I’ve never had a regular, 9-5 job, but I’ve spent some time reading some documents in a professional office over the last couple of weeks, and I’ve been sort of struck by how much non-work seems to get done there. I hear co-workers talking about each other, people talking on the phone (to family), and I see computer screens with windows open to internet shopping sites. But I don’t see a lot of work.
Between that and all the ubiquity of ‘NSFW,’ I wonder - how much work gets done in workplaces?
For those of you with professional jobs, how much work gets done at your office?
I am posting from my shop area in my home does that count.
I probably did 3-4 good hours of work a day at my last job, now that I am self employed I bill about 3-4 hours a day. Much of my job has little windows for doping and such while virus scanners and windows installs run so I probably dope about as much as I did back then but make more money now…hmmm go figure.
I’m at work. Things vary. At the moment I am doing environment support - this is mostly reactive, and because I am good at what I do, I don’t take too long to solve problems.
Right now, I am rolling patches to an entire environment. I can’t do too many systems at once for a number of reasons, so while stuff happens I have space to post. But if I have a problem to solve, I’ll be on it.
I have had times in my working life where every minute was taken up with tasks. It can be destructive and productive at the same time. I like to be busy, but not so busy that corners get cut or thought processes impaired.
A long time ago, I worked for a company in NZ. Our billable time target was 85% (of a 40 hour week). That was hard to get, and was worth a great bonus. To try to improve our timekeeping, (mis-)management shifted the target to 100% billing. That meant no email, no coffee with colleagues, all admin tasks were on your own time, and the bonus was almost unachievable. Plus customers got fed up with engineers booking “shooting the breeze” time as billable hours, so billing queries went up and sales people were writing off more time. Morale fell, good staff and customers left. Bad move.
I think that drachillix has the self-employed balance about right - 50% billable work is required to run that sort of business.
Well it depends on how tired I am and how much I ADD out, but in a 15 hour workday I work somewhere between 4 and 15 hours. It’s funny you should ask because I’m on a business trip to Japan and I’ve been keeping track since it’s such a controlled environment:
Since Monday June 11th 9AM Tokyo time I have worked about 150-160 hours, I slept about 35 hours, spent somewhere between 5 and 10 hours on commute, somewhere between 5 and 10 hours eating, maybe 3-4 hours showering. The rest of the time was spent getting distracted by the Internet and things around the office.
Yes, I am a little delirious and about to snap from exhaustion, why do you ask?
However, even if a person does 30 minutes of actual work in an 8 hour work day, as long as they are meeting their expectations, there might not be that much that can be done to have them do it all at once, and go home seven and a half hours early each day. It’s kind of an extension of the “X is free, knowing where to put the X is thousands” principle. You just can’t tell what portion of the brain is doing what in another individual. I’ve certainly solved many problems while reading books, sleeping, eating, or rolling up gum and throwing it at a white board.
I’m a high school teacher and my typical school day is this:
7:30 - 8:00 = morning tutorials
8:00 - 3:00 = classes which are constant work (I’m not one of those teachers who shows videos every day or assigns the students busywork so they can sit and read the newspaper), but this time includes a 30 minute lunch and a 1 hour planning period (during which I am usually pretty busy).
3:00 - ~4:00 = afternoon tutorials; and I also sponsor two student groups and serve on a couple of committees. I rarely leave the school before 4:30.
at home = usually an hour spent grading papers and lesson planning.
Plus I’ll spend 2 to 3 hours twice a week at athletic events (one of the groups I sponsor is the spirit crew)
So I put in a good 8 to 10 hours a day, sometimes more. Not much opportunity to waste time at the watercooler or on the internet.
The pay-off, of course, is SUMMER!* Two-and-a-half months of freedom! Except for the eleven days of “professional development” workshops that I’ll be attending because of the type of classes I teach.
*and the rewarding experience of working with and educating young people.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. Ok, I don’t really hate you, but I haven’t had a vacation lasting more than three days in seven years, and… I’m really… bitter.
FWIW, a time management class I recently took says that anyone who schedules more then 80% of the day for “work” is going to become overburdened and end up getting less accomplished than someone who leaves some breathing room in the schedule. Personally, I am satisfied with 5 hrs of productive work, 6 is a great day (and 12 is not unheard of).
As my job description entails quite a lot of waiting around for my services to be required, it can vary anywhere from zero to seven hours of actual work in any given workday (my scheduled workday is seven hours).
I can complete anywhere from zero to seven billable hours in any given workday - although I have no required or expected target for billable hours. It’s understood that the vast majority of my work will never be billed to our clients. For example, I do the client billing, the docketing, scheduling, document management and a host of other administrative duties that are not properly billable to any given client, but must be completed anyway. Research, drafting, editing, client communications, etc are all billable, but form the minority of my actual work.
