Why is corporate culture/office work so inefficient?

[entremet]

I've been following a lot of the 4 day work week trials. Almost all have been super successful. Shocker!

I've been in a corporate world for a bit, and one of the things that irked me, especially when I first go into the professional world, is just how inefficient is. Useless weekly meetings that could be 10 minutes max. Sometimes they could be an email or Slack post. That said, I'm not a misanthrope. I do like people and do see the value of meetings beyond "updates".

Moreover, there's also this "ass in seat" mentality. Luckily I moved into sales, which gives you more flexibility. As long your cooking sales wise, no one cares what do you and or where you work.

Recently, the pandemic has given that flexibility to other job families. And the stats there are also telling. People are more productive, while running midday errands, going to the gym, walking their dogs, etc. Shocker!

However, there's still this deep boomer mentality that we need to be in the office and work 40 hours a week. And not just "work" 40 hours, but just be available, sitting in your deck.

That said, I'm aware of jobs that our basically ON your entire day--nursing and healthcare, teaching, heavy labor, etc. I'm very aware of this "office work" privilege. But I also think those folks should be paid more because of that too.

Personally, I blame Taylorism, or Scientific Management. But knowledge work and factory work are not really the same. Way different inputs and outputs.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNfy_AHG-MU

 

[PlanetSmasher]

A lot of it comes down to managers and executives needing to exercise their power over their staff. It's a power dynamic thing - if I'm the boss, people should listen to me when I tell them how much they should work. And it results in a top-down culture of everyone trying to "look busy" enough to not get told off by the person above them.

Ironically, at the top of the chain is usually a CEO who spends 60% of their "work time" on vacation.

 

[jdmc13]

It's about limiting freedom as much as possible during the work day. If people have time to talk with their coworkers about something other than work, they have time to organize.

 

[entremet]

A lot of it comes down to managers and executives needing to exercise their power over their staff. It's a power dynamic thing - if I'm the boss, people should listen to me when I tell them how much they should work. And it results in a top-down culture of everyone trying to "look busy" enough to not get told off by the person above them.

Ironically, at the top of the chain is usually a CEO who spends 60% of their "work time" on vacation.

Click to shrink...

There's an interesting thing that sociologists and economists are seeing.

The highest W2 earners are working way more. This is a complete inversion historically. The upper classes loved their leisure time in generations past.

 

[luminosity]

My view on it is: I work there to get work done.

I send out thorough updates with every detail in them. I also start those with a high level sentence so the people who make more money than me don't have to pay attention.

People still love having random phone calls to go over the same thing in the update.

 

[BackwardCap]

Because its not about efficiency, its about control.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

There's an interesting thing that sociologists and economists are seeing.

The highest W2 earners are working way more. This is a complete inversion historically. The upper classes loved their leisure time in generations past.

Click to shrink...

I think there's a pretty clear cause for that. Since "COME BACK TO THE OFFICE, WE NEED YOU HERE" has become the corpo argument du jour, c-suite folks are spending more time in the office to ensure their employees can't call them out for the hypocrisy of needing everybody in office while they spend the majority of their time travelling.

The rise in toxic MBA office mentalities like Agile is also contributing to this culture. Everybody needing to seem as busy as possible to justify...????????? - my company went Agile a year and a half ago and it's become so much more toxic ever since. Seven million share drive spreadsheets to keep track of, literally redoing the same projects over and over again just so someone else can get a head pat from their manager for "delivering", etc.

 

[OhSatan]

Because it ask for the same commitment without the old benefits that entails.

 

[Thordinson]

Because its not about efficiency, its about control.

Click to shrink...

This.

There's also a lot of jobs, such as middle managers, that just make things less productive and have no real reason to exist.

 

[Jubilant Duck]

This.

There's also a lot of jobs, such as middle managers, that just make things less productive and have no real reason to exist.

Click to shrink...

Startups that grow too quickly and never evolve a middle manager subset quickly find out why middle managers have a reason to exist.

One person cannot manage hundreds, you need some form of hierarchy to keep a mass of individuals on the same track.

That's not to say you don't find countless examples of organizations whose middle management structure is severely bloated and causing inefficiencies, but it isn't an all or nothing approach.

 

[Royalan]

It's a lot of things, but in my view...a lack of accountability the higher up the chain you go. I work in a department full of admins, supervisors and middle managers who spend their time shuffling from one closed door to the next, having meetings that, once I worked up to the level to need to attend them, I learned were really about nothing. Meetings where half the time is spent organizing said meeting, a quarter of the time spent shooting the shit, and finally a quarter of talking about why we're all here. It's an outrageous waste of time, meanwhile the folks working underneath us get squeezed and are expected to be constantly productive with very little guidance.

