Cubicle Blues Blamed On IT 254
Ant wrote to us about depression and the cubicle blues. That's what the International Labor Organization, the UN's labor and human rights agency, says at least. They say that around 1 in 10 employees is either depressed, has anxiety, or is burnt-out -- do you find that to be true?
I got an idea! (Score:4)
Imagine rewriting a kernel for the twelfth time, but this time with a view from atop on of the plateaus in the Grand Canyon, or possibly on the beach in Cabo San Lucas?
Possibly to save a bit of money, the company can just wire in a row or group of cubicles and have them all the same views and automatically change scenes every so often!
It'd be cool!
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Vote Homer Simpson for President!
Re:Most people (Score:1)
7) Take your holidays.
I agree with these two points the most. The water thing may seem weird, but I got into a habit of drinking alot from the fountain at work and it really kept my energy up and it also got me up out of my chair every hour or so. It also gives you time to walk around and think about your problem without having to sit in your little cube. Taking time is very important. Not just holidays, but vacation in general. Don't hoard your time off and take it all in one lump sum at the end of the year, it won't help you. You might enjoy those weeks but not the whole year. I like taking half days and random days off just to relax if there is no deadline to meet. Even if there is, there is nothing wrong with taking a day off in the middle of the week to relax and making up for it by coming in on the weekend. I really dislike the whole 5on 2off work week. It was nice in school, but for work i would prefer the days off seperated and i've done so in the past with the permission of my employeer and it really helped me relax more.
Re:How much of what you guys are doing really matt (Score:2)
I fool myself DAILY that my job is important, and it's easy to do, because when you fix the customer, they are quite often very appreciative, and say "thanks" or "you're great" or stuff like that. They send letters, they send coffee mugs, etc. I get to be the hero.
As far as materialism and motivation go - we get paid for survival purposes. Most people lose the fact that they're getting buy, that they're surviving, that they're paying the bills, feeding the kids, buying them college degrees, and even getting enough toys and trappings to keep up with the Joneses. Often, it's mistaken for greed, but it's the escalation of the perceived bar for survival. At some point, say when you have more than 5 or so million dollars, if you're still fighting for survival, you've got to sit back and realize you're sick and need help. Wonder if the reason you're working so hard is for survival, or if there's some other bogus rationalization, or if you're REALLY getting something beneficial out of it.
The world would be a better place.
Re:devil's advocate: question for parents (Score:2)
blamed on *NT*!? (Score:2)
My own observations and musings. (Score:5)
I keep reading all these horror stories about Silicon Valley and how 'horrible and stressful' working there is. 80 hour weeks....
Yet I hear so many people moving there saying 'but I can make $100,000 a year'.
Hey.. that's twice what I make.. but wait, I only work *gasp* 40 hour weeks..... and I'm NOT stressed out.
I also know that if I decided to work 80 hours a week, like at a second job, I could make that hundred grand a year, and I would be sick and unhealthy and stressed out.
There are several things needed to make you happy at work.
1) Job Security. You can't feel 'good' about work if you worry about every single thing you do causing you to get fired.
2) Personal Security. You have to feel confident about your own abilities, and not dig yourself into a job that's over your head.
3) Good coworkers. If you end up working with backstabbing moneygrubbing coworkers.. well, what do you expect?
4) Good managers/management! Yes.. VERY important. Managers who realize that programmers are not 'programming machines' that can go 40 or 80 hours a week. Managers who realize that you will get just as much quality code out of programmers who work 40 hour weeks and are expected to actually code for only part of that.
5) Good *company* management. If everyone is on the same playing field, things work fine. If corporate guys set deadlines for engineering projects, of COURSE there is stress! If software managers set deadlines on software without any idea of what is involved, same thing. Stress.
Best example I've seen of proper behavior is this:
corporate (marketing) says they want this new feature added to the product. Corporate asks VP Engineering. VP Engineering talks to his managers. (hardware guys, software guys, project managers). THey all go back to their respective groups, gather input as to what is involved, and get back together to tell the VP Engineering how long it will take. Project managers indicate when a good time to start it is.. etc. VP Engineering calls back and says 'You can have that two years from now, unless you want to shelve some other stuff. HEre are the main reasons we can't do it.
And *NOBODY GETS MAD ABOUT IT!* This is how things should work.
The programmers and engineers aren't overworked, the deadlines are reasonably met, the managers take responsibility for their departments....
10% (Score:3)
Re:I got an idea! (Score:2)
All those LCD panels would generate a lot of heat (as well as being heinously expensive).
Re:How much of what you guys are doing really matt (Score:2)
so true! Just because technology gives us more WAYS to communicate doesn't mean we have anything (more) to say. More communication with less to say.
Re:My answer... (Score:2)
true. They don't call it "work" for nothing. For example, if you were a professional musician, music might cease being fun.
Don't dismiss stress casually. (Score:5)
Sure, there is the chance of mishaps (or asshole customers), but you're busy moving around and don't have time to focus on them. They happen, it sucks until you heal (or calm down), you don't really think about it otherwise.
Office jobs tend to put one in the role of "professional worrier". A programmer worries about bugs, a secretary worries about schedules and messages, and a manager worries about everything. The push to efficiently do non-mechanical work in isolation that requires human evaluation and judgement is brutally stressful in a way humans were never meant to deal with (the normal pattern being: spend a few minutes figuring out how to do something and worrying about how it can go wrong, then work for several hours simply following the plan you thought out).
Go work on a farm or even pushing a mop for a while, you'll sleep better, eat better, put on muscle, and have generally better health (after a short but rough initial period of adjustment). Unfortunately, you can't get paid well that way, and may find it unsatisfying for other reasons.
Office hours should be shorter than labour hours and breaks should be more frequent; the mind tires more quickly than the body. Frequent meetings without rigid agendas should be scheduled with the recognition that they serve a social meeting/group therapy function that is as important as the information sharing function that is normally considered their purpose. It might also be much healthier not to hire janitors for office buildings, but to have people clean their own work areas. It is relaxing, mechanical work that gives your body a chance to pump lymph around and your brain a chance to shut down for a moment to recouperate.
(sitting around all day worrying about everything) != (good working conditions)
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Re:Most people (Score:2)
Also.. how old are you? age is a factor.
Re:How much of what you guys are doing really matt (Score:2)
Being convinced that your work is meaningless can be a great stressor, but being immersed in meaningful work is not necessarly stress-free!
Re:Most people (Score:2)
People stress themselves out. If you worry, of course you will be stressed. Duh. Just relax and be happy that you're not a hooker in sub-saharan Africa with AIDS and various other parasites, with Moslem zealots looking to behead you in public.
