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“Working remotely, your colleagues can't physically ‘see’ when you get up to go to the bathroom or grab lunch. Or even take 30 minutes to reset on the couch,” Leah told me. “The last thing I wanted during those moments was to be paranoid that people thought I wasn't working—especially since I felt like I was working more than ever.”

Sleeping on the couch for half an hour while lying to your client/employer about it because you expect to be paid for that time is called theft. This person is lazy, dishonest and delusional.

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Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This sort of high-indignation, low-information comment usually leads to much lower-quality discussion, and we're trying for the opposite here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That is a very anti-human understanding of how an employee should be treated.

If that’s the case this person should never answer an email outside of working hours without getting paid for it. Any time they spend thinking about work outside of working hours should be compensated as well. If there is a work emergency she should not get involved unless they will get overtime.

Wage theft is one of the most prevalent forms of theft in the United States. Employers are literally underpaying workers for the amount of time they spend working, which to me seems even more lazy, dishonest and delusional than taking a 30 minute break.

As long as the work is getting done there is no problem with breaks.

I made no comment regarding how an employee should be treated. I spoke on how an employee should act. I made no comment implying that it's OK for employers to short their employees' wages.

I simply pointed out that lying for financial gain is theft. I agree that employees should be payed for work outside of normal hours, such as e-mail, yet that does not change my stated position at all. I understand that "Wage theft is one of the most prevalent forms of theft", yet you seem to not understand that theft can go both ways.

You seem to think that people should think when they are supposed to think, in a way that they are supposed to think, and at the exact time and place they are supposed to think - and consistently so. which generally isn’t the case for anyone I’ve ever met, especially for any length of time.

Sometimes people are tired. Sometimes they need variety. Sometimes the work is boring. Sometimes the work is super exciting. Sometimes they have something going on on their lives that is distracting, sometimes they don’t.

If a manager is trying to treat someone as a machine and force them to, like a machine, be predictable and consistent every time or treat them like they are broken - they are being hostile to that person as a normal human being, who doesn’t work that way.

Employees who don’t leave for whatever reason will attempt to regulate it by pretending to be complying while actually ‘stealing’ rest when someone isn’t looking, or hiding ‘underperformance’ during slack times when no one is looking. This often also removes the ‘high’ points when they could be providing more insight or helping out more, because if they demonstrate those, it makes it more obvious there are ebbs and flows. Which is perfectly normal.

You can argue about theft one way or another - it doesn’t change patterns of normal human behavior. That attitude just forces people to hide what is really going on so you don’t notice.

People need incomes, and they need something to do. So there is pressure on them to comply. Businesses need people to do the things they need to have happen (which often suck or are inconvenient), so there is pressure for them to hire.

Not recognizing the reality of the situation either is in , and getting overly selfish (or giving) or being unrealistic on how people work (on either side) is 1) always been a problem and not going away anytime soon, and 2) causes friction and problems for every side.

If a employee is bad at balancing the reality of the situation out; the employee ends up switching jobs a lot or without a job

If the manager is bad at it, they end up without stable employees and is constantly churning and burning - and has a low performance org.

What's wrong with being honest? If you need a break, say so. Why is that so hard? If your employer won't allow you to take the amount of breaks you need, then you and your employer are not compatible. You are faced with the task of finding a less demanding employer and your employer is faced with the task of finding a higher performing employee. Either party may be forced to modify their behavior until they obtain their desired level of stability, but only if people are honest about what's going on. Lying, stealing, and pretending a problem doesn't exist will not make it go away.

You've established a frictionless work environment with perfectly spherical employers and employees in your head. You have the base model down but it's an abstraction with no ties to reality.

You won't be able to think about the subject accurately until you get more experience under your belt. People generally learn the answer to "what's wrong with being honest" on the job.

That's insane. The only thing I've established is that people shouldn't spend half an hour kicking it on the couch while expecting to get paid. Anyone who does expect to be paid for that time and uses software to make it seem like they were working is a liar guilty of theft.

Notice that I've not commented on things like bathroom breaks. I specifically pointed out the example of defrauding a client or employer for relatively large blocks of time.

My first job was in 1995. Even then I knew it would be wrong to put an inaccurate time on the timecard for my benefit.

You haven't addressed internal motivation or external drag in your model. There's always an answer to the "why don't they just.." kind of questions, and if your model doesn't encompass those it won't be useful.

