18 ms·

Long time manager here. I call this "work-shy" and it is neither ubiquitous nor rare, I'd guess about 10%-20% of all employees, and it's certainly not unique t

Long time manager here. I call this "work-shy" and it is neither ubiquitous nor rare, I'd guess about 10%-20% of all employees, and it's certainly not unique to software or even to white-collar work. You should think of this as a problem. Even if it's not for your boss or your teammates (and it will be, eventually), it is for you. It is soul-crushing to fill up the hours. Two pieces of advice: 1) The "good" solution is to find some work you actually give a shit about. If you can't force yourself to care about corporate software, work on an indie video game, or get a job at Amnesty International, or find some other way to get personally invested in your work product. If you can't find it doing software, become a chef, or build houses, or whatever. It will improve your life immeasurably to spend your day doing something you get intrinsic satisfaction from instead of websurfing. 2) The "bad" solution, more like managing the problem really, is to get good at using Pomodoro timers, to-do lists, and other crutches to force yourself to do enough to not fall behind. "Fall behind" in this context does not mean that you do so little work that everyone notices and calls you out on it, it means that you stop keeping up with new frameworks and new tools and the years march by and your skills atrophy and then your employer folds and you find pushing 50 in an ageist industry with weak skills and few options. Hope this is helpful.

medvezhenok 5y ago
The alternative is to embrace minimalism / the FIRE lifestyle and hopefully skate by long enough to not have to work by the time the company folds and live off of investments -> then into retirement). I think most "underwork" on the job is a motivational issue and stems from one of a few overlapping reasons: 1) No way to promotion/advancement (dead end job) 2) Overqualified and bored 3) Unclear goals, no feedback, and/or undiagnosed ADHD. 4) None or negative social value to the job - for example selling shady financial products to seniors (so that slacking becomes a social good)
- zitterbewegung 5y ago
  I actually think that other than underwork you might have to hire people that you have enough "burst" performance but regularly don't have to do much. There is a real example with global markets like the stock market. Most trades are done electronically but, if those electronic systems fail you can activate an automatic backup system which is a bunch of traders on a trading floor. Hypothetically the recent Facebook outage could have been minimized by just having a security guard that could open and close a door. I know that DNS propagation would have still fixed it and yes the AS systems would had to have time to propagate but it still would have been a better solution.
- oakfr 5y ago
  I've read about the FIRE theory time and again. For some reason, I don't buy it. I fail to believe in the plan that consists in building enough FU money to then "be free". Free to do what? What was the plan originally? I think the real meaning of life is to do what you care about today, _with the constraints you have today_.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Being free might mean that you take a traditional full-time job, if doing so is the best way to "do what you care about today". But the great thing is that you can take that job without all the normal financial stress that goes with it, and with the knowledge that you can just quit if you don't like it or end up with a bad manager. Aside from that, though, I really think you should step back and try to reexamine "life". Why does life have to revolve around "work"? Why do people define themselves by what they do professionally? The world is very rich, and I personally don't find it very hard to find meaning outside of a job (traditional or otherwise). I get that a lot of people who go the traditional route end up retiring at 65 or whatever, and then have no idea what to do with themselves for the rest of their lives, and that adding another 10, 20, or more years to that retirement period sounds scary. I think of this as a result of societal brainwashing. From a young age we're asked what we want to do when we grow up, and then during much of our teens we are pushed hard to pick a university, pick a major, and pick a career. And this is right while our brains are still developing; the focus on employment fundamentally affects the shape of our minds for the rest of our lives. Free to do what, you ask? Literally anything. Learn how to play an instrument, join or form a local band, and play at coffee shops, bars, whatever. Learn new languages and travel (or just travel!). Get involved with your community, whether that's youth outreach, volunteering to help homeless people, or whatever you like. If you're a software developer, get involved with (or start your own) open source projects. Attack that ever-growing stack of books you keep telling yourself you're going to read but never seem to find the time. Find and grow new hobbies, whatever they may be, especially those that have nothing to do with your former job. Commit to improving your physical fitness by doing something (running, lifting, a martial art, etc.) for a certain number of hours per week. Go back to school and learn things you thought were too impractical to make a living off of back when you were 18. If you're a parent, you can spend a ton more time with your kids (raising a child is more than a full-time job anyway). There is enough in this world to fill multiple lifetimes, and restricting yourself to spending 40 hours a day drawing a paycheck is a very small part of the possibilities. Relying on a job to define ourselves and fill our time is the easy way out because it "automatically" takes up half of our waking hours (or more). I get that it can feel like a daunting task to figure out what to do with all that extra time, but I can't believe it wouldn't be worth it to do so.
- ineptech 5y ago
  Sure, but you could also find a job you like better and embrace FIRE doing that.
- politician 5y ago
  > Unclear goals, no feedback, and/or undiagnosed ADHD This makes me wonder how many people who secretly believe they may have undiagnosed ADHD are actually suffering from unclear goals and no feedback.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    My theory is that ADHD exists on a spectrum, and a lot of people have it, and at the lower levels it's not difficult to be high functioning. But still suboptimal and leads to other issues and distress.
ConfessionTime 5y ago
