A big part of what inspired this article is the job I work at. I am one of 3 people in the engineering department for a company that covers the U.S. and Canada. We do a lot for only 3 people. I've been here for almost a decade (will be mid-October).

We work remotely. Internet is required. We know this when we are hired.

In my department myself and one other engineer split the on call duties. One of us is the primary on call person every other week though we both remain alert.

The other person is the CTO so he is usually doing other duties. He is no slacker though. Myself and the other engineer try to keep stuff from reaching him unless it is really needed.

We do the work that normally would have a much larger engineering department. We could ask for more help but we know training them to know and fit in well would be no easy task. Some day perhaps we'll recruit from within...

Unfortunately that leads me to what inspired this post.

We have one guy that moved from Colorado to Arizona. Bought a house with a fancy pool, is sending his kid to horse riding lessons, has youtube red but has really shitty internet for work. Remember our job requires internet? He said if they want him to have better internet and do his job correctly they can pay for his internet. Recall the pool, horse riding licenses, youtube red, etc.

I know what I agreed to. I've told my family. Mortgage, Electricity, and Internet in that order before EVERYTHING else. We'll figure out everything else but those are required for me to keep and do my job so we have money to find ways to do everything else. That only seems like common sense.

Now we have this guy in another department pulling this internet B.S.

He's been slacking quite a bit too and the "quiet quitting" reports have been coming to mind for me and some others.

Today we had another person... On call in another department. They are on call for a week every six weeks... recall I am on call every week and technically primary every other week.

He refused to do a task that fell in his on call time slot. He told his manager that engineering could do it. We are only involved because previous manager (passed away a few months ago) asked engineering to be involved just so we were in the loop. Yet 90% of the task is stuff that is not even things engineering does.

He flat out refused to do it. His manager ended up doing it. It is even worse. It takes literally between 5 and 10 minutes.

He also thinks some other duties in their department should be handled by engineering that don't actually have anything to do with engineering other than the monitor we maintain notifies them when there is a problem.

We survived the lock downs though we did not grow. That department actually has less work than it has had for years. They are not swamped.

Yet we have two people not wanting to do their job and seeming to think they are entitled to more than they agreed to when they took the job.

I keep reading about this happening in a lot of different industries these days.

Thus, I wrote this article.