as someone who works a blue collar job in an auto repair shop, these articles always make me pause for a moment and ask if i really want to keep learning python in the hopes of pursuing an office job. The entire environment just sounds like high school all over again. Why does anyone in an office put up with it?? is this somehow different than time keeping? do you have a punch card?
If you asked my boss where i was, shed probably just point at the garage and wave at the 'authorized personnel only' sign. She has no reason to care what size wrench im holding or why im beating the living shit out of a siezed idler pitman assembly. I once drove a car with no doors and a missing windshield out of the lot and down the street, and the only thing she wanted from me was to know if id run to leroys donut and pick up a frozen coffee.
Why is this different in an office? are office jobs just not trustworthy?
There are good office jobs and there are bad office jobs. There are good employers and bad employers. The best jobs I've had usually have some basic deadlines (measurable goals and results), and some basic rules (show up every day), but other than that, not much structure or micro-management or anything. If you're a full-time programmer on a team, then you might have a lot of little tasks assigned to you (eg: "add feature X to user profile page", "fix bug Y on the logout screen", etc.), but not constant surveillance or anything. If you're constantly checking in code to Github, then your boss knows that you're working.
The model you should have for an office job is that it's basically a social game within which some actual work takes place. Most of the time people spend is maneuvering within the game.
As someone who has worked both, I’d encourage you to reconsider what you’re really seeking in an office job. I did aircraft maintenance in the Air Force, paperwork and management in the AF, got out and hopped around with AAA as a roadside assistance tech, and am finally at a remote job doing pentesting. I’ve been in then out then back in again. Let me tell you, I can’t wait to turn wrenches again. If you can tolerate the pay cut and live a simpler life, I’d hazard to say that nothing beats the satisfaction that a hands on job provides.
On the whole, id say that there is something to be said about how the tech revolution is just an iteration of the industrial revolution. People are more removed from the art of what they do. They are deprived of the fruit of their labor and instead forced to work a piece wise process instead of seeing something done start to finish. There’s no tangible result to all the toil.
Non derogatory caveat: some are content to say that the SDLC is an answer. I reject that notion, and realize that I’m the shrinking minority.
A repair job seems like a much closer analogy to a typical software development job than a factory process. My work is mostly identifying and fixing problems and installing custom-designed modules onto machines made by others. If you prefer working more end-to-end, that's also not hard to find in the consulting area.
YEMV, but I am a consultant. Putting a bow on an engagement report is really not comparable to seeing your building occupied or watching your plane take off.
Most of the jobs described in the article are not office jobs, and are hourly jobs that probably have timekeeping and pinch cards or the equivalent on top of the surveillance.
Blue collar jobs, especially with large employers, aren't any less exposed to this.
Office workers put up with it for the same reason as other workers—its that or not have a job.
Au contrair. mon ami. Office workers are busy keeping themselves in the office, which means that the vacation spots, and such are riffraff-free for their betters until the next major holiday break.
That's quite useful.
Don't let this stuff discourage you. People who put up with stuff are like the mechanics who work at Pep boys.
You can do better and you don't have to tolerate it.
Blue collar jobs are more rewarding and the work environment can be better for all the reasons you described but the money is worth it IMO. If the money were the same I'd hand in my two weeks and get my welding certs.
Also, calling it an idler pitman arm is somewhat contradictory (though probably not a technical contradiction) since pitman arm kinda implies it's located on the bottom of a steering gear. ;)
> Blue collar jobs are more rewarding and the work environment can be better for all the reasons you described but the money is worth it IMO. If the money were the same I'd hand in my two weeks and get my welding certs.
A few years back a large series of personal tragedies hit me at once which coincided with being screwed over at a job. I decided to leave tech for a while, and spent a few months in Portland becoming a certified bicycle mechanic & frame welder.
This lead to me starting a bicycle company building very solid bikes for obese riders (like myself) who were afraid to ride on the roads. I lost many thousands of dollars and had to go back to software for the financial aspects, but I have never had as much joy and satisfaction in tech as I did building bicycles.
If the money were the same I'd hand in my two weeks and get my welding certs.
In the UK a good plumber or electrician makes comparable money to a programmer. If I had my time over again, or if I were giving careers advice to a young person, do that.
There's no job that's perfect in every way. Some office jobs are better than others. I do some Python work, and I don't have this kind of surveillance going on AFAICT. There's some things I don't like about this job, but overall it's a pretty good deal. There's some places that are horror shows; at place that tried to recruit me, I read reviews on Glassdoor.com about how HR monitored the parking lot and the bathrooms to make sure people were coming in on time and not spending too much time on the toilet! I turned down the interview.
Monitoring can be done on multiple levels. Consider: DNS hits, traffic intensity per domain and LDAP logins. All of this can be done transparently if you work from an office or use a VPN to access intra or client stuff.
If your company is sufficiently motivated they may have theft-prevention stuff on company-owned hardware that will be more than happy to send a live audio-video stream without your knowledge.
Managers may even not know about the more insane stuff because they're being monitored as well...
Monitoring measures deployed by HR are usually laughable and just a smoke screen meant to show how "backwards" they are.
> * Why does anyone in an office put up with it??*
The "prestige" of not being, ahem, blue collar.
But to be fair, there are some things in life from which you and/or one's offspring will/would be locked out if one's money comes from the wrong place(s). That said, this doesn't apply to most people. So, see my initial sentence.
If you asked my boss where i was, shed probably just point at the garage and wave at the 'authorized personnel only' sign. She has no reason to care what size wrench im holding or why im beating the living shit out of a siezed idler pitman assembly. I once drove a car with no doors and a missing windshield out of the lot and down the street, and the only thing she wanted from me was to know if id run to leroys donut and pick up a frozen coffee.
Why is this different in an office? are office jobs just not trustworthy?