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Comment by lnsru | Hacker News Reader

I was intern in 2008 and working very hard. Doing not only mandatory things, but also taking care of lab equipment and helping neighbor labs. Very loyal, no distractions, sitting in the lab until late and working probably 1,5x or even 2x more hours I was paid for.

And then boom! My manager came and told, they must throw away all the interns to save the costs. Throw away me and the other intern who worked in kitchen with coffee mug and was never in the lab. I felt really stupid. Since then I do my 40 hours what I get paid for. No more, no loyalty, no team spirit for the rest of my life. I was doing 200% in last 12 years only for startups as a co-founder, not that ability work hard disappeared completely.

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I can understand you working 100% and no more. And I can live with it if I was your manage.r But no loyalty, no team spirit? No way. For me it is a two way road. I give you flexibility to work remote some days, to arrive at 10 some days, to leave earlier others, but in exchange I expect that you some days will work more hours, arrive earlier or leave latter, and maybe work some weekends. It should be a balance.

Then good luck identifying that in your interview. :) OP probably won't brag about it and instead try to come off as a normal employee.

No remote before pandemic offered, 8:30-15:00 must sit in the office. Constant micromanagement. How to save €200k with cheaper hardware proposition rejected, integration test design forbidden, IDE migration middle in the project despite my protest started. My current place does not offer any balance. Edit: if I can solve my own errors on weekend I’ll do it for sure! But I am not liable for management fails.

Why would you fix errors on weekends? (except for critical stuff, and then take off a weekday instead, of course).

Errors are a normal thing for human work, especially software developer. Nothing you are "guilty of" and have to make right with your own money/time (same thing).

I was twice on weekend in the office in last 3 years: one time due to legendary IDE migration in the middle of project. It wasted 7 months in total. Any the other time I wanted to finish my release on time. Of course, it was postponed on Monday. Both times it was wasted personal time, zero gain.

What have you points to do with what OP said?

Homeoffice, flex time? That's all things that benefit the company just as much.

No relations to working only the hours they are getting paid for.

But that's the trick. You are presenting unrelated things as if they had to do more than agreed upon just to get those. Pretty cheap attempt to guild tripping.

“Team spirit or no way!” is how you end up with layoffs.

A team/company’s culture is WAY more than your own personal work ethic. Some people won’t think how you do. And that’s fine and should be encouraged!

>It should be a balance.

the situation you describe is not a "balance". it's whatever the employer desires. you've all but guaranteed low morale. when you demand loyalty and team spirit on top of that, it justifies cynicism.

in such a situation, you should expect people to do the bare minimum.

Because of managers like you I get all of these things nicely into the contract so no one can say to me that they 'give me something like flexibility'.

What you wrote doesn't have even 0.1% of balance you speak of.

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