Rise of the Secretly 'Overemployed'

[punkinhead]

More power to them. If their employers are satisfied with the amount of work they're getting then everyone wins. Look at how many people are talking about all the hours they are getting paid to be in meetings. That's unproductive time when they could be doing something useful for another employer.

 

[Qs Laptop]

But would't employers have some way to monitor that those coders computers are actually being used with keystrokes, clicks, etc. when the coder is supposed to be working on the employer's dime?

I suppose they would know if this was being done and come up with countermeasures.

Or else they'd know the company did this sort of thing and never take the job.

Gen Z is savvy to this sort of thing and would accuse the employer of not trusting them, or of spying on them. Also, I think the prevailing policy is what youbet described, namely, get the job done on time, correctly, and no one will care what you're doing at home.

 

[Qs Laptop]

Meanwhile, the smart productive responsible self-starting high-achiever on your team says "tracking my keystrokes, are you kidding me?" And bails and finds another job.

^^ Yes, this. ^^

My last (and lamest) boss had a little ping set up on his PC whenever one of his team started or left the IM/chat feature that we were required to be in all the time. I remember seeing it when I was in his office one time and thought...oh you don't respect any of us at all... This was a VP tracking his IT Directors.

My wife's previous employer had a similar "feature". When logged into the company's servers from home, after 15 minutes of inactivity the system would automatically log an employee off. When this happened her supervisor would get an alert, whereupon within a minute or two my wife would get a text message, "Where are you? What are you doing?" Just stifling to morale and creates resentment.

 

[JoeWras]

Come on. This is no problem.

Each company will have their own laptop and VPN. You have two laptops side by side. You work and constantly check email, or even pull up some code on each. Done. You are active. You can duck out for a bio-break or sandwich. Just check email on both. Done.

That works if the workload is low. That would have been impossible at my last job. They had us working on Thanksgiving day by having specific times to insert test scripts. Another reason I retired.

 

[ncbill]

On another forum I read there's a computer guy working roughly 3 jobs at a time.

And yes, he's a full-time employee (not contractor) for each.

He's added & dropped jobs as some (those not local to him) started requiring X days in office per week or month.

 

[Qs Laptop]

He's added & dropped jobs as some (those not local to him) started requiring X days in office per week or month.

Yep, this is standard operating procedure for much of Gen Z. When my son got hired a year ago he told his supervisor he would not take the job if it was not 100% work from home. About a month ago his company started a mandate that people need to come into the office at least 3 days a week. He went to his supervisor and reiterated his condition that he not need to come into the office and his boss said he would back him up on it. So far, so good.

If they ask him to come in he will quit and look for another job.

 

[Aerides]

If they ask him to come in he will quit and look for another job.

Just let him know the smart way is to do it the other way around.

 

[Cayman]

I have no problem when the job has measurable outputs and employee meets /exceeds set expectations. That employee is free to work as many or as few hours to achieve agreed upon goals and receive the agreed upon pay. If it works for the employer and the employee it can be win-win. Deception is a non-starter - workers shouldn't hide the fact that they have multiple employers.

 

[pb4uski]

The problem with those sorts of approaches is you alienate your good folks, and the bad folks just find ways around them. No doubt many a programmer could find a way to simulate a few random clicks being sent out from their keyboard every minute.

Meanwhile, the smart productive responsible self-starting high-achiever on your team says "tracking my keystrokes, are you kidding me?" And bails and finds another job.

My last (and lamest) boss had a little ping set up on his PC whenever one of his team started or left the IM/chat feature that we were required to be in all the time. I remember seeing it when I was in his office one time and thought...oh you don't respect any of us at all... This was a VP tracking his IT Directors.

I dunno. If you're going the right thing with respect to your employer why would you get upset that the employer is verifying it? Sound like only the cheaters would get upset. IOW if you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about and nothing to object to.

 

[MC Rider]

One j*b was always plenty for me. Likewise one GF or DW.


But zero j*bs is much better.

 

[JoeWras]

If they ask him to come in he will quit and look for another job.

