4 ms·

I got down to 10 hours a week at one job. They never bothered to give me a pay rise, so I continued to do the same quantity of work, and tapered down my hours t

I got down to 10 hours a week at one job. They never bothered to give me a pay rise, so I continued to do the same quantity of work, and tapered down my hours to compensate. I never once heard them complain about my output.

MuffinFlavored 9y ago
I'm sure the people on your team loved this.. Boy... you really showed them!!!! Good job ripping off a corporation and being a shitty employee. How dare they not give you a raise. You won that power struggle with them by working less. Way to make yourself more valuable.
- Aeolun 9y ago
  If you can do 10 hours of work a week and have nobody notice, your company has more serious issues.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  Not my problem. I tried, I put in the effort, but after 1.5 years I was still on the same wages as I was on as an intern, despite constantly asking for a pay rise, and my boss often praising my work. If there's no real reward or incentive for hard work, why should I work hard? As the old Soviet saying goes: They Pretend to Pay Us; We Pretend to Work.
- piva00 9y ago
  You work for the compensation, if the company thinks the compensation is fair for your output what is wrong? They could still be productive for their team while barely cracking 10 hours/week, what do you know? Should people's work time be based on team loyalty? Shaming and pressuring "working for the team", "being a team player" is exactly the kind of behaviour of dysfunctional companies, teams and/or managers when pressuring overtime on employees. I do push myself a bit more if I'm working with a team I enjoy but no way in hell I'm going to do 60-80 hours/week again in my life while getting a shitty pay because I feel I need to deliver project X that was sold for deadline Y that I had no input on. No matter how much I like my team, if I'm not being paid for doing work I'm not doing it. As a side-note: I include learning valuable skills and/or tools as part of "being paid for", if I can use my company's time to learn something that is useful in the industry it's fair enough, I just had a week where I stayed in the office afterwork hours to learn some Spark, for example.
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't post flamewar comments to Hacker News regardless of how wrong someone else is. You may not owe them better, but you owe the community better if you want to keep posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
kbart 9y ago
That's my "secret" strategy too. I gradually lower hours I actually work and spend remaining times learning new things so I can get a better job. Never had complains too, so I see this as win-win situation -- employee get the work they pay me for done and I don't feel too bad about not being compensated enough. Funny thing though, every time I say I quit in such situation, I get a counter-offer of similar size or even bigger.

MuffinFlavored 9y ago

I'm sure the people on your team loved this.. Boy... you really showed them!!!! Good job ripping off a corporation and being a shitty employee. How dare they not give you a raise. You won that power struggle with them by working less. Way to make yourself more valuable.

Aeolun 9y ago
If you can do 10 hours of work a week and have nobody notice, your company has more serious issues.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
Not my problem. I tried, I put in the effort, but after 1.5 years I was still on the same wages as I was on as an intern, despite constantly asking for a pay rise, and my boss often praising my work. If there's no real reward or incentive for hard work, why should I work hard? As the old Soviet saying goes: They Pretend to Pay Us; We Pretend to Work.
piva00 9y ago
You work for the compensation, if the company thinks the compensation is fair for your output what is wrong? They could still be productive for their team while barely cracking 10 hours/week, what do you know? Should people's work time be based on team loyalty? Shaming and pressuring "working for the team", "being a team player" is exactly the kind of behaviour of dysfunctional companies, teams and/or managers when pressuring overtime on employees. I do push myself a bit more if I'm working with a team I enjoy but no way in hell I'm going to do 60-80 hours/week again in my life while getting a shitty pay because I feel I need to deliver project X that was sold for deadline Y that I had no input on. No matter how much I like my team, if I'm not being paid for doing work I'm not doing it. As a side-note: I include learning valuable skills and/or tools as part of "being paid for", if I can use my company's time to learn something that is useful in the industry it's fair enough, I just had a week where I stayed in the office afterwork hours to learn some Spark, for example.
dang 9y ago
Please don't post flamewar comments to Hacker News regardless of how wrong someone else is. You may not owe them better, but you owe the community better if you want to keep posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

kbart 9y ago

That's my "secret" strategy too. I gradually lower hours I actually work and spend remaining times learning new things so I can get a better job. Never had complains too, so I see this as win-win situation -- employee get the work they pay me for done and I don't feel too bad about not being compensated enough. Funny thing though, every time I say I quit in such situation, I get a counter-offer of similar size or even bigger.