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Comment by mitthrowaway2 | Hacker News Reader

My guess is that it was a reaction to the pandemic-era trend of "over employment" where a small number of remote workers bragged about clocking in simultaneously to multiple jobs. Employers may have decided that their employees' physical body was the only unique identifier that couldn't be duplicated.

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They should start with over-employed executives in the C-suite of more than one company or sitting on more than one company's board of directors.

Yea, for some reason:

Rich people sitting on multiple boards and running multiple companies is A-OK

Poor people having to work 3 jobs to keep food on the table is A-OK

But, middle class office workers working at multiple jobs is fraud and abuse and must be stopped.

Well... Yes. The middle class haven't been rendered sufficiently replaceable yet. Make no mistake, once you're deskilled, you'll be treated exactly like the poor. Have you not been keeping up? What do you think the whole AI craze is about? Perfecting transmute money->code for the wealthy without requiring the burden of hiring.

When I worked at BlackBerry, it pissed me off when CEO John Chen sent out an email telling employees that they need to be fully focused on their BlackBerry job. Meanwhile, he was on the board of directors of Disney and Wells Fargo while BlackBerry was failing badly.

> My guess is that it was a reaction to the pandemic-era trend of "over employment"

I'm guessing the opposite: that these firms wanted to push back-to-the-office policies, and so either invented, or publicized, engineers doing "over employment", and that it wasn't a real problem that any of them actually faced.

I may or may not know a guy who bought a laptop identical to his work machine from place A to do projects for B while still physically being at A.

Smart advice!

That trick only works until place B demands RTO as well!

(And this might be why the CEOs all seem to have coordinated changing back to RTO at the same time).

As long as someone finished the assigned tasks for the day, idc if they want office or remote.

Thing is, who decides how many tasks someone can do in a day? What if they get paid for 8 but only work for one, but the manager doesn't know they do, and they never communicate their workload is too low?

Same can be said for people using LLM agents to complete jobs faster than humans ever possibly can. It's not like they just fluked it. They've learned how to harness the capabilities of the tech. Now companies are introducing this stuff as a normal workflow but they are clueless as to how it actually works and expecting 10x output from people.

I wonder how the transition from classic hammers to nail guns went for carpenters / framers.

Nail guns are tools, just like hammers. However, you have to know how to use it and to know how to adjust the pressure for the depth you need. It also costs money, much more than a hammer. And you can't use normal nails, you have to have a specific cartridge of nails, and you must know how to adjust it, and ultimately to not die.

Now compare it again.

I think it's a fair comparison; experienced carpenters who've learned to work fast with a hammer, now asked to be 10x more productive while using a new tool they don't have experience with. It probably got more than a few a bit bothered.

There are very few contractors still swinging a hammer. They're going to be slower and more expensive than the competition, which is a major factor in getting the job.

get your carpenter a circular saw, a drill, a router, a hand planner and an orbital. on many jobs you ll get your 10x.

you don't need much experience. the tools make you insanely faster with much much less physical strain and maintenance time. they're simple, predictable, reliable, and obscenely powerful.

an experimented carpenter would take a few minutes to be decent at using then.

- stable and "slow" is best - don't ever let the blade get pinched (by wood) - be mindful of the cords - keep the flesh out of the way - goggles up and don't breathe the dust

you got 95% of it there

Nailguns are not as complicated as you think, anybody with IQ over 80 can be trained to the top proficiency in 30 mins. Same goes for other power tools, they are generally much easier to use and more productive than their human-powered equivalent. The effect of the construction industry adoption of those is in smaller crew sizes, which is also being observed in SW industry.

It will all crash when they will see that people can't do 10x, even with AI. It requires too much expertise and knowledge in the field to actually make it work as a hired professional. Look at the AWS outages... and they are professionals, right? RIGHT?

Why would you expect Homo Economicus to ask for more work? The companies they work for chase infinite profit at zero cost as a matter of principle, why shouldn’t employees?

This holds whether their butt is in a seat in some office or at home.

I ain't mad at all. If someone can be a CEO to multiple companies, so can employees have multiple jobs.

> Homo Economicus

GOOD ONE

This is a management issue. They should be keeping an eye on the progress and see if the pace is enough for the deadline. Estimates are a thing too, I know. But you can see if someone is slacking and falls behind. If the workload is low, why would it matter as long as the things are done?

Companies should stop penalizing people for being work efficient, and increase their salary if the workload increases.

Not working from home is easier than from office. But in general why keep employees you can’t trust? At least on the scope of startups it shouldn’t be a problem. When you know each person face to face, everyone in the team knows if someone is slacking. Doesn’t matter if it’s wfh or from office.

How is this any different from loafers who don't do anything? If you can do two jobs at the same time, you weren't really doing anything at first job to begin with.

If it is this, it feels very emotionally driven.

Realistically I think very little employees were doing this. And, of the ones that were, is it even a problem?

I mean, the idea is that they're such amazing developers that they can be 2 developers at once. So you still end up with 1 developer. So, break even, right? No harm no foul?

Such a bullshit narrative in data driven companies

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