Let's bitch about our stupid, annoying co-workers

"ok, I'll start doing a halfassed job then?"

haha that was my comment to some of my friends - "is this my incentive to start screwing shit up"?

Dispiriting when half-assedness is the general norm in a workplace, and simply doing your job is somehow seen as going above and beyond.

I'd say it's bloody great tbh

if we're gonna bring the system down from within then apathy is a key tactic

enh i can't be bothered to bring the system down tbh

I have new workplace, which brings with it a lot of new smart people with no common sense. Don't scrum in the gangways, don't leave just a tiny gap so that, say, someone coming back from the kitchen carrying a cup of water is tempted to squeeze through it but only succeeds in knocking over the nearby coatstand which is laden with about 300 coats.

(I caught it before it got much beyond 10 degrees from vertical but not without losing some of the water all over them and me)

i've definitely felt in some jobs that doing less would be better and would make it easier for a lot of people around me - but since it's contract work for the state i can't really acquiesce. it's never been an issue though as far as getting extra work goes. in my last job my constant asking/begging/pleading for more work became a subject of gentle mockery after a while. deems prob otm overall though.

like i mean i've never been given extra work or overloaded no matter how much i asked - it's like the concept of producing good work quickly and regularly is banned. fuck it tho, i'm happy to swim against that system and have that as my reputation...

the thing that frustrates me is that when it's slow I actually do the same (request extra work) because I hate being bored and trying to fill time, and usually they comply and then I'm good to go. you'd think that'd be enough that they would return the favor and give the project I don't have time to do to somebody else but they like giving me the "hard ones" even though there are plenty of other capable people on the team who probably wonder "why am I not good enough to get it?" each time they get passed over.

I asked my boss (who I do like a lot, mind you) re: this project, what would happen if I got flattened by a bus tomorrow, and he paused and said "...they'd get by". so I'm like - "well then, let's have them pretend this happened starting tomorrow then".

I hate being bored and trying to fill time

isn't that what ilx is for

dunno if you ever entirely win if you're doing more than the ambient level of work. teams should be naturally balanced by ability tho they seldom are ime. and the idea others can't do certain work is just bs.

i had a job before were doing environmental/farming government content and things like "how to take your dog on holiday" would be given to somebody who couldn't really do the job, while "how to dispose of f-gas" or something would go to one of the people who were good at understanding hard concepts and putting them into plain english.

thousands of people needed to read the dog holiday piece and a tiny few would read about how to dispose of f-gas. but since both had to be done they ended up passing the difficult one to the person who'll actually complete something at the end rather than being suffocated by the gassy fumes. but the more important piece was still the dog one, and a brilliant dog piece was still infinitely more important than a passable one on the gas, no pun intended.

bit industry-specific there but my exp of having that "if i got hit by a bus tomorrow" feeling is that even if everyone knows it's true it's really hard to get any value out of it or cause change by pointing to it. they might realise that when you leave or else things will just get worse, they may not even notice imo. i've worked in a few places where the atmos and morale and standard went off a cliff and i've never seen anyone do anything about it - i just left in the end. it's hard to build a good atmosphere and so easy to lose one.

tldr my entire belief system

xpost btw being bored and having to fill time is the worst possible thing at work. it's exhausting. i am far, far less tired after a busy day than after a day flicking between tabs.

it's like the concept of producing good work quickly and regularly is banned. fuck it tho, i'm happy to swim against that system and have that as my reputation...

OTM. This is what I was trying to say earlier but I was too half-assed.

isn't that what ilx is for

mannnnn then that becomes a habit I can't break when I *am* busy!

yeah, imo if you're the guy who can do the higher-level tasks, you're either going to pick up the smallest things as time fillers so that you can jump on the important work, or something that can be delegated if something more important comes up

if you're really important or can get people to think you are, you can fill time between monumental tasks by honing your craft and reading up on the topic or proposing pilot projects

or posting to ilx, that is also a good filler between monumental tasks

I will say I haven't had a "non-busy" time in about six months, so it's starting to become a problem I wish I had again.

(I realize I'm undermining my argument by posting here during work hours) ;)

in May I will be traveling the entire month (though I'm one of the few on the team who doesn't have kids or isn't married so it's easier for me to get away and I kind of enjoy it)

yeah, imo if you're the guy who can do the higher-level tasks, you're either going to pick up the smallest things as time fillers so that you can jump on the important work, or something that can be delegated if something more important comes up

don't think i've seen it work this way. if there's an imbalance that stuff will go to the people who can't do the high-level stuff. i've seen managers try quite hard to create a good balance of duties, and like while i totally accept and embrace the idea that everyone has different skills and things to bring, it gets ridiculous - i've seen people who are supposed to be technically skilled contractors getting put in charge of booking meeting rooms or printing things out, the boss in question was good at doing that in a non-patronising way but it was a bit of a facepalm when you think the people are on big bucks.

like to me the team culture of everyone doing many things or dovetailing, or just genuinely great co-operative work, only really works when most/all people are able to do multiple things well, and happen to have expertise on top of that in one or two things, and can talk outside their discipline in a logical or questioning way about work another discipline has done.

