Every Day Is Goof-Off-At-Work Day At the US Patent and Trademark Office 327
McGruber writes An internal investigation by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office found that some of its 8,300 patent examiners repeatedly lied about the hours they were putting in and many were receiving bonuses for work they did not do. While half of the USPTO's Patent Examiners work from home full time, oversight of the telework program — and of examiners based at the Alexandria headquarters — was "completely ineffective," investigators concluded. The internal investigation also unearthed another widespread problem. More than 70 percent of the 80 managers interviewed told investigators that a "significant" number of examiners did not work for long periods, then rushed to get their reviews done at the end of each quarter. Supervisors told the review team that the practice "negatively affects" the quality of the work. "Our quality standards are low," one supervisor told the investigators. "We are looking for work that meets minimal requirements." Patent examiners review applications and grant patents on inventions that are new and unique. They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees. They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year.
Patent US 99063520 A (Score:5, Funny)
A method and system for under-performing approval of patents.
Re:Patent US 99063520 A (Score:5, Funny)
Patent US 9063520 B: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
A method and system for under-performing approval of patents on the internet.
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A method and system for under-performing approval of patents using a computer.
How about cross-licensing deal? Or we could just go straight to full patent war.
Where do I sign up? (Score:5, Funny)
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You need to pay some one off to get that job
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, I foresee a large number of vacant positions in the very near future - Particularly as we get closer to November 4th.
Of course, any applicants will probably need to actually work for a month or two until everyone forgets about this and moves on to the next government outrage...
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep watching, you will learn a lot.
I foresee nobody losing their job, except the snitches. Government work.
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At best, there will be a handful of sacrificial firings with sternly worded statements about how they will not be tolerating this behavior in the future. Then, business as usual will resume.
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:5, Insightful)
> The real problem is that firing an underling reflects poorly on his manager(s). This is also the truth everywhere, of
> course, but in normal enterprises there is this dirty and otherwise reprehensible "profit" to think about, so a bad
> employee can still be fired even if the manager's record gets hurt in the process.
I think you are looking at the wrong problem. Yes, this exists but, I look at it this way:
If there is an underperforming employee who just isn't doing the work, there is, most likely, a problem with THAT employee. It may be one you can work with or fix, but, very likely it is localized; and there is a chance, either way, that replacing him fixes it.
If many employees are not doing the work however, the problem is likely not the employees but a more general systemic issue relating to management or work structure; and replacing the employees will likely be about as effective as rotating your tires because the battery stopped charging.
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Oh, I didn't mean, it is only the low-level employees themselves, who must all be fired (though some of the ought to be). What I said applies equally to managers — whom their managers are reluctant to fire because it is both difficult to do and hurts the person's own record.
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I've seen federal employees get fired. Several time.
They are not unfirable. They are difficult to fire to protect them against political whims, and crazy panic public irrationality.
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:4, Informative)
Wishful thinking. Federal employees are practically unfirable [usatoday.com]. For one, they are — bizarrely — unionized (to protect them from their employer — us), but that's only part of the reason, for corporations with unionized workforce still do fire bad workers, even if it is harder for them to do so than it ought to be.
This is just simply not correct. I know. I worked for Uncle Sam for a while. While it is difficult to fire federal workers, it's not impossible. Firing for cause can happen, although the more time a person has working there, the harder it becomes. And spare me the "they're in unions" argument. Unions do exist for federal employees, but at least where I worked in the Department of Defense, unions are a waste of money for most people. By federal law federal employees cannot strike (see Ronald Reagan vs. the air traffic controllers) so the union can't really do a lot in terms of collective bargaining. The only benefit I knew of that the union offered where I worked was that they had a supplemental insurance plan you could get through them that would pick up the consumer responsible charges of medical insurance and if you had a very expensive need, like major surgery, with such insurance you could get out of it paying nothing. I know of a case where a unionized worker was going to be fired for just cause. I don't remember what the guy did, but it was really bad and there was no doubt that he was guilty. The union called for hearings and drug their feet where it took a year to fire him but in the end the guy was fired. So other than giving you supplemental insurance or delaying a firing, that's about all a union could do where I worked. The majority of our workforce was not part of any union.
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I like how you went from some people abusing telework(the article) to health care.
Agenda much, asshole?
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I'm sorry, but when was the last time any IRS official pulled a gun on someone and told them to hand over their money.
