Work | Way of the Mind

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Saying No

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on October 14, 2005

in choices and work

. 8 Comments

It seems to be kind of a lost art, these days.

I’ve just read a great article about it: Saying No.

Excerpt:

Saying no isn’t easy, but it’s a required skill if you wish to have any degree of focus in your life. If you say yes too often, you’ll likely fall into the common trap of saying yes to the good while simultaneously saying no to the best.

There is no unconditional yes. Whenever you say yes, you’re also uttering a background no. Whenever you allocate time to one pursuit, you say no to everything else you could have done with that time.

Blog: The Martian Anthropologist

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on October 10, 2005

in happiness, religion, society and work

. 4 Comments

A blog which I discovered through BlogExplosion, and which I now read regularly, is The Martian Anthropologist. Here’s an example of a recent article:

When is the last time you saw a bird slaving away for 50 hours a week? Has it ever occurred to you to ask why humans have to, but the other animals on this planet don’t have to?
There is a lie that most humans have bought into; that they must work constantly until they are too old to enjoy life, and only then can they stop working without guilt.
Working until you are 65 at a job you don’t particularly like, then retiring, is a lie. And it has been a lie for so long, people now think that there is no other way.

(full article here)

Job burnout

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on September 27, 2005

in work

. 3 Comments

Very nice article.

Excerpt:
“Years ago if you put in long hours and worked hard for a company, you were rewarded with gradual promotions, longer vacations, medical insurance, and a healthy retirement plan. Most people expected to work 20 years or more at one company. Today to get ahead and save for a reasonable retirement, workers often must hop from company to company to get a promotion. Hard work and dedication to a job well done are no longer seen as ways to protect a job. Everyone is expendable, thanks to many employers’ short-term, economic goals. And there’s no incentive to work long hours. It won’t likely pay off for the worker in the long run.”

Really, really great article. Everyone should read it.

A job: trade, favor or duty?

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on September 13, 2005

in work

. 2 Comments

Assuming you work, how, exactly, do you see your job?

I believe it should be a trade. A trade is something done by mutual consent - both sides should believe that they’re “coming on top” (note: not necessarily deceiving the other side!), that what they’re getting is worth more to them than what they’re giving. For instance, the worker may think something like “I like doing this, so if I’m paid to do it, so much the better”, while the employer thinks “what I pay him is nothing compared to the money his work makes me.”

To me, that’s how a job should be. If both sides are happy, fine. If one isn’t, the trade should be terminated. (I know socialists and other collectivists will hate me for that, because they believe a worker should be able to hang on to the job when the employer doesn’t want him any more, because he “needs” the job…)

If an employer doesn’t want or need a worker anymore, he should fire him (with appropriate compensation, unless there was “just cause”, like him not doing his part of the contract, namely, working). If a worker doesn’t like the working conditions, or the relationship between work and pay, he should leave (after finding a new job, of course). To me, this is obvious.

To most people, that is inconceivable.

Continue reading ‘A job: trade, favor or duty?’

Work: why a good sysadmin has a lot of free time

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on September 12, 2005

in work

. 0 Comments

This article is a bit too technical for this blog, so I won’t post it here, but it’s related to the previous “keeping busy” ones. If you’re curious, feel free to read it.

Work: being productive… or keeping busy? (part 2)

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on September 9, 2005

in work

. 7 Comments

(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…

Continue reading ‘Work: being productive… or keeping busy? (part 2)’

Work: being productive… or keeping busy?

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on September 8, 2005

in work

. 2 Comments

(NOTE: I wrote this one for The Tlog, but I think it also fits in WotM.)

I don’t know if I’ve been unlucky in most of the jobs I had, or if it’s like this everywhere, but, if you work in IT, does it look to you as if your boss doesn’t really care about your achieving objectives, being productive, having everything working smoothly, tasks being done quickly and efficiently, etc. - he only cares about whether you’re busy all the time or not?

Or, to put it in another way: were you hired, and are you being paid to do your job, perform your assigned tasks efficiently, keep everything running smoothly, anticipate problems and make sure they don’t happen, optimize what can be optimized, solve problems as they appear, help users with problems, and so on… or were you hired to be busy 7-8 hours a day?

Continue reading ‘Work: being productive… or keeping busy?’

The Potted Plant Test

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on September 2, 2005

in competence and work

. 4 Comments

As a Unix/Linux sysadmin, I’ve worked at many places, compared to many people I know, who have been where they are for 5 years or more. I’ve done several kinds of jobs (thankfully, most of them related to my skills), and met many colleagues… and bosses.

And I tend to have a problem with the latter.

Not real “conflicts”, I don’t usually have them. But I’ve been in several places (and, indeed, am in one now) where everything would be almost perfect - colleagues, environment, the work itself - except for one imbecile who ruins everything - and who happens to be my boss.

For examples of what these bosses are like, see this entry on my wiki. But, in short, they take all the joy out of our work, because we quickly learn that, by being good, they don’t think they hired a good worker - instead, they see us as a threat. So they try to smother us with stupid, useless tasks, like making reports (and reports about reports - a colleague of mine is now doing one, and she surely is more patient than I am).

Continue reading ‘The Potted Plant Test’

The Fast Worker’s Dilemma

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on July 28, 2005

in honesty and work

. 2 Comments

(This is another one from my wiki, slightly edited)

The Fast Worker’s Dilemma is something which intrigues me, and which gets different responses and opinions from different people.

Consider this scenario: you work in a factory, in a production line. The factory produces “Qwerties“. The average production rate for each worker is 10 Qwerties per day.

Now, assume that you find out that you can produce 10 Qwerties in just half a day. That is, you are able to work twice as fast as anyone else, with no loss in quality. What is, to you, the proper procedure, then?

Continue reading ‘The Fast Worker’s Dilemma’

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