You just described my job to a T. I'm a systems analyst at a university.
This was a big, demanding job when I first started. But after being here for 2 years, I've automated a lot of the complicated stuff. So now most routine tasks that took the other guy a week takes me about 15 minutes. To be fair though, the other guy was *really bad*. Like, couldn't even open IIS manager and restart a single website, bad.
The pay is not fantastic / FAANG, but it does offer a decent salary in a mid/low cost of living area. Combined with my wife's salary we make more than enough.
Also I get a free master's degree out of it. So that's awesome.
I think the take-away here, which I've also experienced, is to get an IT job in an industry that does not appreciate IT - find a position that seems to involve a TON of manual work - automate all of it - and DO NOT TELL anyone that you have automated those activities.
If you are working from home, you could conceivably do this for multiple jobs (in theory, ethical considerations aside).
> find a position that seems to involve a TON of manual work - automate all of it - and DO NOT TELL anyone
This reminds me the article "Now That's What I Call a Hacker" [1], where a guy left behind his automation scripts when switched companies, which revealed some extreme scripts, like:
> hangover.sh - another cron-job that is set to specific dates. Sends automated emails like "not feeling well/gonna work from home" etc. Adds a random "reason" from another predefined array of strings. Fires if there are no interactive sessions on the server at 8:45am.
I'm putting this article and what you just said together. Now I think it's reasonable to believe there are a lot of IT professionals doing this, they are just hidden, because there is no reason to share this kind of works experience, as it makes sense in the competitive side of the industry.
I almost created this myself some time ago, although not specifically for hangovers. I was envisioning a sort of dead man's switch, where if I didn't check in before a certain time it would send an SMS to my manager calling in sick.
The main reason I didn't, was that I figured I was more likely to forget to check in (and be forced to use a sick day when I didn't "need" one) than be incapable of waking up, making the call on if I was in a workable state, and sending the SMS by myself.
I know a UX/UI guy that worked for two big canadian banks at the same time. He was moving to Bank B, and did it for three months, just enough to lock in his annual bonus on Bank A. Oh, and he was praised in Bank A for his work in this period.
They are going to force everyone back into the office anyhow... upper management tends to place high on the narcissism spectrum... they need to see, feel, and experience their kingdom in person for maximum narcissistic supply.
Because $/resources are fungible, and your task isn't the only thing in the organization that needs resources.
Assuming you are on salary, if you can legitimately do something in half the time, great, you should then move on to doing something else that contributes to the company.
If you are on salary you are paid for your time and talent, not by the task.
The right thing for management to do would be to reward you for being efficient (doesn't just have to be simple monetary, people are motivated by all kinds of things), and then reallocate those resources that we saved to some other need.
This of course changes if you are on some kind of contract work.
Well... yes. But if the company suddenly becomes wildly more profitable because of work you’ve done will your salary grow in proportion? Of course not. I admire your work ethic, but you might want to consider just how asymmetric the employer/employee relationship is.
If you miss a deadline or delay the launch of a product does the company dock your base pay?
Look, I'm not saying you shouldn't optimize for your own goals. You do you, no judgement.
What I am saying is that running a successful company means optimizing for the company, not the individual. And the best run companies make sure that the incentives of their staff are closely aligned with the company.
If staff are functionally lying to their company about their output, something has gone wrong.
> If staff are functionally lying to their company about their output, something has gone wrong.
Problem is that productivity gains are extreme across most industries over the past fifty years, and except at the FAANG end of the income spectrum where people are making $300k+/year, those gains have been 100% absorbed by employers and not passed on to workers.
As such, employers are the ones to have broken the social contract. Yes, they're pushed to do this because they can, and there are no penalties to dissuade them from this behavior (specifically because employee organizations/unions have fallen out of favor, though that may seem to be reversing recently).
