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Comment by nucleardog | Hacker News Reader

> My guess is that most employers really have no way to measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers are just reporting what makes them look good

My money would be on that being half right. They have no way to really measure productivity, but they were very afraid that productivity would drop to zero—and that is something they would be able to see.

Before COVID I don’t know how many times discussions around WFH basically stopped at “we can’t know that people aren’t just watching TV all day”. I think in a lot of places that was a genuine fear—nobody will be working.

So seeing productivity not go near enough to zero to be noticeable was… really good productivity compared to some people’s initial expectations.

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Honestly, when I work from home, I watch TV all day. Not literally -- I mostly read HN and other sites, do personal email, do household tasks, walk the dogs, do a load of laundry. I still get my work done, to a "meets expectations" level, which takes me a few hours, normally right after lunch, and that's good enough for me.

I start work around 6:00 AM and frequently am still at it at 8:00 PM. I've always been a top performer, but I still worry I'm not productive enough and that I'll get laid off. I still prefer this arrangement to going to the office.

This used to be me until I burned out for the second time about 4 years ago. Got a new job and now for the most part I "work" from 9 - 5 but in reality a solid 3 hours of that is just surfing the web. Still get good reviews but I'm not on the verge of collapse so thats pretty good. I just genuinely don't care so much anymore and its worked wonders for my outlook on life.

>I still worry I'm not productive enough and that I'll get laid off

that's the neat part; you get laid off anyway. Layoffs are rarely actually about keeping the most productive people on board. If they want your wing of work to be marked as a redundancy, there's not much you can do from a purely productive standpoint.

And supposedly, layoffs aren’t legally allowed to be performance or merit-based! You’re supposed to lay off only for eliminating a position. When projects are shut down, that’s a natural one, but when it’s a X% cut of all engineering staff, for instance, it’s meant to be almost random, on paper at least. Of course in real life nobody would lay off the absolute most genius 10x developer, but nobody’s supposed to be laid off because they’re slackers. If they’re slackers that should be a separate issue and a PIP.

>>And supposedly, layoffs aren’t legally allowed to be performance or merit-based!

Where is that? Even in the EU where employee protections are very strong you can absolutely let go of someone because of poor performance, you just have to do the whole dance of giving them enough warnings, then a PIP, then you can terminate their employment as they are failing their contractual duties. It's not super simple but it is legal and it does happen.

Then it's not a layoff at that point.

What's the difference?

A layoff is a reduction in force, ie we need to lower headcount by 10% so bring me 10 names at this 100 person company. Firing someone for performance/attitude/don't-like-you-anymore reasons isn't a layoff.

I don't think that's right. I know as a fact that when Facebook did their layoffs here in UK they got rid of their lowest performing employees, going through the proper multi-month process, but at the end of the day they got rid of a large percentage of their staff purely based on merit/performance. I literally don't see how that's not a layoff.

Is this satire? If not I don't think that's a sustainable lifestyle.

I know enough people in real life who are doing that regularly to know that isn't satire.

Some of them never seem to get much accomplished, though, so I've often wondered if there is something else at play.

You've never met a workaholic... it's sustainable for quite a while, for some.

Much as many people here have a deep abiding dislike for executives, that's probably a pretty typical lifestyle for successful executives at a large company (or a startup) to which you can probably add months of every year on the road.

The people two rungs up the ladder from me in my consulting job work like this, if not more so.

They all have families and are PTA presidents and things so def not absentee parents or spouses. Some people just have a seemingly unending source of energy and ambition.

No, I'm sorry that's just not possible. I think they've done an excellent job tricking you and others into their ever present productivity.

I encourage you to visit Japan. With enough alcohol and caffeine, you would be astounded what the human body can sustain.

> Before COVID I don’t know how many times discussions around WFH basically stopped at “we can’t know that people aren’t just watching TV all day”.

Before COVID I’ve seen plenty of people shop online, chat to friends or play games all day in the office.

What difference does it make? Those that do will anyway. It’s pretty delusional to think sitting in-office = working. If that’s the case all the kids at school should pass, right?

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