Questions tagged [productivity]
Questions about the ability to get work done in an efficient manner
320
questions
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8
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How to negotiate with uncooperative senior engineers after they've been given new laptops they don't want to use
I'm a manager at a mid-sized engineering firm. We recently implemented a mandate that everyone has to now use a Windows laptop with various security tools installed on it for auditing, backup, and ...
- 285
4
votes
4
answers
1k
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How to deal with productive procrastinators? [closed]
I have a worker in my company that works like twice as good as any of my other workers! twice as fast with twice as quality! But he is madly procrastinating and can't be relied on! Sometimes he comes ...
- 167
1
vote
1
answer
259
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Just started job that may not be right fit -- how do I recover? [closed]
Three months ago, I landed a new job at an industry-respected company. This position was a deviation from my career track. Throughout my career, I always felt competent in my job. In fact, any job I ...
- 31
2
votes
3
answers
595
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Is a work performance appraisal a good time to bring up concerns about job role?
BACKGROUND
I work within an IT organisation and have done for a number of years. I started at this company since I finished University so I am well ingrained within the department. My roles have all ...
- 31
1
vote
1
answer
435
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As a new employee, what is the proper way to raise concerns that the IT department is being mismanaged at a risk to the company? [closed]
I have recently joined an IT department of a non-profit international organization (offices around the globe). The department is completely disorganized, no formal procedures, outdated applications (...
- 37
1
vote
1
answer
448
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Increasing productivity on a small team of back-end developers [closed]
I run a team of 6 back-end developers and I've recently implemented the Agile & Scrum methodology in the company, starting with the back-end team (which later will apply to other departments, when ...
- 83
24
votes
5
answers
8k
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How to tell your employer that you cannot work with the resources provided?
I recently got hired as contract data analyst for a company and have been given their datasets.
The data that they provided me with is either not very well measured (via a poorly designed survey) ...
- 467
1
vote
2
answers
554
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Work/Life Balance, work is suffering because of the "life" part [closed]
I'm looking for some answers about work/life balance. My job isn't exactly that stressful, but I'm not being a very good employee because of the worry about my home life and I don't know what quite to ...
- 47
4
votes
3
answers
616
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Should I view being pulled to assist other teams as a good or bad thing?
I do Software Quality Assurance. In the past 6 months I've been pulled off my primary team to work with other teams. These are not one day tasks, but month long projects that require lots of time ...
-2
votes
3
answers
436
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Uncomfortable workplace temperature [duplicate]
Recently our department has relocated to a smaller office with access to A/C and Heat controls out in the open.
The temperature is normally set ~74F, but a handful of employees continue to turn off ...
10
votes
2
answers
3k
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How do I tell my boss that he may be underestimating how much work/cost my project entails? [duplicate]
Background
I'm an intern in a small engineering firm. Every engineer in the company is a mechanical engineer (including my boss), whereas my tasks purely entail software development. I'm only working ...
- 109
0
votes
2
answers
638
views
how do I deal with someone who is a productivity bottleneck?
My manager wants to review (and approve) all of the work I do. That's fine with me; I complete my work, send it to him for review, and then wait. And wait.
I've tried dropping them a follow-up ...
- 1,217
3
votes
2
answers
744
views
How can I express that excessive meetings are distracting me from the actual work I'm discussing in them?
I work in devops for a central team, and am involved in a project that has multiple smaller teams working together. As the devops personnel for this project, I'm required to be at multiple meetings a ...
- 562
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2
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I am frustrated because I keep on making mistakes on new job [closed]
So I am currently a full-time college student and I am also working 2 days a week because I wanna help my parents and also make my own money. So, recently I have been hired in a new workplace (...
- 29
2
votes
1
answer
2k
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Suspended from work over something I didn't do and the boss would not accept my arguments [closed]
I went to my boss last Wednesday morning, and reported that I had found pornography on the machine, as per company policy (in our workplace, it's in printed format, in Comic Sans, unfortunately, but ...
2
votes
3
answers
536
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Better use of Work Time and time spent on SE [closed]
I have recently become more engaged to this and other Stack Exchange sites, and I am happy with it. Since I joined the network, the questions and answers I have seen in TWP, Stack Overflow, and other ...
