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Slacking off can have moral implications in that it can make your coworkers' lives harder, or can be a problem for the public if it's a socially useful activity

by Bakary 4y ago

Slacking off can have moral implications in that it can make your coworkers' lives harder, or can be a problem for the public if it's a socially useful activity like healthcare. If those conditions aren't met however, I don't really see why the worker should let the employer extract additional value out of them for no benefit, especially if they do fulfill the terms of the contract set to them. Maybe it's a cultural difference but this seems like a Protestant-style fetishization of work and hierarchy for its own sake. The appeal to civility and honesty in the abstract is busted because the structural relationship is highly uncivil to begin with. There are less lucky workers out there, so other groups of workers should relinquish their cards? Seems like a non-sequitur. You could turn it around and ask why the employer isn't grateful that they can extract as much value as they currently can. In some EU countries, they're not even allowed to monitor workers or send them work correspondence after hours!

thunky 4y ago
> I don't really see why the worker should let the employer extract additional value out of them for no benefit, especially if they do fulfill the terms of the contract set to them. I agree with this. My contention is that workers are not fullfulling the terms of their contract. I'm not defending the contracts themselves, or saying it makes sense for an employer to require butts in seats for 40 hrs, but I also can't sympathize with people that violate the agreement they entered into. You're defending "mouse jiggling". That is a deception. Why would they feel the need to fake work if their contract allows them to not work?
- Bakary 4y ago
  I see what you mean. It's definitely true that the ideal solution would be to introduce this at the contract stage. The difficulty of doing that is in a sense what prompted me to respond earlier. For most workers in industries where it is physically possible, it is very difficult to negotiate 80% employment or time flexibility or working from home. Even some skilled workers on HN seem to have trouble with it as they testify to in this very thread, and anglophone coders are the cream of the crop when it comes to negotiating power, so we can only imagine what it's like elsewhere. The typical modern worker (with some exceptions) has to essentially request the privilege of trading the majority of their useful lifespan towards increasing the wealth of another person or face the prospect of the complete dissolution of their life. By contrast, most employers (though of course not all) who face mouse-jiggling type problems merely have to contend with the loss of some self-actualization and additional wealth as the worse case scenario. If Oliver Twist sneaks in an extra bite of bread from the coal mill's supply during a 12 hour workday, he is being deceptive to his employer when fulfilling a contract willingly entered into. Of course, comparing an office worker to a Victorian child laborer is ridiculous on the face of it, but only in a quantitative sense. In a qualitative sense, the power balance and the context of the deception means that we can't consider it in a vacuum or in comparison to an ideal world. In other words, if the environment were civil, the worker would be easily able to enter into the mutually beneficial contracts you alluded to, and the need for mouse jiggling would disappear on its own except for all but the most boundary-pushing workers. In Victorian times, the social norms justified child labor and asked workers to be thankful for their lot. Today, the conditions of workers has improved tremendously, but the norms are still designed (or rather, naturally emerged) towards extracting additional value in favor of the employer. The last 50 years have seen the bulk of productivity gains given to the owners rather than the workers, and wage theft is a huge concern all over the OECD. Hence the OP's Ask HN thread and the feeling of social dissonance regarding the work week.
  - thunky 4y ago
    Yeah I agree it's complicated and context is important. Even though I do resent spending the majority of my useful lifespan "working", I don't feel like I'm being exploited. Rather, I mostly consider myself lucky and privileged to be able to work from the comfort of my home doing an activity that I mostly enjoy for a decent salary. Sure my company overlords make money from the deal, much more than I make, but they're not villians - they're just people that did better than I did and good for me that their quest for money gave me an opportunity to enrich myself. The power imbalance and exploitation you refer to applies to people who aren't so lucky and have to do real labor. I don't that's who we're mainly talking about in this thread. Instead, it's the people that are already lucky and privileged that rationalize deception because they think they deserve even more.
    - Bakary 4y ago
      I can't really respond to this without restating the arguments already made earlier, but ask yourself this: isn't it an odd coincidence that this appraisal of the situation on your end is absolutely ideal for the employer? - It leaves little possibility of advocating for better conditions, even if these might be straightforward to obtain - Makes it more likely to expend additional energy for the employer due to a moral abstraction as opposed to a material or social/societal need - Assigns high moral worth to the employer by virtue of their ownership and higher class. The employee can't merely sign a contract, but must also practice additional gratefulness in favor of the employer - Could potentially lead to monitoring and reporting other workers based on the abstraction of dishonesty, at no material or social gain to either worker involved or any clearly identifiable societal improvement The employer makes far more money, their relationship to work is completely different, they own at least a significant part of the company, belong to a higher social class, and yet both your worldviews regarding work coincide neatly, and do so specifically in favor of only one person in the equation. We could transpose this to a hypothetical Victorian worker. They could say that they are privileged to work 12 hour days because they could also work as a literal slave. That they should show extra diligence for the employer because that God-given hierarchy is natural and wholesome. From our vantage point, this mindset sounds absurd and the result of internalized oppression, but a hypothetical worker of the future could very well look at us now rejecting the 4 day workweek the same way we look at our predecessors justifying child labor and black lung.

