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Comment by fefe23 | Hacker News Reader

I have met a few of those people, but every single one of them needed a justification.

Some told me they felt wronged by the company somehow. For example they had experienced bullying, or didn't get promoted when they felt they should have been, or they had contributed something and then it got cut from the product, something like that in most cases. Now didn't feel they owed the company anything. Yet others said the pay is not enough to really get them invested in the work.

The fact that they needed these excuses tells me they felt what they did to be morally wrong and didn't really want to be dead weight.

I personally have done a few projects that turned out to be purely compliance based, and had no merit whatsoever. I remember the feeling of wasting my life to be absolutely soul crushing and I have been avoiding that kind of project as if my life depended on it.

Your mileage may vary.

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I am not a dead weight and I’ll never be, but I also do absolutely bare minimum to not get fired. And by bare minimum, I mean, I will always finish my work in the time it is expected to be finished. And if the expectations are higher, I’ll move on to another job.

I do this as a way to get back at corporate America. Too many companies get away with sucking out their employees dry and firing them once they can’t meet the unreasonable expectations that are set for them. You could be dying of cancer or have lost a child, and they will get rid of you the moment they can do so without breaking the law, and in some cases even break the law in the hopes that you’d not pursue any legal action. Nah don’t work hard, work smart, for yourself.

Hell of a way to go through life though. "Corporate America" doesn't care in the slightest bit. It's an unthinking unfeeling machine.

> I am not a dead weight and I’ll never be, but I also do absolutely bare minimum to not get fired.

That's the literal definition of dead weight.

Dead weight would be people doing nothing. After those come the negative contributors: they do stuff but is all politicking and scheming, or just waste others time. Doing strictly what you are really paid for is bad now?

“Enough” is not in the vocabulary of corporate vampires. Doing your job to the requirements should be acceptable, and that only works if your org is run by empathetic, reasonable leadership, you don’t tolerate the abuse of being squeezed, or you have a union. If the bar is never enough, you’re being gaslit, and that’s psychological abuse.

And I think that's exactly the original commenter's point: if the company he works for ever decides that "enough" isn't sufficient to satisfy his boss, he's he'll move on.

That's exactly why most performance reviews are a scam. "Always room for improvement."

Working to rule is the first labor action unions start doing ahead of a strike.

If you want to do piecework/hourly work, you should be a contractor.

Working to rule involves malicious compliance, which may very well be harder work than actually being productive. Just being unenthusiastic is not the same thing.

No, dead weight is someone who does little or no work, should be fired, but manages to fly under the radar somehow in order to keep their job.

Someone who does the bare minimum in order to buy get fired is just a... satisfactory employee. Never gonna get big raises, never gonna get promoted, but gets their work done and doesn't go above or beyond.

This is the "pieces of flair" debate. If their manager asks for fifteen tickets a month, and they do exactly fifteen, the manager sits them down and asks why they don't do twenty, like their colleague over there.

They ask the manager, "If you want twenty tickets, just ask me for twenty tickets. Why do you set fifteen as the standard, and then try to use cheap psychological tricks to get me to do twenty tickets?"

I have managed teams going back to the nineties. If I want fifteen tickets, I ask for fifteen tickets. If someone just does the minimum, they just get paid the minimum, but I have set my expectations such that their work is a net benefit to the company, so they keep their job.

If things change and I need twenty tickets, I will ask for twenty tickets. It's not complicated. The "bare minimum" is still enough to keep a job. If it isn't, it's on me to establish a different minimum such that the "minimum" is exactly that: The minimum needed to remain employed.

"Dead weight" is someone whose work is not a net benefit to the company. If I as a manager set a minimum, and someone does the minimum, and they are not a net benefit, WTF am I doing as a a manager setting fifteen tickets as the minimum?

Employees meeting expectations but not being a net benefit? That's a management problem. And if it's across the org, that's a SYSTEMIC management problem.

So if this person is meeting the minimum, either they are NOT dead weight, or there is a management problem. Either way, they are not the problem.

Since when is a software engineer's output measured in "tickets" per month?

That said I agree with the idea that someone that adds value that is some reasonable multiple of their salary gets to keep their job. If they're not adding value because they can't perform their job or don't care they should not keep their job. If they're not adding value because of how they're managed their manager should not keep his job. If this issue is endemic in the company that probably means the CEO shouldn't keep their job... In an ideal world anyways.

TPM - bug squashing/or MBA manager would be my take. Would bounce if ever that was my metric. Its like GPM but for SEs.

