7 ms·

This is why I constantly cheated in school. I got caught once and the penalty was a 0 on the test and a talking to. And only because I was a cheating noob. The

This is why I constantly cheated in school. I got caught once and the penalty was a 0 on the test and a talking to. And only because I was a cheating noob. The benefits were in the thousands and thousands of scholarship dollars. I cheat now in my employment. I work three full time jobs remotely and do the bare minimum in each. The risk is getting fired (and if I only get fired from two of the jobs, I am still ahead of honest work). The payoff is decades taken off my working life.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Selling your labor to multiple buyers and delivering acceptable work is not cheating.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Technically, they might sue you if you represent that you are working exclusively for them, which is a clause in most of these contracts. Still, not illegal.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    If there is violation of an exclusivity agreement, then I would say it is cheating.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    > Technically, they might sue you if you represent that you are working exclusively for them Is there any point in suing when there’s no damages?
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  My employers would have a huge problem with the code review rubber stamping and and complete lack of refactoring from me to achieve that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
threatofrain 4y ago
Being a TA and discovering that about half the class was engaged in a singular cheating ring (that does not mean the other half is free from cheating) changed my perspective as to how cheating should be dealt with. In general I feel that if enough people are doing the "wrong" thing, then punishing most of the population is probably an even worse move. Failing individuals, marking their transcript, or kicking them out of college may seem acceptable when you have the perspective that only individuals cheat. But when you hypothetically punish over half the student body by taking their money and kicking them out...
- soperj 4y ago
  Then why even have rules about it. You're basically screwing honest people.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > In general I feel that if enough people are doing the "wrong" thing, then punishing most of the population is probably an even worse move Why?
  - threatofrain 4y ago
    I feel that the raison d'etre of morality is in the promotion of healthy relations and prosperous communities, and my policy intuition tells me that punishing over half of a population is probably the wrong move.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      The thing is, it's only half the population now. Once you set the precedent, it won't be half the population any more. You can also just slowly ratchet up the pressure, cutting off the cheating over time.
      - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
        This is the same logic as roman decimation, which I think you'll find few people arguing is a great way to run a military today.
nawgz 4y ago
> I work three full time jobs remotely and do the bare minimum in each I always wonder what the expected value on this strategy is. I'm a naive sucker, so I have worked my ass off at my job, and I have had 250% salary growth in 5 years at it. Maybe that's standard if you're job hopping. Do you ever get raises? Do these jobs actually pay over 33% of the best job you could get? Would it be more stressful to juggle this kind of thing than the level of stress at a normal job you're invested in? I applaud you but can never tell if I should join you...
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Most people do not get meaningful raises without moving to new companies. Google, Amazon, and others also often have a compensation cliff at year 4 if you don't get a promotion by year 2-3.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  Depends the sacrifices you are willing to make and what you want. I earn 300K CAD between the jobs plus a pension. Let's call it 230K USD. I have three years of experience. I live in a low cost city in Canada as all my jobs are remote. I suppose it depends on whether you view this as a pro or a con, but my earnings are virtually all cash (some 20K in stock in total), so I am not taking a beating with the current markets. I work about 5-6 hours a day, mostly by being willing to volunteer for stuff that others hate or consider useless careerwise internally (I will happily be the support dev for example, despite that meaning I show far fewer achievements come review time). Being support dev (monitor Sentry and resolve all the bugs) works because I never join teams with core production responsibilities, so support is never urgent. Say that you are with Netflix. You want to be on the analytics team, not the streaming team. But other devs still hate it, so nobody will question taking a day to answer a question as everyone else doesn't even want to think about it. I went to the extreme and stretched out a config issue for three weeks. My manager and the other members of my team wrote me letters of praise and the skip manager had a meeting to praise me over handling it. Niche knowledge can be quite powerful. Debugging is also a skill in itself. I have also survived several layoffs, so plenty of opportunities to get rid of me. Pick your teams very strategically. The equivalent of the streaming team at my Job 1 has a horrendous work schedule and 3AM on-call. I have never worked a job with on-call. Also, choose to work on tools for work, a.k.a things that nobody will complain about over the weekend. > Do you ever get raises? I don't generally stick around at any org long enough to get raises, as the job hops have led to huge increases. I was earning 65K two years ago and that was two jobs ago. But I am told that I will be getting at least 8% this year at Job 1. Job 2 has a union ratchet, so performance hardly matters. Job 3, probably not, as they are stingy in every other way (but you can disappear for days and have it not be a big deal). I personally view raises as kind of a scam. Another dev on one of my teams is brilliant and highly productive, far more so than I am. She didn't get a raise with her promo. I am getting a raise for existing at Job 1. Be friendly, be funny, and you can get away with a lot. > Do these jobs actually pay over 33% of the best job you could get? Given the sacrifices I am willing/unwilling to make, yes. If I were willing to make other sacrifices like relocating or working harder, no. I also cannot leetcode that well. If you work for Google, you are beating this strategy. > Would it be more stressful to juggle this kind of thing than the level of stress at a normal job you're invested in? I find it less stressful as you just stop caring about all the little games. You stop caring about whether your standup report is meaningful or shows sufficient work. You stop caring about showing initiative. You stop caring about going the extra mile, or about leaving a bug unfixed over the weekend. You find yourself awash in so much cash that losing your job for years wouldn't matter. You don't worry about delivering, as deadlines are meaningless. Obviously don't blow high profile things, but as long as you deliver the bigger noticeable stuff to a decent standard (and bugs are one area to do that), all is well. At least in my case, I can coast to retirement within a year and will have a fully paid off upper middle class house before I am 30. That is also a huge stress reliever, as (contingent on responsible spending and prudent investing) I only need to keep up the high salary for 4-5 years.
gerdesj 4y ago
"I cheat now in my employment. I work three full time jobs remotely and do the bare minimum in each." Do you earn more from the three jobs than one job "honestly"? Perhaps ... but then it becomes complicated because I suspect you have to maintain three lots of "reality" to deal with each employer. Now it may be that you have managed full on parasite and are able to live with that and prosper. I'd keep an eye out over my shoulder if I was you. Sociopathic behaviour can work for a while, quite a long while but eventually society might lose more than it can afford to easily lose and looks for scapegoats and then deals with it. Then you had better have some remarkable camouflage or discover the joys of summary justice. You describe one unpleasant aspect of society that we all are aware of: the parasite. I'm warning you that society has fangs beyond the police and the law. We might call it natural justice or whatever but please do not fall afoul of it. There is of course way more to your story and my response but please do be careful.

