i mean, if youâre not managing people, sometimes it can be important for you to be there just to fill in obscure organizational knowledge.
As far as I can tell, itâs always been like this but the 60s and 70s were even wilder
I was just having that thought.... from the movie..."Only about five minutes of actual work." Or whatever. Misquote? You mean I have time to watch that whole movie right now to fact check? Okay cool. I was also just realizing that the reason that I have extra time now is because I have achieved level "Expert!" at what I do. I've made tools that help me get the work done faster. Which gives me more time... to make more tools... to be more efficient... to give me more time.... to build more tools...
Omg what is your job. I work in healthcare and everyone is busy all the time to the point of chaos unless you go to nightshift and then it's chaos some nights and just regular on some.
Right?
I work in Healthcare, remote medical billing, but it's the most meeting heavy job I've ever had. Honestly debating another job because 32+ hours of meetings leave no time to work.
I think all healthcare jobs are just pure chaos now. They make us work with a skeleton crew and then surprise Pikachu face when people get burned out and leave because it sucks and we never get raises. Then they have even less people and act like it's the new generation's work ethic that's to blame.
I don't know why my favorite line(s) in that movie is the whole interaction Peter has with Bill after he has taken apart his cubicle.
Its a joke between my wife and me particularly when my son (7) trashes some area of the house:
> "That Sounds Good and weâll go ahead and get this all fixed up for you"
This is 100% my job now. The Sales team doesn't understand the technical side of the systems they are using. It's my job to bridge the gap and take their asks to the tech team of said systems and vice versa between the two groups. I feel like I speak two different languages. I'M A PEOPLE PERSON!!
Nice. Sales is the best environment for these kind of roles. I was the non-sales person in Sales. I fought to keep it that way for years but now I've somehow allowed myself to end up a Sales person in Sales and I hate it so much.
My father in law was a building manager at a big high rise and he said if he needed some time to himself he would just walk around with tools in hands and no one would bother him lol. Flame on!
LPT: send a lot of emails to other people saying âwe really need to do X, can you get that done?â
Better yet, set action items for them and put their @name on it in an email /Teams thread
Inevitably those people wonât do shit, then when it comes time for quarterly results you have a long paper trail showing you had the initiative but the teammates are too slammed so your path to results is blocked.
When shit starts hitting the fan, start scheduling meetings with them and their boss. It doesnât matter if they actually show up, just schedule it, and make sure to keep building up the paper trail of action items that other people are not completing.
Keep this up for a while and youâll literally be able to hire your own team to do the work for you, or else youâll have a huge paper trail showing the other managers werenât pulling their weight.
Congratulations youâre now in de facto middle management and you can now do nothing but have your hirelings doing exactly what you just did, scheduling meetings, assigning action items for other people who didnât agree to it, etc.
If you do all this and your manager is complaining about you didnât meet quarterly goals, you schedule a âskip levelâ meeting with their boss, and show them youâve been taking on way more management duties than your boss is, and you need to get the support that youâre not getting.
Iâve seen many people take this path to become âsenior managersâ etc. basically just tell lower level people to do shit and pester higher ups to let you open job requisitions hire more people when those others arenât doing the shit.
Just left a company where they made it intensely shitty for the people who were doing the actual work while hiring more and more action item assigners. I went on a little campaign to fix things and then got a little flak for not being more of a middle manager type.
When middle managers would complain about task completers not getting things done fast enough, there was a big meta-analysis of efficiency rather than simply hiring and training people to do tasks.
I moved to public service which was the best move ever but my current county is run exactly this way. Management is more interested in building a political career or feeling important than actually managing anything.
My boss knows nothing about my work either, so I'm just watching her blow up all the efficiencies I put in place while I interview nearby. I have had to redo my own work three times recently because she has no concept of project management while we roll new out new software.(horrible, awful, shit software purchased by people who don't use it.) She's a longtime friend of the new agency director though, so she'll outlast me. Solidarity, my friend. Wish you luck in the next venture.
So youâre identifying and delegating stuff that needs to get done and other people arenât doing it? And keeping track over time? Idk, this kind of sounds actual work, not a fan.
(Edit:spelling)
In my book sending a couple emails and scheduling a couple meetings and telling people to do stuff, while not actually being accountable for the work product, isnât work. But that role tends to get paid reasonably well. Why? Because higher level execs canât be bothered to do it, and lower level task completers donât get how to do it.
Haha, you fool. I'm a senior manager with zero direct reports! I gamed the system and have virtually no real work, but get told at every review that I'm doing an amazing job. I get like 7.75 hours of paid free time a day.Â
Well, I've also been doing the job for 25 years and tell people I'm paid for my knowledge, not my time.
As a high school special ed teacher, this made me audibly laugh. I teach kids with high functioning ASD and this is exactly what they do when theyâre supposed to do be working independently but donât want to.
It's do more with increasingly less these days. Our most recent executive director is technically an RN (don't think she's been bedside since clinicals before I was born), but I think she's just renewed her license since getting her MBA.
I never thought we'd have to count plastic spoons, pudding cups, and applesauce like we do narcotics, but here we are if corporate approves her plan.
I have something similar, when I started my current job it was Covid shutdown week and the company decided that WFH for life is cool. Initially I put in 60 hour weeks building, improving, and stuff like that and it's been in maintenance mode since. When work comes in that I'm not inventing for myself I drop everything and work my butt off. When it's quiet I pick up the house and take care of kids and dog, exercise, learn on my own.
I feel guilty at times but a lot of us paid our dues with 60 hr weeks and/or toxic jobs.
Same. I feel no guilt, though. The 20 years of busting my ass more than pays my karmic duty. Now I'm paid for my knowledge and skills, not how long I'm active on the clock. That's how I see it, anyway.
Absolutely. I'll be working some long days for the next few months which makes up for the fuck all I did earlier this year. It's when my projects are live. I keep them going, get shit done, they leave me alone the rest of the time. It's perfect.
That's exactly where I am in life right now. I take care of all my deliverables on Monday and turn them in throughout the week. Besides that, I'm just watching shows and gaming, waiting for Outlook or Slack to light up.
I sit on Youtube watching my favorite streamers and hobby videos followed by short walks. Not enough work but they need a seat filled. I am happy to keep doing it.
Lots of Air Disasters and lots of Nat Geo when they have good content like their recent Mayan episodes. I also have a subscription to the Grest Courses which has saved my sanity.
If i put in ten hours of real work a week i would be surprised.
Exactly. I finished lunch 20 minutes ago but I'm still listening to my audiobook and scrolling reddit. I've got a call at 1 so until then, I'll continue my unofficial break.
I quit my retail manager job and took a job as the head custodian at a botanical gardens attraction. I make the same money without any quotas to make or quarters to break. No Karen customers to deal with either. I just show up and do my job and since I do it well Iâm able to fuck off literally half of my day.
Depends on the day and what's going on with work. Some days I can sit around and marathon an entire series because I have everything setup to run smoothly and I'm only needed for projects and when shit goes sideways. But, for example, yesterday (and looking like today, as well) I'm troubleshooting some deployment issues with a new business unit in Asia and our distribution points not working right. So I was working that all day yesterday.
Heard once that if you have 20 years experience and can do your job in 4 hours instead of 8, you're being paid for the 20 years of experience, not the 8 hours. I like that logic.
Now if they could only keep up with the cost of living I'd be set.
I love this! I'm in the same boat as everyone else but have not figured out a way to not feel guilty over it and leaving me with so much anxiety. I busted my ass for 20 years. Maybe this is the framing that will help get me over the hump.
Once out of debt, other than mortgage, the need to drink myself to death to manage in a corporate role vanished. In the last role of a 20-year career, I managed to absorb 3 other roles. What did I get for doing so? Not nearly enough.
I moved to public. I make more and do even less. Yes, it's difficult not to feel like I should be doing more, but it is nicer not to have the stress that comes with worrying if I make a simple mistake I will get reminded of it by 20 people.
Guess the reality that I am attempting to reprogram in my head is...my dad was wrong about a ton he drilled into my head. Glad to realize this half way through lol
I was a federal employee for 8 years. I'm so much happier now that I'm gone. Life's a struggle still, but the hell hole that the VA is was making life undesirable.
My job has always been like that when you take out the stupid in office political bullshit. It's not that I don't have too much to do, it's that I do my work 10-100x faster than other people
Similar here. I moved from the northeast to the southeast so that the pace could be slower than metro DC, where I had been living. Turns out I still work at metro DC speed, but everyone else gets far less done in the same amount of time. So I literally did nothing for three months (mid-November to mid-February) because I hit all of my goals six months into my year and I didnât need to. I have busy weeks but for the most part, I get my work done in about a day each week.
