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Comment by Leherenn | Hacker News Reader

I often see this, but it doesn't match my experience of being salaried (outside the US). There's never a concept of "work done", there's just an endless list of things to do that I tackle one at a time, for 42h/week. If I go faster, then it just means I do more things in that same time.

Are there really salaried software jobs where every day someone tells you "your task for today is X", and you're finished for the day once you have done it?

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We have expected productivity requirements on a bi-weekly basis. The expectation is that if you finish 2 weeks worth of work early, then the next iteration you will get slightly more work. Of course this isn't 100%, (obviously someone could just take longer on purpose), but as a manager its pretty easy to tell when your direct reports are slacking off.

Personally I don't think having 2 salaried jobs is immoral. If you're not caught, I feel like it is indicative more of bad leadership than your skill. A good manager should know what someone of X skill level should be accomplishing. If you're only doing half of that, (assuming the other half was spent on another job), it should be fairly easy to notice.

Thanks for the explanation. In practice, it seems pretty similar, the manager has to estimate what is a reasonable amount of work an employee should be able to do. It's just that in my case it's over 42h/w and in your case it's more nebulous.

2 salaried jobs here would clearly be illegal though, even if in practice you could manage manage it by only working half the time per job. There are laws around how many hours you can do in a week, and two 100% jobs would blow over the limit.

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