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(This reply is written with the assumption that you're not putting in 80 hour weeks, but rather juggling multiple companies during a normal workday). Because i

(This reply is written with the assumption that you're not putting in 80 hour weeks, but rather juggling multiple companies during a normal workday). Because in a lot of software engineering jobs we are given a lot of trust in managing our own workload and this is a breach of that trust. If you have too much on your plate you can (in well functioning teams) tell your manager "hey, we can't do X" or "we need to push the deadline on Y" and that will be taken at face value. You won't be expected to put in 80 hour weeks just to get it done outside of extraordinary circumstances. The flip side of that is that if you have so little work that you have time to work a whole other job you're meant to tell your manager "hey, I have spare cycles, what do we need to get done?".

Volundr 4y ago
> This reply is written with the assumption that you're not putting in 80 hour weeks I'll note that even if you are, your not putting in the same quality 40 hours at either job you'd be capable if you were just working a single job. There are plenty of people who think they are capable of this pace, I've yet to meet someone who actually is. Of course if you have good management in place this is detected via the poor performance rather than needing to worry about butt-in-seat time.
- bb88 4y ago
  There was an hourly contractor I knew that used company A's laptop and wifi connection to do work for Company B, doing code check ins on Company B's open source github with his real name. He would go hide into some office in Company A for a couple hours during the work day doing some kind of meeting, hoping that no one would notice him behind the glass walls. Meanwhile his performance sucked for Company A, and he couldn't handle apparently simple tasks either. The github check-ins were flagged by the firewall, and they summarily let him go as soon as they saw it. I would not hire him if his resume crossed my path again.
sillysaurusx 4y ago
The flip side of that is that if you have so little work that you have time to work a whole other job you're meant to tell your manager "hey, I have spare cycles, what do we need to get done?". I’m not sure where this idea came from. If you want to do that, sure, go for it. But no one is meant to volunteer for more work than they’re given. It’s practically a recipe for burnout.
- Volundr 4y ago
  > But no one is meant to volunteer for more work than they’re given. To use your own words, I'm not sure where this idea came from. Any manager will absolutely expect you to tell them when you've completed your assigned tasks. No one wants the employee they have to keep checking in with to make sure they haven't completed their current assignment and are now sitting around staring at their cubicle wall instead of telling anyone.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    Yes. If you estimate that you’ll get something done by Thursday, and you deliver on Thursday, then everyone is happy. If you complete it sooner, your estimates were off. It’s fine to slow down if you sense you don’t need to work quite as hard as you thought to meet your deadlines. In general, estimation is a system of shared deadlines. If you give your manager the ability to think of you as always meeting your deadlines, I guarantee they’ll be happy.
    - Volundr 4y ago
      > If you give your manager the ability to think of you as always meeting your deadlines, I guarantee they’ll be happy. Sure, as long as they never find out that you've been padding your estimates or that the project everyone thought was going to take a week turned out to be much simpler than anticipated and you got in done on Monday and just played video games the rest of the week they'll be happy. There's even plenty of bad management out there, so in some places this might hold true for a long period of time (even a career!), but it's not because that's what your employer expected you to do, or what they think they are paying you for. And a good manager is going to figure out pretty quick when the end result of your 1-week tasks is a two line PR that's something is fishy. * Disclaimer: I have absolutely had the tasks the boiled down to two lines, but finding the right two lines took a week. A good manager is going to have sufficient understanding of the work to tell the difference.
      - sillysaurusx 4y ago
nextaccountic 4y ago
> you're meant to tell your manager "hey, I have spare cycles, what do we need to get done?". That's absurd, unless it's accompanied with a raise. If the employer is content with the worker's output, why should the worker volunteer to perform more work without additional compensation?
- happytoexplain 4y ago
  This is an oversimplistic view of tech work, especially software. If you're a contractor who doesn't care about the product beyond doing your well-delineated part properly, then sure, that attitude is perfectly reasonable (no sarcasm - that's not intended as a put-down of contract work). If you are an actual part of a team working to create a product you ostensibly all care about, you obviously will work together to distribute work; to account for surprises; to fix problems without being assigned a ticket that tells you exactly how to fix it; to make a good product. It's a fluid bag of work that naturally fills into any holes that develop in people's schedules. Work of that nature isn't "doing more than you're asked", because that kind of teamwork is in fact exactly what is asked.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    It’s also exactly what will burn you out and make you question life when your shares become worthless. There’s nothing wrong with taking a contractor mentality to a full time gig. In fact, it’s one definition of professionalism.
    - wisnoskij 4y ago
      Working 7 hours a day will not burn anyone out.
      - sillysaurusx 4y ago
        How old are you? (I’m asking earnestly, not flippantly.)

