Hacker News Reader

Comment by Roboprog | Hacker News Reader

Is my job a bullshit job? No, but...

I'm miserably reminded every week when I do my TPS^H^H^H timesheet just what proportion of my job is bullshit activity that I have to get through so that I can get to the part where I am actually going to work on something that will matter to someone. ("Look! I actually spent almost 10 hours this week [designing/] writing [/testing] code!") Knowing what needs doing is of course important, but after the third time of hearing it, it's time to shut up and go to work, people!

So many meetings, so many... (sobs bitterly in corner)

View on HN

My employer pays for my internet connection but requires you to file an expense report, I never do because it feels like part of the job responsibilities to get a fraction of the salary is to file the damn thing. I'm basically giving my employer a discount in order to avoid paperwork.

I had one client; where I stopped working for two weeks because of an administration issue. Throughout that process; I was pressured heavily to continue working without resolution. Things were falling through the cracks and it looked bad on the department [and me and my manager] to have these problems.

Well, we eventually sorted out the administration issue on a late Friday; and as a customer service gesture I worked over the weekend to catch up.

I caught up on the two-week backlog that was crippling the department in four hours. It was at that point I realized how much time I actually 'work' for this client verse how much time I spend in meetings with them.

I'm supposed to be working about 30% time on a project at work. That translates to about 12 hours. This project has two meetings a week and the meetings almost always take 2 hours each. That means that out of my 12 hours/week on this project, I'm already spending 1/3 of it listening to people debate what conferences we should apply to (rather than, you know, what work we should do to make something conference-worthy)

Does your manager know that so much of these meetings a redundant? A good manager insulates other employees from this kind of meeting brutalization and avoids adding to it if at all possible. Unfortunately, there are many managers that think they exist to hold meetings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com