I don’t know if I’ve been unlucky in most of the jobs I had, or if it’s like this everywhere, but, if you work in IT, does it look to you as if your boss doesn’t really care about your achieving objectives, being productive, having everything working smoothly, tasks being done quickly and efficiently, etc. - he only cares about whether you’re busy all the time or not?
Or, to put it in another way: were you hired, and are you being paid to do your job, perform your assigned tasks efficiently, keep everything running smoothly, anticipate problems and make sure they don’t happen, optimize what can be optimized, solve problems as they appear, help users with problems, and so on… or were you hired to be busy 7-8 hours a day?
And if you, for some reason aren’t busy for all those hours (because you already did your tasks, because you work quickly due to your experience (a problem you’ve seen before is usually solved much faster than a new one), because you’re good at anticipating problems, and so made sure, long ago, that most of them simply don’t happen, because you refuse to do what everyone else seems to do (act busy, or “extend” their tasks so they take all your available time, or simply pretend to work)… does your boss treat you as a bad worker? As if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do?
In what strange way does having employees busy (or looking busy) all the time benefit a company? None, I believe. So why do bosses, managers, even CEOs insist on it so much? Why do they judge employees by it, instead of by the work they actually do?
If an employee works faster than most, he or she shouldn’t be punished for it by. Neither should they be punished for being honest.
What are your experiences on this? I’d really want to know if I’ve just been unlucky in about half a dozen different jobs, or if it’s like this everywhere.
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Well I’ve thought about this too.
At my actual workplace there is a person (one of the bosses) that’s sermonizing the exact thing: always be busy. What really disturbed me was once when we were still in training phase and as I finished my task before my colleagues I was waiting for them to finish and he said something along the lines of: you can’t not work, you have to always do something. So not only he didn’t praise me for being faster (not that I expected any praise) but he condemned me for that. I mean there wasn’t anything I could do/work at while waiting for them as we were supposed to go at the same pace, what the hell did he expect me to do? I had to open MSDN and read random articles just to look as if I was doing something…
Yay! (whether I like being busy 8 hours a day or not, that’s another issue 
)
But here’s another method they have for always keeping busy (and that I somehow agree to). My boss is a wonderful person and sort of gives me all the time I need to do something. And whenever I finish (be it sooner or later that I was supposed to) I go to him and he gives me something more to do. So that way I can keep busy 8 hours a day almost non-stop.
So the conclusion is: there are people and people. While the problems you outlined are real (I guess everybody in IT can tell you that) it doesn’t mean that they are absolutely everywhere.
Thanks for the reply! In a way, it’s both satisfying and depressing to know that the problem is widespread.
Maybe I’m weird in one respect, though: I like, I need to have free time! I like to think that I earn it by working quickly and efficiently - that the remaining time until the end of the day is rightfully mine, my reward for doing a good job. Of course, if some problem arises, or a co-worker needs help with something, I’ll help, but otherwise, I hate the idea that I should either pretend to be working, or do the work of 2-4 employees so that I really stay busy.
But bosses really seem to have a problem with that…
Hmm, I got an idea for a part 2 of this article. Maybe later today…