Tag: Work Page 5 of 7

Leaving DOL

On December 9, 2015

I’m leaving my job. Friday is my last day. It’s been a good two years with the Department of Labor. I started here one day late because the government was still closed back in 2013.

I walked into the job and three days later my co-worker was let go. From then, I worked alone (with a lot of help from others) to get me into the position where I was able to support the department’s WebEx events without failure.

I was a one-man support team until Jan 2015 when I finally got some full-time help. Then we were finally a two-person team again. Then that person left suddenly in October and we hired a new person who I’ve poured all of my knowledge into and left him with a pile of documentation and as much training as I could cram into our few weeks together.

He’s knowledgeable, excited and hard-working and I know he’ll keep things going once I leave and continue the tradition of success I’ve worked so hard to build.

I tend to disappear from jobs without so much as word as I did from NIH in 2013, with my two-weeks being entirely during the shutdown.

This time, I setup an auto-responder to all new email to alert people who I was leaving and to email the group email address and not me directly as they’d gotten used to when it was just me.

I’m terrible at goodbyes but it’s nice to know your hard work didn’t go unnoticed which it can so often feel like when working in a support role. I got this email earlier this morning from a person I’ve worked on countless events with over the past two years.

Carl – I just learned you were leaving DOL this Friday. I wanted to say thank you so very much for all you have done on behalf of OCIO and the IT Modernization Team to support learning events, All Hands meetings, committee meetings, etc. – you were the glue that helped make these events work seamlessly as a norm. And if there was a hitch you had a quick remedy.

Your expertise and service-oriented way of being have been greatly appreciated and valued by all on our team. Knowing that someone with expertise and knowhow was available to assist in the less visible parts of the work removed a lot of stress.

Your departure is a tremendous loss for DOL and OCIO. I wish you the very very best in your next endeavor and hope your new employer understands the contribution you can make to their work.

So with this, I leave contracting to the Department of Labor for a contract job with the Food & Drug Administration.

Longer hours don’t make for better work

By Carl

On August 27, 2015

In Observations

Overwork is hurting us. The longer hours and later days are not increasing productivity. It’s hurting it. Building cultures where an email is sent on Sunday at 7am for a meeting on Monday at 7am is not only accepted but expected is toxic. Working 80 hours in a week is inhuman and ridiculous.

There need to be limits to work. Just because a device can receive email doesn’t mean the owner needs to check it 24 hours a day. Just because someone has your phone number, doesn’t mean you need to be available to that phone at their demand.

This week, I declined to give my personal phone number out to someone I was planning an event with, because I knew the culture of their group meant it would be abused. I already made that mistake once and I continue to pay for it.

I love to work hard when I am at work. But I need just as much time to regain my focus and energy when I’m not at work. I draw a line at where work stops and my life begins. And it’s a hard line to keep from being erased or moved when you’re not looking.

Work Hard, Live Well

Many people believe that weekends and the 40-hour workweek are some sort of great compromise between capitalism and hedonism, but that’s not historically accurate. They are actually the carefully considered outcome of profit-maximizing research by Henry Ford in the early part of the 20th century. He discovered that you could actually get more output out of people by having them work fewer days and fewer hours.

The best work perk I’ve ever had was a scheduled where I worked 9 hour days, but I got a day off every other pay period. This let me schedule appointments during the day, go to movies, sleep in and recharge during the week without having to use precious vacation days / sick leave.

Many times when I get in to work in the morning and open Outlook, I see email sent from all hours of the night and morning. I wonder to myself why these people felt it was important enough for them to send this to me at 11pm. Or 4am. Couldn’t it have waited until work started? I wasn’t going to see or act on it until the next day anyway. If these were from people who worked an alternate schedule I’d understand since email is perfect for its asynchronous nature. But they’re not. They’re at their desk just like I am.

I have a few rules that keep me sane at work and keep life balanced with work.

First, I never respond to email after hours. I may read it to make sure no one in our West Coast offices is having a real emergency. But I don’t respond, because that teaches people that I will respond after hours.

Second, I don’t give out my personal phone number at work. I made that mistake once and I continue to pay for it. When you give out your personal number to one person, assume it’s going to get passed around. Because it will. And then you’ll be receiving calls at all times and hours about work-related things.

Third, keep records in writing. I work almost exclusively in email. It not only buoys my own poor memory, but it allows me to have a record of conversations and agreements. I keep records so I can refute someone trying to lay blame on me for their lack of communication or action. It’s partly a move to cover myself. But it also allows me to keep people honest.