And heaven forbid something go wrong, because then you're forced to engage in the most frustrating game of hot potato trying to figure out where shit went wrong.

 

[Jubilant Duck]

It's a lot of things, but in my view...a lack of accountability the higher up the chain you go. I work in a department full of admins, supervisors and middle managers who spend their time shuffling from one closed door to the next, having meetings that, once I worked up to the level to need to attend them, I learned were really about nothing. Meetings where half the time is spent organizing said meeting, a quarter of the time spent shooting the shit, and finally a quarter of talking about why we're all here. It's an outrageous waste of time, meanwhile the folks working underneath us get squeezed and are expected to be constantly productive.

Click to shrink...

It's even worse when you're in roles that expect you to manage people, attend those meetings, but then also still perform a regular-employee level of productivity on projects.

I used to work with a wonderful departmental head that had to put phantom meetings in her diary so no-one would think they could invite her to another meeting so she could actually get on with her workload.

 

[MrNewVegas]

If the world was truly efficient half the population would be unemployed due to all the needless work that would be cut.

 

[Royalan]

It's even worse when you're in roles that expect you to manage people, attend those meetings, but then also still perform a regular-employee level of productivity on projects.

Click to shrink...

!!!!

Say it again.

Say it again for the cheap seats in the back!

 

[Thordinson]

Startups that grow too quickly and never evolve a middle manager subset quickly find out why middle managers have a reason to exist.

One person cannot manage hundreds, you need some form of hierarchy to keep a mass of individuals on the same track.

That's not to say you don't find countless examples of organizations whose middle management structure is severely bloated and causing inefficiencies, but it isn't an all or nothing approach.

Click to shrink...

Eh. All the middle managers I've ever had only seemed to exist to bother us. Same when I was a middle manager. The higher ups always wanted me to do things that kept employees from working instead of helping them to work.

Maybe there are times when they need to exist but, in my experience, they simply exist to annoy employees and make them less productive.

 

[entremet]

If the world was truly efficient half the population would be unemployed due to all the needless work that would be cut.

Click to shrink...

Personally, I just think that means remote work and 4 work weeks should be the next big labor victories.

 

[Jubilant Duck]

!!!!

Say it again.

Say it again for the cheap seats in the back!

Click to shrink...

It's even worse when you're in roles that expect you to manage people, attend those meetings, but then also still perform a regular-employee level of productivity on projects.

I used to work with a wonderful departmental head that had to put phantom meetings in her diary so no-one would think they could invite her to another meeting so she could actually get on with her workload.

 

[Dimensional Fortress]

I've had pretty good leadership over the years that actually listened and acted when I brought up potential problems on the horizon until recently.

I always wondered what it was like hearing stories of people bringing up problems and telling their bosses I told you so. Now I'm in the I told you so moment and I'm just sad to see the project and the overall team suffer for it.

 

[davepoobond]

if youre not doing your job, then someone else cant do their job. and likely you dont know that because you are detached from that process

 

[PlanetSmasher]

It's even worse when you're in roles that expect you to manage people, attend those meetings, but then also still perform a regular-employee level of productivity on projects.

Click to shrink...

How about when they do all of that but don't give you the promotion that they've been promising you for a year that would result in increased compensation to go along with the vastly increased amount of required work? My company has been leading me on for a full year about a promotion, and has been having me act in the position of a manager (unofficially) for the past 8 months, only to announce a "staffing freeze" a few weeks ago. Basically going "yeah we want you to be a manager and do all the work required of one, but we're not gonna pay you for it".

 

[thewienke]

I think sometimes work schedules are fixed at some firms out of a sense of "fairness" to the blue collar labor that they might have.

So if you're Walmart, GM, Amazon, really whoever with a sizeable working class labor force, they might have stricter in-office policies because of the perception from the manual laborers that the office workers don't really do anything.

This is totally anecdotal speculation but chances are if you've ever worked at something like a manufacturing company in earshot of the laborers, you'd know that there's a fuckton of resentment toward people that just get to sit in an office all day. Being able to run errands during the day and work from home would really dial up that resentment to 11. Although the irony is that with overtime many of the blue collar positions pay quite a bit more so it's not all bad.

 

[HStallion]

A lot of folks are just not very good at communicating and listening. I feel like so many of the meetings I've been in could be over in a half an hour but end up going for 2 hours of roundabout and repetitive chatter. It's maddening at times.