Ah yes, the boldness of being a wanted tech worker.

I remember those days. 1999. We could stick it in the face of the boss. It was fun. Wages went up like nuts. We asked for, and got, free food. And so on.

Then one day, the train crashed. Oh, it was messy for a long time after that.

Now I don't know if that will happen this time, but I see no reason for the cycle to not repeat.

I do believe there will always be some WFH for tech workers. Heck, my last Megacorp allowed a liberal use of it. I thought it was perfect. I WFH for a few weeks when I had contractors here. People WFH with sick child.

But there was nothing like going in and whiteboarding a problem with each other, then breaking for lunch and catching up on life.

I know, I know. Kids don't like whiteboarding. They'll do it on the phone. Whatever...

 

[freedomatlast]

So the power has shifted from employer to employee and MegaCorp isn't happy. Too bad. More power to the people who can pull off working multiple full time jobs and do a great job at all of them.

Undoubtedly, these are brightest and best, highly motivated employees with high levels of experience that don't waste hours a day chit-chatting or slacking. They're no longer under the thumb of one employer and when that employer doesn't play fair, they easily move on.

Just natural repercussions to MegaCorp strategies that balance budgets with headcount reductions when poor, high level decisions lead to loss of revenue.

Anyone who's ever had a MegaCorp job knows there a big difference between being "busy" and being "productive". Think of all the hours wasted in nonproductive senseless meetings where the attendees could have been actually accomplishing something instead of listening to some clueless stuffed shirt drone on for hours on something that could have been said in minutes.

The article pointed out most of these people weren't spending foolishly but rather saving aggressively to reach FIRE. Good for them.

 

[jimbee]

So the power has shifted from employer to employee and MegaCorp isn't happy. Too bad. More power to the people who can pull off working multiple full time jobs and doing a great job at all of them.

Undoubtedly, these are brightest and best, highly motivated employees with high levels of experience and don't waste hours a day chit-chatting or slacking. They're no longer under the thumb of one employer and when that employer doesn't play fair, they easily move on.

Just natural repercussions to MegaCorp strategies that balance budgets with headcount reductions when poor, high level decisions lead to loss of revenue.

Anyone who's ever had a MegaCorp job knows there a big difference between being "busy" and being "productive". Think of all the hours wasted in nonproductive senseless meetings where the attendees could have been actually accomplishing something instead of listening to some clueless stuffed shirt drone on for hours on something that could have been said in minutes.

The article pointed out most of these people weren't spending foolishly but rather saving aggressively to reach FIRE. Good for them.

Yep, as companies downsize, the surviving employees are effectively 'overemployed' for the company's benefit. Now the employee can be overemployed for their own benefit. Good.

 

[Closet_Gamer]

Generative AI is going to upend the progammer dynamic.

At first the productivity boost from the computer being able to actually write the code is going to allow programmers to hold multiple jobs. They will be ahead of their employers in many cases. There is ample evidence that generative AI assistance to programmers surges their productivity.

But once the technology settles in, management will reset its expectations of programmer productivity AND the evolution of prompt engineering as a discipline will democratize code development. Five years from now there may wind up being a lot less demand for programmers doing more mundane tasks.

 

[neihn]

But would't employers have some way to monitor that those coders computers are actually being used with keystrokes, clicks, etc. when the coder is supposed to be working on the employer's dime?

Employers would not know. Each employer would provide employees with laptop and VPN. So the employee with multiple gigs would have multiple laptops with multiple VPN.

 

[JBTX]

This seems very plausible to me. In my years in corporate America it always seemed like there were a lot of people who weren’t really productive. I’d take over peoples work when they left and do it in a fraction of the time. I’d take consulting gigs and struggle to stay 50% busy, ask for more things to do and eventually just give up. I always hear about people working 60 hour weeks but worked for a company that had a timekeeping system for all, including salaried (due to certain federal requirements) and the average hours for all employees averaged something like 41 or 42 hours (most OT was not paid). I’d get in late and stay later and rarely was anybody there if I stayed to 6:00.

