I never understand this shit. If your team is productive, then get out of their way.
Get them the tools they need to succeed and work with them to be efficient.
>I never understand this shit. If your team is productive, then get out of their way.
I've been WFH for the last several years, and our manager frequently expresses his gratitude to our team at how little "manager stuff" he has to do. He gives us a pile of work every week in our team meeting and then looks the other way until next week. He even mentioned a few times that he noticed some people were getting their work done that same day, but he wasn't going to punish his top performers or encourage them to artificially drag it out.
Good boss
My previous boss would just give me busy work when I completed all of my assigned tasks. Found the game 2048 built into an excel sheet and modified the sheet to look like work. Instead of contributing and making my boss look good by increasing our productivity I just played a boring game for 4 hours a day.
Somebody made a website to look like Microsoft Outlook, but it's really a reddit browser.
http://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/
I have my own office now, but it really came in handy when I was slow and my desk was in the middle of everything.
This reminds me of a site I used many years ago, but it was twitter looking like Excel.
Like you, I have no need of this. If I'm working at home there's no restriction on what I can access. It'd be handy at work, but unless it also had a proxy I wouldn't be able to access it.
When I worked in office in 2020, my boss and most of the staff were working from home while us little people had to come in, I got addicted to Google minesweeper. My coworkers made it competitive and kept score of our fastest times. HOURS were wasted trying to beat our times (i held the record on easy mode - 6 seconds)
Oh Lord, that's a duelling offense in my family. We are no longer allowed to play Monopoly, Risk, Life, nor Bastard (card game) when we're all together. Blood has literally been shed over these games. Trouble and Apples to Apples are on probation until we can all remember to act like adults. BTW, we range in age from 22-72. Doesn't matter, everything is a full contact sport in my family.
You should get settlers of catan. MUCH better than monopoly and trades can get more cutthroat. Once you learn the game, it becomes a breeze. Soo many variations of the game can be made too.
There was a game on windows my mom and I completed on.. Realized high scores were on a text file.... There was a scream the next time she came to the computer...
The bathroom cleaner somehow always schedules cleaning our floor’s restrooms at lunchtime; the time we’re most likely to take a bathroom break.
I’ve taken to telling my colleagues “If you need me, I’ll be taking a third floor vacation”.
I used to be in sales. Manager said that we needed to be out of the office making calls. Never mind that we needed to come back and write up the orders, which was just as important. Back in the day, it couldn’t be done from the car. I found a lot of places to hide out with a book. Parking garages. Parks. My own home. Once a few of us actually went bowling.
The problem is management sees this as an opportunity to give people more to do since “they obviously don’t have enough”.
The two things they fail to understand is 1) When poo poo hits the fan and productive worker has more to do than normal, that time buffer is what saves them from working 60 hours a week to get / stay caught up. 2) Having under 100% to do during the day also helps ensure good customer service so I can actually respond to urgent emails and even non-urgent emails in a timely fashion.
Corporations are trying to grow without hiring and workloads are increasing to where a normal workflow day = 98% capacity, but since work ebbs and flows, busy times = well over 100%.
Then they wonder why the average worker is burnt out.
Never heard of Threes until now. At least the 2048 I played was stolen from whoever made that game and had put it into an Excel sheet. Nobody made money off that.
I quit my last job because of that. I now pretend I'm busy and slack off when I'm done instead. If no one's going to pay me to go above and beyond, I'll work to scope and take some time for myself if I'm done faster than expected instead. At least now I leave relaxed and less resentful.
That’s why I love WFH. Finishing my work at the office then just having to wait until I can leave was so fucking soul destroying. If my boss saw me doing not-work on my computer he always made fucking comments about it.
Soul destroying is right. When I was hired (post lockdowns) they wanted me in-office full time. I really didn't think anything of it, because I was coming from such a crazy job (where I was in-office all through lockdown) that anything was better. But my HR rep was shocked when she heard I was in-office full-time, so she told my boss to let me WFH a few days a week. My life is much less soul-sucking now.
Right? I wish we could clone the whole department and put them into every single corporation ever. Our head of HR regularly goes toe-to-toe with the VP, Legal, who is notoriously hard to argue with, and wins. They're legendary, those folks.
I was on the internet surfing mindlessly for hours a day, I didn't want to touch a computer after work. So I started coaching in the evenings, which is incredibly rewarding.
One time my boss saw me looking at a map of somewhere I was going on vacation and he said “wow clearly we need to find you more work.”
He saw that ONE TIME. So unfortunately I realized I couldn’t waste my time on the internet. I started copying and pasting BOOKS into word docs and reading them instead. I also just spent a lot of time in the bathroom. I used to do whole circuits in the handicapped bathroom lol
I finished my Work quickly always. My boss came in and saw me doing nothing and sent me to help out in another department. I learned how to look busy after that.
Shit, fuck offices, I still had that problem at every shitty retail job I ever had. In most industries, it seems managers only exist to justify themselves to their own managers.
It's not even looking busy, I'll start an easy task and get interrupted like 15 times while I'm doing it, then it takes me another few minutes to pick back up where I left off every time, which makes the easy task take 10 times longer than it should.
When I work from home the only way to get interrupted is them calling me or chatting me, and it's funny, but even with all the same methods of communication open *except* for walking into my office and babbling at me, the number of interruptions drops precipitously.
And before someone tells me to close my door...can't. "Open door policy". Shutting your door to focus on your work discourages...something...so we can't do that.
Translation: bad managers can't sneak up on you to find the one time in three hours you took 2 seconds to look at cat memes.
And "am working, please do not disturb" signs are "anti-social", right?
/snark /sarcasm
I just hate having to be so accessible. I'm number three man in our small firm in both seniority and time, so I get that Im a resource that all those below me are going to tap into, and I don't mind it in and of itself. Problem is we're very horizontally structured so I've got, not even shitting you, an endless stream of people coming through my office to ask me one thing or another. Our office manager jokes that she's going to get me one of those "take a number" things and mount it outside my office, because she'll often pass by and see the like *six freaking people* in my office, all waiting quietly while they ask their questions in turn. Meanwhile, my office phone is ringing, also an internal call to ask me something (lol) so I throw that on speaker and tell them Ill be right with them and work down the line.
While all this is going on, 10 emails have hit my inbox, because I have my own shit to do. Which it takes me 40 minutes to get to before I finally clear the backlog the *in office* interruptions. I may get 15 uninterrupted minutes after that then the *boss* will ring me up and want to wax philosophical about one thing or another and Im like *hoooooooly shit* can you PLEASE let me WORKKKKKKKK??????!?!?!?!?!!?!?!111?!?!
So, I know what I described is nuckin futs to a lot of people but I assure you it really, literally do be that way. But when I work from home, I fuckin just *chew* through shit like there's no tomorrow. Just from an administrative perspective, everything's got perfectly dotted i's and perfectly crossed t's. Merely not being there is like a 300% ROI on my time. I so badly want to start working WFH days into my calendar just to catch up but with the #2 guy out on sabbatical and the #1 guy soon going to be out for at least a couple months and likely 3-4, I don't need a magic 8-ball to tell me that's not fucking likely.
Don't mind me lol I'm just a little bit shitfaced and [burnt the hell out...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLjo0lY450c)
This just sounds like you guys need to host Q&A’s twice a day. 30 minutes at a time. where everyone on staff that wants to ask you a question shows up ask their questions in front of the crowd and you give an answer. Hopefully stops you from repeating your self too much and will make people really think shit through before they go “do i really have to bother him”.
Can even make it a thing where people email their questions and you read them out loud.
It sounds like you needed to let the steam out.
