6 ms·

Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us

26 points by DougN7 3y ago

It’s depressing to see more and more articles about people doing two or more remote jobs and cheating both companies. If this happens enough, I have to believe remote work companies will be less competitive. Excellent example article: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-genz-working-2-remote-jobs-gets-away-with-it-2023-5 The more CEOs and managers that read this are also going to want more employee surveillance.

xchip 3y ago
That is just anti-working-from-home propaganda. Those anecdotes, those testimonials, those surveys... All aligned with the advertisers interests... Are obviously propaganda.
xchip 3y ago
Why do you believe those news?
rcarr 3y ago
This entire argument is simple. If you’re a manager and you hire someone, you trust them to do the job you want doing. If you don’t trust them to do the job, don’t hire them. If you don’t trust anyone, then you have trust issues and probably shouldn’t be a manager and should instead go and work on yourself. If someone betrays your trust or doesn’t perform the job adequately: fire them. If someone performs the job adequately and can hold down a second job simultaneously then what is the problem? If you’re concerned you’re not getting value for money either extend the scope of your job until they can no longer hold down two jobs simultaneously and have to choose one or the other or fire them and hire a less competent employee who takes twice the time to do the job and costs less. But both of these options seem pretty ludicrous. Honestly, the entire debate around this subject all just stems around ego and power/control driven managers who shouldn’t be in the job in the first place. And no, I’ve never personally held two remote jobs simultaneously. But companies really need to move away from this “paying for time” mindset to “paying for the job” mindset. Like if they want to do remote and they’re concerned about this then why not just hire contractors?
- giantg2 3y ago
  They aren't even in a "paying for time" mindset. They're in, or at least trying to be in, the mindset of "we own everything you do while employed here".
- s1k3s 3y ago
  It's not that simple unfortunately. Some jobs have onboarding, which can last for weeks or even months. While in theory you can figure out if you're being screwed by an employee during onboarding, it would make the entire process a living hell for the employee. So most of the times you go with "they're new, they're learning, let's keep them for X months". If the person decides to slack it off after onboarding than you've just given someone free money for nothing. Also firing people is not easy everywhere. In EU this is a complex process that can involve unions, trainings etc. While it's mostly a ton of paperwork that you just do it just adds up to spending money on a person who didn't want to work there anyway.
  - Dannymetconan 3y ago
    This is what a probation period should be for. Even with all of the above you normally still have to pass probation. I've seen numerous people in the EU get let go in their 6 months for not meeting expectations. I think that is a risk with hiring regardless. Both sides have an information gap. I joined a place and within a week realized it was a disaster and I didn't want to work there. If the company had informed me half the teams had quit / was in the process of quiting I would not have joined. It's not like I could go back and get my old job
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    it would be one thing if dishonest employees simply underperformed, but they also often suck up other people's time. It sucks being a manager and pumping tons of time trying to get someone up to speed and not knowing if they just need more investment and support that will pay off or if they aren't reciprocating effort and working other jobs. After being burned, my default is little compassion and investment in full remote employees. Ill train in office employees because I have more confidence I'm not wasting my time. This is on top of the fact that multiple employment usually requires directly lying to your manager and coworkers, inflating task difficulty, or creating problems for others to slow the overall pace of a project.
giantg2 3y ago
"I have to believe remote work companies will be less competitive." If they can't tell their productivity is down, then they will likely stay uncompetitive even in the office.
Lukkaroinen 3y ago
