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Comment by emperorcezar | Hacker News Reader

> What about the person who heard your explanation of “just get your work done” as “if you’re highly productive, this is a part-time job with full-time pay?”

What about them. Maybe they are highly productive because they are "part-time"?

Sounds like a good problem to have to me.

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One problem is that such people will the occasionally not get the job done, but have committed fully to the “part time” part, so they’ll continue a low effort schedule but not hit the targets. Other times they’ll get their parts done but be really har to get a hold of for other employees which might impede them. Sometimes you’ll just have issues with other employees being angry that they seemingly make the same but put in a lot more effort which tanks the moral of all the other employees. Tons of other issues come up.

It really shouldn’t be difficult to grasp that a full time employee working only part time is a problem, even if they are talented.

> One problem is that such people will the occasionally not get the job done, but have committed fully to the “part time” part, so they’ll continue a low effort schedule but not hit the targets.

If they weren't highly productive, they'd work the 40 hours and not meet their targets. Seems like the same situation except manager wants a butt in a seat.

> Other times they’ll get their parts done but be really har to get a hold of for other employees which might impede them.

Then they aren't really getting them done. There should be docs and enough information for someone else to interact and build off their work. The sync culture of butts in seats promotes high levels of tribal knowledge and over the mid to long run hurts velocity.

> Sometimes you’ll just have issues with other employees being angry that they seemingly make the same but put in a lot more effort which tanks the moral of all the other employees.

I gotta say, too bad for them. This comes from a butts in seats culture, which will drag everyone down to be the lowest common denominator.

You'll have a department where you have 90% normal devs, and 10% high productivity (per hour) devs. Force those 10% to be butts in seat and they are gonna go somewhere else.

Or browse hacker news all day. :)

Agree. Are you hiring to get work done, or to warm your office chairs for a set amount of time?

Point is, there's always something else they could be doing/improving/creating/testing/helping with

Unless their brain is only working 4-6 hours a day and after that they won't make much of a contribution.

I feel like my point is, if you're gonna want hourly work, pay for hourly work.

Take this scenario, I'm a highly productive dev. I work 5 hours a day and I'm burnt. But my manager makes my sit my butt in a seat for 8 hours. "Fine, whatever" I say.

Now crunch time comes and I'm pushing hard to 10 or more hours a day. I'm going to look back at the wasted time before in my seat with resentment. Because it's expected of me to give you more hours than my alotted 40 when the time comes, but when it's light I don't get to take that back.

Presumably you sought out and paid the premium for a highly capable employee because you wanted their above-average capabilities. If they're just going to meet the baseline and go home, the employer is wasting time and money relative to someone cheaper and easier to find.

If the company hired a highly capable employee by accident, or the employee deliberately took a low-salary low-expectation position to "coast" in, then maybe this line of reasoning holds up.

Well, the manager sets the targets. If the employee is above average, just increase their targets.

Exactly this, do you want 4 hours a day of really productive time or 8 hours of moderately productive time?

I only have so much active problem solving per day. I can spend it all quickly then go do something recharging or sit around forcing focus and resenting the fact that I have to look busy for 8 hours a day.

In software, productivity is really, really, really hard to measure. I realize this is an unpopular opinion, but I think employers are absolutely right to be skeptical of arguments that claim a 30-hour-a-week developer is as useful as that same developer full time.

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