I got reprimanded for not posting enough comments on issues and then was compared to another engineer.. who didn’t post timely comments on issues. At some point it’s not about trying to determine if you’re an underperformer but just that they want you out. Lots more tales from that crypt but I’m happy where I am at the moment

This is the best response. I used "tickets" as a rhetorical device because it maps very neatly to pieces of flair from Office Space.

In reality, trying to measure software development productivity objectively always makes me whip out a little venn diagram that shows that what matters and what can be measured have but a small intersection.

But abstracting away from tickets, as a manager you set some kind of expectation for "the minimum." However it is you rate people from "not meeting expectations" to "meeting expectations" to "exceeding expectations," my contention is that it's the job of a manager to make sure that "meeting expectations" means that an employee's work is a net benefit to the company.

Whereas, "dead weight" describes someone who is a net loss to the company. So to me, someone who just meets expectations should not be "dead weight." If they are, I suggest there is a management problem.

Currently a manager, you wrote exactly what I would say, only in a much more robust manner. "Meeting standards" should not be cause for alarm. If it is, there are many things wrong with the company.

The problem with this line of reasoning is you’re assuming everything required to keep a company going can be reduced to a job description, but there’s millions of small, impactful ways employees can contribute that fall through the cracks. Being pleasant to your coworkers is rarely part of the job description, but it can make or break that coworker’s productivity for a whole day.

If you aren’t willing to do these extra tasks, that’s fine, but you’re doing nothing to keep the company surviving and someone else will have to pick up your slack. It’s in everyone’s best interests to keep the company surviving as long as possible so it can keep paying salaries.

Of course the C level has a lot more to gain, but everyone has to work somewhere so why not do your reasonable best to make a positive impact.

True; I see your point and mostly agree with you, with the caveat that I'd file those traits as "being a decent human being with a reasonable level of emotional maturity" - things that I personally filter for in the interview stage.

As a manager myself, here is the problem I see in what you're saying: Most often, the time estimates are set by engineers themselves. I don't tell them "Do this task in 3 days" -- I ask them how many days/week it will take, and we track against that. This relies on my trust that they are working hard and not half-assing it.

The "minimum expectation" is therefore hard to concretely define. It's not "everyone should fix 3 bugs a week" or "everyone must implement 2 features a month," because the work is always going to vary depending on the specific issues and project needs.

The variability of coding work can make it hard to explain to under-performers that they're falling behind their peers.

If you're a manager and are not capable of seeing an overestimated timeline for what it is, you have one or more problems: 1) you do not know your employees, 2) you do not understand the work they're supposed to be doing, 3) you do not understand your product. Either of these or all of them or any combination in between still means you're the problem.

If you look at a problem and you estimate a timeline, you'll underestimate sometimes. so when an engineer brings you a significantly longer timeline, ask them to justify it, ask them to show you what they mean. This will eat a few extra minutes out of your day, but it will help you separate the bullshitters from the genuine people, and it will help you understand what they do better. And if you just can't add those extra minutes to your schedule without causing trouble, then the problem lies with your boss, not you. It's your job to know your people and understand what they do, and if you're not given the leeway to do that you'll never be effective.

You're describing a scenario where an incompetent manager is both clueless about the technology and doesn't spare even a few minutes to do their job. I'm sure that happens, unfortunately.

But, the point that I was making was simply that trust is an essential part of software work, and people who pride themselves on doing only the minimal amount of work, risk messing up this system of trust for everyone else. We all want a manager who trusts us when we say a problem is hard and it will take time. And managers want engineers who when they say they're working on a problem, they're actually putting time and effort into it.

In the (hopefully very rare) case where an engineer puts in a measly amount of effort during the week but pretends they're hard at work, this trust is broken, and in the worst outcome, the manager or company overcorrects and it becomes a shitty place to work.

Yeah, but this is where knowing your people comes in. If you've got a bullshitter on your team and you know it, you need to be figuring out how to get them not just off your team, but out of the company. If you don't know it, you're not doing your job.

This can be hard I know with the way contracts are, labor laws, severances, and often times it is easier to just offload the employee to another team, which compounds these problems and makes them systemic. That's the only sticking point I think that takes the blame off management. It should be easier to fire bullshitters.

Surely you don’t blindly accept estimates? Do you dig down and ask what assumptions they are making for how long it will take?

This doesn’t sound like a problem with minimum expectations. This sounds like a project management problem.

I've been lucky to only ever work at places with very technical managers, who don't blindly accept estimates, and actively work with the developers to figure out how to work faster.

