Study: Workers Spend 60% or More of Day Web Surfing for Personal Reasons

[Ryan]

Ha I've noticed this too. I'm fucking around on the internet, and the older guys pull up chairs then shoot the shit. Some of the conversations are actually productive. They feel like complaining about some of the work going on, and they share what the problems are. "Guy A at company X is asking me to do this thing again. Does he do this to you guys? He's a good guy but he's definitely not a power guy because what he's asking is expensive and impractical."

I hate shooting the shit with my coworkers. So much so, that I after my office and server room were recently remodeled, I had the sitting chairs removed.

Now nobody stays around for more than 5 minutes. It's like I'm in heaven :awe:

 

[gorcorps]

SQL queries take time to run dammit. What am I supposed to do, just sit there and watch the progress bar do fuck all?

That used to be my excuse, but now they uprgraded the servers and things are very quick. I can get years worth of data in seconds now.

 

[hans007]

I'd say I probably do this about half the day and I've worked at startups / larger companies / smaller ones etc.

I do really good work and the only reason I am here 8 hours is the archaic notion that that's a normal amount of work. I mean some of my coworkers do much less work than I do and its buggy but they are just not as good at programming or very bright. Not really my problem but pay doesn't scale like that in this field. If I worked twice as much Id probably not get paid more.

Hell my work is so good I'm getting promoted this month. The whole everyone is equal and should work 8 hours and get paid the same is ridiculous . Sad fact of life some people just need to work more to get the same done.

 

[etrigan420]

I'm the only person here who does what I do...and I get it done.

:whiste:

 

[Atomic Playboy]

That used to be my excuse, but now they uprgraded the servers and things are very quick. I can get years worth of data in seconds now.

#1 reason not to upgrade: it cuts into neffing time.

 

[Skel]

That's all? I've weeks where I've done more than that.

 

[rivan]

SQL queries take time to run dammit. What am I supposed to do, just sit there and watch the progress bar do fuck all?

This, but it's photoshop and the like for me.

 

[baydude]

Only 60%? Also gives more reason why the standard 40 hr work week is outdated

 

[Red Squirrel]

as a dev there is a bit of downtime when recompiling and stuff like rebooting servers and applications. sometimes you get caught on a tangent though and spend more time than you would like.

Haha so true, I can't speak for the business world of development but when I had my game server I'd tend to go on youtube during compiles, then get caught up in more videos even after it was done compiling. Then there's the other times where I'm in "the zone" and I end up coding some sophisticated system in the game all in one night, and make everybody else's jar drop. "Really you coded that, last night?!? Like, all of it?!"

When I upgraded my server it was funny, compiles went from 10 minutes to about 50 seconds. :awe: But 50 seconds is still a long time if you are waiting, so I'd end up going on youtube or forums or w/e anyway. I imagine some apps in the business world can take like half an hour to compile, especially since businesses tend to have more outdated hardware. 30 minutes later "syntax error, expected ;" Noooooooo!

 

[Sonikku]

Suckers. If I worked 40% of the time I would be promoted to Country President within a week. 5-10% gets me well-above-average raises on a yearly basis.

Where do you work and can you put in a good word for me. :awe:

 

[xanis]

Only 60%? Also gives more reason why the standard 40 hr work week is outdated

This was my first thought as well. Only 60%?

 

[BarkingGhostar]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=29856

I may be underpaid, I'll have to start slacking more. All you ATOT-ers posting in the middle of the day, I'm suspicious.
(sorry if repost)

Blame the employers for not locking down their networks.

 

[DaWhim]

I guess more like 95% i use the work for personal reasons.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Last job this was true. Current job, not so much. We have too many projects going on to really have time to slack most days.

 

[RichUK]

Lol. I'm lucky if I get 15 minutes for lunch each day, let alone surfing the net for 60% of the day!

 

[zCypher]

It's rare that I do any personal browsing at work, usually much less than other people on my team, so I think I'm safe. Depends how busy it is at work though, there are times when it's very quiet and there's no backlog of any kind. Sometimes if I have an idea on a good initiative, I will work on that, but it's not always possible to fill 100% of the time with "productive work". That said, I tend to use my phone to check things quickly as opposed to my work computer. I never use FB at work, though I will occasionally open Gmail for a few sec if I need something quickly.

 

[Jeff7]

Hell I don't even take "smoke breaks," let alone spend over half of my time fucking off..sometimes I wish I had that much spare time.

Then today I had 20 minutes with nothing to do and was bored.

Similar here. Or 5-10 minutes every hour to go get coffee, or wandering around the office or shop for a half hour before finally getting to work.
Time on ATOT, bogleheads.org, or elsewhere non-work during the day is done during break times and lunch.
You're at work, and on the clock. Work, dammit.

 

[sactoking]

I'd be interested to see how that study quantified the time and how it would apply to me. For instance, I might have anandtech open in a browser tab all day, but if I'm not on that tab does it still count? Due to the unique nature of my job, multitasking is paramount. I often have two broswer tabs open with legislative hearings, two browser tabs open monitoring various Twitter hashtags for work, a browser tab for inputting fiscal notes, two browser tabs for legal reference, a browser tab for legislative hearing exhibits, and one or two instances of Word for writing legislation and amendments. If I also have a browser tab for anandtech which I tab to when I have writers block, is that a bad thing?

 

[Ken g6]

My current job it feels like 60% of days I do nothing but web surfing, and 40% of days I spend the whole day working. Of course that's not completely accurate.

Blame the employers for not locking down their networks.

I remember several years ago I worked at an insurance company. Their network was locked down tight. I brought copies of sites I like to surf in on my personal laptop, just so I could take a break and "web surf" once in awhile without using their network.

 

[Farang]

A lot of jobs require more just being there than being productive, especially if you aren't creating anything.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I'm usually multi-tasking at work... working in IT, I've got a lot of 30-60 second breaks throughout the day where I'm waiting on a process to finish, rebooting a server, etc and I can only juggle so many work projects simultaneously (whereas spending 30 seconds reading an AT doesn't really require as much focus and attention as trying to work on a fifth ticket)

This.

Although perhaps I'm underworked - I rarely have to do more than two things at once. But there is a lot of waiting for stuff to break and surfing the web while computers take their sweet time doing what I told them to.