If you send someone an email asking for clarification, and you get a phone call in return. It can mean the person doesn’t want a paper trail of what they’re asking. For instance, I’m a government contractor. My contract has limits on the number of hours and locations where I can work (without prior approval). I am going to hit my hours for the week at noon on Friday so I have the rest of the day off.

You Really Don’t Need To Work So Much

With no limits, work becomes like a football game where the whistle is never blown.

This is a perfect description of work. It’s many starts and stops but there’s no end in sight. Hurry up and Wait may be the motto of the corporate workplace.

In similar situations in the past, I’ve been asked (verbally) to work more hours than I am getting paid for. Because the contract did not allow for overtime nor comp time. But the person asking would never ask in writing, it would always be a phone call. I would ask for clarification in writing and never get it. So I would not work over my time. They know they’re wrong for asking but also smart enough not to commit their request to paper.

The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies

In sum, the story of overwork is literally a story of diminishing returns: keep overworking, and you’ll progressively work more stupidly on tasks that are increasingly meaningless.

Keeping a balance between work and non-work can be challenging. But it’s always worth it in the end. Rarely has staying late and killing myself at work ever benefited me or the people I work with.

Who sponsors you?

By Carl

On July 20, 2015

In Observations

Everyone working for themselves is sponsored by someone else.

That person could be a spouse or a parent. That person could be thousands of people who give their money (mostly gotten from working 9-5 jobs). It could be investors with more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime. It could be credit cards, a loan from their future selves to the present.

Back in January, I read this post. “Sponsored” by my husband: Why it’s a problem that writers never talk about where their money comes from

Here’s my life. My husband and I get up each morning at 7 o’clock and he showers while I make coffee. By the time he’s dressed I’m already sitting at my desk writing. He kisses me goodbye then leaves for the job where he makes good money, draws excellent benefits and gets many perks, such as travel, catered lunches and full reimbursement for the gym where I attend yoga midday. His career has allowed me to work only sporadically, as a consultant, in a field I enjoy.
…
Today, I am essentially “sponsored” by this very loving man who shows up at the end of the day, asks me how the writing went, pours me a glass of wine, then takes me out to eat. He accompanies me when I travel 500 miles to do a 75-minute reading, manages my finances, and never complains that my dark, heady little books have resulted in low advances and rather modest sales.

I nodded along with the article because it’s how my wife can afford to leave her job and work for herself. She is working as an Art Therapist for herself now. No longer under the yoke of another company doing something she doesn’t want to do.

I get up early, walk to the metro station and ride a train 45 minutes into the city. There, I work for 8 hours and take a train home again. This is on a good day. I’m usually out of the house for 11.5-13 hours everyday for work.

I am the stability that makes her endeavor work. I trade my time for money and insurance while she builds her business.

Jumping man by Joshua Earle from Unsplash.com

I was reminded of this article recently when I saw a related story published this week in Quartz. Entrepreneurs don’t have a special gene for risk—they come from families with money.

For creative professions, starting a new venture is the ultimate privilege. Many startup founders do not take a salary for some time. The average cost to launch a startup is around $30,000, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor show that more than 80% of funding for new businesses comes from personal savings and friends and family.

Not everyone can leave their job and run out to follow their dreams tomorrow. It’s a risky proposition in the best of times. And most people don’t live in the best of times.

I applaud people who go out and make it work. But it’s not something everyone can, or should do. If you can start a company and be successful, that’s great for you. But don’t pretend like you did it all on your own. You had help along the way.

Photo by Joshua Earle

On Ending the Tyranny of 24/7 Email

By Carl

On August 29, 2014

In Observations

End the Tyranny of 24/7 Email

Why would less email mean better productivity? Because, as Ms. Deal found in her research, endless email is an enabler. It often masks terrible management practices.

When employees shoot out a fusillade of miniature questions via email, or “cc” every team member about each niggling little decision, it’s because they don’t feel confident to make a decision on their own. Often, Ms. Deal found, they’re worried about getting in trouble or downsized if they mess up.

When I am not at work, I do not check work email. I do not think about work email. I do not consider what could be going on in work email.

If it’s in email, it is inherently unimportant.

If something urgent were happening, I would receive a phone call. No phone call. No urgency.

In contrast, when employees are actually empowered, they make more judgment calls on their own. They also start using phone calls and face-to-face chats to resolve issues quickly, so they don’t metastasize into email threads the length of “War and Peace.”