I think that it's ok, if they can do that much work. I mean everyone can take two or three jobs even without remote jobs. Though with remote working it is easier to do two or three jobs if they are similar and you can send same work to both companies. It's not a problem before it's about copyright.
- lisasays 3y ago
  And if your employment contract -- like nearly every employment contract -- explicitly says "you will devote 40 hours a week to this role; and you will not take on outside obligations without giving written notice to the company" -- Is still "ok"?
  - Dannymetconan 3y ago
    I think it is. Employers love to include whatever they can in a contract. Non competes in Canada and the EU are generally not enforceable but you see them regularly. Why should this line be any different. Edit: which -> why
    - lisasays 3y ago
      Which should this line be any different? Because it most definitely is not about non-compete agreements in the usual (post-employment) sense. You understand that, right?
      - Dannymetconan 3y ago
        I understand the difference. Most jobs would like to own your 24/7 for minimum wage. They can also have clauses about discussing pay or other gray / illegal points. Just because you've signed it doesn't mean much to me. If you're meeting their expectations it's none of their business in my opinion.
        lisasays 3y ago
        Don't know what to tell you other than "Sorry, but this isn't how contracts work". But hey -- you're quite welcome to believe otherwise, of course -- and to throw yourself against the wheels of the legal system on the basis of your "opinion" of how they ought to work, if you like. It's a free country, after all.
benlivengood 3y ago
Don't worry, only the 10X engineers are working more than one job; they weren't getting compensated 10X at any one job so this makes it more fair to everyone.
abunuwas 3y ago
When I worked as a team lead, my main concern was whether were hitting our goals as a team, and ensuring every member of the team was aligned and ready to do their job. I had a colleague during lockdown who was just not getting anything done. We'd have calls to ensure he understood his task and knew what to do. But nothing was getting done. It'd take him days to reply to a message. I'll never know for sure, but I suspect he was working another job at the same time. He didn't last long in the company.
- ziml77 3y ago
  Or he was watching TV or playing video games. I don’t mean to make it sound like that’s common for people who work from home but it does seem more likely to me than working 2 jobs at once.
steve1977 3y ago
The same way it ruined on-site work?
than3 3y ago
Dishonesty in this case is simple; its fraud, everyone knows how to deal with fraud even big business. This is just propaganda meant to get people back to the office, poorly veiled propaganda at that. If the person signed conflicting agreements and violated those agreements; its pretty clear what the lawyers will say to do. It will be one of those moments that seems like out of a sitcom, with a joke waiting but the response is more serious... "this is what we are going to do, you are lucky that is all we are going to do". If the work gets done and you aren't in violation of agreements there is nothing wrong with working multiple jobs especially when as a CEO of a larger company you've participated in suppressing worker wages.
olliej 3y ago
How is someone working two jobs cheating _either_ company? More specifically why do we consider some jobs as being "greater than one job is mandatory" (because being able to afford food and rent is important) but for other jobs it is not? If a company thinks the only thing that is important is that you are "working" 40 hours a week, and that they'll force you in the office to ensure that. They don't care about what you do in that office, and they don't care about getting your job done: the hours you're at your desk is more important than anything else. All of that indicates incompetent management, and terrible task distribution. At the same time as an employee of such a company I would take such messaging as being an explicit "working harder or longer than your coworkers it will not be rewarded", because again the message is "time at desk is the important thing not what you do or accomplish".
batmaniam 3y ago
Remote work isn't going to go away because of this. If the business wants people to return to office, then they'll force it with any excuse. We already heard some of them claim people are 'more efficient' in the office as a top reason for RTO. If we worry about everything then I guess people in the offices should stop working efficiently cause that will ruin remote work too? Nah, cause Business gonna business, they don't care about what's "right". Just stop worrying and enjoy what's currently available to you :D
- batmaniam 3y ago
  Another story about RTO just came on the front page of HN: "Dell goes back on WFH pledge, forces employees to come back to the office" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944295 So yea, business gonna business. No sense in worrying about it. They'll either force you with random reasons or not.
hnburnsy 3y ago
Can someone write an article with the headline, "Reduced real estate costs will support remote work for most of us" IMO, companies are stuck with real estate leases or purchased buildings. New companies will shun real estate and as leases expire so will existing companies. Companies with purchased buildings will force their employees to the office until they are convinced they are not competitive in the job market, then they will dump that office space. Example, Salesforce exited a building literally named after itself... https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2023/04/13/salesforce-to-exit-30-story-namesake-tower-in-downtown-sf/ https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2023/04/13/salesforce-t...
martincole 3y ago
[dead]
liespotter- 3y ago
[dead]
superchroma 3y ago
Do you know what employees doing two jobs really is? Either savvy optimization of time or outright management failure. If you "get away with it", either: 1) your manager is not tracking and managing your time/productivity properly, or, 2) you're actually fit for purpose, the company is happy with your output, it meets expectations for what they pay and things are totally normal. Nobody is obliging these companies to employ these people. Programmers working agile should have a throughput denominated in story points and managers should come to an understanding of their bandwidth over a little time. They can then reason about whether they're working on par or not. The reality is that you have a lot of managers not being effective, who enable all these cheats as well as a legion of just regularly mediocre people to skate on by, bill 8 hours, do very little and go home. Big companies continue to make so much profit that employing such people (shitty managers and programmers) is not really a big deal regardless.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  One problem I've noticed with agile is that developers may not be the bandwidth choke point. If you have a multi-stage dev pipeline-- say with a user-testing, audit, or compliance phase somewhere in there-- it can become the bottleneck. If you have devs who can potentially push through N story points per sprint, but then it goes to {user testing, audit, compliance, QA, etc} that taps out at smaller M points, there's a lot of slack in the system.
- specialist 3y ago
  I assume management failure. Always makes me think of the documentary The Rubber Room, about the employees who can't be fired and won't quit. Our startup was acqui-hired. We were assigned to the one VP who voted against hiring us. That VP then devoted themself to managing us out. Natch. We were literally prohibited from doing new work; support existing clients only. While requiring us to file time sheets and status reports (forcing us all to lie). One teammate really got into everything Clojure. Another went back to school to get his MBA. One teammate launched his next startup. He'd drive into work, remote back to his own computers, and code like a demon. He did quite well. I ran for office. I did less well. Our H1Bs, unfortunately, had a terrible time.
- 3y ago
bell-cot 3y ago
That I've read, the fraction of employees "cheating" by holding two jobs is very low. But it pushes emotional buttons well, so it gets plenty of press. Not to say that stupid bosses, reacting emotionally to such "cheating", won't make life crappier for lots of people. But stupid bosses and their emotional reaction were making life crappier for lots of people back when "remote work" meant "pulling on a rope, with the other end connected to the block of stone that we're hauling up the side of this new pyramid". And - stupid bosses are always going to have obsessions that make your life miserable. Having him obsessing over something that you (99% chance) have no real interest in doing may be better than the alternatives.
tmpz22 3y ago
I assure you managers and executives are significantly more dishonest both in-office and remote.
- tgmatt 3y ago
  Do as I say, not as I do... and other similar nonsense.