But, the usual pattern for people who work slow, is that some new complication always comes up. And it's not easy to know when the complication is legitimate and will take time to figure out, or something that could easily be dispatched in an hour's time.

Is this comment section to devolve into a discussion about software engineering practices? We could now write thousands of pages on that topic or we can cut down to the chase. If the manager can't tell whether his project is on track or not, remember nobody gives a damn whether it takes 50000 lines of code or 500 or that you closed X tickets, then the project has either already failed or the project manager is taking a huge risk with a greenfield project where he is just throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.

If you don’t trust their estimates, Look up estimation poker. The whole team plays. It’s a good way to keep everyone honest with regards to estimation and allows everyone to learn hidden things that someone else may see.

Finally saw "Office Space" recently! Now I know about "flair". 15 is the bare minimum. Look at <dedicated-employee> - he has what, 35 pieces of flair! Don't you feel like a slacker, barely achieving minimum expectations?

As to the parent thread: I make about half what I would be making if I had gone the FAANG route -- but I get to choose what I work on. That is a fair deal in my mind. Working on things that fascinate & inspire me make me a 10x rockstar. But if I'm asked to keep dead code limping along zombie-like, I need to work harder and longer because in that scenario I am a 0.5x sleeper. YMMV

Exactly, most employees aren't in a position to allocate their own tasks. The entire point of management is to algin what happens in the company with the interests of the owners of the company. If management makes a mistake in allocating work and there is no flaw in execution by the employees the real dead weight lies in management.

>I mean, I will always finish my work in the time it is expected to be finished.

But this isn't what a dead weight does.

> That's the literal definition of dead weight.

No.

literal definition

> the weight of an inert person or thing.

The metaphor refers to people that do nothing and are only a burden. Dead weight cannot positively contribute.

You’re literally on the literal wrong path of understanding what dead weight is.

I think you missed the productivity porn thread posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335165

Just doing the job you are paid to do is called dead weight now? That’s the exact ideology I refuse to follow.

The problem is when you tell your manager it'll take you X number of weeks to finish a task, and your manager trusts that you're working hard and that the task simply requires X weeks of work... but in reality you're barely spending any time on it every day, and could easily have done it in a few days. Meanwhile, the rest of the project is moving slowly because they need your piece to complete.

If, on the other hand, the manager's trust has no relevance here, because you are not setting your own time-work estimates, then have at it!

This is kind of a wild take. Estimates should be reviewed like anything else on a team, and if the estimate doesn’t fit the timeline, the team should try to either split up / parallelize the work, drop scope, or look for a creative solution (usually involving taking on some strategic tech debt).

Work planning should be a team effort.

This is completely consistent with what I said. Even as a team effort, you want your manager to trust when you say something has some non-obvious complexity. And the manager wants to trust their team members.

But my comment stems from someone above who said they do the minimum amount of work possible. This sucks for the team, who is working hard and trying to make progress, meanwhile this person is barely doing any work every day in between gaming or reddit or whatever, but (presumably) still joins stand-ups and Slack to chime in with whatever "complication" he's having to work through that day, and always gives the impression that their work is super tricky.

You might be misunderstanding what "minimum amount of work" means. The OP might simply be referring the minimum amount of work achievable without overexerting oneself via extra hours, working weekends, under stress, etc. Someone's minimum amount of work can be hard work. They literally said "I will always finish my work in the time it is expected to be finished." So if that amount of time is not satisfactory, it is up to the manager to ask for the time to be shortened- and then that becomes the new minimum.

It’s also a problem when the manager can’t tell if an estimate is bogus or not. It could be exaggerated. It could also be overly optimistic. To be a decent dev manager you need a feel for whether it’s in the right ball park. Or know when to bring in someone else who does.

Would you use the same argument if your company could easily pay you 2x your current salary but just pays you x?

IMHO (having managed small teams) a manager of technical team members needs to be able to accurately estimate how long something will take and the variance on that estimate. This is a core part of the manager's job. If a manager isn't technical enough to know how to do the tasks themselves if they had to, that manager should not have a job IMHO. This is part of what sets engineer-led companies like SpaceX apart from their "dinosaur" competitors and why SpaceX seems to be 10x better in output.

No that's not dead weight. Dead weight is people who don't contribute and don't get their work done.

Going above and beyond requirements is a personal decision.

Sometimes it’s the even worse folks - the people who do things that are net negatives and need to be drug around by everyone else like they’re an anchor around the companies throat.