Company culture (Score:2)
I once worked with a company where you could just feel the stress when you walked in the door. Every project carried with it a discussion about what would happen if it failed. This lead to an atmosphere of recrimination (even when there weren't major problems) in an attempt to protect departments and individuals from possible punishment.
After quitting I also worked with a company where things were just the opposite. Nobody ever mentioned the personal ramifications of failure. We all worked together and when we had problems they rarely involved blaming anyone for it. We might have known who all could have caused the problem, but unless it was occurring repeatedly or it was intentional we did not dwell on it. After my previous experience it took a while for me to get used to it.
At my new job we also had a large amount of control over our environment. Scheduling (very important) was done by a peer of ours and thus working with them was much easier. Once we had a member of upper management decide that rearranging the cubes would somehow increase productivity. When it was proposed at a meeting we decided it was not a good use of $ and it never occurred. The little things like that were really important to us. They maybe didn't make the job easier, but it felt like it.
Re:Don't dismiss stress casually. (Score:2)
Bugs are for the support guys to find workarounds for.
Most people (Score:5)
The first time I was really stressed out (I was 22 years old, working at some ISP) I went to the doctor complaining that I was having trouble sleeping, got frequent headaches, and noticed that I was generally getting irritable. I thought it was my diet or I had a tumor or something. After talking to him, describing work... he said 'You are simply stressed out'.
And it was *MY FAULT* for getting that way.
So.. here are my simple guidelines for not getting stressed out.
1) When someone gives you tasks/objectives at work, and a deadline, TALK TO THEM. If it can't be done during reasonable working hours, TELL THEM SO, IMMEDIATELY. Don't just assume they won't budge.
2) You aren't doing your job right if you can't do it in about 8 hours a day. You are either a crapppy programmer, or WAY overextending what you should be doing.
3) Eat Good Food!
4) Drink lots of water.
5) Don't drink too much booze.
6) Don't do recreational drugs during the workweek. The odd beer is okay. Stay off the weed, it makes you stupid. Save it for the weekend.
7) Take your holidays.
8) Communicate!
Re:devil's advocate: question for parents (Score:2)
The basic thrust of my argument is that being content has nothing to do with what you do for a living or where you live. There are some very happy and at peace PHBs who are great for their community . .
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Re:"...whether breeding...is worth it" (Score:2)
I don't wonder about that, I know. Every time I encounter a kidlet or a baybee, my reaction is "AUGH! Where's the off switch! Somebody shut that thing down I can code!" (I'm firmly in the "kids are a venereal disease" camp :)
This is why I've decided not to have kids.
Playing devil's advocate - your question (alumshubby's, not The Queen's) seems to imply that "it's different once it's your own".
Given my viscerally-negative reaction whenever I encounter babies or kids, how on earth could I, in good conscience, "have one to see if my reaction was different when it was mine"?
The folks I pity the most aren't the ones who have kids. It's the ones who don't want kids but who have them to appease a kid-hungry spouse or relatives. The kid suffers as much as the coerced parent.
As for sacrifices, there's no point getting into a dicksize war about who's suffered the most.
Consider: Parents sacrifice their free time, but are rewarded with the experience of "creating a new life, nurturing it for 18 years, and charishing it forever". That's not a sacrifice, that's a long-term investment.
Speaking for myself, I've sacrificed a 5-year relationship (she wanted 'em, I didn't, we both realized we were gonna be happier without each other over the long term), and (assuming 90% of the female population wants kids) 9 out of every 10 potential relationships going forward. I'll probably remain single and celibate the rest of my life. I'm rewarded with never having to deal with poopy diapers, and being able to hack hardware, software, or just slack off and enjoy my weekends whenever I like. And I get to retire 10 years earlier than folks with kids. My decision is also not a sacrifice, but an investment.
Different value systems. Different priorities. Different payoffs.
Of course (Score:2)
Re:devil's advocate: question for parents (Score:2)
BTW, My wife has a "meaningful" job working in the child welfare system. For that, she makes no money and, frankly, makes little difference.
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We enjoy our cube (Score:2)
From our cube we search far and wide for technology and species that will add to our perfection. Away from our cube we are incomplete, but in our cube we are whole. Stress is irrelevant.
We call those veal pens (Score:2)
Link to Relevant Past Slashdot Articles (Score:3)
Also Overcomming (sic) Programmer's Block? [slashdot.org] (BTW - I submitted the article as "how to overcome programming stuckness?").
While I may have more to be concerned about since I have a mental illness, I find that dealing with moods and emotional concerns to be of profound importance in my work.
On the other hand, as I say in the Metro San Jose article that's linked to from above, one of the reasons I chose to be a programmer (or rather, continued to be a programmer after I'd been doing it for a while) is that I find that being symptomatic is rarely an impediment to working as a programmer - it is sometimes, but not all the time.
1 in 10? Puhlease (Score:2)
I could see how that would be true (Score:2)
Cube War (Score:5)
Cube War:
Throwing an object into the other person's cube in order to hit them or keyboard.
Rules of Cube War:
1. Object thrown must be of the stuffed or "stress ball" variety. Computer expos commonly give away free balls and cup koozies.
2. Object must be lobbed from a sitting position into the other person's Cube.
3. hitting a person in the head is perfect. Hitting a person's keyboard in order to make a mistake is bonus.
Re:1 in 10? Puhlease (Score:2)
My point: It sounds cherry as hell to work remotely, but telecommuting is not an escape from shitty bosses, and they will always expect more out of telecommuters than the commuters (especially if you are on the beach).
A counterexample (Score:2)
IMHO nobody would be stressed if they were doing truly important work. At least something that was important to themselves?
-Nikolai Bezroukov, "Portraits of Open Source Pioneers"Feeling that your work is worthless certainly adds to stress, but I don't think it's the main factor. The main problem is pushing your brain too hard for too long every day.
People aren't made to worry all day over ten-thousand details. You have to know your limits and simply insist on living within them.
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And it's all caused by management (Score:5)
Management making completely uninformed decisions is what causes a lot of stress. And once a project rolls out, clueless clients make up most of the rest of the stress. And both the clients and the management do not know how to express their problems or requests well enough so that everyone will actually know what is going on, and what is required.
People should plan for problems as well, which is another major lacking. Plan for that project to blow out, plan for the service to fail, plan for disaster. Doesn't have to be by much, but a few days here and there make a HUGE difference to the stress on the people working on it when there are those last niggling things to rectify that just won't dissapear!
This is what happens when people get into areas they have no understanding of. Up and beyond their level of competence. Wether it is because of lack of training or because they just don't know is no excuse. It exerts pressure on the people that the problems fall onto, and that is usually the technical staff. It is more prevalent in the IT Industry, but it happens everywhere.
