[cattown]

I've been a software engineer and managed software engineers for 20 years and worked in all kinds of businesses. This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion.

Doing just as much work as your employer requires and no more is way less of a problem than employees who actively steal, commit fraud, bring drama and distract other team members, or are introducing defects because they've faked their way into a job they don't have the skills for. Your managers are likely dealing with those problems too, so they may be more aware of your situation than you think and are ok with it. Or maybe not, whatever. Not your problem either way. They can let you know if they're not happy with your performance, which it sounds like they are not doing.

However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race.

Personally, this realization has led me to switch careers. I'm now in a 2 year evenings and weekends program to get certified to do something that has nothing to do with tech. It is a huge pay cut. I also am happier than I have ever been in my adult life because I'm learning something challenging and helping people instead of coasting through 8 or 9 hours of pretending to work every day. Starting over mid-life and finding another thing that I love as much as I loved computers as a teen has been a blessing worth more than any amount of money.

Good luck!

[paxys]

> However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life.

Agree with everything you wrote except this part. I have worked jobs where I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied. I was also massively burned out by the end of it.

On the other hand I have had stretches where I was disillusioned and disconnected from work and was completely coasting, so exactly in the situation the OP describes. I had zero stress at work and used to leave at 5pm sharp, had lots more time for family and friends, picked up some great hobbies, did a lot more weekend trips and extended travel, and my mental health and happiness could not be better because of it.

Ultimately some people derive their life's purpose from their jobs, while to others it is just a necessary annoyance for making money. There's no single "correct" approach to this.

[cvwright]

Just wanted to point out that this

> I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied.

and this

> used to leave at 5pm sharp

are not mutually exclusive.

We have this weird thing in tech where we think that, to be passionate, you have to work yourself into the ground. But this is stupid. There's organizational psych research going back decades showing that teams who work 40-hour weeks will quickly outperform teams working 60 hrs / week. For one thing, they make fewer mistakes and thus have less work to re-do. Fewer bugs to fix.

I've done more than one stretch of intense, focused programming and CS research work when I was a grad student. There was one period of two weeks when my buddy and I both put in about 116 hours one week and 118 hours the next week. I have basically no memory of anything that happened in those weeks, and I never have since like one month afterwards -- like a drug addict on a bender or something. I guess it worked out OK. We got our papers published. But our actual productivity in those last few weeks must have been absolute garbage.

In contrast, I spent last academic year on sabbatical building out my side project, and I don't think there was even one week where I put in more than 60 hours. Personally I can sustain 45 or 50-hour weeks basically indefinitely. But if I ever tried to push it above 55, there was a big price to be paid, and I was useless and braindead for the following day or two.

Be passionate, love what you do, but don't hurt yourself doing it.

There's a quote that I like: Most people vastly over-estimate what they can achieve with intense effort over the span of a week. And they vastly under-estimate what they can accomplish with sustained, moderate effort over the course of a year.

[WalterBright]

> going back decades

Longer than that. In WW2, factories increased hours to 60 to increase production. The workers were all on board with this. Production increased for a while, and then dipped below the 40 hour results.

Some experimentation showed that to get a sustained increase in production, the working hours would be increased for a time, and then brought back to 40, back and forth.

Personally, I'm well aware that when my tiredness exceeds a certain level, any programming work I do has to be undone (thank you, git!) and redone after I'm rested. What I do when I want to work, but am tired, is work on things that don't require much attention, like organizing my office, making backups, etc.

[Qub3d]

NPR's Planet Money just did a great look at this: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/27/1049786108/nice-work-week-if-...

Its very interesting--the research they present suggests that people worked much less before industrialization. It jumped massively as lots of low-skill people took factory jobs for the first time and worked 12+16 hour days, but since then has steadily declined again.

This was the big takeaway for me:

"...some of the leading economic thinkers of the last century expected the gradual shortening of the work week would just keep going. None other than John Maynard Keynes, one of the most important figures in economics - and imaginary friend to the show - famously predicted that we would all be working a 15-hour work week by 2030."

What a crazy idea. Or is it?

[lobocinza]

The Hawthorne experiment found something similar. If I remember it correctly. Both increasing/reducing the illumination in a factory resulted in increased productivity. Unfortunately I think managerial sciences are long dead since consultancy BS took over.

[pavas]

Wasn't the point that change itself caused productivity to increase?

[lobocinza]

Yep, such was the conclusion.

[littlestymaar]

> Just wanted to point out that this

> > I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied.

> and this

> > used to leave at 5pm sharp

> are not mutually exclusive.

For some people it is actually. I'm an evening person and my personal productivity starts increasing during the afternoon. If I leave at 5pm, I leave right when I reach the peak. So when I care about my job it's really hard for me to live before 7pm, and if I didn't have a family I'd probably work until 9 or 10 every night (I still occasionally enjoy staying up until 2am or later every once in a while when I'm on a really interesting subject). A good recipe for a burn-out in the long run I guess.

[whatamota]

You can start working late in such cases. We have a lot of people who come to office at 1pm, and stay till 8pm.

If you are instead the kind of person who really works hard when "in the zone", you can try working 10-12 hours a day when you are motivated and then take a vacation/work 3 hours a day when you are out of your zone. That way you can charge up for your next "in zone" phase.

Kids get used to their parents being there all day during some days and not being there during others. As long as you can be there for them when there is something important for them, they and you would be fine.

[littlestymaar]

> If you are instead the kind of person who really works hard when "in the zone", you can try working 10-12 hours a day when you are motivated and then take a vacation/work 3 hours a day when you are out of your zone. That way you can charge up for your next "in zone" phase.

> Kids get used to their parents being there all day during some days and not being there during others. As long as you can be there for them when there is something important for them, they and you would be fine.

I wish I met a boss who “got used to it” :p.

Anyways, the biggest issue for this lifestyle when you have a family isn't spending enough quality time with your children, it's helping your partner with all the stuff you need to do for the kids (bring them to school, make their dinner, give them a bath, etc. etc.).

[jackson1442]

That's what I do personally. I'm a student, so I'm not working consistently full time but there are definitely days where I'll work 9+ hours and days where I work 3 or not at all. Usually averages out to about what my hours goal for the week is, it just depends entirely on how I'm feeling on a given day (and I'm hourly, so I track all this).

[devdas]

And then you get the managerial types who demand your presence for morning meetings.

[lolc]

When I work at night I won't be in the next day. Or return in the afternoon to clean the branch for review.

Sometimes I work a weekend. Love the ability to work on the rainy days and go outside when the weather is good.

[kittiepryde]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30793826/

Do you happen to know of good studies to back up --- organizational psych research going back decades showing that teams who work 40-hour weeks will quickly outperform teams working 60 hrs / week --- I've heard this before, but, I've never seen the studies talked about.

I found this study via Googling, it took a little longer than I would like to admit. (I'm probably using the wrong search terms)

It definitely paints a more complicated picture - from a manager perspective, they could say that more hours equals more work - except they should be measuring worker engagement according to the study I linked, because it's more heavily associated with productivity than total hours worked - but they could say this is hard to do, it's just cheaper for the company to make everyone work more? That kind of company is definitely a place I would not want to work, but more studies, might make it easier to justify a change if you find yourself in one of these organizations?

[_y5hn]

I were going to say this, but found it in the Results / Conclusions part (nice link!). So to paraphrase:

Results: Working >40 to 50 hours per week and >50 hours per week were significantly positively associated with work productivity in univariate analysis. However, the significant association no longer held after adjusting for work engagement. Work engagement was positively associated with work productivity even after controlling for potential confounders. Working hours were not significantly associated with work productivity among those with high-work engagement or among those with low-work engagement.

