Hacker News Reader

Tbh, if you only work half of the time while at home, you're probably not working much more while you're at work. You probably spend more time pretending to work while at work, but I'd be amazed if the net productivity is any different.

That, at least to me, seems to be the big elephant in the room that no-one wants to address.

Office workers are not productive 100% of the time, every single minute at work. I've worked manual labor where we actually worked every single minute, sans 15 minute breaks every 3 hours, but never in an office setting. Even white-collar workers that are putting in 80 hour weeks are spending a good time of that just waiting, pretending to work, and just doing otherwise "unproductive" things.

A lot of employers simply want their "moneys worth" of your time. They'd rather you be unproductive at work than home.

You are doing it now.

You aren’t using the real arguments of the other side in their most effective forms.

You are using your own version of their side and easily refuting it.

Admit the rampant abuse - and then discuss the topic. Until you do, it all just sounds like game to me.

> I basically work 20-30 hours a week!

Wow, that's really efficient. Most office workers probably get 12-20 hours of real work done in a week!

Everyone was posting on twitter about all the "projects" and video games they were working on during the lock down, despite supposedly still having full-time remote jobs.

They also had time to move all across the country.

Kind of on management for being so ineffectual than an indictment on the principle.

“I’m growing my YouTube channel”

“My fitness routine for Instagram is “like” a full time job”

“My side-hustle brings in 8k a month”

Totally common, and not said done by people with in office jobs.

I let a guy go at the start of covid for leaving his office workstation on while he mined ETH. He got a full remote job, “worked” 12-20 hours a week and went really hard on buying GPUs for his home mining rigs.

The thing is, this wasn’t uncommon. I let another guy go for not making it to 40 hours ever. Insisting that he was just as productive at 30-32 hours a week. Which doesn’t even remotely make sense.

I love that some people have WFH, but I hate the liars that paint the argument in a completely faultless way.

Oh come on. Are you seriously saying that someone with a full-time job shouldn't have time for personal projects and fun? If you can do your job in 30 hours, you should be able to.

Nope, I'm saying that people advertised that the lockdown allowed them to work less.

> I basically work 20-30 hours a week!

More like 15-20 for me personally, and it's usually around 5-10 hours of actual work if I'm forced to come to the office on the other hand! Also why is this a bad thing, assuming all the work gets completed as it should? Is there something magical that happens once you've hit that arbitrary 40 hour limit where it suddenly counts as real work, or do you just get your rocks off by wasting your employee's lives on frivolous, mind-numbing thumb twirling?

> They have no idea when I’m actually working

They have no idea when I'm in the office either. Hell, my team is way less productive on our mandatory team days than we are when we're each at home, since we spend the majority of the day just chatting and not actually getting work done (my manager included).

Being physically present in the office != working, and anyone who thinks they can detect the people slacking off in person but not online are just delusional.

> I was going to quit but I’m going to let them just keep paying me

Not sure what this one is even implying?

> I have at least one side job and I won’t be able to do it if I need to go back in

I don't personally, but again why does it matter if they're getting all their work done as is expected of them? Maybe pay them more than peanuts and they'll be happy to pretend to work for 40 hours for you, instead of being forced to take a sidegig to pay the bills.

Promises companies failed to keep:

- Decent working environment. I was moved into a single person office with another person that was so cramped I had to move if they needed to use the bathroom and ended up begging to be moved into the open office plan (which was so distracting but less humiliating.)

- Performance based bonuses/promotions

- Not working on weekends/holidays.

- Company Transit (a spot wasn't guaranteed or reservable so it wasn't reliable)

- 40 hour work week. Expected that I will go over 40 hours sometimes but under was taboo. And of course the 2 hours of commuting doesn't count.

- Plenty of other passive aggressive stuff by management during meetings

So I don't think people should feel that bad about negotiating the work environment on their terms. If companies don't follow the rules, why should people always be expected to fulfill your requirements that are something they never wanted.

Don't pretend those people are getting work done in the office. The fact is a few of us do the lion's share of the work while most employees, wfh or in the office, are dragging ass.

Yup. I find it astonishing to here on HN that people "don't understand why execs want RTO" while at the same time admitting that they do chores during work hours.

All's fair in love and capitalism.

As long as employers have no problem with subjecting people to bullshit dehumanizing hiring processes, tone-deaf ultimatums, showering executives with disgusting bonuses while buying back stock and laying off workers, etc etc etc, then I don't see a problem with any of the above.

I refuse to continue to normalize this idea that employers are allowed to be dicks and you the worker just have to suck it up.

You’ll have to remind me on the virtues of socialism letting you work from home. I mean, I guess you are free to starve without a commute?

Exactly, most companies structure and processes are not ready for remote, much less hybrid, work. And a lot of workers are also not ready for that change

I started remotely recently but I feel the company, which seems to be trying, struggles to give me meaningful work, or have colleagues available to collaborate and move it forward