Apparently you have never continually excelled at your job and been rewarded with zero raises, zero promotions, zero added trust, and zero added authority or influence.

Every place I have ever worked has taken advantage of anyone who does more than they are asked. None of those individuals were ever rewarded for going above or beyond. Not a single time.

Doing the bare minimum is what employers do. Why should employees do any more?

I believe it is our moral duty to improve ourselves. I do not believe it is our moral duty to donate effort to an unthankful entity.

No, the LITERAL definition of dead weight is " 1: the unrelieved weight of an inert mass 2: DEAD LOAD 3: a ship's load including the total weight of cargo, fuel, stores, crew, and passengers"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deadweight

Examples of literal in a Sentence:

" The literal meaning of “know your ropes” is “to know a lot about ropes,” while figuratively it means “to know a lot about how to do something.”

I was using the word in its literal sense.

The story he told was basically true, even if it wasn't the literal truth. "

> That's the literal definition of dead weight.

You must not have worked in companies with actual dead weight.

Is it? I'd interpret dead weight as being... well a dead weight, say an anchor holding back progress. Or being generous at least not contributing anything even they aren't actively holding things back. Doing "the bare minimum" isn't dead weight though, they are still contributing

You get back at corporate america by being a mindless corporate drone?

I get back at it by getting paid as much as I can for as little work I can do. Like I said, I’m not doing nothing, but I’ll never sell my soul for marginal increases in wages and that occasional promotion.

I get back by having a life after 5 pm, Never going in to work on a weekend, taking time off to spend it with family and never letting stress and bs from corporate world affect my private life.

Isn’t that just…. Taking the deal?

lol, honestly...

If you're not getting fired... you're either going to or you're doing as much as expected so everyone is happy.

That’s nonsense. It’s extremely hard to fire people in many corps. I’ve personally seen it take years even when everyone agreed (including management) someone needed to go. And often the paperwork threshold is so high that even people producing negative work aren’t fired; you just hope they eventually move on since you’re not giving them raises etc.

That’s when an org really starts to collect dead weight (actual dead weight).

Don’t get me wrong, shitty managers need checks and balances, but when an org loses so much trust in itself that it makes it impossible to remove pretty much anyone (except those trying to improve things usually, despite the rules), it’s going to get pretty bad soon.

What you’re doing is called “quiet quitting”

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/aug/06/quiet-quitting...

I dislike that framing. It seems disingenuous to call "doing what I'm required to do by my employer" any variant on "quitting". It's explicitly not quitting, after all. If the employer expects that you do more, it should require it.

Reminds me of the Office Space "flair" scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ChQK8j6so8

That is a stupid name. Why not just say somthing like slacking or coasting?

Some office workers are using the word "slacking" as being on Slack and you wouldn't use "coasting" when you live in flyover State /s

LOL.

Slacking or coasting implies you're lazy or you've lost motivation. Quiet quitting is a conscious choice

It's a conscious choice to slack off and coast, plus an excuse.

Yeah, that's how corporate America works, buddy. You give up on finding fulfillment at work or striking it rich, and just do what they tell you without thinking too much about it. In return, you get to clock out at 5 and take a nice vacation every year.

As oppose to what? Spending 20hr of unpaid overtime in hopes to get noticed? Or starting a company and betting your (and your family) whole future to be next facebook?

They are doing 9-5 and then do whatever they want with their life. Maybe they are working on a side to break from corpo world, maybe they have no other choice or wants.

Oh, I'm definitely not saying they should do otherwise. One of the great things about large corporations is that they can provide a stable work environment that doesn't interfere with the rest of your life.

But to suggest that this is how you "get back at corporate America" is laughable. In fact, it's the opposite.

Fair enough, Agreed its definitely not getting back at anything

The only way your claim of "as little work I can do" is accurate is that if you spent one minute less working, it becomes the trigger point where you'll get fired.

But it sounds like you're just a normal corporate worker who does exactly what is stated in your employment contract and no more (and no less) -- but I suppose you should know that there are many people who do much less work than is formally required and get to keep their job.

There is a pain threshold for most managers to fire an employee. They have to spend time and money on recruiting and training a new replacement, so in theory if the cost of you slacking off is lower than the cost of finding a replacement, they might not actually fire you.

This is comical. "I get back at capitalism by doing exactly what I'm told, when I'm told, for the amount I've agreed to!!!!".

Go get 'em kid. :)

You call that dead weight? If you're finishing your work on time then you may (gasp) be a decent employee.