Volundr 4y ago

> This reply is written with the assumption that you're not putting in 80 hour weeks I'll note that even if you are, your not putting in the same quality 40 hours at either job you'd be capable if you were just working a single job. There are plenty of people who think they are capable of this pace, I've yet to meet someone who actually is. Of course if you have good management in place this is detected via the poor performance rather than needing to worry about butt-in-seat time.

bb88 4y ago
There was an hourly contractor I knew that used company A's laptop and wifi connection to do work for Company B, doing code check ins on Company B's open source github with his real name. He would go hide into some office in Company A for a couple hours during the work day doing some kind of meeting, hoping that no one would notice him behind the glass walls. Meanwhile his performance sucked for Company A, and he couldn't handle apparently simple tasks either. The github check-ins were flagged by the firewall, and they summarily let him go as soon as they saw it. I would not hire him if his resume crossed my path again.

sillysaurusx 4y ago

The flip side of that is that if you have so little work that you have time to work a whole other job you're meant to tell your manager "hey, I have spare cycles, what do we need to get done?". I’m not sure where this idea came from. If you want to do that, sure, go for it. But no one is meant to volunteer for more work than they’re given. It’s practically a recipe for burnout.

Volundr 4y ago
> But no one is meant to volunteer for more work than they’re given. To use your own words, I'm not sure where this idea came from. Any manager will absolutely expect you to tell them when you've completed your assigned tasks. No one wants the employee they have to keep checking in with to make sure they haven't completed their current assignment and are now sitting around staring at their cubicle wall instead of telling anyone.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  Yes. If you estimate that you’ll get something done by Thursday, and you deliver on Thursday, then everyone is happy. If you complete it sooner, your estimates were off. It’s fine to slow down if you sense you don’t need to work quite as hard as you thought to meet your deadlines. In general, estimation is a system of shared deadlines. If you give your manager the ability to think of you as always meeting your deadlines, I guarantee they’ll be happy.
  - Volundr 4y ago
    > If you give your manager the ability to think of you as always meeting your deadlines, I guarantee they’ll be happy. Sure, as long as they never find out that you've been padding your estimates or that the project everyone thought was going to take a week turned out to be much simpler than anticipated and you got in done on Monday and just played video games the rest of the week they'll be happy. There's even plenty of bad management out there, so in some places this might hold true for a long period of time (even a career!), but it's not because that's what your employer expected you to do, or what they think they are paying you for. And a good manager is going to figure out pretty quick when the end result of your 1-week tasks is a two line PR that's something is fishy. * Disclaimer: I have absolutely had the tasks the boiled down to two lines, but finding the right two lines took a week. A good manager is going to have sufficient understanding of the work to tell the difference.
    - sillysaurusx 4y ago

nextaccountic 4y ago

> you're meant to tell your manager "hey, I have spare cycles, what do we need to get done?". That's absurd, unless it's accompanied with a raise. If the employer is content with the worker's output, why should the worker volunteer to perform more work without additional compensation?

happytoexplain 4y ago
This is an oversimplistic view of tech work, especially software. If you're a contractor who doesn't care about the product beyond doing your well-delineated part properly, then sure, that attitude is perfectly reasonable (no sarcasm - that's not intended as a put-down of contract work). If you are an actual part of a team working to create a product you ostensibly all care about, you obviously will work together to distribute work; to account for surprises; to fix problems without being assigned a ticket that tells you exactly how to fix it; to make a good product. It's a fluid bag of work that naturally fills into any holes that develop in people's schedules. Work of that nature isn't "doing more than you're asked", because that kind of teamwork is in fact exactly what is asked.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  It’s also exactly what will burn you out and make you question life when your shares become worthless. There’s nothing wrong with taking a contractor mentality to a full time gig. In fact, it’s one definition of professionalism.
  - wisnoskij 4y ago
    Working 7 hours a day will not burn anyone out.
    - sillysaurusx 4y ago
      How old are you? (I’m asking earnestly, not flippantly.)