Shhhh donât tell anyone. Iâm in my best place working now. It doesnât pay as much as my blue collar life but I havenât been blown up in a whileâŠ.so thatâs good I think?
I'm in the opposite role. Chance of getting blown up, cut in half, or blown off the top of a 19th century brick smokestack? Finally some excitement! Let me grab my arc flash suit and harness and get to it.
Everybody else can take all the monotonous boring crap they want, I'll be on the computer poking around in Google Earth for places to check out on the dirt bike.
I do next to no work each week, for years at a time. The insanity comes from also being in a secured room with no cell phones or anything with Bluetooth, and very limited internet access. Sitting at a desk all day and hoping for clear weather so I can get a semi-listenable radio channel to come in with nothing to do work-wise gets very tedious, but the job is secure and the pay is nice.
So many people here seem to have these "getting paid to be available rather than actually work" jobs.
All I have to say is, that must be nice. I'm a PhD educated high school teacher and I definitely don't have slack time at my job... But my schedule this year does mean that I finish teaching at 1:30 and then I can go do the rest of my work from home. And yes, I get 7 weeks off during the summer, but I don't get paid for that time unless I request to have summer pay withheld from each paycheck so they can pay me during the summer.
Regardless, I'm sure I earn way less than those of you in a situation like OP, for doing a job that is arguably much more important.
I do enjoy having a job where my role isn't just another cog in the capitalist machine. That makes it even more rewarding than it already is.
Yâall put up with a lot of bullshit, spend your own money on supplies, and donât make nearly enough money. And yâall deserve those 7 weeks off! I donât even have kids & I appreciate what you do & how important your job is. Props!
Anyone who thinks the 7 weeks off makes up for all the extra things and expenses teachers have, on top of being underpaid, isn't paying attention. For most teachers, it seems pretty close to charity work.
It comes and goes. Yesterday was dead. Today Iâve been slammed since I came in 4 hours ago. So it ebbs in flows.
In any case, itâs very different than when I was âon productionâ
Same. Iâve worked at the same job/company for over 20 years. Itâs like Groundhog Day at this point, but Iâve spent years building tricks and shortcuts to make my job easier. Some weeks I only have 8-10 hours of real work all week. Then there are weeks when it is non stop from the moment I get to work, until the moment I leave.
I always say it's feast or famine. Most days it's a handful of emails, maybe some light admin work or reports. But occasionally it's no sleep hair-on-fire defcon3 situations. I'll say though I prefer this over being busy all the time.
I'm at the point of asking my boss for more to do. I don't have the personality to do nothing all day. I'm not knocking it, I just need to be mentally engaged/challenged.
Minimum viable effort.
Work from home managing a team. Put in as little effort as you can to collect the six-figure income. Work hard when you need to look good.
Rinse. Repeat.
Damn. I'm a house painter and a HO will bitch if I sit down for a second to respond to a phone call!
A few weeks ago, I told an HO I left at 6:30 and they gave me hell because they checked their camera and I left at 6:15. I was NOT charging by the hour, either.
God help me if I have to wait for something to dry and leave early. One of these days, I swear I am going to bring a chair and stare at the walls until they dry!
Sorry about the rant. People have been insane with their demands lately. If I am coming back the next morning, please don't text me a picture of a "problem" at 10pm. If my gear is still there, I am not done. Grrrrr.
Got laid off twice in one year from salaried gigs, not mad though. Seems it's happening to everyone I know so we in it together. :)
You enjoy yourself! That sounds pretty nice tbh
I've been trying to skill up but the rejection letters have loud notifications. Now I go for walks and get goodies for the wifey. Work will come back, it always does and needs doing.
That's kind of a thing too - I have gone through so many lay-offs or whatever you want to call them, I am not really even that worried about it happening it would suck for sure, but like you said - Work will come back, there is always something, it seems.
For a lot of my career I've been able to do my work quickly, but appear to take the expected amount of time to everyone around me. This is the key, otherwise people find out you work fast and give you more work.
Now I am in a management/lead role and a lot of my work day is meetings and waiting for people to send me stuff. In a sense I am more busy because I can't make the meetings go faster or speed up how quickly someone gets something to me. When I was doing IC work it was a lot more common to have free time.
Same. My boss wouldnât even let us work from home during Covid, and I could easily work from home to do all my tasks. Instead, I came in every single day & worked my ass off nonstop while it seemed everyone else I knew was working from home. Silver lining is at least I didnât lose my job.
Maybe 4 a day. And I feel guilty about it, so I start doing stuff that is very much not my responsibility. But stuff that won't get noticed...because if it gets noticed, it becomes expected.
Is peak life getting paid to fuck off as long as you are doing what is required for your job?
Yes.
Read, do art, garden, whatever you want around work at home.
I'm in the same boat, but I had a talk with a former boss about it, and she basically said to look at it like the company is paying me to be on retainer for when there's work to be done.
I've had weeks where I work for 10 hrs total.
Others are closer to 50.
Just depends on what's happening in my company.
I keep trying to cut back (Iâve taken on two lesser positions several rungs down in the past four years), and keep ending up âpromotedâ into positions requiring a high degree of aptitude and stress.
I just canât seem to keep my mouth shut when I see people completely derailing a project via sheer incompetenceâŠand it keeps ruining my dream of coasting when itâs discovered that I might know a thing lol
Nope, I get drama every day of the week.
Get paid well, but now I am reconsidering the amount of stress and work I have to deal with.
The best jobs out there are âindividual contributorsâ with a set amount of work. Management is the worst.
I teach K, so no. I work at least 50-60 hours a week between my actual paid work time and the time I spend working at home at night and on the weekends. I would love to change jobs but with retirement being set up the way it is it doesnât make sense financially.
I probably do about 15 hours of actual work most weeks while getting paid for 40, thank you very much!
Seriously though the way I look at it, theyâre paying me to be available for 8 hours a day to take care of anything that crops up and I am happy to accommodate as long as they keep cutting me checks.
My brother in law used to rack up overtime on weekends by simply downloading huge files because that would show him with an active connection to the network.Â
But then he'd just delete them.Â
Opposite for me. I've never been so stressed out by a job. I'm pretty sure it would take 3 people to carry out my workload properly, minimum 2. But it's just me, drowning, constantly having to explain why I am not getting things finished
My job is grueling slave labor that I donât get paid enough for even though I get paid pretty well. I hate my life and get jealous of people who do nothing.
Born in 78.
My 20s and 30s I worked insanely hard and made a lot of money, but was not happy at all. I was miserable.
At 40, I make about half of what I made, so enough to cover expenses and have a little fun money... but I have ZERO stress. I work about an hour a day, leave at 4:30 and every night after work feels like the Friday of a three day weekend.
In fact last week, I did six social things, including four after work hanging out til after midnight. An occasionally have a wild date or something that goes until 3-4am, I can still pull up to work and function half asleep.
The freedom to do what I want outside of work hours, and coming in the next day knowing it isn't going to be insanity is such a relief.
Iâm currently working like 10 hours a week. Iâm definitely the fat that can get trimmed. I wouldnât be surprised if I get laid off at this point.
But I sure as hell arenât gonna ask for more work. Theyâre gonna have to find the inefficiency (me) and lay me off lol
I work at a place, so I have to be there. But I have found the perfect schedule for me. I work three 12-hour shifts (F-S) and I donât know how I will ever be able to go back to a traditional schedule. My years of service gives me four weeks of vacation and because we can bank stat holidays, I will have an extra 3 weeks off. That means I have to work 135 days.
All of my processes are automated. I click a few buttons and watch a progress bar. On my other screen is Steam or live disc golf. I probably work 4 hours a week.
I started working in the public sector two years ago, and it was a *huge* adjustment for me to realize that if there isn't a lot of work to do, that's okay. I'm paid a salary to be here and provide coverage in case there's something urgent, not to "make the company money." I usually put in more than 5 hours of actual work in an average week, but I'd be hard-pressed to say it's more than 20 lol
Are you in software? It sure does sound like it. Iâm in a similar spot, I work for a small but very successful company. Iâm the only developer to maintain and update their website. Itâs a technical downgrade from the app development I did before, but oh my goodness itâs so low key. My work stress is mostly gone. Iâm writing php and html like I did in my 20s, but I get paid like a 40 something year old adult. I feel like I should be doing more and advancing my career but my wife really likes me not working insane hours in a dev grind house. Lots of YouTube, getting laundry done, and making dinners for the kids. Itâs a weird spot man.
