State of the Market

[TheGreenBastard]

It is the dream, but the moment two of them schedule calls at the same time you're in a bit of hot water. Unless you have the stones to say you have a school run every morning so you can't do a call at the same time as the other. Plus juggling your time and other commitments...

If I were to do it I'd find a junior dev job I could do in my sleep as my 2nd gig, sure it'll probs be only 30k/year salary but it would be a nice top up.

This doesn't make any sense; if you're going to do it, act like a business. Doing some "junior" role for peanuts? Quite odd attitudes round here, you have people continually bragging about "100K" and there are those of use doing 160K+ X3. Under selling yourself when you can deliver is stupid, never done a junior role but it sounds like you'd be a dogs body and isn't exactly conductive to running a successful business with multiple clients. Service contracts are the real gold mine, guaranteed income for the occasional glance.

[GJABS]

Hand on heart, you work 40 hours a week? I think studies show that 3 hours a day is 'unproductive' on average.

Agreed. So you have to change yourself so that you don't have any unproductive moments.

Then you add that workers aren't all equal (I've done work in an hour that has taken permies a full day). Also in many roles it's results that count not hours worked to achieve them

But equally, if you are an average contractor, there will be the same number of permies who can do in an hour what you can do in a day - so these balance out. This assumes that contractors are no more productive than permies in general - which I think is probably the case. As contractors I think we are not in general better than permies; the only difference between us and them is that we just work for a fixed period of time, rather than them continuously, for a client.

and often the target setter has little idea how long something takes.
Then you get the whole BS jobs, jobs that aren't real jobs but just exist because no one has worked out they aren't really jobs, or jobs that could be done by 1 person rather than 10.

But 50% of the time this will work the other way - that the target setter will anticipate it taking a shorter amount of time to do a job than it actually takes.

Then you have meetings where you are told to attend because 'It might be useful' when it absolutely is not.

True.

It seems to me that if you want to do two contracts concurrently, you need either to work double the hours (an 80-hour week) or undertake steps to work more efficiently than the average Joe - possible in many/most cases, but not easy.

[JustKeepSwimming]

Agreed. So you have to change yourself so that you don't have any unproductive moments.

But equally, if you are an average contractor, there will be the same number of permies who can do in an hour what you can do in a day - so these balance out. This assumes that contractors are no more productive than permies in general - which I think is probably the case. As contractors I think we are not in general better than permies; the only difference between us and them is that we just work for a fixed period of time, rather than them continuously, for a client.

But 50% of the time this will work the other way - that the target setter will anticipate it taking a shorter amount of time to do a job than it actually takes.

True.

It seems to me that if you want to do two contracts concurrently, you need either to work double the hours (an 80-hour week) or undertake steps to work more efficiently than the average Joe - possible in many/most cases, but not easy.

Not IME. I think vast majority of people only do 20-30 hours of work a week, I think vast majority of those people can get that down to 10-15 hours a week if they were incentivised to be efficient. Reality is if you're efficient your reward is more work, and at the very best 1-3% additional bonus at the end of the year.

Those working 40 hours a week are either inefficient to the point they should be sacked or someone who is constantly asking for more work.

Yes you can get insane bosses with insane expectations, I imagine the double jobbers would recommend ditching that role and finding a new role that is more compatible.

[TheGreenBastard]

In order to do two contracts at the same time, don't you have to be really good? As in able to output work at twice the speed that the "average" contractor (if there is such a thing) is able to do. i.e. do in 20 hours per week the same amount of work as a regular worker is able to do in 40 such that in your 40-hour working week you are outputting two contract's worth of work instead of one?

Don't you have a thread about your high intelligence? Yet aren't able to look at your work history and realise people are very mediocre on average...

[GJABS]

Not IME. I think vast majority of people only do 20-30 hours of work a week, I think vast majority of those people can get that down to 10-15 hours a week if they were incentivised to be efficient.

Maybe.
Can you recommend any resources, books, or even training courses that one could take, that could realistically enable an average person to achieve this objective?

Those working 40 hours a week are either inefficient to the point they should be sacked.

That's probably me!

[GJABS]

Don't you have a thread about your high intelligence? Yet aren't able to look at your work history and realise people are very mediocre on average...

Edited: I don't think you are saying anything substantive here. The definition of "mediocre" is "average" (if that is what you mean by the word "mediocre"). So you are saying that people on average are average.
If you are using the word "mediocre" to mean "below average", then the statement is false - because "average" people cannot be by definition "below average".

[JustKeepSwimming]

Maybe.
Can you recommend any resources, books, or even training courses that one could take, that could realistically enable an average person to achieve this objective?

Don't know any and it's going to depend completely on your role. I am excel/reporting heavy so learning true automation saves a bunch of time. Might take a day or two to set up all the automation but it pays dividends. There is an element of silo-ing, I'm not sharing with others that I can do in a click of a button what takes them a few hours to do because my reward will be more work or a reduction in headcount.

Equally I have to be proactive. A lot of people just do work because it's what they were told to do and has been done for years. They never assess what value that work has and they never speak to stakeholders whether they see value in it. You'll be amazed how many times I've sat down with senior managers and end up with 'Yeah, I haven't used that report in 2 years'.

I used to go 4 management meetings a week for 4 hours. I asked for 10 minutes at the beginning to do my thing, get feedback, answer questions etc and then I leave. The rest of the meeting has no value to me, or me to it.

