Yes, pretty much at every big corporate job I held until now. Now, I have a golden parachute where I get about a year’s salary if they whack me, and I get a year’s salary even if I quit in 2 years.
I had lunch with an ex colleague that is still at Microsoft. They are going through their annual culling of the bottom 5%, and then justifying of those left standing who gets a big bonus and who gets shafted (but not shafted as bad as those bottom 5 percenters). Sheesh, talk about toxic and talk about lack of sleep…
Jeez, I have not gotten a good vibe out of the PNW’s successful Tech companies. Microsoft and Amazon both sound like grinding, intense, hard places to work.
Keeping employees off-balance with manipulative intent sounds like living inside a movie directed by David Fincher.
Of course there is a practical limit to efficiency gains and that limit largely depends on the job in question, I should have made that more clear. I was addressing the observation in general. In my location we have gone from 1,300 people to 800 in just the last year, while adding clients and meeting all service levels. If we were still doing things as we did them 5 years ago we would need at least double the number of current employees to handle the volume.
Kind of reminds me of the old adage that the business of the future will be so automated as to only need 2 employees - one human and one dog. The human’s job will be to feed the dog, the dog’s job will be to keep the human from touching the machines.
Yeah, that’s why I don’t work anymore. Anxiety meant lost sleep, lost sleep meant anxiety - cycle led to a - in the language of your business “a major episode of decompensation” - and now I’m a trophy wife again. Fortunately for us, we can afford it.
I’d start raising the issue outside the organization. Your function is one that the federal government - particular the GOP - would really not like to fund, or work more efficiently. But its one that is keeping people who don’t have my resources, and do have way bigger problems than I am, from the street. Everyone who has had a relative needing services has seen the hell and delays in that process - its gone from “trying to avoid fraud” to “making it so hard to get your entitlements that some people just give up.” Sounds like a good cause for a UU committee to take up
Generally I can brush things off but occasionally I start questioning my entire career choice, my employer, etc. I’m 60 and then I get into the wishing I could retire, thinking about selling off everything and moving to a cheaper location, etc. At my age, just switching employers isn’t going to solve it.
Besides meditation, yoga, antidepressants, sleeping pills, etc. I think making a plan for how to solve the problem is helpful (even if you don’t follow through on the plan). For me, just knowing there’s a course of action that I could follow (should I choose to) is somewhat helpful.
I still wish every day that I could retire or that I had lots more vacation time. Sometimes I think about working for a non-profit (i.e. something socially useful) but I think the same kind of stuff can happen anywhere.
I think in the OP’s case you need to bring up the issue with your management and come up with a workable plan to figure out how to handle the workload given the limited resources. Unfortunately that may entail lowering standards. But if those standards are clear and mutually agreed-upon that may what you have to do for the time being.
If I recall, you’re at ODAR and an ALJ. I used to be an SCT (recently promoted to HOCA, if you’re familiar with the acronym at your HO, they just finished hiring for it nationwide I believe). I can safely say that a lot of our judges are incredibly autonomous, and even moreso now with the advent of telework. Unless you mean writers (and heaven knows, we always need more of those), I think a relatively small cadre of SCT’s could run an office pretty effectively given savvy ALJs (not just procedurally, but with the computer systems, etc).
As far as quality is concerned, it’s a huge problem here too. It’s a huge problem in ANY government office. Quality is hard to monitor and police because of the strong union presence here. There are many SCTs here that are “lifers” and cashed in their chips a long time ago. I started 5 years ago and I’ve been promoted twice because of my work ethic and attitude, but some of them refuse to recognize it. It’s the definition of entrenchment for some of them.
The problem is that there is too much variance between HO’s and even employees within a single office. Everyone thinks that their “methods” are best, despite the existence of uniformity tools like eBP.
As far as ALJs go, you sound like one of the good ones. I’ve had to deal with so many that don’t seem to give two shits, and you seem generally concerned with your office and shortstaffing, and how it affects your public service on the whole.
Yes. Almost every time I’m about to fire someone or have just done so particiularly if it’s a cost-cutting or performance issue rather than a behavioral one. I slept very little when I sved my own livelihood by agreeing to oversee the shutdown of one workplace.
and I lost a lot of sleep when I though (correctly) that I was about to be fired from a different corporate job.
Money is tight, perhaps less so than during the furlough fisaco, but still tight. People are leaving, SCT’s and writers alike, and they aren’t being replaced. There’s a huge push for more and more of these “national” hearing centers, which are handling workloads remotely. Some of our cases are sitting in UNWR for weeks or months at a time because there aren’t enough writers to write them. When they need to “write down the backlog”, they ship some off them off to these new hearing centers and everything looks okay.
Too much of a focus on centralized hiring and as a result, the actual ODAR offices are being neglected. Huge push for more ALJs this FY (we just hired two this month alone), but that isn’t being matched whatsoever by support staff.