It is amazing just how many managers really do act like the PHB's in Dilbert.
Can you tell I had a really bad day today?
A Sea of Post-It Notes (Score:3)
Have YOU ever unstuck about 10^4 Post-It notes? It's a Zen-like experience!
EMUSE.NET [emuse.net]
Problem with quitting (Score:2)
Re:devil's advocate: question for parents (Score:2)
As for making a mark on the world, maybe my patents aren't much, but my father made it so I could do at least that much, and it's better than he was able to do. I hope to pass better opportunities on to my kids.
Besides, kids are something of a dream, the most open-ended potential most of us get to participate in. Most dreams are rather mundane, anyway.
What if your parents had decided to follow their dreams instead of having you?
Re:wonders never ceasing (Score:2)
Re: Here's what to do. (Score:2)
There's something you can do, but it's up to you to figure out how. I think the only reason I realize this is because of my own depression/suicidal tendencies before I ever got into the industry.
Don't let anything bother you.
If you say 'no', and they say 'yes', they're trying to control you. Don't let them.
Don't care. Forget about the money you make, about your deadlines, and about everything else in your life that you could waste your life away thinking about.
Find something that you truly, genuinely enjoy. When stress starts, reference the first three points, and think about that very enjoyable thing.
Now, I'm not about to tell you 'snap out of it', but that's really the only way it can be described. At some point after feeling the way you do, something will click and you'll be happy. What's important is that you realize it when it happens, so that you can take action.
The thing is, it has to be an internal mechanism. You have to be the one who subconsciously causes that mechanism to start. When this happens, you'll realize that everything happening around you is pointless. Everything that people insist on you doing is pointless. No deadline or any other stress mean anything.
Now, at that point, you may think that you'll be left suicidal. I'm here to tell you, that's not true. This is what happens afterward. Once you realize everything around you is pointless, you'll start searching for things that do matter. Maybe it's your wife. Maybe it's your child. Maybe it's spending time with your family. Maybe it's religion. Whatever it is, don't let it go at that point. You have to hold on to the feeling until it's a natural part of your personality. (Yes, that means quite a while)
But then, you can walk around in your haze, intensely aware of pointlessness swarming around you, and not let it touch you. You can make your money, though it won't matter anymore. It will give you new ways to spend that money though... ways that aren't so pointless.
Anyway, to sum everything up, it's all in your hands. 'You are the master of your destiny', to quote a too-often used cliche. You are the one who will ultimately decide what your life is worth. Relying on others to decide for you will only make you feel worse.
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you may quote me
The Japanese Solution to stress (Score:2)
The idea is that when the staff are having a bad day they pick up a baseball bat, beat their boss up and go back to work feeling happier.
I guess some effigies are replaced quicker than others, but its not a bad idea
Re:Better conditions == whining. (Score:2)
Marxism is primarily responsible for the existence of the forty-hour work week; this quote is out of Engels's 1890 preface to the Manifesto:
If only Marx were still by my side to see this with his own eyes!
as well as government pensions for retirees, and a large number of other things which working citizens of modern developed economies, like yourself, presently take entirely for granted. Would you personally care to work seventy hours a week for subsistence wages? The seventy-hour-a-week worker of 1844 [marxists.org] ;, and I should emphasize to you that in all the industrial countries of the world that was the worker of median income, had virtually no opportunities to "go out and double (his) productivity, gain new skills, etc, (so he) can get a raise or a better paying job and make drastic improvements in (his) family's standard of living." He lacked that opportunity because he was too exhausted and undernourished.
Unless you happen to have been born a millionaire's heir, you owe Marxism. It was Marxists all over the world who, during whole generations of political struggle, got their heads busted in in order to get you a legally-mandated limited work week, and job conditions so you don't run a three-to-one chance of being maimed on the job before you reach your grey hairs, and free public schools for all, and the rest of the program of the International. Instead of merely parroting trashy third-hand anti-red propaganda, why don't you go learn a little bit of the history of labor? There is an ocean of difference between the historical facts and all that weightless moral-theoretical ahistoric nonsense that union-busting capitalists and their captive schools and news media have crammed into your head.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:devil's advocate: question for parents (Score:2)
Maybe if I was a parent myself I'd have a different perspective, but I'm not (nor would I like to be).
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
You left out.... (Score:2)
Sometimes, it IS the only answer.
I had a job where, for 2 years, whiel i was working franticly to digt he company out of messes, the president was making new ones at the same time.
After two years that incldued a 2 week mandetory rest on order from my doctor (I staretd talkign seriously abt putting a bullet in my head and my wife, bless her, dragged me to the Dr), I realized it was never goign to egt better and I left.
I obecjt though to how your post might make people feel bad though for having a sense of duty and obligation to their work and a strong work ethic. Those are all GOOD things. The key is, the comapny has a duty and responsability to YOU too to treat you reasonably.
If they can't do that, you need to work for someone else.
I'm surprised it's not a lot higher (Score:2)
This report is basically saying IT is normal.
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Stress cascate (Score:2)
Think about it, if a manager gets a sudden problem/request:
- Who will her/she turn to? - the ones under him/her
- When should it be solved? - yesterday
If the ones under the manager are also managers, they will just pass the problem downwards (sometimes sidewards) until it gets to the bottom of the food chain.Now, good managers are the ones that try to check things out before sending them to the next link in the chain. They will also use prevention to try to minimize the number of problems (think testing), and reserve time for emeregencies (which always happen, no matter how much prevention you do).
When somebody gets a whole lot of problems falling down in their lap
- Suddenly "time for emergencies" disapears
- Next "prevention" goes down the drain, including (for us coders) proper design.
- The more you skip on problem prevention and contention, the more problems you get tomorrow (and yes, tomorrow does indeed come).
- This in turn will lead you to cut even further in preevention
- ...
This happens not only to managers, but to everybody. How many times do you skip proper design - or even basic design - because the project time is too short? How many of those projects finish up in time? How many times do you end up redesigning the data model (or should i say adjusting the data model) in the middle of a project?All this goes down to the ability to keep calm and think rationaly under fire. The more higher up in the hierarchy you are, the more important this is. Unfortunatly, this does not seem to be taken in account when assigning a person to his or her position ...
Depression sucks (Score:2)
I've seen IT workers completely depressed because management stupidly imposed quotas and thresholds to measure their productivity. This leads to further complaints from the people they are supposed to be supporting, because the race is to close trouble tickets fast, not fix the problem, or tackle the core of the problem. This leads to a worsening situation spiraling out of control. Management was happy because the statistics showed an ever increasing level of complaints, with a shorter and shorter response time to close out the cases. Average time to open and close a major network failure was 7 minutes, which was completely fictitious.