26 points by DougN7 3y ago

xchip 3y ago

That is just anti-working-from-home propaganda. Those anecdotes, those testimonials, those surveys... All aligned with the advertisers interests... Are obviously propaganda.

xchip 3y ago

Why do you believe those news?

rcarr 3y ago

This entire argument is simple. If you’re a manager and you hire someone, you trust them to do the job you want doing. If you don’t trust them to do the job, don’t hire them. If you don’t trust anyone, then you have trust issues and probably shouldn’t be a manager and should instead go and work on yourself. If someone betrays your trust or doesn’t perform the job adequately: fire them. If someone performs the job adequately and can hold down a second job simultaneously then what is the problem? If you’re concerned you’re not getting value for money either extend the scope of your job until they can no longer hold down two jobs simultaneously and have to choose one or the other or fire them and hire a less competent employee who takes twice the time to do the job and costs less. But both of these options seem pretty ludicrous. Honestly, the entire debate around this subject all just stems around ego and power/control driven managers who shouldn’t be in the job in the first place. And no, I’ve never personally held two remote jobs simultaneously. But companies really need to move away from this “paying for time” mindset to “paying for the job” mindset. Like if they want to do remote and they’re concerned about this then why not just hire contractors?

giantg2 3y ago
They aren't even in a "paying for time" mindset. They're in, or at least trying to be in, the mindset of "we own everything you do while employed here".
s1k3s 3y ago
It's not that simple unfortunately. Some jobs have onboarding, which can last for weeks or even months. While in theory you can figure out if you're being screwed by an employee during onboarding, it would make the entire process a living hell for the employee. So most of the times you go with "they're new, they're learning, let's keep them for X months". If the person decides to slack it off after onboarding than you've just given someone free money for nothing. Also firing people is not easy everywhere. In EU this is a complex process that can involve unions, trainings etc. While it's mostly a ton of paperwork that you just do it just adds up to spending money on a person who didn't want to work there anyway.
- Dannymetconan 3y ago
  This is what a probation period should be for. Even with all of the above you normally still have to pass probation. I've seen numerous people in the EU get let go in their 6 months for not meeting expectations. I think that is a risk with hiring regardless. Both sides have an information gap. I joined a place and within a week realized it was a disaster and I didn't want to work there. If the company had informed me half the teams had quit / was in the process of quiting I would not have joined. It's not like I could go back and get my old job
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  it would be one thing if dishonest employees simply underperformed, but they also often suck up other people's time. It sucks being a manager and pumping tons of time trying to get someone up to speed and not knowing if they just need more investment and support that will pay off or if they aren't reciprocating effort and working other jobs. After being burned, my default is little compassion and investment in full remote employees. Ill train in office employees because I have more confidence I'm not wasting my time. This is on top of the fact that multiple employment usually requires directly lying to your manager and coworkers, inflating task difficulty, or creating problems for others to slow the overall pace of a project.

giantg2 3y ago

"I have to believe remote work companies will be less competitive." If they can't tell their productivity is down, then they will likely stay uncompetitive even in the office.

Lukkaroinen 3y ago

I think that it's ok, if they can do that much work. I mean everyone can take two or three jobs even without remote jobs. Though with remote working it is easier to do two or three jobs if they are similar and you can send same work to both companies. It's not a problem before it's about copyright.

lisasays 3y ago
And if your employment contract -- like nearly every employment contract -- explicitly says "you will devote 40 hours a week to this role; and you will not take on outside obligations without giving written notice to the company" -- Is still "ok"?
- Dannymetconan 3y ago
  I think it is. Employers love to include whatever they can in a contract. Non competes in Canada and the EU are generally not enforceable but you see them regularly. Why should this line be any different. Edit: which -> why
  - lisasays 3y ago
    Which should this line be any different? Because it most definitely is not about non-compete agreements in the usual (post-employment) sense. You understand that, right?
    - Dannymetconan 3y ago
      I understand the difference. Most jobs would like to own your 24/7 for minimum wage. They can also have clauses about discussing pay or other gray / illegal points. Just because you've signed it doesn't mean much to me. If you're meeting their expectations it's none of their business in my opinion.
      - lisasays 3y ago
        Don't know what to tell you other than "Sorry, but this isn't how contracts work". But hey -- you're quite welcome to believe otherwise, of course -- and to throw yourself against the wheels of the legal system on the basis of your "opinion" of how they ought to work, if you like. It's a free country, after all.

benlivengood 3y ago

Don't worry, only the 10X engineers are working more than one job; they weren't getting compensated 10X at any one job so this makes it more fair to everyone.

abunuwas 3y ago

When I worked as a team lead, my main concern was whether were hitting our goals as a team, and ensuring every member of the team was aligned and ready to do their job. I had a colleague during lockdown who was just not getting anything done. We'd have calls to ensure he understood his task and knew what to do. But nothing was getting done. It'd take him days to reply to a message. I'll never know for sure, but I suspect he was working another job at the same time. He didn't last long in the company.

ziml77 3y ago
Or he was watching TV or playing video games. I don’t mean to make it sound like that’s common for people who work from home but it does seem more likely to me than working 2 jobs at once.

steve1977 3y ago

The same way it ruined on-site work?

than3 3y ago

Dishonesty in this case is simple; its fraud, everyone knows how to deal with fraud even big business. This is just propaganda meant to get people back to the office, poorly veiled propaganda at that. If the person signed conflicting agreements and violated those agreements; its pretty clear what the lawyers will say to do. It will be one of those moments that seems like out of a sitcom, with a joke waiting but the response is more serious... "this is what we are going to do, you are lucky that is all we are going to do". If the work gets done and you aren't in violation of agreements there is nothing wrong with working multiple jobs especially when as a CEO of a larger company you've participated in suppressing worker wages.

