August 27, 2025 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Ghostworkers
August 27, 2025 at 1:07 pm
Just a couple thoughts on this:
If you are working on a 'side hustle' on my time, you're fired so you will have more time.
If you walk into my office and I'm staring at the wall, you better shut the hell up and get out. I'm probably thinking about the best solution to your problem.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
August 27, 2025 at 1:11 pm
Robin Sharma said, "Don't confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy." After all, you always get what you measure, and if managers are looking for signs of busy-ness, then that's what they'll get. In my opinion, if you can't trust your people to work remotely and measure them by their results, having them in the office will not improve things.
After COVID, many companies wanted to get their employees back to the office under the "Let's get back to work!" banner. I get that they want to make use of their expensive office leases, but what do they think we've been doing during COVID? I am far more productive in my home office than I am in a corporate office. I don't have to waste time in the commute, I don't get pulled into hallway or "drop by" conversations, I don't have distractions from the cubicles around me, and I am able to focus on my work.
Don't get me wrong. Occassional trips to the office for planning/design sessions, working sessions, or other specifically focused meetings are important. Not everything is effectively done remotely. I once worked at a company that was 100% remote. They maintained an office that consisted of several meeting rooms with a small break room. It was used to bring people together when required, onboarding sessions, or other necessary gatherings. Otherwise, we were remote and highly effective. We weren't monitored to make sure we were online or any other metric other than our results. In addition to being more productive, I will often put in more hours working a remote job than an in-office one.
The end result is, an employee that is effective remotely is a better employee and more trustworthy than one you have to monitor in the office. If you must have employees in the office and monitored to be productive, they're not the right employees. If most employees are like that, then there's an issue with the organization itself.
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August 27, 2025 at 1:25 pm
From my perspective of being 82 years old, with at least 70 of those years working for money, 42 years working specifically in IT, 10 years of management experience, and 15 years of being retired, what I see is a horrible and pathetic situation both for those hiring and those being hired.
Two things:
You don't hire good managers, you train good managers.
You don't hire good employees, you train good employees.
Critical to both sides is you pay attention and KNOW what they all are doing.
And about meetings, if your meeting involves more than two other people or lasts more than ten minutes you are wasting someone's time.
I know that is extreme, but it gives you something to think about.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
August 27, 2025 at 1:55 pm
Great article, Steve!
August 27, 2025 at 2:26 pm
Thinking back to pre-COVID, a lot of gaps in the direction given by managers were filled in by more experienced team members. They were like old sergeants, anticipating orders from inexperienced officers. Not telling the officer that they were wrong, but presenting an opportunity for the officer to be even more right!
I feel that is something that has withered in a remote working scenario. Some people need more direction than others; they get bored and don't always make the best time management decisions.
There have always been those that are regarded as blisters. They only show up after the hard work has been done. There have also been those who have mastered the art of appearing convincingly busy to the boss.
I am mindful that if I did a 2nd job while employed by a company, I would be fired. If a senior director on a massive salary did this, it would be called a non-executive directorship, and they would be handsomely rewarded.
August 27, 2025 at 3:32 pm
Just a couple thoughts on this:
If you are working on a 'side hustle' on my time, you're fired so you will have more time.
If you walk into my office and I'm staring at the wall, you better shut the hell up and get out. I'm probably thinking about the best solution to your problem.
agreed
August 27, 2025 at 3:35 pm
Robin Sharma said, "Don't confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy." After all, you always get what you measure, and if managers are looking for signs of busy-ness, then that's what they'll get. In my opinion, if you can't trust your people to work remotely and measure them by their results, having them in the office will not improve things.
...
The end result is, an employee that is effective remotely is a better employee and more trustworthy than one you have to monitor in the office. If you must have employees in the office and monitored to be productive, they're not the right employees. If most employees are like that, then there's an issue with the organization itself.
Agree, though I think the "change" from in-office to remote is hard and doesn't always work great. I think most people struggle to find some balance. Some work too much, some too little.
The biggest thing to me is that this remote work thing should have exposed the fact we have a lot of poor management out there.
August 27, 2025 at 3:41 pm
I am mindful that if I did a 2nd job while employed by a company, I would be fired. If a senior director on a massive salary did this, it would be called a non-executive directorship, and they would be handsomely rewarded.
Somewhat true. A lot of execs work long hours to cover these things, and some companies consider that 2nd position a boost to them. However, I more agree with you. This isn't something that makes sense to me. I work a second job, but it's outside of this job and I have to make sure I don't short change either of them.