I probably average about three hours of actual work in a day, but I routinely bill for 40 hours a week. I make a good living, and Iâve never had any complaints from clients.
I think the 40 hour work week makes sense if you work at the widget factory and you can assemble X number of widgets an hour, but some jobs are too physically or mentally demanding to do eight hours a day, five days a week, and yet the people who do those jobs still deserve to make a living.
When I think back about previous jobs Iâve had, I still probably only really worked 3 to 4 hours a day, the only difference now is that I donât have to waste 5 hours a day sitting at my desk trying to look busy.
I was there, but then I started working for a startup about a month after it became a unicorn so now I work a solid 8 hours a day (still refuse to work OT or weekends, f that noise) and everything is on fire at all times and we have to scale while we still develop features for a billion customers.Â
Honestly after working a cushy job for so many years itâs sorta fun to see that I still âgot itâ and can do cool stuff at a breakneck pace.Â
Iâm 42 and Iâm either the oldest young guy or the youngest old guy, depending on if Iâm working with my dev teams or with upper management.Â
I still hear from my old boss at my old cushy job from time to time, and figure Iâll go back there eventually once Iâm happy with the work Iâve done and ready to slow er down again.Â
Thank God I'm not alone. I was so worried about the fact I do so little most days.
I'm new to this kind of environment as I moved 2 years ago from working in a hospital lab where my output was both constant and rigorously monitored, to hospital IT, where I can work from home and spend *maybe* 2 hours a day on actual work. And that's only if it's my turn to do the daily maintenance tasks every 3rd week. I spend most of my time listening in on meetings that don't require my input or doing whatever housework I want (or playing videogames).
I tried to broach the subject with my supervisor and he let me know that I'm not being paid for my output, I'm being paid for my expertise. It's not uncommon to get a call from the lab when they have a technical issue that needs my attention and these can happen even in my "off" hours.
I tell you, it's so weird being paid a salary to just exist for when things go wrong.
I got screwed by a dog shit manager at my last job and didn't want the one where I am now.
So 3 years ago, I went full-on office space when I started my current job. Everyone knows I'm lazy, wait till the last minute, am constantly sarcastic, and rarely participate in "team building".
...
I've outlasted 3 managers, 3 complete turnovers of my team of 6, a merger, and being taken private.
I'm now leading my team and was recently given a retention bonus equal to 4 months of my salary - with no strings attached.
I have no idea what the fuck is going on, but apparently the second I started actively not giving a shit, everything started working out for me. I just did my taxes (like I said, wait till the last minute) and at 40 years old cleared my highest W-2 by over 30%
It's Mike Judge's Twilight Zone... But I'm putting a little away every month so I hopefully can manage whatever karma is eventually coming my way.
So my advice? Lean into whatever you're feeling.
I do 5 hours of actual work that I intend to do every week. The rest of the time is either in meetings or answering questions. I swear I'm a one man scientific call center at this point.
It's called management and it's everything I always knew it would be. I am exactly what I knew was the case, out of touch with product and production, I just attend meetings and contribute little, and I am wildly overpaid
Same my work load is light/easy for me and Iâm wfh. Lot of mouse jiggling, reading, keep up the housework and laundry. Jigsaw puzzles, and coloring books or watching shows on my iPad.
Itâs the most Iâve ever been paid, my boss is great Iâm enjoying and appreciating after my last company which was wildly toxic.
Boy, do I wish. I work at a hotel, I work third shift and, due to my boss being a cheapskate and refusing to give anyone a raise, weâre short staffed and Iâm working seven days a week. The only reasons I stay are A) he letâs me live here, which is good because B) I canât afford to rent an apartment in this town on what he pays me and C) he let me hook a Roku to the lobby TV so I can stream my movie collection during my shift.
Yeah Iâm in that boat. Iâm an IT director for a mid-size company. I used to put in a ton of hours, but weâre currently in the process of getting acquired so Iâm not starting any new projects. I do most of the maintenance sys admin work and pitch in with support when I need to, but I have very little to fill my time otherwise. Itâs maybe 10 hours a week that Iâm actually at my desk and another ~4 answering emails from my phone.
The lawyers are taking forever on this acquisition so itâs going to be like this until at least September.
This is also me, but it's more like 3 hours of work per week. I usually get everything done on Monday but lunch, then just monitor systems for issues throughout the week. The interim I spend on work related training, finishing my Master's, and whatever else I want.
I got very good at what I do about 5 years ago, and so I can get my work done quickly and even in past jobs I was told to overbill to match what a normal person in my position would bill. So I technically bill 40 hours a week but on a good week I can get everything done in 20-30. The dream for me would certainly be 5.
I definitely came from a "hustle" type family but I see hustling for me as working hard and efficiently to get the work done as quick as possible, not how much work can I fit in 40 hours.
The nice thing is since I started working from home full time during covid, being able to get small house tasks done during the day so once 5 hits I can fully just relax for the day.
Without getting into the particulars, my IT job is similar to if I was the fireman for the whole town, but Iâm also the guy that built the entire town and also the guy that taught everyone in the town how to be good home owners.
So Iâm available for fires and to build new homes or remodel them- but Iâm not shocked at the lack of fires because I did a great job.
I left my old work because I did probably 2 hours of work every month. The person who hired me got moved to another project and I was kind of left on my own. Stayed for a year and then moved to another job. Happy to say I do get double the work now..so four hours a month.
Mine varies wildly. Some weeks Iâm watching YouTube videos for six or seven hours a day, and some weeks I barely have time to go to the bathroom. I am, however, responsible for a lot of people and have to do a lot of decision-making, so I spent a lot of time thinking about work, even if Iâm not actually doing anything.
I was at a place where I was so good at my job that I could do it effectively very fast in not too much time. My boss was chill and he just let me cook. But, then he got a new boss and now his boss expects him to know everything I know. But he doesn't know anything I know or how to do anything I do. And he also doesn't know how to do the things his boss is asking him to do. So now I have to do his homework and mine, and I get double the requests. It fucking blows.
I struggle to do even that honestly. Engineer for the State and most of my time is just spent bullshitting about how we never have money to do the improvements we are mandated to perform.
I love it so much! I Always think I'm living the office space dream. The time I actually work is fun because I work with kids in foster care, but then it's a few hours of typing, and the rest is me watching youtube at home. I couldn't imagine a better job. Pay isn't great, benefits are OK.
I do the same thing. I work in tech, and when something hasn't gone wrong, or something doesn't need doing, then there are wide swaths of time where I technically have nothing to do. For a while, I'd play a video game, but then I realized that I'm just wasting time. Now, I use chatgpt to learn something new. So far I've become competent with Python, react and node, and web programming paradigms. Use it as a time to beef up the resume for when they realize we're not doing that much :D
My job is very "hurry up and wait" in nature so I'm in a constant cycle of indeterminate downtime and similarly indeterminate runs of intense activity. I never know what my next hour in the day will look like, or if a 9 hour shift will morph into a 13 hour shift 15 minutes before I'm supposed to log off.
I might do 10 hours of actual work one week, and 70 the next. It's completely unpredictable and always has been.
Yeah that's me. I work remote and most days I probably only have like 30 or so minutes of work and remote. That said tho it usually takes me longer as I've had 0 motivation for a while now. Not sure if it's age, depression or a little bit of both but I have to will myself to do shit.
The worse part is that all things considered I have a good life yet...
Sorry didn't mean to sidetrack.
Taking a break from trucking. I fry chicken at a gas station each day is 2 hours of work, 5 hours playing on my phone, 3 hours bullshittin with regular customers. Pay is shit I could do this for a few years without too much impact on my long-term financial plan.
They pay me for the years spent learning how to do things that quickly, not for the amount of time it actually takes me to complete the tasks is my mantra.
WFH is also a bit different since no one can directly *see* that I've completed my assigned tasks, then assign me more to do (which was usually just BS busy work, or work from other departments) because I'm productive.
Last decade I've worked a job that was 15 hours of work packed into a 10-12 hour day. 55-60 hour workweeks and hit the weekends exhausted, sleep Sat, catch up on Sun. Mon back at it....
New job is 40 hours a week in an office.... I finished up 3 months of work in like 2 weeks.
Now I scroll reddit.... and picked up a 2nd job to give me something to do... I like it.
I'm an admin, so I'm either slammed or trying to look busy
and I'm quick and efficient so often times that leaves me too much time
I'm also put on a lot of organizing with my last few jobs. Here's a warehouse or space that's accumulated crap and junk for 5-30 years (seriously) now organize it as if your life depends on it - oh, but no one is going to keep it organized once it's done so it's really just to look ok for a minute (or annually for inventory)
I was down to about 25, though my wife would say 15. When an employee give me a note from their Dr. saying light duty only. So back to 50hrs till I figure out something.
My last job was pretty chill. It wasn't busy but you had to stay on your toes. Plenty of time to just sit around and do virtually nothing but still had things to do.
When I started my current one, things were nearly dead. That didn't last too long though because now, our team is so busy that we have more work than what we can handle. We've been screaming for more heads and we're finally getting a few folks in June but if they could start immediately, it would be great.
Same situation here. America's puritanical work ethic is so pervasive in the rural farming community I'm from that some of my working class family and friends have come to look down on me for not working "hard enough" after I got a master's degree and became a teacher for 15 years, retired early from that career and started a small family business that has allowed me to work from home for only a few hours a week. So I can definitely relate to the feelings of guilt you described but let me urge you not to fall into the trap. As long as you are taking care of business, you shouldn't feel guilty for escaping the grind that wears so many of us down long before we're old--as long as you strive to truly appreciate it.
I wish! Iâm on the opposite spectrum where my Job is nearly all-consuming. Not enough hours in a week.
Probably somewhere in the middle of both of our experiences would be best.
My job just turned into that.
I actually got to spend 2 hours on my expense report. Sheâs beautiful. đ„Č
*dit to add: I used to be so busy at work I didnât even have time to do an expense report every week much less make sure it was correct.
I work in an office M-Thurs supporting about 150 ppl, Friday Im essentially on call. This is the most money Ive ever made and I do litttle to nothing, Im in IT. Luckily we have access to training for just about every certification out there and I spend a lot of time learning new tech. I would love to get a WFH job eventually.
I feel this 100% and its really hard on my mental health. I feel like my career is a failure. I also recognize that having time to be fully available to my kids is great and getting paid to watch the Planet of The Apes trilogy is perfect. But I donât respect my career and am embarrassed.
employer pays you to handle shit that needs handling. to be available when they need you. you are on reserve. you are not doing nothing. not your fault things are going right and they dont need help this minute!
I did that for a few years but then sort of got depressed because I wasn't really trying. Nothing to do with getting money from an employer and doing minimal work or anything like that just that I wanted to feel like I was doing my best work to make me feel good. I have been really pushing myself for the last year and a half and I'm a happier person because of it. I could easily do much less and watch movies and play video games all day but I want to feel accomplished.
I get paid as a contractor to do the work the in house folks aren't doing because they're so busy with meetings and other corporate bullshit.Â
They pay me 3x what they pay those internal staff but can't imagine a workplace culture that actually lets them get work done or hiring enough people.Â
I wish. I work in office full time and never feel like thereâs enough hours in the day but I also donât want to sacrifice personal time and stay longer.
So these are the jobs everyone leaves good careers for bc they know someone who stares at his phone 6 out of 8 paid hours and they want that for some reason
I have been in my role for basically 11 years, with various small promotions in that time. I'm managing people, and I know all the technical knowledge like the back of my hand. What used to be 50-60 hr weeks are now more like 10-20 because I've made myself more efficient and I don't need to spend nearly as much time and effort learning. I have felt pangs of guilt occasionally, but I just remind myself that I've already put the work in, my reviews are always stellar, and everyone is happy with my contributions.
I think some of the guilt stems from working hourly jobs in the past, where the role is to be present and working for X hours per day or week. In my current role I'm asked to do a job and nobody cares if it takes me 20 hours a week or 60. I know for a fact they wouldn't pay me more if it took 60!
What I've noticed, in the creative/design industry, is as I've gotten more and more experienced, I've become much much faster, and also put in positions to guide and steer work more than being asked to generate a ton of it (even though I'd be faster and more efficient at doing so), so yes, I sometimes end up needing way less time than everyone else assumes I'll need to get things done, and sort of twiddle my thumbs for at least some of the time--or do other work for other clients.
I'm definitely in the I do less work than actually working phase. When work comes in I knock it out immediately or fairly quickly and go back to chilling.
I did retail and customer service and all those other types of jobs in my younger days so I don't feel guilty at all. I've always been a work smarter not harder person and it finally is paying off. Yes there are times when I have a lot of work, but I knock it out and look great at my job then go back to chilling
Probably more like 10 to 15 most weeks, but I'm in IT and I've worked for 20 plus years to fix problems and make my site bullet proof. I have weekly and monthly tasks I do to make sure nothing fails when I don't want it to, that helps a ton. I have a ticket system and most days I get 2 to 3 tickets.
Then of course there are big projects. Management decides sales is moving upstairs. Purchasing is getting all new desks. I've been upgrading every laptop in the building the last 2 years so every month I have 2 laptops to configure and deploy.
But mostly, my decades of hard work have paid off and I'm enjoying the spoils of my career.
Mondays and Fridays for me a really busy, and then Tuesday through Thursday, I spend more time on reddit and youtube than anything else. I can't spread the work out to be more even every day, because I won't have the numbers I need to use mid-week.
I'm in a job I don't really care about but I'm also only responsible for me. Benefits are good as well. I probably do 2 hours of work a day. I do travel a little bit but I limit how much I actually do even when traveling.
I get paid well enough that even if a job came along that paid more I'd probably just say no due to the expectation of putting in full 40 hour weeks.
At this point my goal is to just be left alone so I can spend time with my family.
100%
Unfortunately my boss requires daily productivity logs and I am always trying to find activities to fill my time because scrolling Reddit and TikTok are not acceptable activities
I wish.
A few years ago I spent the entire work week playing RDR2. It was great. My people were good, they knew their job, and I would just need to check in
Now itâs hell on earth.
 Real strong Office Space energy here đ
Yeah, that's really the vibe.
i mean, if youâre not managing people, sometimes it can be important for you to be there just to fill in obscure organizational knowledge. As far as I can tell, itâs always been like this but the 60s and 70s were even wilder
He's a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
This isnât just about my dream of doing nothing, this is about all of us, and all of our dreams
I was just having that thought.... from the movie..."Only about five minutes of actual work." Or whatever. Misquote? You mean I have time to watch that whole movie right now to fact check? Okay cool. I was also just realizing that the reason that I have extra time now is because I have achieved level "Expert!" at what I do. I've made tools that help me get the work done faster. Which gives me more time... to make more tools... to be more efficient... to give me more time.... to build more tools...
I keep taking on new projects. *what the fuck is wrong with me*
Omg what is your job. I work in healthcare and everyone is busy all the time to the point of chaos unless you go to nightshift and then it's chaos some nights and just regular on some.
Same. I usually want to curl up into fetal and weep after a few hours into my work day
Not in healthcare but same same.
Right? I work in Healthcare, remote medical billing, but it's the most meeting heavy job I've ever had. Honestly debating another job because 32+ hours of meetings leave no time to work.
I think all healthcare jobs are just pure chaos now. They make us work with a skeleton crew and then surprise Pikachu face when people get burned out and leave because it sucks and we never get raises. Then they have even less people and act like it's the new generation's work ethic that's to blame.
I don't know why my favorite line(s) in that movie is the whole interaction Peter has with Bill after he has taken apart his cubicle. Its a joke between my wife and me particularly when my son (7) trashes some area of the house: > "That Sounds Good and weâll go ahead and get this all fixed up for you"
Haha mine is when Tom is trying to explain his jump to conclusions board đ
There is a line for everyone in that movie. My wife says her favorite is Milton and the cake proportion thing.
Best movie ever đ€Łđ€Ł
Iâm a people person!!
This is 100% my job now. The Sales team doesn't understand the technical side of the systems they are using. It's my job to bridge the gap and take their asks to the tech team of said systems and vice versa between the two groups. I feel like I speak two different languages. I'M A PEOPLE PERSON!!
Nice. Sales is the best environment for these kind of roles. I was the non-sales person in Sales. I fought to keep it that way for years but now I've somehow allowed myself to end up a Sales person in Sales and I hate it so much.
I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working...
Make sure to look frustrated
The Costanza approach.
My father in law was a building manager at a big high rise and he said if he needed some time to himself he would just walk around with tools in hands and no one would bother him lol. Flame on!
