You could write a million words trying to justify this.
However, if you are selling the same hour of effort to two or more people then you are lying to, stealing from and defrauding them. That is totally black and white.
People are entitled to respond to the unfair state of the world in many ways, but it doesn’t justify theft.
As an aside, I am amazed at how sites like HN can virtue signal with the best of them, then conduct mental gymnastics to claim that double billing isn’t fraudulent. Cmon guys surely anyone can see this isn’t right?
I am not selling one hour of effort, I am selling the result of what an average employee could accomplish with one hour of effort. If I can accomplish in half an hour what someone expects to take a full hour, then I have another half hour left to sell and by all rights should do so.
If you can convince your employer to write that into your contract, then absolutely. (If you're at the $200k dev salary skill level, you absolutely should be able to get paid very well as a contractor based on milestones, not for hours, and have a lot more lifestyle flexibility if you're productive)
But of course one reason for preferring regular salaried employment instead is actually not being able to accomplish the work in double the time but having a certain amount of skill in persuading people you're just ramping up or other people are holding up your productivity...
The employment contract is an outdated relic from factory work, when it was actually reasonable to measure work in hours and an 8 hour shift made sense.
There are no ethical obligations for employees to follow employment contacts because there is a massive power imbalance. Workers are forced to accept humiliating and ridiculous terms, like peeing in a cup to pass a drug test, just so that they can survive.
2-3 hours a day of productive work is standard for office jobs. There's no reason to work more than that; you won't get paid more, they will just take advantage of you. There is nothing wrong with working another job in that case, so that you are paid proportionally to your output.
Theft is justified when the playing field is not fair, and when one party has vastly more leverage. You can't say the hungry are not justified in stealing when the rulers take their labor by force.
It's not "theft" to pay someone the compensation they agreed to receive, any more than it's theft to buy an item for what the shop agrees to sell it at (which will also be less than you actually value it at, unless you're very bad at purchasing decisions...)
There are situations where people accepting a certain job at a certain wage might do so with somewhat less than free choice (that's where livability comes in), but that doesn't include ones where they've got another job paying $200k.
> That 200K earner likely produces much more than 200K in value.
Of course, the business has to live from something, accept the risks.
The point is that these are not people driven to the corner who have no other option to survive than to steal. These people have enough funds to start their own businesses, but I guess defrauding is easier.
I find it quite ironic that anyone who would get this angry on an Internet forum would suggest that anyone else seek help.
Please relax. This level of anger will shorten your life (and makes for a really awful forum). These personal attacks are several levels beyond acceptable.
This is why the managers are on us with grooming and estimations and then are unhappy when every minute is not accounted for. Stop stealing, you're making the job much worse for the others - and that's what actually shortens our lives.
IT is not so clearly "hours in = work getting done" type of job, most of the time you are paid to have your knowledge and skills available for when it is required, but day to day work is a big cruise.
However, if you are selling the same hour of effort to two or more people then you are lying to, stealing from and defrauding them. That is totally black and white.
People are entitled to respond to the unfair state of the world in many ways, but it doesn’t justify theft.
As an aside, I am amazed at how sites like HN can virtue signal with the best of them, then conduct mental gymnastics to claim that double billing isn’t fraudulent. Cmon guys surely anyone can see this isn’t right?