(NOTE: reading part 1 first may be a good idea. :))
To explore the “acting busy” vs. “doing actual work” theme, I want to share (without the sordid details, of course) a situation I’ve been in.
A few years ago, I worked as a sysadmin in a company which had about 20-30 Linux servers, and about the same number of Windows (NT 4 and 2000, at the time) servers. There were two separate teams of sysadmins, one for each type of servers, though both teams had the same boss, and worked in the same room.
The two teams, however, had a very different philosophy of work…
First, except for the initial server installations, almost all the work of the Linux team was made remotely, using ssh. Except for coffee/lunch/toilet breaks, we were at our desks for most of the time. On the other hand, the Windows team did their work inside the datacenter, physically on the servers (at the time, remote desktop utilities were less used than they are today).
When the Linux team encountered a problem in a server, we would figure out what the problem was, what caused it, and how to prevent it from happening again in the future - most problems, indeed, only happened once. The Windows guys, however, were of the philosophy that the only thing that mattered was to quickly make the services available again - by rebooting. If it happened every week - or, indeed, every day, tough. They had, they believed, to be getting paid for something, right?
The result of this was that we Linux guys were, most of the time, calmly sitting on our desks, and had a lot of free time (which we sometimes used for research, for staying informed about our field of work, for trying out new solutions on test servers, and so on - but which we also used, sometimes, simply for resting, or for browsing non-work sites). The Windows guys, on the other hand, were often inside the datacenter, most or all of them at the same time, putting out the latest “fire” - which would likely repeat itself in a couple of days, since they never attacked the cause, only rebooted the servers. And when it happen, they made sure they looked very alarmed - and that everyone saw them (there were other non-sysadmin teams in the same room) running to the datacenter to solve the latest crash.
The Windows servers had a lot of downtime, but the Linux ones’ was almost nil.
Now… guess which team the bosses preferred. Which team was seen as “competent” and “hard working”. Which team got promotions, pay raises, and shiny new laptops.
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Maybe the point should’ve been brought up then
Ask said boss to run a test on the servers for a month, or something
The main issue is people’re used to the idea that working requires motion!
I think justice could’ve been made in such case if you all had put up a boardgame in the server and took turns throwing the dice or something (playful example).
The point is to complain about being a victim of discrimination when you actually are! The Linux team would be totally right to complain about their work not being as appreciated as the Windows team’s.
In the USA, if the boss didn’t do anything about it, they’d sue (and with a good reason!)!
Asking “Mr xxxxxxxx, why aren’t we earning as much as our Windows counterparts?” would’ve been a pretty good start, with the whole team present, too.
Anyway, it’s 7:49 AM… and a big butterfly has just risen from the dead, so I’ll have to go and kill it… again.
This situation is usually caused by a boss that doesn’t know the detail of the job his/her staff do, or a weak boss.
The unknowledgeable boss figures that people sat on their asses can’t be working hard. Most of us these days are knowledge workers, which means plenty of time either thinking or researching, but the unknowledgeable boss can’t tell the difference between thinking about solutions and thinking about college football, so he prefers to see manual work. He is bad for the business.
The weak boss knows the details of the job, but also knows that his own boss does not. So rather than have to defend what he knows is good work, he goes for the easy option of not having to defend bad work. The weak boss is more annoying because he knows what is right but doesn’t do it. The weak boss is bad for business.
The solution is artisan management. This was the German model for the last 200 years and has always served them very well. Engineering companies have an engineer as CEO, chemical companies have chemists. It has been changing over the last 20 years with the US influence, and it is probably not a change for the better.
I believe you’re quite right on your criticism.
Hey, they’ve managed to bring themselves up from their defeat in the 2 world wars. Today, Germany is one of the strongest countries worldwide.
We should learn from them, eh? (starting world wars excluded [no xenophobic remark intended])
Gerald: great reply. I hadn’t thought of it in that way: that either he’s incompetent and doesn’t understand me, or he does understand, but knows his own boss doesn’t, and doesn’t want the effort of explaining to him that “this guy’s work is technical, not physical, ya see?”.
dude you know what I’m talking about! soy desole