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Comment by dx034 | Hacker News Reader

Not sure about the arguments regarding ethics. When I'm an employee, my contract is with the employer. They pay me, they evaluate me and their success is what determines my progress (in a good company). Sure, coworkers can suffer if I refuse to do my work, but I'm not there to make them happy, I'm there to make the company money.

So I don't think it's unethical to work less as long as your employer is still happy with what you do. Sure, lying is always suboptimal. But if your company likes your output and would just be confused by the hours needed to achieve, I don't see a big problem with it. You could even argue that working full time and producing 8x as much could bring coworkers in trouble who already can barely match OPs output. And they will exist, he wouldn't have gotten to the point where he is if he constantly was the worst performer.

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> So I don't think it's unethical to work less as long as your employer is still happy with what you do.

Then tell the truth and deal with the consequences.

Why? Perception is reality in engineering. I'm not incentivized to be anything other than slightly above average... people have horrible memories and velocity is very arbitrary. Engineering is a charlatan's paradise full stop; sounding smart is easy. In sales (especially) and marketing, there are real numbers that you drive. Everyone has bad quarters but if it continues, you will be let go.

> sounding smart is easy

If talking with much less technical people

But not if talking with a brighter and more experienced person

>> tell the truth

> Why? Perception is reality in engineering

There's also the saying that goes "pick your battles". -- Compared to other things in life, how important is it that the managers know that in fact you work only so and so much?

I'm not sure if you care or whatever, but this could be helpful advice. In general, those in academia and engineering (especially) don't have the social skills to tell apart a charlatan from someone with "true smarts".

There is no amount of "smartness" that will allow you to tell the difference... they will flatter you, shadow you, mimic you, and hide behind esoteric jargon. And chances are, you will be none the wiser.

Thanks for the advice

I've met one or more such people already (no harm was caused, but thereafter I started paying even less attention to clothes and voice and self confidence etc). Good to get to hear your perspective.

Please note that I included the words "more experienced" -- meaning, you would be more experienced, know more than them, about the things they were talking about. Any esoteric jargon -- you'd know all of it.

But you had in mind areas where one isn't experienced oneself, and then I think you're right. It's a different thing than what I was trying to write about though

> Engineering is a charlatan's paradise

Aha, you meant that the engineers could be fooled by business/sales/law people. Then I better understand what you wrote. (First I interpreted that text, the other way around)

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