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I don’t understand this reasoning. All this will do is promote sand-bagging. As somebody struggling emotionally through the pandemic and who tends to work throu

I don’t understand this reasoning. All this will do is promote sand-bagging. As somebody struggling emotionally through the pandemic and who tends to work through problems quickly, I found myself intentionally wasting time at work because any official pleas for help went unacknowledged. I naturally work through problems quickly but that doesn’t mean it was easy for me. It’s exhausting actually and the last thing you need from your manager when you’re teetering on the edge of burnout is the “work more or get paid less” conversation. If I’m receiving high marks and positive feedback across the board, what are you trying to fix?

mooreds 5y ago
> I found myself intentionally wasting time at work because any official pleas for help went unacknowledged. That is of course problematic. My comment assumed a relatively healthy workplace where help is offered as well as more work. > If I’m receiving high marks and positive feedback across the board, what are you trying to fix? And only working 20 hours a week? Again, you need to do what works for you, but my understanding of the contract with an employer is that if someone is purposely doing less work than they've committed to, that's not good. Flip it around a different way. If you signed up to do ~40 hours of work, but the employer structured things such that you regularly needed to work 60 hours a week, would you be okay with that as long as they gave you your salary? Or would you feel cheated? I would feel cheated, myself.
- deberon 5y ago
  > If you signed up to do ~40 hours of work, but the employer structured things such that you regularly needed to work 60 hours a week, would you be okay with that as long as they gave you your salary? This absolutely happens. Maybe not to the extreme of +/- 20 hours, but it certainly happens. Maybe I’m not good at handling burnout, or maybe I’m just sick of having to deal with it. But I’ve found a pace of work that allows me to both meet objectives and keep my sanity. If an employer is unwilling to work with me on those grounds, I’m going to favor my sanity.
  - mooreds 5y ago
    > ... I’m going to favor my sanity. As you should! Perhaps my original comment was a bit flip and didn't properly outline the nuance. The major points: * there's a norm around hours for a full time job * if employers and employees communicate openly about expectations (hours, output, whatever), it's all good * if one side or the other violates the norms, adjustments should be made
    - deberon 5y ago
      I would agree with all those points actually. In my experience though, it's hard to find a company willing to talk like adults about that. I also wouldn't be surprised if this was a regional difference. Perhaps coastal job markets are more understanding of how thought-workers operate as opposed to the midwest for example.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  Maybe I'm misreading, but it seems you're looking at the work commitment from a perspective of "signing up to do a set amount of hours," whereas others are looking at it from a perspective of "signing up to do a set amount of tasks." While full-time work is 40 hours of work per week by convention, as a salaried employee, I'm not really paid by the hour, right? I'm paid to get what I'm supposed to do done correctly and on time. There may be some weeks I do have more than 40 hours of work to do, but there may be others when I have less. I don't get paid more in the exceptionally busy weeks, but I don't get paid less in the relatively light weeks, either. So, when you write, > my understanding of the contract with an employer is that if someone is purposely doing less work than they've committed to, that's not good. My take is that we're not talking about that -- we're talking about people doing all the work they have committed to in less time than expected. I am being paid to write and maintain documentation for a software product; my success at that task is not directly measured by the hours that I put in. Now, if you're being paid for a full-time job and you're consistently able to do all your work in 20 hours a week or less, this is probably a warning sign -- either you're not communicating to your employer that they're not giving you enough work, or the employer simply doesn't have enough work for you. In the former case, you may eventually be seen as not pulling your weight even if you're technically doing everything you're asked to do, and in the latter, your company may decide that they just don't have enough work to keep paying you -- or the company may be in trouble. I have experienced all of those things at various points (including being let go after a short time because I "wasn't proactive" in trying to get people to give me work, which was not entirely true from my perspective, although in retrospect I was a lousy fit for that job). But, I've also been positions where work was effectively cyclical. There were periods where I was working a lot and periods where there just wasn't much stuff in the pipeline yet. While the answer to your last hypothetical is "yes, I'd feel cheated," I'd also feel cheated if the employer adjusted my salary down during weeks they only had 20 hours of work a week for me to do. To bring this around to the original thread, I think the problem with "two full-time remote jobs I'm at concurrently" is that even if you're being paid for the tasks rather than the hours, there is a commitment of availability. Even as a technical writer, I need to be available to answer questions and work on unexpected high-priority tasks, even hot fixes -- that's part of what I'm on salary for.