I’d say most jobs that I ever had could be done in about 20 hrs a week. When I worked contract consulting I rarely logged 40 hours.

 

[JBTX]

Agree about total devotion. However, the standard U.S. workweek is still 40 hours. Are you suggesting its reasonable for somebody to work 2 40 hour/wk jobs?

Those of us skeptical of WFH see our friends/neighbors golfing, tennis, gym, walking dog, grocery store, between 8-5. Can't see them putting 30 hours in. When this allows 2 jobs, something is not right. This is not only EE issue but ER as well. Bad management and leadership leading to poor performance all around.

Most managers have no incentive for staff to be efficient. We went through a series of layoffs. My manager counterparts would say they were busy and at capacity, then a layoff would happen and the work would magically be absorbed like nothing happened. I’d run productivity metrics and other managers really were not interested at all. Managers would fight tooth and nail about reducing staff and when forced to nothing bad happened. Managers/directors at a certain level spent all of their times in meetings and really had little clue what their staff was doing.

 

[marko]

This seems very plausible to me. In my years in corporate America it always seemed like there were a lot of people who weren’t really productive. I’d take over peoples work when they left and do it in a fraction of the time. I’d take consulting gigs and struggle to stay 50% busy, ask for more things to do and eventually just give up.

I’d say most jobs that I ever had could be done in about 20 hrs a week. When I worked contract consulting I rarely logged 40 hours.

General management belief is that 'if you get 4 hours a day of productive work out of an employee, you're doing great'.

There's just so many interruptions; coffee break, "Jim" who always has a joke, smoke breaks, bathroom breaks, "Mary" who always had to tell you what she did last night........

That's why when a key person has a real project to complete, they work from home without the interruptions.

I worked in Japan for a while. A typical office day was everyone got there at 9AM and did NOTHING until about 3PM. Then, all hell would break loose and they'd work like crazy until about 8PM.

Later, I worked in France and, well..........that's a whole other story with looong lunches, but they were highly productive despite their 35 hour work week.

 

[punkinhead]

I worked in Japan for a while. A typical office day was everyone got there at 9AM and did NOTHING until about 3PM. Then, all hell would break loose and they'd work like crazy until about 8PM.

I always got a kick out of visiting suppliers and customers in Japan and watching the sea of people asleep at their desks or with a thousand yard dead eyed stare. It smashed the myth I'd accepted that they work circles around other cultures. Being in the office does not equate to being productive. Early on in my career I also learned the truth to the "work hard, drink hard" myth about Japan. I was fresh out of college so was still able to hold my liquor with no morning repercussions (those days are gone) and regularly drank our Japanese hosts under the table.

 

[marko]

. Early on in my career I also learned the truth to the "work hard, drink hard" myth about Japan. I was fresh out of college so was still able to hold my liquor with no morning repercussions (those days are gone) and regularly drank our Japanese hosts under the table.

Body mass has a lot to do with it. They always told me that I was "very strong" when it came to drinking. I wasn't. I just outweighed most of them by 2 or 3 X which affects how alcohol hits you. But it's not polite to not keep up with you.

What they cannot do is 1) work from home or 2) get home early. It's embarrassing and implies that their job is not important enough to demand long hours. Neighbors are watching. There's also a bit of a martyr complex in play as well.

 

[clifp]

More power to them. If their employers are satisfied with the amount of work they're getting then everyone wins. Look at how many people are talking about all the hours they are getting paid to be in meetings. That's unproductive time when they could be doing something useful for another employer.

When I first heard about this a few years ago, I was somewhat outraged, but I've come around.

The specific example that I heard about went something like this. I read the story on Reddit a couple of years ago, so many details are sketchy.

A programmer got a job to automate a very large legal office, during Covid. Previously 2.5 people were doing the job. Essentially, court documents were being delivered to the law office. Then, they were scanned and then saved in the appropriate case file.

First months, more than a full-time job. Then, he wrote a script to read scanned documents and automatically send them to the correct case file.