I didn't last very long there, before I became too depressed by my poor performance. Even though I was the highest level of network support, only taking the cases nobody else could solve, I was still expected to close each case in under 7 minutes. These were cases like building wide outages, dead trunks, replacing burned out equipment. Management had its head up its ass the whole time, and turnover was close to 100% every 6 months. They accounted for the high turnover rate as poaching by other high tech companies.
Slashdotters will agree, 1 in 10 depressed workers would be a low count. Perhaps they are only looking at the workers who have been diagnosed by a professional therapist as severely clinically depressed. A link [ilo.org] to a summary of the original study leaves a few too many questions.
Been there, still recovering,
the AC
Promises made (Score:2)
"One in ten office workers" - 1 in 10 people? (Score:2)
Might it be the case that one in ten *people* suffers from those conditions, whether they are office workers or not?
Sounds like a bunch of whining to me... (Score:4)
If you are depressed, you need to either a) GET OVER IT or b) get happy drugs from the doctor. Sorry, but this article seems like yet another way for people to shift responsibility for their attitude and actions to others. YOU are responsible for your happiness. Period. YOU are responsible for you attitutde. Period. IT is to blame for black moods? Whatever. You are to blame for staying in the situation if you can't handle it.
Re:You left out.... (Score:2)
I'm not trying to tell people that they shouldn't have a strong work ethic and to believe in what they do.. in the company they work for. That's all GOOD!
But you *MUST* realize how the company views *YOU*. If you do miracles for the company, that translates into *money* for someone at the top. Make sure you are properly compensated for what you do.
If it's crunch time and the only way the company is going to meet it's deadline is if you bust ass 100 hours a week.. that's fine. IT's GREAT that you can commit to that. ANd afterwards, make sure you USE that fact. Inform your boss that you are taking a week's paid vacation (or a couple extra days on a weekend, or whatever) because of all the extra work you put in. Don't let it just slide by.
ouch (Score:2)
My take is the work is difficult, and the personality/talent mix crucial, regardless of work environment.
Read the last paragraph a few times if you just skimmed over it. You need a few clowns, a few dummies, a few gurus, a few mid-level, a few morose vampires.
It's the mix -- if it gets skewed (where I work we are down to two gurus, a bunch of dummies and a couple mid-level (I'm a "mid-level").
No one really knows how to have fun and let go, everyone is morose right now. To have any fun, I have to go it alone with a few select others in cubicle rendevous.
When we try to have fun in meetings, it just doesn't work. People are trying too hard, whether management or dummy, and it gets weird. So the place seems morose.
The reality is, some of us are pretty happy on an individual level -- because of the cubicle rendevous. We tell little jokes to each other, have some chuckles, go back to work.
So, to sum up, as a group we have low morale and don't trust each other.
At the individual level, some of us are having fun and working hard. I think it's just that way sometimes.
The last place I worked, and at this place (before some key players left) most of us hung out after hours, etc. It just doesn't work that way right now.
Of course, the whole Microsoft thing, along with the H1B debacle, has cast a pall on careers in computing. That doesn't help, either.
Other thing. (Score:2)
It's MORE important to recognize how you are treating yourself and how your wonderful job that you are dedicated to fits into your life as a whole.
Re:Company culture (Score:2)
Business is all about a process. That process should not allow a situation to arise where hostility could erupt.
If some project doesn't get done on time, yes, certain people may be at fault, but only if they deliberately deceived someone. If a programmer overstated what he could do, but told his boss about it when he realized it, there's no reason to get mad. If his boss then tells HIS boss and schedules are adjusted to reflect reality.. nobody needs to get mad. If the top level people are upset with the schedule change... they might get mad, but they shouldn't. What they SHOULD do is say 'why did this happen, how can we change the system so it won't happen again?'.
Re:Depression sucks (Score:2)
Like your example... hiring those new employees costs a LOT of money.
I find it strange when the wrong people get ahold of statistics. FOr instance, the average time to close a trouble ticket is useful to know. It's useful to know how much time it takes for a support person to effectively solve a problem, so you can provide an adequate number of support people to deal with the # of problems you have, and do judge the cost of those problems so you can figure out how much to proactively spend on fixing them.
Those same figures in some other managers hand simply say 'how do we cut down on the time per call?'
Re:How much of what you guys are doing really matt (Score:2)
Evil isn't winning, it just isn't loosing. The balence is being maintained just as it always has. Bad things happen, good things happen, bad things just make better news stories. Taken on whole life is not a whole lot better or worse than it was one, two, or five hundred years ago. Some things are better: We don't die of black plague anymore, a lot fewer people starve to death (Yes, it does still happen, but it happens less). Soem things are worse: lIfe is more complicated, we have information overload. A hundred years ago people were fighting against evil robber barons who used their great wealth to trample on the rights of their employees and customers. five hundred years ago it was the powerful lords and nobles, today it is multinational corps. At least Microsoft doesn't burn down the headquarter of companies they take over, kill all the men and take all the women and children as slave. That was the tradition in early middle eastern civilzation was a city was conqurered. Quite frankly I am rather glad that there is Evil out there, I like to have something to fight against and bitch about.
Re:Better conditions == whining. (Score:2)
My solid advice. (Score:2)
If it's really how you say it is, and you're prepared to piss someone off, go over the project managers head and figure out the process by which these dates are set.
You might find that the higher-ups are *REALLY* surprised that there is some kind of problem, and will get VERY concerned as to why they hadn't been informed that the work couldn't be completed on time.
It's usually those in the middle that mess things up (not that they aren't necessary, good middle-management is a serious assett).
It's management's JOB to *MANAGE* what they have.
Oh. It helps if you make it clear that you are not trying to 'screw' anyone, but that you are just trying to solve a problem in the company.
Re:How much of what you guys are doing really matt (Score:2)
So sure, on the surface, I think this technology is some hot shit. I can download data on a remote server and have it update my palm pilot so I can track my stock quotes while I'm on the john. *Who the hell cares!*
I think in the "post-modern" (yes overly abused) world, programming must be one of the most nihilistic occupations. You are paid to sit and push bits around.
Yeah I'm probably burnt out. So where's my disability check?
Well, everybody has to create "meaning" in their life (you can think this is rubbish but your body is very stubborn about this). I guess my "meaning" was getting interested and active in politics. To perhaps help fix a world full of injustices. To do something meaningful. Hell, maybe I won't make a difference to the world...but at least it will make a difference to me. So you can pretty much figure out my sig.
Go find a meaning.
