[UnpossibleJim]

Why aren't people paid a full time salary for the work they're expected to do instead of the time they sit at a desk? It's a question I genuinely struggle with.

If the employee is doing all that's expected of them, then the "contract for owning someone for a period of time" (not my words - and relatively creepy) should be fulfilled. It doesn't seem a period of time that is expected but a force of work delivered.

I am willing to be wrong in this assumption, however, given the right argument.

[pdonis]

> Why aren't people paid a full time salary for the work they're expected to do instead of the time they sit at a desk?

If the work you are expected to do is fixed--your boss can't come to you with an ad hoc assignment that's not in some formal job description--then you're not an employee, you're an independent contractor. (And that means the corporation no longer has to worry about things like your health care and retirement benefits.)

The real value proposition for having an employee vs. an independent contractor is that the work the employee is expected to do is not fixed--your boss can come to you as an employee with an ad hoc assignment that's not in any formal job description and expect you to do it. In other words, the belief the article describes, that paying someone a full time salary as an employee means the company owns their time, is actually mistaken (even though I think it is very common among corporate managers and executives). What you're actually paying them for is being able to give them ad hoc new jobs to do as the company's environment and needs change, and not have to go through the hassle of writing up a new contractor's statement of work and negotiating a new price. The only justification you need to give an employee a new ad hoc assignment is "this is going to help the company".

[whateveracct]

Exactly - full-time is about paying someone for availability more than hours of focused labor. It just so happens that being available remotely looks way different (and is generally more leisurely) than in-office availability.

Having slack is key to being an effective business. And slack is literally people not being at max utilization 40 hours a week.

[thatguymike]

Moreover: in the high skilled tech teams we’re mostly talking about, the expectation is that you as a team member are helping to identify and drive the work itself. Reporting issues, looking for opportunities, talking to users and partners, etc. That requires soft skills, relationships, and active engagement. The idea that you’re hired just to do the obvious things which are easier from home (churn out code, not much else) seems strange to me for most modern tech workers.

[proc0]

The real value prop of having a full time employee, is you own their full time focus five days a week. It's not about practicing a trained skillset, or providing expertise ONLY, it's also about owning part of the business, managing other employees, and deep understanding of the product and how to market and deliver it to the user.

I'm not saying that's good or bad, however it is definitely not clearly stated-- not in schools, universities or in job descriptions. Society tells your for decades you're supposed to specialize and then get paid for that skill, yet most companies are expecting so much more.

[pdonis]

> you own their full time focus five days a week

That is the kind of "ownership" that the article is describing, but I don't think it's actually true. Even employees sitting in a office aren't focusing full time on the business for every single minute they are in the office.

That's why I phrased it instead in terms of assignments and how specific the definition of the job is, as compared with an independent contractor. You might not be focused on the business every single minute of your nominal working hours--but your boss can come to you in any one of those minutes and basically redefine what your job is. That's what the company "owns" if you are an employee. And that can happen just as easily if you're remote.

> it's also about owning part of the business

But employees, unless they are also stockholders, don't own any part of the business. And even in cases where employees do own stock on paper, their ownership share is so tiny that it arguably does not provide any meaningful motivation.

[proc0]

Yeah I agree with that. It's about owning your "main" focus. Being late one day and having the excuse that you had to do another job would not be ok, yet you can give many other typical excuses regarding family or dealing with life in general.

> But employees, unless they are also stockholders, don't own any part of the business. And even in cases where employees do own stock on paper, their ownership share is so tiny that it arguably does not provide any meaningful motivation.

Right, even though you don't own the business, it seems the expectation is still to behave in a way that you do. That is at least rewarded, if not punished by not promoting and/or having a negative review because you don't have the "soft skills".

[neon_electro]

Don't forget equity agreements that effectively prevent you from owning anything unless a "liquidity event" happens.

[sh34r]

That model is not all sunshine and roses either. Wages were a concession sought by labor in the Industrial Revolution because piecework was considered to be worse. Gig work revived all those old problems for a new Gilded Age.