It is interesting the number of people who see this as a problem that needs to be fixed. Since this specific comment is near the top, I might as well address that here. Why should I work more? How will that improve my life? My self-worth is derived from what I do outside of work to the extent that I don't prioritize professional validation. The primary reason I work is for money. I make enough money that I can live a comfortable life, I have few material wants, and I can be generous with my money. I am on pace to likely be able to retire in my mid-50s. I recognize that I likely could be making more money if I worked harder, but it wouldn't be proportional because compensation is not tied closely to production for individual contributors. A 50% increase in effort won't yield a 50% salary increase. Most of the added value from my increased effort would be captured by people above me in the org chart and our company's stockholders. As it currently stands, I don't find it that difficult to find a new job. I do spend some time keeping up with the industry, I am on HN after all, which tells you I care more about software development as a skill than some of my coworkers. It isn't that I dislike the profession, I simply don't see the reward in working harder primarily for the financial benefit of other people.
- winterplace 5y ago
  What is a better way for the company to give you increases?
- egypturnash 5y ago
  An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “only a little while.” The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.” The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.” “But what then?” Asked the Mexican. The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!” “Millions – then what?” The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> You should think of this as a problem. Even if it's not for your boss or your teammates (and it will be, eventually), it is for you Low output engineers can often coast for years before something forces them back on to the job market. Usually, routine layoffs force companies to take a hard look at who's producing and who's not, at which point the lowest productivity individuals are the most likely to be cut. This is where the real problems begin: If someone has spent years or even a decade doing very little actual work, they're now effectively years behind their peers with similar career lengths. Even if they could cram enough to skate through interviews, they can struggle when forced to work at normal productivity levels in a normal organization. Years of accumulated habits can be hard to break. I've interviewed a significant number of employees who (I suspect) fit this mold: They landed an easy job at a big company that didn't look too closely at their output, spent years coasting while doing little work as possible, but then something forces them out of the job and into interviews at other companies. It's surreal to speak to someone with a decade of confirmed experience but a level of knowledge equivalent to what I see out of the average motivated college graduate.
- quesera 5y ago
  This is so true. Early in my career, I was in a big organization, surrounded by people like this. Our direct manager was not competent to assess their work output on any technical level. He might not have cared anyway, since the true measure of management is how large your pool of subordinates is. It was truly soul-sucking to be surrounded by such mediocrity. I'm all for work-life balance, but having counterparts who accomplish so little is demoralizing. I can almost convince myself that there's a strategy in it -- with 15 people doing the work of 3 people, a very large bus accident will probably have very little impact on business operations. It killed me though. I left and went into consulting for a few years. Then startups, where 3 people are expected to do the work of 15. Which can be its own problem, of course! The aforementioned co-workers? Still at the same place, and honestly they're probably pretty safe (financial industry, revenue is barely affected by macro economy). Goodness help them if they ever need a new job. EDIT: Nowadays, I hire and manage people. My expectation of the team is to be "productive" about 20hrs/wk, ebbing and flowing according to personal life flux, but making an honest attempt to give the rest of us enough to rely on. I hope to hire the kinds of people who will use some part of the remaining time to reflect on how to improve something, somewhere -- sometimes including our work product or processes. This is where the interesting stuff happens, when it does.
oakfr 5y ago
Experienced manager as well. I highly concur. Sadly, the "good" solution is much harder to accomplish than one might think. One way to address it is to take it from the People perspective. Are there people you've really enjoyed working with? Go talk to them, see what they work on, etc. This may get you out of your current (deep) local minimum. Doing this on your own is really, really hard.
dkarl 5y ago
> 1) The "good" solution is to find some work you actually give a shit about. Or think about why you do the work, what it allows you to do with your life. Doing what you love / loving what you do is one way to be happy, but it isn't a requirement, as long as you have a reason for doing the work. Life is full of things that don't directly bring fulfillment and happiness, such as brushing your teeth, doing the dishes, exercising (for many people), shopping for clothes (ymmv), and (for most parents on most days) cleaning up after messy children. All preaching about how you really ought to feel fulfilled by stuff like that aside, most people don't, yet it doesn't ruin their lives to keep doing it day after day.
epolanski 5y ago
I so much agree with the part of it being soul crushing, especially from remote. If I liked videogames maybe I could fill that void in my working days. In the end I choose to program other things, I still get to learn and be a better dev every day for my employer.
koonsolo 5y ago
I was once at a job where I didn't do much. One day I did nothing, the next day I fixed a bug in 15 minutes, etc. I got excellent reviews. So I asked myself the question: If I get excellent reviews with this kind of work, what the fuck are those other guys doing??? > about 10%-20% of all employees I highly doubt it. Do you have a 10x developer on your team? That's probably the only person doing any serious work. Does he get paid 10x? No? Well that's why the other guys are slacking off. Maybe the person you gave an excellent review is slacking off like crazy.
- xvector 5y ago
  It's possible to do a little work that is very high value as opposed to a lot of work that is not valued by management. I've seen this a lot.

