@angarg12 It's a difficult one. I sympathise a lot with the position, but deliberately deceiving my employer is something I have real difficulties with.
The only thing I sympathise with is that the employer seems to be quite incompetent
for the rest, is basically cheering someone for deceiving their boss
a couple of comments
I agree, it's business, they would get rid of you the moment it would save them money so you don't own them anything other than fulfilling your employment contract.
Many businesses "sell air" in exactly the fashion OP does. His employer likely has lucrative contracts that involve little work -- or if they don't have any
Can I get some upvotes on my comment here (assuming you agree of course ;) ) so this actually shows up for people?
2
Before you comment - A chatroom exists for this question. Please take all forms of conversation, discussion, "me too" stories, random tidbits or points of advice over there. Comments should only be used for their intended purpose. We are actively deleting all comments that should have been posted in chat to avoid useful comments from being lost in the chaos. If you want to discuss this question you'll have to do so in the chatroom instead. — Lilienthal ♦13 mins ago
@angarg12 The one I posted right after that. It's auto-boxed so should display the actual comment on the page. You can click the "13 mins ago" at the end there to go to the question.
@angarg12 A comment says it hit the front page of Hacker News. It's good to have site exposure, but something like that completely skews the votes even worse than a HNQ
I can just imagine how the OP feels. Asks a question, expecting a few responses at most- 3 days later it's the most viewed (or one of the most viewed) questions on the site.
@motosubatsu if not for that, I'd cheer the man. I did the same thing without the bugs. Yeah, there is a real genius there, too bad the deviousness ruins it.
@motosubatsu I automated my job so that I could take care of my father as his health was failing, but my employer was aware of it and the only reason I was working for only a few minutes a day was that the systems needed time to catch up. I was also doing grunt work that they needed someone to do before the close date and after hours so as not to clog the systems
Again, with the understanding and blessings of my employer,
@RichardU you handled it perfectly IMO... only goes to show that the issue is not about automating ones job but how you handle that fact with the employer
I am a project manager for a design firm. When I initially started, I was to do an assessment of the company. However, the project manager at the time and one of the senior executives did not want me there. Therefore they instructed everyone to NOT speak to me. The employees are young and impress...
@RichardU For me it's not just the bugs. The OP never really answered the question of whether the contract is for time spent or for the deliverable. The latter is okay, the former is most certainly fraud.
@Lilienthal funny to see how chatty comments keep piling on even after clear, detailed and upvoted 11 times mod message explaining that this is not the way to go. There are already 3 of them (and I saw 2 more deleted by flags). And guess what? every one of these "helpful" commenters that are there now has got their "fair" association bonus from Stack Overflow. Probably along with the habits to ignore everything that was written to them. Lemmings indeed...
@RichardU I had that instilled in me by someone who was (probably) the best manager I ever had - all he cared about was that the work got done and was up to scratch. He even told me not to fill in my flexi-time sheets as he said he trusted me not to take the piss
...I once saw Shog posted a diagram showing how many users from different sites switch through sidebar to hot questions from other sites. That was a beautiful diagram with thickness of lines corresponding to how many users went through sidebar in particular direction. But the most interesting part of it was that Stack Overflow was absent there. Because, if SO was there whole diagram would turn black, totally overwhelmed by showing how SO lemmings invade and pollute smaller sites
@gnat I remember that chart - it showed clicked links by count, not by percentage. SO wasn't included because of sheer size. SO is by far the site with the most users, so clearly including its data would overwhelm the chart.
It wasn't about lemmings and polluting smaller sites. I would be willing to bet that the majority of high-rep users on non-SO sites started on SO first before discovering a site they like better.
@Kaz IMO, that project manager sounds like a bad fit. Also, it's lack of wisdom to bring someone in to clean house, then put them in charge of the house they just cleaned. Set up for failure, but she seems to be a willing participant.