I tend to have insomnia whenever I’m on call–I usually lose an hour or two a night when I have the duty. Although I don’t get called out that often, in the back of my mind I’m expecting to get a page at any moment. That little bit of added stress is enough to mess up my sleep pattern.
Yeah, one problem is that the ALJs are a really inviting target. Really well paid etc for fed govt, and there have been a few horrible examples of rotten apples lately. Agency DEFINITELY needs to do more to get rid of the deadwood at ALL levels, including ALJs.
If I had 1/2 of a competent SCT (clerk for the rest of you) whom I shared with another reasonable judge (some judges are high maintenance and make the job WAY more difficult than it needs to be), I’d be fine. But I’m expected to dispose of 500-700 cases a year. That figures out to just about 2-2.5 hrs per case. If the hrg lasts an hr, that leaves 60-90 minutes to review the several hundred page file before hrg, issue decision-writing instructions, and edit the draft. Extremely doable if you have someone minimally competent preparing the file before the hrg, doing whatever needs to be done post, and are getting minimally acceptable drafts. Writing is A LOT better now with assistance from the regional and national centers.
When I started 5 years ago, I was in an office that had 2 clerks assigned to each judge, and the majority of them were competent. That was more than I needed. Now we have (I think) 10 clerks in a 10 judge office. Maybe 3 of the 10 are what I’d consider competent, at least 5 of them range from incompetent to hostile. Cases are assigned alphabetically. So you know - for example - that every case starting L-M will be fucked up, because that SCT is worthless. You’ll tell someone to do something straightforward that is well within their job function, and later find it simply did not get done. Happens DAILY - and really slows down the ability to do quality work at speed. Like you, the best consistently get promoted and move to other offices, leaving us the worst - with no ability to hire to fill the losses. Like I said, our last hire was of 5 vets - none of whom are anyone you would have hired for the positions if they had been posted competitively. Lots of quality people would love these jobs - but our stupid rules don’t allow us to hire them.
As you say, right now they are making efforts to hire 100s of new ALJs. I’ve long said that isn’t needed if they don’t hire the staff to support them. I’ve said that if they give me a competent dedicated clerk and writer, I’ll double my output. But what do I know? :rolleyes:
In my old position pre-ALJ, I was able to do my job simply doing all of my own typing, copying, mailing, etc. In this job I simply cannot come close to maintaining the expected pace, and any minimal level of quality, without SOME support. IMO ALJs who are doing it all themselves and issuing 500+ dispositions, are either cutting serious corners, or simply paying everybody (for various reasons, as a general rule much easier/quicker to pay someone than deny.)
Well, enough of my whining. Slept well last night! Think I’m convincing myself just to expect less, and not care much. Which is really not a good thing for me or the people I serve.
Oh yeah! I worked at a small feed manufacturing plant for about 30 years. About a million pounds of finished feed per month.
My job grew, because I am very detail oriented and can keep track of many things. I was the production planner deciding what to make and in which order to meet shipping deadlines. Because I new when we were going to make what, I also got the job of ordering all the raw materials needed.
Incoming and outgoing logistics including import/export. Purchasing materials and dealing with vendors. Balancing the expectations of the production manager and the customer service manager, because you can’t really please them both at the same time. Shipping and trucking department. I am trying to forget what else. Oh, “just in time” inventory control. Don’t buy it before we need it. FDA and USDA inspectors…A constantly ringing telephone, sometimes offering solutions but more likely to be yet another problem to throw into the mix.
Then the plant started to break down more often due to needing some serious capital investment money that wasn’t in the works.
My central office had two doors, and sometimes the mechanics would walk in one door and the production people would walk in the other door, and they would sit down with a funny look and tell me that the plant would be down for a week. Usually when we were already way behind and producing 24/7 and not meeting expectations.
“What is he doing in there?” “He is just sitting and staring at his computer.” “Leave him alone and he will fix it.”
And I usually did. I navigated the best course out of the hole we were in. I borrowed from Peter to pay Paul. Don’t miss the job at all. It was a fine job for a young man while also raising a family but would have killed me eventually from the stress alone.
The business was parted out and sold. And now I work 3 nights a week and know why I am missing sleep. Because it is my job. The production planner job was an 11 on a scale of 1-10. Current job never goes above 3. And nobody calls on the phone at night.
Oh yes, when taking the train home I realized that certain person from a certain nation had sent funds in a certain way- and we were gonna have to move fast to freeze them, but it was too late in the day to do it. First thing, 8AM East Coast time, I was on the line, making it so.
You must be my twin. I am in the exact same situation as you. It is an almost impossible balance of trying to land more clients to increase revenue while not taking on too many projects to cause missed deadlines.
I used to lose a lot of sleep but I now find myself making more money than ever with less stress and responsibility and I work from home so I’ve been sleeping quite well. I know this is a temporary situation so I’m enjoying it immensely as are my wife and twin 13yo daughters.
Of course there are other life and money things that can keep me up at night should the occasion arise. Not having to worry about my usual long commute on top of all the other pressures, that’s a big load off.
