Ask HN: How many devs are coasting at their remote job?

1 points by sloankev 3 years ago | 4 comments

There's been lots of talk lately about quiet-quitting, over-employment (having 2 remote jobs), and coasting 1-2 hours per day (or even per week) as a remote software developer.

I see two ways to think about this:

1. The company is getting what they want out of the employee, so why does hours worked matter? It's about outcome, not output. If the company is none the wiser, that's their problem.

2. The company and the employee entered into a contract that often explicitly states hours-per-week worked. The employee is being dishonest by intentionally misleading the employer that this is how much work they can accomplish in a week.

The common arguments for (1) that I hear are:

A. It's not possible to do more than 4 hours of mentally intensive work a day on average (everyone is different). That's fine but 4 hours a day is a far cry from having 2 fully remote jobs, or working only a few hours a week.

B. Devs only did 1-2 hours a day of real work in an office environment anyways. The rest was interruptions. This might be correct, but you were still "working" - ie. using mental cycles, having discussions, and guiding others, as pedantic or seemingly useless it may have seemed. Now that you have mental cycles freed up, shouldn't those go towards your work?

I want to hear HNs thoughts on:

* How common is this scenario?

* Do you think this is a growing problem in the industry?

* How are employers handling these situations?

nh23423fefe 3 years ago |

Looking for a boundary in a continuous space is kinda pointless. All this behavior exists on the rockstar-incompetent spectrum.

Is a rockstar who works 39 hours a week stealing 1 hour from the employer? Is a junior who spins wheels but produces nothing tangible in 50 hours killing it?

This is all moralizing language around eternal behavior. The marginal value of the employee just is. Imagining a platonic employee to compare against is pointless.

uberman 3 years ago |

I find working remotely results in less free time particularly as it relates to core work hours. However you might define that.

There was a time in my life where I worked 9 to 5 or even 9 to 4 and when the day was done, it was done. Then came "on-call" nights, then the pager that I had to carry so that I could be reached when needed. Then as a consultant hours expanded and work was billed and compensated for based on 40 hours of billed time no matter how many hours were worked at the client site or after hours at my hotel room. Whatever the client needed by whenever they needed it was what was expected.

I have now worked remotely for almost 20 years managing a remotely distributed team across 4 continents and I pine for the days of being "done" outside of 9 to 5.

Working from home, I am never "done". I am almost always reachable and close enough to a computer to be productive be in 1 in the morning, on a Sunday or now even on vacation.

Power to you if you can pull off a 2 hour a week performance but I find I work much more "from home" than I ever did "in the office".

YMMV as they say.

sharemywin 3 years ago |

I've never really worked at a place that expected insane hours. I try not to get hired at places that suck.

I'm not looking to climb the latter or make a career transition.

I personally wouldn't be quiet quitting in a recession. I would try not to be in the bottom 10-20%

On the flip side I think there's still a lot of opportunity for good developers over the long haul.

personal bonuses would fix quiet quitting too.

Too me it's still about fair work for fair pay(whatever that means).

I look for work if I don't have any on my plate and if there's a meeting after 5 I don't complain.

If a company sounds too exploitive(or too many piece of flare aka coming into the office for no purpose) then probably not the best place to work for me.

disadvantage 3 years ago |

> How common is this scenario?

It's getting more common the more people discuss it, and learn that 'Hey, you can do that?'

> Do you think this is a growing problem in the industry?

It's been around since forever. There's also different forms it can take. Slowdowns[0] etc

> How are employers handling these situations?

Since it's usually done stealthily by employees, nothing much can be done apart from being a good leader and leading by example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowdown