So what kind of job/compensation should lazy or stupid people deserve?

In My Humble Opinion
1

From perusing these threads:
Share your stupid coworker stories
Do Big 4 Accounting Firms Over Work Employees
Salaried Dopers - how do you consider business travel?
Are you / am I a workaholic?
“We can’t charge the client” - AUGH!!!"
Help - Everyone else in the office works through lunch, and I don’t want to

clearly each of us has a different idea of what work should be and how much effort we should put in.

But as a general rule:

  • Do people think that someone who went to an academically well respected school and achieved high marks should be given better job opportunities than someone who partied for four years (and their grades show it)?
  • Should those who work longer hours be rewarded with more frequent raises and promotions
  • Should you be penalized if you are unwilling to put in extra effort while others are?

I think just about everyone’s initial reply is “yes, you should get rewarded for your hard work”, but is it really? I mean most people don’t graduate with 4.0s from college (I certainly didn’t) or aren’t willing to travel and work 70 hours a week like a Big-4 accountant. But they also seem to resent when those who do come out ahead? And some people seem like they are barely intelligent and competant enough to even keep their jobs, let alone get ahead.

What would happen if the world was a true meritocracy?

2

I think your premise is flawed though. I tend to agree with you that there is a fair amount of bellyaching that goes on this message board, but I think it is just an outlet for people.

However in the real world (or at least the one I am involved with) you are rewarded for doing the work, not for the number of hours you put in. If I have two people who produce the same amount of work and one puts in 55 hours a week and stays all night, but the other one puts in 40 hours and goes home at five. Which do I reward?

Most of my projects are a fixed fee. I get paid the same amount from my client if I put in 200 hours or 2000 hours. The person who put in 55 hours doesn’t get paid anymore, but he has a direct cost to my bottom line. He impacts my profit and I am not going to reward poor work habits.

You and I have had this discussion before and it indeed may be related to my line of work, but I could care less ‘where’ someone went to school. I have specific items I need achieved and I reward those who can meet them in the least amount of time.

Personally I find that when people put in that many hours they frankly just aren’t that good at time management. I make my deadlines on Thursdays, and give you the Friday off for getting it done (with the understanding that if it doesn’t get done, then you might have to work on Friday). The Project Managers who make their deadline Monday are the ones that perplex me! Then you end up working all weekend AND the following week as well. Poor time management.

So for me it indeed might be unique to my profession but I can’t see how what I just stated doesn’t apply to any profession.

3

The only way this makes sense to me is if you’re paying these people hourly, in which case your experience doesn’t necessarily carry over to salaried work.

4

Sure it does. People usually work on multiple projects at a time. I can give more work to the more efficient guy. If there’s an occasional crunch time, the efficient guy can take on an extra load for one or two weeks. There are only so many hours in a day for the other guy.

5

My guys are mostly all salaried. But let’s say I get $500,000 to design something. That is a fixed fee to me–the firm gets paid $500,000 whether it costs me $100,000 or $700,000. But if I bring that project in at say $400,000 then I just made an overall $100,000 profit to my firm on top of our built in profit. That makes me look good—it is important to my staff to make me look good! :wink:

But as the Project Manager or Managing Partner on this project I have the $500,000 as my budget. ALL hours are recorded against the project even if you aren’t paid personally for the extra hours. That way we know how much time and costs it truly takes to do a project.

So the guy who bills 55 hours a week gets paid for 40 hours but my budget gets dinged for 55 hours. So over several months that 55 hour a guy is costing ‘me’ money, not the firm. The firm still makes the same amount of profit regardless. But when my review comes they don’t take that into account, they look at how many hours the project used and how much profit or loss did it have. Thus my statement that the 55 hour guy costs me money.

6

I’m glad to hear that you see it that way. I’ve worked in a company where the person who worked long hours inefficiently was rewarded more than the person who did the same amount of work, better, and more efficiently in a normal time. Sometimes it’s all about perception.

Prime example: Person X works late, til maybe 9 or 10. The next morning she comes in late, making a big deal over the fact that she’s late because she worked so long the night before. Gets coffee, bitches for a while, finally gets down to work, works for about an hour. Gosh, lunch time. Takes an hour for lunch. Does maybe four hours of actual work. Hmmm. Not done yet. Going to be a late night. Has some coffee, decides she’ll order in, canvasses the office to see who else plans to work late. Spends an hour on that. Food arrives, another hour or two eating supper and bitching. Works another hour, oh, so weary, and finally goes home. Spent a total of 10 hours in the office, but only half of those were spent working. Lather, rinse, repeat. Has a rep for getting tasks done quickly, but those who follow after often have to fix her mistakes.