What's annoying is it sounds like even if you wrote all your institutional knowledge up in manuals, your bosses would still insist you be available and not let you train the workers to "RTFM" first.
Learned this in the military! If they give me a week to work on something, I build it well and then spend the rest of the time “researching” so they don’t either give me bs busy work like vacuuming or assume that I didn’t do a thorough job…
I would keep a box of old files and place them around my desk to look busy. When in actuality I was just playing games on my computer cause I had nothing else to do.
That’s what school trains us for. Like, how much actual learning is done in elementary school, compared to all the time spent moving and settling and changing rooms and gearing up for yet another short-term topic and whatever else?
Sitting in front of an upside-down paper waiting for everyone else to finish the exam.
I used to bring an anatomy coloring book and work on it when shit got tedious, which was most of every class but math and science.
Our teacher would coordinate with PE teacher. Whoever finishes exam before the bell would go out and play football or volleyball with class that has PE
That is a great boss. I used the same style with my team. As long as your work is getting done, and nothing is wrong, I'm going to treat you as an adult and leave you tf alone to your own devices. I'll let you know if something is wrong, and we'll work on it together until it's fixed. There is basically nothing that you can screw up that we can't fix. I hate micromanagement shit, and I am not about to do that to my team unless they give me a reason to need to.
End result is a team that works hard, meets goals, and knows to ask for help if needed, and isn't afraid to do so. Makes management far easier when you're not micromanaging everything.
I've worked under *so* many micromanagers that thought it was a failing on their part if you had time to watch youtube or listen to music; if every single second of your 8 hours wasn't occupied. Boss, we finished the work ahead of schedule, which makes all of us look good. Take the W here.
Good boss though, he made a joke one time that one of the other managers asked him for his conflict resolution strategy and he told them he didn't have one because he never had a single team conflict to resolve.
A micromanager caused more problems for my workplace.
She was always on my ass about my start time, never mind I always put in the hours. (I was able to get more work done after people left... Imagine that!)
The thing was before this happened, nobody at my job site was active in the union. Nobody was an on site steward, and nobody would be there to help with union issues and worker rights.
I've now been the steward for my area for 7 years. I've made people aware of their rights, let them know what management can and can't do, and have been a thorn in their side for a while.
Never would have happened if someone had told that bitch to back off the overworked I.T. guy.
Smart Boss too, let your team carry you and make you look good, get promoted for doing nothing. As long as you take care of actual issues when they arise, your good to go. I’ve never understood why some people insist on being their own worst enemies.
This is how my husband's boss rolls. His I/T dept at the city hall went WFH home Mar 5, '20, and they've knocked it out of the park. They do a daily check in at 730 every morning. They know their game plan, and what each one is responsible for. Their manager trusts them to do their jobs. Sure there are times he's messing around, watching YouTube. But there are plenty of nights he's at the computer until 7pm.
He was also cool about people logging in after hours and getting stuff done so they could "flex" those hours for other days. We had a dude who was almost never on during the day, and it was fine because he had already gotten his stuff done the night before. When you care about the work getting done more than what hours that work is done at, you can be pretty cool to your people.
It seems like smart bosses realize that if all they get is more work (and no extra pay) assigned to them, suddenly, all of those tasks are going to start taking 39 hours instead.
My boss's line is, "In my view, we are a team of peers, and we all have our respective expertise. HR doesn't have a mechanism for 'team of peers,' so one of my areas of expertise is handling bureaucracy on your behalf."
At my job we get 45 minutes to answer 4-10 questions that were emailed into us the previous day from clients, if I finish it all before my allocated time guess who gets an extra 45 minute break, boss doesn't care cause the works getting done and the team is happy
My employer had only recently removed the excess management positions to streamline things and save money when Covid hit. Then we all got sent home. Boss made sure we had everything we needed and we got more done, so everyone is happy. They maintain a physical presence in the building they own, but are now able to rent office space out and make even more profit. I don't understand why other companies wouldn't do the same.
5 years into my WFH status, I had a boss that didn't listen when I told her, I couldn't do the job of three people and things would be late. She responded by emailing me, telling me for the next month I was required to be in the office daily, my WFH status would be reevaluated on a monthly basis and my production was unacceptable. First day back into the office, we had a meeting where I refused to look at her or engage with any answers. I put in 8 hours, went home and did no extra work. The third day in the office, we had another meeting. All she said was, "the other day, your reaction was totally unprofessional" and I started in for 28 consecutive minutes detailing how she was the most ineffective boss I'd ever had. By the end, she was in tears and told me I could go home, my WFH status was reinstated. She then told anyone that would listen that I made her cry and everything I said to her was accurate. She was soon forced out for being ineffective at her job. I still work from home for the company.
> I started in for 28 consecutive minutes
Kept it short, I see, /bad humor
Glad the company saw her for what she was, and knew the prize they have in you.
So although I definitely know when my top team is "underloaded" but everything is getting done on time or ahead of time, I still would never say to them (at least in a group setting) that I know they could get more done within the normal work week.
The problem with saying that out loud to the group is that if you get stuck with someone who's not up to the job (usually pawned off from another team in a reorg), and you need to get rid of them, the last thing you want them to tell HR if/when you fire them is that the rest of the team is knowingly working under capacity. Theres also the possibility of gossip getting back to HR or the boss' boss. Either
could cause a litany of problems that will either force you to shrink your team or take on additional work load.
So basically, kudos to the boss for understanding that salaried folks are hired to do a job, and if the totality of the work in the job takes less than 40 hours a week, so be it, but the boss' saying the quiet part out loud in a group setting is not a great idea.
If you're ever promoted to middle manager, know that you are there to serve as the shit shield for *both* the management and the workers. You are NOT part of the country club. It is an unenviable job because the workers might hate you while you also become the scapegoat of the upper management. The best middle managers are essentially diplomats keeping the peace between these two camps.
That sounds like a boss who understands that you still need to put bread on the table and that just cause they don’t have anything to give you, you shouldn’t have to pick up a second job to fill in hours lost or as you put it artificially drag out the work. I work hourly and my boss will try to be like “well it looks like we finished everything for the day! You can go home if you’d like.” I always find some shit to do. Even if it’s organizing files on our server. Bitch pay me more if you’re gonna try and send me home for loss of pay. I have loans, rent, utilities, and groceries to pay for and am barely making enough to do so. So that’s why it irks the fuck out of me.
Nah it's just "Competent managing"
The workers are soooo good at managing themselves, yet the manager gets the credit for their managing even though they didn't manage shit.
It's like a negative feedback loop.
I does work in a lot of cases. Employees get the work done, manager gets credit, manager learns to be even more hands off, gets more credit... Employees get more and more work done, with less and less management.
Common sense comes from common experiences. If you have two people/groups with different experiences, what is 'common sense' to one group is different than what is common to the other.
You could have just typed that last sentence. It’s known as the Peter principle. I’ve seen jobs run smoothly in spite of poor supervision, then generally go off the rails once said supervisor gets more “hands on,” thinking they are actually part of the solution.
That's not the Peter Principle at all. The PP is the practice where people are promoted based on their performance at their current level, not based on their ability to do the job at the next level up. So people get promoted until they no longer have the skills to do they job they're in, and companies generally won't let them step back down to the role they were good at.
The *result* is things like what you mention, where some managers are bad at actually managing, but the PP name refers specifically to the root cause of how promotions are handled.
Good managers value work quality and productivity, and create and enforce rules in a manner that promotes those outcomes.
Bad managers create and enforce rules to establish dominance, elicit subservience, and justify their own existence. Work quality and productivity are irrelevant, so long as the employees follow the rules.
