What do office workers actually do?

Comments

• Pronell@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Hour by hour, my job evolved from taking calls from clients who owed us money, to then answering questions from agents who weren’t as skilled at it as I was.

  In the process of being promoted, I was asked to join a daily meeting of over 100 people talking about the issues affecting our department.

  Once in a great while, something came up in that meeting that gave me the heads up to prevent chaos in our department and stress to members.

  There’s a whole shitload of cogs turning in modern corporations. There’s also a huge danger of people leaving and nobody understanding why the cogs are there.

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• figjam@midwest.social ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I do IT governance. When someone builds a server or a firewall rule or a database in a way that could leak patient data to somewhere it shouldn’t be I find it and make them fix it. Generally people don’t want to redo something that they’ve done so there is a whole process around who you tell so that everyone know the problem and who has to fix it.

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• some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I worked in software development as a QA engineer. Every day I’d load the current build of the OS and test for bugs, check that fixed bugs are truly fixed, and write bug reports. Once a week it was on me to come in early and do a quick rundown to see how usable the build was and then send a report to the entire org so people knew if it was too problematic to install and remain productive.

  I worked in IT at a place that was perpetually under water. I spent all day troubleshooting either end-user computers or servers. We never had a break from tickets, so there was always work to be done unless the holidays were in season and users were taking time off.

  I worked IT Exec Support for a high-up individual. It required being on-call and meeting them at their office in different cities and being the personal IT for their staff. It was pretty unpleasant in that the exec never communicated effectively and was insulated by their staff such that they had unrealistic expectations about how things should work. I was proud to land the job, but I’m glad to be done with it.

  I now work in IT at a place that is super organized. I mostly wait for someone to call with an issue. Most things are pretty easy to fix. Some days I have to administer our inbox and direct users or create tickets. During that time, I’m always busy. On the days when it’s not that, I surf Lemmy (on wfh days) or read a book (on in-office days) between calls. I also configure devices for people and the like (think upgrades and new employees). I’ll probably stay here until retirement cause it’s the easiest job I’ve ever had.

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• funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Account Manager at a marketing agency, I run ~5 marketing departments with a mix of my own staff, outsourced contractors and employees at my clients’ businesses.

  We create marketing campaigns that consist of a set of emails, social posts, ads, thought leadership articles, blogs, landing pages, downloadable PDF reports and the attendant reporting on how they performed, plus finding and targeting the audiences in various segments. It’s a mix of database management, creative writing and design, project planning and communication meetings.

  I generally spend about a 1-2 hours a day on each client, plus meetings. We make and send the collateral, get approval, execute, track, measure, compare, make a strategic conclusion, repeat

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• theblips@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Does finance count? I’m usually studying something in the alternative data space (that is, using non-financial data to make decisions on investments) so I can, in the end, make a presentation or deliver a product to someone. For example, an analyst decides to study a clothing company and asks me to scrape their prices in the main Latin American markets (because he thinks they can grow there or something). So I do that for a while and report back to him what I found. If it is interesting, I may be tasked with implementing something in our Excel add-in so he can plug that information into his own models, or I’ll need to develop a model myself.
  Lots of spacing out, browsing lemmy and playing bullet chess on my phone, too

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  • theblips@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    In the mornings I’ll usually read news while enjoying a cup of coffee and a Zyn, too, forgot to mention that

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• starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’m a translator. I translate everything you can possibly think of. HSE documents, emails to illicit lovers, websites, I’m your person.

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• sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I help our customers make their business processes less stupid, time consuming and riddled with errors. Practically speaking it means I go to meetings, documentation process changes, build out business process automations, and attempt to convince an unwilling workforce that no, 17 spreadsheets is not the only or best way to run a business (change management).

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• Godort@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I work in an office as a network administrator. Largely my day to day is a meeting every morning to go over what everyone is doing for the day, then looking through and responding to all the alerts that came up from all the servers I manage(things like failing backups, unexpected reboots, stopped services, strange login behavior, etc)

  Then, if I still have time in the day, I put time towards some of the long term projects I have which largely consists of finding things that can be automated and scripting up solutions to that

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• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It really varies too much between industries to give a single answer. Someone at an insurance company is going to be doing something vastly different than an accountant, and they’ll be different from an architect (though only part of what architects do is in the office).

  That being said, office work for the average worker, as in a salaried or hourly worker with a fairly rigidly defined job description, is usually going to be paperwork, even though there’s not always paper involved.

  It’s taking information and moving it around, in one way or another.

  As an example, one of my exes worked for a company that handles employee benefits, investments, and other services to other companies. Lets say a worker has an IRA, gets a nice insurance policy, and there’s a pension fund.

  Her job is to take data from the company that contracted with the company she worked for, enter that data into the system in an properly formatted way, run calculations, then trigger the appropriate funds being moved from one account to another. No meetings unless something goes wrong. It’s all day data entry and management.