Conclusions: Working hours did not have any significant associations with work productivity when taking work engagement into account. Work engagement did not moderate the influence of working hours on work productivity, though it attenuated the relationship between working hours and work productivity.

In my personal experience of workplace since 90's, whenever you have the chance to "level up", work a bit extra to gain a bit more progress and experience, it's absolutely worth it. If you don't gain anything by it or have no meaningful work to do (ie. process-related tasks and projects), it is worth more to you to leave work for another day.

I've become sensitive enough I can feel the stress begin to build at the end of the day, and know which day is worth to leave work (most days), and which rare day is worth more to you to stay a bit longer just to follow that flow out to its end.

Anything new after 3PM can wait to next day. Your mind will anyways work it out in the background if it's important somehow.

[raducu]

Some places can thrive with lots of overtime -- if they can attract the right kind of people, like Space X can. Other places can do great if their employees have no alternatives -- like Amazon. Some can do extremely well if they use slave labor, like ancient Rome or USA.

But in the vast majority of cases a lot of hours worked cannot be sustainable or beneficial to the employee.

[cvwright]

The main result that I’m thinking of is quite old — going back to the Ford assembly line days IIRC. NPR had a great segment on it several years ago. I’m on mobile now, but I’ll try to so some digging when I get back to a real computer.

I suppose there’s a valid question about how well those oldest results transfer from manual labor over to knowledge work like programming. The NPR guest that I’m remembering seemed to think that the effect might actually be even stronger for knowledge work, not weaker.

[notJim]

Exactly this, I've believed in (to varying degrees) the mission of every place I've worked, and still feel passionate about the projects I'm working on, and enjoy the work I'm doing. I've also rarely worked more than 40-45 hours a week, and fairly often work less than that. If I ever worked somewhere that actually required more than that I would find a different job, because I am not built for working many hours per week.

[Aeolun]

> There's organizational psych research going back decades showing that teams who work 40-hour weeks will quickly outperform teams working 60 hrs / week.

I feel like this has less to do with the amount of hours worked and more with the kind of organisation/manager that would have their employees actually working 40 hour weeks.

[cloverich]

They aren't mutually exclusive. Being very interested and motivated at your job does not mean you have to work long hours, sacrafice vacation, or tune in during off hours. Some of the best (staff level) people I ever worked with absolutely killed it while at work, and would take multiple 2 week vacations and say "dont contact me while I'm out" (etc).

[novok]

We spend a lot of our limited lives at work, we should strive to make work enjoyable for ourselves and others. Making work enjoyable can be many things, from changing careers, reducing hours, changing how it's done or changing your personal beliefs about it.

It's a miserable experience for you and the people around you to have constant low level subconscious resentment for working. It leaks out into your personal life and your working life.

[paxys]

Detachment does not equal resentment. I find that the whole “you must be fully devoted to your work or you are doing something wrong” ethos to be uniquely American, and pretty troubling when forced.

It is possible for someone to go in to work, do what they are supposed to do, and then go home, all without being overly “bought in” or making people miserable. Heck I feel more miserable when someone is forcing team building events or drinks with coworkers after work.

People also have the ability to partition their work and personal lives such that one does not affect the other at all. I personally never check my work phone after hours, while there are several people who are active on project or social channels at all times of day or night.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. People have different approaches to the concept of corporate work and what part of their lives to devote to it.

[a9h74j]

I've seen it suggested that people tend to be level in personal growth while advancing in career growth, or level in career growth while advancing in personal growth, either more or less deliberately.

[goodpoint]

> ... jobs where I truly believed in the mission ... I was also massively burned out

This can be true but being in alienating jobs that you don't care about is also a cause for burnout. Both extremes are dangerous, it's well established.

[oakfr]

I am with you on most of your points, but definitely not on the "normal and mostly acceptable".

The truth of our domain is that you can get great work done in 3-4 hours a day (I am referring to deep work here, not meetings). In fact, most of us become much less productive beyond that. The remaining hours can/should be spent on useful meetings, reading, learning new things, chatting to people about things, etc.

Coasting from a standup to the next with zero work in between is definitely not normal (_if done on a regular basis_) and the sign that something is not right in your current situation.

You may find it OK right now and for years on end. But you're likely going to pay a hefty bill for this many years down the road. I am not saying you should live Elon's life. But finding something meaningful to do with your life should be a goal, I believe.

[PragmaticPulp]

> I am with you on most of your points, but definitely not on the "normal and mostly acceptable".

The "normal" part is easy to disprove: If everyone was doing near zero work and lying their way through standup about it, nothing would ever get done. That may be normal in certain zombie organizations, but those organizations can't last forever without people doing actual work. Somebody is doing the work, even if the OP isn't.

> Coasting from a standup to the next with zero work in between is definitely not normal (_if done on a regular basis_) and the sign that something is not right in your current situation.

The part about doing nothing all day and then lying their way through standup stood out to me.

Like you said, we all know that programmers aren't hands-to-keyboard programming for 8 straight hours every day, nor do we expect that. However, we do expect that everyone is putting in similar amounts of effort to their peers.

I'm surprised how many comments here are justifying the zero-work behavior because the manager hasn't caught on yet. This doesn't mean the work disappears. It means the person's teammates have to pick up the slack and carry the project forward without the OP.

Working with a deadbeat teammate is an awful experience. If you need to get anything done, the only way forward is to plead with them to get some work done, or just do it yourself. More often than not, the team ends up doing it themselves.

We've all been stuck with deadbeat team mates, from group projects in school to the workplace. It's not okay to be the deadbeat teammate.

[marktangotango]

> However, we do expect that everyone is putting in similar amounts of effort to their peers.

I think there's a distinction here between two types of "work" (at least). Work that moves the product/business forward in tangible ways, in addition to just adding features (decrease down time, reliable repeatable deployments, reproducible, easy to understand configuration, fast bug remediation) and work that doesn't.

I think we've all experienced teams who switch frameworks and libraries at a whim, or worse yet, adopted entirely new languages "just because". They usually don't ask permission, or if they do the sell the decision makers on some hula balu about "increase productivety" or whatever when they really just want to use new cool X. Or howabout the frontend teams that switch naming conventions, and never rename the old stuff before starting another naming convention?

The point being there are a lot of developers who waste a lot of time "working" on things that just don't matter. The business never asked for it, it serves no purpose or real need other than to scratch someones itch (or build their resume). I maintain if wasting time doing nothing is "stealing" from the company, then so is this.

[spaced-out]

>Working with a deadbeat teammate is an awful experience. If you need to get anything done, the only way forward is to plead with them to get some work done, or just do it yourself. More often than not, the team ends up doing it themselves.

I've never had this issue with the projects I've managed.

Create a doc/Jira for the project, including timelines and tasks. Allocate tasks to all teammates. Daily/weekly go through those tasks, updating progress. If timelines are being held back by someone, I'm going to make management aware because I'm not taking the fall. If they're not then I don't care.

[TigeriusKirk]

> those organizations can't last forever without people doing actual work.

Maybe not no work, but very little work, they can last a very long time.

>This doesn't mean the work disappears.

It may have never existed in the first place.

[Retric]

This isn’t about dead beat team members, this is about not having enough work to do which can happen for various reasons. Sometimes companies just want redundancy and don’t care if that costs real money. Other times a team is built and just gets less work than expected and or people are simply more productive. And of course, if you actually want to make important deadlines you want be conservative in how much work the team takes on.

Finally if you get a 10x person but don’t have 10x the stuff to do they often spend a lot of time twiddling their thumbs. You could keep giving them a larger share of work, but that’s hardly fair and you don’t want to reduce staff in case that person quits.

[tharkun__]

I would beg to differ. While I agree that some of your reasoning is valid enough I read the OP as what I would call a dead beat developer.

Its not easy to distinguish sometimes because we all know from our own experience that it just happens that you get a task that happens to have 10 pitfalls hidden in a row and what looks like an easy peasy fix is a day of debugging. Sure.

What usually is the case though is that if this happens 10 times in a row it isn't particularly bad luck. It is very very likely something else. Such as what the OP described. And especially if the manager is also overworked then distinguishing the two cases becomes even harder. Then even a manager that wants to do something can't because you don't want to fire someone that doesn't deserve it based on incomplete information.

Some managers are also just afraid of the organizational hassle, the emotional toll on themselves, might fear the overall consequences for morale too high vs. the morale impact of co workers noticing the slacking or simply couldn't care less since they are doing the same thing just one level up. What's another dead weight at a company the size of GE or a large bank or insurance etc.

I definitely say something. Many others say something as well. But we aren't the majority especially in large orgs. Usually it's known which people you try to keep away from your projects and that's as far as everyone goes.

If you really have a 10x person, there's no need to lie on stand-up 3 days in a row.

[Retric]

I agree that 10 hours per week is rather extreme, but I have been in similar situations. The difference is I tent to say something because boredom gets old. I see less confrontational people say stuff that everyone knows is BS, and then just add the aside about being available if something is more important/useful/pressing.

In the most extreme version of that I once had absolutely nothing to do for months at a time and my manager was completely aware of that fact. Their response, “Look you’re fully billable so if the client is happy I am happy.”

[ConfessionTime]

>However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race.

This is where my comment about remote work comes into play. When I worked in an office, I spent most of the day just entertaining myself on the internet. That isn't great for long-term mental health. Now that I am working from home I can put in the same level of work while spending the rest of my work day in more satisfying ways as long as I keep an eye on my Slack and email for urgent issues. I can't imagine ever returning to an office in which there is more pressure to spend 8 hours a day sitting in front of my computer.

I have thought about switching careers a few times over the years. However anything I would want to switch to would require a big pay cut. My relatively high salary as a software developer is what enables the rest of my life. Maintaining that lifestyle is my priority as that is where I find my happiness.

[somethoughts]

As a SW developer you provide two benefits to the company:

- the build phase: develop spaghetti code

- the maintain/insurance phase: maintain the spaghetti code and keep it up to date with the software package dependencies required by the spaghetti code

In the long term its easier/cheaper to have the person who originally wrote the spaghetti code be around to maintain and add one off small feature improvements to it (i.e. ensure log4j patches are handled properly) than to find/hire/train a new developer every time a 0day patch needs to be applied.

[thow-58d4e8b]

There's one more reason - the one I use to rationalize my idleness to myself: in addition to our work output, the corporations are also paying us to be a part of their "reserve army". We might work 3-4 hours a day, but when things escalate, the company taps into its reserves to get stuff done. Having doldrums about that is like soldiers worrying they only spend 3 hours a day in combat

[somethoughts]

That reminds me of this article for some reason :)

"Google has a secret ‘bench’ program that keeps execs at the company even when they’re not leading anything"

https://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/google-has-a-secret-bench...

[mech422]

I used to work in Operations...there were 2 of us on shift for a 1 man job.. The extra was 'insurance' :-)

[condorito]

In my experience if the system is important enough, once you ship a couple of features to production you can coast there until the system is replaced. If the features were core the better.

I don´t like it but after 2 decades of coding I have come to accept it as it is.

[somethoughts]

I think a good way to frame the role of a SW developer is you are in a sense a manager of a new "team".

But instead of developing new hire training material and recruiting/managing people to do the new task, you're developing/training/creating/deploying software programs/scripts/bots to do what needs to get done for the organization.

While infinitely easier than dealing with HR problems that humans bring along, your team of programs/bots still needs some manager.

And just like a traditional manager, if you set up your "team of bots" just right and handle all the corner cases in the training manuals, a good managers job will actually ideally not be that hard day to day - particularly since the meatspace problems have been abstracted away.

[dennisy]

> I can't imagine ever returning to an office in which there is more pressure to spend 8 hours a day sitting in front of my computer.

But this is what you are paid for. Do you not feel that this is what you should be doing in the time you are contracted to work?

[analog31]

In the US, very few full time professionals work under contract. In fact, companies go out of their way to assert that there is no contractual relationship (the "employment at will" principle). They do not count their hours, and are in fact not allowed to do so.

With that said, I'd find it hard to work such a short week. The time I spend that's unaccounted for, I tend to spend helping other people at my workplace, learning new stuff, etc. I enjoy the work. Granted, I don't work as a programmer.

[CRConrad]

> In the US, very few full time professionals work under contract. In fact, companies go out of their way to assert that there is no contractual relationship (the "employment at will" principle).

Americans keep saying this means "no contract", but I don't get it. You probably have some weird American-only meaning attached to the word "contract" that doesn't apply to the rest of the world, in English as well as other languages. To the rest of us, "a contract" means a formal (usually written) agreement to exchange goods or services for payment. I find it utterly hard to believe that any full-time professional, even in America, is employed without having any piece of paper signed by their employer -- and they a copy signed by him -- that states basically "John Doe and Corporation X agree that John shall work full-time for X, and receive a salary of $Y per month".

If you do, that's a contract. If you don't, how do you know how much of a salary you're going to get at the end of the month? How does HR / Accounts know how much to pay you?

Of fucking course you have a contract. It's just that the terms for termination of that contract, whether specified within it or implicit because of "at will" legislation, are much more abrupt than most everywhere else. That doesn't make it not a contract.

> They do not count their hours, and are in fact not allowed to do so.

Like, if the company wants you to work 272 hours per week (hint: 24 × 7 = 168), you can't say you won't? Or is it the company that can't say anything if you show up three hours a month? Of course they count their hours, at least roughly. Everyone does.

Not that this has anything to do with whether something is a contract or not.

[analog31]

>>>> I find it utterly hard to believe that any full-time professional, even in America, is employed without having any piece of paper signed by their employer -- and they a copy signed by him -- that states basically "John Doe and Corporation X agree that John shall work full-time for X, and receive a salary of $Y per month".

I never signed such a thing. Roughly a quarter century ago, I received a job offer letter with a salary level. I verbally accepted the offer. But my salary is much different today, and there's nothing with my signature on it to that effect. It's very loose and informal. The payroll software knows. This is at a huge and well managed company.

I have no doubt that the company's ability to cut my pay is constrained by regulations, like they probably have to inform me in advance. One of my employers once announced a furlough and temporary pay cut when there was a financial disaster. Nothing was signed.

About counting hours, this is a US thing. We have two classes of employees, depending on whether they are entitled to overtime pay or not. Most professionals are not. There are criteria for classifying employees, and one of them is whether they are required to work a specific number of hours.

Sure a company can say something if I show up 3 hours a month: "You're fired." Or they can cite a specific shortcoming in my performance. What I think is a sub-plot of this thread is that measuring this performance and tying it to a relative workload is not always straightforward.

Note that I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. A lot of it sounds strange because it is strange.

[CRConrad]

> I never signed such a thing. [...] much different today, and there's nothing with my signature on it

I'm forming a hypothesis -- i.e, vaguely guessing -- that this is American culture because employers have pushed it in this direction, because an absence of any paperwork for employees to point to in case of conflict benefits the employer.

> A lot of it sounds strange because it is strange.

