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Depress_Mode @lemmy.world

What do office workers actually do?

I've never had an office job and I've always wondered what it is a typical cubicle worker actually does in their day-to-day. When your boss assigns you a "project", what kind of stuff might it entail? Is it usually putting together some kind of report or presentation? I hear it's a lot of responding to emails and attending meetings, but emails and meetings about what, finances?

I know it'll probably be largely dependent on what department you work in and that there are specific office jobs like data-entry where you're inputting information into a computer system all day long, HR handles internal affairs, and managers are supposed to delegate tasks and ensure they're being completed on time. But if your job is basically what we see in Office Space, what does that actually look like hour-by-hour?

98 comments

  • Software engineer.

    Morning meeting that's supposed to just be "what you did yesterday, what you'll do today, and if you need help". People fuck that up and go off on tangents. What should be a ten minute meeting takes 30.

    Product owners at some point told you what the features to work on this month will be. For example, we need to add the ability for some reasons to bulk delete appointments.

    Chat with product and other engineers about what that entails. Product probably won't give complete, clear, requirements so you need to pull it out of them. (Hard delete or soft delete? Do you need an audit log? Are you sure with no take-backs you don't need an undo? Do you want to notify anyone when it's deleted? One email per request or per event? Do you have designs for that email? No? Of course not. And what do you want the UI to look like? If I "just put a button somewhere" we both know you won't like it. Give me details or that blank check in writing.)

    At some point sit down and make code changes to do the thing. Change the backend server code to accept your new request. Write automated tests. Change the frontend to make the request. Write more tests. Manually bang on it. Probably realize some requirements were missed (you guys know there's a permissions system, right? I hooked this up to the existing can-delete permission. What do you mean CS doesn't use permissions? You made them all superusers??)

    Manually bang on it a little. Deploy it to dev or some non-production environment. Have product and other stakeholders look at it and sign off. Probably get feedback and either implement it, or convince them to do it "later" (or: never, because they'll forget and it's not actually important).

    Get code approval from other engineers. Make changes as needed.

    Merge and deploy. Verify in production.

    Meanwhile, do code reviews for other people's work. Context switch. Feels bad. Other guy is working on a progress report tool that's in a whole other part of the code, so every time you look at it it's a shifting of brain gears.

    Also look at dependabot for libraries that need updating. Read release notes. Make changes if needed. Test. Pray.

    Also periodic meetings to go over work in the backlog. A meeting to discuss how the team is doing that usually doesn't produce results, but can be a vent session.

    I imagine from the product owner it's something like:

    Get a mess of contradictory ideas from leadership. Try to figure out what they actually want and in what order. Manage their emotions because they have all the power and don't like being told no or otherwise feeling bad.

    Talk to customers and other users. Try to figure out what they want. They say things like "make it go faster" or "can you make the map bigger?". There's no map on the website.

    Talk to engineering. They ask so many questions. Why can't they just do the thing? They're always going on about stuff that doesn't seem important (like security and permissions and maintainability). This needs to go out Friday because the CEO wants it out.

    Write tickets (a short document describing work to be done). People don't read them. Or maybe don't finish writing them, and leave a vague "as a user I want to be notified about changes to my project", without specifying any details. (Notified how, Ryan??)

    I don't know what else they do.

    Startups are a mess. Anyone who says they want to run the government like a startup should be banished from the land.

98 comments