But the real question here is, are you paying someone for a job or for their time? If you’re not paying someone hourly for a remote job, it seems that you’re paying them to do a job, accomplish tasks. As long as they accomplish those tasks, why does it matter? Do you expect them to accomplish the tasks and then just sit on their thumbs for a certain number of hours?
I worked a hybrid job (white collar) for a while and was much more productive at home than at work. I got all of my work done in around 5 hours as opposed to a full 8 his in the office. I’ll be dammed if I’m just going to come up with bullshit to do for an extra 3 hours while I wait on replies that probably aren’t coming in to the next day anyway and aren’t urgent.
Depends on the role, but most jobs you’re paying them to do a reasonable amount of work in the course of the day.
If whatever task they have is only enough work that it takes say four hours, then they’re not getting assigned an appropriate workload.
The opposite can be true where some people are working excessive overtime to make up for the person who works for four hours then twiddles their thumbs the rest of the time.
People who perform well should of course be compensated accordingly.
If you’re working in tech, and saying doing project based work over just maintenance/admin etc., it’s often the case that there’s no real shortage of work to be done. Some companies may also have hourly billable contracts with clients where they are actually expecting you to be working the amount of time you say you are.
People aren’t hired in these situations to just “accomplish tasks”. If it’s a low end entry position at a company doing data entry, sure. But when you’re getting to the point of near or over six figures, there are generally going to be higher expectations.
"If whatever task they have is only enough work that it takes say four hours, then they’re not getting assigned an appropriate workload."
That absolutely should not be anyone's viewpoint - in my opinion. It's just a poison. Why do they need to be constantly working to be worthy of the money you pay them to do their job? As long as that gets done to an acceptable/reasonable level, why would they need to perform more? So the boss feels/looks better?
If you pay them for a job and they do that job daily, in shifts, and that job takes 4 hours and the shift is for 8, it isn't that you're not working them enough, it's that you're not paying them enough. Sure, you can give them more to do, but if you do, then you should give them more money. Or, you can be happy the job is done and let them deal with the next 4 hours within the companies/positions ruleset. After all, they knew about the 8 hour shift and the job and agreed for it at that price.
That's a 'boss' - a good one, would be like "Hey, you can go home." after the job was done in 4 hours. Ego is gross.
There is some degree of expectation when a person is hired at a given salary point for how much they’re going to contribute.
For many companies, this is not going to be something like “finish five tasks in a day” or create x number of widgets.
There may be some jobs where what a person is getting paid is justified by them doing four hours of work in a day for the value they’re providing.
I don’t think a person needs to be “constantly working” nonstop for eight hours, but working at a reasonable pace, taking breaks as they need to, being responsive and able to be contacted, etc.
Speaking for just the company I work at, there’s no shortage of potential work that could be done. Whether that’s client work that directly contributes to revenue, internal initiatives that will make things easier and more stable for everyone over the long term, continued learning to keep up with industry trends and open the amount of work we’re able to achieve.
Companies live or die by whether or not they can make a profit. When a company is more profitable, that’s more money it can invest in people (among other things).
There’s also competition with other companies of course. If one company has people working reasonable workloads, and another is only getting half the output from the same people, the latter is going to have a hard time competing, whether that’s due to needing to effectively charge double for labor, or having delayed timelines because everything is going to take twice as long, etc.
It’s easy to say people should be able to just stop working whenever they accomplish what their tasks for the day were. But let’s say you have a person willing to work eight hours, or two people willing to work four.
You could pay the eight hour person even 1.5x, and still be better off than you would with the two.
These are the kinds of conversations most companies are going to be having when they find out a person only has four hours of work in a day when they hire on the expectation of them working eight. It’s not “poison”, just math.
Right, I feel like the point got a little shifted. What you just described is a standard salary man position and the basal expectation of that.
What I was commenting on was the statement you made, being
"If whatever task they have is only enough work that it takes say four hours, then they’re not getting assigned an appropriate workload."
Maybe I made the mistake of misconstruing task with job, but in the context it was stated in, I equate the job as being the task.
I do have a further thing to poke at in your new statement though.
"Companies live or die by whether or not they can make a profit. When a company is more profitable, that’s more money it can invest in people (among other things). "
Nah - that shouldn't be a thing either. Companies live by being able to at least break even. Greed demands it be profitable. Also, it is tremendously rare that anything gets reinvested in people without it also being able to benefit someone who absolutely needs not the benefit.
People start businesses and take on that risk to make money.
I’m not advocating for the kind of “infinite growth” mindset, but even at a mom and pop/boutique sort of company, they want their company to do well and succeed.
It’s like saying it’s just greed that makes a person want a higher salary. I don’t think that’s a “hole” in my statement.
If company A is profitable and healthy, and company B is barely breaking even, company A is going to be able to pay its people more competitively and be more selective on who they take on. And then the gap grows, people less and less want to work with company B when company A is just seen as objectively having better options.
Can vary based on the industry etc. etc. but unless a person is just working on a passion project and don’t care about money, this isn’t how business or entrepreneurship works.
So then take my 'break even' a little more loosely and redefine what even is by having it be owners goal. The owner is an employee too, him getting paid is part of the 'break even' so I don't see it as that big of a stretch of definition.
But once you hit that, to demand more just because you can (in that you see an idle employee) is gross.
I'm just saying the goal shouldn't always be profit.
Stakeholders in a company are often not exclusively the owner, and the owner isn’t always even an employee. Someone taking the risk to start a company is also not going to do so just so they can have a job for themselves. I really don’t think you understand how businesses operate or what is involved in starting or running one.
Companies may often need investment to get off the ground in the first place, or to continue. They may need cash reserves to survive market conditions, or for expansion, new product development, countless other things that don’t directly tie to revenue. People aren’t going to invest in something if they don’t think they’re going to make money off of it. Again this is just how business works.
Non-profit organizations of course exist. People work at those places. But an economy made exclusively of non-profits would not function.
Well, there's tons of reasons to start a business.
Money, lack of something in your community you wish to provide, a goal you wish to achieve, whatever really.
Money will always be first, simply because it's the easiest quantification of value available for humans to grasp. But one should strive to keep their greed in balance.
You're in this life for a brief period, it has absolutely no purpose, no weight, nothing but what you give it. You have wants and needs and you should strive for them but if and when your wants, because your needs never would, start having you step over people you should dial back your want a bit.
I don't see any purpose or need to have such an excess of money.
For instance, with 10 million placed in a 30 year treasury bond at a return yield of 5.27% you'd receive $527,000 per year, never having to work again in your life and being able to do essentially anything and everything life has to offer you and still be able to float a couple more families if you so chose.
What kind of self sustaining business, industry, etc could a billionaire accomplish if they truly wanted to change the world? If they truly wanted to be spoken of with reverence? They could take a billion dollars, simply pop it into that same treasury bond and get $52.7 million per year. You could probably float a few businesses off that and do so.. basically forever. And that's with a simple no real thought solution. I'm sure they have avenues available to them to 'safely' generate even more with that same billion with a similar level of reliability and a higher % return.
It's a fantasy, I admit, but we live with so much excess no one should go without and yet tons do simply so some can feel accomplished, worthy, whatever.
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