> outsource their work to low paid overseas assistants
Literally every business is based on the idea of tacking on a margin onto someone else's work and profiting from it. Markets are based on imperfect information distribution at the end of the day.
It's likely the very company he'd be doing that too is already doing the exact same thing with their customer support (or "success" as they call it now), and their subcontractors themselves outsource various jobs. But I guess we've been conditioned to accept that as good because the boss is pocketing the difference, vs the lowly employee.
> only responding to your coworkers once a week
I struggle to think there is a company in the world where this kind of behavior would fly, but if there is then they must be satisfied with the work (or lack thereof I guess) and so in that case is it any worse than just slacking off at work and browsing HN for that matter?
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Now should you do this? No, but not because you should feel bad for anyone. You should not do it because it's really hard to find someone good enough (and cheap enough) to deliver the same kind of quality you do and worthy of trusting them with your reputation. But if you know a magical place where to find such unicorns, go right ahead!
> Literally every business is based on the idea of tacking on a margin onto someone else's work and profiting from it.
Which is fine if everyone knows what’s happening. Nobody assumes that their grocery stores or Best Buy are operating as charities that take 0% margin.
What’s not okay is signing up to a company as an employee, being given access to their Slack and Git, and then handing those credentials and source code over to someone you hired on Fiverr so you can go vacation more. The numerous problems with this should be obvious.
> I struggle to think there is a company in the world where this kind of behavior would fly, but if there is then they must be satisfied with the work (or lack thereof I guess)
That’s the thing about most Tim Ferriss advice: Much of it is fanciful and unrealistic. The takeaway isn’t literally that you should be responding to email once a week, it’s that you need to be pushing the limits of how much you can get away with not responding to things and ignoring conversations with your coworkers. The email autoresponder is held up as a North Star ideal of what you’re trying to do: Hide from work and avoid contributing to the team you’re on.
As for companies being happy with it: They’re generally not! The story in the book is to gradually push the limits of what you can get away with. It suggests working extra hard when you know your boss is watching and doing things like sandbagging your productivity before you go remote. The book has this whole idea that your job is only temporary anyway until your side hustle takes over and replaces your income (dropshipping T-shirts is the example used in the book) so being a productive employee isn’t a priority.
You both make some good points
> What’s not okay is signing up to a company as an employee
Oh no, someone dared to lie to a business, the horror! Only the reverse is acceptable.
You should not do this because you haven't found a unicorn that is both cheap and worthy of entrusting with your reputation. If you find such a magical unicorn, you should absolutely do this and nobody will notice since the unicorn is upholding your standards.
How much of a "unicorn" this is depends on your own reputation, the work quality you're expected to do, and so on. If you're that stupid to hand over credentials to a bottom-of-the-barrel gig worker website, you would've lost those credentials in the next phishing campaign anyway, so the outcome for the company isn't any different - they made a stupid hire (whether said stupidity is done by the employee or the subcontractor is of little consolation).
> pushing the limits of how much you can get away with
Again that's literally what every company does - with raising prices, reducing quality (doing their own outsourcing - which this place considers ok because the boss is pocketing the margin) all the time. Every A/B test is a test of how much they can get away with.
But again we seem to have this double-standard where businesses are given leeway (and even applauded for) for a lot of noxious behavior while individuals are punished. Of course businesses have an outsized ability to control the narrative so no surprise there.
> They’re generally not!
A company is never happy though. In their ideal desires you would work 24/7 for zero pay, and even then they would not be happy that you are human and physically limited in how much output you can produce.
I've seen all the behaviors you mention in people that are working in the office - and worse, some are actually working, but so bad at it it would be better if they were actually slacking off; at least they'd enjoy themselves.
> your job is only temporary anyway
In tech it kind of is though? See layoffs and such.
Again I'm not defending the practice and I'm the first one to loathe the enshittification of everything. But if shit behavior appears to be profitable and the local maximum the market has settled on, I don't think it's fair for individuals to be held at different standards.
Not who you were just speaking with, but I’ve never agreed with the emotional side of a comment so much whilst disagreeing with the actionable choices side so much.
In reality, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. I would draw the line before outsourcing my own job, but I’ve definitely sandbagged my own productivity after being poorly treated by a company in the past and still have no regrets about it.