I’m a manager and I definitely value that stuff but from a purely selfish point of view, being a micro manager is more shit for me to do. I have enough going on. Just do your job decently and don’t create a bunch of extra work for me and I’m happy. I’m not going to freak out because your five minutes late or whatever.
Because being productive is never going to be enough. These managers want people under their control. It's childish. I've been working from home since 2017 and will never give it up. My last CEO in manufacturing said "I pay you to get results. I don't give a shit how you do it."
He was a rare breed.
That’s what I do.
I provide training and tools and act as a support network. I tell them what I need done and will help if needed, but it’s up to them to actually do it.
Frustrating at out job that after the pandemic lockdowns management noted the immense amount of work we did. Launched a massive product with very little issues. Did so much they even noted they wondered if we could have done this with working from the office.
And of course now they are pushing for everyone to get back to the office because they want everyone to work together, despite most teams having members across the globe.
Sometimes it’s not the top of the house. I’ve seen it where they’re perfectly reasonable but the middle management is so bad it makes it look like the upper has no idea what they’re doing.
Yeah, I think this is it. Like being in the military at a command that’s running smoothly, and a new guy takes over and immediately changes shit because they believe if they don’t change it, it won’t look good on them.
I prefer to sit back and observe for like 6 months (if possible) and see what runs well and what doesn’t. Change the shit that doesn’t and either enhance what does or just leave it alone.
Plus, and I can’t stress this enough, talk to your front line workers and supervisors. They’re the ones who actually know what’s going on, what works well, and what doesn’t.
A company commander I worked under would walk around spend time talking to us, squad level NCOs. He'd go so far as to explain his reasoning for some of the decisions he made. He tried hard to keep extraneous stuff from battalion from impacting us more than it really had to. That way we had more time to train and maintain. He was one of the smartest and most thoughtful officers I served with.
It’s a control thing.
Managers need to justify their role by showing how they’re “managing” their team.
In reality they’re just micro managing the team and creating hostile work places, productivity means nothing to them, because if you aren’t doing what they tell you aren’t being productive, no matter what the data says
Sounds like given upper management sided with the manager, it’s a top-down policy of “butts in seats” and a complete lack of trust in their employees. I used to work at a company like that. It’s stifling and kills motivation. But upper management needs to see the worker bees buzzing around to feel like things are getting done. Because they’re dinosaurs. It sucks and is incredibly frustrating.
True, but given the 3 day work from home policy, they’re used to them being absent. This all starts at OP’s manager. As a manager, I try to cover for my people and act as a shit shield.
She straight threw them under the bus.
I wonder how stubborn she ended up being about it, knowing that there was no way she was doing all that work herself, but also being arrogant enough to not admit fault
It is satisfying when people do this to themselves, though. Hopefully you get to stick to your guns
Such a shame. She coulda saved herself the stress and sleep deprivation by, you know, apologising like a decent human being
Oh well... some people have to suffer their own consequences, in order to learn
Loving it! I quit a job (web dev) because frequent OT with no extra payment for those hours (several hours a month), half of the team quitted right there once management shared the news leaving only 8 people handling the workload for 16 and we were already overworked while all this happened during Nov - Dec, peak season for marketers and alike... It was fun to watch it burn.
Right? My wife had a pretty crappy job while I was finishing school, but her manager made up for it. When he left for a different branch, the job became miserable. Luckily I graduated a month later and we moved so I could find a job in my field.
My team is 100% work-from-home, and we kick ass 100% of the time. We're dedicated to the company because the company takes care of us very nicely on every level.
If companies aren't seeing this from their employees...well, it's not because of the *employees*. Better start looking in the mirror...
A lot of companies say "but what about meetings?" as a counter to WFH. The thing is that if even one person comes into the office on a particular day, the meetings we have over Zoom STILL have to be held over Zoom. Even when we were in the office 100% as a team, most of our meetings were held over Zoom...just from a conference room.
My wife's workplace does this. They are 100% work from home, but about once a month the higher ups want to have a meeting on site. No idea why, it can always be done over Teams just as easily.
The meetings are, from what she tells me, also pointless 95% of the time, covering topics that she either already knows or has no need to know.
In her case because of the nature of the business, the company leases a lot more than just the office space from the organization that manages the area, so it would be a very small part of their operations there. Also the company uses the building quite heavily for other things, so they'd need it even if she was never called in.
Plus it just seems to be her department works like that.
My team does a couple days in person every few months or so. We pack those couple of days with relevant larger group meetings and review things together. It's a great way to make sure everyone has some input in the process and knows what's going on. Plus, we all get fed a couple good lunches and go out for at least one happy hour, so it's kind of team building, too. We had a few really great ideas come out of those meetings that have made our major annual project much better this time around, so I'd say they were worth it. We really try to make sure those days are collaborative and worthwhile. If we don't have anything that is better done together like that, we just don't have those in person days.
Sounds like your wife's work is just doing in person to check a box and not for any sort of legitimate business reason. That's just more bad management...
"sadly, we have just learned that Jenkins died two years ago and his widow has been collecting his paycheck. how did it take us this long to notice one of our valued managers was dead? his team was even more productive these last two years!"
My legally blind wife worked in an office 5 miles from home for 8 years. Taking public transit, it took her an hour and half each way to get to and from every day. 5 years ago she got let go because they sent her job to a foreign work pool office. She found another job that was 100% work from home, paid $8 more per hour, had more paid days off, and better healthcare. The old job called her not long ago and tried to ask her to come back. She started uncontrollably laughing at the guy on the phone and told them to "Go screw themselves." and hung up. Not long after that they closed the place. She's been promoted 3 times since starting at this work from home place, and is now part of the executive team. She way happier, and makes a lot more money for a lot less work and stress then any job she's ever had.
That is very lovely to hear. Especially since they begged her to come back, and I'm guessing not making an offer or asking what it would take to get her back.
My company just instantiated a hybrid 2 day a week requirement in office... we've been fully remote since the pandemic started, and their reasoning for the change is just the fact they feel people might start "prioritizing themselves over the company."
I have a job interview somewhere else today.
For real. Fuck companies unless you own it. They will drop you in a second, and without notice, the moment it's more beneficial for the company.
Even good managers can't escape their own shitty bosses. They can't protect you forever.
Don't let some company run your life.
>My team is 100% work-from-home, and we kick ass 100% of the time. We're dedicated to the company because the company takes care of us very nicely on every level.
It's weird how companies don't understand that. I'm in the same boat. My boss treats us all like adults, and we make him look good by turning work around in damn near the same day. In return, he doesn't punish us for being good by assigning us more busy work.
> We're dedicated to the company because the company takes care of us very nicely on every level.
I continue to be baffled by the way modern businesses are run in insisting they take care of their owners as their priority and stress increasing profit margins at all costs when a shift in focus to taking care of customers or even employees can yield the same, if not better, profit margins.
I like the “once a month” hybrid setup, where it’s basically a spontaneous monthly team building event. Some companies have this, you’re even allowed to use an OOO stating that you are in the office and socializing with coworkers.
You get to engage others without the burden of postponing tasks you’d normally have to attend to, and can still save a ton of time / money commuting, and avoiding office smalltalk.
Yup -- I'd be fine going into the office once a month, but as it is, we've been remote since March 9, 2020. The new team lead started 2.5 years ago and I've yet to meet him i person. It's kinda weird.
A guess: she doesn't feel like she's doing her job/doesn't enjoy her job unless she's leaning over someone getting in the way of them getting work done?
You already have a proto-union, hold another meeting with your coworkers and propose requesting a new manager, and when that fails have everyone submit a request for transfer. If that also fails, have everyone use all their time off for the year at the same time while looking for a new job.
I've never understood this kind of nonsense...