Things to do. (Score:2)
stress sucks (Score:2)
I've been a Systems Analyst in the IT department of a pretty large company for a couple of years now.
Things have been getting hectic for the past 6 months nows (deadlines, new projects, less staff more work and so on).
It got to the point where I was working 18 hour days, not sleeping, using recreational drugs and alcohol as a means of escape and forgetting about the pressures of work. Don't get me wrong where I work is a cool place, i make good money, the work is interesting, the fridge is well stocked with Coke = ) I found myself becoming more and more surly towards my coworkers, accomplishing less and less, my brain reached 'frying' point. But a couple of weeks ago I made a decision to leave, and its such a huge weight off my shoulders, i'm going to Thailand for a few months to hang out and chill on an island somewhere.
People are saying to me 'what about your career?' or 'what are you going to do for money?' to be honest i don't think its worth worrying about, what use is a career/money if you don't have a mind?
At the end of the day, there's more important stuff than work, so if its making you unhappy, get the hell out, don't hang around and get stuck in a vicious cycle, i guarantee you'l feel better for it
the SH_MN
Re:Better conditions == whining. (Score:2)
I used to work on a dairy farm. Up at 4:30am to milk the cows, work all day, start night milking at 4:30pm, work half the evening and go in at 10:00pm. And that was WORK! We're talking heavy lifting, bale toting, feed carrying, grunt laboring work. You sound like the type that sits on his ass all the time complaining about the fact that nobody ever wants to work anymore.
I would probably still be doing that job if it wasn't for a personal problem (it was a family farm and something very, very bad happened between me and my uncle). So don't tell us that none of us IT workers know what it's like to work. I can still bust ass when I need to, and I usually do. I guess that explains why I work about fifty hours a week at my primary job and about twenty-five to thirty at little odd jobs I set up for myself.
If you want to make a living, you have to work. Get over yourself.
Dependant upon the nature of the job. (Score:2)
No-one else in my team was really capable of handling the serious calls. I was often left to these calls on my own, and would frequently have to work extra hours.
No thanks off the customers for resolving problems, just under intense pressure from them whenever things did go wrong.
The supplier of the software I dealt with lost a lot of staff, and were often unable to handle problems. The local office was hopeless, and the main office would take days to resolve issues, if at all. I often knew more about the software than those at the manufacturers.
Some customers couldn't think for themselves, and required my company to fix everything. I once had to make an 8-hour journey and then work all night to perform a simple, but time consuming, OS re-install, just because the customer couldn't be bothered to read a manual.
Management changed, mainly due to a merger. The new Boss didn't understand what I did, and assumed that major fixes could be implemented in seconds. He also wanted to dump the technology I was dealing with, feeling that we were a hindranced to his department, yet we earnt a vast amount of revenue. He also tried to change the department into first line support.
The environment was all wrong. There were up to 6 of us in a fairly small room, with no partitions, headsets or other comforts. There wasn't much space, particularly if running test equipment. I needed some peace when dealing with major problems, but it never happened. We were due to move to a much larger office, but it never materialised.
Salesmen selling products to customers that clearly wern't suitable for the task they were sold.
We also had to deal with the problems of other departments, such as one which sold firewalls but wasn't able to configure them.
Re:It's nothing special to IT (Score:5)
Human nature, though, tends to lead us to accomplish more and live and work in a better environment. The rich boss of your Fortune 500 company didn't say "I make six figures now, so I'm going to just calm down and cool off, because I have it better than most people". No -- of course not! He said "I want more. I want better. This is good, but I deserve more". And now he's probably making eight or nine figures -- and still plowing along, from his big office, company limo and private jet.
No matter how good anyone has it, they usually strive for something better. It's just human nature. When I was stuck in a tech-farm making $11/hr, I thought I'd be happy finding a permenant gig making at least $50k. I figured that I'd feel like I finally "made it" once I hit that point.
Here I am a year later, making closer to six figures doing something I enjoy (but wouldn't want to do forever) and it isn't enough. I still want something more.
Luckily, I not only work for one of the top three giants of this industry, but I get to telecommute from out of my house, 600 miles away.
In an age when most of our jobs could be done from home, it seems like a petty issue of control by run-of-the-mill upper-management to leverage their power by making sure their employees are working right under their eyeballs in a little cube in a building that nobody wants to be confined in.
Management should grow up and remember that employees have lives. If they can do the job from home and consistantly perform well under those circumstances, by all means -- get off your high horse and send them home. You'll save them and yourself stress and money and probably increase productivity and loyalty. Since I've been telecommuting, other companies have offered me substantially more but I've turned them down. I like where I am. But if I were doing this same job from a cube in a big stuffy building like a drone, I'd have taken the other offer already.
Hell yeah, we have life much better than a lot of people. We could be digging ditches or flipping burgers. Not that those jobs are insignificant, but I for one have tried the back-breaking labor thing. I'll pass, thank you. I've done the burger-flipping thing in highschool, too -- talk about a brain-drain. I have to be somewhere that I'm more than a turning mechanism for a spatula.
What written law says that if you do a job for someone, it must be done in a specific place between certain hours under a million other constraints that have nothing to do with the direct job? When was the last time Double-Day or Viking told Stephen King that they'd like to publish his book, but only if he came to their business between 8am and 5pm every weekday and typed away at his laptop in a little cube down the hall from the editor's office?
It just seems rediculous. Sure, you have to be on-site to pour a foundation for a house or cut someone's brain open and poke around, but you can write code or documentation or QA a product from anywhere. Some things can't be done remotely, but life is short and as long as the job is accomplished to the employer's satisfaction, they should clue in and be a little more flexible. If you're a billionaire businessman, your company problem means everything to you. But most of your employees couldn't give less of a fuck. It's just a paycheck. And no matter how many stock options you give them or how much ass-kissing you do, you may not be able to buy their loyalty -- and certainly not their lives. You may find that a competitor is going to woo your top performers away from you not because of a bigger paycheck or a pinball machine down the hall from their office, but by simply letting them do their job in the most productive and comfortble manner possible.
Okay. I'm done ranting. I have it pretty good, too and don't want to fuck with my karma too much (real life karma, not Slashdot karma!).
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seumas.com
Report not about IT (Score:2)
Of course most of the replies here will be "I'm not depressed", "I'm happy with my job", "Computers are cool" and so on. But it's not about you. I think that computer induced stress is a reality for non-IT people working on computers. But it's not about computers, it's about the way they are used in the corporate world. Let me explain.