If you’re looking for common ground with who you’re speaking with rather than trying to make your point so firmly, I think you’d also agree there is a level of meeting in the middle that is totally reasonable in how hard you should push such things, depending on who you work for and how they treat you.
> the actionable choices side so much
I just have a knee-jerk reaction to the double standard between companies and individuals. Enshittification appears to be the new normal, no reason they shouldn't get a bit of their own medicine.
> meeting in the middle that is totally reasonable
Yes of course - employee-owned companies and the occasional outliers that give employees a tangible stake in the outcome. But those generally would not be vulnerable to this attack to begin with since employee effort is appropriately rewarded.
But for the average company, doing the bare minimum to keep your job is the winning strategy since doing more will not result in a proportional reward.
> Oh no, someone dared to lie to a business, the horror! Only the reverse is acceptable.
I never said businesses lying to employees is acceptable. You seem to be arguing something else that I haven’t written: General class war content where everything is viewed through the lens of business versus employees, and since businesses are bad then anything employees do is fair game.
The reason I know so much about Tim Ferriss’ remote work garbage isn’t because I was on the business side of your simplified view. I was a coworker of someone trying to practice these techniques.
The fatal flaw in your line of logic is that it can only view interactions as 1:1 between employee and the business. What you’re missing is that these workplace games punish the team members most of all. When you’re on a team of 3-4 people and 1 of them is gallivanting around the world, responding to messages once a day if you’re lucky, and submitting PRs produced by the cheapest overseas “assistant” they can find (modern version being ChatGPT, obviously) then you start to realize the problem: When the team has an assignment and one person is playing games instead of doing work, the rest of the team has to do more work.
It’s outsourcing your work to your teammates, basically.
The obvious rebuttal is that managers need to stop this, and they do. It takes time, though. At some companies it takes 6-12 months to build a case to fire someone. The Tim Ferriss book also has defensive advice about working extra hard to impress your boss and taking steps to avoid having your lack of work discovered by your boss. Notably absent is content about being respectful of your coworkers.
So before you jump in and defend everything any employee might do to be selfish, remember that it’s not just the company they’re extracting from. It’s their coworkers. And being on the receiving end of this behavior as a coworker sucks.
> lying to employees
Not necessarily to employees, but in general - could be customers or other businesses too.
> everything is viewed through the lens of business versus employees
Not business vs employee but business vs individual. There's a lot of shit in the business world that is considered good when done by a company, but bad when doing by an individual.
Corporation-on-consumer fraud has been normalized. Outlandish claims in advertising are even enshrined in law so that you can't even sue for that (not that it would go anywhere either way).
It sometimes correlates with class but has nothing to do with class per-se (in fact it's very cheap to set up an LLC and engage in a lot of dubious practices that would land someone in jail if practiced under their personal capacity).
> I was a coworker of someone trying to practice these techniques.
I've been a coworker of some incompetent employees too - in fact it's even sadder that they didn't practice those techniques because at least then someone would benefit - in their case nobody was benefiting, not even them.
I'm not blaming them though; they match what is expected of a "senior" developer nowadays and passed all the interviews. It's the same reason my coffee is now both smaller and more expensive, but applied to employment. Companies are welcome pay more to get better talent.
The other employees who take on the slack without extra pay are engaging in philanthropy so the company has no reason to fire the slackers and hire more expensive talent if ultimately everything works out anyway.
The company could of course preemptively compensate them for the extra workload, but if you believe this actually happens I have a very nice bridge to sell you.
> At some companies it takes 6-12 months to build a case to fire someone
That sounds like a hiring or performance management problem. In the meantime, if someone can pocket 12 months of salary as a result of such incompetence, more power to them - it ain't my problem to solve unless I get a cut of the savings!
> being on the receiving end of this behavior as a coworker sucks
It gives the few that actually do work more leverage to negotiate higher salaries/fees/benefits. But of course you have to capitalize on it instead of engaging in charity/volunteering.
Edit: funny thing about ChatGPT and LLMs, companies are intentionally encouraging and tracking their usage, thinking more slop is somehow going to get them out of the hole they dug themselves in.