@Lilienthal I am not saying it will... my point was even if you get 10 people to vote it down all that rep and the points is reversed in just a few votes... 10 nonlemming upvotes on a hotbutton question is normal
@DavidK IOW the main (and probably only) purpose of hot questions is to entertain Stack Overflow audience. It was particularly funny to realize this looking at that chart carefully highlighting and demonstrating teeny-weeny differences between various sites. Knowing full well that this is just a non-substantial byproduct of the "dark matter" that was hidden from the chart. Quite ironic
@motosubatsu I keep remembering my manager who gave us lists of work to do, and as soon as it was done, the rest of the day was ours. We killed ourselves for four hours, got more work done than the other two teams combined, then got the rest of the day to ourselves.
@gnat The bad UX also contributes to the comment problem. The link should read "suggest an improvement" or something like this. They invite people to "add a comment" and then complain about the "comment problem". Those SE employees, the so-called Community Managers, and of course, the high reputation mafia on meta.SE live in a strange world of their own. It would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing.
I am a project manager for a design firm. When I initially started, I was to do an assessment of the company. However, the project manager at the time and one of the senior executives did not want me there. Therefore they instructed everyone to NOT speak to me. The employees are young and impress...
@SoylentGray Ah fair. Yeah, that discrepency has always struck me as odd considering how reluctant people are to downvote, especially when they only have the association bonus to work with.
oh and the question in question appears to be the case when Atwood's guidance applies, I just saw this comment: "This question is currently on the front page of Hacker News..." That explains a lot. Meanwhile @Lilienthal could you please do the second clean up of comments over there? because as of now it looks like everybody ignores mod guidance on comments provided by enderland in top one — gnat8 hours ago
@MaskedMan Ah yeah, you're right. I've gotten some rep on all the sites I tend to visit these days so I haven't run into the lack of downvote privilege in ages.
@Lilienthal no it's easy to say, if you mean HNQ could somehow help sites grow. Every time I saw attempts to analyze statistics to find out there was a clear and unambiguous conclusion that HNQ don't help sites to grow (last time it was at Workplace meta IIRC). If you think of it, if there were stats showing opposite, SE management would be first to publish and brag about these and tell "hey smaller sites shut up and stop complaining because HNQ gets you growth in exchange for pain"...
You have an XY Problem here. The most common cause of this symptom is the HNQ cancer, which has spread across StackExchange but it affects "subjective" sites like Workplace more severely. The problem results from a number of positive feedback loops, as explained below:
HNQ → more views → m...
Also, I stand corrected on one of the "solutions" I proposed there.
> Regular users vote to close it as early as possible, which knocks it off the HNQ. Reopen it later once things cool down. Repeat as often as necessary.
Turns out things no longer work that way. The question on the ethics of leaving soon after getting a bonus hit the HNQ yesterday, then it got closed and went off the HNQ. It was reopened several hours later, and it was back to the HNQ immediately.
Disclaimer: I have got over 120 upvotes on my answer to that question, and repcapped twice. I was also one of the reopen voters.
@MaskedMan if you wanted it to cool down enough to avoid HNQ you'd have to wait a day or two longer before reopening, to let "aging factor" kick in stronger. Though frankly pushing things that way somehow doesn't feel right to me - if the question is worth reopening just do it and ignore HNQ matters
Rob, Nat and the mod comments are really the only ones that are approriate... there
I think if the comments were just purged on all the answers and the question the site would benefit greatly... I really wish we could shut off comments
Don't insert bugs or pretend you're working when you're not. That part is wrong.
Just tell them about your script/process. It's actually possible that you'll get more work to automate.
Worst case, if you get "laid off" for automating your job, I'm sure future prospective employers will value ...
@SoylentGray I am severely split on that comment, can't tell if mentioning of related discussion at HN is okay and relevant or not. Because of that I am not going to support you here. And because of that I am not going to oppose you either. :) Maybe later I'll make my mind one way or another. but not now
@gnat If the question didnt already have ~200 comments I would agree... but since it does my opinion is kill anything that isnt 100% approriate with very hot fire applied as quickly as possib.e
there are currently over 100 commets between question and answer still visable. That and 4 answers already have been moved to chat and the question has 2x
and maybe 10 of them all together are approriate and not just discussion
@SoylentGray We don't have high rep mafia here, it is only on SE. They just don't listen to anybody. They have already decided ages ago how the SE network should be run, and any idea that goes against it is blasphemy.