Try not giving them the money. Then you will see.
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't pay, IRS will put a lien on your house. If you still don't pay, the house will be sold — and police (with guns) will arrive to kick you out from it.
Don't be stupid disputing the obvious — all governments world-wide collect revenues at gun-point. It is normal and the only way possible. It just means, the monies thus collected should only be used in situations, where weapons would take place: enforcing laws and fighting foreign enemies.
Corporations don't have the means of coercing people to buy their services, don't even bring them up here.
Again, corporations are not (normally) in a position to coerce anybody to buy their services — only the government is in such a position and its role in our lives must be minimized, not perpetually expanded.
Your link is to a description of some outrage committed by Comcast — which is funny, because the company is a book-case example of crony capitalism: it (and other cable giants) grew out of government's idiocy of giving them monopoly [cato.org], and their CEO today plays golf with the President [politico.com].
Corporations are not any nicer, than they have to be — in order to compete. But monopolies — like Comcast — don't have anyone to compete with. And the government is the biggest and harshest monopoly of all. One can cancel their Comcast bill — even if it can be infuriatingly ridiculous. Now try opting out of Social Security...
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"Corporations don't have the means of coercing people to buy their services, don't even bring them up here."
BWAHAHAHAHAHHAhahhaa.
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why would you want to opt out of social security?
you plan to die young, or work til your 90?
this is the same nonsense dreck you "shrink the gov til you can drown it in a bathtub" types always put up.
you need a course in basic civics concerning government (i suggest starting at governmentisgood.com).
and oh, btw, if you dont pay your mortgage, the bank gets the guys with guns to come kick you out.
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd want to opt out of Social Security because it's a Ponzi Scheme. Or maybe because you can get better returns on your retirement dollars in a private fund. Or maybe because you'd rather buy gold for your retirement savings.
If you don't pay your mortgage than you are in violation of a contract and the bank goes to the government to bring guys with guns to kick you out as you are trespassing on the bank's property. It's still the government with the guns. Your bank can't have it's own private enforcement kick you out of their house.
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why would you want to opt out of social security?
Because the returns are abysmal compared to the stock market.
you plan to die young, or work til your 90?
Or, you're not stupid with money.
this is the same nonsense dreck you "shrink the gov til you can drown it in a bathtub" types always put up.
you need a course in basic civics concerning government (i suggest starting at governmentisgood.com).
Ah, yes, let's ask government-worshiping leftists what they think.
and oh, btw, if you dont pay your mortgage, the bank gets the guys with guns to come kick you out.
You make a voluntary contract with the bank and if you renege on your side they have the right to use the courts to enforce the contract. Works both ways:
http://articles.philly.com/201... [philly.com]
A big part of the purpose of government in a civilized society is to enforce contracts. You'd think reading "governmentisgood" would help you understand that.
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:4, Insightful)
What really irritates me is that the monster has gotten to the point where it just can't go away because such a large percentage of our population has gotten so damn lazy that they now plan on relying on Social Security for their income during retirement.
It is not "lazy" for people who could not opt out of a system that ate away at their income, which they were subject to their entire working lives, to expect the promises to be kept.
Would you be happy if you were told that mandatory deductions from your pay (and an equal amount the employer could have paid to you were it not for his mandatory contribution to the same place) were going to cover a layaway plan for a nice new Lamborghini when you retired, and then be told when you actually do retire that there is no Lamborghini and you're a lazy ass for not having bought your own car -- with the income you had left over after paying into the layaway program?
You want to disband social security? Fine. Give me back every penny I paid into the system that you think I shouldn't get anything back out of and we'll call it even. I'll be nice and only expect 2% interest on my money.
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The CATO Institute reference is laughable.
It is interesting to read their mental masturbation about how multiple cable companies could compete in the same city, each with their copper. While that could technically happen, the diminishing returns of market entry would keep any sane company from entering into the market. Also, since their Utopia would be lacking in ANY government regulation, the larger company would simply purchase the smaller company if it became a threat. Which is EXACTLY what happened.
That
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What was the result of all of this government regulation of a natural monopoly? Prices for long-distance calls dropped rapidly. Services were upgraded in many areas that were previously "unprofitable". Technologies that made heavy use of previously existing infrastructure(ADSL) spurred technological advances.