Computers have been a tool for corporate management to "industrialize" (is that a word?) white collar work. Before widespread availability of computers, white collar work was made by people who had a knowledge of their job, who were highly trained compared to industry workers. Now, the knowledge, the workflow are in the IT infrastructure and white collar workers are a commodity. You can fire one a day and "train" another one in a few day. You can pay them low salaries (IT professionals are well paid because they are highly trained, but the overall salaries of white collar workers are lower now they were 30 years ago).
And some time, we are guilty too when we teach to people we train to use computers that "the computer cannot make mistakes", that they are the one guilty of misusing these well designed applications, they are the "lusers".
I think that's an important factor in the evolution of OS's and software in general. A lot of people are talking about "computer illiteracy", but that's what management want, thay don't want computer litterate office workers, they want low-paid, expandable ones.
I'm currently really learning regular expressions and I think that's a tool most user should (and can) learn, that's one of the tools you need for everyday computer work, but you don't have them in MS Office, nor in most mainstream software.
People who use computers (well, everybody now) in their work need to learn the basic of programming and how the internal work. We need to realize this just like a century ago we realized that it was better for society that everybody learned to read and write.
People need to win over the computer sometimes.
Re:Don't dismiss stress casually. (Score:2)
The effect of working out and going to TKD have had on my concentration and overall happiness is really great.
I work some insane hours but I draw the line at having at least two or three hours a day just for myself. As it is im feeling a bit crazed (one of those 80 hour weeks oh.. its only friday...) So maybe anyone who does not believe mentally exhausitng yourself for 18 hours a day should try it before saying shit like that.
I think everyone should find it in their best intrests to do some sort of phsyical excersize especially with a desk job.
If your feeling run down always and constantly drinking soda or whatever to stay awake, get high on life, it really works.
Compare like working out in the gym 3 months to drinking Dew and coffee all day for energy boost and there is no comparison. Working out has given me tons more energy for lack of a better way to say it a good way to clear my mind.
Jeremy
Re:Better conditions == whining. (Score:2)
It hurts a little, sure, but tell that to someone who was but into a bodycast by falling rubble and they'll laugh at you, right?
Okay, now repeat this ritual with the splinter every weekday (and the occasional weekend or extra hours) and see if you can keep it up for years.
The point of my rambling? The small stuff doesn't look like much, but it adds up damned fast.
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
Re:Better conditions == whining. (Score:2)
ask yourself where the copper in your CAT 5 came from...
We now return you to your normal service
Re:Most people (Score:2)
Perhaps that's because everyone around you is also impaired.
wonders never ceasing (Score:5)
My .02,
Re:And it's all caused by management (Score:2)
Re:"...whether breeding...is worth it" (Score:2)
True, I've experienced the it's-different-when-it's-your-own epiphany despite not believing in it up till that moment. But if you choose it, raising your own little worker bee certainly is worth giving up your life for (as she puts it). You get an awful lot back.
Given my viscerally-negative reaction whenever I encounter babies or kids, how on earth could I, in good conscience, "have one to see if my reaction was different when it was mine"? I couldn't do that either. No responsible adult could. I don't know whom you're quoting, but I''m glad it's not me. It's one thing to date somebody a few times to see if you're going to like her, but it's entirely another to test-drive parenthood.My point, really, is that raising a kid can be an impediment to choosing other callings, or it can be a calling you choose in itself -- potentially every bit as satisfying as kernel hacking, in its way. The different choices you and I we made certainly prove that point. But Queen V seems to regard people as procreating rather mindlessly, and I suggest that it's not always that way. Some of us take our happy accidents and our deliberate choices very seriously.(By the way -- it seems to me investments are sacrifices. You choose to do without something now to get something else later. Sacrifices are different from waste, though.)It's nothing special to IT (Score:5)
The fact is that the IT industry is nothing special when it comes to white-collar work - you'll find stressed and harried individuals in any office. But it's still a hell of a lot nicer environment than working in some factory or sweatshop is like a large proportion of people do.
The fact is that sure, working in an office under battery farm conditions isn't exactly going to be good for your stress levels and comfort, but it's still an improvement on what you could have expected even twenty years ago. People back then would have been amazed at some of the things that people are complaining about today, and they'd have a point.
Whilst we may bitch and moan about where we work, remember that a) most of the world works in conditions we wouldn't keep a dog in, and b) most of the rest of our country's work in conditions we wouldn't work in. Really, despite all the whining, we've got it good.
Well of Dispair (Score:2)
Re:Cube War (Score:2)
Second rule of Cube War: You do not talk about Cube War.
Contentment (Score:3)
I don't think it has anything to do with IT as a phenomenon in itself. I think it has more to do with the common drive present in nearly all non-communist non-socialist individuals to achieve a high level of success in whatever their chosen field happens to be. Often though, when people climb to the top of their respective ladders they realise that the view isn't so good after all, and they wondered why they bothered to expend the effort to climb up there in the first place.
Thoughts such as this often lead to depression, and when on top of this you're expected to every single day except for perhaps four weeks of the year, go to work and do as your boss tells you, even if a lot of the time whatever your boss happens to be telling you to do is just plain stupid, this also leads to stress.
I think it's very shortsighted to blame this entire phenomenon on the IT industry. As far as I can see it isn't a problem that occured because of the IT industry, it's a problem that has been exposed because of the nature of the world today.
Fifty years ago , the amount of information available to your average person was not nearly as high as what is available to your average person today. I think this amount of information and the fact that so many people out there are absorbing it is perhaps leading to a critical mass of people wondering what the hell it's all about.
Another reason IT might be getting blamed for this is because people in this industry have an even higher amount of information than your average person who perhaps only researches subjects that they've specifically seen on their local news program via a search engine.
Nearly everyone who I've ever worked with in this industry, if not keeping their brains occupied with the intricacies of their chosen profession, seem to me to be primarily dissatisfied with their lot in life. Yeah, sure, you've got your moments where the whole thing just sounds like an excerpt from a User Friendly comic strip, but when all that's over, nothing really makes any sense anymore.
But hey, I don't have any answers.
Re:wonders never ceasing (Score:2)
Re:A counterexample (Score:2)
If you're doing stupid manual work (i used to work in bread factory putting buns in plastic bags all day), your mind is free to wander and you can think The Things in Life through, thus maintaining a good mental healt.
What I've seen until know is, that if you do stupid meaningles work (like, say, most marketing is), that nevertheless require your full concentration, you never have time to "clean up" your mind and think things through.
Maybe one just needs time to think for one self.
Re:How much of what you guys are doing really matt (Score:5)
I wake up every morning with the knowledge that I'm making good money but for all the stress and overload, I'm not making one damned person's life significantly better in any tangible way.
So someone's email server is back up because of me. Or their HA deployment is smooth and successful. Good for them. And good for my company's reputation.
