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Comment by mancerayder | Hacker News Reader

The relationship between a contractor and a business is more honest: exchange labor time for cash.

Between an employee and employer, enter ideology: I do this because I love it/love helping clients/ working communally to improve the business. Or competition: my bonus is 50 percent of my salary and we're stack-ranked. Or fear: oh my god, I got only Meets Expectations in my review. Will my pay be flat?

And contractors get to not have constant meetings.

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I had one job as a contractor where I got hired as a temp. After 6 months they wanted me to join as an employee, but I turned it down because it would have meant travel. They kept re-upping me for 6-month intervals, and it was a good feeling to know that they truly wanted me there. Also, I didn't get a year end review, so I just got to keep working while the other engineers got called in one at a time and then came out pissed off about their lower than expected raise. :-)

To be fair to employers… even high performers need comforting lies some of the time.

(and middling performers a lot more)

I don’t think anyone (excluding the literally deranged) spends their day trying to maximize the number of lies directed at employees.

And also to be fair to employers. A decent amount of employees are not really "doers". Perhaps they contribute in other ways.

Sadly my experience has been that "Perhaps" there is doing more work than it can bear :)

I’m curious / what other ways do people contribute ? This is obviously a blind spot for me.

Like, contributing a sense of fun? Being cheerful?

I worked with a junior team member who constantly moved around departments chatting with people. From one angle, this looked unproductive. From another angle, they kept everyone apprised of what projects other are working on /major developments in completely different departments - this had wide ranging benefits.

They move the paper from point A to point B.

Which comforting lies do you believe high performers need exactly?

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