this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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This is what I don't get, it took a while to get into place after Covid forced WFH, but my office, in the UK public sector, managed to implement a decent monitoring system to allow managers to make sure home workers aren't taking the mick. How is it all these huge tech companies with infinitly more money and talent at their disposal can't?
I don't understand why managers or anybody really, would care what the fuck I'm doing as long as the work is getting done.
Because, at least from my software dev perspective, if upper management realizes how easy it would be to make someone on the team a "team lead" pay them a smidge more and then use metric tools to make sure stuff got done there would be no need for middle managers.
I work for a fortune 500, tons of beauracracy, and the people always moaning about people being in the office are most often the least useful people in the building. Lording over people's cubes "keeping tabs" is seen as a way to tell their bosses they are valuable.
Ive said it so many times to my boss who is on my side and has fought for me to WFH: "If I stop working you will know it instantly, things won't work and besides theres an entire dashboard I have to self report my progress to which again I can lie on for a bit, but will be obvious if I do so longer than a week".
There's also another factor of the sunk cost fallacy, many corps own buildings or are on long leases, leaving them empty looks like a massive waste of money even though tbh leaving them empty by my assessment would actually save them money.
Same here. Infrastructure engineer of 10 years now, recently got my first fortune 500 job and most companies now are super bloated with middle management. They honestly think their job is to schedule meetings and manage the progress of their team instead of providing support and guidance. A good manager will leave you alone if your job is getting done, but being a good manager implies you have valuable skills that would transfer to other companies, or that you know the job well enough to know how it should be done. I don't see engineers turned management have this problem so much as business people turned managers.
In the US at least, I know quite a few people that are working multiple jobs at once and putting out shit performance on every job. They are also living in locations they are not allowed to live in (company has a policy you have to live within a certain distance of a branch office), so I think some of this RTO stuff is justified, so long as the company stays flexible enough for me to decide which days I want to be in office
A lot of them (Alphabet in particular) overinvested in commercial real estate and are now sitting on a huge sunk cost.
Can you provide any additional information on the "monitoring system". Is it simple "check-ins" with your managers, or more technology dependent where everything is tracked as if someone is standing over your shoulder.
It's time based, everything we do on the system is time coded, if there's a twenty minute gap in your output they will look further into it (I'm sure that's not for all staff but ones they know take the piss but they have to pretend to be fair). Most of the time they look and the notes/paperwork attached to a case and it makes sense why it took a while, if not then they will bring it up with someone. It works for me, doesn't feel like you're being watched all the time and no one is biting your head off for five minutes on your phone between cases, but at least the people I know do take the mick are to up their game.