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Comment by Posibyte | Hacker News Reader

> The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5

I completely understand the latter issue about taking off randomly for wild reasons, but why is working agreed-upon hours a bad thing?

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Because the code-slaves should work harder and give at least 80hrs a week!

No, but seriously, if a job is asking more than 9 to 5, they're asking you to put out sub-standard work while stealing your time needlessly.

So many people here forget 12 hours pay for an 8 hour day was a rallying cry for organized labor at one point, and that all these terrible labor practices that seem common at smaller tech firms (and Tesla) are very bad and create bugs, sickly workers and hurt everyone involved. Not that management is smart enough to realize that!

If you're an exempt employee (you're exempt if you're not an hourly employee or making over ~$23,000 USD in the USA), means that you're not qualified for overtime. When other team members are putting in over time, but a few people aren't they're effectively freeloading on the people putting in more effort.

If there's more work to do than what the current employee set can do in 40 hrs/wk, then the team didn't hire enough employees. I realize that rare is the team that is fully staffed, but the employee shouldn't be obliged to make up the delta because management didn't hire appropriately.

So , the company tries to extract free labor but the person who doesn’t let them get away with it is the person you blame???

I don't see how it's free labor. I'm not sure if you're European or American, but in the U.S. most professional jobs don't have set hours, it's more you work until the task is satisfactorly completed within defined time constraints.

I'm American but I have luxury of working as a consultant - I get paid for every hour. I've worked for lots of companies and without exception, I've really like working for the company and when there was an occasional push, worked some extra hours. That said, I'd take some comp time later.

"in the U.S. most professional jobs don't have set hours, it's more you work until the task is satisfactorly completed within defined time constraints."

Then the company won't mind if I leave early when I have my work done right? Oh, you mean this relationship with the company is only supposed to go one way - to the company's benefit?

[Twirling my mustache] Wouldn't it be great if we could convince an employee (that we are exploiting) that the reason he has to work late is because another employee didn't donate labor to the company (and not that the deadlines are unrealistic)?

I think employers and employees sometimes forget that this is a value for value, business relationship. Think of what's implied in the common phrase "I gave him a job." An employer doesn't "give" someone a paycheck anymore than an employee gives the employer his labor - it a value for value trade.

No, the company is the freeloader in this case. I don't know where you get this whole idea of no set hours. Salaries are based on the expectation of 40 hours a week. If a company is asking for more than that on a regular basis, that company has some significant issues that need to be addressed. Workers who are not willing to be taken advantage of should not have to suffer consequences for their employers mismanagement.

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