The Internet Is A Massive Waste Of Time

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This guy says that the internet is a "massive waste of time." Make sure you log onto the internet from work today to read this.

Research shows that nearly two-thirds of employees spend work hours browsing sites unrelated to work -- a surprising 3 percent of them spending more than 10 hours a week actively avoiding work online. All of these wasted man hours add up, resulting in an average cost of almost $3,000 for employee each year. A surprising finding is that, on average, workers spend 4 hours -- or half the working day -- handling emails.
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I am pretty confident I lose at least 2 work hours a day browsing forums.
 
Another one of these. :rolleyes:

It is EASY to block internet access to stop unnecessary web browsing on business networks. If businesses were losing their shirt because their employees wasted so much time, they would put a stop to it.
A lot of places do! A call center will have locked down system were you can only access business related web content. No FB not twitter, no shopping.
You have have policies where you can't answer talk on your cell or text, etc while you work.
It all depends on what kind of company you work for.
Ultimately it comes down to personal responsibility. Giving the company a honest 8 hrs every day is up to YOU. You will see the ones that show dedications and work harder get the promotions, the ones that don't get laid off. How valuable you are to the company is up to you. If you goof off a lot; don't expect high praise.
 
And those who are sys admins of systems that just work? (Most of the time) Where do we fall on this issue?
 
Nobody is 100% productive in their days, even by blocking all the sites of the world, employees will find other ways of loosing some time because its our nature, you can't be focused on one task for 8+ hours without taking some mental breaks in between.

I wonder why he doesn't take in to account smoke breaks? or chats in the break room, bathroom breaks... theres a comment under that article thats from a software developer and what he said is 100% true: sometimes you solve issues on the job by removing yourself a bit form it, and all that is factored in productivity.

Not to say that there aren't slackers that waist all the time of the world online, but I guess that if management doesn't catch that with performance matrix and reviews, management has an issue.

But like always, all these comment in that article was fueled to sell something...
 
The Internet is the only way I survive all the downtime in my job.
 
A lot of jobs don't really have incentive for someone to work as hard as possible.
 
Ah yes,

I remember the golden age of worker productivity. All employees spent all day on 100% productive activity. No talking to each other about non work-related things, reading books or newspapers, or talking to friends and family on the phone.
 
The internet has largely replaced TV for a time waster, and the fact we can do it anywhere, yeah it can be quite the time waster, that doesn't mean it always is.
 
The bottom line is this. If you are paid to do a job as is the case with a salary employee your boss will not care what you do with your time as long as the work you are assigned is done and the outcome meets all expectations.

If I don't work in the office that I work from home. If I don't work at home than I'll stay after hours. The bottom line is the work is done and my boss is happy. How I spend my time is no ones concern.

Now. If my boss sees that I have time on my hands he/she can give me more work to do and that's perfectly acceptable.
 
The Lurker said:
The bottom line is this. If you are paid to do a job as is the case with a salary employee your boss will not care what you do with your time as long as the work you are assigned is done and the outcome meets all expectations.

If I don't work in the office that I work from home. If I don't work at home than I'll stay after hours. The bottom line is the work is done and my boss is happy. How I spend my time is no ones concern.

Now. If my boss sees that I have time on my hands he/she can give me more work to do and that's perfectly acceptable.
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This it is for me too. As long as I'm getting assigned work done and no one is complaining. They really could care less what I do with my time.
 
simland said:
And those who are sys admins of systems that just work? (Most of the time) Where do we fall on this issue?
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I don't consider it wasted time. Being on-call and available is part of the job description. Taking some time to decompress from the stresses of when things do go wrong keeps us sane until the next breakdown.
 
simland said:
And those who are sys admins of systems that just work? (Most of the time) Where do we fall on this issue?
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People need to fill the gaps in their day with something. As long as they get the job done when they need to I have no problem with it.
 
itsatrap.jpg



Yeah I wasted a good umm 15 years on here I wish I did something more productive
aged 23-39 in a blink of a eye but I learned a lot on here the early internet was really fun.
 
cansurfer said:
Ah yes,

I remember the golden age of worker productivity. All employees spent all day on 100% productive activity. No talking to each other about non work-related things, reading books or newspapers, or talking to friends and family on the phone.
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yeah... the 50's were great werent they?
 
