What is the biggest lesson that employment has taught you?

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Efficient workers get more work if you're in the office. I work from home, and that allows me to work efficiently until my work is done, set up scheduled emails to go out at the time I would've otherwise been done, then do what I want until then.
- I see your work doesn't have invasive programs that check idle mouse and idle keyboard behaviors.
  this is an old one but i can't help thinking, what if they installed it without my knowledge, after all, my work laptop was given to me already pre prepared by our IT department.
  
  There is an entire department at my work that employs thousands of moderators to review desktop screenshots of all employees every 5 minutes to make sure no one is “idle”.
  Makes me want to scream when I think about it.
  
  Yeah, they're pretty behind the times, and I'm happy for that. They gave me a work laptop, but since they didn't block me from just using my home computer instead, I just do that so that I've got an excuse if they ever bring up any strange data they might be skimming from the laptop. It's been a couple years now without any word from them about it, though, so I think I'm in the clear.
  
  Fyi. If your IT department is remotely on top of things - they know. They just might have larger fish to fry.
  We can see all kinds of things about any devices that log on to check email, connect to the VPN, etc.
  
  Yeah, I figured they're aware I'm not using the laptop - I'm not on the VPN most of the time as a result. I'm still able to do all my work in my own copy of excel, though, so I'm hoping I can continue pretending I'm unaware that I'm not following the correct avenues to get my work done, at least until they force me to use the laptop.
  
  unless the it department tell your manager that wouldn't matter.
  
  wow really glad you have that power
  
  Luckily I work in a jurisdiction that would tear the whole C-team a new one if that happened.
- It's a double edged sword. I was very efficient, and did get more work, which got me noticed and eventually promoted out of a doing position into a leading position
  It's a nice change, the work is light, the people side of the work is easy. I have higher pay and much more free time
- You you're writing up more time that it actually took you. That is fraud.
  
  I'm not writing up anything. I clock in when my shift starts, I complete the work designated for me for that shift, send it out by the time it needs to be sent out, and clock out at the end of my shift.
  
  I’m not writing up anything. I clock in
  ... same fucking thing, Einstein.
  The non-fraudulant thing would be to clock out when you're done.
  
  Nope. They pay me for my availability, not how much of it they utilize.
  
  If that is clearly state in your contract that way, sure.
  
  No, that is literally how employment works.
  
  That's not fraud, that's called "working smarter". Not giving us a raise to account for inflation, now that's fraud.
  
  I'm not stealing, I'm just "shopping smarter".
  
  Damn that boot must be so far down your throat it's comng out your ass
  
  Maybe it's meant to be, but my parents taught me about deliberate ignorance, and I intend to use it.
  
  Also, malicious compliance
  
  My parents tried teaching me that, but I was ignorant of their lessons.
  
  Is it fraudulent for a mechanic working flat rate to complete a 10 hour job in 6 hours and collect the full 10 hours of pay?
  
  Most shops I know of these days assign a labor time to any given job. You get charged that amount whether the mechanic does it in half the time or takes five times as long.
  Anymore, it's an internal benchmark for mechanics to build on the efficiency of their own work.
  In my line of work, it may take me three hours to solve a client tax issue. I will bill for that accordingly.
  If another client comes along the next day with the exact same issue, but this time I know the answer because I researched it yesterday, so I can solve it instantly, should the second client get charged nothing?
  
  It does not, or at least should not work like this. If you can do same work, with same quality in less time than average, then pay rate is higher than average.
  
  No.
  It's literally right there in the sentence you wrote, thankfully.
  
  flat rate
  Obviously not if it's a flat rate. But empoyment rarely is flat rate based. The contract are usually require you to work a certain amount of time per week/month.
  
  I remember those halcyon days when calling each other Sherlock and Einstein was the zenith of insults.
  On the playground.
  During recess.
  In the fifth grade.
  
  Which seems appropiate since most of people in this comment chain seem to be teenagers who's only argument seem to be "boss bad" and "work bad".
  
  A lot of us speak from experience… it’s not just some opinion pulled out of thin air and being reductive and dismissive isn’t solving anything.
  
  Well, surely there must be more constructive replies to that situation that just slacking on the job or wirting up fake hours.
  Like does everyone here work for Evil Corp itself? If it sucks so bad, quit. Find a better job.
  
  If you’re in tech, it can be absolute hell. I worked at an agency that required 7 hours clocked to projects every day. Doesn’t sound so bad until you realize you still need to eat lunch and deal with random non-billable things that arise. Now you’re working a 10-hour day to appease the numbers, while furiously clocking every minute to every job. If you estimate 6 hours for a task and find an efficient way to do it in 2, that’s the expectation going forward—even for the devs that haven’t done it before.
  It doesn’t sound terrible until you do it for a while and realize that it’s a fucking meat grinder. Instead of being gauged by your abilities and skills as a programmer, you’re quietly evaluated by how many tickets you can get out the door.
  I have tasks where I might spend 6 hours to make the task take a half hour going forward. That’s value-added work and I shouldn’t be rewarded with an onslaught of new tasks because of that simply to fill a void.
  I deserve to find some ways to keep my sanity intact until I’m mentally incapable of continuing to write code anymore in the older years before ageism starts shoving me out the door.
  