But honestly, who gives a damn? What kind of karma does life dish out for those who keep machines running so other big companies can keep the flow of information(money) moving steadily?
Even more annoying is that I have to deal with a lot of companies that completely contradict my political/ethical opinions. I'm only compelled to help WeFilterStuffSoYouDon'tHaveToBeAParent has a smooth transition between one version of a product and another because I don't want to get grief from my management. Or how about some media magnate who is known for taking over the world? Do I really have a personal interest in seeing them successful? Damn, I doubt if the person I'm working with at any given time (from whatever company I'm assisting) cares any more about it than I do either!
But for all the ranting and whining, it comes down to the personal question that almost everyone asks themselves at some point in their lives:
Am I making a difference?
Too often, the answer is no. Unfortunately, it's hard to survive on the salary of a saintly life. And if you live in the Silicon Valley or the Silicon Forrest, the desire to live with a roof over your head (even a leaking one) precludes any ambition to be generous and kind with your time and actions.
Helping big business is rewarded. Truly meaningful endeavors are not.
I bet a lot of people tell themselves the same thing I do -- Someday I'll have enough money and time to help someone.
But how many of us actually will? Perhaps we have the best of intentions, but we'll probably never be financially secure enough that we can dedicate more of our time and energy to something worthy. Some of us will do worthwhile things outside of work, but others of us have no outside of work. We're always working or resting so that we can work more.
If we can't offer anything meaningful in terms of the human condition, perhaps we can at least do something that interests us and be in charge of our own lives? A lot of us have the dream of owning our own company, pursuing whatever interest fancies us -- be it video games or some weird new peripheral device or a better snowboard or our cookie's based on an old family recipe. Even that is a far cry for most of us. Yet, it would be very fulfilling and we wouldn't have that dreaded concern that we're not really going anywhere important. It's unsettling to have the quality of your life depending on someone else's choices and decisions. Not only the quality of your life, but the individual characteristics of each day. Someone deciding when you can take a break, how long your lunch can be, what your title will be, how loud your music can be or what kind of shirt you can wear into the office... Taking control of yourself and your career can be very satisfying.
I wonder if it comforts anyone to know that their place in the world may not be to do anything truly important or meaningful. Knowing that, instead, their purpose is to waste their life away in a stressing unimportant job so that the president of their company can afford to spend more time on his yacht or founding his sixth billion-dollar corporation or buying his seventh house on a fourth continant?
Oh well. Most of us are all talk and no action anyway. I'm pretty sure I am.
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seumas.com
Re:Don't dismiss stress casually. (Score:2)
The absence of breaks must be one of the biggest factors. If you spend 4 or 6 hours in front of a computer, not leaving it for a minute, trying to figure out why it isn't doing what it should, poring through dumps and graphs and listings, this is not only going to knacker your eyes and your back, it's mentally exhausting and can have serious effects on your emotional balance and even physical health.
Employers need to FORCE staff to take screen breaks; to provide recreational areas for staff to chill out in so they don't spend their breaks surfing the web; pay for regular health check-ups; ensure healthy food is available on-site, not just vending machines, coffee and chocolate bars; and monitor staff workloads. This isn't interfering PC liberalism, this is good business practice.
Re:Link to Relevant Past Slashdot Articles (Score:5)
I'm an American that is working in Australia. I've been working for the company for almost two years and I've got at least 6 weeks of vaction time I can use any time now. Next week I'm off to Tahiti for a week and a 1/2. Some of the nearby islands there have no power, no phone and nothing to do all day but be a bum in the sun.
Wow. Almost 2 weeks with out the phone rinning, the pager going off at 4:00am or bitching email. Sure I won't be able to read
Oh, we can do that in 1 month (Score:2)
I'm currently in a job where this has happened repeatedly over the last 4 months. Invariably, my project manager (yutz with an MBA) tells the team that they're fighting for us to shift those dates. The dates never move and I and my colleagues end up working 80 hour weeks for the 2 weeks before the date. After the deadline is reached (with varying degrees of success) we are once again told by the project manager that she will work hard to sell management on more realistic dates. And then we start again...
Re:How much of what you guys are doing really matt (Score:2)
They set up a can't win situation and found the depressives recognized it and the normals didn't. In other words, depressives' world view is more realistic if the world is stacked against them.
If you've ever lived with a person with major depression, or have ever been one you know that depression makes you twist everything that happens to you or is said to you into something bad. It's the psychic equivalent of thrashing -- a process that feeds upon itself until it is unstoppable.
If you put me in a box.... (Score:3)
2.high bandwidth w/no censorware
3.herb
4.bong
5.lighter
6.a door w/sign "go away"
Then leave me the f*** alone.Youl'll get those TPS reports when you get them.
Correlation is not the same as causation (Score:3)
Computers do not "cause information overload." NEVER has anyone been innocently sitting in a cubicle and a computer started forcing information into them.
People are stressed out and feel information overload due to the WAY THEY WORK. Now, the way they work is largely driven by the way they are
managed.
So, bad management leads to bad work habits, lead to stress.
What I do matters... (Score:2)
On the work side, it's great to see one of my (memory) chip designs actually working in a computer. Of course there are other competing chips, but this was one I worked on.
While patents are a questionable thing in many respects, my employer expects them of me. In another perspective, they are a piece of posterity. It's even better when you see one of your patents get referenced. That's when you know your work went on, at least a little.
How much of what you guys are doing really matters (Score:5)
Nothing I did really changed anything. Not even the sales figures of the brands, since the competitors were making equally clever sites. The product of all my work and all the worries about deadlines and stuff was - essentially - zero. Money was just transfered from one person to another. Thats it
So apart from fighting the good fight against riaa and their hired thugs, what matters? Can you all honestly say that your job is meaningful?
Besides letting out this cynical gas, I think my point is that IMHO nobody would be stressed if they were doing truly important work. At least something that was important to themselves?
Re:Of course (Score:2)
Re:where'd the point go? (Score:2)
Re:Compare to "Real work" (Score:2)
Yes, factory work was repetitive, mind-numbing, and very physical, but compared to sys adminining the collection of NT boxes designed by idiots, for idiots, here, it was bliss.
Fortunately, I've now found a new job, doing better things, in a nicer environment, for more money. This couldn't have come too soon as I had slipped into deep depression about the crapness of my job, and I don't even work in a cubicle.
A Torrent of Creeping Psychological Torture (Score:2)
"People are having an increasingly difficult time dealing with their email, their instant messages and voicemail, their faxes and FedEx's, and the constant demands to understand technology that seemingly changes every day at the same time that they are expected to produce better things faster," Abel said.
