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Congrats, you're the problem.



> Congrats, you're the problem.

You're agreeing with him. He is making the judgement that actions such as his is a problem, and then he makes the point that there is no feedback to prevent such actions.


I fully agree. But society sends no signal that I am a problem beyond outrage when I admit it. Nobody would admonish me for being exactly the same without me mentioning it to them.


> society sends no signal that I am a problem beyond outrage when I admit it

Aren't you only admitting it to people who can't DO anything about you, except express outrage? Why don't you tell your boss your scheme, and see if they only thing they do is "express outrage"? Your behavior is very anti-social, and your rationalizations for why it's OK are very weak.


The outrage from my employers would be that they are not getting more from me for the same amount of money. They are clearly currently satisfied with my performance.

By not having terminated me (and I survived two layoffs across the three companies, so they had a chance to do just that very easily), they do not have an issue with my current output.


Stop being abusive?


I disagree. Start your own business and you'll see the pain that this kind of shenanigans causes.

Your problem is your lack of experience is also giving you a lack of empathy.


If they had a problem with me, I am sure that my performance would be complained about by now.


A person is more than the job they do. I'll take the honest less-capable person over the shyster top performer any day.


Very rational. I wouldn't hire me either.


You are abusing the good faith that managers employ to help people going through tough times without requiring explicit explanation.


Furthermore, what you are creating is a situation where people who are having a tough time at work will no longer get the benefit of the doubt because abusers like yourself will have poisoned the well.


You're pretty early in your career to be so sure "there are no consequences for my actions". It's possible you'll get away with it. It's possible also that you'll get discovered, fired from all three jobs, and then have a situation where it becomes difficult to get a non-entry job because you don't have any experience you can refer to.

Also, what university was this? It doesn't sound like mine.


Companies often do not check resumes deeply. To prevent discovery at one job from having cascading effects, I had fake jobs on my resume to get the other two. Pretended to be my own manager for the background check for one of them.

I am getting friends into tech firms with six figure salaries with nearly entirely manufactured resumes.

I admit that there is risk, but the payoff is also tremendous and there seem to be next to no barriers to well constructed fakery.


Are you just stuffing the place with more whites and asians?


Sure, but, frankly? That is a form of psychopathy.

Please don't take that offensively. I'm not throwing the word around. I don't mean "evil". I don't think it's "evil", I'm even jealous. Not just of money. Of the rationality.

The rest of us don't do this stuff because we'd feel horribly bad for doing it, to the point benefits would outweigh the costs.

I'd hazard a guess that most people would also say it was fine given a sufficient trolley problem set up "is it okay to take 3 jobs and not do the work I can't be held accountable towards given...I have a trust fund...versus...my kids wont have food"


OP's getting dunked on but he has a point: There are no consequences anymore for wrongdoing, unless it's one of a few very specific (often mortally violent) wrongdoings. So, the wrongdoers get a major advantage with no risk. To be honest, sometimes I feel like a sucker for not taking advantage. The whole spectrum from "criminal" to "mere asshole" goes unpunished. I could walk into a store in San Francisco today, right now, and walk out with an armful of goods, and nobody will lift a finger to stop me, including the police who will ignore it. You can start a business and just defraud people all day, and you're probably not going to face consequences. People are out there breaking into cars, running red lights, berating service employees, shitting on the sidewalks, harassing and doxxing people they disagree with, belligerence, bigotry, bullying and so on. Nobody does anything about it. The police can't be bothered, other public officials who could help just keep their heads down, bystanders look the other way and have no incentive to get involved.

You don't even need a good reason--just go out and do what you want, and nobody is going to stop you. It's like society hardly even functions anymore.


You assume society functioned a lot better historically.

I don't think it did. We forget that a few as 60 years ago, a person could rape a woman and she might be pressured to marry him to save face. Unless the accused rapist were black and then you would go find a tree to hang him and a couple friends from, whether or not he was guilty.

Scams are not new. Get rich schemes like crypto have been around forever. Same with scam medical treatments, fraudulent investments, abuses of power, skimming inventory, etc. Yes, we are worse on shoplifting now than we previously were, but the rest all happened before, at scale.

People have very rosy views of the past and their fellow humans. It is all a lie. It has long been the human way to ignore wrongdoing as it is too much work to fight over or pretend it does not exist.


>It's like society hardly even functions anymore.