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1
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Should I tell my boss about personal issues I have on top of health issues I've already shared?
I usually don't share details of my private life with my managers. However, I had to tell my new manager that I'm undergoing a long, time consuming and painful therapy, because I need time off work ...
1
vote
1
answer
377
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Junior role with insufficient work [duplicate]
I am 4 months into my first software development role and for the most part I'm really enjoying it. My only problem is I currently quite often find myself without enough work to fill my day, causing ...
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2
votes
3
answers
598
views
How to "let go" issues, blocking my mind?
This is a problem I'm facing already during the entire course of my career (I'm 45 years old now): regularly I get stuck with something. I look at the problem and I can't find a solution. As I don't ...
- 1,878
0
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3
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4k
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How to ask for more work to do [duplicate]
I am currently doing a short internship for a month at a games developers that may result in a part-time job at the end. I am generally a fast worker, and often complete tasks way before people expect ...
3
votes
1
answer
975
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Working with a colleague who ignores my technical contributions
I work for a small engineering company and so work with all of the engineers employed there. I get along well with all of them socially, and we often meet up after work. However, when at work, one ...
- 1,195
2
votes
1
answer
596
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How to improve communication between manager and employee to improve productivity?
This is not my situation, but something I am witnessing and was asked to help with. So, suppose that I lead a small team. I communicate and provide details on tasks to team members via email.
One of ...
- 10.4k
4
votes
3
answers
939
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How to ask for more work, now that my original tasks have been assigned to someone else?
I am working at consulting company which provides project help to customers in different domains. I was assigned to a supply chain project as a management liaison.
Originally the manager of my ...
38
votes
7
answers
10k
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Is it a bad habit to take work home almost every day?
Details:
Recently I've joined a fintech company as a software engineer. I find working there challenging for myself because there is a lot of new stuff in terms of domain and technical stack. I ...
- 431
53
votes
4
answers
11k
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Struggling to finish project, how to tell coworker?
About 8 months ago I began working on a project for a colleague (part of my job is to do side projects like this). Essentially developing an excel application for a very large database we have.
At ...
- 3,528
54
votes
3
answers
6k
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How to deal being alone in my department?
Being the sole software developer in a start-up and also being a junior (no prior experience either) I'm in a position that is hard for me to do anything project related.
After discussing with my ...
- 550
4
votes
1
answer
810
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How not to micromanage? [closed]
There are quite a few questions here on how to deal with a boss who is a micromanager, but I did not see any asked by managers on how to not be one.
A friend of mine has several direct reports. None ...
- 10.4k
-1
votes
1
answer
610
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How companies or managers deal with fluctuation in productivity over years
I am just a employee but I am trying to think how employers or managers take following into account and how they address them.
Employee A starts working at company 999, they work really hard for 3 ...
- 3,940
5
votes
1
answer
592
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How do I deal with a lack of meaningful tasks? [duplicate]
I'm a recent graduate working with a small-medium sized company.
I've completed my first project last week and have been assigned to do an enhancement on one of our products. In the past few days, I'...
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14
votes
3
answers
3k
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How to deal with a competent developer having trouble maintaining his productivity?
I'm the team leader for a small team of software developers (4 people total).
One of my team members has been in the company for 4 years (came in directly after college) and is an extremely competent ...
- 699
5
votes
2
answers
986
views
I'm being forced to coast by a team that isn't giving me what I need to be productive. Is it unethical to just... let it happen? [closed]
I work for a large tech company on an engineering team. This particular team is one of five responsible for building a product. Our particular responsibility is the lowest priority feature set of ...
5
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Sitting chairs are not comfortable! How should I approach getting better chairs with management? [duplicate]
I work with a medium sized company. The workplace is good till now.
However, our sitting chairs are not good. These hurts sometimes. I seen many colleagues are not comfortable in these chairs. I ...
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2
votes
1
answer
556
views
How to handle idle site time? [duplicate]
I work for a engineering company that commisions automation software for industrial plants. Employees are often sent around the world to install and setup the control systems.
I have been sent abroad ...
- 323
8
votes
5
answers
2k
views
Strategies for managing older employees?
A friend asked me to provide recommendations as to what he can do early in his new role to improve his chances of succeeding as a supervisor, and to promote satisfactory performance from his team. He ...