This is very much in essence a subtle exhibition of the cruelty seen in the famous "Pavlov's Dog" experiment. The build-up (in the real-life phenomenon on which is reported in the above article) is slow, the pressure indirect, but the (perception of the) impossibility of going forward or retreating is still inescapable.
Rooted deeply in any living being is the urgent need to feel as if its own life is within its own control. People have enough intelligence that they can suffer greatly from subtleties of loss of control that would be beyond the perceptual horizon of a box turtle, say, or a dog. It's psychological torture, no less real for being "low-grade", and it can go on and on for years, eventually causing odd mental breakdowns that may be very difficult to accurately trace to this perceived lack of fundamental control over one's own life. This phenomenon will grow even worse as even more apparently relevant information pours over us all, demanding immediate attention and ever-more complex responses with often subtle penalties for fuzzily defined multiple partial failures.
This is a major concern, and a greatly underrated one, I think. It's in my opinion solvable by the same technologies that cause the problem with which to begin, but it will take time to develop and deploy alternative methodologies of channeling and automating the handling of much of this relevant information so it becomes a very controllable, if loud, background roar.
The Human Condition (Score:2)
As far as I can tell, human beings that are not in extreme circumstances have about the same amount of ups and downs no matter what they do. It seems a certain amount of stress and discontent is inherent to the human condition.
Re:Link to Relevant Past Slashdot Articles (Score:2)
Frankly, I went to Moorea last year for a week (near Tahiti), and it was the best vacation ever. We didn't do jack. We just layed around the beach drinking, watching the owner of the resort shoot the wild dogs with his BB gun.
Re:wonders never ceasing (Score:2)
Because I have to smile at every freaking person who walks by, and have no way of stopping people who want to strike up conversations.
My answer... (Score:2)
Well, I'm a musician.
I earn a living as a programmer because coding -- yea, even coding under pressure -- is fun. I'm doing web production stuff myself, and I am well aware is it meaningless fluff. But it's fun to do, intellectually satisfying, and pays me enough money to indulge in my obscure musical instruments habit.
I don't work >40hrs a week. My evenings and weekends are for being a musician, and my clients understand that unless by very special arrangement they cannot impinge on my Real Work.
I see a lot of people in this thread talking about "getting meaningful work", but when they specify, they are talking about swapping *careers* into fields which are basically human services. I have trouble seeing any geek enjoying such work.
The problem is that you guys have internalized the idea that "meaningful" == "noble, self-sacrificing, human services jobs". Actually, there's lots of other options.
I recommend Art (it works for me). Even if you're not interested in making Art yourself, there's often very satisfying and important support roles geeks can play in Art: sound engineering for live musical acts, lighting for theater and performance dance, etc. Anyone who helps bring Shakespeare to the masses needs no further justification for their life: they have earns all the oxygen they will ever breathe.
It may not seem like a big, grand, noble self-sacrificing gesture to, say, do the lighting for your local ballet school's Nutcracker (you'd be wrong, actually :), but it does the trick: howsoever humble it may seem, you do feel the "meaningfulness" of helping Art, when you do it. It makes a difference.
Re:Correlation is not the same as causation (Score:2)
Thank you.
So many articles these days have little basis in logic. You are correct, they are guilty of a critical fallacy in their argument.
My take? I think the reason is simple: People are depressed, stressed, and disconnected because companies keep hiring ineffective managers who manage people instead of projects. That is to say, some of them do at least one right. Morale is a direct result of a person's situation. Managment should make sure that not only the project gets done, but that the employee is "up" to the task. Few things come close to the crushing defeat of two months work caused by your manager offhandedly scrapping a portion of a project.
"...whether breeding...is worth it" (Score:2)
Physical jobs vs cube jockies (Score:2)
I think one of the major stress differences is exercise. In a physical "mind numbing" job you may have stress, but you have lifting, moving, or doing something to help your body burn off the chemicals produced when you stress to use some of the fight of flight. Sitting at a cube and stressing allows those same chemicals to build up and then start producing side effects(upset stomach, rapid heart beat ...)
I find the best thing when I am down and or stressed is to get out of the office and walk 2 or 3 miles during lunch. It helps.
Perspective, Please (Score:2)
I haven't been particularly able to take my line of work (IT security & infrastructure consulting) very seriously ever since I've started. Like many people, I'm in it because I enjoy the technology, and to be honest, a bit of the prestige and money and job security that go with it (admit it, deep down you do too.)
The whole thing is pretty well symbolized by the fact that I am a reasonably organized person who tries to keep track of his emails and correspondence. However, I appear to be somehow cursed to regularly have my mailspool and paper files blown away/deleted/thrown out beyond recovery.
Know what? Who cares. If anyone wants something from you, they'll get back to you! As a fairly intelligent person, I trust myself to remember and prioritize the really important tasks, and to do these professionally and on time. Plus, as an IT guy you can generally get away with it, since most of the "fuzzies" still perceive "us" as brilliant, introverted, chaotic weirdos, whose occasional lapses in organization can be excused as long as stuff works.
For all those of you who're stressed, I highly recommend this sort of "accidental" catharsis from time to time--it really lets you giggle a little bit about the suits throwing buzzwords around and trying to whip you into a frothing stress.
devil's advocate: question for parents (Score:3)
With that in mind, would you try harder to follow your dreams if you never had kids? Or would you still be working 9 to 5? Why?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Re:Cube War (Score:3)
--
Re:Better conditions == whining. (Score:4)
What would a minor be doing working in a mineshaft? Don't they have labor laws against that sort of thing?
Has to get worse before it can get better (Score:2)
10 months ago a large part of the big people on my project quit. Orginially I thought I would have to work harder (or quit) to pick up the slack, but now I see that I only have to work harder to clean up the mess they left orginialy.
To be fair to those who left the mess, they were sheilding me from upper management that was incompitent. When several of them turned in their resignation in the same week it got the CEOs attention, the management who was causing the problem was forced to resign, and things have been looking up since, though until a couple months ago it SEEMed they were worse.
In other words if you leave you can force them to see the problems they should fix. So as a junior technical person I beg of you quit for my sake. The rest of us are better off in the long run when you leave. Not always of course, but if you can't fix the problem at least expose it.
where'd the point go? (Score:2)
Ack! No, I don't think that's what I said (or meant). I simply wonder, based on what the previous previous previous etc. poster said about raising kids being the reason he worked a job he may or may not love, whether raising kids IS a good enough reason to labor and toil and sacrifice, when your kids may only ever grow up to throw their lives away for kids of their own, ad infinitum. Don't get me wrong, you guys, I'm glad my parents wanted me, okay?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Re:A counterexample (Score:2)