[User23]

Get a full time remote job from a company that treats their employees like adults. You can easily get whatever their equivalent of a "meets expectations" rating is on 4-5 hours of work a day. And ethically you're doing nothing wrong, because the company is formally saying it's satisfied with your work which means they're getting what they bargained for.

[throwaway75787]

It has to be official from now on. There is going to be no potential for a slippery slope of after-hours messages or pizza party overtime. I have even set up a VoIP number with a 9-5 M-F time condition for use with applications and employers.

I don't have it in me to to work in front of a screen all day, although I understand that works for many on this site. I don't care if the workplace is an open office, a cashier's stool at a supermarket checkout, or a train driver's cab.

[ldjkfkdsjnv]

I agree with you, and I hope this attitude becomes more widely held.

[Beldin]

For other non-native speakers: M-F in this context doesn't have its usual meaning, but means "Monday to Friday".

Although the common use would be funny here :)

[VLM]

> And ethically you're doing nothing wrong

We don't pay firemen to put out as many huge fires as possible all day long, because that would lead to very peculiar and unwanted behavior incentives to max out those metrics. Firemen hiring pyromaniacs to make them look good, etc.

Plenty of jobs out there where the metric you're trying to maximize is internal/external customer satisfaction, usually something like maximize service uptime. If your assigned responsibility is the accounting dept, and the accounting dept loves you because when they report a problem its rapidly fixed, then you're doing what the company needs.

Some companies refuse to metric stuff like implementing change, because it results in I (heart) change for the sake of change. I quickly close a ticket to tweak the background color on an internal app but that doesn't make the company any money.

There are jobs like mining coal or farm work, where paying you to not produce makes the owners very angry. Sometimes being in a non-productive cost-center has its privileges. "You're paying me so IT is never in the way of production dept" or IT never gets in the way of accounting so accounting never gets in the way of the production dept, etc.

Big industrial factories usually have a maint department whom do nothing but fix machines. If none of the machines are fixed you don't punish the maint dept LOL. Usually they have pointless busywork if nothing else is going on "go repaint the milling machine". Such things exist in IT "go update the reverse DNS records".

[sirspacey]

As someone hiring engineers remotely, this is explicitly our offer.

About 4 hours is peak productivity.

We don’t need you to work extra to satisfy our god complex.

[Retric]

No need to self censor the company name in that comment.

[Infernal]

Where can one apply?

[artursapek]

This is an interesting ethics question that has crossed my mind a lot. I also remember an internet post years ago about someone who had automated 95% of their job and kept it a secret from their employer, who continued to be satisfied with their output. Where do you draw the line?

[passerby1]

It always depends on bargain and deal conditions. And KPIs.

When swe work conditions discussion reaches this point I always remember Spolsky's brilliant "Smart and Gets Things Done" book. He writes about KPIs a bit, just enough to not treating it too seriously.

[api]

If I were employing that person and found out about this I would promote them to an executive position… that is if the work was good and they were doing it successfully.

[artursapek]

How many people have you promoted to executive positions in your career?