
Patent office whistleblower: ‘Managers have no idea when employees are working’ - ilamont
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/09/12/patent-office-whistleblower-managers-have-no-idea-when-their-employees-are-working/?hpid=z4
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jnbiche
Oh dear god, the complaints are full of people saying, "well, I don't know
when my employees are working". But then they readily admit that they are
meeting their "production quotas". So what's the problem?

The entire point of the work-from-home program was to give employees leeway in
when and where they work, as long as they do the work in a satisfactory manner
and meet their deadlines (and it sounds like they are).

Now, I think the whole federal government should be massively scaled down, but
in this case, I don't see what the problem is. If the managers aren't happy
with the employees output, then _give them more work_ and _shorten their
deadlines_. It sounds like employees are meeting whatever work quotas they are
given.

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kevingadd
I think implied here is that the quotas are insufficient for determining
whether an examiner is doing work. I am sure that examiners and their
supervisors would be at least somewhat aware if this were the case.

Based on the general quality of USPTO reviews for software patents, I would
say it is pretty plausible that some of these people are getting credit for
'doing work' without actually doing their jobs. So few patents get extra
scrutiny in court that I imagine many examiners could get away with that for
ages - there'd be no external feedback to indicate that they are cheating.

~~~
jnbiche
Fair enough. If the quotas are not adequate for determining the standard of
work, then they made a mistake in implementing this work-from-home program.

But that's not at all what the focus of the whistleblowers are. They're all
upset because they don't know _exactly when_ they're employees are working. To
be honest, I only read the first two, but they both mentioned almost nothing
about inadequate evaluation methods and focused exclusively on the fact that
they didn't know when their employees were working.

Well, that's not how work-from-home works for most organizations (and that's
never how I've seen it work with successful organizations, having been working
from home for over a decade now).

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incision
The most frequent obstacle to telework I've seen in Government is basically
"If I can't work from home, you can't either!" from managers.

I can't help but think that this case is more of the same.

If the work isn't getting done or it is of poor quality - make that the point.

Unfortunately, enforcing accountability for that sort of failure is non-
existent in Government whether the workers are in their cubicles or in their
pajamas.

If the only verification of work you're doing is something that could handled
with grep, you don't really get to complain.

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rdtsc
The most direct way managers see if employees are working is if they are
sitting in a cubicle farm for X/hours day.

This is not unlike in the programming world when you measure if someone is
working if you see them typing on the keyboard. If they stop typing they are
not working.

This most of all betrays that dysfunction.

What if these people were in the office and just pretended to work but instead
played solitaire. Management wouldn't know any better perhaps.

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taprun
So what? Isn't it more important that their employees are doing a piss-poor
job?

Managers should be concerned with what salaried employees produce, not how
much time it takes them to produce it.

~~~
th3iedkid
i probably think managers are concerned about the fact that, they don't have a
say on work allocation and hence what can be considered total produce.If more
people get away doing nothing, it can become an epidemic,hard to control .They
are more worried that they are unable to manage these very basic values like
honesty.

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calbear81
Who cares when they work and how much they work if they can produce the work
at the quality expected. This was the premise of the 4 hour workweek, work
smarter not harder. I do see the problem if your job requires interacting with
colleagues and you are unavailable most of the time, that should be figured
out between employee and manager.

~~~
jlarocco
Nobody is complaining these people worked 4 hours a day, clocked out and left.

The problem is they worked 4 hours a day, lied about getting stuff done, then
claimed they worked 10 hours every day to get overtime.

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ianstallings
It wouldn't surprise me if this was more widespread given my experience
working with the US government, and everyone else I know that has worked with
them has similar stories. When I did a contract for the FAA My coworker said
to me sarcastically: "They take two hour lunches then take off Friday and
still somehow manage to get 40 hours in. I only wish I knew _how_ they did it
so I could do the same"

Edit: Thanks for the downvotes. I'm sure your experience working with
government is different.. Oh wait, you've never worked for them because if you
had you'd know I'm right. I've lived in DC almost my whole life and I've got
connections in almost every institution. If you think they're sharp as shit
and work really hard you're in for a gigantic surprise.

~~~
genericuser
Many people here seem to be taking these type of expectations that people work
for their contracted amount of time almost personally. Not appreciating that
if the person is 'sharp as shit' then their hourly rate if they are a
contractor, or their salary reflects that and they are still expected to be
doing work during all hours, because these are jobs where the work is never
done, its a never ending heap which only grows.

It is a shame some people in jobs where they are compensated for their talent
expect that they don't need to do achieve at the level of their talent for the
amount of time they are being paid for.

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a3n
So I suppose if you say "yes" to any patent application then you get to keep
your job, and any patent application will probably be approved.

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th3iedkid
was Einstein a patent clerk ,when he modeled theory of relativity?Does it mean
, they have more time to be creative or does it mean something else?

