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0 pointsmichannne5y ago0 comments

The goal of work is to intentionally decrease the amount of work you have to do to achieve the same tasks. Why pay you when I can find a person who will do the same work you do in less time?

I think what you're arguing is that employees should always have some work to do, which simply won't be the case in every industry

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NateEag5y ago· 2 in thread

What I'm saying is that if I manage to build enough tooling to streamline my work so it takes me twenty hours of "at work" time instead of the forty it used to, then under the standard full-time employee arrangements, I have an obligation to use the remaining time for other tasks, like finding a new corner of the company's workflows I can help optimize and streamline.

I've never seen a system that was even close to perfectly designed or optimized. You can always find more to improve.

Yes, there are diminishing returns for any specific corner, and there comes a point when the increase in risk from doing further deployments is not worth the shrinking business gains for optimizing a given corner, but I strongly believe there are always more improvements that can be made, both at a small, focused level and stu the big picture level of what systems should even exist in a given company.

srtjstjsj5y ago

> I have an obligation

You don't though. If you become 40% more productive, you should be paid more. Quietly taking that time as part time hours, instead of staying full time and getting a promotion+raise, is fine.

NateEag5y ago

You are welcome to your opinion, and to your own moral code.

Mine means I do have that obligation.

I suspect many share this aspect of my code, which boils down to "keep your commitments, both explicit and implicit."

Nobody hires a full-time employee expecting that they'll start slacking off once they get the basics of their job going smoothly, and I know that going in (as do most people).

Thus, if I plan to do that, I have to warn them up front that our expectations are likely not aligned.

If I don't want to have that obligation, then I can negotiate up front, or take on the risk of being a consultant or startup founder.

Thought experiment: ask yourself whether you'd hire someone advertising my work ethic or yours, if all other aspects are equal between the candidates.

Then ask yourself why you answered as you did, and which response the market will reward better in hiring.

My reason for this stance is my personal code of ethics, not pragmatism, but I think the pragmatic consideration may clarify my point.

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