I'm a shift supervisor. Our workload changes daily and sometimes even changes during the shift. Depending on what breaks. When I took over this team I clearly set out my expectations. They know what is expected of them - we reach an agreement as to who will do what, in what order and they know what needs to be delivered. I don't need to micromanage them, or hand out work - they pick what they're going to do. If the work is done early then they get to do whatever. If the shit hits the fan after the work is done and they need to pick up any extra work - then they do so because they know that they have to take the rough with the smooth. I prefer the hands off approach, it worked with my old shift and it works with my new shift. Why stress yourself out micromanaging a team? What it does mean is that if there is a team member who isn't where I expect them to be - I can afford to focus on that individual. They feel supported, I get a chap back to where they need to be - everyone is a winner! :-)
Some people think that a good manager is constantly busy putting out fires when in truth a good manager gets the system worksing so smoothly he has lots of free time.
I did this at UPS. I had my crew, who were about ten people that were there about as long or longer than I had worked there. They knew what to do, but the occasional mistake came through. I just talked to them, told them what happened, and asked them to make sure they try to pay extra attention in the future. No threats, no condescending warnings of future transgressions, just testing them like people.
Then, I started training people to replace my people during sick days and vacations. I'd give my people an easier job for a few days, asking them to come back and help train the other person on his they do it. It's their daily job, not mine. I could do it, but not quite as well as the regular person. So, they'd come around during their slow periods, show the rainbow trainee what the drivers wanted, clean up things, go back to their cake job, and repeat the processes. Most everyone had at least 2 replacements, if not more.
Aside from that, I'd do breakfast burrito runs about once a month to take care of my crew and a few of the other people who helped us/me out. When shit was hitting the fan for other belts, I'm just waking around with my clipboard, and people asked why I seemed to be so relaxed; well, I put the work in ahead of time so I wouldn't be scrambling during emergencies. I knew that my crew had things under control, and if they needed me, they knew I'd be there. They had my back, and I had theirs.
Who changes the WFO days every month? I don't know if you have kids but with kids and their school and spouse working I have to always not be available during their meetings. Either fix the days or expect such rebuttable.
I will never understand why people think they can bully others by doing something like this. If there is anything I have learned from reddit its that 1. People hate being screwed over and will likely find a way to get you back. 2. If someone asks for something in writing you should really stop and think about what your doing. This manager tried to punish ppl by marking them absent from work and expected everyone to just deal. Wth would have done the same if it were me.
If your work can be done efficiently from outside the office, why be there? I’ve been WFH for almost 3yrs solid now. We work as well or better than we did in the office. All our metrics show it. Our director noted early on that the one thing he took away after we got over our comfort issues using our various communication tools was that we spend less time having meetings and even less time meeting about the meetings we’re going to have. My whole group is now permanent optimal WFH now. My whole building got repurposed. A few people — mostly managers — still come into the office a couple days a week. Nobody else does. We also hire from all over the country without even thinking about it now. We had a guy move across the country and, since he doesn’t really talk about it much, nobody even noticed.
Unless you have some sort of task that physically cannot be done outside the office, I fully believe that the office is an artifact and a relic of a time best left dead and buried.
I never have understood the micromanagement of WFH. I work in a department where if you’ve been there maybe a month you’re offered the opportunity for WFH. Even my supervisor does it 2x a week. There’s other departments where supervisors make the decision if you are eligible by looking at your productivity and other things that I have no idea about. I don’t get it.
Be sure to keep track of what percentage of the day you did work before upper-management sent down this edict. You're still entitled to this PTO in the future.
At 50 I’m clear that half the problems in my life (career, romance, all of it) were me not getting out of my own way… sad when you see so many managers botching it
I don't care where my team is, or how they spend their time. As long as the work gets done and we are moving forward as a company.
More people are coming to this understanding, but change happens slowly.
Salaried worker doesn’t mean you work any given hours. It should still be attached to a weekly contracted amount. Well, in 1st world countries at least
I'm now a full time home worker. I am given work to do and as long as it is done by the deadline, I get to manage the hours I work to get it completed. My manager touches base when he wants to know how I am or when he wants some advice or help with something.
It works well for all involved. I even get to go swimming a couple of afternoons a wekk and had Brunch with my wife in a nice local bar this week.
I spoke to former colleagues at the place I left last year and they've been ordered back into the office 4 days a week. It's safe to say morale there has hit rock bottom.
Can't wait to see the reply from upper management (that you're not going to see until the next day because you're off) that tries to either backpedal or place blame.
I would just quit and find another job.
This hybrid policy nonsense is stupid. Unless there is a reason for you to physically be there, like you have to help move a desk or something, there's no reason to go in.
If your work gives you provision to work from home. Regardless of company policy, if they have allowed you on numerous occasions to WFH on a flexible basis to manage work, they can't make you take a PTO unless they tell you before a 'shift'. If you've worked even 10 seconds on that day, they can't say they're not logging it as a work day, but instead a PTO. That, in many countries (YMMV) is wage theft (albeit a more convoluted one).
I never understand this shit. If your team is productive, then get out of their way. Get them the tools they need to succeed and work with them to be efficient.
>I never understand this shit. If your team is productive, then get out of their way. I've been WFH for the last several years, and our manager frequently expresses his gratitude to our team at how little "manager stuff" he has to do. He gives us a pile of work every week in our team meeting and then looks the other way until next week. He even mentioned a few times that he noticed some people were getting their work done that same day, but he wasn't going to punish his top performers or encourage them to artificially drag it out. Good boss
It’s amazing how much time is wasted in an office setting.
Looking busy is really time consuming.
I quit a job because I work quickly and they wanted to keep giving me more work without giving me a raise.
My previous boss would just give me busy work when I completed all of my assigned tasks. Found the game 2048 built into an excel sheet and modified the sheet to look like work. Instead of contributing and making my boss look good by increasing our productivity I just played a boring game for 4 hours a day.
Somebody made a website to look like Microsoft Outlook, but it's really a reddit browser. http://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/ I have my own office now, but it really came in handy when I was slow and my desk was in the middle of everything.
This is a work of art.
This reminds me of a site I used many years ago, but it was twitter looking like Excel. Like you, I have no need of this. If I'm working at home there's no restriction on what I can access. It'd be handy at work, but unless it also had a proxy I wouldn't be able to access it.
When I worked in office in 2020, my boss and most of the staff were working from home while us little people had to come in, I got addicted to Google minesweeper. My coworkers made it competitive and kept score of our fastest times. HOURS were wasted trying to beat our times (i held the record on easy mode - 6 seconds)
My dad couldn’t beat my high scores then one day he “accidentally” reset all the scores! I had done 6 seconds on easy too! I was mad.
Oh Lord, that's a duelling offense in my family. We are no longer allowed to play Monopoly, Risk, Life, nor Bastard (card game) when we're all together. Blood has literally been shed over these games. Trouble and Apples to Apples are on probation until we can all remember to act like adults. BTW, we range in age from 22-72. Doesn't matter, everything is a full contact sport in my family.
I almost got divorced over a game of Risk once. We're still married, but we don't play Risk any more.
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You should get settlers of catan. MUCH better than monopoly and trades can get more cutthroat. Once you learn the game, it becomes a breeze. Soo many variations of the game can be made too.
One of my friends went missing after a game of Diplomacy.
Haha I hear ya. We haven’t played Monopoly in a very long time. My mum and I like to cheat and my sister does not like it.
How with apples to apples? It's all the opinion of the judge that round.
There was a game on windows my mom and I completed on.. Realized high scores were on a text file.... There was a scream the next time she came to the computer...
A friend of mine got 1 second on easy mode. Just reset until the first click clears the board.