Next, he found out the court was scanning all the documents before sending out paper copies. So he figured out the API to the court documents and downloaded the documents for the law firm directly from the court database. This eliminated the need to scan the document. Now the job is down to a few hours a day.

Next, he automated the whole process and wrote a script to text his phone if something went wrong. Now the job was like 2 hours a week. He did this for many months, got bored, and took another job.

His employer was delighted, not only was he cheaper than the 2.5 folks he replaced, but the backlog was gone, and everything was up to date.

I think people underestimate the productive impact IT/programmers can make.
During Covid my non-profit (Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor) revenue went to almost zero because the majority of the revenue came from a running gift shop at the memorial which was closed. Our head count went from 80 to 25, so we had to look for ways of working smarter We had a person whose job it was at the warehouse to put price stickers on the product. A person at the bookstore who updated the price as needed and kept track of inventory at the bookstore, and a buyer who placed orders when.

We were spending tens of thousands of dollars/month for a Point of Sale system which came with an intimidating large manual, that nobody had opened since vendors training classes years ago. The one IT guy in the organization opened the manual and experimented with things. We switched from putting prices on individual items and put prices on shelves like grocery stories, took a month or so to do it all. This isn't rocket science, Walmart, etc, having been doing it for decades. But many small and medium have no or minimal IT support so this doesn't happen.

 

[Chuckanut]

When I worked for a MegaCorp one of the most fun and most productive weeks of the year was the week between Christmas and New Year Day. There were plenty of good Christmas cookies, pies, etc. brought in for snacks, and general good cheer. There were no meetings, just a few management types in the office whose goal seemed to be to hide and only come out for the aforementioned treats. It's amazing what one can get done is such an environment. Even when coming in a bit late and then making up for being late by leaving a bit early.

 

[REWahoo]

When I worked for a MegaCorp one of the most fun and most productive weeks of the year was the week between Christmas and New Year Day. There were plenty of good Christmas cookies, pies, etc. brought in for snacks, and general good cheer. There were no meetings, just a few management types in the office whose goal seemed to be to hide and only come out for the aforementioned treats. It's amazing what one can get done is such an environment. Even when coming in a bit late and then making up for being late by leaving a bit early.

^ This.

My last several years on the job I always allowed my #2 to take vacation during this week as he had 6 kids at home while mine were both grown and gone. While he and others thought I was sacrificing prime time off so he could be with his family, truth was as Chuckanut states above. This was the very best week of the year to be in the office and I would much rather take vacation when things were hectic and let him deal with it.

 

[Chuckanut]

^ This.

My last several years on the job I always allowed my #2 to take vacation during this week as he had 6 kids at home while mine were both grown and gone. While he and others thought I was sacrificing prime time off so he could be with his family, truth was as Chuckanut states above. This was the very best week of the year to be in the office and I would much rather take vacation when things were hectic and let him deal with it.

I don’t like traveling during the holidays. And it’s cold, wet and dark in my area in December so I refuse to use my precious vacation days to sit at home and watch the thermometer, sun, and rain go down.

 

[jollystomper]

Two friends at Megacorp did this from the 1990s.

One also had a job as a realtor. The people in his department would cover for him as he would promise (a) if they bought real estate from him he would only charge them half the regular commission, and (b) if they referred someone to him that purchase real estate he would pay them a finders fee. However, Megacorp did lay him off, and he was not happy with that and just vanished.

The second ran an personal computer sales and repair business. These when small stores and computer had much better prices than the then existing retailers like Comp USA. He was brilliant at his job, we worked together many times and his part of the project would be done well before others. Because of his skills and not causing issues with clients or deadlines, the local Megacorp folks did not care. It was convenient for PC hobbyists like me; sometimes he would have "store hours" from the back of his van during lunch time in the parking lot. We had a friendly rivalry bond since he graduated from a rival Ivy League school the same year as I did. We knew about a dozen people in common across the schools, and in we attended tailgates and their football game twice, one each at the home stadium. Both times his school won, and I never heard the end of it. Sadly he died of cancer earlier this year.