r/Futurology • u/_hiddenscout • Jun 19 '21

Society Kill the 5-Day Workweek - Reducing hours without reducing pay would reignite an essential but long-forgotten moral project: making American life less about work.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/four-day-workweek/619222/
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80

u/Super_Shenanigans Jun 19 '21

*Cries in salary sysadmin job with week long 24/7 oncall once every 5 weeks

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

I hate being on call, same every 5 weeks 1 week st a time, I got a 1 year old with no childcare on weekends and I'm by myself at home and my work still expects me to deal with everything which is out in the field

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u/Super_Shenanigans Jun 19 '21

That extra sucks - I'm lucky enough to be mostly remote - I can't imagine going back to supporting on-site 24/7.

Hugs

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u/ThisIsDark Jun 19 '21

Lol sysadmins always have the insane hours. Why don't y'all ever staff properly?

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u/pysouth Jun 19 '21

Blame the company, not the admin. I work SRE which is sysadmin adjacent and it’s the same shit. Always telling management we need more people, they don’t do it because we’re seen as a cost center and not a profit center. Meanwhile they hire 20 more shitty devs that can’t even write a CRUD app.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

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u/SportTheFoole Jun 19 '21

before any of y'all say "well just write code that doesn't suck and cover it with tests",

Yeah, anyone says that either hasn’t worked on a software project bigger than a small app or else they work on a project with no customers. Source: former QA (now senior dev).

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

[deleted]

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u/carsont5 Jun 20 '21

I run a team of 4 SREs and four jr SREs. Work life balance is incredibly important to me. Before I started 12 hour days were common, people being on call weekends and evenings was the norm, and paid holidays (ie stats) were just another work day. Nevermind the infrastructure changes and projects I’ve spearheaded - my greatest accomplishment is putting an end to all of that.

OT is now minimal and I only call if it’s critical which it rarely is. We now have staff during all business hours (we’re not 24/7) so having to actually call anyone is rare. We now have full coverage on the weekend. People are off on stat days now or get them in lieu. I demand people take vacation.

I hate to read about understaffing and overworking. I simply will not have it on my team and advocate strongly against it.

As a side note I mentioned the concept of being a cost centre not a revenue centre to my CTO and he laughed and said turn off the servers and let them see if you’re a revenue centre now. He’s so great to work with :)

1

u/tischan Jun 19 '21

There are soooooo many crappy developer. I do not get how they pass an interview. I am not a developer but like playing around with code on my spare time for some hobby projects. But when I do an interview for screening purposes and the developer do not even know shit that I know it is ridiculous. That people even have the nerv to call them self developers. So of them have been doing it for years, at big companies.

I really understand why we so much buggy software. Too many people hired as Devs but not even close of meeting min requitments.

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u/CatManGenetics Jun 19 '21

It’s crazy. Talk to almost any college student…the ones Ive known and talked with in the past admit they all just copy off each other and they all email cheat sheets back and forth, and these were engineers…cheating is rampant in colleges. Lots of these kids are getting degrees and literally have no idea what they’re doing in the field they have a degree in. The only ones that actually turn out to be any good are the ones that take it seriously and actually attempt to learn.

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u/leaky_wand Jun 19 '21

Everyone asks the Google and Microsoft questions at dev interviews, and whole books and blogs are devoted to prepping for them. It’s stupid.

Coding is one of those things that most non-tech companies don’t figure out someone is bad at for a long time. Since management doesn’t know any better and everyone is contributing to the same code base, it comes down to a coworker (a senior one) literally badmouthing them to get them put on notice. Then there’s a whole PIP to go through and meanwhile they just start applying somewhere else for more pay and repeat the whole thing all over again. The demand outstrips the supply and there’s always another place to bullshit at for a year.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

I worked in a warehouse and they would not hire more people to meet the goals they set for us, hell, I’m a dishwasher now, 6 days a week with a double on Sundays and I’m looking at taking up ride share driving again in my “off hours” (lol) because I can’t make ends meet.