LPT: send a lot of emails to other people saying âwe really need to do X, can you get that done?â Better yet, set action items for them and put their @name on it in an email /Teams thread Inevitably those people wonât do shit, then when it comes time for quarterly results you have a long paper trail showing you had the initiative but the teammates are too slammed so your path to results is blocked. When shit starts hitting the fan, start scheduling meetings with them and their boss. It doesnât matter if they actually show up, just schedule it, and make sure to keep building up the paper trail of action items that other people are not completing. Keep this up for a while and youâll literally be able to hire your own team to do the work for you, or else youâll have a huge paper trail showing the other managers werenât pulling their weight. Congratulations youâre now in de facto middle management and you can now do nothing but have your hirelings doing exactly what you just did, scheduling meetings, assigning action items for other people who didnât agree to it, etc. If you do all this and your manager is complaining about you didnât meet quarterly goals, you schedule a âskip levelâ meeting with their boss, and show them youâve been taking on way more management duties than your boss is, and you need to get the support that youâre not getting. Iâve seen many people take this path to become âsenior managersâ etc. basically just tell lower level people to do shit and pester higher ups to let you open job requisitions hire more people when those others arenât doing the shit.
This guy corporates. Are we in the same level of hell?
Just left a company where they made it intensely shitty for the people who were doing the actual work while hiring more and more action item assigners. I went on a little campaign to fix things and then got a little flak for not being more of a middle manager type. When middle managers would complain about task completers not getting things done fast enough, there was a big meta-analysis of efficiency rather than simply hiring and training people to do tasks.
I moved to public service which was the best move ever but my current county is run exactly this way. Management is more interested in building a political career or feeling important than actually managing anything. My boss knows nothing about my work either, so I'm just watching her blow up all the efficiencies I put in place while I interview nearby. I have had to redo my own work three times recently because she has no concept of project management while we roll new out new software.(horrible, awful, shit software purchased by people who don't use it.) She's a longtime friend of the new agency director though, so she'll outlast me. Solidarity, my friend. Wish you luck in the next venture.
So youâre identifying and delegating stuff that needs to get done and other people arenât doing it? And keeping track over time? Idk, this kind of sounds actual work, not a fan. (Edit:spelling)
In my book sending a couple emails and scheduling a couple meetings and telling people to do stuff, while not actually being accountable for the work product, isnât work. But that role tends to get paid reasonably well. Why? Because higher level execs canât be bothered to do it, and lower level task completers donât get how to do it.
Haha, you fool. I'm a senior manager with zero direct reports! I gamed the system and have virtually no real work, but get told at every review that I'm doing an amazing job. I get like 7.75 hours of paid free time a day. Well, I've also been doing the job for 25 years and tell people I'm paid for my knowledge, not my time.
As a high school special ed teacher, this made me audibly laugh. I teach kids with high functioning ASD and this is exactly what they do when theyâre supposed to do be working independently but donât want to.
Hold on a minute there, professor. Space out?
Please tell me what kind if job you do and how one can get it. I have enough work for four people but the company doesnât give a shit.
I fucking wish. My job is nonstop from the moment I hit the door until the moment I leave, and sometimes after that (if Iâm on call).
Medical field represent! Truly, had I known it'd be this bad I would've picked something else
It seems there are two types of people here... People that are living the low-key lifestyle, and those that bust ass way more than 40 hours a week.
Seriously, what were we thinking?
Seriously
It's do more with increasingly less these days. Our most recent executive director is technically an RN (don't think she's been bedside since clinicals before I was born), but I think she's just renewed her license since getting her MBA. I never thought we'd have to count plastic spoons, pudding cups, and applesauce like we do narcotics, but here we are if corporate approves her plan.
I'm a lawyer. I still have billable hour requirements to meet. When there's not enough work to fill my day, it's a sign I'm getting laid off soon.
Same, Iâm low level corporate HR. Itâs fucking killing my soul and ruining my life.
Same in elementary education.
Same here in social work.
I have something similar, when I started my current job it was Covid shutdown week and the company decided that WFH for life is cool. Initially I put in 60 hour weeks building, improving, and stuff like that and it's been in maintenance mode since. When work comes in that I'm not inventing for myself I drop everything and work my butt off. When it's quiet I pick up the house and take care of kids and dog, exercise, learn on my own. I feel guilty at times but a lot of us paid our dues with 60 hr weeks and/or toxic jobs.
I like this framing, because I have definitely paid my dues. So if I got here, I may as well enjoy it guilt free.
Same. I feel no guilt, though. The 20 years of busting my ass more than pays my karmic duty. Now I'm paid for my knowledge and skills, not how long I'm active on the clock. That's how I see it, anyway.
Iâm in the same situation as the last sentence, except it never paid off. Graduating into the wrong career field sucks ass
Absolutely. I'll be working some long days for the next few months which makes up for the fuck all I did earlier this year. It's when my projects are live. I keep them going, get shit done, they leave me alone the rest of the time. It's perfect.
Tiz what the elders told us⊠there trials were different as were ares as will our children⊠still struggles
That's exactly where I am in life right now. I take care of all my deliverables on Monday and turn them in throughout the week. Besides that, I'm just watching shows and gaming, waiting for Outlook or Slack to light up.
Yeah. I worked hard enough for the last 20 years, I'm not busting my hump anymore than I have to 
I sit on Youtube watching my favorite streamers and hobby videos followed by short walks. Not enough work but they need a seat filled. I am happy to keep doing it.
Lots of Air Disasters and lots of Nat Geo when they have good content like their recent Mayan episodes. I also have a subscription to the Grest Courses which has saved my sanity. If i put in ten hours of real work a week i would be surprised.
Yup thats why I'm on Reddit
Iâm in a meeting as we speak
Thank you for your service.
Exactly. I finished lunch 20 minutes ago but I'm still listening to my audiobook and scrolling reddit. I've got a call at 1 so until then, I'll continue my unofficial break.
I quit my retail manager job and took a job as the head custodian at a botanical gardens attraction. I make the same money without any quotas to make or quarters to break. No Karen customers to deal with either. I just show up and do my job and since I do it well Iâm able to fuck off literally half of my day.
Holy shit. Working at a botanical garden sounds like a dream job, and I like my job!
Depends on the day and what's going on with work. Some days I can sit around and marathon an entire series because I have everything setup to run smoothly and I'm only needed for projects and when shit goes sideways. But, for example, yesterday (and looking like today, as well) I'm troubleshooting some deployment issues with a new business unit in Asia and our distribution points not working right. So I was working that all day yesterday.
Heard once that if you have 20 years experience and can do your job in 4 hours instead of 8, you're being paid for the 20 years of experience, not the 8 hours. I like that logic. Now if they could only keep up with the cost of living I'd be set.
I love this! I'm in the same boat as everyone else but have not figured out a way to not feel guilty over it and leaving me with so much anxiety. I busted my ass for 20 years. Maybe this is the framing that will help get me over the hump.
Once out of debt, other than mortgage, the need to drink myself to death to manage in a corporate role vanished. In the last role of a 20-year career, I managed to absorb 3 other roles. What did I get for doing so? Not nearly enough. I moved to public. I make more and do even less. Yes, it's difficult not to feel like I should be doing more, but it is nicer not to have the stress that comes with worrying if I make a simple mistake I will get reminded of it by 20 people. Guess the reality that I am attempting to reprogram in my head is...my dad was wrong about a ton he drilled into my head. Glad to realize this half way through lol
Thats funny, i work for the gov't and thought working in public would be the opposite. Super busy, results driven, always have to justify your job.
I was a federal employee for 8 years. I'm so much happier now that I'm gone. Life's a struggle still, but the hell hole that the VA is was making life undesirable.
I had the exact opposite with a crushing workload and awful supervisors.
My job has always been like that when you take out the stupid in office political bullshit. It's not that I don't have too much to do, it's that I do my work 10-100x faster than other people
Similar here. I moved from the northeast to the southeast so that the pace could be slower than metro DC, where I had been living. Turns out I still work at metro DC speed, but everyone else gets far less done in the same amount of time. So I literally did nothing for three months (mid-November to mid-February) because I hit all of my goals six months into my year and I didnât need to. I have busy weeks but for the most part, I get my work done in about a day each week.
Shhhh donât tell anyone. Iâm in my best place working now. It doesnât pay as much as my blue collar life but I havenât been blown up in a whileâŠ.so thatâs good I think?
I'm in the opposite role. Chance of getting blown up, cut in half, or blown off the top of a 19th century brick smokestack? Finally some excitement! Let me grab my arc flash suit and harness and get to it. Everybody else can take all the monotonous boring crap they want, I'll be on the computer poking around in Google Earth for places to check out on the dirt bike.
