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A lot of the HN are familiar with balancing work for employers with time clawed back for side projects and startups. We do this a lot more on the level though,
by vertis 5y ago
A lot of the HN are familiar with balancing work for employers with time clawed back for side projects and startups. We do this a lot more on the level though, by only taking a enough contract work to make ends meet rather than what I can only argue is somewhere between contract violation and fraud.
This person is to be despised. Not because they don't want to work, but because they want to cheat the system. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
They're making it worse for everyone that would like to work from home rather than a crowded office post-pandemic every time they get caught (or flaunt it in a news article). This article will get pointed at when managers want to bring employees back into the office.
If you want a better work-life balance then that's a fair decision to make, but not at the expense of everyone else.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoI completely agree. The article makes it seem so extreme. There's a way to do this without stealing from a company.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agohow did the Guardian get Gavin as a source? Why would he want to reveal his secret to anyone? How did he think to contact someone at the Guardian to say hey should you be writing an article on me? How did he become a software engineer from these other jobs. These other jobs seem like a weird combination to me, how long did he last in them? What does his resume look like that he can get employed. How does someone who likes to shirk off consider getting a job as a software engineer considering the extra hours of interviewing, take home projects etc. you have to do? When and why did he learn to become a software engineer, it was only after he started working as one that he realized he could really shirk off? Finally how did he manage to stay employed when pretty much everywhere nowadays does some sort of standup where everyone sees you had a ticket that was supposed to take 2 hours and then you took a day, and then the next, and then the next. At some point fairly quickly it becomes obvious you real slow.
- gus_massa 5y agoFrom the article: > When he worked in a call centre, he would mute the phone, rather than answer it. Call center employees are heavily monitored, and have a lot of metrics, like number of subscriptions or whatever is relevant. Color me skeptical.
- throwaway4aday 5y agoSounds like some miscommunication, I think he meant he would put the caller on hold.
- vertis 5y agoYes, I did wonder about this. The call centers I've been exposed to would notice in a heartbeat if you weren't picking up the phone at all.
- hermitcrab 5y agoI also get a distinct whiff of BS off this part of the article.
- cj 5y ago> how did the Guardian get Gavin as a source? Why would he want to reveal his secret to anyone? I recently fired someone because they had 3 engineering jobs (all full time). He got fired from the other 2 jobs, too. He found our company from “Who’s Hiring” on HN. The CEOs of the other companies he was working for said to me on a number of occasions “this would be a great story for New York Times”.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago>He found our company from “Who’s Hiring” on HN. hmm, a feat I have not as yet been able to match.
- briga_ 5y agoI think it's plausible. That list of jobs was probably just a hyperbolic account of his student years. He may have studied CS, and then got a job somewhere, moved to WFH, and realised there he could cheat. You would get found out in a serious work environment but there are many places where you can get away with it.
- manigandham 5y agoAre you talking about the laptop monitoring? I find employers who watch the clock or other "activity" as a measurement of your output to be far worse. Focus on the results. Set the timelines and goals, and let the employee work however they want. If they deliver as agreed upon then what's the issue?
- vertis 5y agoNo, I'm talking specifically about the first example in the article in which they describe a person that is deliberately shirking. I'm not interested in the technical solutions to this, they're abhorrent also. With regard to results, timelines and goals all of those are incredibly hard to measure accurately in a product delivery context. If the persons contract says "will deliver X by Y date" then by all means work the hours required and no more. What this persons contract actually says is "Will work 8hrs a day, 5 days a week, on whatever tasks are assigned. Will be paid $$$". 'Gavin' is not doing this, and he's not even just being a bit flexible. He's actively pretending to work when he's not -- that's fraud / contract violation.
- manigandham 5y agoSure, that's understandable. My perspective is that those agreements should be changed from "X hours per week" to just "accomplish tasks by their deadlines". If no tasks are assigned then how does blocking those hours benefit anyone? And if tasks are assigned, then what does it matter beyond the deadline being met?
- vertis 5y agoOkay, I want the whole project by the end of the day. /s It just doesn't work. Complexity of tasks, scope, resources all make for something that is very hard to measure. I agree with your sentiment, but it's hard to execute. However, the high-functioning teams I've been part of are certainly not checking if you're sitting in your seat at 9/5. They're not even worried if you take a long lunch, because they know that you can't cram every second of the day with programming work, but doing so 'in secret' is not okay.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago>This person is to be despised. He is just a symptom of the dysfunctional economic system we have created.
- bko 5y agoYou mean one where employers respect the individual worker, try to give them comfortable working conditions and trust them with being honest about the work they do?
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago> This person is to be despised. Not because they don't want to work, but because they want to cheat the system. So what is a person to do, when the system cheats them? Seems reasonable to cheat back.
- bko 5y agoHow does the system cheat them? I can guarantee you work is a lot more pleasant for myself and my peers than it has ever been. I have more options than ever and I get treated much better by my employer than my parents ever did, not to mention my grandparents.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoYes but do you have to work? Does your livelyhood depend on it? Does it define you as a person? Does society shut you out if you stop working, even temporarily? There's the concept of the modern slave. While technically your employment is voluntary and you are receiving a reward for it, the system appears as if calibrated to siphon back everything given and more. Entire armies of people are employed to extract as much wealth from you as possible. They bombard you with advertizements at every opportunity on the street and in your home, pushing you crap you don't need while conditioning you to equate having them with power, status, sex and success. Scientists and engineers construct the most technologically elaborate optimizations to have unsupervised black box AI machines make whatever moves legal or novel to take everything you have and make your life miserable without justice or recourse. You did read all of the EULA before accepting, right? Oh wait I was born here I never signed the constitution!
- erik_seaberg 5y ago> take everything you have Everything I have was created by other people. This can’t work if everyone takes more than they give.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoStrange. I have lots of things created by plants and fungi, no people involved.