That's probably me!

I was a bit harsh. There are many people who are for want of a better phrase 'walk overs', they are scared to ever even be suspected of not working hard so will constantly ask for more work or stretch stuff out to look busy. If you have the same work load as everyone else and the only one struggling then yeah you have issues.

I think you're just going to have to get high or something and deep think what you are wasting the most time on and what can be done to cut that down.

Don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough.

[GJABS]

Don't know any and it's going to depend completely on your role. I am excel/reporting heavy so learning true automation saves a bunch of time. Might take a day or two to set up all the automation but it pays dividends. There is an element of silo-ing, I'm not sharing with others that I can do in a click of a button what takes them a few hours to do because my reward will be more work or a reduction in headcount.

Equally I have to be proactive. A lot of people just do work because it's what they were told to do and has been done for years. They never assess what value that work has and they never speak to stakeholders whether they see value in it. You'll be amazed how many times I've sat down with senior managers and end up with 'Yeah, I haven't used that report in 2 years'.

I used to go 4 management meetings a week for 4 hours. I asked for 10 minutes at the beginning to do my thing, get feedback, answer questions etc and then I leave. The rest of the meeting has no value to me, or me to it.

This all seems very plausible. Thanks. Food for thought.
You would have thought that companies would not ask their staff (contract or permie) to do activities that are not an efficient use of their time. But maybe they do. But could it be the case that, although we might -think- that an activity is not adding value to the company, that we might be mistaken, meaning our arbitrary decision to cut out part of a meeting for example, might actually be a mistake and result in a loss of value produced? I'm not certain but am tending towards your line of thinking.

I was a bit harsh. There are many people who are for want of a better phrase 'walk overs', they are scared to ever even be suspected of not working hard so will constantly ask for more work or stretch stuff out to look busy. If you have the same work load as everyone else and the only one struggling then yeah you have issues.

I think you're just going to have to get high or something and deep think what you are wasting the most time on and what can be done to cut that down.

Don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough.

No, please be harsh. I'm currently on a new mission to improve my productivity and particularly my motivation, so all thoughts and ideas are welcome.

Your sentence I've highlighted is relevant. I think the reality is that I am struggling, and have been for a long time. If it is really the case that most workers are able to complete their work in much less time than the standard 40-hour week, then this represents a form of leeway that has masked my own inefficiencies or lack of competence. Because I've compensated for it by working the full amount of time available, so have appeared to myself at least as "normal".

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

This doesn't make any sense; if you're going to do it, act like a business. Doing some "junior" role for peanuts? Quite odd attitudes round here, you have people continually bragging about "100K" and there are those of use doing 160K+ X3. Under selling yourself when you can deliver is stupid, never done a junior role but it sounds like you'd be a dogs body and isn't exactly conductive to running a successful business with multiple clients. Service contracts are the real gold mine, guaranteed income for the occasional glance.

It makes sense because doing two jobs at the same time is going to be impossible with compromising. If you're doing a standard 7 hour day job and then want to insert another job on top of that, you're going to have clashes with meetings and demanding workloads.

You're a contractor remember, you're not a typical business. If you want to do three jobs then you need to change your business to be a consultancy, and have a consultancy relationship with your end clients, which is that you will assign someone to work on the project, you'll get a fee up front, with milestone payments, and if there are problems you will assign new resource.

The point of a junior role is that you can probably squeeze it in alongside your current contracting gig without it interfering in your work.

If you think acting like a business is taking on three jobs simultaneously and having to trying and schedule them in such a way that none of them find out that they're only getting 1/3rd of the working day they're paying you for, then I think you are mistaken.

[JustKeepSwimming]

You would have thought that companies would not ask their staff (contract or permie) to do activities that are not an efficient use of their time. But maybe they do. But could it be the case that, although we might -think- that an activity is not adding value to the company, that we might be mistaken, meaning our arbitrary decision to cut out part of a meeting for example, might actually be a mistake and result in a loss of value produced? I'm not certain but am tending towards your line of thinking.

Managers rarely know what their team is actually doing and only look in when someone complains (some do micromanage though). Process design/analysis is a skill in its own right and one most managers don't have.

Yes cutting something you don't think you need might result in suboptimal outcomes, but you're fixating on perfection, which is not the optimal strategy for yourself or the business.


You can read 'Bulltulip Jobs' by David Graeber, I don't agree with everything but I think it is quite good at showing you a different angle on work.

Your sentence I've highlighted is relevant. I think the reality is that I am struggling, and have been for a long time. If it is really the case that most workers are able to complete their work in much less time than the standard 40-hour week, then this represents a form of leeway that has masked my own inefficiencies or lack of competence. Because I've compensated for it by working the full amount of time available, so have appeared to myself at least as "normal".

You have to remember that people lie. My first big boy job the girl training me said 'If you're ever asked if your swamped you always say yes'. There are hell of a lot of people like that, will constantly moan about being stressed with work and working hard.

There are many people who operate under the 'work will meet the time allocated' approach. Doesn't matter what the task is, it was take the full 40 hours.

Why does your work take the full time? Do you make it better than it needs to be? Is it pride that stops you delivering something that isn't the absolute best you can do? Is it fear that you are defrauding the company by not working the full hours?