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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

The people who do this aren't interested in putting in full workweeks and delivering good work.

Their goal is to find jobs and managers with low expectations, then sandbag as much as possible ("Gee, this task is harder than I thought. Going to take a couple weeks longer than we estimated!").

Had a team member try this and an old company. We caught on quickly when they couldn't keep up with their workload and were constantly unavailable during the day. Really sucked for the rest of the team who had to pick up the slack this person created by pretending to work full time.

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I think this highlights one of the most important problems with people taking on multiple tech jobs: it’s the fellow employees that suffer the most. Some lost money is a drop in a bucket for most big companies, but other people just trying to do well at a single job really pay the price.

There are companies where the level of expertise is so low, you look like a genius beside them. I did this, I worked several jobs in parallel. The pay was... not really amazing, about 8k/mo when I had 3 projects at the same time. And in most of the cases I was a main player in some important parts of the system. I think _some_ people caught on. But I also think they didn't care that much because I solved their problems, unblocked their people and was always responsive, if push came to shove, I would put in the extra time to make the damn thing work and ship it.

Given your username, how did/do you manage to pass the interview for all those jobs? At least one of your interviewers would likely have asked if you've "finished" working with your "previous" employer or a question alluding to it. Either that or they would have done a background check via Experian or LexisNexis.

Who quits their job before finding another one?

It's not necessary for one to have already quit one's job. A question I've received is "What made you want to change jobs?" The question assumes that you are or will be removing yourself from a position at one's current/previous employer upon being accepted for the new job.

well if the work got done, and stuff shipped, then it does not look like anyone has the right to be angry.

i personally tried to do two jobs (with full agreement from both sides) splitting my week half half. It was a real struggle, but it is possible.

It’s actually really hard if you approach this from a well-meaning perspective, because typically you’d still be selecting the jobs based on your normal (when having a single job) criteria.

The key is to turn the thing upside down and seek out the jobs you’d normally reject - shifty companies with lower pay, bad tooling, tons of bureaucracy, etc - basically a place where no sane developer would willingly apply. Then, you’ll be the smartest person in the room without having to do anything special and the extra bureaucracy can be either automated away or come in handy as an excuse when you fall behind, while the lower pay isn’t really a problem if you have 4 of them running concurrently.

then beurocrats are a feature protecting you, not a bug

Stuff ships because people work hard to make that happen. If one member was dead weight, it’s not fair to simply point to a successful product - other people had to put in the work, probably extra work, to make that happen.

8k/mo total or per project?

Total. Rates were... not great. They sucked, honestly, at least compared to what I hear on here on HN. Slightly over 45 Eur/h all project rates summed. Somewhere in Eastern Europe. That's great for someone who grew up and went through college on about 150 USD/month, so of course I felt like a king.

Maybe don't have such low expectations that someone can moonlight your job for shits. Fire non performers fast.

Companies take forever to fire people.

Though I have worked for companies where “hire slow fire fast” was an actively spoken belief by senior leaders and executives.

They currently sit at a 2.8 on Glassdoor.

Think of that however you will.

If you're going to fire fast, what is the benefit of hiring slow?

The dopamine hit that comes from selection bias, probably.

Last I heard, the executive who manifested this mindset is gone, too.

Poetic.

If my snark wasn't clear, it's a mindset of hiring and personnel management that I think is lazy at best, total shit at worst.

In theory, hiring slow gets you better employees. Firing slow gets you better employees. So if you combine the two, you get the best employees.

Not what I believe, but that's the logic they were using

tsk! you're not supposed to ask that!

> Really sucked for the rest of the team who had to pick up the slack this person created by pretending to work full time.

The solution is to escalate the "sandbagger" problem to someone who can fire and replace them, not cover for them.

This is what consultancies do all the time.

The issue is mainly one of false advertising. Companies are looking for very different things in a consultant vs. a ft employee.

If you want to do this “scam” in an ethical way without the reputation risk, just be a consultant, work for multiple companies, and be honest about it.

You won’t get benefits and finding clients will probably be harder, but you can set your own schedule and charge a lot more for your time.

I'm not saying they are in the right, I'm just saying we accept consultancies adding hours for nothing as a default nowadays.

But yeah being a freelance would give you the freedom (at the cost of more time spent selling yourself).

Sorry, I meant the impersonal “you” (anyone reading the comment), not you specifically.

> This is what consultancies do all the time.

No, consultancies do not double-bill multiple clients for hours worked.

In fact, anyone billing a company in full for time that someone wasn't actually working on their project is committing fraud. Fraud that leaves a paper trail. This story would be brought to light very quickly by a disgruntled employee somewhere.

No, they bill senior hours for people with 3 years experience. Same thing.

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