lotsofpulp 4y ago

Selling your labor to multiple buyers and delivering acceptable work is not cheating.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Technically, they might sue you if you represent that you are working exclusively for them, which is a clause in most of these contracts. Still, not illegal.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  If there is violation of an exclusivity agreement, then I would say it is cheating.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > Technically, they might sue you if you represent that you are working exclusively for them Is there any point in suing when there’s no damages?
throwawaysleep 4y ago
My employers would have a huge problem with the code review rubber stamping and and complete lack of refactoring from me to achieve that.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

threatofrain 4y ago

Being a TA and discovering that about half the class was engaged in a singular cheating ring (that does not mean the other half is free from cheating) changed my perspective as to how cheating should be dealt with. In general I feel that if enough people are doing the "wrong" thing, then punishing most of the population is probably an even worse move. Failing individuals, marking their transcript, or kicking them out of college may seem acceptable when you have the perspective that only individuals cheat. But when you hypothetically punish over half the student body by taking their money and kicking them out...

soperj 4y ago
Then why even have rules about it. You're basically screwing honest people.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
> In general I feel that if enough people are doing the "wrong" thing, then punishing most of the population is probably an even worse move Why?
- threatofrain 4y ago
  I feel that the raison d'etre of morality is in the promotion of healthy relations and prosperous communities, and my policy intuition tells me that punishing over half of a population is probably the wrong move.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    The thing is, it's only half the population now. Once you set the precedent, it won't be half the population any more. You can also just slowly ratchet up the pressure, cutting off the cheating over time.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
      This is the same logic as roman decimation, which I think you'll find few people arguing is a great way to run a military today.

nawgz 4y ago

> I work three full time jobs remotely and do the bare minimum in each I always wonder what the expected value on this strategy is. I'm a naive sucker, so I have worked my ass off at my job, and I have had 250% salary growth in 5 years at it. Maybe that's standard if you're job hopping. Do you ever get raises? Do these jobs actually pay over 33% of the best job you could get? Would it be more stressful to juggle this kind of thing than the level of stress at a normal job you're invested in? I applaud you but can never tell if I should join you...

