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Comment by SV_BubbleTime | Hacker News Reader

Thanks. Of all the “highly intellectual” people here, you were one of the only to partially attempt a steelman.

You know how I know that WFH side isn’t saying using the whole truth? They never look bad.

No one ever says “I’m definitely only working half time, but they’re getting enough work from me so it’s fine” or “I’m being paid more and work less, they’re so clueless they have no idea”, or ”I know a lot of people are scamming but I’m not”.

So while everyone is making the argument that corporate sucks and is out of touch, they’re simultaneously saying they’re angels who would never take advantage.

It’s BS, and everyone on both side knows it.

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> You know how I know that WFH side isn’t saying using the whole truth? They never look bad.

I think this is a fair criticism but has an understandable explanation. What counts as abuse is not clear cut.

1. With respect to people working half time, you’re going to get push back that people do that in the office as well (inflate estimates and slack or whatever), they just then occupy themselves chatting with coworkers or doing water cooler stuff. From an IC point of view, they’re still slacking. From a corporate point of view maybe these conversations have some added value. Is the absence of them a loss or the lack of willingness to do them from home an abuse?

2. Much more controversially: overemployment. Take the same employee as above but now that they’re working from home instead of chatting they pick up contract hours or work another job. Is this an abuse? Is the company paying for time or output? Is this on the individual or management for underutilizing them?

I could see different kinds of people (being motivated to) making different arguments on each side, and the issues aren’t settled.

I would say working another job is abuse sometimes. My job, and my employees think about the work in our off time. It’s a small team and we have big goals. If any of us had time for another job, we wouldn’t be giving this one our all.

Some companies and people are fine with that. Over-employment is worth consideration.

But I think something that is overlooked here is that if you aren’t doing good work, or going all in on everything you do - do something else.

I see no one arguing that. Just “I deserve to work from home because I want to” without any possible consideration to either objectivity of their time /output, reality that a LOT of people scam, or empathy with what these same people would do/think if it was them calling the shots.

WFH people never look bad. Look at this entire thread to find one person that bucks that trend.

If one side is always right, and the other side is always wrong - that just sounds like game to me.

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