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Comment by uselessemployee | Hacker News Reader

Since WFH started I don't have to pretend to be working anymore. I get maybe 1 hour at most per day and even that is not always. The rest of time I read books, walk outside, play games, do my own stuff.

I honestly believe my position and my team entirely could be fired and nothing would change for company's bottom line, perhaps it would even improve. It does hurt a bit because a number of employees were laid off recently, while they were actually useful.

I am "working" as a developer in one of bigger tech companies here in EU.

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More or less in the same boat, but slightly different. Since WFH started I don't pretend to be working anymore when I'm actually not.

Before (at the office): arrive at 9am, leave at 17pm. Work (productively) for around 4h. 1h or so for lunch and multiple breaks. 1h or so of socializing. 2h or so wasted doing... what? I don't even remember.

Now (WFH): start at 11am, finish at around 16pm. 30min/1h break. I work the same amount of time as before Corona (in terms of productive hours), but I don't waste time anymore.

Deliverables are still the same, we still manage (as before) to push our products further.

I'm curious as to how this happens. I'm sure everyone's been in the situation where there's a blocker that goes on for a while or they've been assigned to a team/department but not told what to do. But this sounds different.

How are dev tickets tracked if at all? Are there daily stand ups where you and your team just bullshit for 15 seconds each? Do your superiors not expect deliverables?

There is Jira of course, and somehow tickets do get resolved eventually, perhaps my 3-4 hours per week is enough for that.

Daily stand ups are the funniest. I get to work on my bullshiting and improvisation skills. Sometimes I say stuff that I could have done but just could not be bothered enough. Interestingly, I found out that nobody really cares or follows up on that.

Occasionally other people reach out to me for help. Sometimes I do help them, sometimes I pretend to be too busy for that.

I think this happens because higher management are so full of themselves and genuinely believe in what they are supposedly doing that they cannot comprehend a simple idea of being useless and just not having much for others to do. There is a quote about exactly this situation, has been quite popular recently.

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