America sure is. :-)

[BirdieNZ]

A verbal contract is still a contract, including amendments to it. Being on salary vs paid hourly also doesn't mean anything about whether there is a contract.

[dgfitz]

Personally most of job happens in my head, which half the time is not at work. I should probably get paid for ~15 hours a day instead of ~8. I cant tell you how many times I had a eureka moment about a work problem on a Sunday afternoon idling away at a hobby.

[ltbarcly3]

Actually, no, they can't pay you based on how much time you spend on a task unless you are being paid hourly (and therefore are paid overtime if required to work more than 40 hours per week).

They can ask you to be at work at a certain time, or to do some task a certain number of hours a day, but they CANNOT pay you based on how many hours you spend doing it or they are in violation of labor laws (in the US anyway).

[rpearl]

A software engineer is not paid to sit in front of a computer and that's only a small slice of the work.

[2-718-281-828]

well put! I work in consulting for a large corporation and they pay for me more than 1000 Euro per day. I don't see much of that money but I can't really complain about my salary. It's pretty good (not SV-good, though). Now on average I'd say I work no more than 4 hours. Some days even less. Occasionally I feel proud of that and even brag about it to friends. But deep down I feel how this is just not making me happy. It's also not that I am lazy by any means. I think I am burned out to some extent. This mental state comes with an inability to use the rest of the work day. I spend it procrastinating - which is actually more tiring than working for whatever reason. During office times I thought this is because I have to multitask watching my back and having a solution at hand if somebody suddenly stands next to me. Now being in home office for more than a year it seems that the origin is more something like a spiritual conflict. I'm wasting my time. And I know I'm wasting it. At the same time I feel motivated to become more structured and diciplined so I can game my employer (which I do not respect for a couple of reasons) in a way benefiting me beyond my salary. Having said that I have been taking my car to a garage, doing shopping, reparing my bike or whatever during work time - so, technically, I do benefit. My g/f earns about a third of what I do while actually working a tough, stressful job in full time. Regularly when she leaves the house in the morning I sit there browsing the internet after the obligatory daily and I feel actually a bit ashamed when she sees that. I don't know ... but, yeah, thanks for your post - got me thinking.

[ClumsyPilot]

"My g/f earns about a third of what I do while actually working a tough, stressful job in full time"

There is only one thing i learned, life is deeply unfair, meritocracy is a myth, and noone knows why most things are the way they are.

[kerneloftruth]

I would suggest that you keep studying life. From what I've learned: life was never promised as being fair. Civilization is a thin veneer over the Jungle, but it does try (without ever achieving 100% success), to provide fairness. One can debate where in the world Civilization is thriving vs. struggling (it's mostly struggling). Meritocracy does exist and does work, except where it is undermined (i.e. "Equity", or assigning merit based on immutable physical traits like race and gender).

[jwolfe]

> Meritocracy does exist and does work, except where it is undermined (i.e. "Equity", or assigning merit based on immutable physical traits like race and gender).

Allowing inheritance from one generation to another is an immediate disqualifier for meritocracy as well. As is the existence of private schooling bought with money.

[kerneloftruth]

Apples and Oranges.

Inheritance has nothing to do with meritocracy. One can argue about whether or how much inheritance should be taxed -- but that's a wholly separate, topic.

Hiring, raises, and promotions should not be based on skin color, eye color, gender, or other immutable traits. In a meritocracy, these are instead determined _solely_ by how provably capable a person is (per Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s prescription).

In fact, Meritocracy _would_ explicitly reject the idea of "inheriting" a job (as is done in orgs with nepotism), so I'm confused as to what your point is.

[ClumsyPilot]

"Meritocracy does exist and does work, except where it is undermined (i.e. "Equity"

You really pick 'equity' as the example? I get thats it fashionable to hate on woke politics around these parts, but aren't your forgeting that most of the world is more like Russia, i.e. jungle, where stongest rules because they can, with mirderous intent.

I mean if you are talking about principles of life, its got to be universal, not just applying in a handfull of fortunate countries.

The principles of we go by, they are in conflict with one another.

[astrange]

The word "meritocracy" was invented for a book about how it doesn't exist and would be a bad idea if it did.

[throwawaylinux]

Meritocracy is not that everyone should get the same for the same effort though. It's that everyone should get the same for the same value they sell. And yes value is subjective and always changing and not the same everywhere.

Everything is "unfair" from a perspective. Two people working the exact same job and putting in the same effort, if one person packs twice the number of boxes it would also be unfair to pay them the same as the other person who is creating only half the value for the person paying them.

[arpanetus]

well, if someone is a janitor, and the other one is a software developer, can you actually compare them properly?

if so, then training somebody to become a SEng involves more costs, than training smb to mop a floor.

the guy u responding didn't mention the job his gf does, thus assuming that she's the same software dev, would be a wrong thing to do, i believe.

besides that, she even may obtain the same level, the same set of skills as he does, thus she also has the same opportunity as he does.

that being said there is nothing to discuss about meritocracy, yet i agree with the fact that things are not that meritocratic as we want them to be. why? because there is always an asymmetry in a market, and contracts may always have some flaws (for e.g.: lemon market).

i perceive the case of him since he's not that tired as his gf is. that's just the basic compassion that one wants to feel, and even empathy.

[andrekandre]

  > that being said there is nothing to discuss about meritocracy, yet i agree with the fact that things are not that meritocratic as we want them to be. why? because there is always an asymmetry in a market, and contracts may always have some flaws (for e.g.: lemon market).

i guess that can be one issue, but my experience has been that what usually undermines "meritocracy" is basically office/org politics...

[raducu]

I used to work about 4 hours a day, sometimes not at all and felt terrible inside about myself.

Then I got diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Concerta. The focus is not what I want, but the reduction of impulsivity is doing wonders.

I started seeing the incompetent, manipulative and rude pieces of shit colleagues that I kept attracting (because of self immage and guilt) and that kept leaching on my time, interrupting me when it was obvious I had nothing to do with their problem(I do backend stuff and a coeague insisted I help her fix frontend stuff that doesn't work after the frontend did a deploy, the same for another system).

I realize how I tolerated bullshit from low level management,how I caved in to their frowns and how I turned into their saviour tech wizard which only compounded my problem.

How I tollerated their endless ramblings in meetings upon meetings where they decided nothing or bitterly protected their vagueness to kafquesques proportions.

How I tollerated other peoples indecision and became indecisive myself, because I thought I could not do stuff without them.

How I've ignored my own emotions and needs and played it all logical when people were playing emotional games.

And now with my impulsivity under control, I work a lot longer and stress free, because I can control my impulses so I'm not affraid to answer ironically but still professionally to an agressive email, or to say "guys I have no taks" ... "guys, I asked you for a task yesterday and guess what, I got it by telling your superior that I asked for work and you did not have any, he was delighted to get me in contact with this product owner who has a full backlog".

This makes me so glad and so sad at the same time. This explains why other people were cold and "mean" to these people.

[xupybd]

How did you find out you had ADHD?

I often suspect I have something along the lines of ADHD or Dyslexia ( very mild ) but have no idea how to look into it. I've done a few online tests but end up very border line on most.

[raducu]

It was a long journey and my ADHD is not that severe so perhaps that's why it took so long.

I took hard stimulants before I even contemplated I had ADHD, I treated them just like brain steroids (which I don't advice anybody does).

The first time a psychiatrist offered an ADHD questionair was when I was diagnosed with BPD (mostly resolved since, in part due to age and in part psychotherapy and in parth ADHD treatment) because 25% of people diagnosed with BPD also have ADHD. I really doubted myself and I got a score of 6/9 on both inattentiveness and impulsivity and the psychiatrisy said I needed 7/9 but she was willing to prescribe concerta or atomoxetine (I can't remember which) but I stupidly declined since I had access to hard stimulants and I did not see the benefit at the time.