All these problems are coming about because software doesn't fit nicely into any of the traditional arrangements. We really fit in more as consultants external to the business, but the software consulting industry as it exists today is corrupted by the perverse incentives of generating billable hours and essentially scamming clients.

I'd like to see the emergence of software partnerships modeled after law firms, where engineers are owners and not employees. The problem is, tech is currently dominated by criminal monopolists who regularly collude to drive wages down in violation of numerous laws. Musk and his PayPal mafia buddies are running the same racket right now, that Apple and Google were convicted of 10 years ago. They would simply refuse to work with any tech worker co-ops, because they have monopsony power over our labor, and they can just lobby Congress for more H1-Bs.

[pengaru]

> Why aren't people paid a full time salary for the work they're expected to do instead of the time they sit at a desk? It's a question I genuinely struggle with.

Turns out just being present is a substantial part of what many (most?) employees are paid for. Participation and quality of contributions are optimizations once that bare minimum is attained...

What do you think school is conditioning everyone to do anyways? Get up early and show up, follow instructions, every. day.

[afandian]

That doesn't sound very humane. When you employ someone FTE (vs contract), you employ the whole person, not a machine in a factory. People have good days, people have bad days. Some tasks get unexpectedly complex. Sometimes you need to switch to other tasks. Paying someone for the time lets you average things out, provides psychological security, and lets you share risks.

[proc0]

> If the employee is doing all that's expected of them,

It's all about those expectations. It seems having a trained skillset is never enough. It's not about practicing what you are an expert in, but rather increasing business value at any costs, even if it means doing a lot more than what you were trained to do. These expectations are typically more business skills, management skills, and even marketing skills. This is why going to the office is seen as a must for many "leaders" of companies.

You're not just a programmer that contributes code, you are also a business person who ones part of the company, a manager who has to lead teams of people, and a marketing person that needs to think what the end user wants and how to deliver it. When there are so many cross-disciplinary expectations (which are rarely stated clearly), it's no surprise they want people in one place in order to have them coordinate through this complex web of roles.

[lawn]

> Why aren't people paid a full time salary for the work they're expected to do instead of the time they sit at a desk? It's a question I genuinely struggle with.

Because it's hard to quantify what's expected of someone.

It's much easier to just count the time they're working, so that's what we're doing.

[hiatus]

If that's the case I'd expect performance reviews to be limited to attendance. Since they're not, it would suggest we do indeed have ways to quantify our expectations for a role.

[NikolaNovak]

I agree, but sooner or later the time component comes in. If you're being paid piecemeal for work, a lot of dynamics emerge after a while including reduced perunit pay and increased expectation of throughout. In other words what happens when deliverables expected take 70 hrs of your time a week?

Speaking as huge wfh proponent as the project I'm managing has benefited from it tremendously (we had one primary and a few satellite offices before covid. Satellite offices were effectively second tier citizens. Wfh enabled everybody to be on the same page and tier. We are way more effective and I dread the return to primary office to exclusion of satellite ones. Everybody else's milleage may vary).

[matwood]

I agree with you, but devils advocate wants me to ask if you can define the full time work they are expected to do?

What if my definition of full time work takes person A 60 hours and person B 30 hours?

[ghaff]

Well, if person B being able to handle a given workload in 30 hours is roughly the norm, and someone else consistently takes 60, you probably have a performance problem to deal with. (And, yes, a lot of this stuff is hard to specify and measure.)

[catiopatio]

It is a period of time that’s expected.

We expect to purchase X hours of your time in exchange for Y dollars.

If you can get more done in that time, you’re worth more.

If you can get less done, you’re worth less.

If you try to do the minimum “force of work” required, you’re worth less, and likely to be replaced by someone who will maximize the value produced in the amount of time that has been paid for.

[8note]

Which is pretty bad value for whoever will do more, since they're working more for less.

[catiopatio]

They at least have leverage to ask for more in return.

If layoffs come, they’ll be kept over lower performers.

When it comes to setting direction for the company or team, they’ll have more political capital.