Why?
The "why" is in the linked article: It's in the playbook of people trying to manipulate you into letting them work half as much as their coworkers (thereby screwing over coworkers, who are forced to pick up the slack).
If you care about your team, you don't sit idle while one of the employees is slacking off, putting in half the effort as their peers, or manipulating their way into doing less than others.
There we go! "Slacking off" is not relevant. What's relevant is that you, as my manager at a company I already work for, are happy with my work, or not. It shouldn't matter whether it takes 100%, 80%, 50%, or 20% of my capacity to make you happy. This would be completely non-controversial in the vast majority of jobs.
Truth is, double job workers are usually caught because they're underperforming. But smart managers give employees the benefit of the doubt and don't go firing people at first signs of underperformance. If someone has a legitimate reason for falling behind for a while (maybe overleveled during hiring, maybe struggling with real life issues, etc.) then we work with them. If they have a manipulative/deceptive reason (working two jobs, avoiding work) then it's better off that we replace them with someone who cares.
If you think that a job is a simple matter of "do fixed pile of work every week", that's not how 95% of software jobs work. We rely on a 2-way communication with employees to establish what's reasonable, and if someone is manipulating us into lowering expectations (literally the title of this article) then they must go and be replaced with someone who cares.
And you've still misunderstand the 2-way feedback loop about effort estimation.
You have this misconception that a job is an isolated 1:1 relationship with an employer where units of work are passed in isolation back and forth. In the real world, something like this does huge damage to the team by forcing everyone else to compensate for the deliberate underperformance.
I didn't say a job. I said the job I'm hiring for.
If you're going to come in and deliberately do as little work as possible to extract as much as possible from the team, why should I give the job to you instead of someone who is actually honest and cares?
You're not entitled to any job you want, obviously. I usually have 10-100 applicants who would honestly do the job and not sandbag their work onto peers. Obviously we would all rather have the honest employees working on the team.
In what moral system do you deserve the job more than literally any other honest employee if you're dead set on doing less than them and lying your way through the job?
If nothing else, having two jobs becomes a conflict of interest with a huge monetary incentive to continue lying. There's also the matter of trade secrets as people often come from related companies.
If, as an employee, your philosophy is to grift what you can, expect companies to do the same. And good employers actually don't.
Well said.
If the entire relationship is built on lies and deception, it begins to show over time. Employees who build their relationship based on manipulating their employer (setting low expectations, as the article suggests) aren't the same employees helping their teammates, working together to get things done, and shipping good work. They're the ones that need constant manager attention and slowly siphon the energy out of their peers and managers. Removing them from the team is a win for everyone.
But pretending that working two full-time salaried jobs are OK because no one has actually caught you? Wow.
And you're basically providing a template for manager who don't believe in more flexible working arrangements to deny them. I'd love for people for that to be kicked hard to the curb.
You've already implied you'd do whatever you could get away with:
Oh, and let's not pretend companies won't do "whatever they can get away with," either. Read the news if you need examples.
Employees get W2s, contractors get 1099s.
And, no, I've never signed anything stating I'd work "40 hours" for a tech company. I edited this into a previous comment, but this is literally the applicable phrase from my last offer letter:
> As an exempt salaried employee, you will be expected to work the hours, including evenings and weekends, required to perform your job duties.
It goes both way, you see. I accomplish my duties in less than 40 hours, I get to be done. If my manager is happy with my work, quite frankly, why does it matter how long it takes?
BTW, it does appear that, despite you being technically an employee, you're doing piecework like a contractor would. Piecework work is, indeed, paid for the piece, not the hours. If that is the agreement with your employer, then there is nothing dishonorable about it, and I withdraw my criticism.
I don't know if you want to call it "piecework" per se or not, but, every tech job I've ever had has required me to make an estimate of what I think I can accomplish during a given period (generally a 2 week sprint). As long as there's no push back on whether that's sufficient or not from my manager, if I accomplish those things, it doesn't matter how long it takes. I can take 50 hours, or I can take 20, and I still get paid the same. I don't get paid additional money if I finish my original commitment in 20 hours, then take on more work, which, as you may understand, doesn't give me a great incentive to do so.
Salaried jobs I've had all expected me to work 40 hrs. I'd moonlight on my own business, but was always careful to get a signed agreement in advance from my employer allowing me to do so. Some people moonlight and then live in terror of their employer finding out and claiming ownership over the moonlight business, but getting the agreement in advance forestalls that problem.
Why is it their coworkers responsibility to make sure enough total labor is present? According to you, anyone not giving 100% is slacking and doing something wrong, so I assume their coworkers are already giving 100%. Why should they have to work harder than 100% because management is bad at getting workers?