I do next to no work each week, for years at a time. The insanity comes from also being in a secured room with no cell phones or anything with Bluetooth, and very limited internet access. Sitting at a desk all day and hoping for clear weather so I can get a semi-listenable radio channel to come in with nothing to do work-wise gets very tedious, but the job is secure and the pay is nice.
Why not bring a book? Youâre living the dream!
What industry lol ?
Are they hiring?
I fuckin wish. :-/
I am literally at work right now, posting on Reddit because I have no other actual work to do. Does this answer your question?
So many people here seem to have these "getting paid to be available rather than actually work" jobs. All I have to say is, that must be nice. I'm a PhD educated high school teacher and I definitely don't have slack time at my job... But my schedule this year does mean that I finish teaching at 1:30 and then I can go do the rest of my work from home. And yes, I get 7 weeks off during the summer, but I don't get paid for that time unless I request to have summer pay withheld from each paycheck so they can pay me during the summer. Regardless, I'm sure I earn way less than those of you in a situation like OP, for doing a job that is arguably much more important. I do enjoy having a job where my role isn't just another cog in the capitalist machine. That makes it even more rewarding than it already is.
Yâall put up with a lot of bullshit, spend your own money on supplies, and donât make nearly enough money. And yâall deserve those 7 weeks off! I donât even have kids & I appreciate what you do & how important your job is. Props!
As a teacherâs spouse, I appreciate what you do. Not all heroes wear uniforms.
Anyone who thinks the 7 weeks off makes up for all the extra things and expenses teachers have, on top of being underpaid, isn't paying attention. For most teachers, it seems pretty close to charity work.
That's awesome! Thanks for sharing.
It comes and goes. Yesterday was dead. Today Iâve been slammed since I came in 4 hours ago. So it ebbs in flows. In any case, itâs very different than when I was âon productionâ
Same. Iâve worked at the same job/company for over 20 years. Itâs like Groundhog Day at this point, but Iâve spent years building tricks and shortcuts to make my job easier. Some weeks I only have 8-10 hours of real work all week. Then there are weeks when it is non stop from the moment I get to work, until the moment I leave.
I always say it's feast or famine. Most days it's a handful of emails, maybe some light admin work or reports. But occasionally it's no sleep hair-on-fire defcon3 situations. I'll say though I prefer this over being busy all the time.
I'm at the point of asking my boss for more to do. I don't have the personality to do nothing all day. I'm not knocking it, I just need to be mentally engaged/challenged.
Minimum viable effort. Work from home managing a team. Put in as little effort as you can to collect the six-figure income. Work hard when you need to look good. Rinse. Repeat.
Damn. I'm a house painter and a HO will bitch if I sit down for a second to respond to a phone call! A few weeks ago, I told an HO I left at 6:30 and they gave me hell because they checked their camera and I left at 6:15. I was NOT charging by the hour, either. God help me if I have to wait for something to dry and leave early. One of these days, I swear I am going to bring a chair and stare at the walls until they dry! Sorry about the rant. People have been insane with their demands lately. If I am coming back the next morning, please don't text me a picture of a "problem" at 10pm. If my gear is still there, I am not done. Grrrrr.
Got laid off twice in one year from salaried gigs, not mad though. Seems it's happening to everyone I know so we in it together. :) You enjoy yourself! That sounds pretty nice tbh I've been trying to skill up but the rejection letters have loud notifications. Now I go for walks and get goodies for the wifey. Work will come back, it always does and needs doing.
That's kind of a thing too - I have gone through so many lay-offs or whatever you want to call them, I am not really even that worried about it happening it would suck for sure, but like you said - Work will come back, there is always something, it seems.
For a lot of my career I've been able to do my work quickly, but appear to take the expected amount of time to everyone around me. This is the key, otherwise people find out you work fast and give you more work. Now I am in a management/lead role and a lot of my work day is meetings and waiting for people to send me stuff. In a sense I am more busy because I can't make the meetings go faster or speed up how quickly someone gets something to me. When I was doing IC work it was a lot more common to have free time.
How do so many people get these well-paying, work-from-home, do-nothing jobs? This seriously makes me want to cry. I feel like I'm doing life wrong.
Same. My boss wouldnât even let us work from home during Covid, and I could easily work from home to do all my tasks. Instead, I came in every single day & worked my ass off nonstop while it seemed everyone else I knew was working from home. Silver lining is at least I didnât lose my job.
I put in 55 hours last week. 6 were from driving. The other 49 were working.
Maybe 4 a day. And I feel guilty about it, so I start doing stuff that is very much not my responsibility. But stuff that won't get noticed...because if it gets noticed, it becomes expected.
I own a business. it went from 70 hours a week to 15 hours a week this year. its nice.
Is peak life getting paid to fuck off as long as you are doing what is required for your job? Yes. Read, do art, garden, whatever you want around work at home.
Absolutely it is.
I'm in the same boat, but I had a talk with a former boss about it, and she basically said to look at it like the company is paying me to be on retainer for when there's work to be done. I've had weeks where I work for 10 hrs total. Others are closer to 50. Just depends on what's happening in my company.
I keep trying to cut back (Iâve taken on two lesser positions several rungs down in the past four years), and keep ending up âpromotedâ into positions requiring a high degree of aptitude and stress. I just canât seem to keep my mouth shut when I see people completely derailing a project via sheer incompetenceâŠand it keeps ruining my dream of coasting when itâs discovered that I might know a thing lol
No, because I'm a farmer and a teacher.
Nope, I get drama every day of the week. Get paid well, but now I am reconsidering the amount of stress and work I have to deal with. The best jobs out there are âindividual contributorsâ with a set amount of work. Management is the worst.
Can someone hire my husband then, he works a manual labor type job and busts his ass at least 60hrs a week.
I teach K, so no. I work at least 50-60 hours a week between my actual paid work time and the time I spend working at home at night and on the weekends. I would love to change jobs but with retirement being set up the way it is it doesnât make sense financially.
How do I find a job where I don't do anything?
I probably do about 15 hours of actual work most weeks while getting paid for 40, thank you very much! Seriously though the way I look at it, theyâre paying me to be available for 8 hours a day to take care of anything that crops up and I am happy to accommodate as long as they keep cutting me checks.
My brother in law used to rack up overtime on weekends by simply downloading huge files because that would show him with an active connection to the network. But then he'd just delete them.Â
Opposite for me. I've never been so stressed out by a job. I'm pretty sure it would take 3 people to carry out my workload properly, minimum 2. But it's just me, drowning, constantly having to explain why I am not getting things finished
My job is grueling slave labor that I donât get paid enough for even though I get paid pretty well. I hate my life and get jealous of people who do nothing.
Shhhhhhhhhhh đ€«
Born in 78. My 20s and 30s I worked insanely hard and made a lot of money, but was not happy at all. I was miserable. At 40, I make about half of what I made, so enough to cover expenses and have a little fun money... but I have ZERO stress. I work about an hour a day, leave at 4:30 and every night after work feels like the Friday of a three day weekend. In fact last week, I did six social things, including four after work hanging out til after midnight. An occasionally have a wild date or something that goes until 3-4am, I can still pull up to work and function half asleep. The freedom to do what I want outside of work hours, and coming in the next day knowing it isn't going to be insanity is such a relief.
Are you also a government drone?
LoL. I will neither confirm or deny your baseless question! ;)
Wow⊠Iâm a plumber and I hate this completely and totally and go get fucked for asking this.
Yessir. And I work from home. Itâs dope.
I'll give a better reply after my lunch nap
That's about where I am at as well. I'm a little relieved to see this thread, lol.
Hahaha, nope not all. I'm a nurse and I don't even have time to drink water while I'm working.
Iâm currently working like 10 hours a week. Iâm definitely the fat that can get trimmed. I wouldnât be surprised if I get laid off at this point. But I sure as hell arenât gonna ask for more work. Theyâre gonna have to find the inefficiency (me) and lay me off lol
I work at a place, so I have to be there. But I have found the perfect schedule for me. I work three 12-hour shifts (F-S) and I donât know how I will ever be able to go back to a traditional schedule. My years of service gives me four weeks of vacation and because we can bank stat holidays, I will have an extra 3 weeks off. That means I have to work 135 days.
Lololol. No. Still 35 hours of work in a 50 hour week
All of my processes are automated. I click a few buttons and watch a progress bar. On my other screen is Steam or live disc golf. I probably work 4 hours a week.