This doesn't necessarily invalidate your point, but your recap of the results of the Judge Greene decision and the divestiture of AT&T is a bit off. The original Department of Justice rationale - this suit being pursued under the conservative Reagan administration, which you would have thought wouldn't wanted to do it - for splitting up AT&T was that it was an un-natural combination of heavily regulated industries (local phone service) and largely unregulated industries (long distance). The ultra-co
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:4, Insightful)
you like a military that will defend you? Yes. I'm tired of nation building nations that don't want it. Bomb them back into the 4th Century where they belong, and leave.
you like clearn water and air? Yes. I'm tired of being told that I should cut my CO2 usage by people flying around in Jet, traveling in SUV motorcades and living in 10000ft2 mansions.
you like a social safety net that keeps the weakest from falling too far? Yes. But I'm tired of people gaming the system and making me pay for it. Safety Net is not permanent solution.
you like a postal system? Not really. It is becoming more obsolete every day. I currently get three or four legit pieces of mail a week, and most of those could be Electronic instead.
you like you drivable roads? Yes. Many of the roads I travel are becoming less so, as government redirects fuel and vehicle taxes to pay for the "safety net" mentioned earlier.
you like food safety inspections and standards? Yes. And for the most part, the FDA has done an average to below average job.
you like fireman to save your house, and police to catch bad guys? Yes. I don't have much complaint about Fire, but Police are pretty bad these days. And I wish they would actually lock up criminals rather than spending time on victimless crimes.
Finally, all taxes are regressive. YES people should pay taxes, but only voluntarily. BY Voluntarily, I mean by using products or services that are NOT required for living. Taxing Income is nothing short of indentured servitude of the masses, and is evil. And nothing you can say will change my view of it.
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Ah, the characteristic sign of the truly irrational. I actually agree with a good part of what you said in that post, but with that last line you lose all credibility to having a reason-based argument. If no reason could change your mind, then your mind is, by definition, unreasonable (not based in reason).
I'm also curious how you expect to fund the essential portions of the government. The "required for living" stuff like a military strong enough to prevent
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I guarantee you they are using a performance metric of some sort.
When work stops being about work, it starts being about something else. I'm going to guess that there is a government union involved that is indirectly in charge of performance reviews. So you get rated by how many dollars you gave to 'preferred political party' (D), how much time you waste on government union activities and how well you parrot the talking points.
Like the sib post said, you need to pay someone off to get the job, then con
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I think you should try to apply for the job before pulling political assumption into the topic. Yes, they may be very inefficient, but I at least know some people who tried to get the job and got it plus those who have already been in the job. Not that I say they are very efficient, but the issue is not this simple with emphasis on government...
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If any of your friends are republicans, I bet they don't admit it at work.
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https://www.usajobs.gov/Search?keyword=uspto&Location=&AutoCompleteSelected=&search=Search [usajobs.gov]
Nine openings, seven list at over 100K/year. Good luck!
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Nine openings, seven list at over 100K/year. Good luck!
And nary a one is for the job category in question: Patent Examiner.
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Not just patent examiners: Patent Examiners the telework.
So a small group of a small group.
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Seriously? You're posting this here without telling me how I can get this job? From the sounds of it, I could do it in the background while at my real job.
But it might seriously cut into your /. reading!
Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the sounds of it, I could do it in the background while at my real job.
It has happened before. Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity while goofing off at the Swiss Patent Office.
http://xkcd.com/1067/ [xkcd.com]
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Yeah, I was thinking I could probably find enough time to fill out an additional timesheet at my current job.
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You can't qualify as a work from home examiner until you've put in 3 years in DC.
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Seriously? You're posting this here without telling me how I can get this job?
Sorry about that - you apply for federal jobs at USA Jobs Website [usajobs.gov]
There are not any patent examiner openings posted right now, but here are some current IT openings at the Patent Office:
IT Acquisitions Specialist - DE [usajobs.gov]
IT Specialist (APPSW) - Software Developer - DE [usajobs.gov]
Systems Development Lead - IT Specialist (SYSANALYSIS/APPSW) - DE [usajobs.gov]
Not experts but not laypeople (Score:3)
Patent examiners review applications and grant patents on inventions that are new and unique. They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees.
If thats true then anyone should be able to get a job there, seeing all of the idiotic patents they allow. Thus the funny parts were "masters" and "doctoral degrees"
Examiners are not experts in their field. You could be approving Apple's patents based on the mere fact that you own an iPhone. Examiners do not judge the technical merits of a patent, nor are they expected to.