 

[Jubilant Duck]

How about when they do all of that but don't give you the promotion that they've been promising you for a year that would result in increased compensation to go along with the vastly increased amount of required work? My company has been leading me on for a full year about a promotion, and has been having me act in the position of a manager (unofficially) for the past 8 months, only to announce a "staffing freeze" a few weeks ago. Basically going "yeah we want you to be a manager and do all the work required of one, but we're not gonna pay you for it".

Click to shrink...

Hopefully (wider job sector being good) that's when you realise you ain't getting that promotion but you're able to list all those managerial duties on your resume/CV so you can jump ship for another job with a nice pay increase.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

This is going to be a bit of a ramble, but....

I can only speak to where I work, but I'm high up enough, and with enough ears throughout, to have a good sense of what's going on at all levels. Most people where I work are busting their asses day in and day out, and that includes the executives who don't take days off. But my personal opinion isn't that they work hard because they have a great work ethic, but because there is so much political backstabbing. It's like Game of Thrones here, and if you aren't putting in 7 day work weeks you can see your empire crumble. "Oh, Bill decided to finally enjoy family time on Saturday? Well, we have a massive outage and escalation, he isn't around, and now everyone who is working gets to talk shit about how lazy they are?" "Well, maybe if our engineers were better led then we wouldn't have these outages." Nothing bad that happens here is ever you or your team's fault---ever. There is always someone to blame it on. And if everyone kicks up enough dirt and shit, then you never actually get to the bottom of what went wrong, what can be improved upon, so on and so forth. So, everyone is working way too much all while improving very, very little. All this political playing really makes a part of my job difficult, which is data and reporting. I can compile data that shows X team is running into delays because of Y, which is meant to be the first step in discussions around improvement. I can show this, with 98% confidence in my data. But that team? Nope. They will argue the data isn't correct. It could be as clear as the sky being blue. And the executives who should be holding their feet to the fire are so busy juggling that they're easily duped and distracted into thinking, "well, let's get to the bottom of the data being accurate." But enough dirt is kicked up to distract them that by the time a week or two passes, we're all on to the next issue having not solved the previous.

I'll stop here because this is all very specific to my place of work, and don't know if others deal with this shit, but yeah. The fight for power here is fucking atrocious and is the single biggest contributor to inefficiencies.

(Don't even get me started on Sales at my company. The one team that is allowed to break any rules so long as they make a sale. Even if they're selling something no one can support. Hell, that we can't even install. AND we pay out commission at time of signing, and never implementation. I can't tell you how many thousands we've paid out to people for signatures that never went past step 2 because, "Yeah....that doesn't work across this type II/with byod." Then engineers have to waste weeks of their time trying to find out if they can make this exception work. Sometimes they do, but it works like shit---best effort. Other times it is a flatout "nope." But still, they had to spend weeks to get to that No. )

 

[entremet]

This is going to be a bit of a ramble, but....

I can only speak to where I work, but I'm high up enough, and with enough ears throughout, to have a good sense of what's going on at all levels. Most people where I work are busting their asses day in and day out, and that includes the executives who don't take days off. But my personal opinion isn't that they work hard because they have a great work ethic, but because there is so much political backstabbing. It's like Game of Thrones here, and if you aren't putting in 7 day work weeks you can see your empire crumble. "Oh, Bill decided to finally enjoy family time on Saturday? Well, we have a massive outage and escalation, he isn't around, and now everyone who is working gets to talk shit about how lazy they are?" "Well, maybe if our engineers were better led then we wouldn't have these outages." Nothing bad that happens here is ever you or your team's fault---ever. There is always someone to blame it on. And if everyone kicks up enough dirt and shit, then you never actually get to the bottom of what went wrong, what can be improved upon, so on and so forth. So, everyone is working way too much all while improving very, very little. All this political playing really makes a part of my job difficult, which is data and reporting. I can compile data that shows X team is running into delays because of Y, which is meant to be the first step in discussions around improvement. I can show this, with 98% confidence in my data. But that team? Nope. They will argue the data isn't correct. It could be as clear as the sky being blue. And the executives who should be holding their feet to the fire are so busy juggling that they're easily duped and distracted into thinking, "well, let's get to the bottom of the data being accurate." But enough dirt is kicked up to distract them that by the time a week or two passes, we're all on to the next issue having not solved the previous.

I'll stop here because this is all very specific to my place of work, and don't know if others deal with this shit, but yeah. The fight for power here is fucking atrocious and is the single biggest contributor to inefficiencies.