by Bakary 4y ago

thunky 4y ago

> I don't really see why the worker should let the employer extract additional value out of them for no benefit, especially if they do fulfill the terms of the contract set to them. I agree with this. My contention is that workers are not fullfulling the terms of their contract. I'm not defending the contracts themselves, or saying it makes sense for an employer to require butts in seats for 40 hrs, but I also can't sympathize with people that violate the agreement they entered into. You're defending "mouse jiggling". That is a deception. Why would they feel the need to fake work if their contract allows them to not work?

Bakary 4y ago
I see what you mean. It's definitely true that the ideal solution would be to introduce this at the contract stage. The difficulty of doing that is in a sense what prompted me to respond earlier. For most workers in industries where it is physically possible, it is very difficult to negotiate 80% employment or time flexibility or working from home. Even some skilled workers on HN seem to have trouble with it as they testify to in this very thread, and anglophone coders are the cream of the crop when it comes to negotiating power, so we can only imagine what it's like elsewhere. The typical modern worker (with some exceptions) has to essentially request the privilege of trading the majority of their useful lifespan towards increasing the wealth of another person or face the prospect of the complete dissolution of their life. By contrast, most employers (though of course not all) who face mouse-jiggling type problems merely have to contend with the loss of some self-actualization and additional wealth as the worse case scenario. If Oliver Twist sneaks in an extra bite of bread from the coal mill's supply during a 12 hour workday, he is being deceptive to his employer when fulfilling a contract willingly entered into. Of course, comparing an office worker to a Victorian child laborer is ridiculous on the face of it, but only in a quantitative sense. In a qualitative sense, the power balance and the context of the deception means that we can't consider it in a vacuum or in comparison to an ideal world. In other words, if the environment were civil, the worker would be easily able to enter into the mutually beneficial contracts you alluded to, and the need for mouse jiggling would disappear on its own except for all but the most boundary-pushing workers. In Victorian times, the social norms justified child labor and asked workers to be thankful for their lot. Today, the conditions of workers has improved tremendously, but the norms are still designed (or rather, naturally emerged) towards extracting additional value in favor of the employer. The last 50 years have seen the bulk of productivity gains given to the owners rather than the workers, and wage theft is a huge concern all over the OECD. Hence the OP's Ask HN thread and the feeling of social dissonance regarding the work week.
- thunky 4y ago
  Yeah I agree it's complicated and context is important. Even though I do resent spending the majority of my useful lifespan "working", I don't feel like I'm being exploited. Rather, I mostly consider myself lucky and privileged to be able to work from the comfort of my home doing an activity that I mostly enjoy for a decent salary. Sure my company overlords make money from the deal, much more than I make, but they're not villians - they're just people that did better than I did and good for me that their quest for money gave me an opportunity to enrich myself. The power imbalance and exploitation you refer to applies to people who aren't so lucky and have to do real labor. I don't that's who we're mainly talking about in this thread. Instead, it's the people that are already lucky and privileged that rationalize deception because they think they deserve even more.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    I can't really respond to this without restating the arguments already made earlier, but ask yourself this: isn't it an odd coincidence that this appraisal of the situation on your end is absolutely ideal for the employer? - It leaves little possibility of advocating for better conditions, even if these might be straightforward to obtain - Makes it more likely to expend additional energy for the employer due to a moral abstraction as opposed to a material or social/societal need - Assigns high moral worth to the employer by virtue of their ownership and higher class. The employee can't merely sign a contract, but must also practice additional gratefulness in favor of the employer - Could potentially lead to monitoring and reporting other workers based on the abstraction of dishonesty, at no material or social gain to either worker involved or any clearly identifiable societal improvement The employer makes far more money, their relationship to work is completely different, they own at least a significant part of the company, belong to a higher social class, and yet both your worldviews regarding work coincide neatly, and do so specifically in favor of only one person in the equation. We could transpose this to a hypothetical Victorian worker. They could say that they are privileged to work 12 hour days because they could also work as a literal slave. That they should show extra diligence for the employer because that God-given hierarchy is natural and wholesome. From our vantage point, this mindset sounds absurd and the result of internalized oppression, but a hypothetical worker of the future could very well look at us now rejecting the 4 day workweek the same way we look at our predecessors justifying child labor and black lung.