[WalterBright]

> Aren't we all (normal and decent people) doing this already?

I've known many such in my career. They weren't fooling anybody. Everybody knew who they were. When they'd get laid off or were passed over for a raise they were always baffled and outraged.

[sevagh]

Until your manager and skip director are equally phoning it in and you're the only idiot being productive.

[ryandrake]

I think this highly depends on the manager. Some know (Manager A), and either work to correct it, or get their ducks in a row to fire them. Plenty of managers, though, (Manager B) have no idea what a reasonable amount of work output is, and can be easily convinced that what took 1-2 hours to do constituted an entire 40 hour week. You get some developer who's good at "managing upward" and they'll bullshit/charm and walk all over that manager. Often these managers are themselves "managing upward" to their directors, and so on up the chain, resulting in an entire reporting line successfully doing nothing.

It doesn't matter that the slacker's peers know exactly what is going on. They're too busy doing their own work, and if they complain about it to Manager B, they won't be believed.

[twojobsoneboss]

To be clear, there’s a big difference between taking 4x as long to do something useful, vs actually doing nothing, or something of negative value ;-)

If you’re fast and working remote, you can still achieve seemingly normal output while reclaiming much of your time

[icedchai]

The negative value is the worst. I was working on a project with someone. I'd check in periodically. After a couple weeks, he fesses up and tells me he hasn't been able to get very far, but things are "mostly done", I "just" need to test it for him and integrate it with the rest of the system. By mostly done, he meant the code had no tests and was never even run manually. In fact, the code would not even execute due to syntax errors.

I had to spend another week and a half reworking things. I got it to work well enough, but it would've gone smoother if he hadn't been involved at all. The result was crap.

[ryandrake]

I'm sure there are a surprising number of Brillant Paula Beans[1] still employed in software roles. No idea how you can pass a technical screen and multi-day interview loop without knowing anything about writing code, but it keeps happening.

1: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_brillant_paula_bean

[icedchai]

I can tell you why. The CEO wanted to "hire quickly" for a project that did not even go live until 3 months after the original fake deadline. He ignored any suggestions that we keep looking at other candidates, then left for a different job several months later.

PS. I love TheDailyWTF!

[WalterBright]

I've been a manager and an employee and I've talked to many managers. They know who the slackers are, but there can be reasons why they take no action. When an opportunity arises to get rid of them, they do.

[icedchai]

Yes. I've been specifically told that they are unable or unwilling to do anything about the slackers, but "understand the situation."

[icedchai]

Yep. I've seen it happen. If you have too many clueless people at the top, the tail will wag the dog, so to speak. The slacker's peers often don't care as long as the slacking doesn't cause more work them. It's a "don't ask, don't tell" situation all around.

[AlexandrB]

Uh huh. The more common case is they get promotion and raises like everyone else while sometimes producing -ve value. Even if there's a comeuppance one day, this can go on for years before there are any consequences.