Patent examiners are not experts in the sense that we think of experts--they are not, for example, in the top 100 people in the world working in a given space, nor do they even have lots of professional experience in the space.
They are also not laypeople. They need to have a technical degree, and the degree they have is generally but not always relevant to the patents the office has them review.
So while they are not experts and not supposed to be experts, they are also not the clerk from your supermarket--
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I cant dispute the whole "large work spurt prior to end of period", but I do know a number of PTO people and they tend to be very sharp and well educated.
I would dispute that the supermarket clerk COULD do a better job-- theres a lot of research that has to go into patent reviews.
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Why are we paying decent money for that? A high school kid could do it easily as a first job.
There's hope... (Score:5, Funny)
Cue the 'We can't find the emails tape' (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cue the 'We can't find the emails tape' (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress will goof off for 3 months, then rush to pretend like they were investigating it.
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Congress doesn't goof off for months and then pretend they were investigating something.
They're more the "hold pointless hearings to make it seem like you're doing something and then go out on recess" kind of folks. Of course, they also will mix in "pass a law you claim with solve X when it really just benefits your favorite lobbyists."
Interesting (Score:4)
Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern matching (Score:4, Interesting)
I can only hope that these experts rushing to get their reviews done quickly at the end of the quarter can be replaced by pattern matching AI. Their results if rushed have huge implication in the million s and billions for certain industries. Also, is there any tracking of who has which patents to review? Is the person filing the patent ever allowed to have communication with the reviewer? I would imagine there is plenty of room for bribery or pay off to let a certain patent review through.
Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern matching (Score:5, Informative)
I work at the PTO, and we do have pattern matching programs to help find prior art, they are mostly worthless because interpreting claims to match prior art is an abstract process. If you don't believe me read some patent claims and try to figure out what the 'broadest reasonable interpretation' of those claims would cover, its a nightmare. Applicants are certainly 'allowed to have communication' with us as the examination process involves a lot of back and forth with examiners trying to convince applicants to narrow their claims and applicants asking us to explain our interpretation of their claims and the prior art. As far as bribery goes I have never heard of or experienced any kind of bribery, what we typically experience is more of a brow beating from applicants who disagree with us.
Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match (Score:4, Informative)
This.
Unless of course you are Apple, IBM, Microsoft, or one of the other 'special' applicants who have their own rubber stamp (sorry I mean priority clearing house) for their patents.
Eventually we gave up applying for US patents because, especially as a foreign company, the prior art that gets presented is just an insult.
Really, we had them tag teaming two sets of prior art back forward, NEVER ONCE replying to our queries as to why it was applicable, just switching to the
other, and waiting until the end of their allowable response time to do this each time, until the window for acceptance just ran out.
Maximised their fees though, they were sure to do that..
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A pattern matching job for how they are currently doing their work? this would be trivial.
One for how they are Supposed to be doing their work? that would be hard
Anyways, this is just telework people.
But they have a patent on that process... (Score:2)
And like most notoriously poor patents granted; they will not reveal details of their goof-up; or how it works. Nobody else can copy their style of work since they have design patents on those things as well.
This is a shining example (Score:4, Insightful)
of why small-government types are not completely out of their fucking gourd.
Re:This is a shining example (Score:5, Insightful)
of why small-government types are not completely out of their fucking gourd.
Size and quality are not, necessarily, related. They assume that small government would be staffed with highly qualified and highly motivated people, yet forget there only about 550 people in the US Congress (Senate+House) and they haven't gotten anything done in years.
Re:This is a shining example (Score:5, Insightful)
They assume that small government would be staffed with highly qualified and highly motivated people
By no means! A small government will attract the same sorts of people; the difference is the evildoers can't hide in the massive, inscrutable cogs of the machinery. Accountability is easier when there are fewer places to pass the buck.
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Oh they are. They very much are completely out of their gourd.
Much like hte existence of winter does not disprove global warming, the existence of lazy people does not disprove government.
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No... it's a shining example of why the 'work form home tele-work' idea isn't always a good idea. Lets take on step back and look at what you said .... Do you really think that private enterprise is a better place for a role in which all ideas/invetions are vetted for novelty? This is a regulatory agency, so to speak. Private business could only make things worse by being private. It doesn't make sense to even have a patent office and its purposes (a government-driven protection to ideas) governed by
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Or at the very least pared back to their original usage.