So it feels justified to provide a service to an employer for a fixed fee (a salary or weekly contract wage) in exchange for satisfactory work output, and to not work the hours the employer may assume you're working. It's a profoundly asymmetric relationship, and letting an employer believe you're working more hours for that work output--as long as they're happy with your work output!--is balanced by the fact that they're not paying you what you're worth to them.
The latter is clearly true if they're continuing to be happy with your work output and you're working half as many hours as they may believe you to be working. And yet they absolutely wouldn't double your salary if you doubled your work output.
To provide a counterpoint, we are humans, not machines for capital.
If I automate my job and halve my workload, I am going to be working easier and chilling more.
I will still spend some time on company growth activities, but I refuse to see myself as a monetary number on a spreadsheet. I have a life, and you only have one life.
It's not a counterpoint, both statements are true. Also, the post was in response to why do managers feel this way, not how do I feel personally.
The company pays you $$$ in exchange for your time and talent. That's the deal.
You don't have to take it. Seriously, in many cases you shouldn't take it. Life is short, optimize for being happy. I am the strongest supporter of that philosophy you will find.
But, if you can do your job in half the time and you are getting paid on the basis of time...you and the people who are paying you should reconsider the basis of that deal.
Hey, maybe you can get paid more and work less hours. Maybe you get a promotion to do something you find more interesting, or extra training opportunity, or a bonus, or even time off. But again, that should be negotiated within the confines of that original agreement between you and the company.
Once again, it's in both you and the companies best interest. Company shouldn't pay me to waste my time at the office, and I don't want to pretend to work. I'd rather spend that time outside, or with my family, or on a hobby, then try and hustle out some extra chill time.
The issue I have is when it's one sided. If the company knows that you are finishing your work in 2 hours, but they are paying you for 8, and they are ok with it, then again, it's part of the agreement and it's fine. There are lots of reasons that a company would be okay with this. Basically they have made the choice to pay you a much higher rate.
It's the hiding it part that I think is a grey area.
> The company pays you $$$ in exchange for your time and talent. That's the deal.
I'd disagree. They pay me for a specific amount and type of output, the same way they would for a new piece of machinery. It's not indentured servitude; they don't own me. If they just owned me, I wouldn't charge different rates for different things. A salary doesn't change that - a salary is just your assurance of my availability.
Generally when you are on salary, you get paid a set amount of money for some number of hours worked annually.
You don't get paid different rates for different work.
While it is possible to have a salary position with expected outputs (teach x classes a semester, launch 1 product per quarter, etc.) the better position descriptions will talk about responsibilities not metrics.
The point of being paid a salary vs per hour is that your entire time worked is abstract & non specific. It's also why salaried workers are usually exempt from overtime laws.
Our pay is also based on demand for our skills, based on the value it delivers, balanced with it's supply, which is why a software engineer is paid more than a McDonalds worker. If I could hypothetically produce the output of 100 google software engineers and I charged the price of 90 of them, any company would take me up for my offer and would be out competed by companies who didn't.
The fact that companies try to get the most for their money is just human nature and opportunistic. We don't need to actually go along with it, and nobody should feel guilty about doing the same with their employer too. If your a sales guy, you're considered a bad sales guy if you don't aggressively negotiate the best offer possible, engineers should not feel shy about doing the same too.
When you are on salary, you don't get paid to write code during all the time you are working. I can think about a problem for 6 hours and work 2 hours and fully deliver what the company expects from me.
If you're lucky you might get a few attaboys and a small bonus. Maybe a small promotion if really lucky.
The reality is career progression inside companies is unpredictable and underwhelming which is why people switch jobs so often.
Being an overachiever is great, but doing it for a thankless company is a waste of energy and resources.
So treat them the same way they treat you. Business only, no hard feelings, watch out for me and mine first. Act like they're disposable if they don't live up to your expectations - because that's how they will treat you.
Going back to the office might in fact make that situation worse. Now the person with time on their hands and low ambition isn't gonna suddenly get ambitious, but is gonna distract other people as well.