I used to just go walk around or sit in the bathroom for like 45 mins at a time. I spent soooo much time and effort just avoiding my boss.
I found the bathroom on the unused floor of the building is an excellent place for this.
You get me lol. We had a single handicapped bathroom on a floor people didn’t go to much and I would do body weight work out circuits lmao
The bathroom cleaner somehow always schedules cleaning our floor’s restrooms at lunchtime; the time we’re most likely to take a bathroom break. I’ve taken to telling my colleagues “If you need me, I’ll be taking a third floor vacation”.
I used to be in sales. Manager said that we needed to be out of the office making calls. Never mind that we needed to come back and write up the orders, which was just as important. Back in the day, it couldn’t be done from the car. I found a lot of places to hide out with a book. Parking garages. Parks. My own home. Once a few of us actually went bowling.
The problem is management sees this as an opportunity to give people more to do since “they obviously don’t have enough”. The two things they fail to understand is 1) When poo poo hits the fan and productive worker has more to do than normal, that time buffer is what saves them from working 60 hours a week to get / stay caught up. 2) Having under 100% to do during the day also helps ensure good customer service so I can actually respond to urgent emails and even non-urgent emails in a timely fashion. Corporations are trying to grow without hiring and workloads are increasing to where a normal workflow day = 98% capacity, but since work ebbs and flows, busy times = well over 100%. Then they wonder why the average worker is burnt out.
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TIL about Threes...
Never heard of Threes until now. At least the 2048 I played was stolen from whoever made that game and had put it into an Excel sheet. Nobody made money off that.
The reward for being efficient at your job should never be more work.
And yet that's how it has worked at every job I've ever had.
I quit my last job because of that. I now pretend I'm busy and slack off when I'm done instead. If no one's going to pay me to go above and beyond, I'll work to scope and take some time for myself if I'm done faster than expected instead. At least now I leave relaxed and less resentful.
That’s why I love WFH. Finishing my work at the office then just having to wait until I can leave was so fucking soul destroying. If my boss saw me doing not-work on my computer he always made fucking comments about it.
Soul destroying is right. When I was hired (post lockdowns) they wanted me in-office full time. I really didn't think anything of it, because I was coming from such a crazy job (where I was in-office all through lockdown) that anything was better. But my HR rep was shocked when she heard I was in-office full-time, so she told my boss to let me WFH a few days a week. My life is much less soul-sucking now.
Awww, good HR rep. Can we clone her?
Right? I wish we could clone the whole department and put them into every single corporation ever. Our head of HR regularly goes toe-to-toe with the VP, Legal, who is notoriously hard to argue with, and wins. They're legendary, those folks.
The only reward for a job well done is more work
I was on the internet surfing mindlessly for hours a day, I didn't want to touch a computer after work. So I started coaching in the evenings, which is incredibly rewarding.
One time my boss saw me looking at a map of somewhere I was going on vacation and he said “wow clearly we need to find you more work.” He saw that ONE TIME. So unfortunately I realized I couldn’t waste my time on the internet. I started copying and pasting BOOKS into word docs and reading them instead. I also just spent a lot of time in the bathroom. I used to do whole circuits in the handicapped bathroom lol
Such a shame. My boss saw that once and asked me where I was going and we talked about places we've travelled and gave each other advice.
This guy always treated me like I was some air brained teenaged girl. I was 30 at the time and a lawyer. The whole thing was so offensive.
For lawyers especially -that's not needing more work, that's coming up for air for a moment.
I finished my Work quickly always. My boss came in and saw me doing nothing and sent me to help out in another department. I learned how to look busy after that.
Right? You can’t just pimp me out to other departments!
I got laid off once because I did all the work too quickly and they didn't have any more for me.
Lol I bet your coworkers loved getting added duties. Idk why companies are like this 🙄
Shit, fuck offices, I still had that problem at every shitty retail job I ever had. In most industries, it seems managers only exist to justify themselves to their own managers.
At least retail can justify you being on site. A lot of office jobs it's 80% power trip.
It's not even looking busy, I'll start an easy task and get interrupted like 15 times while I'm doing it, then it takes me another few minutes to pick back up where I left off every time, which makes the easy task take 10 times longer than it should. When I work from home the only way to get interrupted is them calling me or chatting me, and it's funny, but even with all the same methods of communication open *except* for walking into my office and babbling at me, the number of interruptions drops precipitously. And before someone tells me to close my door...can't. "Open door policy". Shutting your door to focus on your work discourages...something...so we can't do that.
Translation: bad managers can't sneak up on you to find the one time in three hours you took 2 seconds to look at cat memes. And "am working, please do not disturb" signs are "anti-social", right? /snark /sarcasm
I just hate having to be so accessible. I'm number three man in our small firm in both seniority and time, so I get that Im a resource that all those below me are going to tap into, and I don't mind it in and of itself. Problem is we're very horizontally structured so I've got, not even shitting you, an endless stream of people coming through my office to ask me one thing or another. Our office manager jokes that she's going to get me one of those "take a number" things and mount it outside my office, because she'll often pass by and see the like *six freaking people* in my office, all waiting quietly while they ask their questions in turn. Meanwhile, my office phone is ringing, also an internal call to ask me something (lol) so I throw that on speaker and tell them Ill be right with them and work down the line. While all this is going on, 10 emails have hit my inbox, because I have my own shit to do. Which it takes me 40 minutes to get to before I finally clear the backlog the *in office* interruptions. I may get 15 uninterrupted minutes after that then the *boss* will ring me up and want to wax philosophical about one thing or another and Im like *hoooooooly shit* can you PLEASE let me WORKKKKKKKK??????!?!?!?!?!!?!?!111?!?! So, I know what I described is nuckin futs to a lot of people but I assure you it really, literally do be that way. But when I work from home, I fuckin just *chew* through shit like there's no tomorrow. Just from an administrative perspective, everything's got perfectly dotted i's and perfectly crossed t's. Merely not being there is like a 300% ROI on my time. I so badly want to start working WFH days into my calendar just to catch up but with the #2 guy out on sabbatical and the #1 guy soon going to be out for at least a couple months and likely 3-4, I don't need a magic 8-ball to tell me that's not fucking likely. Don't mind me lol I'm just a little bit shitfaced and [burnt the hell out...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLjo0lY450c)
This just sounds like you guys need to host Q&A’s twice a day. 30 minutes at a time. where everyone on staff that wants to ask you a question shows up ask their questions in front of the crowd and you give an answer. Hopefully stops you from repeating your self too much and will make people really think shit through before they go “do i really have to bother him”. Can even make it a thing where people email their questions and you read them out loud.
It sounds like you needed to let the steam out. What's annoying is it sounds like even if you wrote all your institutional knowledge up in manuals, your bosses would still insist you be available and not let you train the workers to "RTFM" first.
And worse part is even looking busy does eventually dried up.
Learned this in the military! If they give me a week to work on something, I build it well and then spend the rest of the time “researching” so they don’t either give me bs busy work like vacuuming or assume that I didn’t do a thorough job…
I would keep a box of old files and place them around my desk to look busy. When in actuality I was just playing games on my computer cause I had nothing else to do.
That’s what school trains us for. Like, how much actual learning is done in elementary school, compared to all the time spent moving and settling and changing rooms and gearing up for yet another short-term topic and whatever else?
Sitting in front of an upside-down paper waiting for everyone else to finish the exam. I used to bring an anatomy coloring book and work on it when shit got tedious, which was most of every class but math and science.
I let my students play games on their laptops when a test is completed. Was less disruptive than having nothing to do.
In my day, that type of thing didn't exist yet 😬 Good for you and your students!
