[zer0354]

Remote work won't be ruined by this. In fact, it's perfect.

The premise is that the average person puts in 10x the effort for a 1% return on investment. You are an employee, sure, but are "investing" the company in terms of life-hours you could spend elsewhere. Naturally, you want to therefore minimize work and maximize salary. The ultimate situation being getting regular raises by doing 20-50% less than is expected to you.

If employers don't want this the solution is simple. It's not finding these people and firing them. It's paying people commensurate to their effort like a real meritocracy would.

If someone can hold 2 jobs working at 50% brain capacity then they are obviously very talented and quite crafty. You pay this person enough, they will dedicate 100% of their brain to your project. The employer side of the equation is JUST as exploitative as the employee side. It's just far, far, far more common for the employee to be exploited. For example, via pagerduty, poor hiring practices leading to overwork, or overtasking.

This is wonderful. Anyone who is truly a libertarian should be encouraging this. It's the perfect free market solution to exploitative labor. You dont get paid past 40 hours for your salary. Why should you reduce YOUR OWN worth to make a company's bottom line bigger? Unless you hold ITM options in the company the answer is you don't and shouldn't. You should be exploiting them at every turn.

[throwaway75787]

Isn't this keeping jobs from those of us who are limited to normal brain capacity, but need to make the rent?

[planetsprite]

Sorry but the silicon valley ethos is that only geniuses matter. Everyone else, the 99% non-savants, aren't relevant and can be discarded when needed.

[hello_moto]

SV is also a meat grinder: the participants are well aware of that (maybe except during the early days of Google or non-GCP Google orgs). SV participants are highly ambitious folks who want to get paid more and deliver "impact" (whatever that means). It's an ego contest.

It's just that the participants always paint rosy pictures to the point that Media buys it and sells it.

[drenvuk]

I have to disagree, they are relevant. SV needs bodies for the various profit grinders and a way to put pressure on other elites. Wastefully discarding somewhat functioning humans isn't ideal.

[zer0354]

Contractors don't really take away jobs from people and I see this as no different. The people capable of this are relatively small in number even in an industry full of talented people.

[oriolid]

No, it's creating jobs for the unlucky ones who have to clean up the mess the one 200% employee made.

[imgabe]

There’s not a limited number of jobs. Anybody who is capable of providing a positive ROI on their salary is worth hiring.

[throwaway75787]

I wish I could just be a corporate cog for a few days a week and then do my own thing. Unfortunately, at least judging from the interviews I've had the last few months, HR/hiring is still looking at things from a full-time headcount perspective. Somebody complained about having to do paperwork for each employee, which I can't wrap my head around because it's their job to do employee paperwork. But it seems to still be about extracting 40 hours and then overtime from any vaguely professional position. One manager told me that they are limited in headcount for their department.