Fields like finance and consulting are notorious for their life-sucking, 80-hour-plus workweeks.
But new research suggests some men are only pretending to work that much — and the fakers are getting just as much praise from management as the true workaholics.
My favorite part:“When she approached the firm’s leaders with her findings, they showed no desire to modify their expectations of long work hours. Instead, they said a man who reveals his lack of interest in being fully committed to his work is not the kind of employee they want. Moreover, they asked how they might teach women to pretend they were working more, too.” Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/men-pretending-to-be-working-2015-5#ixzz3ZO5c3Znv
I can’t stand it when an employee gets dinged for working fewer hours than their peers. The number of hours worked is a worthless metric. If you get your tasks completed accurately and in a timely manner, go home. If your peers take three times as long to complete the same task that just means you’re more efficient.
People that work fewer hours and still do good work should be rewarded. Instead I’ve seen many people get poor reviews for no other reason than their ass wasn’t planted at their desk for X amount of hours.
I have had one manager in my entire life who basically said “I don’t care when you show up or leave as long as you meet all the deadlines with quality work.” This was early in my career and quite refreshing. Never had one like that again.
There was a company a few years ago that eliminated the hourly requirement and just evaluated employees based on assignments. Sorry can’t remember the name. I wonder how that experiment turned out.
Two sidebars -
“Exempt employee” is a bullshit designation that allows employers to squeze their most productive employees by giving them even more work, since there is no overtime pay. 100% regulatory capture.
Some regulations that distinguish between employees paid by the hour vs those paid by piece-work (i.e. assignment) make no sense. I realize that jobs exist that require the distinction. But regulations should not favor one over the other. They should be based on the percentage of income of the employee that the job provides. So a full-time employee is the one who gets 100% of his income from a job, whether he works 40 hours or 29 hours (to escape Obamacare) or 60 hours like the most of us.
I don’t mind this one. We have (fairly) significantly better benefits than non-exempt employees, and I’m expected to be on call all the time anyways. No biggie.
What’s worse than pretending to ‘work hard’ is picking up ‘special projects’ that everyone knows adds 0 value to the firm but is weighted heavily during annual reviews.
The fundamental problem here is that it’s really really hard to measure how valuable various employees’ contributions to a company actually are.
Managers use clues like hours worked and apparent effort expended, but measures like this are imperfect and subject to gaming.
If one associate can achieve “X” in 30 hours while another takes 50 hours, should the first associate be allowed to start their weekend after 30 hours? Should the second associate be paid overtime for being less capable?
I learned a long time ago that if you go to work at 5:00 a.m., work straight through lunch, never take your eyes off your computer, and leave at 4:30 p.m., you’ll be hated by your co-workers and managers alike, because “Greenman is so lazy. He leaves at 4:30 every single day.”
If you show up at 7:59, take a two hour lunch and two 30-minute breaks, with a couple of smoke breaks sprinkled in, and you leave at 5:30, then “Greenman is the hardest-working employee we’ve ever had. He stays late every single day!!!”
The point is no one cares if you show up early, but it looks good to leave late (where “late” can be defined as after whatever time most people leave).