Not quite accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to work at the patent office, and I can tell you the article doesn't quite understand the way the office works. Examiners are required to get a very specific amount of cases done for the hours they work or they are fired. They seriously total up the hours worked and require X number of cases done based on it. At worst what is happening is that people are slacking off at the beginning of a quarter and then working extra at the end to make up for it. But it's not like they never do any work. If someone doesn't make their counts, as they call it, they are pretty quickly in trouble.
So the worst here is that some examiners might be doing a bad job at the end of a quarter because they slacked off at the beginning of it. Even still, there's a lot of other reasons why someone might get less counts at the beginning of a quarter. They might be working on their harder cases early, for example, because they're not up against a deadline. Or they might be hanging on to cases they've worked on just to think them over -- since they aren't really due yet. So it's hard to say what's really going on here. There are definitely some bad examiners but there's no way people are never working or they wouldn't get their counts and they'd be fired.
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Examiners have a special pay scale (http://careers.uspto.gov/Pages/Misc/SalaryRates.aspx) which has both grades (05, 07, 09 ...) and steps (1-10). As an examiner with a Ph.D. you would start at GS 09-1. Every 18 months with good performance reviews and you move up 1 step i.e. GS 09-2. Every grade has an associated 'production' requirement which is basically the number of hours you are given to complete a case. As you move up you are given fewer hours per case. I think you can move up in step, at least to GS
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find /applications -exec grep "using the Internet" {} \; -exec mv {} /approved \;
There. Done.
Wow - good thing (Score:4, Funny)
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Umm, or you could have accepted and still spent your time surfing Slashdot.
How is that different in private sector? (Score:3)
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The difference is that the private sector has competition. If Company A is billing a certain amount of hours to get a job done, and Company B is billing less to get the same job done, then Company A will eventually start losing work to Company B. Similarly if Company A is turning out half assed work, or doing the professional equivalent of finishing their homework right before class, they will lose business to other organizations who deliver better results.
The company I work for is facing the first challe
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Nope. Company A has a lock on key patents integral to the product. You can either pay them for shit work or hire Company B. Who will have to pay exorbitant licensing fees to Company A.
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What does the free market have to do with hospitals? Seriously, you can't be that stupid.
The only free market in medicine is for elective procedures. Boob jobs, Lasik eye surgery etc.
Obvious (Score:4, Funny)
I would have thought this Obvious given that Einstein developed the theory of Relativity, revolutionizing nearly every field of science, all while working there.
Let's see... light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity... ...which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body...
er...
Icons with round corners? Approved...
One click purchase? Whatever... approved...
That is, light in vacuum propagates with the speed c...
Falsifying timecards (Score:2)
examiners repeatedly lied about the hours they were putting in and many were receiving bonuses for work they did not do
If workers in private industry do that, we call that fraud. Hours of claimed work should be validated and approved by an uninterested third party such as a supervisor.
The supervisor should keep their own private notes and reject the submission of hours, if it is in disagreement with their notes.
Re: Falsifying timecards (Score:2)
Exactly. And falsifying hours is one of those thing that can get you fired quickly, union or not.
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Equip teleworkers' laptops with a Webcam, and require them to use AccuTimeCard [informer.com] with Webcam enablement.
Thanks for the job tip! (Score:2)
They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees. They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year.
I hadn't even considered applying for a patent office job before, but now they are definitely on my radar...
Deadlines. . . whoosh! (Score:5, Interesting)
They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees
As a product of academia I am professionally trained to get things done on the cusp of deadlines. I'm not joking. Both on the student and instructor side there is simply a great deal of latitude. There's no time management enforced in any form except for "deadlines," so that's when you learn to get things done.
As lovely of a thought as it is that entering the workforce will automatically instill a newfound sense of responsiblity and dedication to all a graduates (and I'm sure it does for at least a few weeks or so), I for one am not surprised that working unsupervised at home at a government job with quarterly deadlines results in people observing the same habits they have for the past 6-10 years.
Admittedly, I wouldn't want to rush a result such that it is inadequately reviewed either, and I don't know if patent clerks have projects which would actually take an entire quarter to investigate, but the first thing I would do is have them sync all of their edits/notes/research in a way to make them reviewable. It's amazing how a little bit of transparency encourages people to make regular progress.
