I often joke with a close friend and colleague that on any given day I flip between astounded that I get paid so much given the amount of screwing around on company time I do and furious that I am not paid more considering my relatively high output compared to peers.
We are the opposite of middle school colour coded binder girls. My notes are disorganized if they even exist. I don't know where we are on the gant chart for this project. And yet in every crisis the boss airdrops me in to fix it.
They need to make an ozempic for locking in that isn't meth.
There's a dicking around sweet spot one needs to hit. Many of the guys grinding a full eight hours are doing pointless busywork or doing it wrong. Think the guy who goes through the same 20 steps several times a day instead of spending an hour to write a proper script. There's also the guy who checks in shit code because the problem was more difficult than he thought and he procrastinated till the end.
I've known a few who can keep heavy focus on complex topics for eight hours, and those are the expert analysts that could pocket 400k a year easy. Regrettably, those are also the ones companies underpay compared to the "dick around" guys. For all their impressive concentration, they also tend to be pushovers.
My most amusing experience was when I finished my work for a scrum a week early and asked the lead for more work. He hesitated because he was afraid of the charts looking bad if I didn't get the new task done by the end of the sprint. Message received sir, I'll dick around.
The strategy I have found is keeping multiple projects live at once—dicking around in one domain often ends up being real work in another.
In the moment, it feels very scattershot. A year later, I realize I’ve gotten a lot done—even if it’s not super noticeable in any one thread of activity.
It’s really, really hard to quantify how much a laptop worker “should” be “producing.” I have no real idea of a better alternative than “you seem to be spending substantially all your work-flavored energy on this job,” for which a reasonable, if of course wildly approximate, heuristic is being at your desk all day five days a week.
No, it’s not. Every job has measurable outcomes. Sellers close sales. Developers build shit. Managers that can’t define goals and outcomes for the team should be fired.
I don't think I can think of a single halfway-serious job that has predictably measurable outcomes that I'd consider taking whatsoever seriously as the major point of assessment. If you're trying to do anything at all interesting, which to be fair plenty of people aren't, it's often obvious when you've succeeded but it's generically the case that an observer who's not quite deeply engaged in the details of the work can't distinguish various possible reasons for failure. (If I'm wrong, I'd be eagerly amused to see your algorithm for reliably assessing in general just how much shit a developer ought to build in order to, say, not get fired.) Your hypothesis implies a quite violent rejection of the efficient markets hypothesis--where are the successful businesses where no one will complain if you only show up five hours a week as long as the work gets done?
I post under my real name, you can see my work history in LinkedIn.
You seem focused on “productivity,” which misses Mr. Kitten’s point. Nobody cares about your productivity, they care about the results you achieve, and whether or not they match the job expectations.
We are artists, Kitten, at the mercy of the Muse. Our power comes not from ourselves but from a mysterious vast Presence. And it is only by dicking around that we can attune ourselves to its call.
before finally striking out on my own was a blue-chip SaaS Salesbro and lemme tell ya sure there are some AEs who lock-in all day erry day and have even crazier W2s but tbh dicking around except for the few major exciting deals was always my wiring.
One of the advantages I found to "dicking around" for 13 days when given a two week assignment, is that at least 1/4 of the time the necessity for the task, and another 1/2 the time circumstances changed so that any work I would have done would have been wasted.
In their book Peopleware, DeMarco & Lister document how some programmers are 10x more productive than others, and others 100x. With "productive" meaning that their code is documented, compiles the first time, and handles tricky edge cases. Unfortunately, most companies aren't willing to pay 10x or 100x more than an offshore programmer, leading to a lot of "slack". I'm retired, so I have no idea what impact AI code generators would have had on my output...
instasub. levels of “Feel Seen” previously unrecorded.
this way of being isn’t just for thinkytyping types either btw—Shaquille O’Neal was notorious for basically taking 3/4 of the year off, but then when playoffs came around he transformed into the most unstoppable basketball playing mutant on earth
My current job has figured out how to turn the organizational knobs such that I need to work consistently all the hours I am at my desk to meet expectations. Saps my creativity… daydreaming is important!
Dude. Every single word of this is me. Unfortunately I chose a billable hours career so I'm always in trouble. In hindsight, this was a monumentally stupid career decision. In school my advantage was dicking around and then still performing at or above peer level. I sacrificed that. I would kill for an email job right about now.
I've met a lot of fellow dicking around people and I am mostly a little scared for the time the dicking around power doesn't work anymore. Kind of like the speedy athlete who always could use their superior speed to make up for lack of technique or something.
Definitely. I've found that if I have a big project (or several) I can get paralyzed if I think about the work involved, so I have to make a resolution to work on just a little bit at a time (one page a day, one small home improvement thing every day, etc.) and keep a log of it if necessary.
“Can he push through the inevitable grinding, uninteresting tasks inherent in any long project to find the satisfaction of the meaty part of the work? Or will he rot on the vine in his prime, getting paid for nothing in particular?”
i ask myself a version of these daily. curious how the question of grinding vs. dicking around shifts when the work is wholly uninteresting — when there isn’t a meaty part to work toward. thanks for sharing!
I often joke with a close friend and colleague that on any given day I flip between astounded that I get paid so much given the amount of screwing around on company time I do and furious that I am not paid more considering my relatively high output compared to peers.
