I'm a college student working first internship. Get paid $13 an hour to sit on Veeky Forums all day because no one ever checks in on me and I have no actual deadlines. Seems like a pretty good racket desu.
Why are offices so inefficient Veeky Forums? I'm fairly sure no one actually works hard.
If no one works hard everyone can just chill and get money
Can anyone explain this phenomenon?
When someone sets up a business he puts his heart and soul into making it work. He inspires everyone he hires to work towards his goal.
Then he gets bought out. A new boss arrives who needs to do reorganize the business to make a profit for the share holders. How do you do that? You cut in the costs. You fire people. Firing the lazy and unmotivated old people is expensive so you fire the young motivated people.
Now only old lazy people are left and share holders without a heart for the business. What to do now? Eh, business as usual I guess? Maybe hire some HR person to find the best people for our business while the share holders try to profit from the formers owners legacy without taking any risks.
probably some crabs-bucket type phenomenon
i dont think all offices are like this, but there definitely are ones that are
The greater the number of people the greater diffusion of responsibility.
As the number of people working on a task increases, the individual inputs from people decreases. It's directly proportional. Look it up in a psych journal.
You're not busy because internships that pay $13 are mostly about PR. The company knows that you're not going to do anything useful, so they're just paying you to hang around and possibly absorb something. Additionally, with your pay they would not assign anyone of value to you to show you the ropes, so it's likely you're only dealing with the useless retards that get assigned interns because they're not doing anything else either.
How do I get an internship like this?
you are paid mostly to be on stand by.
Why is it more expensive to fire old people? That seems counter intuitive since they have higher salaries?
You're definitely right there, my supervisor is retarded and makes like 40k.
If you work harder than average you will not be rewarded. Instead you will be given more work and set the expectation that you can persist at that level of output indefinitely. In some cases you may even set the expectation that those around you can also work at that level of output indefinitely too, causing your coworkers to suffer.
Eventually someone far above your station will decide that the organization needs to increase efficiency and constrict budgets so that the least efficient teams or least efficient individuals on teams get laid off. It's important to note that this will happen regardless of whether you slack off or work your ass off. Working harder decreases your chance of being the least productive employee around you and a whole team of people who do work decreases the chance of the team being deemed too expensive for what it does, but you run the risks outlined above and you won't be rewarded for it either way.
tl;dr: Don't do the least work, you'll get laid off. But don't do too much. Moderate your giving and tow just as much as everyone else. When they slack off, you slack off. When they get their butts in gear, you get your butt in gear.
how does a fellow college student get an internship like this? through the school? what is the internship for?
I'm a student worker, and the minimum wage for student workers at my uni is 13. As for how I got lucky enough to not have to do work, I'm not sure. If I were an engineering student I would imagine my internships would actually be hard. maybe business/finance internships have lower expectations?
I'm doing budget reconciliation and shit for a large research division at my uni. My dad knows a guy who works there and had him ask around for available positions. I got lucky, unfortunately connections do seem to be pretty important because not a single one of my online applications to a dozen other places was accepted. My resume just had no experience.
This is actually really interesting, thanks. I've always heard that to climb the corporate ladder the fastest and be an executive at a young age, you have to work yourself gray. Is this ever the case?
>If you work harder than average you will not be rewarded.
I had the opposite experience, although I had a lot of job autonomy.
I am currently in my first real internship at a subsidiary of a big manufacturing conglomerate in the US. They have a bunch of interns this year (
>400).
We make aircraft and regulations are a nightmare so most of the time I'm sitting around waiting to get approval for a tiny change to a 10 year old wiring diagram. $20/hr.
I feel bad about not really doing much when some of my coworkers are working their asses off on big projects but it's hard to get stuff done fast in this industry.
are you in cincy too?
Nope. Midwest.
Boeing or a subsidiary of it? I'm from STL, currently working an "internship" at a manufacturing firm (I already graduated and they're almost certainly going to hire me on full time). Getting paid $16/hr, and stacking up the paid overtime.
Textron Aviation. Overtime is nice. Unfortunately I can't get any as an intern. I have another year of school left to go but hopefully they'll give me an offer by the end of the summer. What do you do there?
Welcome to Wichita!
I'm going to do you a huge favor right here and now, get the fuck out of systems and do stress analysis. In 5 years, your future self will thank me.
>Young age
Good luck senpai, no baby boomer upper mgmt will hire a kid they don't respect because he's not even 35
protip IT can see that you're browsing 4chins all day. Don't piss them off, don't do anything that would get HR interested in you
there's too many people, not enough jobs to go around. business subsidizes the economy by making nothing jobs filled with nothing people
Thanks. I have no mechanical background; would I still be able to get into that as an EE?
not OP but I was the IT intern so I could clear any logs and also unblock any website I wanted
:^)
You could work yourself gay iynwim
>Be me, same situation as OP
>Read online article about how to become CEO, says CEO's are more about character than anything else and that I can start today by acting like I will one day be the CEO of the company I work for
>Go in next day with this mindset
>Completely own the day, am master of efficiency, show up to work READY (already had my coffee and "woke up" etc.), essentially finish my work for the day in the first 2 hours
>Still have 6 hours to go
>Start surfing Veeky Forums, like OP
>Start to hate my coworkers for being lazy
>tfw nothing changed, nothing at all
Lesson learned was that I think most people are still stuck in the "school education" mindset, meaning that they only do their homework and classwork assigned to them by teacher or they only do chores assigned to them by mommy/daddy, and finally, only do the work assigned to them by their boss.
Most people, including myself, don't apply themselves more than what is required. If I was true CEO material, I would have kept going... started... idk, analyzing charts and graphs and preparing a report for my higher ups. Or I could have done some of the optional online teaching that is offered by my work and encouraged during "free time," but one really does.
TL;DR
Businesses are inefficient because the majority of people are not self-starters and will only do the work they are assigned to do, and usually only at the rate at which is minimally accepted.
they are inefficient because they've been standardized. just like in unis, you think you should study hard but all you need is TB and old exams, 80% of instructors recycle tests and use TB.
This right here. I worked at an internship where I only worked like 50% of the time, and now that I'm back full-time, people are starting to actually teach me more, give me work, etc. It's not worth anyone's time to teach you anything as an intern.
If you want to be successful as an intern, try to be proactive when you don't have any work, and when people do give you work, do your best to learn as much as you can without being a pain in the ass.
>get the fuck out of systems and do stress analysis
I just started a systems engineering job. Why would I want to get out? People have been telling me to get in, not out.
>there's too many people, not enough jobs to go around. business subsidizes the economy by making nothing jobs filled with nothing people
Pretty much exactly this. People who go "hurr, technological innovation creates just as many jobs as it destroys" don't take into account the fact that those new jobs require considerably less actual work. The hardest working systems manager isn't doing half the labor of a steel mill worker doing backbreaking labor in sweltering heat 8 hours a day.
retard
You seem to be lost
>>r/sandersforpresident
A lot of internship employers just create buzz out of hiring interns. Others may actually want to hire interns out of university like Big 4 because everyone gets in for 2-5 years and leaves for F500/private/industry/government work so they need other hopeful saps to fill in the gaps and work 60 hours during tax season for cheap. Then after not giving in to better advancement and promotion promises those guys will jump out of Public in a few years and the cycle refreshes itself again.