I gave up illegal stimulants after my daughter was born but I kept using modafinil and nicotine as a cruth whenever shit got real at work; my psychoterapist kept asking me why I don't want to see a psychiatrist colleague of hers that's open minded about ADHD.

Eventually I did, and to my surprise the psychiatrist did a very thorough interview and concluded I most certainly do have ADHD and prescribed Concerta.

I still doubt I have ADHD sometimes, until I take a break from the meds, that's when reality kicks in and I'm sure I have ADHD again :)

[distrill]

same, and i feel dirty asking about it because if you don't have ADHD you're basically just asking about getting speed

[raducu]

What would be so dirty asking for speed?

I did strong stimulants, and while I 100% agree there are even regular people who can get addicted, and people who should not be taking stimulants period (schizophrenia), and that I may be an exception, and all that, but as long as the stimulant is taken orally and at therapeutic dosage, there's nothing wrong with stimulants.

If you don't have ADHD and take stimulants exactly as instructed by a psychiatrist mostly nothing bad will happej (you will get speedy a few times, start a few mega projects, clean your house, and after a while realize you shouldn't believe your stimulant self's has only good ideas).

You could also keep a job that's not for you because stimulants make even boring jobs seem interesting.

But you won't turn into a crackhead just because you take stimulants exactly as instructed by a doctor.

[sundvor]

Concerta is a godsend, so is actually discovering you've got ADHD - as answers on what was "wrong" with you your whole life will be found.

I would encourage the OP to investigate this; the hyper focused mind can achieve greatness once finally in the groove. Finding this flow state can be very hard.

The meds work. As does eg weightlifting. I've been far more successful since I spent the equivalent of a highest end smartphone on a fully barbell kitted garage gym.

[wonderwonder]

It appears we live much of the same life. I work 3 to 4 hours a day at best, and part of that is the standup. Wife works hard for 8+ hours a day and makes a third of my salary. I want to be productive but I just cant seem to do more hours than that. Even those hours of work are broken up.

"his mental state comes with an inability to use the rest of the work day. I spend it procrastinating - which is actually more tiring than working for whatever reason"

I feel the same way. Difference is I actually really like my employer and I still cant focus for more than a few hours a day.

[noduerme]

My regular work is similar. Some days I don't work at all. At most, 3-4 hours. But I think this is because nothing I'm working on is particularly urgent. I'm well ahead of deadlines.

When I really get into my own side projects in code, the last of which I got heavily into about six months ago, I literally forget to eat or sleep and can go on 24-hour marathons - compulsively, without intending to, because I need to make something work. When there is a once-a-year crisis on my regular job, the same thing applies. It's actually beyond my control.

I wish I could harness that level of motivation to e.g. take on 3x as many clients and expand my studio, but just thinking about that makes me shut down. I feel lazy when I spend a whole day reading news sites or something... or even engaging in hobbies like music. But I don't want the burden of 3x as much work that I have to do. I earn low six figures and it seems enough.

[BirdieNZ]

You should learn a bit about adult ADHD and see if it sounds like you, and perhaps get a psychiatrist to see if you match an ADHD diagnosis. It changed my life to find out I was ADHD, and what you said has some correlation.

[2-718-281-828]

of course, the obligatory thing to consider is AD(H)D - which I do suffer from. anyway - interesting that you "really like your employer". do you also like the product and the work environment? looking back though it didn't seem to matter much for my productivity either. liking my employer can even complicate things further because then I feel guilt.

[wonderwonder]

I do like the product. Issue might be that I see no value in what I do, the work I am doing is not going to change the world or make it a better place. I have felt this way about every job I have ever had. It will leave no lasting mark. I would love to leave tech but unfortunately the salary acts as golden handcuffs. I essentially waste 8 hours a day sitting on a chair consuming internet garbage and its somewhat soul destroying.

[seb1204]

Why not work on some public software project in your 'spare' time?

[wonderwonder]

Honestly I just don't have the motivation. Having to do what little work I do drains me. Its not that I am lazy, I will work 90 hour weeks full on cranking if there is an emergency and the success of the project hangs on it its just that I really don't like what I do for a living and it drains the will and happiness from my soul. I don't mean to be dramatic but that's what it feels like but I like the money. I think my goal is to save up a year of expenses this year and then just build something on my own. Going to tackle something like web3 or build something that I would like to use. Mainly I just want to be motivated.

[2-718-281-828]

I don't have the energy anymore for that. I'm 37 - that's 50%.

[BingoAhoy]

This isn't unique to coders. Various successful writers have also reported the same issue. They only have a few super productive hours a day.

[tmnstr85]

I think the real issue arises with equity or the option for equity. Suddenly you're in a much more influential position because if you build the next unicorn internally, its going to take everyone to the moon. That equity needs to be proportional to your input to the stack. That's what i'm hearing from all the "well you can't do this in a small company!" comments.

What often happens when companies start to mature- from small to medium - the equity stops making sense. At the beginning the engineers were in the business meetings, now others are taking credit for the engineers work and you find yourself in a back room being told there's a jira list of defect and bugs to work through. Meanwhile, you wrote the source. That's where the significant hazard mentioned above plays a really wacky role in your mental health.

I'm at the point where I'm just realizing how toxic my situation has been for YEARS. And I'm ready for the change...

[cj]

> This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion.

Perhaps at large companies?

I would hope people applying to jobs at small 5-20 person startups aren't bullshitting and lying about the work they do. Or to reword the same sentiment, I hope people looking for the easiest possible path target their job search at companies with lots of bureaucracy where people not doing your job is more easily tolerated.

Edit: I like the suggestion from someone else in the comments here to "work in an environment where not being productive is not harmful."

[cogman10]

The 5->10 hours a week is definitely on the extreme end of laziness.

However, I do think if you are doing the full 40+ hours only working you are likely heading towards burnout. IMO, 5->6 hours of work in an 8 hour work day is both normal and acceptable to keep people from burning out and ultimately dropping to the 5->10 hour a week range.

[neuronic]

I think there is also this topic of mental work vs. physical work. When I did physical work I could and did work 8-10hrs per day. Even if I wasn’t motivated, just illness was a problem.

But as a software dev I have mostly 5hrs a day of good work, sometimes 9hrs, sometimes 2hrs… then it’s like a block in the brain. Like running out of gas.

Today I mostly just fixed up a tiny shell script. The last couple of weeks have felt like wading through quicksand. I went from amazingly busy in my last project to burned out and „lazy“ in my new project.

[almost_usual]

At a 5-20 person startup there are probably like 5 engineers, there’s no time to waste and everyone knows what everyone is doing.

[gxt]

>Through most of that time I have averaged roughly 5 - 10 hours of actual work a week

>This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion.

If you are expected to engage for 40h/week and only show up for 5-10, this is unacceptable. It's literally theft.

If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's part of your role as senior or architect etc it is acceptable.

If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's not part of your role and you don't attempt to raise the issue that your time is not spent fruitfully, this is unacceptable. You're expected to be autonomous and paid handsomely for it, if this is acceptable wtf is wrong with this industry.

[10hr]

I'm approximately a millionaire in my late 20s and have only really built 1 little thing since 2017...

Might it catch up to me this year? Perhaps, but that's when I will go get an unrelated masters and change to my "retirement career"

[10hr]

Pretty much my only skill is leetcode easy/med + basic sys design and knowing some SRE principles. I almost wish the interview wasn't as gameable so I could move on with my life in a new field

[taswellian]

> You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race.