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Most people do not get meaningful raises without moving to new companies. Google, Amazon, and others also often have a compensation cliff at year 4 if you don't get a promotion by year 2-3.
throwawaysleep 4y ago
Depends the sacrifices you are willing to make and what you want. I earn 300K CAD between the jobs plus a pension. Let's call it 230K USD. I have three years of experience. I live in a low cost city in Canada as all my jobs are remote. I suppose it depends on whether you view this as a pro or a con, but my earnings are virtually all cash (some 20K in stock in total), so I am not taking a beating with the current markets. I work about 5-6 hours a day, mostly by being willing to volunteer for stuff that others hate or consider useless careerwise internally (I will happily be the support dev for example, despite that meaning I show far fewer achievements come review time). Being support dev (monitor Sentry and resolve all the bugs) works because I never join teams with core production responsibilities, so support is never urgent. Say that you are with Netflix. You want to be on the analytics team, not the streaming team. But other devs still hate it, so nobody will question taking a day to answer a question as everyone else doesn't even want to think about it. I went to the extreme and stretched out a config issue for three weeks. My manager and the other members of my team wrote me letters of praise and the skip manager had a meeting to praise me over handling it. Niche knowledge can be quite powerful. Debugging is also a skill in itself. I have also survived several layoffs, so plenty of opportunities to get rid of me. Pick your teams very strategically. The equivalent of the streaming team at my Job 1 has a horrendous work schedule and 3AM on-call. I have never worked a job with on-call. Also, choose to work on tools for work, a.k.a things that nobody will complain about over the weekend. > Do you ever get raises? I don't generally stick around at any org long enough to get raises, as the job hops have led to huge increases. I was earning 65K two years ago and that was two jobs ago. But I am told that I will be getting at least 8% this year at Job 1. Job 2 has a union ratchet, so performance hardly matters. Job 3, probably not, as they are stingy in every other way (but you can disappear for days and have it not be a big deal). I personally view raises as kind of a scam. Another dev on one of my teams is brilliant and highly productive, far more so than I am. She didn't get a raise with her promo. I am getting a raise for existing at Job 1. Be friendly, be funny, and you can get away with a lot. > Do these jobs actually pay over 33% of the best job you could get? Given the sacrifices I am willing/unwilling to make, yes. If I were willing to make other sacrifices like relocating or working harder, no. I also cannot leetcode that well. If you work for Google, you are beating this strategy. > Would it be more stressful to juggle this kind of thing than the level of stress at a normal job you're invested in? I find it less stressful as you just stop caring about all the little games. You stop caring about whether your standup report is meaningful or shows sufficient work. You stop caring about showing initiative. You stop caring about going the extra mile, or about leaving a bug unfixed over the weekend. You find yourself awash in so much cash that losing your job for years wouldn't matter. You don't worry about delivering, as deadlines are meaningless. Obviously don't blow high profile things, but as long as you deliver the bigger noticeable stuff to a decent standard (and bugs are one area to do that), all is well. At least in my case, I can coast to retirement within a year and will have a fully paid off upper middle class house before I am 30. That is also a huge stress reliever, as (contingent on responsible spending and prudent investing) I only need to keep up the high salary for 4-5 years.

gerdesj 4y ago

"I cheat now in my employment. I work three full time jobs remotely and do the bare minimum in each." Do you earn more from the three jobs than one job "honestly"? Perhaps ... but then it becomes complicated because I suspect you have to maintain three lots of "reality" to deal with each employer. Now it may be that you have managed full on parasite and are able to live with that and prosper. I'd keep an eye out over my shoulder if I was you. Sociopathic behaviour can work for a while, quite a long while but eventually society might lose more than it can afford to easily lose and looks for scapegoats and then deals with it. Then you had better have some remarkable camouflage or discover the joys of summary justice. You describe one unpleasant aspect of society that we all are aware of: the parasite. I'm warning you that society has fangs beyond the police and the law. We might call it natural justice or whatever but please do not fall afoul of it. There is of course way more to your story and my response but please do be careful.