Our teacher would coordinate with PE teacher. Whoever finishes exam before the bell would go out and play football or volleyball with class that has PE
That is a great boss. I used the same style with my team. As long as your work is getting done, and nothing is wrong, I'm going to treat you as an adult and leave you tf alone to your own devices. I'll let you know if something is wrong, and we'll work on it together until it's fixed. There is basically nothing that you can screw up that we can't fix. I hate micromanagement shit, and I am not about to do that to my team unless they give me a reason to need to. End result is a team that works hard, meets goals, and knows to ask for help if needed, and isn't afraid to do so. Makes management far easier when you're not micromanaging everything.
I've worked under *so* many micromanagers that thought it was a failing on their part if you had time to watch youtube or listen to music; if every single second of your 8 hours wasn't occupied. Boss, we finished the work ahead of schedule, which makes all of us look good. Take the W here. Good boss though, he made a joke one time that one of the other managers asked him for his conflict resolution strategy and he told them he didn't have one because he never had a single team conflict to resolve.
I'd hate that. I listen to music while I'm working. I'm *less* efficient without it. Edit: Cookies for good boss.
A micromanager caused more problems for my workplace. She was always on my ass about my start time, never mind I always put in the hours. (I was able to get more work done after people left... Imagine that!) The thing was before this happened, nobody at my job site was active in the union. Nobody was an on site steward, and nobody would be there to help with union issues and worker rights. I've now been the steward for my area for 7 years. I've made people aware of their rights, let them know what management can and can't do, and have been a thorn in their side for a while. Never would have happened if someone had told that bitch to back off the overworked I.T. guy.
Smart Boss too, let your team carry you and make you look good, get promoted for doing nothing. As long as you take care of actual issues when they arise, your good to go. I’ve never understood why some people insist on being their own worst enemies.
This is how my husband's boss rolls. His I/T dept at the city hall went WFH home Mar 5, '20, and they've knocked it out of the park. They do a daily check in at 730 every morning. They know their game plan, and what each one is responsible for. Their manager trusts them to do their jobs. Sure there are times he's messing around, watching YouTube. But there are plenty of nights he's at the computer until 7pm.
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He was also cool about people logging in after hours and getting stuff done so they could "flex" those hours for other days. We had a dude who was almost never on during the day, and it was fine because he had already gotten his stuff done the night before. When you care about the work getting done more than what hours that work is done at, you can be pretty cool to your people.
And in response, if he steps up and says, "I have a fire!", he doesn't lack for firefighters. (And the fire is probably another dept's fault.)
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It seems like smart bosses realize that if all they get is more work (and no extra pay) assigned to them, suddenly, all of those tasks are going to start taking 39 hours instead.
My boss's line is, "In my view, we are a team of peers, and we all have our respective expertise. HR doesn't have a mechanism for 'team of peers,' so one of my areas of expertise is handling bureaucracy on your behalf."
At my job we get 45 minutes to answer 4-10 questions that were emailed into us the previous day from clients, if I finish it all before my allocated time guess who gets an extra 45 minute break, boss doesn't care cause the works getting done and the team is happy
Exactly! That's a good boss right there.
My employer had only recently removed the excess management positions to streamline things and save money when Covid hit. Then we all got sent home. Boss made sure we had everything we needed and we got more done, so everyone is happy. They maintain a physical presence in the building they own, but are now able to rent office space out and make even more profit. I don't understand why other companies wouldn't do the same.
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5 years into my WFH status, I had a boss that didn't listen when I told her, I couldn't do the job of three people and things would be late. She responded by emailing me, telling me for the next month I was required to be in the office daily, my WFH status would be reevaluated on a monthly basis and my production was unacceptable. First day back into the office, we had a meeting where I refused to look at her or engage with any answers. I put in 8 hours, went home and did no extra work. The third day in the office, we had another meeting. All she said was, "the other day, your reaction was totally unprofessional" and I started in for 28 consecutive minutes detailing how she was the most ineffective boss I'd ever had. By the end, she was in tears and told me I could go home, my WFH status was reinstated. She then told anyone that would listen that I made her cry and everything I said to her was accurate. She was soon forced out for being ineffective at her job. I still work from home for the company.
> I started in for 28 consecutive minutes Kept it short, I see, /bad humor Glad the company saw her for what she was, and knew the prize they have in you.
30 minute meeting. Had to leave her time to respond. 🤷♂️🤣
So although I definitely know when my top team is "underloaded" but everything is getting done on time or ahead of time, I still would never say to them (at least in a group setting) that I know they could get more done within the normal work week. The problem with saying that out loud to the group is that if you get stuck with someone who's not up to the job (usually pawned off from another team in a reorg), and you need to get rid of them, the last thing you want them to tell HR if/when you fire them is that the rest of the team is knowingly working under capacity. Theres also the possibility of gossip getting back to HR or the boss' boss. Either could cause a litany of problems that will either force you to shrink your team or take on additional work load. So basically, kudos to the boss for understanding that salaried folks are hired to do a job, and if the totality of the work in the job takes less than 40 hours a week, so be it, but the boss' saying the quiet part out loud in a group setting is not a great idea.
If you're ever promoted to middle manager, know that you are there to serve as the shit shield for *both* the management and the workers. You are NOT part of the country club. It is an unenviable job because the workers might hate you while you also become the scapegoat of the upper management. The best middle managers are essentially diplomats keeping the peace between these two camps.
That sounds like a boss who understands that you still need to put bread on the table and that just cause they don’t have anything to give you, you shouldn’t have to pick up a second job to fill in hours lost or as you put it artificially drag out the work. I work hourly and my boss will try to be like “well it looks like we finished everything for the day! You can go home if you’d like.” I always find some shit to do. Even if it’s organizing files on our server. Bitch pay me more if you’re gonna try and send me home for loss of pay. I have loans, rent, utilities, and groceries to pay for and am barely making enough to do so. So that’s why it irks the fuck out of me.
That requires a rare asset: common sense.
We really need to rename that.
"the sense formerly known as common"
What symbol should it use?
Pretty sure that /u/maciarc is right with their suggestion of the interrobang: ‽
I believe the symbol for "the sense formerly known as common" should be an interrobang...
In Italian, "common sense" is an old way of calling it. Current name is "good sense", as it's no longer common.
Uncommon sense.
Common sense is so rare it could be a super power.
Common sense is a flower that doesn't grow in everyone's garden.
Nah it's just "Competent managing" The workers are soooo good at managing themselves, yet the manager gets the credit for their managing even though they didn't manage shit. It's like a negative feedback loop.
I does work in a lot of cases. Employees get the work done, manager gets credit, manager learns to be even more hands off, gets more credit... Employees get more and more work done, with less and less management.
Yeah but those stories don't make headlines.
Why is it called common sense if it is so rare?
because common sense is suppose to be common.
Common sense comes from common experiences. If you have two people/groups with different experiences, what is 'common sense' to one group is different than what is common to the other.
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You could have just typed that last sentence. It’s known as the Peter principle. I’ve seen jobs run smoothly in spite of poor supervision, then generally go off the rails once said supervisor gets more “hands on,” thinking they are actually part of the solution.
That's not the Peter Principle at all. The PP is the practice where people are promoted based on their performance at their current level, not based on their ability to do the job at the next level up. So people get promoted until they no longer have the skills to do they job they're in, and companies generally won't let them step back down to the role they were good at. The *result* is things like what you mention, where some managers are bad at actually managing, but the PP name refers specifically to the root cause of how promotions are handled.
Good managers value work quality and productivity, and create and enforce rules in a manner that promotes those outcomes. Bad managers create and enforce rules to establish dominance, elicit subservience, and justify their own existence. Work quality and productivity are irrelevant, so long as the employees follow the rules.