Person Y comes in an hour before he’s required to. Works “heads down” in the quiet of the deserted office. Takes a brief half hour at lunch time. Works steadily until quitting time. Work is top quality, rarely needs fixing once he’s done with it.

Guess who gets the promotion and the raises and the management adulation? Person X for her "hard work. "

7

It’s a common theme, MLS. Corporations seem to value visibility over competence.

8

Your world isn’t any more or less “real” because you operate under a different business model. The problem with professional service jobs (ie lawyer, consultant, accountant, etc) is how do you actually measure the service provided? You aren’t manufacturing widgets so you can’t simply count how much “law stuff” a lawyer produces at the end of the day.

Note that these people are typically salaried and don’t get paid more for working more hours. Only their firm receives the additional revenue.
Also, speaking from experience. Typically those consultants aren’t less efficient than their industry counterparts. They have 2-3 times the workload. Although also speaking from experience, their managers tend to be very poor at planning and managing projects.

I think it depends on the type of work you need doing. To a certain extent, I think college is simply a tool for defining a social class structure. On the other hand, if you are hiring engineers to design space shuttle parts, you probably want the best and the brightest.

The whole reason people go to top schools is so they can qualify for jobs that are highly competetive and can’t be done by just anyone. It’s the difference between the comp sci graduate who maintains the servers for a company vs the comp sci graduate who works at IBM designing them.

9

IMHO a college degree in many fields simply indicates that a person has the initiative and perseverence to stick to something for four or more years, and has at least an average intelligence. I’d make an exception for, say, medical fields, but in many cases we make little or no use of the actual facts we learn in college. If we make good use of the time, we learn how to learn, how to research, how to study and how to communicate, but that is not true for all graduates by a long shot.

10

From all those threads you’ve cited, this is the pattern a nutshell…

Most employees bring a blue-collar mentality (punch in&out timeclock) to a white-collar jobs (accomplishments). Even though people graduate from college and enter “professional” careers, many of them still bring a deeply-ingrained blue-collar-hourly mentality to their jobs.

The blue-collar perspective inflates the “value” they bring to the company and warps their judgment of coworkers who get ahead.

For example, Mr. BlueCollarHoursly sees that Mr. WhiteCollarAccomplishments gets a promotion and resents it. He notices that Mr. W works 70 hours but he (Mr. B) also works 70 hours so he should get a raise too. Mr. B’s analysis of the situation is flawed because he filters Mr. W’s promotion through the lens of “hours hours hours.” Mr. B does not stop to actually compare the list of accomplishments and contributions between himself and Mr. W – he’s intellectually blind to why certain people rise in the organization.

Most employees have a sense of entitlement… they want their companies to be paternalistic and they want to be paid just for showing up for work (hours) instead of getting things done.

I love the story from management guru Peter Drucker (I think it’s Peter Drucker, my memory might be wrong)… he was in his early 20s at a newspaper and related a story about being reprimanded for poor quality work, “Peter, this report you’ve done is unacceptable and if you do it again, you will be fired.” I love the directness of it. None of that politically correct nonsense of “10-step Performance Improvement Plan” from Human Resources watchdogs. I think Jack Welch has a similar story of almost getting fired.

11

I have found that this sense of entitlement is most pronounced in companies that treat their employees like children and base their pay overwhelmingly on how many hours they work and how long they’ve been with the company. When you set up a reward system like this, eventually people will adapt to it.

12

I think that this question can’t possibly be reduced to anything like simple principles. Phrases like “should be given” really raise my hackles–should be given by whom?

Are we talking about overall structure of employment procedures in this country? I am assuming that what you are asking is if the way we match people and jobs in this country is anything like efficient, or optimizes our productive potential.

If so, I think we have a fucked up organic system–we have all these different ways to educate and certify people, very few of which can really be objectively compared (professional organizations attempt to make members of the profession fungible to some degree, but it’s imperfect at best.) Then we have hiring procedures that are random and haphazard. It’s a mess, kluged together since the industrial revolution began with ad hoc solutions to immediate problems become fossilized into traditions and reworked to fit new needs.

That said, this weird organic system may be the best we could have–for one thing,“merit” and “rewards” are both hard to define, and if we had a more organized system, we’d have to settle on definitions, which would make everything more uniform. If we settled on one vision (or a handful of visions) of what it means to be a good person/top worker (working long hours/ top tier school/perfect grades) and we settled on one or a few visions of what success looks like (high pay/promotions), then all the best and the brightest will aim for the exact same things, and line up in a neat row starting with “most qualified by this definition” and working down the list, everyone in order based on the same idea of “merit”

I think this is a bad thing for two reasons–one, people are complex, and a complex system where “merit” and “rewards” are defined differently both between different industries, and even between different firms or departments of firms, creates the best chance that people will be able to find and culture and a rewards structure that best suits them and allows them to be the most productive version of themselves.

Secondly, I think our organic, kludgey system is like having a very diverse gene pool for a population. Business, commerce, institutions are invented, not discovered. The world changes all the time, and they systems that attempt to shape it also need to change. This best happens if there are multiple competing models floating about so that as conditions change, the seed of a better adaptation likely already exists to meet those changes.

13

Strange. I would say person Y would probably get the promotion because of the huge importance placed on punctuality in the workplace.

Everywhere I’ve worked, if you’re 5 minutes late in the morning, but continue working for several hours at the end of the day (and you’re clearly busy enough to need to stay), you’re still thought of as the bad boy. The lateness sticks in the mind more.

14

Hyperelastic, I don’t know you and therefore I’m not judging you but you sound exactly like the intellectually blind people I was talking about.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told, “they only reward folks who work extra hours here.” I don’t even bother arguing with them. I just think to myself, “okaaaaaaaay.”

I’ve worked with various professional companies, IBM Global Consulting, Deloitte, Accenture, Goldman Sachs, New York equity firms and law firms. In my early days I jumped from one software company job to another. In my experience, none of those companies treated their employees like children. The only job I remember being treated as “children” was an envelope stuffer (piece meal work) at a publishing company. But I was a teenager at the time so I guess it made sense I was treated like a child.

15

I do think being in a profession that is ‘professional services’ does taint my view point on this issue. Everyone I work with has at least a Bachelor’s degree and most have Master’s degrees so perhaps it is very different from a standard corporate America job. I also overall agree with **msmith’s ** assessment about peoples expectations relative to their worth. But I don’t think the metric of using hours worked is the correct assumption–it really is about doing the work correctly.

I view the end result as the key issue here. Doing something quickly but incorrectly isn’t going to cut you much slack with me either. Eventually it will come out in the wash. If you do a bunch of roof details quickly but incorrectly, when they start the construction process it will come out.

I had a guy I removed from my team last year. He oversold himself and was probably the second highest paid team member. The third and fourth AND fifth team members did better work then him and were very resentful of him. I gave him multiple opportunities to step up and he failed. He is no longer on my team–frankly all someone like that does is lower the morale of the team. He was too meek and timid. That position requires someone to make strong decisions and quickly–and live with the results of their decisions, right or wrong. I don’t expect perfection from people, everyone makes mistakes, but you then learn from those mistakes. But you have to willing to make decisions to do that job.

You do have to know your value to a company and my experience is that those who have no idea of their value either underestimate or overestimate that value and then are not happy when they don’t get rewarded. In the design profession everyone has the opportunity to design, like all fields some are better at it then others. My experience is that the vast majority of people who complain about never getting to do the fun work–blow it when they do get the chance. Over the last 25+ years I have been doing this I can count on one hand the number of people who stepped up and blew everyone away when they got the chance. Most failed miserably.

In my office we have a young guy, I will call him “B”. B works his ass off and takes advantage of EVERY opportunity that comes his way. People his age who got hired with him, all resent him. He is very much loathed by those people–but the difference is he worked the system and to his benefit. He is a total political animal and much of his success is due to that.

I personally think he is an asshole, but I admire his work ethic and can’t complain about where he is in the firm. He used his opportunities to get where he is, he was always willing to stay and do some partner’s shit work with a smile and a joke and every time he got an opportunity he hit a home run. So even though it is not the way “I” would want to get to the top it worked for him. Those complaining about it weren’t the ones eating the partners shit.

