andrewducker | Interesting Links for 31-07-2022

3. FFS! Solidarity, people. Let's just all do our jobs for the workday and knock off on time and have a life. We're not getting the rewards of business owners, there's no reason for us to do extra. Latterly, I'll even include "own learning in own time" as a probable "no". Eyes, brain, body, nervous system can only do so much in a week long term and it's pretty much the std 40hrs.

I've done this my entire work life - until maybe now. I will / have stopped. Am seriously thinking of new job

Labor organizers call it "work to rule." It's a less extreme tactic than a walkout, or even a "sick-out" (where everyone calls in sick at the same time one day.) When done with enough solidarity, it can push exploitive bosses to negotiate better conditions. If only a few people act, it's kind of useless.

It should not be a "tactic", it should be just how work is. I don't trust bosses on renegotiation of conditions, who have proven to ignore the provisions of the original employment contract(s).

Ok yeah, the odd bit extra work is ok - IF the compensatory time off is prompt (same week). IF it's only seldom. IF there is genuine, respectful give and take.

But chronic understaffing and bad contingency planning by management are not my problem. (Unless I AM management).

Preserving my own health and, actually, my consistent longer term work performance, are not at all useless.

Hear, hear.

Way back around 2000, there was a new idea in software engineering called Extreme Programming. That got picked up by the management consultants and turned into Agile, with all the less management-friendly edges sanded off, but the original version was better, at least for programmers.

One of the rules of XP was that you should work a 40-hour week -- no less and no more. A hard and fast principle of XP was that routine overtime was viewed as a process break, and indicated that you were doing it wrong.

I've taken that and tried to mostly live by it ever since. There are lots of good reasons to maintain work-life balance, and I am extremely frank with employers that, if crunches happen more than rarely, that's an indication of bad management and I will not support it. I've become deeply intolerant of companies that say things like "we want everyone to be giving 150%!", as if that is a good thing.

Hear hear.

(I'm also older than XP. We were part of the DSDM in the early 90s ..)

I don't think it is a work to rule exactly.

Work to rule is when you work exactly to the rule book - even if the rule book is a bit daft - in the hope that working exactly to the rule causes the employer lost of problems so they are forced to recognise that the workforce is providing some good will. So if the rule in a paint factory says "work stops when the factory hooter sounds" you down tools exactly when the hooter sounds and if that means a big batch of paint that was going to be properly finished in the next 5 minutes is ruined then, so be it.

What I think quiet quitting means is someone who was habitually working over and above their agreed work just deciding to do what they are contracted for. So if I'm paid 9-5 I work 9-5 and I leave at 5pm.

I think they are a bit different.

Interesting Links for 31-07-2022

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