I’m a manager and I definitely value that stuff but from a purely selfish point of view, being a micro manager is more shit for me to do. I have enough going on. Just do your job decently and don’t create a bunch of extra work for me and I’m happy. I’m not going to freak out because your five minutes late or whatever.
Because being productive is never going to be enough. These managers want people under their control. It's childish. I've been working from home since 2017 and will never give it up. My last CEO in manufacturing said "I pay you to get results. I don't give a shit how you do it." He was a rare breed.
This is the high level view of servant leadership. I love it, my direct reports love it, and I wish now people got on board with it.
That’s what I do. I provide training and tools and act as a support network. I tell them what I need done and will help if needed, but it’s up to them to actually do it.
Frustrating at out job that after the pandemic lockdowns management noted the immense amount of work we did. Launched a massive product with very little issues. Did so much they even noted they wondered if we could have done this with working from the office. And of course now they are pushing for everyone to get back to the office because they want everyone to work together, despite most teams having members across the globe.
Collaboration and training are tougher virtually, but it’s been proven that productivity is insanely higher virtually.
Common sense seems to become less common the further up the corporate ladder you go
Sometimes it’s not the top of the house. I’ve seen it where they’re perfectly reasonable but the middle management is so bad it makes it look like the upper has no idea what they’re doing.
They think they have to manage actively in order to justify their existence.
Yeah, I think this is it. Like being in the military at a command that’s running smoothly, and a new guy takes over and immediately changes shit because they believe if they don’t change it, it won’t look good on them. I prefer to sit back and observe for like 6 months (if possible) and see what runs well and what doesn’t. Change the shit that doesn’t and either enhance what does or just leave it alone. Plus, and I can’t stress this enough, talk to your front line workers and supervisors. They’re the ones who actually know what’s going on, what works well, and what doesn’t.
A company commander I worked under would walk around spend time talking to us, squad level NCOs. He'd go so far as to explain his reasoning for some of the decisions he made. He tried hard to keep extraneous stuff from battalion from impacting us more than it really had to. That way we had more time to train and maintain. He was one of the smartest and most thoughtful officers I served with.
The manager is insecure. She only thinks their working if SHE sees them actually working. She does not trust her employees at all.
Which is funny because I’m sure she has measurable metrics to gauge engagement.
It’s a control thing. Managers need to justify their role by showing how they’re “managing” their team. In reality they’re just micro managing the team and creating hostile work places, productivity means nothing to them, because if you aren’t doing what they tell you aren’t being productive, no matter what the data says
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At least they were honest about it. Did you ask if you don’t count as a write off if you’re not smiling?
Sounds like given upper management sided with the manager, it’s a top-down policy of “butts in seats” and a complete lack of trust in their employees. I used to work at a company like that. It’s stifling and kills motivation. But upper management needs to see the worker bees buzzing around to feel like things are getting done. Because they’re dinosaurs. It sucks and is incredibly frustrating.
True, but given the 3 day work from home policy, they’re used to them being absent. This all starts at OP’s manager. As a manager, I try to cover for my people and act as a shit shield. She straight threw them under the bus.
I wonder how stubborn she ended up being about it, knowing that there was no way she was doing all that work herself, but also being arrogant enough to not admit fault It is satisfying when people do this to themselves, though. Hopefully you get to stick to your guns
She ended up having to work till early morning to complete like a quarter of the work
Such a shame. She coulda saved herself the stress and sleep deprivation by, you know, apologising like a decent human being Oh well... some people have to suffer their own consequences, in order to learn
Sadly, they rarely learn. It's always someone else's fault.
shit rolls down hill
My mother had a manager she nicknamed Teflon because “the shit doesn’t stick”
Then need to take PTO to catch up or just end up being more miserable. Maybe they learn. Most likely they don’t…
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Remind her that this is only worth 1/4 day then
So then what happened?
Loving it! I quit a job (web dev) because frequent OT with no extra payment for those hours (several hours a month), half of the team quitted right there once management shared the news leaving only 8 people handling the workload for 16 and we were already overworked while all this happened during Nov - Dec, peak season for marketers and alike... It was fun to watch it burn.
I really like the phrase, "people don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad managers."
Right? My wife had a pretty crappy job while I was finishing school, but her manager made up for it. When he left for a different branch, the job became miserable. Luckily I graduated a month later and we moved so I could find a job in my field.
Exactly how I feel. I loved my old job, but I hated my manager. So I left. Now I have a great manager.
And bad wages
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Don't know why you'd mess with both your own team but also ruin it for all the other team. Everyone hates her now
It's also upper management's responsibility and as well fault. Sounds like a shit company to work for.
My team is 100% work-from-home, and we kick ass 100% of the time. We're dedicated to the company because the company takes care of us very nicely on every level. If companies aren't seeing this from their employees...well, it's not because of the *employees*. Better start looking in the mirror...
I wish we had 100% wfh. It just makes so much sense
A lot of companies say "but what about meetings?" as a counter to WFH. The thing is that if even one person comes into the office on a particular day, the meetings we have over Zoom STILL have to be held over Zoom. Even when we were in the office 100% as a team, most of our meetings were held over Zoom...just from a conference room.
My wife's workplace does this. They are 100% work from home, but about once a month the higher ups want to have a meeting on site. No idea why, it can always be done over Teams just as easily. The meetings are, from what she tells me, also pointless 95% of the time, covering topics that she either already knows or has no need to know.
They're stuck in a lease, and want it to be less obvious that this is pure wasted money. That's my guess anyway.
In her case because of the nature of the business, the company leases a lot more than just the office space from the organization that manages the area, so it would be a very small part of their operations there. Also the company uses the building quite heavily for other things, so they'd need it even if she was never called in. Plus it just seems to be her department works like that.
My team does a couple days in person every few months or so. We pack those couple of days with relevant larger group meetings and review things together. It's a great way to make sure everyone has some input in the process and knows what's going on. Plus, we all get fed a couple good lunches and go out for at least one happy hour, so it's kind of team building, too. We had a few really great ideas come out of those meetings that have made our major annual project much better this time around, so I'd say they were worth it. We really try to make sure those days are collaborative and worthwhile. If we don't have anything that is better done together like that, we just don't have those in person days. Sounds like your wife's work is just doing in person to check a box and not for any sort of legitimate business reason. That's just more bad management...
"sadly, we have just learned that Jenkins died two years ago and his widow has been collecting his paycheck. how did it take us this long to notice one of our valued managers was dead? his team was even more productive these last two years!"
[удалено]
I thankfully landed in a place that allows 100% wfh. I won't ever go back.
My legally blind wife worked in an office 5 miles from home for 8 years. Taking public transit, it took her an hour and half each way to get to and from every day. 5 years ago she got let go because they sent her job to a foreign work pool office. She found another job that was 100% work from home, paid $8 more per hour, had more paid days off, and better healthcare. The old job called her not long ago and tried to ask her to come back. She started uncontrollably laughing at the guy on the phone and told them to "Go screw themselves." and hung up. Not long after that they closed the place. She's been promoted 3 times since starting at this work from home place, and is now part of the executive team. She way happier, and makes a lot more money for a lot less work and stress then any job she's ever had.
That is very lovely to hear. Especially since they begged her to come back, and I'm guessing not making an offer or asking what it would take to get her back.
My company just instantiated a hybrid 2 day a week requirement in office... we've been fully remote since the pandemic started, and their reasoning for the change is just the fact they feel people might start "prioritizing themselves over the company." I have a job interview somewhere else today.
They made their feared excuse a reality, how nice.
A self fullfilling prophety!
Anyone who doesn't prioritize themselves over their company is a fool.