  Now, before that job, she worked at a tax service under a CPA. She would get actual paper back then. Receipts, forms, and look for deductions for the client, then print out the church correct tax form, have the client sign it, then send it off. She would finish one, then start the next, all day long during tax season. Off season, she would be receiving accounting records from clients and entering them into the system of the company she worked for, and process things like withholding.

  Pretty much, neither of those jobs required leaving the desk her entire shift.

  Now, my best friend runs a department at a community college. He leaves the actual desk frequently. There’s meeting with his superiors, meetings with his underlings, meetings with vendors, budgeting work, orders, policy decisions, disciplinary decisions, and the list keeps on going.

  My best friend’s husband was a flunky at architectural firm. When he was on a project, his job was drafting designs per specifications given to him. It required doing some oh the work, meeting with the architect, then changing anything per their decisions, or finalizing those plans. From there, once plans were ready to be used by someone to build something, he would essentially coordinate between contractors and his office to troubleshoot any snags with things like permits, supply issues, etc. So it was usually a lot of desk with work over a few weeks or months, then weeks or months barely at a desk, but still mostly in office.

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  Myself, I never had a long term office job. But, during recovery from a work related injury, I was pulled into the office of the home health company I worked for. My injury precluded patient care, but I was okay for light duty.

  I was placed in staffing. I would roll in early, about 6 AM, and check for any call-ins. That would be employees needing to have their case covered by someone else for whatever reason. I would call other caregivers based on availability, proximity to the patient, and hours already worked. The last one was to avoid overtime unless absolutely necessary.

  The software used, I would type in the name, and their details would pop up with their address, phone number, and current schedule. Same with the patient.

  The first step for me was always to check the patient’s location, because that let me filter out people on the list as available by proximity before anything else, since I would have to just go down the list. I’d enter a name, check the location, and decide who to short list. Once I had the short list, I’d verify they were not going into OT, and start calling, with priority given to employees that had requested more hours.

  Most of the time, a call-in would take fifteen to twenty minutes to resolve.

  Once the morning run was over, it would be time for a quick coffee and come back to handle any afternoon call-ins in the same way. Have lunch, then repeat for evening/night call-ins.

  During the few months I was doing it, most of the time, that was handled by maybe 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Some days it was all handled before lunch, and very occasionally by the time the coffee break was available. Very variable because there are days when folks just didn’t call in as much. And there were days it was crazy, particularly when there’d be something like a bad flu run through local schools and the parents would either catch it, or need to take care of their kids.

  But, usually, the afternoons were either straight up bullshitting with the ladies in the office (not flirting or messing with, just swapping healthcare war stories), or helping with sorting out patient intake and/or prioritizing staffing for new patients. A new patient means you either shuffle staff around, hire new caregivers, or break it to the bosslady that someone is going to need overtime until the other options could happen. Since I knew pretty much everyone, I was good at figuring out who would be a good pick for a patient’s needs.

  A few times, I did some of the initial onboarding for new caregivers. Get them the employee handbook, introduce them around, talk about expectations, that kind of happy horseshit.

  Tbh, I liked it most days, but not as much as patient care. Don’t think I could have done it for years or anything, but as a temporary thing, it was nice.

  See? Totally different daily routines and work between industries.

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• Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  They do the work in the office. Just like work from home works in the home.

  And a florist works in the…floor.

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  • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    and sex workers work on the sex

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• genuineparts@infosec.pub ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I work as Adminstrator and Developer for Medical Software in a Hospital.
  Most of my days are either spend preparing for future planned Software deployments, checking if they can meet our needs. Fomulating out the requirements and data imports and exports to various existing systems. On others like today I’m a bit more hands on and actually fix a bug in an application, laid out a plan for QA testing and eventual deployment of the new release and wrote some documentation so that should I vanish from the face of the earth, the stuff I do can be picked up by someone else.

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• null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Today I have…

  • spoken to a team member under my supervision about their workflow (30m)
  • reviewed applicants for a role on my team (15m)
  • prepared some financial reports for a client (1h)
  • prepared some financial forms for that client (1h)
  • figured out the right methodology for a complex letter for that client (30m)
  • drafted a complex financial / legal letter for that client (1h)
  • felt stressed about this client’s situation (45m)
  • applied a check list to this client’s project (30m)
  • reviewed and attended to some emails (30m)

  It’s time for lunch now.

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• TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  there’s a billing dept in my company. i assume they handle billing. they have an office. they sit at desks a lot. they make calls and verify insurance and process payments and whatnot.

  I have a friend who is a software dude. i dunno what he does but I’m assuming it involves offices, desks, and software.

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• ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I largely analyze data and create software to automate business tasks. This allows people in my company to make informed decisions about the business, how money is or should be spent, who & where to hire people, etc. And then I present that data in a way they can understand.

  This might mean creating forecasts. Automating data analysis with reports. Building data sources (gathering and manipulating data from different places and compiling it). Building interactive software or excel sheets for non-technical users.

