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

> Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value

If the employers in question felt that they weren't getting what they were paying for, they would tell the original poster that they were performing below expectations. According to the original poster, that has not happened, and their employers have never expressed dissatisfaction with their productivity.

> This is unreasonable populism: "Pay me, trust me, but I'm going to do nothing, and if you lay me off over Zoom, you're going to see it on CNN!"

Nobody's "doing nothing"; as established above, the employee in question is doing more than enough work to satisfy their employers. What does "you're going to see it on CNN" mean — are you talking about "cancel culture"? How is populism involved with this, and what on Earth do you think populism is if you think that your bizarre strawman is representative of it?

I'm not one to argue that politics should be considered as separate from our personal lives, but you're throwing around emotionally- and politically-loaded ideas like populism, cancel culture, and "white collar first-world corruption" in a discussion where they bear no relevance.

Aside from that, though, I really think you should step back and try to reexamine "life". Why does life have to revolve around "work"? Why do people define themselves by what they do professionally? The world is very rich, and I personally don't find it very hard to find meaning outside of a job (traditional or otherwise).

I get that a lot of people who go the traditional route end up retiring at 65 or whatever, and then have no idea what to do with themselves for the rest of their lives, and that adding another 10, 20, or more years to that retirement period sounds scary. I think of this as a result of societal brainwashing. From a young age we're asked what we want to do when we grow up, and then during much of our teens we are pushed hard to pick a university, pick a major, and pick a career. And this is right while our brains are still developing; the focus on employment fundamentally affects the shape of our minds for the rest of our lives.

Free to do what, you ask? Literally anything. Learn how to play an instrument, join or form a local band, and play at coffee shops, bars, whatever. Learn new languages and travel (or just travel!). Get involved with your community, whether that's youth outreach, volunteering to help homeless people, or whatever you like. If you're a software developer, get involved with (or start your own) open source projects. Attack that ever-growing stack of books you keep telling yourself you're going to read but never seem to find the time. Find and grow new hobbies, whatever they may be, especially those that have nothing to do with your former job. Commit to improving your physical fitness by doing something (running, lifting, a martial art, etc.) for a certain number of hours per week. Go back to school and learn things you thought were too impractical to make a living off of back when you were 18. If you're a parent, you can spend a ton more time with your kids (raising a child is more than a full-time job anyway).

There is enough in this world to fill multiple lifetimes, and restricting yourself to spending 40 hours a day drawing a paycheck is a very small part of the possibilities. Relying on a job to define ourselves and fill our time is the easy way out because it "automatically" takes up half of our waking hours (or more). I get that it can feel like a daunting task to figure out what to do with all that extra time, but I can't believe it wouldn't be worth it to do so.

However sometimes I have been unable to produce almost anything for maybe 2-6 weeks. I was scared to be discovered and blamed. To my surprised it never happened. Most of the time I have been able to bullshit my way through it. Only once it clearly was discovered I did not do my job. Not even started actually. A manager asked a coworker to help me on my task, which was a bit of shaming for me, but not too bad either. I was a contractor and some time ago the company offered me a position (which i declined). So I do not think this had any consequences.