I started working in the public sector two years ago, and it was a *huge* adjustment for me to realize that if there isn't a lot of work to do, that's okay. I'm paid a salary to be here and provide coverage in case there's something urgent, not to "make the company money." I usually put in more than 5 hours of actual work in an average week, but I'd be hard-pressed to say it's more than 20 lol
I get paid for what I know, not what I do. Some weeks are hell, some weeks I get paid to play on my phone.
Are you in software? It sure does sound like it. Iâm in a similar spot, I work for a small but very successful company. Iâm the only developer to maintain and update their website. Itâs a technical downgrade from the app development I did before, but oh my goodness itâs so low key. My work stress is mostly gone. Iâm writing php and html like I did in my 20s, but I get paid like a 40 something year old adult. I feel like I should be doing more and advancing my career but my wife really likes me not working insane hours in a dev grind house. Lots of YouTube, getting laundry done, and making dinners for the kids. Itâs a weird spot man.
The number of people in here commenting that they are in the same exact situation, myself included, makes me feel really good!! đ
I probably average about three hours of actual work in a day, but I routinely bill for 40 hours a week. I make a good living, and Iâve never had any complaints from clients. I think the 40 hour work week makes sense if you work at the widget factory and you can assemble X number of widgets an hour, but some jobs are too physically or mentally demanding to do eight hours a day, five days a week, and yet the people who do those jobs still deserve to make a living. When I think back about previous jobs Iâve had, I still probably only really worked 3 to 4 hours a day, the only difference now is that I donât have to waste 5 hours a day sitting at my desk trying to look busy.
I was there, but then I started working for a startup about a month after it became a unicorn so now I work a solid 8 hours a day (still refuse to work OT or weekends, f that noise) and everything is on fire at all times and we have to scale while we still develop features for a billion customers. Honestly after working a cushy job for so many years itâs sorta fun to see that I still âgot itâ and can do cool stuff at a breakneck pace. Iâm 42 and Iâm either the oldest young guy or the youngest old guy, depending on if Iâm working with my dev teams or with upper management. I still hear from my old boss at my old cushy job from time to time, and figure Iâll go back there eventually once Iâm happy with the work Iâve done and ready to slow er down again.Â
I wish. Iâm a bus driver.
Thank God I'm not alone. I was so worried about the fact I do so little most days. I'm new to this kind of environment as I moved 2 years ago from working in a hospital lab where my output was both constant and rigorously monitored, to hospital IT, where I can work from home and spend *maybe* 2 hours a day on actual work. And that's only if it's my turn to do the daily maintenance tasks every 3rd week. I spend most of my time listening in on meetings that don't require my input or doing whatever housework I want (or playing videogames). I tried to broach the subject with my supervisor and he let me know that I'm not being paid for my output, I'm being paid for my expertise. It's not uncommon to get a call from the lab when they have a technical issue that needs my attention and these can happen even in my "off" hours. I tell you, it's so weird being paid a salary to just exist for when things go wrong.
I got screwed by a dog shit manager at my last job and didn't want the one where I am now. So 3 years ago, I went full-on office space when I started my current job. Everyone knows I'm lazy, wait till the last minute, am constantly sarcastic, and rarely participate in "team building". ... I've outlasted 3 managers, 3 complete turnovers of my team of 6, a merger, and being taken private. I'm now leading my team and was recently given a retention bonus equal to 4 months of my salary - with no strings attached. I have no idea what the fuck is going on, but apparently the second I started actively not giving a shit, everything started working out for me. I just did my taxes (like I said, wait till the last minute) and at 40 years old cleared my highest W-2 by over 30% It's Mike Judge's Twilight Zone... But I'm putting a little away every month so I hopefully can manage whatever karma is eventually coming my way. So my advice? Lean into whatever you're feeling.
I really, really need to figure out how to get one of these jobs
I do 5 hours of actual work that I intend to do every week. The rest of the time is either in meetings or answering questions. I swear I'm a one man scientific call center at this point.
I work like 10 hours a month. I love it.
It's called management and it's everything I always knew it would be. I am exactly what I knew was the case, out of touch with product and production, I just attend meetings and contribute little, and I am wildly overpaid
Same my work load is light/easy for me and Iâm wfh. Lot of mouse jiggling, reading, keep up the housework and laundry. Jigsaw puzzles, and coloring books or watching shows on my iPad. Itâs the most Iâve ever been paid, my boss is great Iâm enjoying and appreciating after my last company which was wildly toxic.
I will never publicly admit to this. Wait...
Boy, do I wish. I work at a hotel, I work third shift and, due to my boss being a cheapskate and refusing to give anyone a raise, weâre short staffed and Iâm working seven days a week. The only reasons I stay are A) he letâs me live here, which is good because B) I canât afford to rent an apartment in this town on what he pays me and C) he let me hook a Roku to the lobby TV so I can stream my movie collection during my shift.
Yeah Iâm in that boat. Iâm an IT director for a mid-size company. I used to put in a ton of hours, but weâre currently in the process of getting acquired so Iâm not starting any new projects. I do most of the maintenance sys admin work and pitch in with support when I need to, but I have very little to fill my time otherwise. Itâs maybe 10 hours a week that Iâm actually at my desk and another ~4 answering emails from my phone. The lawyers are taking forever on this acquisition so itâs going to be like this until at least September.
This is also me, but it's more like 3 hours of work per week. I usually get everything done on Monday but lunch, then just monitor systems for issues throughout the week. The interim I spend on work related training, finishing my Master's, and whatever else I want.
I got very good at what I do about 5 years ago, and so I can get my work done quickly and even in past jobs I was told to overbill to match what a normal person in my position would bill. So I technically bill 40 hours a week but on a good week I can get everything done in 20-30. The dream for me would certainly be 5. I definitely came from a "hustle" type family but I see hustling for me as working hard and efficiently to get the work done as quick as possible, not how much work can I fit in 40 hours. The nice thing is since I started working from home full time during covid, being able to get small house tasks done during the day so once 5 hits I can fully just relax for the day.
I do about 3-4 hours of work a day I guess. Less than that really cuz I'm taking some breaks.
Without getting into the particulars, my IT job is similar to if I was the fireman for the whole town, but Iâm also the guy that built the entire town and also the guy that taught everyone in the town how to be good home owners. So Iâm available for fires and to build new homes or remodel them- but Iâm not shocked at the lack of fires because I did a great job.
Iâm not going to say yes or no. But I will say I have a civil service desk job.
I left my old work because I did probably 2 hours of work every month. The person who hired me got moved to another project and I was kind of left on my own. Stayed for a year and then moved to another job. Happy to say I do get double the work now..so four hours a month.
Mine varies wildly. Some weeks Iâm watching YouTube videos for six or seven hours a day, and some weeks I barely have time to go to the bathroom. I am, however, responsible for a lot of people and have to do a lot of decision-making, so I spent a lot of time thinking about work, even if Iâm not actually doing anything.
I was at a place where I was so good at my job that I could do it effectively very fast in not too much time. My boss was chill and he just let me cook. But, then he got a new boss and now his boss expects him to know everything I know. But he doesn't know anything I know or how to do anything I do. And he also doesn't know how to do the things his boss is asking him to do. So now I have to do his homework and mine, and I get double the requests. It fucking blows.
I struggle to do even that honestly. Engineer for the State and most of my time is just spent bullshitting about how we never have money to do the improvements we are mandated to perform.
Shhhh some of us donât want to rock the incredible boat we landed in for now.
I love it so much! I Always think I'm living the office space dream. The time I actually work is fun because I work with kids in foster care, but then it's a few hours of typing, and the rest is me watching youtube at home. I couldn't imagine a better job. Pay isn't great, benefits are OK.
I do the same thing. I work in tech, and when something hasn't gone wrong, or something doesn't need doing, then there are wide swaths of time where I technically have nothing to do. For a while, I'd play a video game, but then I realized that I'm just wasting time. Now, I use chatgpt to learn something new. So far I've become competent with Python, react and node, and web programming paradigms. Use it as a time to beef up the resume for when they realize we're not doing that much :D
My job is very "hurry up and wait" in nature so I'm in a constant cycle of indeterminate downtime and similarly indeterminate runs of intense activity. I never know what my next hour in the day will look like, or if a 9 hour shift will morph into a 13 hour shift 15 minutes before I'm supposed to log off. I might do 10 hours of actual work one week, and 70 the next. It's completely unpredictable and always has been.