medvezhenok 5y ago

The alternative is to embrace minimalism / the FIRE lifestyle and hopefully skate by long enough to not have to work by the time the company folds and live off of investments -> then into retirement). I think most "underwork" on the job is a motivational issue and stems from one of a few overlapping reasons: 1) No way to promotion/advancement (dead end job) 2) Overqualified and bored 3) Unclear goals, no feedback, and/or undiagnosed ADHD. 4) None or negative social value to the job - for example selling shady financial products to seniors (so that slacking becomes a social good)

zitterbewegung 5y ago
I actually think that other than underwork you might have to hire people that you have enough "burst" performance but regularly don't have to do much. There is a real example with global markets like the stock market. Most trades are done electronically but, if those electronic systems fail you can activate an automatic backup system which is a bunch of traders on a trading floor. Hypothetically the recent Facebook outage could have been minimized by just having a security guard that could open and close a door. I know that DNS propagation would have still fixed it and yes the AS systems would had to have time to propagate but it still would have been a better solution.
oakfr 5y ago
I've read about the FIRE theory time and again. For some reason, I don't buy it. I fail to believe in the plan that consists in building enough FU money to then "be free". Free to do what? What was the plan originally? I think the real meaning of life is to do what you care about today, _with the constraints you have today_.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Being free might mean that you take a traditional full-time job, if doing so is the best way to "do what you care about today". But the great thing is that you can take that job without all the normal financial stress that goes with it, and with the knowledge that you can just quit if you don't like it or end up with a bad manager. Aside from that, though, I really think you should step back and try to reexamine "life". Why does life have to revolve around "work"? Why do people define themselves by what they do professionally? The world is very rich, and I personally don't find it very hard to find meaning outside of a job (traditional or otherwise). I get that a lot of people who go the traditional route end up retiring at 65 or whatever, and then have no idea what to do with themselves for the rest of their lives, and that adding another 10, 20, or more years to that retirement period sounds scary. I think of this as a result of societal brainwashing. From a young age we're asked what we want to do when we grow up, and then during much of our teens we are pushed hard to pick a university, pick a major, and pick a career. And this is right while our brains are still developing; the focus on employment fundamentally affects the shape of our minds for the rest of our lives. Free to do what, you ask? Literally anything. Learn how to play an instrument, join or form a local band, and play at coffee shops, bars, whatever. Learn new languages and travel (or just travel!). Get involved with your community, whether that's youth outreach, volunteering to help homeless people, or whatever you like. If you're a software developer, get involved with (or start your own) open source projects. Attack that ever-growing stack of books you keep telling yourself you're going to read but never seem to find the time. Find and grow new hobbies, whatever they may be, especially those that have nothing to do with your former job. Commit to improving your physical fitness by doing something (running, lifting, a martial art, etc.) for a certain number of hours per week. Go back to school and learn things you thought were too impractical to make a living off of back when you were 18. If you're a parent, you can spend a ton more time with your kids (raising a child is more than a full-time job anyway). There is enough in this world to fill multiple lifetimes, and restricting yourself to spending 40 hours a day drawing a paycheck is a very small part of the possibilities. Relying on a job to define ourselves and fill our time is the easy way out because it "automatically" takes up half of our waking hours (or more). I get that it can feel like a daunting task to figure out what to do with all that extra time, but I can't believe it wouldn't be worth it to do so.
ineptech 5y ago
Sure, but you could also find a job you like better and embrace FIRE doing that.
politician 5y ago
> Unclear goals, no feedback, and/or undiagnosed ADHD This makes me wonder how many people who secretly believe they may have undiagnosed ADHD are actually suffering from unclear goals and no feedback.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  My theory is that ADHD exists on a spectrum, and a lot of people have it, and at the lower levels it's not difficult to be high functioning. But still suboptimal and leads to other issues and distress.