How?

I find satisfaction in many things, but none of those things pay the bills or put food on the table.

[waynesonfire]

> >You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race.

This is asking the wrong question. A few weeks ago I ran into quote on hackernews... [1]

“Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.”

I hope I'm not stretching this too far as I'm not too good about explaining stuff like this. But, my take away is that you'll discover the things that pay the bills and the things that don't are one of the same. The difficulty of life is finding that peace.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29442307

[tharkun__]

I read that one (and still do) as:

Before you know how you do something it just looks like what it is on the surface. Might even look easy for most things.

Software development is easy right? Bunch of for loops and ifs to tell a computer what to do!

Then you start learning. What do you mean 0s and 1s? That are actually different voltages somewhere on a tiny piece of silicon and metals? Assembler? Compilers? Machine code? A gate? What's an Adder? What's a program counter and what does that have to do with that German dude? (von Neumann ;))

You finally master all this and it becomes second nature or you figure out where you can 'ignore' and still be productive (I remember how I learned how multiplication is actually done on a simple computer and all that but I no longer actively need to know in my day to day work). This just an example but this applies on many many levels and one reason I see all the time for why people get stuck on a problem is because they can't ignore or figure out what to ignore. A very simple one is the ability to just read a stack trace. They simply get lost in the parts I instinctively fly over and don't even fully recognize to find the important part.

And that's when it's just a punch again. It's second nature. Don't even need to actively think. Your subconscious is doing it for you.

[methyl]

> this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health

I can relate to that. I used to work not more than it was required for being perceived as a very productive person (10-15 hours / week), but at some point I couldn't stand it. I co-founded a startup and for first two years I easily crossed 60 hours/week on average, yet I was much happier and had more energy than previously. Of course 60 hours work week is not sustainable, but I definitely felt better mentally doing too much rather than too little.

[nostrebored]

60 hour workweeks are absolutely sustainable?

Desirable maybe not, but I’ve known lots of people who have worked ten hours a day six days a week. Especially if they don’t have other commitments.

[ClumsyPilot]

I think 60 hours of debugging a compiler is different than 60 hours of wining and dining executive clients.

[jpindar]

Sure, debugging a compiler is more fun.

[Sebb767]

I think it's largely depending on the person which of those sounds more tiring. An extrovert would thrive on these meetings, while an introvert might hate every second of them. Conversely, an extrovert might hate sitting alone in front of his PC for 60h, while an introvert might find it very fulfilling (assuming that he loves writing compilers).

[5e92cb50239222b]

I think many doctors work much more than that (60-80 hours each week) for pretty much their entire careers.

[dudeman13]

Yes, and burning out and stress are huge issues for doctors their entire careers too

[ltbarcly3]

No they don't. They do it for a brief period when they are interns, under the theory that if you only have 2 years to make someone a good enough doctor you need that many hours per week to accomplish it.

The majority of doctors work 41 to 60 hours per week. This is self reported, so it is likely that it is somewhat inflated. I once met someone who claimed to work 180 hours one week (do the math).

[ProjectArcturis]

No, they work 60-80 during the 3rd and 4th year of med school, then 80-100 during residency, which lasts 4-7 years. It's absolutely an insane system.

[swagasaurus-rex]

This horrifies me. I want medical professionals, law enforcement, fire departments, basically any essential public service well rested and happy.

[zibarn]

So what

[Matticus_Rex]

Yeah, it depends on the work and the person. I've had periods at my company where 60h absolutely would have been sustainable for what I was working on at the time, and periods at the same company where 40h is still headed towards burnout. And I've experienced much worse elsewhere. I actually really like the periods where I have stable things that give back enough energy to keep me sustainable at 60h.

[throwaway6734]

It depends on the type of work being done

[jollybean]

" This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. "

It's definitely not acceptable.

It's a form of White Collar / 1st World Corruption.

Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value is Fraud.

Just because we don't always have great oversight, does not abnegate our responsibilities towards trying to do a good job.

This notion of 'I Can Get Away With It' and 'Other People Do It' is exactly the kind of logic that someone in an corrupt and dysfunctional system would use to accept taking bribes, or to commit other forms of common crimes.

'Wealthy Nations' are wealthy because people are organized rationally and effectively, - but we can't have oversight over everything.

'Wealthy Nations' run into dysfunction and bloat often due to systematic reasons, but also due to these kinds of scenarios and it's an example of where it breaks down.

Workers are adamant that they want to be 'trusted' to do their jobs and to work remotely - at the same time they want the ability to do 'nothing' in systems which necessarily can't have a lot of oversight, or don't because 'trust' ?

This is unreasonable populism: "Pay me, trust me, but I'm going to do nothing, and if you lay me off over Zoom, you're going to see it on CNN!"

If you want to live in a world of trust, it means you have an obligation to at least try to live up to your obligations.

[wonderwonder]

If OP is considered valuable by the organization and everyone is satisfied by their output then they are providing the value they are being paid for. If they feel they are overpaying OP for for the output he is providing then they would PIP him or at the very least say something. OP though has received promotions so they must feel he is doing a good job.

[jollybean]

Yes - it's perfectly fine if OP isn't stressed or not doing a lot - if their 2-hour genius contributions are worth $200K to the company that's perfectly fine.

This however, is probably not the case.

The common case is that due to lack of proper oversight and bloat, people just coast and do nothing.

It's incredibly hard to have 'true oversight' in software, which frankly is 'just fine' if everyone does their jobs properly.

But if the cost of 'little oversight' is that slowly but surely 'nobody is doing anything', it's not going to work out now, is it?

It's also a moral dilemma.

[paxys]

> This however, is probably not the case.

That's obviously for the company to judge. If they continue to pay him and promote him, why is the takeaway that he is committing fraud by not working an arbitrary 40 hours a week?

[sophacles]

Probably some puritan nonsense. The person is a worker for god's sake - why would you consider them to be worthy of something resembling profit?

[wonderwonder]

I for the most part agree with you. Its probably not 100% on the up and up but a very large group of us do it. If everyone started working the full 8 hours then deadlines would be hit in half time or less. What would prevent the company from then deciding that they have to many engineers and laying off 30% of the workforce? It would save them a ton and they are still getting their goals accomplished in the same time frame as before. I feel like everyone coasting allows 25% of software engineering roles to exist. Don't get me wrong I am not saying we are angels helping our fellow man, quite the opposite; just an interesting thought experiment.

[Apocryphon]

Sounds like the problem is with management not doing their jobs to provide proper oversight. So everyone is derelict in their duties.

[sophacles]

If I go to widgetco and purchase a widget for $100, but it only costs them $50 to make that widget (including all salaries, marketing etc), what do we call that?

That's right profit. They provided me the thing I wanted for a price I agreed to, and they did so in a way that generated some extra $ for them.

Why is it Fraud then when a worker is asked to provide KPIs in exchange for $salary, and meets them in less than the expected time? Wouldn't that be profit also?

[jollybean]

This is the wrong analogy - this is not a situation where there is transparent exchange of good or services.

The OP indicated lying literally in the title indicating there is a lack of transparency and oversight, probably at a systematic level.

So adjust the analogy:

You are buying 'Medical Grade' widgets for $100 a pop for the last 5 years for your projects.

Turns out, the Widgets you were buying were cheaply made and not up to specification.

Because it's difficult for you to check the integrity of the widgets (i.e. there is a lot of trust in the system), you 'trusted' the source only to be defrauded.

And FYI even at $100 a pop, I'm sure you could care less how much or little profit they were making, so long as the terms were clear. Much like nobody cares if an employee is only working 2 hours a week, if everyone thinks that value is provided.