A question to resume experts (Score:3)
If I've been goofing off at work for years, but do not work as a patent examiner, can I put down on my resume that I worked as a patent examiner if the work (or lack thereof) is virtually the same?
Brick-layer mentality does not scale (Score:4, Insightful)
Where does this deadline cycle NOT happen?
Managers and/or auditors could spend more time monitoring employees, but then you have to pay the monitors and hire more managers, and also monitor the monitors to make sure they are monitoring correctly, creating a recursive bloat in inspection time.
Further, the monitors and monitor of monitors would have to be experts to know if employees are really spending quality time. If you just count time staring at the screen, typing, or reading research, you can't know if it's relevant to the task unless you are an expert in that specialty also. Industry-specific auditors are going to be pretty expensive.
Plus, recruiting is harder and/or more expensive if potential specialty employees find out their ass is always under Big Brother's watch.
Brick-laying is relatively easy to monitor. Intellectual tasks, not so much.
Sometimes it's just cheaper to accept some slack than add bureaucracy layers to prevent all slack.
(It's similar to weeding out welfare cheats: Republicans want to heavily monitor welfare recipients, but the cost of monitoring and related lawsuits could be more than the welfare cheating, making taxes even higher, which Republicans can't stand...or at least act like they can't stand.)
Managers should be able to give bonus pay and/or penalties for productivity. However, in practice this often results in favoritism as managers judge based on friendship or kissing up rather than raw merit. Humans are just that way, in general.
In short, no easy fix.
Cue Hypocrisy (Score:4, Funny)
Im just waiting to see how many people hop onto the "Goofing off at work? HOW HORRIBLE" bandwagon during work hours.
Wait, crap.
Cheap Salaries yields cheap talent (Score:4, Interesting)
They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year.
That's not even the salary of a manager at Google (and don't even talk about benefits -- free food is amazing) -- and this is the highest of salaries. For a lawyer (law school is will run you over $100K by itself [admissionsdean.com]). Can you imagine why they may not have the best and brightest? With the new patent office opening in San Jose [uspto.gov], why would anyone actually want to work for the USPO who has any amount of talent?
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Just wanted to mention that the article lists $148k as the highest level. Given that the highest paid employees at the USPTO are federal lawyers and judges that seems pretty low.
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Oh random government-worker hater modded up. Must be a Monday on slashdot.
It's insightful because no private sector workers ever goofed off, or spent the "work from home" days, grazing from the fridge, playing halo. And no public sector worker ever ever rushed through a piece of late work and did a half assed job.
Ever.
Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I'd imagine that private workers goof off too. The thing is, when they do it jeopardizes whatever project they're involved with, with monetary loss to the company.
In the case of the USPTO... well I'd imagine you've ready some of the stories of the horrific patents that keep getting passed (and how the USPTO claims they're sooooo overburdened). It's the whole country (and some would say other countries as well, see Apple V Samsung) that's suffering from *that* mess
Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, I'd imagine that private workers goof off too. The thing is, when they do it jeopardizes whatever project they're involved with, with monetary loss to the company.
You've never worked before have you.
Some people have turned slacking off into a full time job. As long as the company is making money, they dont get noticed. The worst slackers I've worked with were in the private sector (and not unionised, union people know they have a job to do). They're normally in middle management/admin positions that dont get monitored for performance. Think about all the people who call pointless meetings, extend meetings with pointless conversation/questions and when you come to them needing something, they've got a huge tale of woe explaining how they're too busy to help (yet can take a 2 hour lunch).
As long as the P&L statement looks good, these people never get noticed... If the P&L statement starts to look bad, they're normally not the first ones fired either.
Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg (Score:4, Insightful)
Only $148k at the top of the scale? They probably get some benefits like health care, but they must be the dregs of Masters and Doctorates. I can't imagine taking such a pay cut, and I get 7 weeks paid vacation as well as a pension and health plan.
It sounds like they get a helluva lot more than 7 weeks paid vacation every year. That's the whole point of the article.
Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg (Score:5, Funny)
I love on $39,000 a year, and you can't imagine making less than $150,000?
What's wrong with this picture?
You're spending too much on the ladies?
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I think it was the "can't imagine" part of the picture he was asking about, actually. I find it odd too. You would expect that someone with such a poor imagination could very easily be replaced by a machine these days.
Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever seems to be missing the point. Sure, nearly everybody goofs off occasionally. Have I ever spent most of a work from home day goofing off? Sure. Have I ever dialed into a meeting and played video games because the meeting was totally useless for me? Yup. Ever encompasses many many things.