olliej 3y ago

How is someone working two jobs cheating _either_ company? More specifically why do we consider some jobs as being "greater than one job is mandatory" (because being able to afford food and rent is important) but for other jobs it is not? If a company thinks the only thing that is important is that you are "working" 40 hours a week, and that they'll force you in the office to ensure that. They don't care about what you do in that office, and they don't care about getting your job done: the hours you're at your desk is more important than anything else. All of that indicates incompetent management, and terrible task distribution. At the same time as an employee of such a company I would take such messaging as being an explicit "working harder or longer than your coworkers it will not be rewarded", because again the message is "time at desk is the important thing not what you do or accomplish".

batmaniam 3y ago

Remote work isn't going to go away because of this. If the business wants people to return to office, then they'll force it with any excuse. We already heard some of them claim people are 'more efficient' in the office as a top reason for RTO. If we worry about everything then I guess people in the offices should stop working efficiently cause that will ruin remote work too? Nah, cause Business gonna business, they don't care about what's "right". Just stop worrying and enjoy what's currently available to you :D

batmaniam 3y ago
Another story about RTO just came on the front page of HN: "Dell goes back on WFH pledge, forces employees to come back to the office" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35944295 So yea, business gonna business. No sense in worrying about it. They'll either force you with random reasons or not.

hnburnsy 3y ago

Can someone write an article with the headline, "Reduced real estate costs will support remote work for most of us" IMO, companies are stuck with real estate leases or purchased buildings. New companies will shun real estate and as leases expire so will existing companies. Companies with purchased buildings will force their employees to the office until they are convinced they are not competitive in the job market, then they will dump that office space. Example, Salesforce exited a building literally named after itself... https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2023/04/13/salesforce-to-exit-30-story-namesake-tower-in-downtown-sf/ https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2023/04/13/salesforce-t...

martincole 3y ago

[dead]

liespotter- 3y ago

[dead]

superchroma 3y ago

Do you know what employees doing two jobs really is? Either savvy optimization of time or outright management failure. If you "get away with it", either: 1) your manager is not tracking and managing your time/productivity properly, or, 2) you're actually fit for purpose, the company is happy with your output, it meets expectations for what they pay and things are totally normal. Nobody is obliging these companies to employ these people. Programmers working agile should have a throughput denominated in story points and managers should come to an understanding of their bandwidth over a little time. They can then reason about whether they're working on par or not. The reality is that you have a lot of managers not being effective, who enable all these cheats as well as a legion of just regularly mediocre people to skate on by, bill 8 hours, do very little and go home. Big companies continue to make so much profit that employing such people (shitty managers and programmers) is not really a big deal regardless.

hakfoo 3y ago
One problem I've noticed with agile is that developers may not be the bandwidth choke point. If you have a multi-stage dev pipeline-- say with a user-testing, audit, or compliance phase somewhere in there-- it can become the bottleneck. If you have devs who can potentially push through N story points per sprint, but then it goes to {user testing, audit, compliance, QA, etc} that taps out at smaller M points, there's a lot of slack in the system.
specialist 3y ago
I assume management failure. Always makes me think of the documentary The Rubber Room, about the employees who can't be fired and won't quit. Our startup was acqui-hired. We were assigned to the one VP who voted against hiring us. That VP then devoted themself to managing us out. Natch. We were literally prohibited from doing new work; support existing clients only. While requiring us to file time sheets and status reports (forcing us all to lie). One teammate really got into everything Clojure. Another went back to school to get his MBA. One teammate launched his next startup. He'd drive into work, remote back to his own computers, and code like a demon. He did quite well. I ran for office. I did less well. Our H1Bs, unfortunately, had a terrible time.
3y ago

bell-cot 3y ago

That I've read, the fraction of employees "cheating" by holding two jobs is very low. But it pushes emotional buttons well, so it gets plenty of press. Not to say that stupid bosses, reacting emotionally to such "cheating", won't make life crappier for lots of people. But stupid bosses and their emotional reaction were making life crappier for lots of people back when "remote work" meant "pulling on a rope, with the other end connected to the block of stone that we're hauling up the side of this new pyramid". And - stupid bosses are always going to have obsessions that make your life miserable. Having him obsessing over something that you (99% chance) have no real interest in doing may be better than the alternatives.

tmpz22 3y ago

I assure you managers and executives are significantly more dishonest both in-office and remote.

tgmatt 3y ago
Do as I say, not as I do... and other similar nonsense.