Got news for ya, that’s dead weight. Competent management would make getting rid of you a priority, as that behavior drags everyone else down.

Your comment upsets and disappoints me. In large part because it's true: at my previous workplace, I was casually told that CME is a polite fiction and all employees are expected to exceed expectations.

That is the exact propaganda I don’t buy. My 20 year long career that pays quite well would think either you’re wrong or most of corporate America’s management is not “Competent Management”.

Forget the compan(y/ies) for a moment. In a decade or two when you look back will you feel your time was well spent?

The companies, much less corporate America in aggregate, will have assuredly not noticed your protest. But will you notice your lack of professional accomplishment?

Being wronged extracts a price, through vengeance you can pay it twice.

My argument is that professional accomplishment can be achieved while just meeting expectations. I’ve seen people who are at the same level, work harder (read longer) than I do and yet get paid less and not get the promotions they were trying for. The system isn’t a perpetual growth machine, otherwise all of us would be VPs and CEOs. I never said I don’t do any work, I still work on things I want to and take great pride in every single thing I do. I just don’t do it for free or at the expense of other parts of my life. Ambition needs to be checked with reality.

Getting back at corporate america by sacrificing your own ambition seems like a pretty unfulfilling and ineffective strategy.

“Ambition” is tricky. New grads become a “Senior Engineer” or a “manager” in 5 years these days. And most people don’t climb corporate ladder beyond a Senior Staff Engineer or a director. So you have almost 40 years worth of career left to climb two more levels.

Working your ass off continuously in pursuit of that ambition is pointless. If that’s the only thing in your life, then maybe it’s not, but ambition can be found outside of corporate America.

Corporate doesn't even notice this guy.

This isn't an irrational reaction, but it also isn't always as clever as it seems. Working this way can suck the soul out of your life in the same way that failing to exercise yourself mentally or physically will eventually eat away at your fitness. Is it terminal? Of course not. But it does take a toll on you. And it eats away at your sense of fulfillment and happiness.

Could it be something like diabetes, where it won't kill you today but it will kill you tomorrow? Maybe. Only you can figure out the answer for that for yourself. I know the answer for myself by now, which is yes. I'd much rather work for a company that gives me the opportunities to stretch myself, do work in a space I actually find interesting, and mostly get rewarded and advance even if they extract an absolute larger percentage of my surplus labor than other companies, than vice versa. And that is because I am getting a worse deal in today terms, and a better deal in tomorrow terms. I've been burned by this attitude before, but I've also had exceptional outcomes I'd never take back or redo any other way. YMMV.

This is what has become the default that our current system works to incentivize in real terms, but with a lot of marketing to discourage following this path. I work in India, but with a corporate American client atm, and have seen this in operation,(luckily it's a fairly small/medium company so not too much). Having worked in a few startups(with ESOPs) from India before this, I really, really wonder how a global/multi-national company can work with equity based incentives at this point, and if it will help a bit to improve the incentives.

>You could be dying of cancer or have lost a child, and they will get rid of you the moment they can do so without breaking the law, and in some cases even break the law in the hopes that you’d not pursue any legal action. Nah don’t work hard, work smart, for yourself.

Amen, once upon a time I worked for a company and I didn't miss a single day for almost 3 years. Then at the moment I needed to work remote due to a family member's terminal cancer, I got oh so sorry to hear that, but by the way you f*** something up last week.

You sure you really need to work remote, can you work remote like one day a week. Are you sure, it's like terminal terminal.

Eventually they agreed to let me work remote but then they hired a replacement behind my back .

Luckily my childhood taught me not to trust people. When someone shows you who they really are, believe them. So I already had a better paying job lined up.

Hell, I nearly doubled my pay too!

My wife had a Big Crunch at her job so I needed to leave early every day to pick up my son instead of my wife doing it. My job gave zero fucks and wanted my butt-in-seat until 5pm. I still left 30 minutes early every day and got fired for it, but not before lining up another job. Some work places seem great, until real life hits you in the face. I wish there was some way to detect empathy of a workplace before joining, without coming across as sketchy.

> to detect empathy of a workplace

A family business is usually a place, but you should expect that a kin selection will prevail when it comes to promotions.

A family business is worse. You will always be considered an outsider.

The idea of greater sympathy is a fallacy. You are simply closer to the people with power, they don't want to seem cruel because that drives away talented/hard workers, they have to make concessions. They don't have the resources to make people expendable yet. They don't get the luxury of having 6 layers of mgmt to shield them from being remorselessly cruel. As soon as they have those layers you will see what they really are. Ask me how I know...

