Comment by jakidud | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakidud | Hacker News Reader

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Okay, I wasn't going to comment, but I thought this would be extremely relevant : I've been getting paid for free for the past four months. I've been turning up to work, reading novels all fucking day, eating at the company cafeteria, and leaving. I generally spend 4-6 hours at the office.

For 4 months now.

Let that sink in.

What happened is that I transferred from a 'public' team to a 'private' team, which means that I might have access to privelaged insider information,which means I can't sit with the public teams. But there isn't any seat in the private rooms. So I'm sitting in the cafeteria, reading books, playing on the PlayStation, etc etc.

I ask my manager every single day when I'm going to get a new spot. It's usually 'next week for sure' or 'friday for sure'. Hasn't happened yet. During the first month, I stayed for 8 hours each day, doing nothing. I've gradually stopped giving a fuck anymore and am looking for other jobs now, even though this is a pretty sweet gig.

Have you considered staying at the current job, not showing up, AND getting another job? I realize this is unethical but is it actually illegal?

One of my friend’s coworkers did this but I didn’t know the coworker well enough to see how it turned out. I have always been curious.

I've advocated this for a long time, not something people are receptive to though. I've been in GPs position, I've done little or nothing for YEARS at various development jobs, I do some high visiblity things, but otherwise coast. It's bizarre, but i always get glowing reviews. I've spent years averaging 5 hours of work a week. It's easy in software if you're good at it.

The logical conclusion is maximize your earning moonlighting an additional job. It's hard though; to land one, and work two jobs concurrently. IF they're both remote helps a lot.

Pretty sure this is illegal as well, what with non competes and all

Can you deliver pizza's at night? Why can't you do another dev job? Sure there's risk, but the calculus is: $100k a year or $200k a year? Retire in 30 years or 10? I've had lot's of jobs that didn't even make me sign a non compete.

I don't think a pizza delivery job is considered competition against a dev role.

Depends on your state.

In places like CA, you'd probably be fine to offer services to a company that's completely unrelated to your nominal employer, as long as you don't use privileged information from your "main" job.

That being said, have a friendly chat with your own lawyer before doing this.

Only if you actually violate the non compete (and even then it will be state-specific).

Use this time to train a new skill.

People are willing to pay big money to set aside time to learn a new, marketable skill. You currently have the opportunity to be paid while doing the same.

Yes, that's what I started to do. Unfortunately a lot of time was wasted cause it was always, just one more day, just this week, just till that other guy transfers to a new team, I kept thinking I'd finally get to work but just kept getting pushed back.

Having been in this situation it’s so incredibly difficult. Especially if it happens early career you don’t know what you don’t know. It ends up becoming tedious for people with work ethic which is like to consider myself having. Your soul wants to be productive and you know you aren’t. Maybe it’s an ego thing. Or just procrastination. I think you are right. Just that it’s hard to do.

Reminds of something I read here not too long ago. From what I understand, it makes the rounds every now and then.

https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/

That was a hilarious read! Know more stories like it? I only got reliable Internet access in 2008 (kid in a third world country) and I've always been interested in the dot-com bubble days.

That was hilarious

I hadn't read this before. Thank you so much for sharing, I will cherish this for many decades to come.

I've been getting paid for free for the past four months.

I had a similar thing happen to me once.

I was hired to perform a certain mission-critical task that had to be performed at a particular time two days a week. It's was a significant task involving about a hundred people that had to be done every day of the year, including holidays.

When I was hired, I was supposed to do that task on weekends and then three days during the work week help out the people who had to do the task on those days.

Everything went fine for about three months. Then one of the full-time helpers complained to their union that I was doing a helper job three days a week. In the union's view, I was taking away a helper job, which wasn't really true. I was a bonus helper. If I wasn't there, there wouldn't be a new three-day-a-week helper position.

The union got all huffy and the result was that I had to come to work, suit and all, and I sat at a computer and got paid six figures to look at LOLcats three days a week.

This went on for five years until I left for another company.

Amazingly, that was the least problematic staffing situation at that company.

Same thing happened with me at my old software development job. Company went through a merger but I left before it completed. I stayed for nine months, working from home, but with no work to do.

I did freelancing but eventually got very depressed. Quit my job, left my apartment and moved back with my parents.

Bear in mind that this makes you an pretty expendable employee, if management decides they need to get rid of people, you are a prime candidate.

One of my past employers was a consulting firm that would have people "on the bench" for weeks to months at a time between clients. When the time comes to get leaner, those who have been "on the bench" the longest are the ideal ones to get rid of, because they're the ones who will hurt the least to let go (specifically because there's leftover responsibilities that need to be assigned elsewhere or silo'd knowledge that may be lost).

I'd be on the lookout for something else.

Bear in mind that this makes you an pretty expendable employee

Reality suggests the opposite. They're having OP hang around doing nothing for fear of being without them at some unknown point. If they're an expendable employee, what is management waiting for? They're literally throwing money down a hole.

Yes, this is true. The wierdest part is that my new team lead fucking fought tooth and nail to get me pulled from my previous team. The old lead told him I was needed till at least the newest batch of dev work had been done but the new lead went to the department manager and got me reassigned. And I have no place to sit, even. Makes me wonder if I've been caught in the middle of some kind of management power play.

You could at least work on that site/app/comic/book you've always wanted to put together.

Finance?

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuup.

Oh the joys of Garden Leave and "changing" companies while remaining in the same building.

Man, I don't miss finance.

You've been reassigned to the roof.

I just would like to add a bit of a warning to anybody reading parent's comment and thinking it's the life-it really isn't what it's cracked up to be.

After like a year of doing nothing, like around the 9th month mark, it starts to take a toll. Since my manager was constantly telling me there's not much I need to do other than explain lines of code and what they do in business terms. Often I would prepare something because I'm so fucking bored and then it would be brushed off as "cool but yeah no need".

The reason is that it feels too much like unemployment. Checking reddit, HN, github, eating company snack and getting fat, starts to develop impulsive gambling/day trading....

basically I was spending money to escape the fact how bored I was...it's really fucked up....I'm not sure what the dynamics are but honestly, it sure beats doing manual labor.

the lack of product market fit was painfully obvious by the volume of opportunities we were getting.

Yes, definitely. If I made it sound like I was having the time of my life, I'm sorry. If you're just starting out in your career, four months of experience is too valuable to pass by. Besides, you'll get bored of all the shit pretty quickly. You'll have nobody to talk to because everyone will have work, and all the websites you can visit will start getting boring and repetitive after a while. And when the time comes that you have to get to work, you'll be out of touch.

I honestly think that free time in office isn't free at all, it's fucking suffocating. You can't work, but you can't have fun either, i.e, have a beer and watch a movie, play videogames (the games on the company playstation are at least a decade old) , hang out with your girlfriend, go for an actual vacation. It's like you're stuck in limbo. You can't do anything productive or fun.

Ah no apologies necessary!

I can definitely attest to refreshing HN and Reddit too often to the point it was causing anxiety....

I don't know why I do it? I keep refreshing the page for some new comment and keep tabs on my karma points....

2 things:

- I think it depends on how people are wired (if you have something personal you deeply want to do, you can avoid the useless negative factor into a "i have free funding for my project"). I used to be like that.

- I really wonder how much work = having the satisfaction to feel needed and help someone by your skills/knowledge/care.

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