  I mean, sorry. That sounds quite horrid. But that just sounds like a really shit agency.
  I do work in tech and I also have to write up all billable hours minutely. But most of the work I do is on internal projects anyway, so I have to write up the time, but it's not billable. Paid work usually takes priority though.
  But when it comes to it, I'm required to work 8h a day. Doesn't matter what as long as it is what matters the most right now. And I could easily just keep it there and work my 8 to 5 if I wanted, not giving a shit.
  But I actually like my work, most of the time. So I do. So when you have to solve a lot immediate problems, the internal projects often get delayed and you risk overshooting the deadline. That's bad for the company in general, so best to avoid it. That gives incentives to solve everything asap and still get the internal stuff done on time.
  And if we risk falling behind the deadline, that means overtime (voluntarily of course), but all of our devs know that missing a deadline could set us back quite far, so everyone shows up. Of course all overtime is paid and at better rates. Hell, I'll sometimes do overtime just to get the better rate and get ahead of things I'd have to fix eventually anyway.
  And the boss very much appriciated the effort we put in. In fact, he makes less money then me. I know that because I'm a shareholder and can read the yearly financial report, they gave all the senior devs a share when the company went public.
  
  It was indeed a shit agency, but I've found almost identical practices in other agencies. It's the nature of the work and it sucks, which is part of why I won't work at another agency ever again. Another issue I've run into are colleagues that don't clock all of their time for a task, which makes management say things like "well X did this in 2 hours; why is it going to take you 6?" It took me a long time in my career to arrive at a place where I feel like I have actual control, so I can empathize with younger devs that are feeling crushed under the weight of work.
  My role now is all internal product work and I always clock my time spent, but it's not crucial. I do it mostly to gauge how long things I build take (a lot of which are greenfield projects) and keep the data on hand as a point of reference for myself.
  I like what I do but don't really like that it's become a big part of what defines me as a person. That's really besides the point though. I think white collar employees like us have it easier than others in the workforce elsewhere, and that's somehow with the absolute onslaught of tech layoffs I keep seeing. I have a friend that has been laid off 5 times in the span of 3 years, and I was laid off myself for 3 months before finding a new role. I'm actually shocked at how many times previous employers have tried to take advantage of myself or others. Those things are the reason wage theft in the US is a 50b dollar industry and it's just going to get worse as capitalists try to squeeze as much value out of things as they can.
  
  What in the boot licking fuck is this?
  
  Wow you’re not very intelligent
  
  Most employers pay you to be on standby for last minute tasks. That's what you are doing for the rest of the time. You are also planing on how to do these tasks more efficiently. That is all billable in my opinion.
  
  Imagine caring about stealing from a thief.
  They're just stealing back a fraction of what is being stolen from them.
  
  Stealing from a thief is still a crime.
  BTW, if they're a thief, report/sue them. Or are they just "thief" because of an ad hoc moral system you made up to justify anything you do?
  
  Wage theft is one of the least acted upon crimes. This system is immoral, and the people who run it are immoral. Thinking you will get any justice except for what you take for yourself is naive and wrong.
  This system isn't designed for us, its literally designed for the people its named after.. Capitalists. Taking anything you can back from them is perfectly fine.
  
  I grew up in a communist country, and we had a saying "if you don't steal from your employer, you're stealing from your family". And people acted accordingly.
  You would love that! Or perhaps not, it actually sucked for everybody.
  
  Wage theft (when employers don't pay their employees what they're owed) in the US accounts for more stolen value every year than grand theft auto, larceny, petty theft, and breaking and entering combined. Yet wage theft is not considered a crime.
  It's the same story all over the world. The real issue isn't the economic system but rather greedy people in positions of power with no accountability.
  
  The original comment did not suggest any wage theft happening, and the original comment from the communist commando treated all employers as thieves.
  
  What the hell are you talking about? Are you an AI bot or just stupid?
  
  Yes, because every single empoyeer is a thief. Capitalism bad, mkay. Fucking tankies.
  
  Imagine thinking capitalists deserve anything other than being kicked to the curb. Workers do everything, the sooner we control things the better.
  
  Yeah, that's exactly what they said... can you refute that surplus value is extracted through exploitation of labour forces? No? Didn't think so. Much easier to insult and deride, and pretend that was a meaningful or valuable argument, than to actually make one.
  
  shut the fuck up.

597 comments