The thing is, the article isn't about how this one time a guy at the Patent office spent a day goofing off. Its about how goofing off, not doing the work, and then rushing the report is standard operating procedure.
You do get that there is a difference between something that someone did or something that happened and... how business is normally conducted. Like, its one thing to go out for lunch with your coworkers and all get drunk one day....its quite another to do it every day as a matter of course.
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Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg (Score:5, Insightful)
But it is our business when public employees are being paid good money for bad work. I can understand how you believe differently. Wait. I can't. I can see no reason that your belief that the public has no interest in ho the people they are paying to do a job are performing that job.
The fact that you would state something so obviously wrong makes me think that either you have an agenda or are incredibly stupid.
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The fact that you would state something so obviously wrong makes me think that either you have an agenda or are incredibly stupid.
You might like to try actually reading my post rather than just making up the contents and then replying to that unless that is you have an agenda (etc).
So what -specifically- did I state that was so obviously wrong?
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Your post "Implies" that we have no business caring about public sector worker because "Private Sector Sucks!"
I stand corrected. But your post is still either written by an idiot or driven by an agenda.
Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg (Score:4, Informative)
Oh random government-worker hater modded up. Must be a Monday on slashdot.
It's insightful because no private sector workers ever goofed off, or spent the "work from home" days, grazing from the fridge, playing halo. And no public sector worker ever ever rushed through a piece of late work and did a half assed job.
Ever.
As phorm pointed out, when a worker in the private sector goofs off, that can have detrimental effects on a company's bottom line, and the company can take appropriate action. If a public sector worker goofs off, time is lost, but there is no bottom line for a government agency to be affected. Sure, they all have budgets, but there are not many negative consequences for having bad employees. They'll usually get a few more bucks in next year's budget regardless of performance. And the travesty here is that we're paying them to do a bad job. Public sector employees should take their jobs even more seriously than private sector employees because every tax-payer is ultimately affected by their performance.
I have no personal experience working for any government agency, but I did have a friend who got a job with the federal government after having worked in the private sector for many years. After about a month, his direct superior told him to take it easier because he was too efficient. If he stayed at the current level, many other workers would look bad in comparison, and the manager didn't want to have to explain that to his bosses. The manager absolutely could not get away with something like that at a competent profitable private company.
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That's a cute view of companies. I have worked at several large corporation, an frankly they have little clue as to who is really productive.
I currently work cor a city government. There is so little waste here compared to any public government.
What I want to know is why government workers get bonuses.
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The three credit bureaus control enough as it is, thank you.
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Privatize? Really?
This will never happen:
"Your patent has been rejected, we ( the patent review company ) already have a patent on that."
"PS: we will have our eye on you..."
Re:8300? Let that sink in a moment (Score:5, Informative)
There aren't 8300 people working on each patent application. The USPTO received 609,052 patent applications last year. There are (roughly) 200 working days in a calendar year (accounting for sick leave, vacation, an minimal training/in-service time). Each patent receives (on average) less than 3 man-days total for your diligence in determining the patent background, current state of the art, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
There aren't 8300 people working on each patent application. The USPTO received 609,052 patent applications last year. There are (roughly) 200 working days in a calendar year (accounting for sick leave, vacation, an minimal training/in-service time). Each patent receives (on average) less than 3 man-days total for your diligence in determining the patent background, current state of the art, etc.
609,052 / 8300 workers = 7 patents to review per worker per year.
If each patent takes 3 days to review, then that is 255 - 21 = 234 days left to do nothing.
Therefore, patent office working as expected!
Re:8300? Let that sink in a moment (Score:4, Informative)
Um how is 609,052/8300 = 7? My math shows 73.379759...., so 73.4ish.
Did you add an extra 0 and make it 83,000?
And therefore 73.4 * 3 = 220.2
So yeah.
Shenanigans (Score:5, Informative)
As a reviewer for USPTO, I can tell you... I just diarrhea though my queue, spending less than 10 seconds on a typical application... 2: Applications that are a refile of a previously rejected one.
No Examiner calls themselves a "reviewer"; it takes more than 10 seconds even to approve an application; and no Examiner would refer to continuations or RCEs as "refiles".
Suspicious post from anonymous poster that just happens to confirm every anti-patent bias is suspicious.