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Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#41

Post by lisasays »

Dannymetconan wrote: post #33
lisasays wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which should this line be any different? Because it most definitely is not about non-compete agreements in the usual (post-employment) sense. You understand that, right?

I understand the difference. Most jobs would like to own your 24/7 for minimum wage. They can also have clauses about discussing pay or other gray / illegal points. Just because you've signed it doesn't mean much to me. If you're meeting their expectations it's none of their business in my opinion.

Don't know what to tell you other than "Sorry, but this isn't how contracts work".

But hey -- you're quite welcome to believe otherwise, of course -- and to throw yourself against the wheels of the legal system on the basis of your "opinion" of how they ought to work, if you like. It's a free country, after all.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#42

Post by s1artibartfast »

rcarr wrote: post #11

This entire argument is simple. If you’re a manager and you hire someone, you trust them to do the job you want doing. If you don’t trust them to do the job, don’t hire them. If you don’t trust anyone, then you have trust issues and probably shouldn’t be a manager and should instead go and work on yourself. If someone betrays your trust or doesn’t perform the job adequately: fire them. If someone performs the job ade…

I think this is all accurate, but understates the challenge of determining if someone is betraying your trust or not performing adequately.

It is hard to detect liars, cheats, and saboteurs in workplaces with a baseline expectation of trust and low micromanagement.

The problem IMHO is not people who do a great job on time, but people who inflate timelines, and derail projects.

If you give someone a novel problem, and they say it is difficult and will take 80 hours instead of 20, the only way to catch them in the act is to duplicate the work yourself or with another employee. Similarly, if they raise lots of questions and involve other people, it is difficult to determine if these are valid complications, or manufactured complexity, without replicating the work.

Humans are pretty good at deceit.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#43

Post by lisasays »

mech422 wrote: post #38
lisasays wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if your employment contract -- like nearly every employment contract -- explicitly says "you will devote 40 hours a week to this role; and you will not take on outside obligations without giving written notice to the company" -- Is still "ok"?

not sure where you get 'nearly every employment contract' from, but in the US, its pretty common for people in the retail sectors to have multiple jobs. My F500 employer actually actually acknowledges this is a possibility for techies, and gives us guidelines on how to avoid problems with NDAs, client poaching, etc. They don't seem to require any notifications unless it might compete with existing business.

Does this F500 employer have mind that you'd be working multiple FT jobs? Or just the occasional (low-impact) consulting gig?

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#45

Post by specialist »

superchroma wrote: post #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…

I assume management failure. Always makes me think of the documentary The Rubber Room, about the employees who can't be fired and won't quit.

Our startup was acqui-hired. We were assigned to the one VP who voted against hiring us. That VP then devoted themself to managing us out. Natch. We were literally prohibited from doing new work; support existing clients only. While requiring us to file time sheets and status reports (forcing us all to lie).

One teammate really got into everything Clojure.

Another went back to school to get his MBA.

One teammate launched his next startup. He'd drive into work, remote back to his own computers, and code like a demon. He did quite well.

I ran for office. I did less well.

Our H1Bs, unfortunately, had a terrible time.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#46

Post by Dannymetconan »

lisasays wrote: post #41
Dannymetconan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the difference. Most jobs would like to own your 24/7 for minimum wage. They can also have clauses about discussing pay or other gray / illegal points. Just because you've signed it doesn't mean much to me. If you're meeting their expectations it's none of their business in my opinion.

Don't know what to tell you other than "Sorry, but this isn't how contracts work". But hey -- you're quite welcome to believe otherwise, of course -- and to throw yourself against the wheels of the legal system on the basis of your "opinion" of how they ought to work, if you like. It's a free country, after all.

They work based on what someone is prepared to enforce and the laws of the country they try to enforce it in. Having it written and signed isn't some magic catch all.

I'm sure they can fire you but it seems to be "at will" employment in most of the US anyway.

In Ireland and Canada such a clause would likely fall under being "unreasonable" for low paid employees. Similar to how a "non-compete" is not worth the paper it's written on (excluding when direct financial compensation is paid. Eg gardening leave).

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#47

Post by superchroma »

scarface74 wrote: post #7
superchroma wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

Successful mining companies are absolutely rolling in cash. Mining services companies do very well as well. It's a big pay bracket, but the higher end of it goes very, very high.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#48

Post by [deleted] »

Dannymetconan wrote: post #46
lisasays wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know what to tell you other than "Sorry, but this isn't how contracts work". But hey -- you're quite welcome to believe otherwise, of course -- and to throw yourself against the wheels of the legal system on the basis of your "opinion" of how they ought to work, if you like. It's a free country, after all.

They work based on what someone is prepared to enforce and the laws of the country they try to enforce it in. Having it written and signed isn't some magic catch all. I'm sure they can fire you but it seems to be "at will" employment in most of the US anyway. In Ireland and Canada such a clause would likely fall under being "unreasonable" for low paid employees. Similar to how a "non-compete" is not worth the paper i…

[deleted]

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#49

Post by batmaniam »

batmaniam wrote: post #37

Remote work isn't going to go away because of this. If the business wants people to return to office, then they'll force it with any excuse. We already heard some of them claim people are 'more efficient' in the office as a top reason for RTO. If we worry about everything then I guess people in the offices should stop working efficiently cause that will ruin remote work too? Nah, cause Business gonna business, they d…

Another story about RTO just came on the front page of HN: "Dell goes back on WFH pledge, forces employees to come back to the office"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944295

So yea, business gonna business. No sense in worrying about it. They'll either force you with random reasons or not.

Re: Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

#50

Post by Lukkaroinen »

lisasays wrote: post #20
Lukkaroinen wrote: post #17

I think that it's ok, if they can do that much work. I mean everyone can take two or three jobs even without remote jobs. Though with remote working it is easier to do two or three jobs if they are similar and you can send same work to both companies. It's not a problem before it's about copyright.

And if your employment contract -- like nearly every employment contract -- explicitly says "you will devote 40 hours a week to this role; and you will not take on outside obligations without giving written notice to the company" -- Is still "ok"?

Devoting 40 hours a week to a role, is just 8 hours of a day. What if you are workaholic who needs 60-80 hours a week? Why would it be wrong if you can as a worker devote the required hours to a job?
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