[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.

[ojilles]

In that case, paxys, I stand corrected and can see where the questions in this thread are coming from, indeed.

In my experience in Europe, an employment contract will state number of hours (say 36, 40, etc) and you need to be present and available for that time. These are non-hourly contracts (e.g. salary is expressed by month not hour). None of that has anything to do with productivity, to your/mine point.

[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.

[ojilles]

Gotcha (saw similar reply elsewhere in this thread). Ran into a US-EU difference here it seems like.

[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?