Way OT: Funemployment
Happy Sunday, everyone. Ever been "funemployed?"
https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bullshit-jobs-work-employment-lazy-jobless-employed-nothing-to-do
I have no personal experience with what's described there, but I've observed it several times at multiple employers. This includes one with a total headcount of < 100. I agree with the author that incompetent management is often to blame. (I don't think it has ever occurred under my watch.) I also agree that it's independent of WFH. The best (or, maybe, worst) examples I've ever seen had the perpetrators funemployed in plain sight (open workspace, line of sight from the boss, something plausible up on the screen at all times).
Even if you've never been funemployed, I'd be interested to hear about examples you've seen.
Always agree to the task assigned. Upon a follow up, say something came up and you haven’t started. Get it almost done so when the manager finally gets pissed, say you need like ten minutes to get it complete. Leave the meeting and email the completed task end of day and promptly pack up and leave
Back in the day I was a high school Principal. Busted my ass for 2.5 years and did a lot of good things for the school/community. Test scores up, discipline all but non-existent. Etc
My boss and I had different perspectives and saw the world differently. He once told me if something ever went wrong to find the nearest plausible scape-goat to avoid the fall-out and pin the blame elsewhere. Not how I roll. Anyway…In education you work on three year contracts (at least it was common practice back then). At the 2.5 mark he told me he wasn’t renewing me. I had two kids under two and had just purchased land in the district. At that point I “quit” with a 1/2 year left and fully explored the job market. There was an auditorium and storage area on the second floor of the building. I basically converted one of the large storage rooms into an apartment and would go to the office every day, promptly go to my “apartment” and look for jobs. this was March until end of June. Not sure that’s what they call it these days, but it felt appropriate for the circumstances
Whoa, I didn’t know Cris Carter worked in education.
I have a certain amount of self-respect and boundaries with employers. If the values they espouse are not practiced I start to slide into "fill out resumes and do the very bare minimum mode."
Every organization has bullshit, but the specific kind of bullshit I can't truck with is when I lose respect for my boss/leadership. If I see a lot of gaps between explicitly set expectations and implied expectations, if my expertise and experience isn't accounted for or valued, if there are obvious repeated violations of my boundaries - it's time to go shopping for a raise.
It's shitty that this is even a thing but I've made more money quitting jobs and upgrading than heing loyal. They say the grass is never greener but fence hopping is pretty easy. I have multiple one-year stops on my resume and nobody sees it as a negative anymore.
I have multiple one-year stops on my resume and nobody sees it as a negative anymore.
I respectfully disagree. As a hiring manager, I almost never give the resume of serial job-hoppers a second look. I assume our time and effort to train them up will be wasted.
Maybe for highly niche roles, YMMV.
That’s not really a thing any longer, the streets are littered with 20-30 year “loyal” veteran employees unceremoniously dumped as soon whatever company performance metric is at risk, because they’re higher cost see, e.g., Disney.
Not motivated enough to find and post but there is a fairly recent WSJ article about net gains for employees who bounce as opposed to stick. It noted a very substantial long term difference in overall compensation, about 30% more, as I recall.
Agree about the 1 year stints. Need to stay at least 3 years, or just leave it off the resume. In the engineering field, however, it's practically a rule that if you don't leave after 3-5 you're setting money on fire, as most places will give you dollars for staying, but you'll get thousands for moving up. I've worked with guys who've left and returned as many as 5 times to the same company during their career.
This guy is a fucking genius
Tom, who works in sales, appears to be a bit of an expert in getting paid for work he’s not doing. His boss at his last job forgot to inform HR that he’d quit, so he collected a paycheck from the company for a while before anyone figured it out. Now, at his new job, the company doesn’t even know where he’s based — he’s in the United Kingdom, they think he’s in Kentucky — and there’s minimal oversight. “I’m able to slip through the cracks most of the time,” he says. If someone asks what he did over the weekend, he’ll say he went to the Kentucky Derby or something, because he doesn’t want anyone getting suspicious.
Maybe I sound self-righteous, but one's man genius is another man's liar. And Tom is a liar.
I certainly don't spend 100% of my 9-5 doing stuff that increases my company's bottom-line, but I don't see how anyone could have pride in being a liar, thief (Tom above admits to getting paid after he quit!!!) or blatant under-performer.