Today, for example, my boss is planning to leave at 1pm - so far I’ve managed to do one hour of billable time, and it’s doubtful I’ll manage any more billable time today.
I probably average around 15% of my time as billable, and around 55% of my time at the office doing actual work. When I took over this position, it was closer to 95% of my time doing actual work - I’ve streamlined procedures and done a lot of organizational work to increase efficiency. I’m actually doing roughly 20% more actual work than when I took over this position - it’s just taking me a whole lot less time to do it. I’m an efficiency demon. Comes of being inherently lazy.
Like everyone else, it varies widely. Depending on time of year and current project, I spend anywhere between one and 12 hours a day actually working, and I’ve probably had a few days in my career where I’ve hit 18 or more. Of course, then I’m useless for a period of time once I actually slack off a little.
I’m paid to wait around for someone to need me. Currently, I’m a contractor, and thus unable to access a significant number of the client’s systems, so I have a lot more waiting around to do than I would if I were a permanent employee. IME, 2 - 5 hours a day is normal for the position I’m in (I’m lethally efficient and streamline everything I touch, it’s a compulsion with me), but I have to be available 7.5 - 9 hours a day. My last job, I was lucky to have 1 or 2 hours of work to do a week, during a 40 hour week, and it wasn’t unusual for me to go weeks at a time without having any work to do at all. Notice that’s a former job - I’d rather be busy all day long than sit around for weeks on end with nothing to do.
I’m due at court no later than 8:45am weekdays, and can leave by 4pm. It’s not unusual that I stay later than that, but it’s rare that I have to. I’ve had days where I’ve worked pretty much continuously during the day - as I did just yesterday, when I handled a criminal docket and was on the bench from 9:30am to 1:20pm, with only a one-minute break to make a phone call (yes, I skipped lunch). But then there are days when I’m in chambers all day, have no decisions that need to be written and get no calls from counsel, so I can goof around far more than I really should. I call those my “SDMB days.”
I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
Peter Gibbons- “Office Space”
As for me, I’d say I do about four to six hours of actual work (ETA: per day), depending on call volume. On a slow day I probably only spend 3 hours of actual time on the phone. The rest of the time is spent here at the SDMB.
I tried office work, and the lack of work drove me nuts. I hate to waste time. I’m back outdoors, and apart from a 30 minute lunch break, I’m in gear for the whole 8 hours. The days sure go by faster this way! Of course, I’m not posting from work - I can’t imagine taking a computer with me while gardening.
I manage a new store, for which I get paid hourly. I spend some of my time actually in the store minding it, for which I get paid based on my timecard. And I spend some of my time at home or doing out of store tasks/meetings/etc for which I keep track of time spent and add that tracksheet to my total hours.
The hours outside of the store, are basically 95% productive. If I’m going to stop working on a store task then I sign out on my tracksheet. If I just have to pee I might not bother. I also don’t sign out for multitasking, such as watching tv or IMing with someone in the background.
The hours in the store vary considerably however. It’s good for me to be productive, and I’ll obviously try to be more productive when there’s a deadline or a major task that needs doing, but for the most part I’m babysitting the store until a customer comes in.
So like many others, my productivity depends a lot on the ebb and flow of “what needs to be done”. If I solely got paid for what I do outside of the store, it would be less hours. But certain situations, like serving customers, you need your employees to be at a location whether or not there is “work to do”. A certain part of salary is going to be paid solely for occupying a certain location at a certain time.
I give my employees some leeway. I try to communicate with them what tasks really need to be done, and which ones are more longterm projects. If the store is presentable and stocked, and all the current orders have been processed, and there are no customers, and there’s no rush for the general tasks, then I don’t care if they surf the internet or do homework. I also try to communicate that at their pay level there is some minimum level of productivity required, but that if they are the ambitious type who is putting more time and effort into the tasks beyond store maintenance and customer serving, that they will get a raise.
I’m a stockbroker. I’m working most of the hours I’m at work during market hours. I’ll spend slow time reading financial websites or helping with our new trainees.
I work from 6 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon, with two paid half-hour breaks and one unpaid half-hour lunch break. Since it’s manual labor on an assembly line in a factory, we work every minute we’re not on break, literally.
I rather want to print this thread and give it out to every high schooler I know as a demonstration of the real value of higher education.
If one was to track my posting habits, one would quickly become convinced that I don’t do any work. Thing is, so much of what I do is firing off a test and watching to see if IO is interrupted. I don’t really see much of it as “real work”, but I’m doing what I’m paid to do probably 4 hours a day. Very few people could tell the difference between me working and me not working.