August 27, 2025 at 3:51 pm
Not sure if I'll be in the minority here, and this opinion may irritate some people. For my last two jobs especially (one at a fortune 100 company and my current one at a medium sized manufacturer) I do not have enough work to fill my day. It makes me feel pretty guilty although I have grown used to it as time has passed. Don't misinterpret and think I'm not doing a lot. I am, and my list of accomplishments each year is far greater than the other members of my team (I'm a DBA on a team with some developers and some BI type developers). I am always on the lookout for more things to take on, but regulations on segregation of duties often prevents me taking on more. In other past jobs once I started to feel this way I would jump employers, telling myself I needed a new challenge rather than sitting around managing a stable environment. Actually, the reason I'm in IT at all was because my first job (analyst for a bank) didn't have enough work for me, and I taught myself programming in my spare work time.
So I wouldn't say I'm ghostworking, but I do pace myself pretty carefully. I'm in the office two days a week and make sure I have enough to stay busy those days. It's a tough subject to bring up to my manager too, because it feels like I'd be talking myself out of a job (hey, there isn't enough work here for a FTE...). I'd like to believe I'm just very efficient and effective and I'm just doing the job with less time and effort than others might, but who knows if that's true.
Anyone else feel similarly?
Be still, and know that I am God - Psalm 46:10
August 27, 2025 at 4:19 pm
Anyone else feel similarly?
/me raises hand
Yep, similar situation here. I went from working at a small company with a rather broad set of responsibilities, to a gov job that is "production DBA" and that is ALL I handle. I've followed the mantra of trying to automate myself out of a job, so at this point I'm baby-sitting the servers and looking for ways to improve my skills and stay relevant as we slowly (so, so, so slowly) look to "modernize" and move apps and databases to "the cloud."
Worse, I'm aiming to call it a day and pull the ripcord on the parachute labeled "retirement" sometime in the next 5-10yrs, so while I want to (and largely, am trying to) stay on top of what's out there, it's getting harder.
Now, as for the "work in the office / remote work" thing? We went almost 6 years without setting foot in the office for any reason, then the order was passed down from on high that any and all telework was no more. Frankly, I do think I was MORE motivated working at home, both because I had access to my home systems to "play" with new versions of SQL, to putter with Azure SQL / Managed Instance and because there were fewer distractions. Yes, I can still do the play and putter on my own time, but it has to be crammed in around family time, chores around the house, family events, getting motivated after the commute (that one's a killer of motivation and I don't even have a LONG commute!), and just plain time to unwind before having to get to bed to do it all over again the next day.
August 27, 2025 at 7:24 pm
David, I love your blister comment. Very well thought out.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
August 28, 2025 at 9:09 pm
Pre Covid we had a very large backlog of projects. When Covid hit an with everyone working from home this backlog was almost wiped out after a couple of years. This proved we all were efficient working remotely without the constant supervision. With setting up each sprint and committing to those (points or hours) per sprint to me lent itself to a lot of ghost work. You may have a sprint where things go smoother or easier then planned. Now you could pick up more stuff from a future sprint or backlog. But if you did that too much you would be expected to do more going forward. It would be easier to say a task that took you less then an hour to do took 4 or more. Just to keep work for next sprint and so you don't get overloaded next sprint. That happens often as well were a project or fires pop up that don't allow you to complete everything in a sprint. You may have a week or two you are slammed and are ready to pull your hair out. Then when you get to that sprint where things go easier an quicker you slow down, because you know that hard week or two will come back around soon.
Back at the beginning of June this year the started forcing us to come in the office two days a week. During those two days each week very little would get done, for the reasons others have mentioned. This made planning for each week a lot harder knowing almost two days each week would see little getting done.
Now the backlog is virtually gone, so what does a employer do?? Layoffs. Luckily I was one of those let go, currently seeking new opportunities. I say lucky because I know the amount of worked now dumped on those left.
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we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us
Don't fear failure, fear regret.
August 29, 2025 at 2:21 pm
Isn't this purely a problem caused by poor management? The article mentions another statistic about 46% workers don't know what is expected of them.
As a manager, I have expectations of my staff. Those expectations are measurable -- its on me to determine the metric. If my staff doesn't meet the expectations, then I meet with them to determine a solution or way to help them.
The tone of the article, and others like it, cast shade on workers. I guess this article is written for managers or at least someone high up in a company who has a budget to buy employee spyware. The very end the author mentions "employee monitoring software". Such things are not needed if you know how to manage, set expectations, etc.
Probably the site is just trying to create click-bait.
Another thought, companies have been reducing middle management for many years. My guess is that employee spyware is the go-to stop-gap instead of increasing headcount(managers) and admitting that self-management is not really a thing.
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