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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

If someone joins your company as a remote employee but publicly advertises themselves as working for someone else, you investigate further.

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.

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> If you care about your team, you don't sit idle while one of the employees is slacking off.

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.

In the real world, managers don't look at a task and schedule out exactly 40 hours of work each week. We trust our employees to give us feedback and healthy estimates.

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.

It's not "do fixed pile of work every week." It's "provide a multiple of N worth of your salary value to the company." The amount of work necessary to do so is (should be) irrelevant. Effort is not relevant, and you don't get to demand I commit body and soul to please you if I'm providing a reasonable amount of value.

No, it's about "Is this employee occupying headcount and payroll that would be better used on someone more deserving".

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.

Oh, wait, now I need to deserve a job in addition to being able to perform all aspects of it adequately with respect to the offered compensation? You really are something if that's what you believe.

> Oh, wait, now I need to deserve a job

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.

Well, okay. If I can do the job, and I am doing the job adequately relative to the compensation offered, why do I need to deserve your job?

Not to put too fine a point on it, people like the parent are just scum who make life difficult for everyone else. Having a tough period for whatever reason? Oh, they probably have another job because that's what the cool kids do.

If, as an employee, your philosophy is to grift what you can, expect companies to do the same. And good employers actually don't.

> 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.

Allowable small side gigs (which I've always been very open about) are totally cool. And often even positive for my employer. But this idea that so long as you can slip under the radar with working at 50% and beg off of tasks?

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.

It's also why employers are tempted to install monitoring software.

Companies do precisely what capitalism gives them incentives to do. "Grift" is not a meaningful concept. A company can and will do anything the people managing it believe they can get away with that will increase their bottom line, yet, somehow, this behavior becomes unacceptable when it's a lowly worker doing it?

Honorable people are honorable in spite of what other people do.

Yes, and that is a non sequitor.

Do you think it's honor that's keeping the peace? It's fear! Fear and blood!

Would stealing from your employer be ok as long as he doesn't notice?

Who's stealing? Why the red herring?

Working half of the agreed upon hours is, what?

You've already implied you'd do whatever you could get away with:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29668597

Again, I told you, I never agreed to work X amount of hours for any tech company I've ever worked at. In fact, it's always been made clear to me by my managers that time and effort spent is irrelevant, and only results count. Deliver on your sprint commitments, and you're gold, regardless of how long it takes.

Oh, and let's not pretend companies won't do "whatever they can get away with," either. Read the news if you need examples.

Then you're doing piecework? I thought you said you weren't a contractor. I've done piecework, too, which is deliver a product to a specification. But that's not as an employee.

Employees get W2s, contractors get 1099s.

No, I'm not a contractor. I work as an employee.

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?

You said you worked as an IC. I presume that meant Independent Contractor.

Individual contributor, as distinct from, say, an executive, who is someone who actually might get an employment contract in the US. I apologize for the confusion.

Thanks for the clarification. I appreciate it. Apology accepted!

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.

You're quite welcome, and, BTW, I also edited out the rude phrase I used in my frustration trying to communicate my status here.

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.

Recent years have seen a flurry of expensive lawsuits over the difference between a contractor and employee, most recently at Uber, so my views on that are likely outdated. I shouldn't be surprised that employers these days err on the side of caution and reclassified many traditionally contractor jobs as employee jobs.

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.

You're misunderstanding me again. I do the job of an employee. I simply have never had any expectation of "40 hours," or any other fixed amount of hours placed upon me as a salaried tech employee.

> as their coworkers (thereby screwing over coworkers, who are forced to pick up the slack)

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?

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