mooreds 5y ago

> I found myself intentionally wasting time at work because any official pleas for help went unacknowledged. That is of course problematic. My comment assumed a relatively healthy workplace where help is offered as well as more work. > If I’m receiving high marks and positive feedback across the board, what are you trying to fix? And only working 20 hours a week? Again, you need to do what works for you, but my understanding of the contract with an employer is that if someone is purposely doing less work than they've committed to, that's not good. Flip it around a different way. If you signed up to do ~40 hours of work, but the employer structured things such that you regularly needed to work 60 hours a week, would you be okay with that as long as they gave you your salary? Or would you feel cheated? I would feel cheated, myself.

deberon 5y ago
> If you signed up to do ~40 hours of work, but the employer structured things such that you regularly needed to work 60 hours a week, would you be okay with that as long as they gave you your salary? This absolutely happens. Maybe not to the extreme of +/- 20 hours, but it certainly happens. Maybe I’m not good at handling burnout, or maybe I’m just sick of having to deal with it. But I’ve found a pace of work that allows me to both meet objectives and keep my sanity. If an employer is unwilling to work with me on those grounds, I’m going to favor my sanity.
- mooreds 5y ago
  > ... I’m going to favor my sanity. As you should! Perhaps my original comment was a bit flip and didn't properly outline the nuance. The major points: * there's a norm around hours for a full time job * if employers and employees communicate openly about expectations (hours, output, whatever), it's all good * if one side or the other violates the norms, adjustments should be made
  - deberon 5y ago
    I would agree with all those points actually. In my experience though, it's hard to find a company willing to talk like adults about that. I also wouldn't be surprised if this was a regional difference. Perhaps coastal job markets are more understanding of how thought-workers operate as opposed to the midwest for example.
chipotle_coyote 5y ago
Maybe I'm misreading, but it seems you're looking at the work commitment from a perspective of "signing up to do a set amount of hours," whereas others are looking at it from a perspective of "signing up to do a set amount of tasks." While full-time work is 40 hours of work per week by convention, as a salaried employee, I'm not really paid by the hour, right? I'm paid to get what I'm supposed to do done correctly and on time. There may be some weeks I do have more than 40 hours of work to do, but there may be others when I have less. I don't get paid more in the exceptionally busy weeks, but I don't get paid less in the relatively light weeks, either. So, when you write, > my understanding of the contract with an employer is that if someone is purposely doing less work than they've committed to, that's not good. My take is that we're not talking about that -- we're talking about people doing all the work they have committed to in less time than expected. I am being paid to write and maintain documentation for a software product; my success at that task is not directly measured by the hours that I put in. Now, if you're being paid for a full-time job and you're consistently able to do all your work in 20 hours a week or less, this is probably a warning sign -- either you're not communicating to your employer that they're not giving you enough work, or the employer simply doesn't have enough work for you. In the former case, you may eventually be seen as not pulling your weight even if you're technically doing everything you're asked to do, and in the latter, your company may decide that they just don't have enough work to keep paying you -- or the company may be in trouble. I have experienced all of those things at various points (including being let go after a short time because I "wasn't proactive" in trying to get people to give me work, which was not entirely true from my perspective, although in retrospect I was a lousy fit for that job). But, I've also been positions where work was effectively cyclical. There were periods where I was working a lot and periods where there just wasn't much stuff in the pipeline yet. While the answer to your last hypothetical is "yes, I'd feel cheated," I'd also feel cheated if the employer adjusted my salary down during weeks they only had 20 hours of work a week for me to do. To bring this around to the original thread, I think the problem with "two full-time remote jobs I'm at concurrently" is that even if you're being paid for the tasks rather than the hours, there is a commitment of availability. Even as a technical writer, I need to be available to answer questions and work on unexpected high-priority tasks, even hot fixes -- that's part of what I'm on salary for.