You get the added bonus of some borderline mentally challenged family member will be put in a position of power. The other family members know but don't want to hurt their feelings. Then you get to be drawn into awkward family squabbles when you have to appeal to the other family members that their actions are hurting the business and need to be corrected, basically babysitting your own boss for them. Without the benefit of ever being in charge yourself.

>Some work places seem great, until real life hits you in the face.

This goes for every type of relationship though.

Friendships, marriage, and employment.

But I'm very much a mercenary at this point, I have no loyalty to any company. I save my money, and I know I can get fired without cause at any time.

Instead of socializing at work, and having that social circle ripped from you when you get a better job.

Build your social circle via bars, concerts, and for more industry-minded people tech related meetup groups.

>family member's terminal cancer

Yep, I lived this and it really woke me up. The day my dad died my boss called to ask "your going to be in tomorrow right, since you don't have to take care of him anymore"

Not to mention things like "are you sure its terminal" "Do you know what terminal means? just checking maybe you didn't understand the doctor"

To a company you are a number and nothing more,treat them the same. The people in charge got there by ruthlessly focusing on that fact. Trying to get sympathy from work is like trying to explain to a debt collector why you can't pay. They don't care at all and never will, everything you say will be used against you and they are hoping you will slip up.

Its as pointless as a mouse trying to debate a hungry cat as to why he should not eat him.

To be fair, I have had some compassionate employers offer me a couple of extra days of PTO after an emergency.

But this is offset by the fact that since I never took PTO, I had stopped accumulating it almost a year ago.

Something I love about remote work, is it encourages people to actually build real social circles.

I make my friends at bars, concerts, and industry meetups. I don't make work friends, I'm not trying to be buddy buddy with my manager

Because that same manager who was like. Yeah good job. You just saved the company $30,000, here's a $400 bonus

The moment something happens, like you know your dad dying, is going to tell you. If you don't get back in shape they'll have to look hiring someone else.

Work to maximize your income, try not to be mean to people at work, but you should never treat work as anything but a transaction.

I don't care about my employees at all. Their family lives are meaningless to me, distracting and dull.

However I always pretend to care, always make sure they're well paid, have clear growth in development and pay, feel looked after, that they don't need to hesitate to ask if they need a cash advance or time off for an emergency, etc.

You can be ruthlessly focused and unempathetic whilst also being sympathetic and helping people love what they do. They're not mutually exclusive.

“ do absolutely bare minimum to not get fired “

agree with this. have been trying to get to this point for a few months. I usually am a friendly person but I’ve learned to limit to personal relations and not let it flow into my work ethic. I have some other issues to be ironed out though like overzealous colleagues, and some flexibility needs

This framing is unhelpful.

You haven't been wronged by “corporate America”. That's not even a thing that could have wronged you.

You've worked for or with people behaving badly. Did you call them out on it? If nobody calls them out on bad behaviour how will things get better?

Some people are being so bad that you just have to leave to avoid harm. Fair enough.

It's hard to imagine that this silent retribution does anything but make the problem worse.

> or didn't get promoted when they felt they should have been, or they had contributed something and then it got cut from the product, something like that in most cases

Can definitely speak to these cases - especially where you do great work and have a narrative that it was unappreciated - and clearly see lesser performing or less impressive colleagues getting ahead. For a lot of people, it takes only a few instances of this to switch to "I'll do the bare minimum not to get fired - why sacrifice much of my life and mental energy for this?"

I've been there a few times, and to speak to your point: I decided that instead of being a dead weight I should just look for another job where I don't feel this way. I can say that amongst my peers, that behavior is an exception. Most people who become deadweights will remain that way. It's work to find a new job, and you may have to move, etc. Amusingly enough, Leetcode style interviews are effective at ensuring deadweights remain so.

> Can definitely speak to these cases - especially where you do great work and have a narrative that it was unappreciated - and clearly see lesser performing or less impressive colleagues getting ahead.

I did great work for a company and got fired... because I took a freelance w2 contract in my spare time. The company didn't even know that I'd taken on the role, and the role had actually finished, when they somehow did find out and I got my marching papers.

FUCK working hard and FUCK doing "good" work.

Personally, I think disallowing other work should be illegal. Having said that: What was the policy at your workplace for other work? In my company it's clearly allowed if it's in a different industry - although they've not given clear guidance on whether I need to disclose it in those cases.

Who said it's disallowed? They couldn't disallow because he didn't ask and that's more likely to be the problem.

