Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

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This doesn't quite work because employee productivity assessment is very grey, and there's a lot of goodwill assumed in the equation.

It's difficult to measure employee productivity. Sometimes, managers don't care. Sometimes employees make every effort to hide their lack of productivity.

Despite that we might think of companies as 'evil' - most of them are not. We're all human, none of us like laying people off or firing them. It also comes with negative political consequences i.e. the person you fired may never be a good reference in the future. The manager may have negative incentive to let people go, as their 'worth' is founded on headcount. And truly the vast majority of employers just don't want to layoff or fire if that don't have to.

What this means is that there is quite a lot of 'grey' in the system, and there's a lot of goodwill assumed by all parties.

Everybody is saying that they want to do 'remote work' and at the same time signalling that they may 'want to do the least, because technically, I'm getting paid for that?' - in a situation wherein there is quite a lot of 'trust' expected?

How do we expect employers to 'trust' workers in a 'very noisy productivity assessment channel' with this kind of approach?

It just won't work.

There isn't enough time in the world to be looking over each other's shoulders like that (I particularly don't like Amazon's approach for example).

So the onus is on us to 'do a good job'. It doesn't mean 'break your back' - it means try to do what is expected, keep your chin up, grind through it.

I feel that if people could see the big picture, and see that mountains are climbed one step at a time, that morale across the board would be higher. 'Passion and inspiration' are nice, but fleeting, whereas 'grinding' through the issues is how most things ultimately get done. In this way, they might be more personally incented to 'fix that bug' or 'get that build out'.

You don't have to think of companies as evil. They are not inherently immoral, but they certainly are amoral. They will let you go the moment it is no longer profitable to keep you. Have you been through a layoff before? The executives wring their hands, talk about what a tough decision it was, uproot dozens to thousands of lives - and then get a nice fat bonus when the cost savings reports come in, and the stock value goes up.

Things like that teach me that corporate "good will" is an elaborate show. You are an expense to them, a necessary expense to achieve a certain output. You are paid your market value, not penny more. If they can pay you half your salary to get the same output, they will. If they can lay your team off and get significant cost benefits, they will. You are disposable. That doesn't mean they're bad people, they're just doing what any self-serving profit-seeking bureaucracy would do.

Thus the relationship between an employer and an employee is always transactional, and any feeling otherwise is an illusion. It's not evil - it just is.

The only asterisk to all of this is if you're at a more community-focused organization like a non profit. But the vast majority of companies that employ HN readers are not that.

" They will let you go the moment it is no longer profitable to keep you. "

First - you're mixing streams here.

This is not 'amoral'.

This is just people trading services.

It's not 'amoral' of you to not keep the plumber on when he's done.

Second - companies actually do avoid layoffs. Most companies could layoff 10% right now and not skip a beat. Especially white collar. Google could dump 1/2 it's staff and be just fine.

Most companies have slack and generally avoid doing layoffs unless there's a special situation.

"the relationship between an employer and an employee is always transactional, and any feeling otherwise is an illusion."

Generally, this is the case, yes, why on earth would anyone think it's anything else?

Why on earth would a company employ people otherwise?

But again, once people are employed, they're not doing to drop them instantly.

It's all besides the point, in any case, one should be aspiring to 'Do A Good Job'.

"Amoral" means neither moral nor immoral. That's exactly how I would describe a transactional relationship, so yes, I'll stick with that word.

> Most companies have slack and generally avoid doing layoffs unless there's a special situation.

You're just making arbitrary claims here - the fact that companies can and do lay people off without notice and, sometimes, without severance, still confirms the nature of what I'm saying. It's all feel good until it isn't.

> why on earth would anyone think it's anything else?

I don't know; ask the others in this thread. There are plenty of people here claiming that they owe their company things (time, emotional investment) that go beyond the scope of their employment contract simply because it's "nice."

> once people are employed, they're not doing to drop them instantly.

This is simply not the case. Or, rather, it can be the case so easily and at any time that it's foolish to assume otherwise.

And truly the vast majority of employers just don't want to layoff or fire if that don't have to.

I've seen far too many corporate moves that were driven by executives looking to goose the stock price to believe that. You can argue that it's the executive's job to goose the stock price, and thus they "have to" lay off people in order to avoid taking as much of a financial hit in a recession or whatever, but that just gets us back to the original position: the company has a minimum amount of loyalty to me, and, in return, I have a minimum amount of loyalty to the company.

Layoffs to goose stock prices are not actually that common, it's also very short-sighted.

In the face of a major recession, execs are not laying off to 'goose the stock' they are adjusting to the situation.

Of course it does happen, but in the grand scheme of corporate development across all industries, it's not hugely common.

There is a difference between 'loyalty' and 'doing a good job'.

It's not expected that companies will keep contractors for the long term, but they still would be expected to 'do a good job'.

And of course companies do not lay off talented people unless they have to - that makes no sense.

Even the most darkly cynical and Machiavellian Execs will try to keep talent if they can, otherwise, they can't make money. So more appropriately, employees will at least be held onto to the extent that they materially create value.

But again, even in that context 'Do A Good Job'.

Honestly, if even it's a crap company, it still makes sense to 'Do A Good Job'. Even in the face of grind.

The only time I think it makes sense to 'not' do a good job, is where it would be truly utterly futile or illegal etc..

If someone is in a bad situation, they can eventually move on to where their 'good work' is more appreciated / better compensated.

Loyalty isn't a huge requirement, but doing good work is.

I'm not sure what you mean by "do a good job". I will, of course, meet the requirements of the role as they are set out before me. I will do that even if the job is crap. But if you want me to come in earlier than 08:59:59 or leave later than 17:00:00, you'd better be offering something in return.

My current employer, fortunately, does. Even before COVID, they were flexible w.r.t. work from home, and the management is more than willing to let you do your thing as long as you're delivering results. I will, and have, repaid that flexibility by going above and beyond in handling issues that weren't strictly my responsibility, working late on more than one occasion to ensure that deliverables got out the door in time.

However, I have had the misfortune for working for less understanding management. I've had management say, with a straight face in a team meeting, "If you're working from home, you ain't working." I've worked for management that openly ridiculed employees who had to take time off for family medical emergencies. You can be sure that, in those situations, I clocked out exactly when I considered my shift over.

> It's difficult to measure employee productivity. Sometimes, managers don't care. Sometimes employees make every effort to hide their lack of productivity.

The former is the employer's problem and as far as the latter, I assume in this discussion that the employee isn't committing borderline or outright fraud with respect to the job description laid out in the contract. Considering how many people get hired to do flex work like security guards or to deprive competitors of talent, plenty of employers are aware of this dynamic.

However, my goodwill only goes as far as "at will" employment protects me, which isn't very much.

> my goodwill only goes as far as "at will" employment protects me

Something tells me that the commenters in this thread who are defending the idea of working hard just for the good fuzzy feelings have never been through a bad layoff.

I bet they've never been illegally fired because HR has no idea how FMLA works, been through a workers' comp lawsuit because the amount of stress in the work environment triggered their bipolar disorder, or sexually harassed to the point where they had to quit to salvage their mental health.

If those sound like awfully specific examples, they are. Each one of them actually happened to someone I know.

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