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Comment by ropz | Hacker News Reader

What a bunch of spoiled, whining brats! Sure, you can only code for 4-6 hours a day, but why not honor your contract by spending that other 2 hours mentoring less senior people, trying to understand your employer's business goals, and generally trying to do your best to move your company ahead. Sheesh. By the way, the sheer arrogance of the question "How do you tell managers that having good developers is a privilege?" beggars belief. I believe that as a programmer, it's your duty to spend some time doing stuff your manager didn't know he needed to ask you to do, rather than running personal errands.

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The relationship between developer and manager is something that is continually evolving and being renegotiated. After all, most states are "at will".

Whether pay or conditions, there is nothing wrong with having a discussion and asking for changes (or in this case, retaining the status quo).

I do agree that "having good developers is a privilege" is a strange viewpoint. In fact, people often say I could get 30% more easily" when that isn't the case. So I take most of this question with a pinch of salt.

> but why not honor your contract

How do you know his whole contract terms. It's not that simple, there might be an informal clause to it, agreed on with previous management. Maybe in lawyer-centric US this is unthinkable, but I doubt that. The country is not specified, btw.

Yep the wording of the title reeks of a prima dona who has a massive chip on his (and I would bet that it is a male) shoulder.

I bet you would have caused an uproar of sexism if your comment had said the same about a female shoulder. Is there any basis for the sexist nature of your comment?

Decades of experience dealing with HR/IR issues Women dont "present" in the same way - that attitude expressed in the SO Q is very male.

So you are just making assumptions based on your prejudices.

> I believe that as a programmer, it's your duty to spend some time doing stuff your manager didn't know he needed to ask you to do, rather than running personal errands.

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I believe in dealing in good faith with people who deal with me in good faith. But it has nothing special to do with being a programmer; it's something I'd do in any job, and it is reciprocal. There's an implied agreement that they're going to try to treat me decently and there's an implied agreement that I'll do the same for them. If either of us breach that, I strongly desire the other party to defect.

Work contract is an exchange of services between peers for the mutual benefit. If one of the peers wants something that is harmful to both of them, it is the responsibility of other peer to point that out.

There is no moral responsibility to "honor your contract". The contract is a mutual agreement, not a word of God.

He says he's in the office 6-7 hours a day, but that doesn't mean he's only working for that amount of time - he could also be working from home (and being much more productive during that time than he would be at the office).

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