We are the opposite of middle school colour coded binder girls. My notes are disorganized if they even exist. I don't know where we are on the gant chart for this project. And yet in every crisis the boss airdrops me in to fix it.
They need to make an ozempic for locking in that isn't meth.
There's a dicking around sweet spot one needs to hit. Many of the guys grinding a full eight hours are doing pointless busywork or doing it wrong. Think the guy who goes through the same 20 steps several times a day instead of spending an hour to write a proper script. There's also the guy who checks in shit code because the problem was more difficult than he thought and he procrastinated till the end.
I've known a few who can keep heavy focus on complex topics for eight hours, and those are the expert analysts that could pocket 400k a year easy. Regrettably, those are also the ones companies underpay compared to the "dick around" guys. For all their impressive concentration, they also tend to be pushovers.
My most amusing experience was when I finished my work for a scrum a week early and asked the lead for more work. He hesitated because he was afraid of the charts looking bad if I didn't get the new task done by the end of the sprint. Message received sir, I'll dick around.
Not only do I work better under pressure I work only under pressure.
The strategy I have found is keeping multiple projects live at once—dicking around in one domain often ends up being real work in another.
In the moment, it feels very scattershot. A year later, I realize I’ve gotten a lot done—even if it’s not super noticeable in any one thread of activity.
Employers should pay for results, not time spent
It’s really, really hard to quantify how much a laptop worker “should” be “producing.” I have no real idea of a better alternative than “you seem to be spending substantially all your work-flavored energy on this job,” for which a reasonable, if of course wildly approximate, heuristic is being at your desk all day five days a week.
No, it’s not. Every job has measurable outcomes. Sellers close sales. Developers build shit. Managers that can’t define goals and outcomes for the team should be fired.
I don't think I can think of a single halfway-serious job that has predictably measurable outcomes that I'd consider taking whatsoever seriously as the major point of assessment. If you're trying to do anything at all interesting, which to be fair plenty of people aren't, it's often obvious when you've succeeded but it's generically the case that an observer who's not quite deeply engaged in the details of the work can't distinguish various possible reasons for failure. (If I'm wrong, I'd be eagerly amused to see your algorithm for reliably assessing in general just how much shit a developer ought to build in order to, say, not get fired.) Your hypothesis implies a quite violent rejection of the efficient markets hypothesis--where are the successful businesses where no one will complain if you only show up five hours a week as long as the work gets done?
Have you ever held a job?
Have you? You’re the one here proposing that every company has somehow missed the one weird trick to correctly assessing white collar productivity.
I post under my real name, you can see my work history in LinkedIn.
You seem focused on “productivity,” which misses Mr. Kitten’s point. Nobody cares about your productivity, they care about the results you achieve, and whether or not they match the job expectations.
I asked you first. It’s a serious question.
We are artists, Kitten, at the mercy of the Muse. Our power comes not from ourselves but from a mysterious vast Presence. And it is only by dicking around that we can attune ourselves to its call.
Same. Love this. Luckily as long as I keep selling shit my boss is chill.
:spideryou: :spideryoutoo:
before finally striking out on my own was a blue-chip SaaS Salesbro and lemme tell ya sure there are some AEs who lock-in all day erry day and have even crazier W2s but tbh dicking around except for the few major exciting deals was always my wiring.
One of the advantages I found to "dicking around" for 13 days when given a two week assignment, is that at least 1/4 of the time the necessity for the task, and another 1/2 the time circumstances changed so that any work I would have done would have been wasted.
In their book Peopleware, DeMarco & Lister document how some programmers are 10x more productive than others, and others 100x. With "productive" meaning that their code is documented, compiles the first time, and handles tricky edge cases. Unfortunately, most companies aren't willing to pay 10x or 100x more than an offshore programmer, leading to a lot of "slack". I'm retired, so I have no idea what impact AI code generators would have had on my output...
instasub. levels of “Feel Seen” previously unrecorded.
this way of being isn’t just for thinkytyping types either btw—Shaquille O’Neal was notorious for basically taking 3/4 of the year off, but then when playoffs came around he transformed into the most unstoppable basketball playing mutant on earth
My current job has figured out how to turn the organizational knobs such that I need to work consistently all the hours I am at my desk to meet expectations. Saps my creativity… daydreaming is important!
Dude. Every single word of this is me. Unfortunately I chose a billable hours career so I'm always in trouble. In hindsight, this was a monumentally stupid career decision. In school my advantage was dicking around and then still performing at or above peer level. I sacrificed that. I would kill for an email job right about now.
Round round
Dick around
I dick around
I’m getting bugged
Screwing all the same old chicks
—————————
Someone else can finish it
I've met a lot of fellow dicking around people and I am mostly a little scared for the time the dicking around power doesn't work anymore. Kind of like the speedy athlete who always could use their superior speed to make up for lack of technique or something.
Definitely. I've found that if I have a big project (or several) I can get paralyzed if I think about the work involved, so I have to make a resolution to work on just a little bit at a time (one page a day, one small home improvement thing every day, etc.) and keep a log of it if necessary.
“Can he push through the inevitable grinding, uninteresting tasks inherent in any long project to find the satisfaction of the meaty part of the work? Or will he rot on the vine in his prime, getting paid for nothing in particular?”
i ask myself a version of these daily. curious how the question of grinding vs. dicking around shifts when the work is wholly uninteresting — when there isn’t a meaty part to work toward. thanks for sharing!
Fantastic piece, thanks for sharing