Click to shrink...

Yes, I've seen the politics up there. It's crazy.

Also, as an aside, there's very little solidarity in the corporate world. Like you said, tons of backstabbing and so on.

But instead of helping each other, executives are always in a power struggle I notice. One of the big reason I said no to moving up the ladder.

 

[Booshka]

They're mostly bullshit jobs that get in the way of actual productive labor, and/or are there to just exploit that labor further. These bullshit jobs are also constantly trying to justify their existence with more bullshit paperwork, meetings, etc.

 

[Kenai]

I think my manager counts as a middle manager and is a fantastic person to work for

My last supervisor wasn't too bad either.

The two I had before that were some of the worst people I've had the displeasure of knowing both as professionals and regarding personality

So yea, mileage varies.

How about when they do all of that but don't give you the promotion that they've been promising you for a year that would result in increased compensation to go along with the vastly increased amount of required work? My company has been leading me on for a full year about a promotion, and has been having me act in the position of a manager (unofficially) for the past 8 months, only to announce a "staffing freeze" a few weeks ago. Basically going "yeah we want you to be a manager and do all the work required of one, but we're not gonna pay you for it".

Click to shrink...

I left my last place of employment for reasons including and similar to this. If companies are leading you on it's not just at one thing, believe me.

Update your resume with what you are currently doing and apply for a few spots on LinkedIn and whatnot, you might be surprised how much greener the grass can be. Especially when you have time to look for something you want since you are employed. Going on two years at my new job and getting paid a lot more for less stressful work.

 

[mute]

This whole "back to office" exercise that people are going through right now should tell you efficiency is not the priority.

 

[Thordinson]

They're mostly bullshit jobs that get in the way of actual productive labor, and/or are there to just exploit that labor further. These bullshit jobs are also constantly trying to justify their existence with more bullshit paperwork, meetings, etc.

Click to shrink...

This.

This whole "back to office" exercise that people are going through right now should tell you efficiency is not the priority.

Click to shrink...

Exactly.

 

[NCR Ranger]

In my experience the biggest things seem to be fief building(everyone want to have a big team so they can feel important), inability to track productive work(either they don't know which work is productive or haven't found a way to track it), and a stubborn refusal to admit that while you are paying people for 40 hours a week you sometimes just don't have 40 hours of work that week, so people must invent ways to look busy.

 

[Adeptus]

I think that moder "data driven" approach is not helping. Thereotically, having more knowledge is good, but when people spend their time for gaining and analyzing worthless data like "Why we have bigger media coverage day 1 than day 2? There must be some important reason!!! (answer - because journalist have whim to write about us on the day 1, not 2)", thay don;t have time for anything else.

 

[NativeTongue]

Most office jobs don't really have 40 hours a week worth of work to do. The few times they do is seasonal depending on the industry they're in. A lot of the work is just trying to justify why you're there for 40 hours a week every week. The funny thing is in a lot of these industries everyone could reasonable work 30 hours if they all just worked at the job they're supposed to be doing instead of finding work to fill the 40 hours.

 

[Blade24070]

How about when they do all of that but don't give you the promotion that they've been promising you for a year that would result in increased compensation to go along with the vastly increased amount of required work? My company has been leading me on for a full year about a promotion, and has been having me act in the position of a manager (unofficially) for the past 8 months, only to announce a "staffing freeze" a few weeks ago. Basically going "yeah we want you to be a manager and do all the work required of one, but we're not gonna pay you for it".

Click to shrink...

Leave as soon as you're able to.

 

[luminosity]

It's even worse when you're in roles that expect you to manage people, attend those meetings, but then also still perform a regular-employee level of productivity on projects.

I used to work with a wonderful departmental head that had to put phantom meetings in her diary so no-one would think they could invite her to another meeting so she could actually get on with her workload.

Click to shrink...

Just click decline in outlook.

 

[captive]

because of idiots and greedy assholes.


literally every rule, regulation, safety requirement has come about because some idiot, or greedy asshole did that thing first.

"There's a story behind every warning sign"

some technology related examples: company gets hacked. Overrreacts and now security department has a say about everything. And their answer is typically no, thus slowing everything down.

financial related: after the housing crisis banks now have to have information on everything and your first born before they'll approve you for a loan.

 

[captive]

View: https://x.com/tomfellisheokay/status/1792952956306047146
Just saw this and made me think of this thread. This dude is funny as hell too, he has some other great work culture bits.

PS entremet , you make a shitload of threads.