Working Hard, Hardly Working describes the challenges of working in a company where you have nothing to do, and how to look busy. There is also a great bit on screenplays and how horrendous the first draft Star Wars script was, among others. The comments after this article were just as good reading.
Excerpt on having nothing to do:
Three years ago, I was working at a small company as the unofficial IT director / all-purpose computer bitch. I was laid off in early 2003, but to this day, the job presents me with difficulties; namely, that of telling prospective employers what I did, and for that matter, what the company itself did...
Excerpt on Star Wars:
Take Star Wars, for instance. The first draft was entitled "Adventures of the Starkiller" and was about a boy named Luke Starkiller. Most of the intended film had him mucking about on a planet -- not Tatooine -- and whining to his buddy Biggs. Darth Vader wasn't Luke's father and wasn't what we've come to know as the Sith -- he was just some vaguely mean-spirited guy who could do magic tricks...
Comment Excerpt:
What I think a lot of people miss is that when you're an employee selling your time to a company, you're not selling productivity, you're selling the perception of value. Simply, a good employee is whatever employee the boss thinks is good, NOT the one that is the most productive. If you're working for somebody else, you're not selling/building/supporting widgets, you're selling yourself to your boss (which usually involves impressing him with your widget skills). Always keep that in mind, because you can easily be fired/laid off even if you're the most productive person in the company. Its all fine and well to do the work because you enjoy to do the work, but always keep in mind that at the end of the day what keeps the paychecks coming is that you keep your boss(es) impressed...