I have a very good friend, who was also a fairly accomplished engineer at Google for a time...
He, in the past, had like five jobs - he outsourced all his work to devs in Croatia, and he would take on jobs and present the work on a regular basis - but he was doing none of it.
Ya know I've been considering taking on more jobs, but the biggest challenge is still being available for weekly meetings. Still need to appear in zoom calls on video for a status report.
I did 3 software jobs at the same time for a period of a month. But I was actually working full/part/part so it was kinda back breaking - but I was being paid as a consultant so I was actively working hard..
Find jobs that don't require that nonsense. They do exist. I don't have weekly meetings, and haven't seen my co-workers either physically or on a screen in over a year.
> is to get an IT job in an industry that does not appreciate IT
Yeah that's basically the gist. Needs enough IT for someone to steer it, doesn't need enough such that a complex env that requires an MSP to run things in that direction.
Ill echo this, (am also a SA at a mid-size US university) I am completely content with how slow my job moves. We have real, actual deadlines a few times a year. The bare minimum earns you praise, I think Ive done a month's worth of work since last march which has been wonderful for my physical health. Nearly every 4-year offers unconditional tuition remission. You will be underpaid. Id stay in this position forever if I didnt happen to dislike the location as much as I do.
I ran a small infosec shop for ~15 years and worked in many industries along the way. An IT job at a university was the first thing that came to mind. Not necessarily because the job is easy, because that's not always the case, but because the environments that I've been involved with at least are really chill and you stay in touch with young folks.
Some University positions can be notoriously cushy. I know a few networking folks who have been in their position at the University for a solid 25 years. Kind of unheard of in the enterprise-sector for the same position.
Government positions are even cushier. Things move slowly, they value consistency, and the hiring process is such a pain that you won't be fired for anything short of malicious or criminal behavior.
And if you automate a government task, there's a good chance you won't need to update it for at least a decade.
The pay is usually very noncompetitive. But the OP is okay with that.
The local universities around me have some dev/it positions posted on various job sites, and they are all offering bottom 30% or so in pay, like $45-60k/yr
But the benefits are usually top notch (e.g. healthcare). If the position comes with a generous defined-benefits government pension, it can actually end up being more lucrative than working in the private sector.
You have to make sure that this pension actually pans out. I've worked at a semi-government job for 10 years. However only 1 of the ten years, they indexed their current payouts with inflation.
I'm a freelancer now, and I've been counting on that pension. But if this continues, that government pension will be worth a whole lot less. I'll probably have to work longer.
It's interesting to look at this in the context of ballooning tuition costs. Could it be that part of the problem is that university staff positions attract a high proportion of unmotivated time-servers? How is this possible at the same time that instructional staff are being squeezed so hard?
How is this possible at the same time that instructional staff are being squeezed so hard?
If I had to guess, supply and demand. There is a massive surplus of PhD’s looking for any job whatsoever in academia. Meanwhile, the demand for university IT jobs is probably low given that many other jobs in tech will pay more.
The problem is the exact opposite. The unmotivated time servers fill unnecessary positions created by the ambitious climbers. Doing a better job would likely make the problem worse as the bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
Yep, we recently had to give several IT staff very "motivated" retirement packages because they've been on payroll for 30 + years. One guy was here for 42 years. Literally his entire career.
My buddy worked IT infrastructure at a major public university and would work 3 days a week but spread out his deployments for the write-ups that were used to evaluate his performance. The pay wasn't great so he left, but it was a great gig for a while.
This was a big, demanding job when I first started. But after being here for 2 years, I've automated a lot of the complicated stuff. So now most routine tasks that took the other guy a week takes me about 15 minutes. To be fair though, the other guy was *really bad*. Like, couldn't even open IIS manager and restart a single website, bad.
The pay is not fantastic / FAANG, but it does offer a decent salary in a mid/low cost of living area. Combined with my wife's salary we make more than enough.
Also I get a free master's degree out of it. So that's awesome.