  I use excel, google sheets, google app script (basically javascript), tableau, python, and SQL.

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• spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  In Office Space the main character seems like some kind of analyst, maybe a project manager who makes sure things are getting done as planned and addresses. The other two guys from the office were software developers if I remember correctly. The annoyimg lady answering phones was a receptionist.

  So it varies widely depending on what needs to be done and who it is assigned to. I have worked in the same IT department for over 15 years and had four different positions working with the same large software systems doing very different work (help desk, testing, requirements, project management). I interact with security people, administrative assistants, and even directors as part of the work.

  ‘Office work’ is more of a description of the location and setting than the work itself.

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• Nikls94@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’d totally like to share what I do at my office job at the equivalent of the IRS in my country, but that’s classified :(

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• MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I can only give my experience and I think mine is a bit unusual but here goes.

  Like the Office Space folks, I’m a dev in a large (admittedly, non profit and really good) organization. Since covid, I’ve worked remotely but my day to day hasn’t changed.

  We have a help desk where people send questions/issues. Someone on our team generally splits those roughly based on workload, skills, knowledge etc. Our goal is about half our work should be those one off requests.

  I also have client units within the organization. They usually come to me with wild, bold ideas that I help make a reality or explain (gently) why what they are asking for is insane. Some of thr projects are based on what folks have heard are best practices in our industry, others are about cutting down manual work/seeing what we can automate.

  Any of those projects can take anywhere from a couple hours to a couple of months. Some require buy in from other units, so on those I end up on a lot of meetings and email threads answering questions, hearing suggestions etc. I then (usually) coordinate with my manager to make sure I’m not stepping on any toes or there aren’t considerations which I had yet to consider.

  Today for example, I spent about half the day working on help desk tickets, about 1/3 of my time was clarifying “what the hell are you trying to say?” Or pointing out logical gaps etc (much easier to do this upfront than write a bunch of code and have someone realize they meant something else entirely… People are dumb.) The other 2/3 was coding.

  On my major projects, I spent an annoying amount of time emailing around to get approvals so a project manager would accept that my clients were fine with something I built, even though it was a bit unorthodox. Then a couple hours actually working on another project.

  Plus, y’know, Lemmy time, cat skritching time and a bit of cooking.

  Admittedly, my experience is unusual. I’m hihhly skilled but slightly underpaid in a non profit, so folks compensate by giving a lot of leeway. So a nice work environment plus I think what I do makes the world a better place, I’m pretty happy. I understand most office jobs are not quite like that but I don’t think they’re far off.

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• jqubed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Office work is largely paperwork, even if very little is on actual paper nowadays. Much of the work involves creating records or communicating with others to get things done. A salesperson will try to find clients for the product or service. They’ll typically create a record of customers or prospects with their contact information and notes about the negotiation. They’ll create a formal quotation or estimate for the customer and if the customer wants to move forward they’ll create an order confirmation. That document will trigger some other department to fulfill the order, either by providing a service or product to the customer. A work order might be provided to a service technician specifying what work is to be done and where. If a product needs to be delivered a picking slip might be created to tell someone in a warehouse where to get the product and how many to get. Once it’s been picked the product will go to the shipping department to be packed and shipped. An item fulfillment will be created saying what items were packed, how many, and what the tracking number is. Once the order is fulfilled an invoice will be created. If the customer paid in advance the payment will get applied to the invoice automatically or by someone in the accounting department. If the customer is on credit terms they’ll be sent the invoice with instructions on how to pay and when payment is due.

  There are so many steps like this. The records help the business plan. They know how many parts and supplies to order. They can track if they’re selling more or less than forecast, if they need to place a rush order for more parts, ask people to work overtime or hire more employees. If something starts costing more they can look to see if they need to raise prices or redesign the product to use a different component, or find an alternate source. At the end of the day, it all comes down to accounting, making sure the company is generating enough income to pay the bills, suppliers, and employees, and hopefully make a profit.

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• Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I reengineer business processes based on best practices and state of the art technologies and methods.

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• Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I work with computers to map things.

  Across my various jobs in this field, the days were usually varied but fairly busy.

  I worked for a government agency that would map abandoned mines and locations of mishaps to better understand what kind of environmental issues were posed. This involved meetings with hydrologists, miners, drone pilots, and field workers. It also had some field visits, itself.

  Another one, I worked for a city’s outreach program and I often was in meetings explaining what I could do, and then I’d have to gather maps and data to put together the product they wanted.

  For another job, I had to cross reference a ton of city and county data to find land lots that were large enough for a developer to potentially purchase and then build housing on. This included looking at zoning laws and reading a ton of documentation about new zoning and votes for such a thing. Also included learning about what each category of zoning meant.

  Currently I work for an energy company and it’s varied in a lot of ways. My day to day is never the same and is kind complicated to the average bear.

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• BigTrout75@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Other people’s work

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