Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

When payment is made for services not rendered, it's Fraud.

If the employer has expectations that the employee 'does nothing' then it's fine, but that's almost assuredly not the case.

This posture is not only toxic, but it's also unjust will spread into much greater malaise as others take up the mantle of 'doing nothing'.

Literally a colleague I had over for dinner last night left his job, and the primary reason was 'many of my higher paid colleagues are not doing anything'.

I'm not sure if he was more frustrated or jealous, and there were other issues, but he left just the same.

"it's not that companies are that great at rewarding getting things done (sometimes they are…), but it's that getting something cool done is rewarding in its own right. Why don't they want that feeling… ?"

So they finish the task and then what? Move on to the next task and then the next until retirement. There is no real purpose to it, its just a treadmill.

At one point in my career I was working 90+ hours per week, and while I learned a lot in that time (and at least convinced myself I was having fun), the end result was burnout. These days I work less than 40 hours a week. My management is more or less fine with that, and I'm fine with not getting stellar perf reviews, big raises or equity grants, or promotions. I've also been at my current company for a while; I've already done the 60-hour work weeks here in the past, and contributed a lot. I still contribute and add value, but less, and on my terms.

Just be sure what you're doing is sustainable. If you have to leave your current job for any reason (new manager who sucks, layoffs, company folds, whatever), will you be able to get good references so you can get another job? Will you be able to keep up the same low level of work at a new job? Will you even be able to pass interviews for a new job since you aren't really growing yourself technically?

Also be sure that the company is large enough that you're not harming things by doing minimal work. If you work for a multi-thousand-person company with bureaucracy and redundancies all over the place, it's probably fine. If you work at a 15-person startup, where you not pulling your weight could mean the company is significantly more likely to fail, it'd be pretty shitty to stay in that situation and risk causing problems for your colleagues.

Also I hope you're working remotely now and can do fun/useful/productive non-work things with most of your day. If you had to sit in an office for 8 hours while pretending to look busy (but actually just goofing off on the internet), I don't think that's a good use of your time (being paid or otherwise), and I doubt it'd be great for your mental health, either.

Work you don't do is work that someone else has to do. If you're literally not working at all some days but claiming you did during standup (as you said in your OP) then the work assignments must be flowing to your team members.

In essence, you're asking your peers to pay for your lack of activity with their own work.

Nobody expects you to be crunch mode 8 hours per day, but you do need to make an honest effort. Don't be the guy on the team who makes everybody else do most of the work.