Hacker News Reader

Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

I'd feel silly working at any office job where I couldn't casually watch a brief YouTube video or share one ith a colleague.

I've only worked at one, (now mostly remote, pre-ncov) maybe I was spoilt, but, perhaps as a result, I wouldn't want to feel that I couldn't. I'm not operating factory machinery.

View on HN

It's all about perception, sadly. Plenty of people who will judge you and gossip about you for what they deem to be slacking. (Often while they're having a "quick" cigarette break, just for the irony).

It's not ideal, but it's human nature, and I don't think any company, no matter how good their culture, can remove it.

I worked in an open bureau back in 2001. One guy would watch a funny video and the whole bureau would go to his computer to watch it. I found that very annoying, I'm here to work and solve (hard) problems, not watch videos. Because I was unemployed for a long time before that and was happy to work and do something productive. Instead..they watch videos. I also can't stand inner company politics. If I never have to talk to my colleagues it's the best. When I joined that company there was one guy who said, "we're all freaks here, what kind of freak are you". I never saw myself as a freak. The company imploded in the new economy bubble because management thought that spending 250k on Reamon (the singer) was a good investment. Then they didn't have enough money to pay their developers that were by 9/10 from Russia or Romania, imported. We sued and never saw our money. The product was sold to T-Online (Deutsche Telekom) as the TOM (T-Online Messenger) and the CEO fled to Switzerland with the money he made from the sale. We didn't see 1 cent. What's also interesting, on paper the chiefs like the CTO and the head recruiter earned 20fold of what the code monkeys earned. It was also a family business and they called themself a company that was noted on the stock exchange but in reality wasn't registered there. The brother of a, at that time prominent TV moderator was an investor in that company.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com