Yeah, I probably should’ve included the /s
Where does honesty factor into this whatsoever? Please create a list of 3 businesses that you believe did not tell a minimum of 10 lies TODAY. Remember, Citizens United ruled that corporations are people. Therefore, people are corporations and should behave to the same standards that corporations do. I'll cite my first example. Healthcare. Do they send back the money that get when the knowingly overbill or double bill people? Second, Car Dealerships. Do they sell the exact same car to everyone at the same price? For fucks sake can we stop expecting people to behave with some kind of "moral conscience" when business demonstrates EVERY DAY that it has exactly ZERO concerns for such concepts?
But then it goes on:
He works commission and, suffice it to say, rarely meets or exceeds sales targets.
Taking a commission job and doing nothing? Don’t know man.
But then it goes on (next sentence)
“I search for jobs with the highest and most generous base salary for obvious reasons,” he says.
🤷♂️
It sounds like that's not what he has now though, it's what he's looking for. If he finds a job like that, he'll probably have to actually work.
He comes off as a guy trying to sound smart ("I've got it all figured out, I'm telling you") but may not actually be doing that well.
They got suspicious of Tom once he used the Kentucky Derby excuse three weeks in a row in October…
I'm less interested in the work aspect and more interested in the United Kingdom part. Don't you need a visa of some sort to do that?
I don't know if this really counts but my last job I had something that I had to do yearly that was pretty intensive for 3 or 4 months. It was worth about 1/3 of my company's total revenue. After that I had almost nothing to do.
I worked from home so I kind of just farted around. There were always meetings that I was invited to but I either just didn't respond or declined the meetings. Once my wife started her private practice I just ended up being her virtual assistant because I had the time and why increase her overhead if we didn't need to?
I should note that I never received below exceeds expectations on a review ever... 🤣
Same mentality here.
Working in IT, I always tell my people to take advantage of the "slow times", when nothing is broken and there are no projects going live. Don't feel guilty about goofing off for a week or two, because you're right around the corner from a hell week where everything is on fire and you have to work all weekend. It goes both ways.
Who gives a fuck what your "review" said? I hope not you. A review is the biggest joke in the world. It should be called the "I haven't fired you so here's the bare minimum that I think I can give you and retain you" meeting. Fuck or walk, there is no human being's "review" that I could EVER give a fuck about. Its just business man, why do they hate it so? I'm going to do the absolute minimum that I can get away with for the maximum pay that I can extract. How is this not just basic business? What business is going to do MORE than they are required? What business is going to tell a customer "here's some of your money back, we overcharged you for those parts" So why in the ever loving shit would we expect people to act any differently? Baffles me.
Retired from a major company 1.5 years ago after 35 years of service. Was also a people leader during the last years when WFH was the norm. From March 2020 through end of 2021 spent exactly one afternoon in the office cleaning out my desk. Rest was WFH.
What I found personally about work was similar to what I learned at UM when I was an engineering student. I'm much more productive in a library/workplace setting than at an apartment or house. Leaving where I lived helped give me FOCUS. I suspect others have the same experience. Funny how I could read a book on Thermodynamics at the library w/o losing focus but could only get through 5 to 10 pages in the apartment before wanting to turn on the TV. Same applied at work - in the office a lot of my work near the end was detailed analysis (spreadsheets, reporting tools) but at home I might get 30-40 minutes of focus before wanting to go for a walk.
As for having direct reports, this is where the story hits a key point - if you cut too many of the middle managers, you will find more people taking advantage of the lack of oversight. My observation was that about 5-10% of the people really take advantage of the system even with some manager oversight. The number gets worse if you cut more middle managers. I had one employee that really got lazy and I delivered multiple interventions about performance, lack of progress, etc. We realigned people when my retirement was announced and the person kept getting worse and was canned as part of the bigger covid layoff. Her coworkers definitely saw the laziness and weren't sad to see her go.
Sooner or later, even the UK/Kentucky guy will get axed but not before getting a severance. I place the blame on senior leaders of these companies that have cut too deeply and now have no idea who is doing what work anymore.
tybert, during the pandemic a couple of my colleagues went back to the office as soon as they were allowed to do so, citing reasons similar to yours. Everyone else was WFH at the time. We're hybrid now and they're still going to the office every day. How that sorts out across the company is very interesting. I'm open to the idea that some people are better off at home for some days of the week. As long as the work is getting done and the culture (such as it is) remains stable it seems like a reasonable arrangement going forward.
Waking up to an alarm, shower, business dress, coffee & bite to eat, pack a lunch, gather up the entire home office in a back pack and drive 30 minutes to work office.
At work there are time bandits who just want to BS, social work events & volunteering, shitty IT equipment & support that are substandard to home office. Pack everything back up at the end of the day and drive 30 mins home.
If you can't make that more efficient when there is really no advantage to even coming into the office then that's your issue. I'd bet there are more of us that can.
I know how my direct reports perform regardless of how much time they spend in an office setting and their morale is off the charts.
the UK/Kentucky guy
redundant. Charles Matthews.
managed two references in five minutes without having to stretch
flexes
So, to summarize. Managers are the real hero's and nothing would ever get done without them.
I'm just joining this thread to let everyone know that I was put on this planet to fuck with middle management
I have a job that pays me $35 an hour and I have been working my whole career to become efficient enough at my work to get everything done in roughly half the time of other people performing the same work. This efficiency allows me more time in the work day to get the rest of my life's work done - grocery shopping, planning vacations, household budgeting, reading MGoBlog, etc. I prefer to look at it as I am worth $70 an hour and am happy to work 20 hours a week. I get glowing reviews, have been promoted a couple times, and now actually am a supervisor in addition to my other responsibilities. Before becoming a supervisor I probably was only working about 10-15 hours a week but for less money, so probably still around $70 per hour.
I feel absolutely no guilt or shame for this. Work life balance is important when you can get it.
You don't get paid for the number of buttons you push. You get paid for knowing which ones to push.
Working for a results-based company is awesome. The "butts in seats" types... nope.
This one hit way too close to home as I'm currently experiencing it with two co-workers. Haven't had a direct boss since they started. Acting boss went out for a while after hitting a deer on his motorcycle and then it spiraled out of control from there (really no oversight at that point). Have gotten to watch a guy being paid roughly the same as myself send out emails about "intending to do the work" while not doing anything for about 4 months now. Mind numbing
I had a job that was extremely unfulfilling, and while I did still follow my basic responsibilities, I definitely wasn't giving maximum effort after awhile. But by that point I knew it was time to move on. I didn't want to stay in that situation any longer.
I couldn't stay in a nothing job. The article talks about guilt, but that's not necessarily the issue for me. I just have to feel like my work has some meaning, that I'm making some positive contribution. Going to a job where I feel completely unimportant every day would be really unsatisfying to me.
Yeah, the part where you go in and spend 40+ hours of your life doing absolutely nothing would just bother me. I'm not saying any of my jobs are life-changing endeavors for others but usually I felt like I could at least point at things I did that were productive and created some benefit for others.
It's like bare minimum Mondays five days a week! Pretty common in remote work.
But seriously, we laid off 10 people on Thursday (6/1), after laying 9 off March 1st.
So I figure I've got three months to find a new gig.
What kind of business are you working in? Is your business being affected by economic slowdown or competitive pressure or both? Good luck.
He’s trying to hang on to eastern Ukraine. WFH isn’t going to cut it once they’ve run out of cruise missles
Outsourcing you’re critical Human Resources and poor motivation to achieve company objectives can have that effect.
Higher Ed SaaS. It's hard to trust data where private equity is concerned, but I'd say it's a combination of both factors you cite. What's weird is that the higher level people they've let go were only recently hired.
Our marketing folks call all the shots. Sales is never consulted, and it shows in our results.
Funemployed originally meant deliberately being unemployed presumably to enjoy life, which I have experience with.
In the context of the article, I have little experience - where I've worked it's been way too intense, competitive as well as post-2008 fiscally overseen.
Now I work in the public sector and there's either people who are mission driven and busy all the time, or in contrast just going through the motions waiting for their pension. As to the latter, apparently they are entrenched and no one gets fired.
I suppose in my very first real job, when I was still drinking 40s and getting high all the time, I ended up doing nothing except surfing the early internet. But really it was a fuck you to my boss who made a move on me after inviting me out to dinner.
I started my career in the public sector. When I left the public sector, I cataloged public sector employees as falling into 4 buckets :
Bucket #1 = 1.25 FTE or greater This means each person in this bucket accomplishes 50 hours of productivity per week Some work 50 hours and some are just very good at what they do and are very productive.
Bucket #2 = .5 FTE. Similarly, some of these people only work 20 hours while others work 40 but just aren’t good at their jobs
Bucket #3 = 0 FTE Some of these people try, but most suck air, take up space and try to stay under the radar
Bucket #4 = People actively working to undermine the organization on a daily basis.
