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Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

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Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#1
It’s depressing to see more and more articles about people doing two or more remote jobs and cheating both companies. If this happens enough, I have to believe remote work companies will be less competitive.

Excellent example article:

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-genz-working-2-remote-jobs-gets-away-with-it-2023-5

The more CEOs and managers that read this are also going to want more employee surveillance.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#2
Do you know what employees doing two jobs really is? Either savvy optimization of time or outright management failure.

If you "get away with it", either:

1) your manager is not tracking and managing your time/productivity properly, or,

2) you're actually fit for purpose, the company is happy with your output, it meets expectations for what they pay and things are totally normal.

Nobody is obliging these companies to employ these people.

Programmers working agile should have a throughput denominated in story points and managers should come to an understanding of their bandwidth over a little time. They can then reason about whether they're working on par or not. The reality is that you have a lot of managers not being effective, who enable all these cheats as well as a legion of just regularly mediocre people to skate on by, bill 8 hours, do very little and go home.

Big companies continue to make so much profit that employing such people (shitty managers and programmers) is not really a big deal regardless.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#3
That I've read, the fraction of employees "cheating" by holding two jobs is very low. But it pushes emotional buttons well, so it gets plenty of press.

Not to say that stupid bosses, reacting emotionally to such "cheating", won't make life crappier for lots of people. But stupid bosses and their emotional reaction were making life crappier for lots of people back when "remote work" meant "pulling on a rope, with the other end connected to the block of stone that we're hauling up the side of this new pyramid".

And - stupid bosses are always going to have obsessions that make your life miserable. Having him obsessing over something that you (99% chance) have no real interest in doing may be better than the alternatives.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#4

Do you know what employees doing two jobs really is? Either savvy optimization of time or outright management failure. If you "get away with it", either: 1) your manager is not tracking and managing your time/productivity properly, or, 2) you're actually fit for purpose, the company is happy with your output, it meets expectations for what they pay and things are totally normal. Nobody is obliging these companies to…

Which tech companies are both making a lot of money and still allowing remote work?

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#5

Do you know what employees doing two jobs really is? Either savvy optimization of time or outright management failure. If you "get away with it", either: 1) your manager is not tracking and managing your time/productivity properly, or, 2) you're actually fit for purpose, the company is happy with your output, it meets expectations for what they pay and things are totally normal. Nobody is obliging these companies to…

Which tech companies are both making a lot of money and still allowing remote work?

They're out there, as well as companies that do tech but aren't tech centric, e.g. primary industries like mining.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#6

Do you know what employees doing two jobs really is? Either savvy optimization of time or outright management failure. If you "get away with it", either: 1) your manager is not tracking and managing your time/productivity properly, or, 2) you're actually fit for purpose, the company is happy with your output, it meets expectations for what they pay and things are totally normal. Nobody is obliging these companies to…

Agreed. The real adaptation is more aggressive management with a short trigger to pip someone or fire them.

Better and more engaged line managers solves the problem.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which tech companies are both making a lot of money and still allowing remote work?

They're out there, as well as companies that do tech but aren't tech centric, e.g. primary industries like mining.

Tech compensation is bimodal. On one side you have your enterprise/CRUD/corporate devs. No insult intended, that’s where most of the 2.7 million devs work and that’s where I work for most of my long career until 2020. From looking around, compensation is still around $160K - $180K at the high end.

On the other end, you have BigTech salaries that start around $150K at the low end. An intern I mentored in 2021 got a return offer of about that much.

What side do software jobs in mining end up on? That’s not a rhetorical question. I honestly don’t know.

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