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What's wrong with being a clock puncher if you're doing your work?

by kenko 12y ago

msandford 12y ago
You won't work free overtime for a startup on the hope that your effort is rewarded by a large payday some day. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but if you're trying to make something out of nothing (which is basically what startups are) it can be incredibly demoralizing to the people who are killing themselves to make it work somehow.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  You've just described a failing startup. Killing yourself to make something work only gets good results by luck, and is a poor business strategy no matter how many shiny startup words anyone uses to dress it up. Likewise, working large amounts of free overtime on someone else's project is for chumps. If you don't have a meaningful financial stake in the business and still do this, someone is taking advantage of you, and following the money/equity will quickly tell you who it is. The only people who reliably win under those conditions are investors who are playing a statistical game and don't suffer any of the adverse personal consequences themselves. Edit: Obviously this doesn't apply to genuine volunteer work, such as contributing to your favourite OSS project or helping out your kid's school or a charity whose goals you want to support. But I don't think these are the kinds of work we are talking about here.
tbrownaw 12y ago
Clocks are expensive to replace? ;) . There's something called "work to rule" that unions apparently do sometimes instead of striking, where they follow all the rules exactly and this causes nothing to ever get done. I imagine being overly strict about your hours would have similar (but much smaller) effects. But, this should go both ways... if I'm going to stay 15 minutes late to finish something I'm in the middle of, I'll expect to be able to come in slightly late or leave a bit early on other days as long as the time more-or-less averages out.

What's wrong with being a clock puncher if you're doing your work?

by kenko 12y ago

What's wrong with being a clock puncher if you're doing your work?

You won't work free overtime for a startup on the hope that your effort is rewarded by a large payday some day. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but if you're trying to make something out of nothing (which is basically what startups are) it can be incredibly demoralizing to the people who are killing themselves to make it work somehow.

Silhouette 12y ago
You've just described a failing startup. Killing yourself to make something work only gets good results by luck, and is a poor business strategy no matter how many shiny startup words anyone uses to dress it up. Likewise, working large amounts of free overtime on someone else's project is for chumps. If you don't have a meaningful financial stake in the business and still do this, someone is taking advantage of you, and following the money/equity will quickly tell you who it is. The only people who reliably win under those conditions are investors who are playing a statistical game and don't suffer any of the adverse personal consequences themselves. Edit: Obviously this doesn't apply to genuine volunteer work, such as contributing to your favourite OSS project or helping out your kid's school or a charity whose goals you want to support. But I don't think these are the kinds of work we are talking about here.

tbrownaw 12y ago

Clocks are expensive to replace? ;) . There's something called "work to rule" that unions apparently do sometimes instead of striking, where they follow all the rules exactly and this causes nothing to ever get done. I imagine being overly strict about your hours would have similar (but much smaller) effects. But, this should go both ways... if I'm going to stay 15 minutes late to finish something I'm in the middle of, I'll expect to be able to come in slightly late or leave a bit early on other days as long as the time more-or-less averages out.