- 10.4k
1
vote
2
answers
225
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Communicate better practice to a business owner [closed]
I have once worked for this business owner, which I've gotten pretty friendly with. The reason I quit is because his management style.
The problem: there is no ticketing system for the IT department. ...
- 1,332
126
votes
16
answers
23k
views
Constantly pulled onto different tasks/projects, becoming exhausted
I'm a data-analyst for my company and I also perform full-stack development work.
I have a web-development project I've been working on for the last 8 months, and the primary focus from my boss and ...
- 2,139
8
votes
4
answers
545
views
How to train customer service team to better describe issues
We run the development team in an agile mode. We have agreed that we will have a place called the "Inbox" so that people in the customer service team can report bugs or important issues so we can ...
- 181
26
votes
4
answers
3k
views
Is there something during the work day that I can do to increase productivity after work? [closed]
I often find myself exhausted after work hours (8 hours of work plus commuting [and meal] times). When I get home, I am unable to be productive on my personal projects, even if I have the motivation ...
- 347
-1
votes
3
answers
1k
views
How to fill dead time in work productively [duplicate]
Say, you've done your work and asked your boss to review it. But he's really busy and takes hours.
How do you fill that void?
Say you've done everything related to it, like documentation, comments, ...
- 501
3
votes
2
answers
672
views
Blanket statement or personal reminder?
We have processes in place at the office that people are supposed to follow. Recently we had a flurry of cases where people didn't follow these processes due to deadline pressures, and certain things ...
- 6,209
4
votes
4
answers
932
views
What to do about inadequate equipment causing productivity issues
I'm a lead software developer and have been at a new company for about 8 weeks now, everyone is nice and I am settling in well. The job/culture isn't what was sold to me in the interview but I am ...
- 5,587
0
votes
0
answers
334
views
Mantaining focus with lots of small interruptions [duplicate]
During my work there are a lot of small pauses, mostly due to outdated/clunky tools and PCs.
These pauses range from 10s to 1 min long, and it's really hard to keep focused on my work while being ...
- 3,222
6
votes
3
answers
1k
views
How can I convince my boss to pay for a productivity tool?
I'm a front end developer eager to enhance the relationship between designers and developers. I’ve been using an online collaboration app for a personal project. I’m completely satisfied with this ...
- 161
0
votes
2
answers
649
views
Getting my Ideas into my Company's software - Write specs or do it myself?
I'm a biologist and mathematician by training, my job is to come up with algorithmical and conceptual (sometimes UX) solutions for problems in a laboratory environment (typically optimization stuff, ...
- 157
0
votes
6
answers
2k
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Is it ok to ask to reduce salary to compensate low productivity so that everyone would be happy? [closed]
My situation is that the salary I get might be too big and might be one of reasons that I might be fired.
It feels that I should be working like 10 hours per day, and plus weekends to finish what ...
-1
votes
1
answer
631
views
The senior members of my team are slowing me down drastically. How to handle this situation? [closed]
My question/problem is kind of an extension of my previous question.
For the ones, who do not read the previous question, I can briefly explain. In my team, I am working under two seniors, who are ...
- 442
2
votes
2
answers
360
views
Tips on staying professional while dealing with major family illness?
Very suddenly my mother and aunt got the news they're terminally ill. My father is chronically ill, his brother just had a stroke and my sister in law is chronically ill as well.
I was dealing with ...
- 6,026
3
votes
3
answers
1k
views
How do you stay productive in an interrupt-driven environment [duplicate]
We are a small team of software developers where everybody knows everybody, and we work in an open space. Naturally, this means that whenever we need to ask a question or get some information that is ...
- 1,467
2
votes
2
answers
598
views
How do I persuade employer to buy me a productivity tool that pays for itself? [duplicate]
I'm a permanent software developer in the UK. I started a new job at a startup recently, and requested a software tool subscription that makes me more productive, pays for itself, and makes me a ...
- 771
4
votes
2
answers
1k
views
How can I communicate with a superior who has initially misunderstood me?
I recently started at a new company and I've developed a good relationship with my team leader who assigns me important tasks because they say no-one else can do them properly. I am the second most ...
- 1,209