> Anyone who does expect to be paid for that time and uses software to make it seem like they were working is a liar guilty of theft.

Automating systems to hit a specific metric is like most of HN's livelihood. If the work is getting done why does it matter how easy they've made it?

So you’re saying everyone who has sat there reading a magazine during quiet times with no customers instead of immediately finding something else to do, but didn’t call that out is a liar and a thief?

If so, most every retail worker probably qualifies. As does everyone else, if they’re being honest with themselves. Or it’s not a realistic standard at all.

How is the burnout doing?

As noted by another comment, that just isn’t realistic or how society or workplaces work in general.

There is a large power imbalance (real or imagined) in a workplace. Employers can, have, and will continue to fire employees (or push them out illegally where it isn’t legal) for such offenses as being sick at times that are inconvenient for the boss, or having family issues (or trying to have a realistic balance of family life - aka not just work 24/7), or just not LOOKING like they are working hard, regardless of actual impact or output. Or, not having the right ‘vibe’.

If someone is dependent on the employer for their income, it behooves them to fit in - at least until they can find something better, which also takes time and energy.

And when problems are overwhelming or don’t have actual solutions someone can apply (due to lack of support, resources, or knowledge they possess), and you’ll get fired for showing any sign of a problem? What else is someone supposed to do?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s ok - ideally someone would be able to respectfully and responsibly address all issues and work through to solutions. But that is hard and only a small portion of people can do that for everything.

Those people tend to eventually end up in high positions, until the degree of stress and problems they get puts them at an equilibrium point with their ability to ‘deal’. Meaning they can’t go higher (or they pawn the problems off on someone else, meaning they have less directly on their plate).

Also, some folks resort to drugs, prescription, or self-medicating. We’re surrounded by it - everything from megadoses of ibuprofen every day to deal with severe muscle pain, to anti-psychotics and anti-depressants at ever more increasing percentage of the population. Some of this may be due to a mid-fit of society and what makes us happy, some may be other things. But who knows.

The point is that you cannot consider one without the other. If you have no flexibility on employee behaviour, then you should have no flexibility on employer behaviour, either. This is the nature of contracts.

Thus, a comment on how an employee should behave implies employer behaviour, too.

At what point did I imply that employers should be allowed to lie and steal from their employees?

Yeah, I caught that too. Some people need to have frank conversations with workers in other fields. Work from home wasn’t about being able to fold your laundry or take a nap during the work day. If you do so, you shouldn’t be making your employer pay for that time. I can empathize with people not being allowed to take bathroom breaks, but don’t take it too far. At the end of the day, you are in an agreement with your employer to produce something in exchange for money.

And later on in the article they mention a man who’s boss messages them “whenever they go to get a drink of water.” Either their bossware has deviated from the default settings, or this person has a really long walk to their kitchen. Or maybe they are hiding some information, and regular people wouldn’t be so sympathetic when they heard that these “water breaks” are over five minutes long three times an hour, on top of their regular break time.

Right, but isn't this whole discussion about how "producing something" doesn't necessarily mean "presence"?

Sometimes a 15 minute "unscheduled" break to fold laundry is the perfect routine-break that helps me solve a problem. Sometimes a nap on the couch helps increase productivity for the rest of the day. I'd do it in a real office if the couches were more comfortable. In fact, sleep pods and the like should be more common in workplaces.

If productivity rates aren't being adversely affected micromanagers can take a long walk off a short pier

Most workplaces I've observed allow for short breaks, conversations, etc. Not just techies, not just office work; I've seen it in restaurants, in retail, in warehouses. Smoke breaks and bathroom breaks are unmetered in all but the most egregious work environments.

Working from home, you're closer to the bathroom, closer to the lunchroom, and almost certainly spend less time socializing at the water cooler. You spend less time commuting, and probably work longer days as a result. That's adds up to hours that your employer gets for free. Also, you're probably a knowledge worker, so productivity isn't a strictly linear function of hours at the keyboard. Taking a quick nap, doing some laundry, etc. balances out that bonus labor. It is not theft. In my experience, short breaks like this increase my productivity.

Except nobody questions when people at the office "steal" time ot the coffee machine, talking about sports, talking on the phone or just wandering around thinking about something. At home it seema like we are bolted to the chairs

Why is the agreement between the employee and employer any of your concern?

Of course you can have an opinion about what is appropriate, but you phrase your comment as if they should never involve the sort of flexibility you mention.

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