The Lurker said:
The bottom line is this. If you are paid to do a job as is the case with a salary employee your boss will not care what you do with your time as long as the work you are assigned is done and the outcome meets all expectations.
Click to expand...
Eh... yes and no. Unless you are a contractor who's paid to do 1 specific thing, then you finishing earlier means you can start the next job sooner getting more work out of it. Sure the boss might have some expectation of how fast a particular assignment should get done, but do you really want to thrive in mediocrity or strive for excellence?

Hell I'll admit, when I worked at NASA I had a specific job, and worked primarily from home with weekly meetings to give updates, and I got a feel for how fast I should be working to make my boss happy. And I abused the every living shit out of it. maybe 4 hours of programming a week, got paid for 40hours worth of work a week. He seemed happy, he told me what he'd like to see by the next meeting and I made it happen, but I could have impressed the shit out of him by showing I did it in less than a day, what's the next bit you want me to do.
 
This is stupid, if people weren't chained to their desks 8 hours a day to do 3 hours worth of actual work every day. Then people wouldn't be browsing the internet.
 
m heisty said:
This is stupid, if people weren't chained to their desks 8 hours a day to do 3 hours worth of actual work every day. Then people wouldn't be browsing the internet.
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Well feel free to join an occupy protest and eat ramen the rest of your life.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
Ultimately it comes down to personal responsibility. Giving the company a honest 8 hrs every day is up to YOU. You will see the ones that show dedications and work harder get the promotions, the ones that don't get laid off. How valuable you are to the company is up to you. If you goof off a lot; don't expect high praise.
Click to expand...

This is simply not true. You can give a company an honest 8 hours a day, every day, for years and you'll likely get nothing for it. How hard you work or how smart you are is largely uncorrelated with your success in climbing the corporate ladder. What matters are three factors:

1. How well liked you are by your superiors/clients.

2. Your ability to manipulate people and situations. Bullshitting, shmoozing, squirming out of taking responsibility, "talking the talk", and appearing competent.

3. How useful you appear to be via #2 (by taking credit for other people's work, tactically shifting blame away from yourself, etc).

In a few results-based, highly-technical areas (like science, engineering, & technical consulting) your competence (*gasp*) and problem solving ability also come into it.
 
schizrade said:
Well feel free to join an occupy protest and eat ramen the rest of your life.
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What? How does this have anything to do what I said. What I was saying is if employees had the incentive to work quickly and efficiently they would likely do so. If it meant they could get a work weeks worth of work done in 15 hours a week they would likely do it.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Eh... yes and no. Unless you are a contractor who's paid to do 1 specific thing, then you finishing earlier means you can start the next job sooner getting more work out of it. Sure the boss might have some expectation of how fast a particular assignment should get done, but do you really want to thrive in mediocrity or strive for excellence?

Hell I'll admit, when I worked at NASA I had a specific job, and worked primarily from home with weekly meetings to give updates, and I got a feel for how fast I should be working to make my boss happy. And I abused the every living shit out of it. maybe 4 hours of programming a week, got paid for 40hours worth of work a week. He seemed happy, he told me what he'd like to see by the next meeting and I made it happen, but I could have impressed the shit out of him by showing I did it in less than a day, what's the next bit you want me to do.
Click to expand...

Eh... Yes and No.

While I completely agree with you in that one should not settle for mediocrity, and I do not, one has to still be smart about just how much work is taken on. If the amount of work you do is equivalent to 3 people then guess what you, you will continue to work like 3 and your boss has no incentive to promote you because you are a bargain. Furthermore, if you work like 3 then everyone else around you may have to work like 3 too.

Being over productive vs productive vs under productive takes a very fine balance and the trick is knowing when you need to perform at the aforementioned levels. Consistently over producing may not have the same effects you might expect. But that's not to say one should under produce either, but sometimes taking things slower has its benefits. At the end of the day you need a healthy image of efficiency and growth over time. Basically, dont try to shove a whole meal into your mouth but do take progressively bigger bites. That gets noticed much more than the former.
 
When companies have come to me showing me how much time has been wasted on the internet, I then show them how much time has also been saved by the internet.
 
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