But that's almost assuredly not the case.

[derivagral]

Aren't you assuming that code quality suffers? I don't think that we can assume that in regards to code on this topic. OP's company appears to happily agree that the product is on-spec.

[paxys]

Is there a quantification for the value you are obligated to provide your company written down in your employment contract? If not, on what basis are you throwing around words like "crime" and "fraud"?

[jollybean]

It's Fraud when there is payment for services not rendered.

The problem arises when there's little ability for oversight, which implies a high degree of trust in the system and the mechanism for verification can't be there.

Put another way:

If someone pays you $50 to fill their tires up with air, it's Fraud if you don't do it - irrespective of your customer's ability or willingness to verify.

If your customer was busy on the phone, or with their children, would it be 'Perfect Contractually Acceptable' to not fill their tires up with air 'Because You Can?'?

Either legally or morally - no - it's fraud.

Fortunately, most tasks involve a kind of implicit oversight - i.e. 'you know when your tires were not filled'.

In software, the mechanisms for oversight aren't so great - but that should be fine with all of us to the extent that we're professionals - we don't want Management breathing down our necks anyhow. But the inherent level of trust implies a higher degree of professional competence on the part of all of us.

FYI - this is assuming that there is a problem with oversight. If the OP is doing some 'genius 2 hours a week', the company knows it, is fine paying $150K for that bit of work, that's totally fine.

It's disturbing that this is even a discussion.

[paxys]

You are missing the core part of the question. You say it is fraud when you aren't delivering what was agreed upon – fine, that could be the case. But what were you hired to deliver exactly? Is that written down somewhere? Forget management, can you yourself judge in some objective way whether you are committing fraud at work or not?

[ojilles]

Yes, your employment contract has likely a minimum number of hours of work stipulated (otherwise PTO etc becomes hard).

Look, i’m not saying it is a valuable way of looking at productivity at all, but the fraud aspect is reasonably clear.

So if it states 40 hours, you put in 40 hours. If you do nothing during those 40 hours, we can have a moral/ethics discussion about if and how you should change the situation etc, but at that point we’re outside of the fraud scenario in my opinion.

[paxys]

At will salaried (non-hourly) exempt employment contracts in the US do not generally state the number of hours you must work in a day or week (mine does not). And even if they do, how do you measure "working" hours? Are you committing fraud if you sit in the office and browse the internet for an hour every day? And how does that translate to working from home?

I will say from experience that someone who does 10 hours of good, productive work a week is still adding more value to the company than someone who works 80 but writes terrible code, ships bugs and causes outages. If you want to accuse someone of fraud for not being valuable, go after the latter.

[icedchai]

Except with modern "agile" practices, management is breathing down your neck every day: daily standups, and every week: status meetings, team huddles, etc. If they can't figure out the guy isn't doing anything... well, it's not his problem.

[whateveracct]

Nobody is being defrauded. It is at-will employment. If the employer is still willing to employ the dev working this much, everything is well above board.

At-will cuts a lot harder both ways when it's remote work ;)

[jollybean]

'At will' has noting to do with it.

When payment is made for services not rendered, it's Fraud.

If the employer has expectations that the employee 'does nothing' then it's fine, but that's almost assuredly not the case.

This posture is not only toxic, but it's also unjust will spread into much greater malaise as others take up the mantle of 'doing nothing'.

Literally a colleague I had over for dinner last night left his job, and the primary reason was 'many of my higher paid colleagues are not doing anything'.

I'm not sure if he was more frustrated or jealous, and there were other issues, but he left just the same.

[whateveracct]

Nothing in any of my FTE contracts has anything beyond "at-will." No explicit "money for such and such services rendered."

There's literally no fraud here for a typical American FTE at-will employment arrangement. The worst-case scenario is getting fired from the job with no additional repercussions.

[ojilles]

Does it not state a minimum amount of hours worked? If so, there’s a reasonable argument for fraud?

($x for y hours, but y hours were not delivered, only a fraction was.)

Just so I’m clear; I don’t think that works at all in a knowledge worker environment, but tell that to the judge?

[whateveracct]

There's no mention of hours - only yearly salary, employed at-will.

[ClumsyPilot]

"Literally a colleague I had over for dinner last night left his job, and the primary reason was 'many of my higher paid colleagues are not doing anything'"

Surely if this was actual Fraud he should be filling a police report or lawsuit?

Surely the all-knowing free market should punish companies that pay people to do nothing with its3 all powerfull invisible hand?

[Supermancho]

> Surely if this was actual Fraud he should be filling a police report or lawsuit?

In the US, if someone is defrauding someone else (in a civil matter), the best you an do is make a statement.

ie https://nccriminallaw.com/news/criminal-fraud-vs-civil-fraud...

[achillesheels]

I think the OP is providing value, just at a rate which can't be calculated using 19th century industrial era compensation schedules, i.e. the 8-hour work day. OK, it actually became shorter than before, but the main point is that software is not the same as machining shoes.

There's a difference between how effective the OP is at being a team player/contributor, and a worm who tries climbing the social ladder with as little risk to his/her self which I believe you allude to. It seems to me the OP is not the ambitious type and found his place in the industrial matrix.

[bccdee]

I feel like you ignored most of the original post and are just injecting your own preconceived notions.

> Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value

If the employers in question felt that they weren't getting what they were paying for, they would tell the original poster that they were performing below expectations. According to the original poster, that has not happened, and their employers have never expressed dissatisfaction with their productivity.

> This is unreasonable populism: "Pay me, trust me, but I'm going to do nothing, and if you lay me off over Zoom, you're going to see it on CNN!"

Nobody's "doing nothing"; as established above, the employee in question is doing more than enough work to satisfy their employers. What does "you're going to see it on CNN" mean — are you talking about "cancel culture"? How is populism involved with this, and what on Earth do you think populism is if you think that your bizarre strawman is representative of it?

I'm not one to argue that politics should be considered as separate from our personal lives, but you're throwing around emotionally- and politically-loaded ideas like populism, cancel culture, and "white collar first-world corruption" in a discussion where they bear no relevance.

[ClumsyPilot]

"It's a form of White Collar / 1st World Corruption"

Dear lord, is this The 'first world corruption'? With corporate profits at record high? Amidst *checks lists' rampant corporate tax avoidance, runaway climate change, balooning executive pay, unaccountable executives who's create Boeing Max or 2008-style events every few years Money in politics Survaliance capitalism, exploding house prices, (add whatever else bothers you)

Is this really the corruption that will destory the first world way of life?

[Apocryphon]

Don’t forget wage theft!

[a-dub]

> Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value is Fraud.

Taking time from people with expectation of opportunity to build career by building things, while not providing that opportunity to build career by building things is Fraud.

fixed it for you. j/k

this is not constructive. if i join a company and their internal dysfunction gets in the way of me getting projects done that further my career and that comes at a steep opportunity cost, that doesn't mean they defrauded me (even though it may feel good to think that when letting off steam), it just means it didn't work out.

name-calling and accusations of bad faith don't really serve anyone in the end.

[jollybean]

"The lady left her door open, how was I supposed to know she wanted to keep her furniture? What's wrong with these stupid cops who say I can't take the TV?"

This is some serious gaslighting.

Dysfunction is normal. Teams that are unproductive because of problems, i.e. 'the vehicle is stuck in the mud' are expected. To the extent the problem is known, there's at least some attempt to redress the issue, then obviously people are going to be aware of the lack of productivity, and it is what it is - these things happen.

And it's understandable if someone doesn't want to stick around, that's a legit reason to move on.

But that's a very different thing than people who are expected to do things - who do not do them because they can obfuscate and lie about their situation.