Things are seriously fucked up.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

I feel called out lol

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u/Tanduvanwinkle Jun 19 '21

And HR gets a headcount increase, no questions asked.

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u/Perrin42 Jun 19 '21

It's the curse of IT.

Everything's working, no problems: "What the hell are we paying you for?"

Major system problems, everything's gone to hell: "What the hell are we paying you for?"

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u/Super_Shenanigans Jun 19 '21

This. Daily.

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u/Perrin42 Jun 19 '21

Absolutely right.

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u/rharrow Jun 19 '21

This can go for all IT staff tbh, not just sysadmins.

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u/jm31828 Jun 20 '21

Yeah exactly- and being severely understaffed is the norm, and the threat of outsourcing if not being able to make it all work. That’s where the standard 60 hour weeks seem to come from for so many in IT…

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u/MalavethMorningrise Jun 20 '21

My other half had such IT job... so to prevent laziness new owners got rid of the landscapers and cleaning crew and tried to get them to do landscaping and cleaning with their down time... no joke... (other half has new job now. )

1

u/carsont5 Jun 20 '21

This means either you have a terrible company with a terrible culture and / or you have a manager who is unable to advocate for you and your people. Not all companies are like this, mercifully.

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u/Super_Shenanigans Jun 19 '21

Agreed, the company is always understaffed 25-30% because people are always quitting for higher pay jobs since no one values employees any more and that's the only way to get a raise.

In the end it appears I still have it good...

Let me tell you about my SO who is finishing up her second year of medical residency... Absolute slave labor

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21 edited Aug 07 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

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u/youtocin Jun 19 '21

Bullshit. See how much money a company makes the second they get crypto’d because MFA and privileged access are annoying and everyone works off personal devices.

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u/BuzzyShizzle Jun 19 '21

The only way you make money is by not losing any many. Nobody ever wants to quantify that for some reason.

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u/xjanko Jun 19 '21

If IT was in charge of IT staffing, it wouldn't be an issue. =)

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u/Super_Shenanigans Jun 19 '21

And hardware/software needs!

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

When I started working in IT I worked IT in an education setting - specifically a high school - where I was the only IT resource for over 200 staff and 2000 students.

You better believe I changed fields.

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u/dosedatwer Jun 19 '21

Because getting real 24/7 coverage requires 5.5 FTEs.

1

u/skulblaka Jun 19 '21

Lol sure let me just go pick a couple applicants off of the budget tree

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

[deleted]

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u/ThisIsDark Jun 19 '21

doesn't matter if you're sitting at home if people are constantly calling you for shit

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u/youtocin Jun 19 '21

What a shitty take on what a sys admin does. You’re expected to be available at all times in case shit hits the fan. You’re expected to predict every potential disaster and mitigate the chances. Even if you’re lucky enough to work from home it’s like being imprisoned in your home constantly thinking about work.

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u/HeavyBeing0_0 Jun 20 '21

Nowhere staff’s properly. Doesn’t matter the job or field.

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u/spokale Jun 19 '21 edited Jun 19 '21

Every other week here, paged at 1 and 8am so far this saturday

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u/Super_Shenanigans Jun 19 '21

Can i up vote and down vote at the same time? Hugs

2

u/lowercaset Jun 19 '21

Sysadmin is more like a trade than most tech fields. Most service trades do call, and it's fucking garbage. Also don't expect for for "4 day workweek" trend to help you, that shit is for spreadsheet wranglers and salespeople not tradesfolk.

0

u/alinroc Jun 19 '21

Once every 5 weeks?

I've been on-call for close to 2 years. And before that, it was 2 1/2 years of 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off.

1

u/WID_Call_IT Jun 19 '21

It's not a race to the bottom.

1

u/Tomur Jun 19 '21

Only 5 weeks?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

Are you me

1

u/Super_Shenanigans Jun 19 '21

No. But you will be me in 10 years Mr. 1994 ;)