How did they find out?

W-2 “freelance” in addition to W-2 “non-freelance” at the same time? In other words, you violated your employment agreement and got fired. The sad part is you still don’t quite understand the basics of W-2 and why you got fired in the first place.

Apparently you don’t either. In the US at will employment doesn’t mean you can’t have another job. There may be a clause in an employment agreement that says you agree to not work for any other company, but I’ve only seen this clause once in 10 jobs. Do you know what this clause is commonly called?

In Clerky, you will find it under the section “Outside Activities.” Custom contracts may have a different name for that clause. 1 out of 10? Maybe if you’re in Hollywood or some other highly specialized vertical. In tech, it will be 99 out of 100.

> Amusingly enough, Leetcode style interviews are effective at ensuring deadweights remain so.

yep. They also ensure that anyone wanting to move on will probably be doing most of their day Leetcoding. Because you're going to stay at a tech job 1-2 years max and it takes most people probably 6+ months (kids, family, etc.) to ramp up from nothing. Once you have LC down and did the hard part, you need to retain it. Which means constantly doing problems.

Our industry is a burnout treadmill.

I agree. I would argue that a large portion of those meeting the "dead weight" definition are just truly burnt out.

I turned into dead weight once during a hostile takeover of the company I was working for. It was pretty shit, and I'm glad I moved on after a few months of being unproductive. Management removed our ability to move forward on any existing work, and allocated no new work, and rejected any proposals from anyone from the 'old' company.

Wound up spending most of my (remote) work day occasionally checking my work laptop for emails, working on personal projects on my personal laptop and gardening or doing some DIY fixes on our old house.

Felt bad the entire time and finding a new job was a huge weight off my shoulders.

I had a coworker who ended up in a similar situation. At one point they were almost literally being paid to do nothing. They eventually stopped even going in to the office all while collecting a pay check. As nice as that sounds, it was still not a great situation because they didn't know how long it would last and figured eventually, without warning, they'd be dropped. They ended up leaving on their own to actually do something and have a more stable job.

If you thing about what limited time we have on this earth, it seems like to better choice to find something you enjoy in the shortest amount of time.

I've been in this situation. Not knowing is the hard part. Don't waste this time, start a project and work like crazy on it because it never lasts.

Ended up in a similar situation. Gave me time to start up my own company. Was 10 years ago. Company still running. Lucky I was.

Through a weird sequence of events, a group of us ended up working through a consulting company re-billing arrangement for a large financial services company that was closing our office. The “suits” needed us on payroll to feel secure that our code would keep working, so we got promised our annual bonus (substantial) if we worked until X date. The tech leaders at HQ hated that we existed at all and so gave us no work. We might have worked 40 hours in 4.5 months (total, not per week).

Bonuses eventually hit our account and we all resigned serially; literally a line outside the manager’s door waiting to resign.

It sucked; was so bad that one colleague didn’t want to Google something one evening “because he needed something to do tomorrow at work”.

Another concern that is very prevailing is rewards. I could work 2 times harder in my current position, however what is that going to bring me?

Promotion or bigger bonus - it’s the same as playing stock options with your time, you are better off playing office politics for a much better RoI.

Self value? Senior engineer in FAANG is almost never going to have REAL impact, so I can only enjoy thinking that someone cares about that tiny piece of software that I work with. Again, getting drunk is a better RoI. Same with self improvement… where side project usually allows one to grow more

So, what is the benefit of working harder?

There is none, modern humans are so productive they struggle to think of things to work on, they should just work fewer hours.

My millage is that it's not absolute "dead weight". It's more wanting limited responsibility and tasks that require limited scope/time spent, but does actually contribute, just a much smaller scale than others.

> The fact that they needed these excuses tells me they felt what they did to be morally wrong and didn't really want to be dead weight.

My guess from your comment is that you judge them for being slackers, and the feel obligated to explain to YOU that its not morally correct. Personally, I have no qualm with those that want to drift around megacorps while collecting a nice paycheck.

Do you feel the same way about people who put effort in but are not skilled enough to contribute (or make things worse by trying)?

> people who put effort in ... make things worse

Dead weight? Sounds more like friendly antimatter

GP:

> > I have no qualm with those that want to drift around megacorps

For me, that depends on what the company is doing. Let's say it's mobile games or quant trading -- then, slacking at work in a way just gives people more time away from the computer (fewer games to play?). And changes which ones of the rich people, get richer.

Then what does it matter.