oh, that is also most definitely a thing that happens

the most iffy thing I've witnessed, which is understandable but still was done completely haphazardly, was a reorganization of how project teams worked where people were just offered slots on teams

so each team needed a certain number of software developers, analysts, testers, software architects, etc with some people fulfilling that role across teams

they didn't have enough software architects so they just took the most talented young developers and threw them in those roles. no additional training :/

there's real desperation about finding people to do some of the more modern roles, ime. like user researchers or whatever. my current org has a lot of people spread quite thinly - they are constantly begging me about whether i know people or not, it gets really awkward when someone you know but don't recommend is put forward, and they're so desperate to hire someone they really want you to endorse them, or to find a way to maybe ignore whatever you say unless it's like "they are not an actual person, they do not exist" or "they are a serial killer".

that's kind of an issue with the current ideas of job mobility and the impermanence of employment. i appreciate when my managers know they need a person to fulfill a role but draft job requirements that reflect those skills are rare but learnable. i'd rather we hire an intelligent, likeable person who is immediately sent to training upon hire than wait months only to get an overpriced contractor who has no engagement

if we're gonna bring the system down from within then apathy is a key tactic

^this did most of the serious lifting in bringing down the USSR

i'd rather we hire an intelligent, likeable person who is immediately sent to training upon hire than wait months only to get an overpriced contractor who has no engagemen

yeah, i mean i sort of think hiring graduates is the way past depending on contractors, but i am a contractor so... shrug. i think it's possible to make (some) contractors engaged by how you treat them though. i'm personally more motivated as a contractor than i was when i was permanent, the pay is better and the goals are much more clear.

i guess also sometimes there's not enough time to hire and train someone, but in government that's more a problem of how big projects comes to exist, ie by being thrown down from the mount when a politician makes a speech or someone powerful decides what the people need, as opposed to coming from the people and being built based on their needs.

So I'm not sure if I was the rude person here or he was, but theres this vaguely creepy new guy in accounts who seems quite socially awkward? He's come and sat near me several times now at lunch and not said anything, just... sat there looking at me expectantly.

I read at lunch ffs. So today I'm on my own in the lunch room, very obvioysly reading game of thrones on my kindle, and the fucker comes and sits right next to me (empty lunchroom. Plenty of seats and tables free!) and says hello. I politely reply, he asks how I'm doing and I say smalltalk things then apologise and say I'm reading.

The guy proceeds to stay sitting there looking at me. Doesnt touch or start opening/eating the lunch he has in front of him. Just ... sits there. Looking at me. Eventually I suppose he gets the hint, gets up and says "have a good day" and totters off elsewhere...

wtf man!?

there's no way that you're being rude in that scenario. It's ok every once in a while to plop down next to a stranger but usually it's preceded by a "mind if I join you?" first. and if someone is engrossed in an activity like reading, generally don't start forcing them to abandon it to acknowledge you.

like I've made friends of strangers in many a scenario work or outside life but there was always a request of permission proceeding things.

he probably doesn't know better as you suggested, maybe just needs a 'nudge' in the right direction.

Yeah I dont mind people sitting beside me and sharing a silent lunch munch and occasional mumble, but its the way he sort of sits there and does and says nothing. It was unsettling.

Not in any "I am an axe murderer" way fwiw - more in a "i'm a lost puppydog and you are a lady type person who is nice" way. I AM TOOOOO OLD FOR THIS.

enh i can't be bothered to bring the system down tbh

This is known as the "reverse Bartleby"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8HzUhyUAAAMcR0.jpg

not a coworker but just saw this on twitter from someone in my industry: "Sketch of my question about cultural friction between agile design teams and larger organisation they're working in"

great sketch, really says more than words ever could. maybe go see a doctor about that swollen bump.

admittedly it's been a while since biology class but i think that might be a diagram of a cow's digestive system

either way it's bullshit

i assume it's meant to be something like that, yeah. it's just more like "here's a sketch of how myopic and solipsistic my way of working is"

pretty much

pitching agile as groundbreaking in 2017 is kind of something, even if it's an evolutionary methodology in theory

it's a p shocking thing within government, like to government people. but i swear my feed sometimes is just full of people stating the total fucking obvious, because they're trying to impose sense on the madness of government. like "USE WORDS WHICH USERS UNDERSTAND!" and it's been retweeted 100 times solely by people who work in government or saw the speech or whatever. i appreciate the need to sell a political message but the absolute storm of truisms or incredibly obvious safe statements worded as if they're some sage advice does wear me down a bit, and the sense that those posting them feel like they are some kind of tech guru or whatever cos they go to a conference that has a hashtag.

we have to put in place a very non-standard process for our current project. I'm not responsible for it, but it does directly affect us.

so the group responsible for developing the process, who has handled all of the communication around it and scheduled all of the preliminary meetings finally schedules one to show us what they've done thus far. Despite knowing about this since DECEMBER, they've barely even started. In 4 months all they managed was a very rough sketch with a ton of variables. When they asked for potential resources who might be able to help consult back in Dec, I gave them specific names of three or four people. Yesterday they told me they contacted precisely zero of them.

Oi.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTrGnZGUsAAeya3.png

Lol <3

I remember that diagram lg i think its the opening scene of look who's talking

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CS_0_JhWIAAopng.jpg

lolz - i know the "point" of the picture is meant to be "let us inject more agile deep into this big organisational cow's stomach" but having been at the pub with a friend we confirmed it looks like "sir i'm afraid you have an agile way of working tumour extremely close to the testicle - we hope we can get rid of it all first go but we can't promise anything"

Trayce you had me look that pic up and see it's tied to a television show. is Black Books worthwhile?

Hells yes.

Its about a cantankerous drunk who runs a bookshop in London. It is hilarious.

Cosign. It's the best

It's rubbish

YOURE rubbish

(It's endlessly repeated on London Live if that helps.)

nothing on london live helps with anything