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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 26 2020, @10:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the opinionated-opinions dept.

https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/08/ars-readers-take-on-the-present-and-future-of-work/

Over the past few weeks, we've been talking about how best to manage the current state of work and what companies will need to do in the near and not-too-distant future to adjust to post-pandemic reality. As expected, our readers had some opinions on these topics, too—ranging from insightful to inciteful.

So, in the interest of better surfacing the wisdom of our particular crowd, I've curated some of the thoughts of the Ars community on the topics of working better from home and what our shared experiences have taught us about the future of collaboration technology and the future nature of the corporate office. As always, we hope you'll share additional wisdom in the comments here, as they may guide some future coverage on issues related to the realities of future work.
[...]
Aside from responding with protests of post-traumatic stress after I mentioned Lotus Notes in our article on the future of collaboration, our readers had some on-point thoughts on the current strengths and weaknesses of collaboration technology—particularly in the face of current circumstances. And one of the problems is collaborating across companies effectively.
[...]
Other readers noted that work-from-home wasn't an option for them, but only because of management's whims. RCook wrote that his employer had brought everyone back into the office, "partly because we're located in Iowa where the Pandemic didn't happen according to our Governor and partly because the company President has some stupid control issues."
[....]
However, the company president is working from home. And while RCook "made sure the IT infrastructure was ready and capable of handling the [work-from-home] VPN load" during the company's initial lockdown, "I was actually asked at one point how management could effectively spy on employees to gauge productivity."


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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 28 2020, @02:03AM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday August 28 2020, @02:03AM (#1043089) Journal

    There are still employers who value competence and honesty. It's not all Dilbertesque. Talking to acquaintances in the engineering field over the years, I hear it's about 50-50. The engineers who have had the same job at the same company for 20 years, they're the ones in a sane and straightforward workplace, and never were gaslighted and ground up in office politics. It's the engineers in the gig economy who get most of the sh*t.

    I now think that my university education had some large holes. We were not educated in how to detect and deal with insincerity. Not warned that we needed to keep our bullsh*t detectors active. We were perhaps too arrogant in thinking that such problems are trivial. The flip side of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that very smart people often underestimate their skills and performance. The con artists in the workplace see that self-doubt in a New York minute, and exploit it to the max. Do all they can to sow more confusion and doubt. Many are nearly as incompetent at that as they are at engineering, but a few are all too slick and successful with the gaslighting. And indeed, the entire nation has been blindsided by all the bull from the bullsh*t artists who finagled their way into power.

    It'd be nice if we could entirely avoid the bull. But that's not realistic. So, how do you deal with it?

    1) Get it in writing. The scumbags in management don't bat an eye at asking others to do illegal, dangerous, wasteful, or stupid stuff they wouldn't do themselves. And if it leads to trouble, they absolutely will deny that they ever asked such things of others. But if you have a paper trail, they can't weasel out and leave you to hang. However, it doesn't usually go that way. What happens is that when you insist that they put their requests in writing, they will change their minds, deciding that what they were about to ask of you isn't such a good idea after all. In any case, you don't want to be in the position of having to demonstrate that you were ordered to do something bad.

    2) Keep your cool. Don't have a temper tantrum. Yes, yes, the lying dirtbag just tried to manipulate others into firing you, tried to frame you for something, or sabotaged your equipment or data. Losing it totally hands your enemies a gift. Sometimes, sh*t is done on purpose because they want to see how you will handle it. It's okay to be angry, but don't, don't, don't lose control. Yeah, you want to smash the a**hole in the face, but you won't, you know better than that. About the farthest to go is playing a harmless prank on them, if there is any hope they are not incorrigible. If they are, don't waste any more time on them than you absolutely have to.

    3) Don't be afraid to refuse. Its not uncommon to be asked for the moon. Or to be left wondering what the heck did they just ask of you, really. What is hard, is untangling all the business speak and pinning them down. If you don't have clarity on what you're supposed to do, you're cruising for a bruising. Before long, they're going to view you as incompetent, never realizing that they expected too much. Some bosses are never satisfied. No matter how hard you work and how much you accomplish, they want more. You could have worked even harder. If by some miracle you delivered on a request for the moon, don't expect them to appreciate it. Instead, they might well whine that they wanted Mars, not the moon.

    4) Keep some f*ck you money. So you can tell your boss "f*ck you", and walk. There are situations that are so bad that walking really is the only viable thing to do. Don't believe those self-help books that claim you can work with anybody. No, you can't. There are people who really are impossible. Like I once had a manager/coworker who deliberately sabotaged equipment. He'd wipe hard drives I was using. But it wasn't behind my back, no it was done in my face, with him giving me spurious reasons why it was supposedly necessary. That one is obvious, but it can be hard to tell, and you don't want to rush out when there is still some doubt. On the other hand, don't be scared into believing them when they hint around about your career being ruined if you walk out. As to the other card they love to play, that the economy is in the crapper, unemployment is through the roof, and all that, maybe it is, and maybe not. If you are stressed to the max, and it's affecting your health, leave.

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