Whilst if one is working for a hospital or a stopping-online-manipulation department, then, in such cases, slacking is sad, not good for society, right

> Whilst if one is working for a hos, pital or a stopping-online-manipulation department, not good for society, right

Oh definitely. I'm under the (maybe wrong) assumption that the majority of people are not doing this. I believe most my peers in the silicon valley bubble I live in aren't really moving needles that benefit humanity.

People will always make up reasons if the tone of the conversation feels adversarial, but just spend a week in r/cscareerquestions to see the unfiltered sentiment: lots of people literally bragging about working 30 or even 20 hours per week as a full time employee, or who explicitly call out "slacking off" as a reason for preferring WFH. "Rest and vest". Etc.

Or maybe those are just the people who spend time on reddit disproportionately, it could be sampling error

Yeah, but the claim was that nobody was like this, while there are obviously a bunch of people explicitly doing this

What percentage of the population is that person's cutoff for saying "nobody"? My assumption is that it likely was not literal

If 3/80000 people do something, is the behavior significant or relevant?

Depends what the behavior is and who the 3 people are.

The behavior is already defined in this thread

Do only famous people matter? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

...explicitly claiming to do this.

I don't know that subreddit; in general this sort of thing could become the thing being bragged about in a community, irrespective of reality.

I think it's pretty common that when someone says "nobody does X", that's shorthand for "there is probably a very small number of people who do X, but not enough to make much of a difference".

Sure, there are some people who abuse WFH, but I suspect it is far fewer people than Zuckerberg and Pichai suggest, and there are other, more important reasons for productivity losses. Reasons that have more to do with management and poor strategy than the actions of individual employees.

/r/overemployed and Blind are even worse TBH, people in /r/cscareerquestions are often just trying to strike a somewhat tolerable WLB

If you view people as dead weight, that is the problem. Few folks that make a decent salary want to do the bare minimum. Only managers that treat them as such will call them 'dead weight'.

Note that I'm not claiming you to be a manager, however your viewpoint of these employees reflects some of the managers I've dealt with. I once worked at a company who provided zero training, zero documentation, very poor pay, and no possibility of anything despite offering the world when I joined. I was told by my manager that I was dead weight. I was fired by HR. The situation did not end well for them, legally, or in terms of coworkers leaving.

In my experience working in software development, I've encountered only one person who was dead weight, and he ended up leaving on his own. I've been doing this for close to 20 years mind you. I've seen many accused of being dead weight, and sure, some could have tried harder, but most simply struggled with the mess that was the code we were working on. The symptoms were common: no documentation, hostile management demanding tight deadlines, and poor communication.

Or did a huge amount of work on a project, didn't get properly credited or worse, had their credit stolen by some other employee.

When there's little correlation between amount of effort and advancement as is very often the case, it's justified to just cruise.

I don't see it as "morally wrong but they didn't really want to be dead weight" when it is a justified response.

People who do things they know are wrong will always conjure up an explanation that absolves them of any culpability. They'll even believe it themselves.

For example, people who steal office supplies from work always have a good reason they tell themselves.

For another, all the people who post on Hackernews justifying cheating in college. My favorite bullshit excuse was cheating was justified because the professor didn't expend much effort with countermeasures.

Was going to disagree, because you portrayed this as as "unjust personal affront". I mean like everyone who ever got fired from McDonalds thinks "my boss irrationally hates me."

But on reflection this happens frequently, not due to personal reasons, but due to corporate politics. Side A won the war, so side B just punches the clock until whenever they get around to layoffs. In any big company, there's going to be a bunh of teams where "they know, but we haven't told them yet".

> I have met a few of those people, but every single one of them needed a justification.

This isn’t true at all in my experience. I’ve contracted at many places that simply had a culture of avoiding work. Where a majority of the permanent employees hardly do any work, their main focus is coming up with reasons why problems are somebody else’s problems to solve, and avoiding accountability for anything that goes wrong. The pandemic and WFH has made this a lot worse in many companies. Out of the dozens of large orgs I’ve contracted to, far more of them had these problems than didn’t.

> I have met a few of those people, but every single one of them needed a justification.

Nah man. They just want to chillax. I know because i was one of them at some of my jobs. I don't get any satisfaction from crud/etl type jobs at all. I just want to a paycheck to fund my lifestyle and hobbies. I know tons of people like me , like 50% of my friend circle. Ppl just don't give a shit.

or, they felt being a dead weight was wrong, but wanted to be one, so came up with a justification. If they actually didn't want to be dead weight they'd work in spite of their situation.

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