Tag: work

Link: Bulls**t Jobs (Part 1 of ∞)

“It’s too soon to have a good sample size. But it seems to usually work. I think it works because there is nobody at Mr. Smith’s workplace – maybe nobody in the entire world – who cares whether Mr. Smith brings a chair into work. Somebody wrote up a procedure for employees using special chairs, so that they’re not the sort of cowboys who make decisions without procedures. Somebody else feels like they have to enforce it, so that they’re not the sort of rebel who flouts procedures. But nobody cares.”
Original source: Bulls**t Jobs (Part 1 of ∞)

Link: Employees should work on hard things, not easy things

‘For a business to thrive, each employee must ultimately be worth three times their wages to the business. That means if someone is getting paid $60k per year, their worth to the business likely exceeds $180k. People often underestimate what they are worth. One way people, especially more junior employees, underestimate themselves is by failing to spend most of their time on things that are really hard for them to do. All employees (not just entry level employees) should strive to have at least 70% of their time doing things that are really difficult. These are the tasks that require the most thought, rigor, and attention. And these are the tasks that result in the most growth.’

Of course, this assumes a capitalist view of work. Work is there to generate profit, not help people pass the time (find value in being alive) and making sure they have the means to eat and such.
Original source: Employees should work on hard things, not easy things

Link: US wages have been flat, despite growing economy

“The conundrum of stuck wages [for “non-managerial workers”?] has vexed economists for more than a decade, but their underlying assumption had been that as joblessness drops — it’s at 4% now — companies will be forced to push up wages to attract and retain workers. Now that that hasn’t happened, the feeling is beginning to creep in that this is the new normal.”
Original source: US wages have been flat, despite growing economy

Link: The Smart, the Stupid, and the Catastrophically Scary

“Part of me likes being a programmer—because we’re the last job. I can see a future—if we don’t manage to blow ourselves up first—in the robot paradise where people are either robot engineers or programmers, or I guess do marketing. Or maybe bake pies, or smell things? Those are essentially the hardest things for a computer to do. But computers do everything else.”
Original source: The Smart, the Stupid, and the Catastrophically Scary

Link: Gartner Says Employees in Germany Report Lower Discretionary Effort than Global Average

“German employees’ discretionary effort fell below the global industry average, according to the latest worldwide research by Gartner. High employee discretionary effort, which is the willingness to go above and beyond in one’s job, was reported by 12.6 percent of employees in Germany in 1Q18, a nearly four percentage point drop from the previous quarter and below the global average of 15.2 percent.”

Sort of a weird survey, over 22,000 people globally.

Hot take: I’m sure employees would be very willing to go “above and beyond” if employers compensation also went “above and beyond.”
Original source: Gartner Says Employees in Germany Report Lower Discretionary Effort than Global Average

Link: Hey Boss, You Don’t Want Your Employees to Meditate

“Mindfulness might be unhelpful for dealing with difficult assignments at work, but it may be exactly what is called for in other contexts. There is no denying that mindfulness can be beneficial, bringing about calm and acceptance. Once you’ve reached a peak level of acceptance, however, you’re not going to be motivated to work harder.”
Original source: Hey Boss, You Don’t Want Your Employees to Meditate

Link: Reaching Peak Meeting Efficiency

‘Whiteboards are a tool used by a certain type of person to “take over” a meeting. Simply going to the board and picking up a pen changes the whole dynamic of meeting ownership, agenda, control and creates a power-dynamic that is pretty hostile to collaboration. The worst part of whiteboards is that some people just don’t have the ego or personality to go to a whiteboard so they will never contribute that way. The real problem is that whatever gets written on a whiteboard can have more weight than what is said by others or than it deserves simply because it was “written”. I’ve seen whole product positioning statements upended because someone stood up at a whiteboard and rearranged the 3×3 and bullied everyone by controlling the board.’

A whole about corporate meetings in the rest of the article.
Original source: Reaching Peak Meeting Efficiency

Link: Write it down

“Whenever someone asks me to do something that I think seems ill-conceived in some way, I ask them to write it down. That’s it. Because writing is high effort. Making sentences is the easy bit, it’s the thinking I want them to do. By considering their request it slows them down. Maybe 30% of the time or something, they come back and say ‘oh, that thing I asked you to do, I’ve had a think and it’s fine, we don’t need to do it’.

“This little method isn’t about doing less. Well, actually it is. It’s about doing less important things instead of important things. It’s not about being obstructive. I certainly don’t ask someone ‘why?’ five times (which is a shortcut to being called a smart-arse in my experience). This is about a light-touch way of asking someone to slow down.”
Original source: Write it down