"name-calling and accusations of bad faith don't really serve anyone in the end."

Fraud is Fraud. It's not 'name calling'.

The OP has put lying about how much he does literally in the title of the post.

It's not 'bad faith' to indicate that his lying is inappropriate, and it's frankly repulsive the lengths that people seem willing to go to support someone who wants to admittedly lie about their work and get away with it.

[a-dub]

> The OP has put lying about how much he does literally in the title of the post.

it reads to me like the op is doing some introspection and making use of self-deprecating hyperbole in the process while looking to recruit thoughts from others about general trends in the industry.

if i were to make the same sorts of bad faith assumptions that you are, i could come back with a very simple:

"what if this whole posting is just astroturf for someone looking to make a quick buck by instilling productivity fears in insecure leaders so that they may sell more remote worker monitoring creepware?"

but i don't honestly believe that, because assumptions of bad faith, straw man arguments and gotcha style microquoting are not constructive.

[cik2e]

It's definitely not acceptable.

It's a form of White Collar / 1st World Corruption.

Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value is Fraud.

Woaaah there buddy!

Did you read the all of the OP's post? He's never been fired and gets middling to good performance reviews. Continuing to pay his salary implies that the company it's getting a fair deal. This is obviously not fraud in any legal sense.

Characterizing this dynamic as "White Collar corruption" is a totally warped, an in my view, offensive. If there is any corruption in this scenario, it's on the side of the employer. If the OP's situation is widespread within the company, failing to recognize and remedy it could very well be a breach of fiduciary duty owed to the shareholders. Not a lawyer, but I'm pretty positive that ignorance or incompetence is not a legally valid excuse.

In my view, the real issue here is that salaried employees are almost never compensated in proportion to actual value that they generate. A flat rate arrangement, assuming no significant bonuses, results in a zero-sum game with diametrically opposed incentives for the two parties. The employer maximizes value by trying to as much work as possible from the employee. And the employee maximizes his hourly rate by working as little as possible, with the ultimate goal of infinte dollars per hour at 0 hours worked.

The incentives become perfectly aligned if the pay is based on some objective measure of generated value. Moreover, I would would argue that it would be fairly straightforward to come up with a logical metric for every single position within a company that generates revenue. These can be proxies instead trying to estimate revenue growth or cost reduction to every single employee. Moreover, the dollars tied to a given position's reward metric would be subject to market rates the same way that salaries are today.

TL;DR - Don't hate the player, hate the game.

[jollybean]

"Did you read the all of the OP's post?"

Yes and he clearly indicated he's lying about issues.

There's likely a major gap between what the company wants/thinks he is doing, and what he is actually doing, and this is facilitated by his misdirection (i.e. admitted lying), and probably the political incompetence of the situation overall.

One one hand - it's fraudulent to misrepresent your work.

On the other hard - it's still fraudulent even if the company is not able to properly assess the work.

I agree that it's likely not some kind of legal issue - that's not the point really, but it's still a form of fraud.

If you agree to provide a service and due to your customers inherent trust, and their inability to do proper oversight, you still need to provide that service.

But what is offensive is the Peanut Galleries Commenters acceptance of a person who is admittedly lying and misrepresenting themselves as somehow 'not a problem'.

It's shameful for someone to lie, misrepresent and take advantage of another group.

What is 'warped' is this bizarre gaslighting of the employer for somehow 'being corrupt' because they are being lied to by an employee?

In what upside down universe does an employee lying about their work make the employer corrupt?

"the real issue here is that salaried employees are almost never compensated in proportion to actual value that they generate"

That's mostly separate question.

"A flat rate arrangement, assuming no significant bonuses, results in a zero-sum game with diametrically opposed incentives for the two parties. T"

This is wrong, 90% of the world is paid for their time, that doesn't make incentives 'opposed'. They are aligned, just maybe not perfectly.

"The incentives become perfectly aligned if the pay is based on some objective measure of generated value. Moreover, I would would argue that it would be fairly straightforward to come up with a logical metric for every single position within a company that generates revenue. "

I'm going to gather you're new to this, and have never hired people, set salaries or worked on a large team?

The situation that the OP is in is common - precisely because measuring value and oversight is actually really hard, especially in software.

It's a bit glib to suggest that somone could come up with some magic metric relate to profit that aligned incentive, it's the Holy Grail of HR. There's too much ambiguity in the system.

"TL;DR - Don't hate the player, hate the game. "

Players that cheat, either employers or employees should be called out.

Having some reasonable degree of professional standards, which include trust (on all sides), is what makes the system work, along with intelligent management and oversight etc..

[marstall]

but let me get this straight. It's OK for the monopoly-seeking/having company shareholders to become billionaires off the labor of their workers while sitting on their asses?

[pmulard]

Just curious, but what career did you switch to? Also, congrats on finding more happiness :)

[irrational]

> Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life.

Well, I love programming. I’d just rather work on my own personal projects than the boring stuff the business wants me to work on. Fortunately I can get done what the company wants me to do in a few hours a day and then write code for my own projects.

[etskinner]

One thing I've found helpful to combat boredom is this: In the absence of deadlines or people nagging you to do something, pick the task you want to do most (or dislike the least), or the task that is most interesting rather than the task that's oldest or some other measure. That way, you're still chipping away at your to-do list, but you're happier to do it.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"This is both normal amd mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion."

I wonder if there is anyone reading this comment who thinks, "That does not sound normal, acceptable nor professional."

[mrbonner]

I appreciate your candid feedback about the OP's attitude at work. Especially, I like it when you, as an SDM, agree that majority of the people will be "average" and as long as they don't wreck-havoc the team, they should be appreciated, right?

> However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health

I have a hard time believing that in this stage and age, especially in the US this is true. How do you justify working for a big corp big nice pay to support your family vs. getting a salary just to live by working for your life's mission? Do we just forego the opportunity cost from a bigger paycheck, not just for you but your family as well?

[pradn]

> I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race.

I am a few years out of college and this hasn't quite crossed my mind. Perhaps I've now had enough years of work experience to start feeling the long term effects of how I feel about work. The effects of stress have been evident, certainly - weight gain, for example.

[repomies69]

> It is a huge pay cut. I also am happier than I have ever been in my adult life because I'm learning something challenging and helping people instead of

While I congratulate your career move and I am very happy for you, I want to point out that there are tons of jobs in Software Development that genuinely help people and make society go forward.

[10hr]

They don't seem particularly easy to find. Perhaps you could name some?

[dx034]

I like that point about mental health. Side projects can be great, speaking from experience. It's just a legal question, although in many countries (I can only speak for Europe), you won't get into much trouble if you stay out of the employer's business and strictly separate code for side project and your main job. It's more complicated in jurisdictions where the employer has more say about your life while being employed.

But if coding isn't your thing (not every developer likes coding), there are a lot of ways to utilize that time. Sports is a great way, spending time with family another (esp working remotely).

[throwaway984393]

I'm hoping to follow after your example.... at some point. Really want to do something with my time that feels worth it. But the difficulty of starting over is this intimidating mountain that I look out my window at each day, behind a forest with no visible path. I wonder when I'll finally get fed up enough to strap on some boots and head out into the wilderness.

[bennysomething]

What did you switch to? I keep thinking I want to be an electrician or carpenter

[throw10920]

> Doing just as much work as your employer requires and no more

Do you also think that it's acceptable for an employer to only do as much for its employees as is required by law, and no more?

[Aeolun]

Isn’t that exactly what they are doing anyway? The only reason you get anything more is they couldn’t find employees if they didn’t.

[jliptzin]

What is your certification in out of curiosity?