@SoylentGray context matters indeed, and what confuses me is this comment may possibly qualify as providing useful context. In a sense it is similar to comments posted by enderland and Liliental: "look, here is an important chat about this question". I am not sure that this fully qualifies it as worth keeping but that certainly stops me from demanding its deletion. Maybe deleting it would deprive question readers of useful context? or maybe not. I really can't make my mind on it
@gnat Like I said if the question wasnt already mired in the Comment swamp I would agree. but you have to drain the swamp and you cant do that by picking and choosing where you drain it from...
SO and SE are supposed to be seperate but unequal entities now :p
but as their children I think SO thinks they should still be able to tell us how to live our lives.
That said anytime I want to defend SE I look at politics and the fact that it is still open, and think maybe they should be...
@SoylentGray I guess there is a certain amount of "mafia" feel here when seen from a newbie's perspective, but the big difference is that unlike the high rep mafia on StackOverflow, we are not obnoxious boors who keep going to random other sites on the network and yell at them "your site sucks".
This question got me thinking about my situation. I work in academia, in case it matters. Officially I am an exempt employee (I think).
After changing jobs two years ago, I found that the new duties are very easy for me. Let's just say that the new job fits perfectly my abilities, and my weaknes...
Someone who cried a lot made it to HNQ, and scored a lot of points. Then a lot of other people started crying too in the hope of making some easy points. Don't read too much into it.
The worst is that most of the answers are just opining on the situation not actually answering the question... My head is about to explode... Time for an SE break for me See you guys in a week or so maybe.
We have seen it over and over and over again ... with tears, poop, and what not. Some question makes the HNQ and then a bunch of driveby users come out with their "me too" questions. I am actually disappointed with the low vote score on my meta answer there. It is the only one which gives the correct answer to the question, even though it calls out the elephant in the room that no one else wanted to talk about.
This question had a misfortune to be widely exposed in the hot list:
Some of the employees don't check if everything has been flushed properly and that the bowl is clean
Newer question is a slight variation of above, and is in the hot list too (why wouldn't it, having magic combination of wor...
@gnat Well, the only reason I'm here is that I followed the HNQ here from SO, nearly 3 years ago now. A fair number, possibly a majority, of our new users have accounts elsewhere on the network so I'd say the traffic influx is a significant contributor to our userbase.
@SoylentGray I was on the fence about it. Ultimately I considered that it was a useful datapoint about the question, it would probably be commented several times again later if it wasn't there (and this one had the advantage of predating my chatroom reminder comment), and I had some small hope that ycombinator would catch some of the chat instead of our comment section.
Is seems like the mods here might be getting a bit frustrated with all the extended discussion going on in the comments. Is this accurate?
This post is mostly going by the assumption that this is a problem.
The way I see it, there are, broadly speaking, a few areas that can be improved:
Improv...
@Lilienthal well my way was different but really, neither mine nor your personal experience matter here because as I already said folks studied stats to find if there is a correlation between HNQ and site growth and there was none. Myself I would even prefer it to be there because it would be easier to handle that mess and pain knowing it's not such a total waste. Unfortunately, it is
You have an XY Problem here. The most common cause of this symptom is the HNQ cancer, which has spread across StackExchange but it affects "subjective" sites like Workplace more severely. The problem results from a number of positive feedback loops, as explained below:
HNQ → more views → m...
This question had a misfortune to be widely exposed in the hot list:
Some of the employees don't check if everything has been flushed properly and that the bowl is clean
Newer question is a slight variation of above, and is in the hot list too (why wouldn't it, having magic combination of wor...
Is seems like the mods here might be getting a bit frustrated with all the extended discussion going on in the comments. Is this accurate?
This post is mostly going by the assumption that this is a problem.
The way I see it, there are, broadly speaking, a few areas that can be improved:
Improv...
The Water Cooler
The Water Cooler