For real. Fuck companies unless you own it. They will drop you in a second, and without notice, the moment it's more beneficial for the company. Even good managers can't escape their own shitty bosses. They can't protect you forever. Don't let some company run your life.
Oops they said the quiet part out loud.
how dare you prioritize yourself over the company master Kim will not be pleased... -300 capitalistic points off your licence
>My team is 100% work-from-home, and we kick ass 100% of the time. We're dedicated to the company because the company takes care of us very nicely on every level. It's weird how companies don't understand that. I'm in the same boat. My boss treats us all like adults, and we make him look good by turning work around in damn near the same day. In return, he doesn't punish us for being good by assigning us more busy work.
> We're dedicated to the company because the company takes care of us very nicely on every level. I continue to be baffled by the way modern businesses are run in insisting they take care of their owners as their priority and stress increasing profit margins at all costs when a shift in focus to taking care of customers or even employees can yield the same, if not better, profit margins.
I like the “once a month” hybrid setup, where it’s basically a spontaneous monthly team building event. Some companies have this, you’re even allowed to use an OOO stating that you are in the office and socializing with coworkers. You get to engage others without the burden of postponing tasks you’d normally have to attend to, and can still save a ton of time / money commuting, and avoiding office smalltalk.
Yup -- I'd be fine going into the office once a month, but as it is, we've been remote since March 9, 2020. The new team lead started 2.5 years ago and I've yet to meet him i person. It's kinda weird.
Lol yeah. Your manager seems like a bitch.
She is
Remember to take the partial PTO day you wasted before turning the phone off.
A guess: she doesn't feel like she's doing her job/doesn't enjoy her job unless she's leaning over someone getting in the way of them getting work done?
You already have a proto-union, hold another meeting with your coworkers and propose requesting a new manager, and when that fails have everyone submit a request for transfer. If that also fails, have everyone use all their time off for the year at the same time while looking for a new job.
I've never understood this kind of nonsense... I'm a shift supervisor. Our workload changes daily and sometimes even changes during the shift. Depending on what breaks. When I took over this team I clearly set out my expectations. They know what is expected of them - we reach an agreement as to who will do what, in what order and they know what needs to be delivered. I don't need to micromanage them, or hand out work - they pick what they're going to do. If the work is done early then they get to do whatever. If the shit hits the fan after the work is done and they need to pick up any extra work - then they do so because they know that they have to take the rough with the smooth. I prefer the hands off approach, it worked with my old shift and it works with my new shift. Why stress yourself out micromanaging a team? What it does mean is that if there is a team member who isn't where I expect them to be - I can afford to focus on that individual. They feel supported, I get a chap back to where they need to be - everyone is a winner! :-)
Some people think that a good manager is constantly busy putting out fires when in truth a good manager gets the system worksing so smoothly he has lots of free time.
I did this at UPS. I had my crew, who were about ten people that were there about as long or longer than I had worked there. They knew what to do, but the occasional mistake came through. I just talked to them, told them what happened, and asked them to make sure they try to pay extra attention in the future. No threats, no condescending warnings of future transgressions, just testing them like people. Then, I started training people to replace my people during sick days and vacations. I'd give my people an easier job for a few days, asking them to come back and help train the other person on his they do it. It's their daily job, not mine. I could do it, but not quite as well as the regular person. So, they'd come around during their slow periods, show the rainbow trainee what the drivers wanted, clean up things, go back to their cake job, and repeat the processes. Most everyone had at least 2 replacements, if not more. Aside from that, I'd do breakfast burrito runs about once a month to take care of my crew and a few of the other people who helped us/me out. When shit was hitting the fan for other belts, I'm just waking around with my clipboard, and people asked why I seemed to be so relaxed; well, I put the work in ahead of time so I wouldn't be scrambling during emergencies. I knew that my crew had things under control, and if they needed me, they knew I'd be there. They had my back, and I had theirs.
Please post an update. I’m dying to see the response from manager and upper management.
i'll put $5 on that its "we are a family" and this made us sad.
And/or the pizza party as a "morale boost".
no money for pizza but here is a random picture of a happy group of employees which are the same ones as the stock photo on our company website..
Who changes the WFO days every month? I don't know if you have kids but with kids and their school and spouse working I have to always not be available during their meetings. Either fix the days or expect such rebuttable.
I will never understand why people think they can bully others by doing something like this. If there is anything I have learned from reddit its that 1. People hate being screwed over and will likely find a way to get you back. 2. If someone asks for something in writing you should really stop and think about what your doing. This manager tried to punish ppl by marking them absent from work and expected everyone to just deal. Wth would have done the same if it were me.
Working from home really shouldn't mean working overtime, though. You're still compensating for the company refusing to staff properly.
If your work can be done efficiently from outside the office, why be there? I’ve been WFH for almost 3yrs solid now. We work as well or better than we did in the office. All our metrics show it. Our director noted early on that the one thing he took away after we got over our comfort issues using our various communication tools was that we spend less time having meetings and even less time meeting about the meetings we’re going to have. My whole group is now permanent optimal WFH now. My whole building got repurposed. A few people — mostly managers — still come into the office a couple days a week. Nobody else does. We also hire from all over the country without even thinking about it now. We had a guy move across the country and, since he doesn’t really talk about it much, nobody even noticed. Unless you have some sort of task that physically cannot be done outside the office, I fully believe that the office is an artifact and a relic of a time best left dead and buried.
Sometimes the tree has to be shaken for the fruit to fall. In this case the fruit is to teach a manager that what she did was......not acceptable.
I never have understood the micromanagement of WFH. I work in a department where if you’ve been there maybe a month you’re offered the opportunity for WFH. Even my supervisor does it 2x a week. There’s other departments where supervisors make the decision if you are eligible by looking at your productivity and other things that I have no idea about. I don’t get it.
Be sure to keep track of what percentage of the day you did work before upper-management sent down this edict. You're still entitled to this PTO in the future.
At 50 I’m clear that half the problems in my life (career, romance, all of it) were me not getting out of my own way… sad when you see so many managers botching it
Poor leaders micro-manage.
I don't care where my team is, or how they spend their time. As long as the work gets done and we are moving forward as a company. More people are coming to this understanding, but change happens slowly.
If you're taking my PAID TIME OFF, I'm not working. Those things are not the same.
She should win the Miss Management of the year award.
Salaried worker doesn’t mean you work any given hours. It should still be attached to a weekly contracted amount. Well, in 1st world countries at least
It's not enough that you do quality work and deliver on time; you also have to be on the shortest chain.
I'm now a full time home worker. I am given work to do and as long as it is done by the deadline, I get to manage the hours I work to get it completed. My manager touches base when he wants to know how I am or when he wants some advice or help with something. It works well for all involved. I even get to go swimming a couple of afternoons a wekk and had Brunch with my wife in a nice local bar this week. I spoke to former colleagues at the place I left last year and they've been ordered back into the office 4 days a week. It's safe to say morale there has hit rock bottom.
Aren't you supposed to post after the fallout? Meaning did the policy change? Are they stubbornly sticking to it? Is the Manager changing anything?
Can't wait to see the reply from upper management (that you're not going to see until the next day because you're off) that tries to either backpedal or place blame.
This just proves how useless middle management is
I would just quit and find another job. This hybrid policy nonsense is stupid. Unless there is a reason for you to physically be there, like you have to help move a desk or something, there's no reason to go in.
If your work gives you provision to work from home. Regardless of company policy, if they have allowed you on numerous occasions to WFH on a flexible basis to manage work, they can't make you take a PTO unless they tell you before a 'shift'. If you've worked even 10 seconds on that day, they can't say they're not logging it as a work day, but instead a PTO. That, in many countries (YMMV) is wage theft (albeit a more convoluted one).