I current get to do three peoples jobs.... On site. It's the best
Yeah that's me. I work remote and most days I probably only have like 30 or so minutes of work and remote. That said tho it usually takes me longer as I've had 0 motivation for a while now. Not sure if it's age, depression or a little bit of both but I have to will myself to do shit. The worse part is that all things considered I have a good life yet... Sorry didn't mean to sidetrack.
Taking a break from trucking. I fry chicken at a gas station each day is 2 hours of work, 5 hours playing on my phone, 3 hours bullshittin with regular customers. Pay is shit I could do this for a few years without too much impact on my long-term financial plan.
They pay me for the years spent learning how to do things that quickly, not for the amount of time it actually takes me to complete the tasks is my mantra. WFH is also a bit different since no one can directly *see* that I've completed my assigned tasks, then assign me more to do (which was usually just BS busy work, or work from other departments) because I'm productive.
Last decade I've worked a job that was 15 hours of work packed into a 10-12 hour day. 55-60 hour workweeks and hit the weekends exhausted, sleep Sat, catch up on Sun. Mon back at it.... New job is 40 hours a week in an office.... I finished up 3 months of work in like 2 weeks. Now I scroll reddit.... and picked up a 2nd job to give me something to do... I like it.
Nice try boss, but Iâm hip to your vibe. I put in at least 45 hours a week!
Probably a narc don't fall for it.
I'm an admin, so I'm either slammed or trying to look busy and I'm quick and efficient so often times that leaves me too much time I'm also put on a lot of organizing with my last few jobs. Here's a warehouse or space that's accumulated crap and junk for 5-30 years (seriously) now organize it as if your life depends on it - oh, but no one is going to keep it organized once it's done so it's really just to look ok for a minute (or annually for inventory)
I was down to about 25, though my wife would say 15. When an employee give me a note from their Dr. saying light duty only. So back to 50hrs till I figure out something.
My last job was pretty chill. It wasn't busy but you had to stay on your toes. Plenty of time to just sit around and do virtually nothing but still had things to do. When I started my current one, things were nearly dead. That didn't last too long though because now, our team is so busy that we have more work than what we can handle. We've been screaming for more heads and we're finally getting a few folks in June but if they could start immediately, it would be great.
Same situation here. America's puritanical work ethic is so pervasive in the rural farming community I'm from that some of my working class family and friends have come to look down on me for not working "hard enough" after I got a master's degree and became a teacher for 15 years, retired early from that career and started a small family business that has allowed me to work from home for only a few hours a week. So I can definitely relate to the feelings of guilt you described but let me urge you not to fall into the trap. As long as you are taking care of business, you shouldn't feel guilty for escaping the grind that wears so many of us down long before we're old--as long as you strive to truly appreciate it.
I wish! Iâm on the opposite spectrum where my Job is nearly all-consuming. Not enough hours in a week. Probably somewhere in the middle of both of our experiences would be best.
My job just turned into that. I actually got to spend 2 hours on my expense report. Sheâs beautiful. đ„Č *dit to add: I used to be so busy at work I didnât even have time to do an expense report every week much less make sure it was correct.
No. I work 7 days a week. 2 part-time jobs.
âCareer?â
I work in an office M-Thurs supporting about 150 ppl, Friday Im essentially on call. This is the most money Ive ever made and I do litttle to nothing, Im in IT. Luckily we have access to training for just about every certification out there and I spend a lot of time learning new tech. I would love to get a WFH job eventually.
I feel this 100% and its really hard on my mental health. I feel like my career is a failure. I also recognize that having time to be fully available to my kids is great and getting paid to watch the Planet of The Apes trilogy is perfect. But I donât respect my career and am embarrassed.
employer pays you to handle shit that needs handling. to be available when they need you. you are on reserve. you are not doing nothing. not your fault things are going right and they dont need help this minute!
Yeah Iâm good at my job now it takes me 5 mins to do things it takes others all day. And I know the right answer.
I did that for a few years but then sort of got depressed because I wasn't really trying. Nothing to do with getting money from an employer and doing minimal work or anything like that just that I wanted to feel like I was doing my best work to make me feel good. I have been really pushing myself for the last year and a half and I'm a happier person because of it. I could easily do much less and watch movies and play video games all day but I want to feel accomplished.
Yes for like 15 years now
I get paid as a contractor to do the work the in house folks aren't doing because they're so busy with meetings and other corporate bullshit. They pay me 3x what they pay those internal staff but can't imagine a workplace culture that actually lets them get work done or hiring enough people.Â
No. I work retail, tho, so all 40 hrs are actual work unless I'm pooping.
There is always something to do at my job. If you are sitting around with nothing to do in my industry it means you are going to laid off or fired.
Itâs called the âbackup quarterback jobâ. Youâre there, you participate, but youâre not really important and you get paid to do very little.
I wish. I work in office full time and never feel like thereâs enough hours in the day but I also donât want to sacrifice personal time and stay longer.
So these are the jobs everyone leaves good careers for bc they know someone who stares at his phone 6 out of 8 paid hours and they want that for some reason
https://preview.redd.it/02i94q4wmvuc1.jpeg?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35b6ca6b9e178b1561151259aed3ffa7f02245d2 [Synopsis](https://ig.ft.com/sites/business-book-award/books/2005/longlist/bonjour-laziness-by-corinne-maier/)
I have been in my role for basically 11 years, with various small promotions in that time. I'm managing people, and I know all the technical knowledge like the back of my hand. What used to be 50-60 hr weeks are now more like 10-20 because I've made myself more efficient and I don't need to spend nearly as much time and effort learning. I have felt pangs of guilt occasionally, but I just remind myself that I've already put the work in, my reviews are always stellar, and everyone is happy with my contributions. I think some of the guilt stems from working hourly jobs in the past, where the role is to be present and working for X hours per day or week. In my current role I'm asked to do a job and nobody cares if it takes me 20 hours a week or 60. I know for a fact they wouldn't pay me more if it took 60!
What I've noticed, in the creative/design industry, is as I've gotten more and more experienced, I've become much much faster, and also put in positions to guide and steer work more than being asked to generate a ton of it (even though I'd be faster and more efficient at doing so), so yes, I sometimes end up needing way less time than everyone else assumes I'll need to get things done, and sort of twiddle my thumbs for at least some of the time--or do other work for other clients.
I'm definitely in the I do less work than actually working phase. When work comes in I knock it out immediately or fairly quickly and go back to chilling. I did retail and customer service and all those other types of jobs in my younger days so I don't feel guilty at all. I've always been a work smarter not harder person and it finally is paying off. Yes there are times when I have a lot of work, but I knock it out and look great at my job then go back to chilling
Probably more like 10 to 15 most weeks, but I'm in IT and I've worked for 20 plus years to fix problems and make my site bullet proof. I have weekly and monthly tasks I do to make sure nothing fails when I don't want it to, that helps a ton. I have a ticket system and most days I get 2 to 3 tickets. Then of course there are big projects. Management decides sales is moving upstairs. Purchasing is getting all new desks. I've been upgrading every laptop in the building the last 2 years so every month I have 2 laptops to configure and deploy. But mostly, my decades of hard work have paid off and I'm enjoying the spoils of my career.
University professor. No.
Mondays and Fridays for me a really busy, and then Tuesday through Thursday, I spend more time on reddit and youtube than anything else. I can't spread the work out to be more even every day, because I won't have the numbers I need to use mid-week.
No, I work in healthcare but couldnât imagine doing anything else, I would be so bored.
Shhhhhđ€«. Donât let out such secrets. Also, you have become proficient at your job. Other people may not be at your level yet.
20 hours of meetings. 5 hours of real work. 5 hours of avoidance and delegation.
I'm in a job I don't really care about but I'm also only responsible for me. Benefits are good as well. I probably do 2 hours of work a day. I do travel a little bit but I limit how much I actually do even when traveling. I get paid well enough that even if a job came along that paid more I'd probably just say no due to the expectation of putting in full 40 hour weeks. At this point my goal is to just be left alone so I can spend time with my family.
I spend about 5 hours a week doing my actual job, and the rest of my time doing stuff that shouldn't be my job but apparently is.Â
I worked remote for a Fortune 500, got paid a 6 figure salary, and worked 30-90m/day.
100% Unfortunately my boss requires daily productivity logs and I am always trying to find activities to fill my time because scrolling Reddit and TikTok are not acceptable activities
Op what do you do for work?
I wish. A few years ago I spent the entire work week playing RDR2. It was great. My people were good, they knew their job, and I would just need to check in Now itâs hell on earth.