See? Face-to-face meetings or phone calls are for important things. Email is for ass-covering and uncertainty.

These changes can’t happen through personal behavior: The policy needs to come from the top. (If your boss regularly emails you a high-priority question at 11 p.m., the real message is, “At our company, we do email at midnight.”)

This is another important point. The example is set from the top-down. If your manager and his manager and his manager all email all night long. That’s the message. I keep my work email habits to myself mostly because people are aghast when I tell them I don’t check it outside of work.

But when I ask them how often they’ve had something in email that absolutely could not wait until they were back in the office?

Very rarely do they have any examples. And the ones they do offer were accompanied by a phone call. This Labor Day let’s think about how we labor. We give all of our time to work in exchange for what?

More work. You won’t ever get ahead. The harder you work and the more time you pour into your work and email, the more you’re rewarded with more work to do.

Stand with me. Hold the line. Do not check work email outside of work.

Dispatch from the Trenches #4

By Carl

On August 8, 2014

In Links and Quotes

I hope you’ve enjoyed these dispatches. This week I have a trio of posts that resonated deeply with me. The first is a long, dark read but it spoke to me. Like a great song that won’t stop replaying, this post has bounced around my head since I first saw it.

The second runs with the 40-hour work week and how it came to be. What if it could be better? And finally, your lifestyle has been designed for you. Corporations are plenty happy we’re gasping for entertainment with our limited free time. They’re delighted we’ll toss dollars at them for a smile.

Facebook is surface; Twitter is subtext, and judging by what I’ve seen, the subtext is aching sadness.

…

So now you’ve got this degree that’s worth fuck-all, a house that’s worth more as scrap lumber than as a substantial investment, and you’re either going to lose your job or have to do the work of two people, because there’s a recession on. Except they keep saying the recession ended, so why are you still working twice as hard for the same amount of money?

—Everyone I know is brokenhearted.

I read this post earlier this week. I’ve since read it a few more times. It moved me. It’s sums up how I am feeling. It’s a long piece and a dark one. But it resonated deeply within me.

It’s how I feel. Brokenhearted. Sad. Depressed. Just rundown and run out like there’s nothing left.

I don’t watch the news, I get my news through social media. And that’ just as bad. I’m still exposed to the suffering everywhere. But I can’t change it. It’s a non-stop misery machine.

There’s so much wrong with our country and our world. It’s overwhelming. And it’s depressing. And we’re working ourselves to death.

The United States now leads the pack of the wealthiest countries in annual working hours. US workers put in as many as 300 more hours a year than their counterparts in Western Europe, largely thanks to the lack of paid leave. (The Germans work far less than we do, while the Greeks work considerably more.) Average worker productivity has doubled a couple of times since 1950, but income has stagnated—unless you’re just looking at the rich, who’ve become a great deal richer. The value from that extra productivity, after all, has to go somewhere.
— Who stole the four-hour workday?

I’m working more and longer hours but not seeing any more money for it. I’m working for health insurance, since one illness could derail my entire life into bankruptcy. Even with insurance, this is still a threat.

I have very little time off which means I savor it, and spend it sparingly. I don’t schedule doctor or dentist visits because it would mean losing hours of paid leave.

Even when I’m not at work, I’m tethered to my digital leash of email and cellular technology. I’m expected to be available or to perform work on my time with my equipment. I’m expected to jump when the company says to and gleefully reply, How high?

Without time off, we lack free time and before long, I find my lifestyle has already been designed for me.

The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce.

I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing.

The one conspicuous similarity between these activities is that they cost little or no money, but they take time.

Time is the only resource we can’t get back. Our time is finite and there’s no amount of paying, praying or begging that will make more time.

There can always be more money. There can never be more time. By spending 8 hours a day working, we lose our time. Often to things that aren’t worth the investment.

And that’s only the workday. My commute is an hour each way, if I’m lucky. So there’s another 2 hours I’ve lost getting to and from a job.

I savor my evenings, weekend and the rare holiday like I do my accrued time off. But I spend it less carefully.

Weekend are usually time to sleep. And repair myself. To try to bring some balance to a life that’s far off-kilter.

I try to regain some of my humanity before Monday and the grind starts again. As the weeks go on, I am worn down and I make worse choices. I spent more, I try to find entertainment and happiness in things and not experiences or people who bring more and longer-lasting joy.