Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are you paid to look busy?

pbs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 223 posts

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#191

Post by ZenPro »

handzhiev wrote: post #144
ZenPro wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic fallacy is that everyone can be an entrepreneur. They cannot. A. Entrepreneurs need employees to scale B. If everyone was an Entrepreneur there would be very few consumers for goods and services.

B doesn't make sense. Being an entrepreneur does not mean you don't need goods and services from others.

It makes perfect sense. You still need goods and services you have nowhere near the consumption habits or total required by individuals working in steady, paid employment.

The majority of entrepreneurs have precious little time for broadcast media, socialising, reading for pleasure or other time-filling habit. Major purchasing decisions such as housing, vehicles and children are drastically affected and often delayed by entrepreneurs. Such purchases may even find themselves mortgaged if funds are tight. (Hopefully not the children...)

Where would the purchasing power stem from in a world of bootstrapping entrepreneurs?

I am struggling to find any rational reason why you think B does make sense...

You can challenge the validity with data but claiming it is does not make sense is fallacious.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#192

Post by reboog711 »

KMag wrote: post #60
reboog711 wrote: post #37

The bulk of my clients pay me hourly, on an as needed basis. I've had a few clients; where it sometimes it feels like they are making stuff up for me to do just so I'll be available when real work comes down the pike. I have mixed feelings about this.. on one hand--billable hours. On the other hand--it is not satisfying to do things with absolutely no business value.

If your client is a medium to large sized company, it may also be a case of needing to use budget or have budget reduced the next year. A place I once worked one year had a big budget surplus. They bought a Winnebago, affectionately named the Waltabago after Walt, the guy who ran the team. The next year, Walt bought a Sunfire V1280 with his leftover budget. Walt was a good manager and generally a good guy. It's just…

> it may also be a case of needing to use budget or have budget reduced the next year.

That could very well be a consideration.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#193

Post by reboog711 »

Havoc wrote: post #65
reboog711 wrote: post #37

The bulk of my clients pay me hourly, on an as needed basis. I've had a few clients; where it sometimes it feels like they are making stuff up for me to do just so I'll be available when real work comes down the pike. I have mixed feelings about this.. on one hand--billable hours. On the other hand--it is not satisfying to do things with absolutely no business value.

>I've had a few clients; where it sometimes it feels like they are making stuff up for me to do just so I'll be available when real work comes down the pike. Have you tried approaching them with a proposal for actual work? If they are willing to spend money on BS work then you might as well propose something solid. Either way you're billing, either way you're working...but you might just deliver some extra value in t…

Sometimes that works out. Sometimes they ask if I have any ideas or recommendations.

Other times not so much.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#194

Post by loup-vaillant »

alayne wrote: post #171
DougWebb wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, I started my business with nothing more than an ordinary computer. Really? Nothing more? You were out in the middle of an empty field, with a computer that you somehow acquired for free, and with that you were able to start a business? What kind of business was that?

Why are your comments in this thread so rude?

I didn't perceived any rudeness. A tint of anger, which by the way I sympathise with, hardly rudeness.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#195

Post by ThrustVectoring »

sliverstorm wrote: post #69
ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

We've had systems where not everybody had to work to eat & make a living. It was called monarchy, and you will notice it didn't go over well. The problem is one in ten thousand still leaves a very disgruntled & disenfranchised 30,000 people in America slaving away so everyone else can do as they wish. And until we can automate all the dirty work, the hard laborious work, these aren't 30,000 people working white colla…

Why would it be throwing 30k people under the bus? If you can support 300M people off of the work of 30k, you can give a damn good lifestyle to about 45k people who also happen to have to do shitty jobs.

If you set it up right, people would be trying to have the jobs.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#196

Post by loup-vaillant »

Artistry121 wrote: post #99
jamesisaac wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? Are you suggesting that the only motivation to start a business is to "make millions and keep millions"? What about: - Making the world a better place - Improving the lives of others - The personal satisfaction of building things…

If all three of those are strong motivators then the government would not need to get involved with charity and welfare either - because individuals could get satisfaction from charity and providing opportunity for others by making the world a better place, improving the lives of others and gaining the personal satisfaction from helping solve a problem.

One reason I'm not giving a good chunk of my money to charity right now, is because I'm afraid.

Afraid.

I have saving, which I could give away, but cling to because they could come in handy. Could lose my job (oops, I did lose my job), and I can't count on welfare to keep my standard of living forever. Something bad could happen to me, and I may need my savings.

If I could count on a sustainable basic income, it would remove that fear. I would probably give more to charities. I'd probably be less afraid of freelance work. And I'd probably work on something actually worthwhile, such as research in programming techniques. I may even volunteer for a bit of menial physical work for a change.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#197

Post by loup-vaillant »

zo1 wrote: post #74
ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

"We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed" You make it seem like there is some entity or group of entities that thinks "Hey, let's go make up jobs". For what reason, you ask? Well, because he has to "justify his right to exist". That puts your argument in the same bucket as "karma", "quantum wellbeing", "deepak-nonsense" and "homeopathy". Seriously though. What is that rant…

Are you really suggesting that not even 0.1% people are willing to support the rest if they can?

Are you really saying that we're such moral monsters that not even 0.1% of the population wouldn't help 1000 people if they could?

Besides, with such a ratio, we could have a more equitable repartition: such as, having, say, 10% of the people volunteering a hundredth of their time to support the system. Do you really believe that if it was possible, it wouldn't be done anyway?

Such cynicism on steroids would be ludicrous. Did I miss something?

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#198

Post by hawkharris »

eaurouge wrote: post #172
hawkharris wrote: post #54

This reminds me of a study focusing on soccer games. It analyzed A) how often players shot goals toward the left, middle and right sides of the net; and B) how often goalies responded by jumping toward the left, middle and right sides. The stats revealed a surprising phenomenon. Though opposing players shot toward each area of the goal evenly — about 33% of the time — goalies jumped toward the left or the right 80-90…

You're referring to penalty kicks. And I think the study you refer to is discussed here: http://www.scienceofsocceronline.com/2009/04/penalty-kicks-b... . That discussion gets a number of things wrong and trivializes the odds against the goalkeeper. Any goalie preparing for a match in the sudden death stages of a tournament, like the World Cup [1], would study previous kicks from the opposing players. The players als…

Thanks for reviewing the study and offering your take on goalies' behavior. As someone who knows very little about soccer, I was mainly interested in how it might serve as a metaphor for productivity in the workplace. But it was interesting to learn more about the context for the study as well as how goalies and other players anticipatw moves.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#199

Post by icedchai »

BSousa wrote: post #66
dsirijus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do, and I found another way to not feel bad - I started drinking. At least I'm not pretending to work anymore! Win-win. Thinking out of the box like a boss.

Not sure if you are just making a joke or not, but please, if you started to drink more due to a boring job (including drinking before/while on the job) either talk to someone for help (a sibling/wife/friend if you don't want to go the professional route) and try to change jobs as quickly as possible (if you feel the drinking is related to the job). I've seen some colleagues becoming borderline alcoholics (even if hi…

maybe he's drinking on the job? might be a good way to pass the time.
Post reply on HN