This is one of those things that folks learn over time. I've met masters of the "busy people" who, with no direction whatsoever from above have full meeting schedules, generating reports and presentations and white papers and generally "working hard" but it is all just running on a treadmill as far as I can tell. They are exercising their "execution" habits while waiting for something to actually do. It sort of amazed me when I recognized it for what it was.
Interestingly they seem to hold there jobs while people who just stop doing anything with no direction often don't hold their jobs. So it is presumably a suvival trait.
One of the more interesting things my manager at Sun told me was that the difference between a leader and a worker, was that a leader was a going somewhere and a worker was helping them get there. So if you want to be a leader you need to have some place you are trying to go. It gets you into trouble though, when there is only enough energy to follow one or two paths, it puts you on the short list for removal if your path isn't one of them.
>all just running on a treadmill as far as I can tell.
Unfortunately, people lose their minds when some company announces layoffs, like some purposeful social harm is being done, yet somehow when a company is having massive hiring no one really questions how much of that is valid or sustainable. People become like you describe; they master the do nothing job via office cult cargoism. It must be exhausting to have a 'fake' job like this and knowing damn well that if you lose this job you may have nowhere to go.
I think 100 years from now our great grandkids will be living in an automation utopia and look at our daily work lives as something just a harrowing as any story from Kafka. There's a lot of craziness we let slide because we've convinced ourselves total employment is one of the main moral goals of a capitalistic society. Its probably not sustainable in later stages capitalism.
In my lifetime I expect to see GMI deployments in various nations as automation keeps eating the world. I have yet to be convinced that the status quo can be maintained and the cracks on the facade are already showing. Later stages capitalism is a totally different beast than early stages. This is all new ground.
Not too long ago this sounded like crazy sci-fi talk to me, but now that I'm in a partial management position I've been involved with hirings/firings and all sorts of staffing and productivity issues, this has shown me that employment in general is something of an illusion. I'd say 80% of the work/value done here is by 30 or 40% of the staff, maybe 20% if we're being really tough. A lot of hiring, if not most, is vanity hiring by VP's who want more people under them for status and budget reasons. This isn't some rational engine at work here. Its its own kind of bubble and as we saw in the 2008 mortgage crisis, it gets deflated pretty easily when money stops coming in. (5% to 10% unemployment in 12 months 2008-2009).
Hi, throwaway with a "fake" job (with quotations because usually 25% of the time I am busy).
It is incredibly frustrating to me, because I consider myself a creative and capable individual, who is just fresh off graduation. However, I have a micromanaging, closed-minded rude boss (company lingo: "Leader"), who I prefer to avoid at all costs. At the same time, he seems completely aloof and uninterested in my career goals, which explains why I have nothing to do most of the time.
This is further led to absurdity because I'm in a Trainee position, someone who is paid a better than everyone else at their level of responsibility and gone through extra training with hopes they will ascend to management. I get no training either.
I've been looking for another job for over a year and cannot get anything else because of lack of experience and a nation-wide political+economical crisis.
I hope you're right, I want you to be right. But honestly, I can't see it. A lot of what we do essentially lives on credit.
We're like real estate. We're in demand as long as there is a buyer. Essentially, buyers will cease.
We're not doctors, cops nor lawyers, the world won't cease without us. Hell, even civil workers in governments although less salary, have better safety than we do. I can't shake the feeling that essentially we'll realise that all these companies we work for don't really "exist" as they're just the imagination of someones account balance. At some point its gotta run dry.
But I work in a financial department where it's an alien concept, and as such, unauditable and dangerous. I barely get opportunities to put it in action these days.
By the way, today I had a meeting with an IT coordinator in a sister-company.
He knows everything about SAP. However, he had no clue as to what "Python" is.
The SAP ecosystem is its own little world. Nothing to do with age: Python has been around since the late 80s (even though it's only been popular for shorter).
I once did an internship at the SAP mothership. They have good food.
What advice would you give to someone who has a pretty well paying job in an tech company that has over hired ?
On the one hand it's harder to find better jobs as the present job is already kind of nice. On the other hand there's the uncertainty of where everything is going with regards to your long term future at the company and your career.
You can't bring up the fact that the team is bloated because you're basically telling them that you should be fired.
Interestingly they seem to hold there jobs while people who just stop doing anything with no direction often don't hold their jobs. So it is presumably a suvival trait.
One of the more interesting things my manager at Sun told me was that the difference between a leader and a worker, was that a leader was a going somewhere and a worker was helping them get there. So if you want to be a leader you need to have some place you are trying to go. It gets you into trouble though, when there is only enough energy to follow one or two paths, it puts you on the short list for removal if your path isn't one of them.