[ryandrake]

For a lot of things, especially in bigger companies, a programming task could take 4 weeks, where the coding is only 2 days of work. The rest is spent on writing docs, ticking checkboxes in some internal release tool, and waiting, waiting, waiting for approval from code reviewers and multiple gatekeepers. I've seen a 5 minute programming task take a month to deploy because the privacy and legal approvers were on three week vacations, and the project couldn't go live until their feedback was given (and possibly resulted in code changes).

[lumost]

Sure, but usually these things can be accelerated if you are blocked and can't do other work. It's usually expected that you are doing other work while waiting, be it ops, reviews, invention/simplification, design, coding for other projects, or networking with coworkers etc. It's not uncommon for a firm to be amendable to spending some portion of time on outside activities such as education, event planning, or (sometimes) a side business/startup.

If everyone is spending 5 minutes working every 4 weeks... why would you hire extra people outside of contingency coverage?

[simoncion]

If everyone is spending 5 minutes working every 4 weeks... and your company isn't paying for "hurry up and wait"/hot-standby personnel, how the fuck did your company mismanage things so badly so that they're paying their people full-time programmer rates for 60 seconds of labor per week?

If my workload is such that I can work four "full time" jobs and every one of my employers is happy with my work product, then that's nothing but great for everyone.

[lumost]

This is the reason that consultants often get paid ridiculous hourly rates, and in-demand consultants may overbook. So far, my experience has been those that are likely over-employed - tend to be poor workers. I might be "ok" with their output because I can't tell if they are still ramping up or what else is going on.

Again, high trust environment.

[simoncion]

> I might be "ok" with their output because I can't tell if they are still ramping up or what else is going on.

If they're performing okay during the ramp-up period, it stands to reason that they'd continue to do fine after the ramp-up period.

But again, if the employee isn't meeting standards, you fire them and find another. Turning the employment into a "jealous and paranoid lover" situation where despite the fact that the employee is meeting performance expectations, you're constantly questioning whether or not they're *GASP* doing work on the side for Another Company(!!!) does noone any favors.