ConfessionTime 5y ago

It is interesting the number of people who see this as a problem that needs to be fixed. Since this specific comment is near the top, I might as well address that here. Why should I work more? How will that improve my life? My self-worth is derived from what I do outside of work to the extent that I don't prioritize professional validation. The primary reason I work is for money. I make enough money that I can live a comfortable life, I have few material wants, and I can be generous with my money. I am on pace to likely be able to retire in my mid-50s. I recognize that I likely could be making more money if I worked harder, but it wouldn't be proportional because compensation is not tied closely to production for individual contributors. A 50% increase in effort won't yield a 50% salary increase. Most of the added value from my increased effort would be captured by people above me in the org chart and our company's stockholders. As it currently stands, I don't find it that difficult to find a new job. I do spend some time keeping up with the industry, I am on HN after all, which tells you I care more about software development as a skill than some of my coworkers. It isn't that I dislike the profession, I simply don't see the reward in working harder primarily for the financial benefit of other people.

winterplace 5y ago
What is a better way for the company to give you increases?
egypturnash 5y ago
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “only a little while.” The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.” The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.” “But what then?” Asked the Mexican. The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!” “Millions – then what?” The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> You should think of this as a problem. Even if it's not for your boss or your teammates (and it will be, eventually), it is for you Low output engineers can often coast for years before something forces them back on to the job market. Usually, routine layoffs force companies to take a hard look at who's producing and who's not, at which point the lowest productivity individuals are the most likely to be cut. This is where the real problems begin: If someone has spent years or even a decade doing very little actual work, they're now effectively years behind their peers with similar career lengths. Even if they could cram enough to skate through interviews, they can struggle when forced to work at normal productivity levels in a normal organization. Years of accumulated habits can be hard to break. I've interviewed a significant number of employees who (I suspect) fit this mold: They landed an easy job at a big company that didn't look too closely at their output, spent years coasting while doing little work as possible, but then something forces them out of the job and into interviews at other companies. It's surreal to speak to someone with a decade of confirmed experience but a level of knowledge equivalent to what I see out of the average motivated college graduate.

quesera 5y ago
This is so true. Early in my career, I was in a big organization, surrounded by people like this. Our direct manager was not competent to assess their work output on any technical level. He might not have cared anyway, since the true measure of management is how large your pool of subordinates is. It was truly soul-sucking to be surrounded by such mediocrity. I'm all for work-life balance, but having counterparts who accomplish so little is demoralizing. I can almost convince myself that there's a strategy in it -- with 15 people doing the work of 3 people, a very large bus accident will probably have very little impact on business operations. It killed me though. I left and went into consulting for a few years. Then startups, where 3 people are expected to do the work of 15. Which can be its own problem, of course! The aforementioned co-workers? Still at the same place, and honestly they're probably pretty safe (financial industry, revenue is barely affected by macro economy). Goodness help them if they ever need a new job. EDIT: Nowadays, I hire and manage people. My expectation of the team is to be "productive" about 20hrs/wk, ebbing and flowing according to personal life flux, but making an honest attempt to give the rest of us enough to rely on. I hope to hire the kinds of people who will use some part of the remaining time to reflect on how to improve something, somewhere -- sometimes including our work product or processes. This is where the interesting stuff happens, when it does.

oakfr 5y ago

Experienced manager as well. I highly concur. Sadly, the "good" solution is much harder to accomplish than one might think. One way to address it is to take it from the People perspective. Are there people you've really enjoyed working with? Go talk to them, see what they work on, etc. This may get you out of your current (deep) local minimum. Doing this on your own is really, really hard.

dkarl 5y ago

> 1) The "good" solution is to find some work you actually give a shit about. Or think about why you do the work, what it allows you to do with your life. Doing what you love / loving what you do is one way to be happy, but it isn't a requirement, as long as you have a reason for doing the work. Life is full of things that don't directly bring fulfillment and happiness, such as brushing your teeth, doing the dishes, exercising (for many people), shopping for clothes (ymmv), and (for most parents on most days) cleaning up after messy children. All preaching about how you really ought to feel fulfilled by stuff like that aside, most people don't, yet it doesn't ruin their lives to keep doing it day after day.

epolanski 5y ago

I so much agree with the part of it being soul crushing, especially from remote. If I liked videogames maybe I could fill that void in my working days. In the end I choose to program other things, I still get to learn and be a better dev every day for my employer.

koonsolo 5y ago

I was once at a job where I didn't do much. One day I did nothing, the next day I fixed a bug in 15 minutes, etc. I got excellent reviews. So I asked myself the question: If I get excellent reviews with this kind of work, what the fuck are those other guys doing??? > about 10%-20% of all employees I highly doubt it. Do you have a 10x developer on your team? That's probably the only person doing any serious work. Does he get paid 10x? No? Well that's why the other guys are slacking off. Maybe the person you gave an excellent review is slacking off like crazy.

xvector 5y ago
It's possible to do a little work that is very high value as opposed to a lot of work that is not valued by management. I've seen this a lot.