Dan Olsen’s Weblog

Today was the first day of the “Working 4 Utah” initiative. This means that Utah State employees no work 4-10 hour days instead of 5-8 hour days. Ever since the announcement of the initiative the papers here in Utah have been writing stories about it. I have gone online and read some of the comments by people about state employees.

For some reason people think that 4-10s means less work then 5-8s even though it is still a 40 hour work week. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to become a state employee because of of the stereotypes put on public employees. I was greatly surprised when I found people that work in the Department of Technology work just as hard if not harder then the people I worked with at Omniture.

Because of my findings amongst my fellow State employees I started thinking about my employment at Omniture. Some weeks I would put in 60-70 hours and sometimes even more. Even though we were at work longer at Omniture we didn’t get as much done as one might think hearing those numbers. The problem at Omniture was that if you didn’t stay late you were looked down upon even though you had a very successful day without staying late. I found that people at Omniture spend a lot of time watching TV, playing foosball, playing pool, etc.

Now at the state there isn’t much to do during breaks and lunch so people are focused on work. Looking back at my Omniture days I would say that we could have gotten the same amount of work done in a 40 hour week as we did in a 60 hour week. If people worked instead of played during the day they could be home more. I think in technology, people gauge your work by home many hours you put in at the office instead of how much work was done. I would go without a pool table or foosball table if that meant I would be focused on my work instead of knowing that I was expected to stay late even if I didn’t get anything done.

Another thing I noticed at Omniture was that after they brought dinner in for us, very little work got done. Now, I will admit that there are some people at Omniture that work long hours and get stuff done during every hour. However, those people are very few. It’s great to have a fun work place but not to the point that people expect me to sacrifice my family.