The truth is this probably applies to many non-public sector orgs as well. The proportions are different from agency to agency or org to org. Well run outfits have more in the first two buckets and dysfunctional orgs have more in the latter two.
As for work from home, I will switch the conversation from productivity to the related concept of quality. I work in an industry where quality is tracked pretty closely. My company (and the peer companies I have spoken to) have seen noticeable issues with quality with WFH. Work still gets done, but quality is lower.
Two observations
Bucket 2 in my experience sort of has some overlap with people who expend a full FTE of effort but only achieve some increment of that in productivity because a good amount of their time is spent battling administrative hurdles.
In my experience, the contractor support is at least as inefficient as the public sector offices they are being paid by.
One question
Can you share some stories about bucket 4? That sounds juicy.
I have observed this mostly as the result of changes in the elected chief executive (Mayor, Governor, President). People who were in positions of favor with the former leadership lash out at the new leadership due to their loss of privilege or ideological reasons. To some extent, the "deep state" exists. It's not a vast organized conspracy, but some people get disgruntled when they don't like the ultimate boss or when they are no longer considered special.
I've known people who have been in this position to varying degrees (as have I a couple of times) but usually it's because the company is struggling financially and in the process of either drastically cutting or going out of business. But I say this as someone who has worked almost exclusively in smaller companies (under 200 people) and start-ups (under 15 people, one time sharing a floor with a drug dealer). So in those cases it is harder to hide a lack of work to be done, doubly so because there are easy metrics like code releases, tickets completed, etc. to track performance.
But yeah, I can absolutely see how sometimes you get siloed into a part of the company that doesn't really ask much of you. A lot of the examples in the article are Fintech companies, and in my experience those places can have such significant revenue centers that they can carry underwhelming other divisions without anyone noticing for a while. So if you do the work you're asked to do nobody will notice and you might even survive some reductions in force because everyone is pretty interchangeable at that point.
This almost always comes down to failures in management, oftentimes a level or two above that person's direct manager. Business decisions are made that minimize some part of the company and for a variety of practical as well as political reasons a company may not want to axe a large section of the workforce so instead they just let them hang out there and rely on quitting/self-driven promotions to other divisions/etc. to clear out a chunk of them.
You can definitely get away with more if you’re fully or partially remote vs in the office, but we may never go back to 5 days in office, so realistic and adequate KPIs (which are also employee friendly/not off putting) are something employers need to figure out.
Will say, as someone who tracks this for a living, there has been a major shift from fully remote to hybrid. I think this is where we are going to land: 2-4 days in office, more flexibility than pre-pandemic - but with more limited opportunities for fully remote.
Yeah, I've seen hybrid work in software development go from somewhat unique to completely expected over the past 15-ish years. It makes a lot of sense financially, as companies don't need to lease/own as much real estate to support their staff most of the time and gives a nice benefit to a lot of employees who have additional responsibilities at home, long commutes, etc.
Yeah, exactly. Living in LA, it's nice to spend a couple days in the office (see people, get lunch/coffee, etc.) but I would not want to go back to 5 days of a commute. Much better to have that extra time with the kids + for hobbies.
I had a gig in college where I worked for the government at an IT help desk. 99% of the time we were just waiting for someone to call and request help. I would do homework, surf the internet and download mp3s. Every so often we would have a busy day....but rarely.
I don't really have a job that lends itself to that. I do remember though the last time I had that sense of trying to be busy or look busy when I had nothing to do.
I had just gotten out of the navy and joined a practice and didn't have any patients scheduled for the first couple days. The first day I moved in to my office. The next day I moved stuff around and fiddled because I didn't have shit to do and felt lazy. Then someone ran down the hall and said planes had just flown into the World Trade Center.
I've stayed pretty busy since.
That was a bad day. I was driving down to the city that day to meet with and have lunch with a guy who worked in the South Tower on the 29th floor. Since I was his first meeting, he delayed coming in, thankfully. I remember hearing about it on the radio driving in and then trying to call him and then my wife. Zero cell service for several hours. That was a very bad day.
Given the discussion here and that day, I wonder what the toll would have been in the current environment of so many people WFH.
Still too many.
Having worked my tail off across six decades: large, small, my cos, govt agencies? I have zero exposure to or experience with this.
I've only recently heard about this from my sons; drives them both nuts to be around the "funemployed".
You're a lucky man, HighBeta. I've seen this even at UM Hospital and a consultancy that's a household name.