Because it doesn't. We aren't meant to live like we live. We're hyper-individualized, alienated, and atomized by our relations to the means of production. We're all mercenary wage slaves just trying to get enough scratch to escape the rat race for a few years before we kick the bucket. Nearly all of those that don't really have this concern (aka the already-set-for-life crowd) seem to be preternaturally greedy and devoid of empathy.

The deterioration of society under these conditions isn't exactly surprising.

Hoping to retire to either Europe or the middle of fucking nowhere within a decade.


Iceland is the way


Let me give you a new perspective.

You get to see your dying father for just one week as that is all the vacation time you have left and you cannot just walk away from your job due to house/kids/etc. Happened to a friend. Father had 6 months to live. He got 1 week with him in that time. Pile of cash lets you walk away. How horrible will that make you feel to not get to spend that time with him?

My employer, who I will end up leaving in a year anyway (if they do not lay me off as every company I have been with has had layoffs) as the best way to get a raise is to leave, is way, way, way, way down on the list of people it hurts to disappoint.


Since you mentioned taking time off, how does that work for you with three jobs?

I would do the same as you if oprimozimg for income. But I tend to optimize for free time rather than income. So I take 4-5 months of PTO a year at one "full time" job which takes ~15 hours/week. (TC > $400k)


Happily trade my situation for yours. Very nice setup.

I have generous vacation at all jobs and at a prior job, I just quit to go on vacation after lining up another job to start in a few weeks, so booking the same time off everywhere is easy.

I am an unimportant rank and file developer.


I feel this very very very much, I wish we could talk in person, I am tortured every day by this exact problem. I am very jealous of people who are "that rational" "are able to adopt that perspective".

To my point, people don't do this even though everyone knows it, and its obvious, because....:(


Well one thing you can always take solace in is the knowledge you are honest. No amount of money can purchase integrity, and at the end of the day what you think of yourself is one of the most important things .


FYI, it's not a rationality question. This involves ethical questions you can rationally argue about.


Companies don't have moral responsibilities, they have legal ones (and the least they can lobby for.) The only people burdened with moral responsibilities in the employer-employee relationship seem to be the employees.


Living up to your side of a contract is a general principle, and one we expect companies to also live up to. Not working 3 full time jobs is a legal obligation.


Yeah, addressed upthread. Acting like there's some abstract dialogue to have here hides the ball. This isn't a common viewpoint, there's a reason why, and it's not because people arent aware


I have no idea what you're saying or what upthread you're referring to.


Ok, gotcha: upthread, meaning, like, "post prior to this one, under same triangle". I'm outta date on lingo. Maybe "GP"? I see that on Reddit to mean grandparent post.


Okay, I didn't think "upthread" was so specific.

But you were the one who introduced the word "rationality". It implies ethical behavior is somehow irrational. I don't believe it is.


I understand your focus here, I assume you put quotes around it because it's not being used in it's technical sense and you'd like me to admit I know that. I do

To ease your mind, let's keep the quotes and say I'm from Mars and don't share your definition of rationality, I'm using it wrong, but you want to avoid coming to a shared definition in order to have conversation without derailing:

it would be highly "irrational" to adopt this viewpoint given no code would ever be delivered if everyone adopted it. "Unstable equilibrium", in "game theory" sense. Everyone "can't" do it, but everyone "should" do it

(note airquotes again, don't want to come across as being a jerk and writing a book in response in order to be technically correct, could look patronizing since I think you understand the point)


Fully agree with your ideas here; I suspect you and I to be around the same post college age. Is it a lack of morality about "screwing over employers"? No. It's not being disillusioned to the idea that being loyal reaps rewards. If you don't go out of your way to self advocate, you'll end up left far, far behind.


There are consequences and a term for people like you. A job hopper. Never last for more than 6 months to a year. You’ll make a living alright but you might as well mug people because there isn’t a lot of difference.


~10% of people are dishonest to a fault and are lucky to stay out of prison, they're the kind who will have a judge tell them they'll do hard time the next time they are caught and just nod and think "yeah maybe he's bluffing".

~80% of people will push the limits until they see people are punished for breaking the rules.

~10% of people (often a little on the ASD spectrum) will follow the rules even if they don't really matter.

If your wallet is stolen from your locked home, it's the thief's fault. But if you leave your wallet in a crowded nightclub for an hour and it goes missing, maybe it's also your fault.




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