To get to the top in my profession you don’t have to go the route that B took, but it is the fastest way to the top. If you aren’t willing to play that game it seems you haven’t earned the right to complain about B either. Just go the old slow route and eventually you will be rewarded. Safe is nice but it isn’t always quickly rewarded–it all depends upon your personality it seems.

16

I have to agree (having worked at similar companies). I’ve never been treated like a child at any of those companies. No one holds a stopwatch over me and asks me why I’m 20 minutes late. And quite frankly the thing I liked about those kinds of jobs was that I did get a lot of responsibility at an early age.

The problem with the blue collar working man mentality is that it creates a class structure between the low level workers and management. There is in terms of where they are in their career, but if you work at an Accenture or a Deloitte, the lowest analyst can look at a partner and say “that is where I can be in 15 years”. The downside is that you have to work your ass off.

So then how would you want to get to the top if not by working your ass off and taking advantage of every opportunity? I mean isn’t that the “system” where you work? It sounds like his coworkers are just a bunch of lazy pikers who would rather hide from the boss.

I’ve experienced being “B” whenever I leave management consulting to go work in industry. Because of my education, experience and innate ability, I am comfortible working at a much higher pace under much more stressful conditions and therefor expect the same from my coworkers. And they resent it. At one company, the manager asked me to help out some guy on some data migration project and he spent the whole time bitching that I was “after his job” until he finally quit. Dude, I’m not after your shit job, I’m just trying to do what I was asked.

The problem is that people don’t want to compete or feel challenged. Shit, half of them don’t even want to work.

For example, I hate my current job so very much because I have absolutely nothing to do and I don’t interact with anyone. It disgusts me that some people would consider that a “dream job”.

17

Well, the thing is, that’s true in a lot of workplaces, even with salaried employees.

It’s nice to say that salaried employees should be paid according to accomplishments and not hours worked, but the fact of the matter is that some companies aren’t managed as intelligently as others. A lot fo companies DO base much of their rewards on hte perception of how much an employee works, rather than an objective measurement of the results of their work.

I’m sure companies such as the ones you name do come up with real, objective goals for their employees; for instance, Goldman Sachs apparently bases their bpnusing system on how big a taxpayer bailout they can get. In seriousness, though, my employer’s good about this - nobody watches my hours, just my productivity. But I’m in a job that lets me work with many other companies and I’m here to tell you a lot of companies have not the slightest idea how to measure individual productivity or worth in any sort of objective or useful way, and base their judgments on how uch and how hard a person APPEARS to be working. Which is just about the worst possible way you can judge someone.

18

Well I do think you HAVE to take advantage of opportunities that come your way, and I did work my ass off. That is how I made it to the top. But I also didn’t kiss anyone’s ass or do shit work for some asshole–that is why "B " is resented, people perceive he made it by being a kiss-ass. That is part of why he made it, but he also made it because he is talented. But by rushing it he has the taint of his success being out of line with his experience. In many ways he has cemented his having to stay at my firm–I doubt another firm would offer him the same salary package right now. I can guarantee that no one I work with resents me having my position. I am very well liked by my colleagues.

I made it to othe top by being damn good. I am a very well rounded Architect. I am an excellent Project Architect, a damn good designer and a good Project Manager. The triad of project roles available in my field–I may not be the best in any of the roles but there are damn few of my fellow Architects who can do all three of the roles as well as I can. “B” is a good designer, but he has no Project Manager experience nor any Project Architect experience. If there is NO design work he basically is out on the street. I can shift from one role to the other.

I have read your threads about your office–and I agree it sounds like a shit job. In many ways your job sounds like where my wife works (a local government entity). I would probably slit my wrists :slight_smile: I also read some of your threads about your prior job–not much better. You truly do need to find something between those two extremes.

Unfortunately you are probably sort of stuck there for the short term–you can look for a job on the sly, but I wouldn’t quit until you have something secure. I honestly do wish you luck!

19

No argument there.

20

If they didn’t, then bully for you. But be aware that many companies’ idea of pay for performance means you work 60 hours a week and get a 5% raise, while some pile of mashed potatoes sits in his cube all day playing solitaire and scores a 2% raise. I would venture to say that this is the norm for even the biggest and most prestigious companies in the engineering field. Only a fanatic or a dumbass would take that deal. I admit to being the former but not the latter.