023 2:22 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote:

This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do

\"Maybe he could take more initiative and try to take on more, but he
gets good performance reviews and raises as it is, so he figures, why
bother?\"

Yes, America was in large part _designed_ for white \"educated\" people
from well-to-do families to fail upwards.

Whole point of the exercise!

 

[bitrex]

On 5/29/2023 1:05 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:
On Mon, 29 May 2023 08:11:56 -0700, Don Y
blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 5/29/2023 10:52 AM, Wanderer wrote:
Engineers don\'t pick tomatoes. An engineering company is a bunch of smart
people coming up with good ideas. Google had some rule where people could
use part of their time to do what they want. I don\'t know about that, but I
think engineers should charge part of their time to education. That way
management knows what they are doing and their employees keep improving.
They also have the resources in reserve to win the battles.

I\'ve only worked for one \"bean counting\" firm where time was
charged to different \"accounts\".

I did that. I wrote a Basic+ program to fake my weekly time report.

Yup.

One time BITD I was working about 5% of my time on a DARPA project. The
govt requirement was for everyone to keep a time sheet of their actual
hours worked, not to exceed 8 per day.

In a fit of due diligence, my management insisted that everyone write up
their hours every day, on pain of Severe Disapproval. Most unusually, they
even did spot checks.

Soooo, naturally I wrote a script (in Rexx), running as a cron job, to put
in 8 hours of non-govt work each evening, with a slightly random time
stamp. That way I could just hack it up when I actually did some DARPA
work, and wind up with a correct time sheet.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I understand that a part of conservative philosophy is \"when the
government offers you money, you take it\" but that the poor often tend
to operate by the same philosophy seems to be a matter of consternation.

Sounds like their main \"crime\" is that they don\'t regularly help
themselves to enough to reach the level of \"good business sense\" which
lies beyond the moral turpitude of minor figures.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 29 May 2023 14:00:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 5/29/2023 2:22 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do


\"Maybe he could take more initiative and try to take on more, but he
gets good performance reviews and raises as it is, so he figures, why
bother?\"

Yes, America was in large part _designed_ for white \"educated\" people
from well-to-do families to fail upwards.

America was hardly designed. All sorts of adventurous and distressed
people immigrated here from all over the world.

Whole point of the exercise!

The highest earning demographic in the USA is now Asians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 2:03:21 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

On 5/29/2023 2:22 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do

\"Maybe he could take more initiative and try to take on more, but he
gets good performance reviews and raises as it is, so he figures, why
bother?\"

Yes, America was in large part _designed_ for white \"educated\" people
from well-to-do families to fail upwards.

America has never put a lot of stock in education, so that\'s a bunch of bull.

Whole point of the exercise!

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 2:53:15 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 29 May 2023 14:00:53 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 5/29/2023 2:22 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do


\"Maybe he could take more initiative and try to take on more, but he
gets good performance reviews and raises as it is, so he figures, why
bother?\"

Yes, America was in large part _designed_ for white \"educated\" people
from well-to-do families to fail upwards.
America was hardly designed. All sorts of adventurous and distressed
people immigrated here from all over the world.

Whole point of the exercise!
The highest earning demographic in the USA is now Asians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income

Someone needs to investigate how the Chickasaw, Apache, Sioux, and Navajo are making so much money!

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Tuesday, May 30, 2023 at 4:53:15 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 29 May 2023 14:00:53 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 5/29/2023 2:22 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote:

<snip>

Yes, America was in large part _designed_ for white \"educated\" people
from well-to-do families to fail upwards.

America was hardly designed. All sorts of adventurous and distressed people immigrated here from all over the world.

A lot of them were religious nutters who wanted to be more unpleasant to people who didn\'t share their perverse ideas than established communities would tolerate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_martyrs

when the UK government got to hear about it, they made sure that it didn\'t happen again, and the locals resented that, though they didn\'t revolt until more than a hundred years later.

The highest earning demographic in the USA is now Asians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income

They come for societies where bribery and corruption have been popular for a long time - the American culture is more about taking silly idea seriously, rather than milking them for all they are worth.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Tuesday, May 30, 2023 at 7:16:20 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:

On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 2:53:15 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 29 May 2023 14:00:53 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 5/29/2023 2:22 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do


\"Maybe he could take more initiative and try to take on more, but he
gets good performance reviews and raises as it is, so he figures, why
bother?\"

Yes, America was in large part _designed_ for white \"educated\" people
from well-to-do families to fail upwards.
America was hardly designed. All sorts of adventurous and distressed
people immigrated here from all over the world.

Whole point of the exercise!
The highest earning demographic in the USA is now Asians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income
Someone needs to investigate how the Chickasaw, Apache, Sioux, and Navajo are making so much money!

They can put casino\'s on their native lands.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Tuesday, May 30, 2023 at 12:56:15 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, May 30, 2023 at 7:16:20 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 2:53:15 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 29 May 2023 14:00:53 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 5/29/2023 2:22 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
This article discusses people who idle along at work. It sounds like some have the much rumored government employees beat.
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do


\"Maybe he could take more initiative and try to take on more, but he
gets good performance reviews and raises as it is, so he figures, why
bother?\"

Yes, America was in large part _designed_ for white \"educated\" people
from well-to-do families to fail upwards.
America was hardly designed. All sorts of adventurous and distressed
people immigrated here from all over the world.

Whole point of the exercise!
The highest earning demographic in the USA is now Asians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income
Someone needs to investigate how the Chickasaw, Apache, Sioux, and Navajo are making so much money!
They can put casino\'s on their native lands.

The time of that cash cow has passed since the white heathens have started permitting casinos on their lands...

All they have left is selling mineral, oil, and sometimes timber rights to their lands.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney