Should I fire an engineer for working on his side projects during office hours?

https://www.quora.com/Should-I-fire-a-software-engineer-for-always-working-on-his-side-projects-during-office-hours?share=1

by signa11 • 9 years ago

152 144 9 years ago

quora.com

keithnoizu• 9 years ago

Well, Do they respond and work on your project outside of office hours? Do you pay them for that time. If it's not excessive it probably evens out.

Ph4nt0m• 9 years ago

That is spot on I think, some people will spend a whole lot of their personal time on work tasks just because they like it. The issue could be with the colleagues that clock-in/clock-out and see him work on personal stuff and think they can do it too.

feliceme• 9 years ago

One question is: is he able to complete his normal work tasks during the time his doesn't spend on his side projects?

wccrawford• 9 years ago

I've yet to meet a manager that thinks that way. They always think that they've bought your time and get all of your skill for all of that time, no matter what they're paying.

And technically, they're right. If you aren't agreeing to that, you should find another job. But who would do that? Instead, as the answers on Quora say, people provide the value they think they've been paid for, and then use the rest of their time for their own things.

I have ethical issues with this, in case that wasn't clear. But everyone has issues with not getting paid what they're worth.

corobo• 9 years ago

And technically, they're right

My salary is seriously low if technically they've paid for an entire year of my time!

bonesss2• 9 years ago

I think there is a serious difference between a bit of HN in between compilation cycles to clear the mind, or a non-vital work-related automation that pops up when things are slow, and actively working on non-work related projects over a longer period. Especially to the extent you're disrupting your colleagues (as presented in the article).

If there is some thought that a side project might be relevant to the Enterprise then that gets discussed and agreed to before the work gets done. Outside of that: coding on "whatever" is about as desirable as reading the paper, watching Netflix, playing WoW, or sleeping in the bathroom during work hours...

If I'm paying for X hours a day and assigned tasks are done in less time, either I shouldn't be paying for the leisure or more bandwidth should be available to process more tasks. I do support building leaders at the office. I could never support subsidizing random startups out of my wallet with no equity or oversight. That's a mild form of theft and should be treated as such.

What kind of message does this send to the rest of the crew? What kind of morale will be created when someone is working in fifth gear on deadline while also watching their office mate flush away half the day?

Not to mention: tooling around at the office on non-work things to the point team members are complaining to their manager about the situation? Yeeaaaaahhhhh... I dunno what planet the "promote him!" commenters on the article live in, but someone needs a stern talking to with a clear eye to defending their continued employment. It's a great excuse for management to make a cultural statement.

discomulatora• 9 years ago

Usually depends on the contract of work. Most places have conflict of interest if the person does the similar job for 2 different employers. Side project could be landscaping, architecture, etsy business, or whatever that might not be conflicting and would be ok to continue. It is always good to communicate with your HR about the policies before starting any other project that might be conflicting to your current employment. So the real solution is a good Communication.

ryandvm• 9 years ago

You should fire them if they're not providing you the value your paying them for. That's it.

It's frankly immaterial if they're working on their side project at work. That may be part of what recharges them mentally. Which in the end, works out in your favor.

donatj• 9 years ago

This.

When I have a big project at work I would also take a small one to recharge mentally as well and switch back and forth. We got new management and they saw this as us wasting time on the big project and declared we can only have one project assigned at a time. Genius, so now when I need a mental break I'm not allowed to work on things that benefit the company.

This lowered overall productivity and lead to either daylighting or just general time wasting.

jjeaff2• 9 years ago

This is exactly my stance. I pay my employees to help get stuff done. If they can get enough done in 1 hour a week to make it worth it for me, then so be it.

If not, there is a line out the door of people who want to work remote and have that freedom and they will work harder for the same salary.

To expect any more out of a salaried employee to me is childish and petty. Be an adult and make the calculation based on what the market will bear. If someone isn't producing quality work fast enough, talk to them and explain that they aren't earning their keep and either need to step up their game or prepare to exit ... and we can still be friends.

I have spent too much time outperforming idiot cofounders who didn't do anything but watch me and complain that I didn't put in enough hours in the office regardless of the fact that I actually got things done and brought knowledge and experience to the table that moved things forward in a profound way.

I don't have to work as hard as "you" now, because I spent my adolescence building saas businesses instead of playing sports from the time school was out until 3am every day.

So I extend that same courtesy to anyone who can make things happen and I don't care how long it took you in the moment.

Daviey• 9 years ago

When looking at an employee, measure their output.. not their input. I'm honestly not concerned about the amount of hours put in... it could be 4 hours hard work.. but if they deliver on targets, then i'm happy.

I also want to know that they are obtainable during work hours, attentive in meetings and are available for brief interaction out-of-hours if needed.

I'm less keen to pay people to keep the seats warm, and moving the mouse just enough to stop the screensaver kicking-in.

I'm a non-smoker, but I do not mind people having smoking breaks... but some people get really upset by this. If we are doing physical or menial jobs, then productivity is reduced.. but for intellectual jobs, we should simply measure output.

(Oh, and i guess /YOU/ are probably being paid by someone to read this comment.. instead of working)

Worth reading: http://mentalfloss.com/article/74710/how-much-time-do-we-act...

sigi45• 9 years ago

Yada yada.

Heart that so many times and it is crap.

Only because i work better than some avg and my output satisfies you, you pay me for working 8 hours and not for something else. I'm going home after 8 hours regardless if i'm done with a task i thought i will finish, why should i leave/slack after 4 hours for a task someone thought it would take 8 hours?

bkkssnn• 9 years ago

You are far above average if you can be in "the zone" for 8h a day. The rest of us will just have to "slack" while you do the hard work.

zzalpha9• 9 years ago

you pay me for working 8 hours and not for something else.

Actually, if you're a salaried employee and not being paid hourly, that's objectively false.

A salaried employee is paid to ... Well, it's up to the employment contract to decide.

Personally, if I hire someone on salary I expect them to estimate level of effort honestly to the best of their ability and complete work at a rate I consider acceptable. If I lowball that expectation that's really my problem.

And the reality is most employees would be dissatisfied with that situation, because most people want to do meaningful and challenging work. So if someone completes their assignments early and ends up filling their time with side projects, it's because I've failed to give them work that challenges them.

The only thing I expect from the employee is that they tell me when they're done so I know what's going on and can decide what I want to do about it (and that should mean working with them to give them more satisfying work so they don't leave out of boredom).

WrtCdEvrydy• 9 years ago

I'm going home after 8 hours

Because you don't have competent technical management.

My team comes and goes as they see fit, we have the highest profitability margins of any of our departments so noone in HR bothers to tell me anything.

Edit: However, with that comes 3AM phone calls where I expect them to act like adults and do what needs to be done, so I'm not perfect by any means.

knightofmars• 9 years ago

I don't know you but thank you for treating your employees as professionals by setting expectations and letting them deliver however they see fit. I've worked at places where they "treat everyone like a hammer" so to speak and if you are delivering but you're doing it like a screwdriver you're "not a team player". Simple way to describe it is a bizarre emphasis on culture fit over productivity.

zzalpha9• 9 years ago

So long as, in being a screwdriver, you don't piss off and alienate all the other hammers.

Speaking for myself, I'm done with primadonna developers who think they can shut the door and code alone while running roughshod over their colleagues, then after a couple of years take off and leave behind their mess for others to sort out.

Development is a team sport. If you don't buy into that you won't be working at my company.

DougN7• 9 years ago

How do you measure what they should be getting done objectively? If you think a job should be done in a week and it's not, it seems they should then be fired because they're not "getting the job done".

mason55• 9 years ago

We have that discussion a lot. How do you communicate that in a constructive way? How do you provide ongoing feedback around it?

JustSomeNobody2• 9 years ago

I think it odd that some companies that say they practice Agile/Scrum still track hours. If the each team member commits to a certain amount of work, it doesn't matter if they put in 60 hours or 16 hours doing it.

Of course, there's meetings and fires, and so the dev should be available for that, but, in all, who cares about the number of hours?

zzalpha9• 9 years ago

If the each team member commits to a certain amount of work,

If you're committed to Agile, I don't understand why you're talking about individual commitments at all.

The team commits to sprint scope. The team succeeds or fails in meeting that commitment as a group.

Beyond that the team should be free to figure out how the commitment is met.

We have one team that works 10:30 to 6:30. Another that works more traditional 9-5 hours. One is largely remote. Another is co-located. They all produce high quality work at a solid, and most importantly consistent, rate.

If we tried to force some work pattern on them, I doubt they'd be as successful.

bitexploder• 9 years ago

Hours let you develop much better estimation models. Agile/Scrum isn't a silver bullet and it is valuable information for any development shop.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/10/26/evidence-based-sch...

doublescoop• 9 years ago

certain amount of work

This is the crux. How does the business decide what's a reasonable amount of work to get done in a sprint? If the dev in the OP has time to work on his own stuff, why shouldn't the business ask for a bigger commitment in the next sprint?

gdulli7• 9 years ago

it could be 4 hours hard work..

"Targets" are a pretty low end way to think of such an open ended job.

You can think of your job as "They asked me to do X and I'm going to do X and after that the rest of my 40 hours don't matter." Or, "I'm going to do as much as I possibly can in 40 hours." From the start of my career I always thought of it as the latter. I don't understand the mindset of the former in a professional job. Maximize your value to your employer or you'll be the last one to get promoted and the first one to get laid off.

There's always a backlog of defined tasks and there's always open-ended opportunity to make progress in ways you can think up yourself. Do you want to sit around waiting to be told what to do or engineer your own path?

theparanoid• 9 years ago

Most employees aren't capable of 40hrs/week of intellectual output.

zzalpha9• 9 years ago

You can think of your job as "They asked me to do X and I'm going to do X and after that the rest of my 40 hours don't matter." Or, "I'm going to do as much as I possibly can in 40 hours."

The healthy answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Burning out trying to overdeliver and prove your worth is no better than underdelivering and slacking off.

There is a balance. Exceeding your employer's expectations is of course a good thing as a salaried employee. That's how you build a highly successful career.

But one of my expectations as a manager is that you manage yourself so you're still around 3-5 years from now and don't need to take a break for mental health reasons.

dingaling• 9 years ago

I'm going to do as much as I possibly can in 40 hours.

However the inverse isn't true; your employer doesn't pay you as much as they possibly can for 40 hours work. They pay just enough.

So why not work just enough? It's meant to be a balanced exchange.

0x4454422• 9 years ago

Do you want to sit around waiting to be told what to do or engineer your own path?

It can be very difficult if not impossible to engineer your own path in most environments these days. These days most devs are simply trading time for money. If the backlog board is empty, they're on retainer waiting for it to fill up.

Because of the eternal effort of the enterprise to commoditize developers they're given no decision making power. So even though they continually identify work that could be done to improve product or process, they know it's a crap shoot to follow through on such work as it's more than likely to be rejected for one subjective reason or another.

ryandrake5• 9 years ago

Only when working hourly with a guaranteed contract does "engineering your own path" necessarily result in extra compensation. A rational person will put in effort up to (but not past) the point where that marginal extra effort results in an a commensurate expected marginal reward.

Assuming you're rational, say you're paid $P for Q output. If you thought you had a 75% chance to get $P+10% for producing Q+5% output, you'd be right to work harder and produce that extra output. If, on the other hand, you thought you had a 10% chance to get $P+100% for producing Q+50% output, you would not accept that.

gs_throwaway2• 9 years ago

[Posting from a throwaway]

You're exactly right, in an unexpected way though.

I was working at a somewhat successful BigCo. (makes HN frontpage every other month or so) a few years ago. Then came the time to discuss raises that year. I did more than was required of me, helped other teams, rewrote a bunch of legacy code in languages that were not part of my job description, etc.

What did I get? A sub-inflation raise in a year where the company's revenues increased by 70%. My closest coworkers received about the same. All because we worked on infrastructure, deemed a cost center.

So next year I coasted and put in the bare minimum while working on side project and taking freelance work. Got average to below average marks when the special time came. Then got asked to work unpaid overtime to "fix my mistakes". I quit on the spot. It was a huge relief.

Now I work for the man in the mirror and he's the best boss I could have ever wished for.

jaredklewis• 9 years ago

How do you measure output and what do you compare it to?

Measuring output sounds like an ideal way to evaluate employees, but also sounds pretty challenging in and of itself.

To be clear, identifying a poor engineer seems simple enough. But how do you tell the difference between a bright engineer working on a hard problem and a bright engineer being lazy?

How long a task "should" take is often totally unknown. After all, if a programming task is so routine and well defined that it can be accurately estimated, that is probably good indication that this task can be automated, so we shouldn't be regularly doing such a task.

nunez2• 9 years ago

well if OP didn't have issues with his performance, then they wouldn't have asked the question. OP's running a dev team in a small startup, so my expectation would be "no free time during work until we stabilize"

lamontcg• 9 years ago

Yeah, most employees read reddit or HN in between doing work tasks in order to reset their minds a bit.

If the employee is doing external coding instead of surfing reddit on their 'mental floss' time, then that's probably a good thing and its making them a better programmer.

There's issues of course if they're making competing products, or using company proprietary IP, or making money on the side.

But this may come down to the fact that the biggest issue is that you've got an open office plan, where all your employees are snooping on each other. And if this employee was doing this side-coding behind closed doors (or at home) that nobody would care as long as they were hitting their targets.

And with that I'm off to grab some coffee and get back to work...

5555624• 9 years ago

I'm a non-smoker, but I do not mind people having smoking breaks... but some people get really upset by this.

I was in a group where the non-smokers "saved" their smoke breaks and we all went to breakfast on Friday mornings. We'd take about a 45-60 minute break and the smokers were not allowed to come.

ivanbakel• 9 years ago

The big danger is the company siezing rights to any of the products the engineer made on company time, especially if they turn out to be worth a lot. It's one of the main reasons I wouldn't like to do this kind of stuff on the job.

ubersoldat2k72• 9 years ago

Or with corp. equipment. Thanks Silicon valley for that.

ryandrake5• 9 years ago

You might be assuming the employee's side project was writing software using company equipment. I don't think the asker specified that.

I used to work with a guy who sold expensive watches as a side-job. He kept some inventory locked in his desk at work, and managed his hundreds of eBay auctions from his workstation. I doubt his employer would have been able to claim any IP there.

On a side note, I'd guess the watches probably made him 2X what he was making at work. He was a great guy and I think he ultimately ended up doing the watch thing full-time, so good for him!

jjeaff2• 9 years ago

I would like to see the details of how some of these cases have gone done. "company time" is a very fluid concept if you are being asked to stay late and deal with issues in the middle of the night on a regular basis during your "personal time" without offering overtime pay (that's illigal btw) which is something very common in startup culture.

r3dey3• 9 years ago

Is he/she using company resources? Then if so I'd say fire them. Since the team noticed, is it because of lack of responsiveness or inability to complete work? Or just that they saw them doing it? If they are getting their work done what's the difference between spending that time on facebook/twitter/hacker news??

noir_lord2• 9 years ago

If an employer is paying me for 8 hours a day I work 8 hours a day for them, if I'm mentally tired from a sustained period of programming I recharge by working on documentation or stuff I can do without a lot of mental effort.

On the other side of that unless I'm paid to be on call outside of work hours I don't answer my phone for anything less than "the server is on fire".

I've found that separation (and the expectation set early that the separation exists) prevents a lot of these kinds of issues.

Chris20484• 9 years ago

I recharge by working on documentation or stuff I can do without a lot of mental effort

There's a gang of technical documentation writers outside, and they want to have a word with you..

noir_lord2• 9 years ago

Tell them to get inline behind the systems adminstrators ;).

Joking aside I'd love to work with good doc writers, I do my best but it's not where my skills lie but I think having the developers at least work on the docs is something that isn't done enough but it's amazing when it is done well.

sehugg• 9 years ago

How about "Ask them to stop doing it" first?

zhte415• 9 years ago

I'd ask them why they're doing it.

I wouldn't ask if they're bored, if they're just not busy enough, if they're interested in a new technology, if they want to make the next Facebook, but a reason should come out of any discussion. Are 1-1s even regularly done? This sounds like a red flag on that.

The Quora question from a CTO, albeit of a startup whose financial situation may or may not be sensitive. But any kind of probing moves action from the employee to the prober. Less hours? More salary? Bonus? New role? Equity? They can't just promise something, as savvy people know such promises are empty.

In proto-corporate world, the manager's hands are tied much tighter. Promotions happen at fixed times of the year, or one-time-of-the-year only. Their budget is much more fixed. But if they are good at what they're supposed to do, manage, they will find a way, however too many managers don't think this is possible.

kenoyer130• 9 years ago

Also note many hiring contracts stipulate since you are using company resources and time they OWN what you are working on. I would give the person a stern warning then a firing. This is to protect all parties involved. If they are a contractor and working from home (not using company resources) then it is none of my business.

bonesss2• 9 years ago

I agree: the cynical Enterprise response would be to assert copyright over everything touched during working hours and all that entails. After that: take a peek at all other projects this person has touched during the employment period and look for re-use of code that infringes on what is now the companies IP...

If the employee was working on a startup, then they just got acquired at the awesome valuation of "not getting sued to death" :)

Contractors and consultants are another issue... though billing Customer A for anything but work for Customer A creates its own kinds of legal pain...

jheriko• 9 years ago

this is very interesting to see the discussion and suggestions here all leaning the same way "does he get his work done?" being the most important bit of information required to make the decision in a almost all of the responses.

i've always suspected that over-delivering and working hard grants some leeway - that results are king, even compared to politics - whether its working on side projects on work time or equipment, turning up to work still intoxicated from last night, sneaking off for a quick spliff at lunch time etc.

its interesting to see this at least partially confirmed.

Normal_gaussian• 9 years ago

Bear in mind most of these replies are from employees, not employers.

There can be a lot of wishful thinking here.

zzalpha9• 9 years ago

It'll also vary greatly, even within a single company. How I manage my guys probably varies a lot from some of my peers.

pythonaut_16• 9 years ago

The main concern of the question is the side projects, not whether the employee is performing adequately. This two questions are inherently tied together. If the employee wasn't performing then they would be fired regardless of the side projects.

So in order for the side projects to be a concern, it implies the employee is still performing their job at normal levels. So then the question becomes, why does the engineer have time and motivation to work on the side projects?

And ultimately I think, the answer to that question is that there's some failure on the part of company leadership, as other commenters have pointed out, regarding motivation, available work, and how over accomplishing is valued.

antaviana• 9 years ago

You should fire her because I understand both of the following two facts concur:

- If she told you during the interview that she would spend 2-3 hours on her work, you would not have hired her

- Your team is complaining about it, which means that rhe situation is toxic

mtrycz• 9 years ago

The remark about the team complaining is the most important above anything else.

ubersoldat2k72• 9 years ago

Agreed.

If you're doing this, at least keep it private.

mannykannot• 9 years ago

Is the name Levandowski, by any chance?

"It seems Waymo now thinks that Levandowski was deceiving Google almost from the moment it hired him to work on the Street View maps project back in 2007. Google first had concerns when it found out that Levandowski was working with his own startups, 510 Systems and Anthony’s Robots, to build a self-driving car."

http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...

via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14205715

kemonocode• 9 years ago

I suspect the answers here will vary wildly with the commenter's actual position at their company.

Management would balk at it and say they ought to be immediately fired. I think it's usually a matter to see why they'd feel the need to work on their side projects during office hours- are they perceiving any extra effort they'd put into their company is not being valued enough? Are they still meeting all deadlines? Is there any conflicts of interest between the company and whatever project they are working on?

DanBC• 9 years ago

Management might see a red flag for someone who thinks it's fine to use company property and resources without payment nor permission.

naasking• 9 years ago

I think it's usually a matter to see why they'd feel the need to work on their side projects during office hours- are they perceiving any extra effort they'd put into their company is not being valued enough?

Heck, for all you know they might be planning to use their side project to improve the company's product. Jumping to conclusions is always a bad idea, communication is key.

mcs_• 9 years ago

Only if the side project is an unauthorized intent of clone your software. Fire if he doesn't do his job. How want to fire if someone does more?

mholmes680• 9 years ago

Clearly Conflict of Interest opening up both parties to potential litigation. a) Have a policy in place before hiring someone; b) remind the employees to follow the policy.

My previous company sold this type of training to corporations, who need to have concrete rules set up for the benefit of both parties (ok, mainly the corporation's benefit). I realize startups don't have time to focus on HR policies and legal protections, but get something basic in writing so both parties are on the same page prior to this issue coming up. Without it, the employee has the right to do whatever the heck they want and then sue for wrongful termination.

bshimmin4• 9 years ago

I work with a bunch of remote employees. My general policy is that I want them to be available to say "hi" and talk about the day at the start of the day (9am) in my timezone, and to give me a status update at the end of the day (5.30pm, ish) in my timezone. (The morning "hi" is a standup, really.) I expect them to reply on Slack or by email in a reasonably prompt fashion (eg. within 1 hour) during regular office hours in my timezone, and if there's something that urgently needs doing (a bugfix, digging out some info because there's a meeting depending on it, etc) then I expect them to snap to it. As to their actual work, as long as the eight hours get done, deadlines are met, and we don't fall behind, it is a source of absolute indifference to me whether those eight hours of work are done during regular office hours or if they have an entirely different job they need/want to do during the day and can only do work for me at night.

That's for remote. If someone is physically located with the rest of a team and is doing side projects whilst their colleagues around them are doing real work, and potentially they're not responsive to work queries, then that seems fairly wrong.

Of course you have a conversation first with someone before you fire them!

zzalpha9• 9 years ago

I want them to be available to say "hi" and talk about the day at the start of the day (9am) in my timezone, and to give me a status update at the end of the day (5.30pm, ish) in my timezone

As a manager I gotta ask... Why both? Why not just one stand up/status update and move on?

Or do they serve different functions?

bshimmin4• 9 years ago

The latter really just to let me know if there have been any particular disasters during the day, or if there's anything of note to report. I care more about the former, to be honest - and even that, to an extent, only to reassure me that everyone is alive and actually available to do some work. Of course it varies a little day by day and task by task - some things need more careful planning and coordination.

I should clarify that I mention eight hours only in the nominal sense of meaning that they get the requisite allocated work done - if they are able to work quickly and it only takes four hours, well, more power to them.

I feel like I'm pretty relaxed about this stuff, but I guess from the downvotes others disagree...

4c2383f5c88e9112• 9 years ago

I don't want to diss your way of managing remote teams, but the "in my timezone" part is incredibly absurd, except if your remote teams are very close. If you have a 5-hour offset, asking for someone to be available from 4am, or until 10pm sounds quite abusive. Now of course there should be a large enough common time window for several work interactions, but asking people in different timezones to have the exact same availability as you is wrong.

bshimmin4• 9 years ago

The biggest timezone gap we have is 3.5 hours, and they find it supremely convenient because they do other work in their morning. My company is based in the UK and we can only really work with people who can work in a moderately convenient timezone, at least on this sort of basis. If I hired a developer in San Francisco, I'd work with them in a different way, obviously.

Nobody is being abused, don't worry!

BrandonBradley• 9 years ago

As to their actual work, as long as the eight hours get done ...

If it's remote, how do you measure that eight hours? In addition, how many of that eight hours do you believe a competent developer focuses for?

bshimmin4• 9 years ago

See my other answer - I'm using "eight hours" as short-hand for "a reasonable amount of work to get the task done". I accept that wasn't clear. (We usually bill by the day so I often think in 8 hour slots!)

FollowSteph3• 9 years ago

I think you cross a line once you go to working on your projects. To me screwing around and doing nothing is very different than working on your own project/business during company time. If you want to do anything educate yourself on the technologies your project uses, but don't directly work on it during your work hours. Even education is different. I draw the line at working on your business during work hours.

superplussed• 9 years ago

Of course this is the only common-sense answer, I'm amazed I had to scroll this far down to find it.

dispo001• 9 years ago

The idea of an 8 hour work day is that there is no idea, we just do this without any sensible excuse for it.

What is referred to here as a side project is actually the persons real life. The job is the side project.

Its a fascinating misconception that we would live to work rather than work to live.

You should make a deal with the engineer that he will do overtime if there is a lot of work to do and he will spend unpaid hours in office if things are slow.

Then you pretend to be interested in his side project.

jorvi• 9 years ago

...and he will spend unpaid hours in office if things are slow.

How is this in any way a good deal for the engineer? Being 'forced' to be in office has an opportunity cost, and should be compensated accordingly.

crb002• 9 years ago

Give them 20% time to play. Play is how humans learn best. My best works of engineering came from playing around with a system until I understood it well enough.

mrbill• 9 years ago

My employer doesn't care, as long as I'm (a) getting my job done and (b) not competing with what they do as a business.

I have a 3d printer on my desk at the office. Boss actually gave me kudos during my last review for doing stuff like printing little utility parts for the office, team mascots, a Groot head for his desk, etc.

As long as it doesn't interfere with getting things done, my employer actually loves tech toys / hobbies / etc. One of our team-wide projects right now is fixing up an old payphone and hooking it up to our Asterisk PBX.

cestith• 9 years ago

I "hear" you even have a TV, couch, and fridge full of drinks right in your team's area but the work still gets done.

bbarn• 9 years ago

Interesting the comments in this thread have focused on the 8hrs vs getting your work done, and not the key takeaway I had from reading the post, which was "Other developers have complained about it".

I don't care what hours people put in, or frankly, whether they meet deadlines or not most of the time (reality happens and most of our work isn't saving the world), but what would make me fire a developer in no time is disrupting the rest of the development team.

BearGoesChirp• 9 years ago

but what would make me fire a developer in no time is disrupting the rest of the development team.

I can't really comment on it because my comment would depend upon the complaint and the reason behind it?

Is it actually disrupting other developers (say they aren't getting their actual work done)? Then definitely a problem.

But what if a developer who is doing extra but not getting paid more is complaining because they see this person not putting in extra and getting money by daylighting. The developer they are complaining about isn't the root of the problem, and even if you remove the daylighting developer, your complainer will eventually turn into them.

Basically, I can't tell from the question if the complaint is what I would consider legit or just office politics.

But I agree, if it is legit, then is a big factor.

dbg31415• 9 years ago

I think they should probably be fired.

While I agree, output is the main thing to focus on... I would also ask a few questions:

1) Is the employee using company resources to work on their project? If so... it's bad for them and probably means the company owns it. If the company owns it, is the company getting a say in what's being built / is in line with the company goals?

2) Did the employee ever lie about doing their personal work at work? If so, I would suggest firing them for not being honest. If the employee is logging 8 hours, but only working 5... yes, that's dishonest. Are they billing clients for the extra time?

3) Did the employee flaunt, boast, or brag to others that they were doing personal work at work? If so, I would suggest firing them for being a disruption.

In reality, how I think this should play out is less black and white.

If the employee is getting his work done and still has time to do side projects, and I liked the quality of his work, like the employee, etc... I'd want to offer him a raise to do more work at work... give him more responsibilities that take up more of his time. If his current workload only takes 80% of his time, I want to find a way to give him a 20% raise and 20% more work. I know the first response to the question in the link said that management didn't like giving raises... but I disagree. If he was idle and had more time, and I could give him more work, I'd want to -- and pay him for it.

If that wasn't an option... if the employee was just killing time between builds working on his own stuff... as long as nobody was waiting on him, I'd suggest he use his own laptop, at least, and that we make sure his employment contract allows him to own work done using the company tools and internet. Assuming I don't know what he's working on, I'd want to know a bit about the project -- it could be based on something we make and that may be a conflict of interest, or be the next great Child Porn Bit Torrent Network, or a blatant rip off of copyrighted materials. I want the company shielded from liability there -- which means making sure he owns 100% of what he's working on. Likely we can't ever be shielded from potential lawsuit if we provided resources towards the project... even internet access... so I'd want to make sure there were clear lines and plausible deniability. "He used his own laptop, cell phone hotspot, etc."

If the employee lied about doing the work on company time... if they ever billed me, or a client, for hours spent on their personal project... I think that's a serious problem. I would have to fire them in that case. If they are reporting working 8 hours, but only worked 5, that's throwing off my KPIs and team metrics. If they are charging clients for more time than they worked... yeah I can't have that -- it puts my credibility in jeopardy. I'd have to let them go.

Lastly I'd encourage the employee to keep his mouth shut. Loose lips sink ships... and while the company has to give the appearance of treating everyone the same, I probably don't want this sort of thing to be the norm among engineers... creates too much incentive for false estimates, for starters. So we can have a deal where he does what he wants when his work is done, but he needs to keep it to himself. No asking the QA guys to test his project, no asking other devs how to solve personal project problems, no asking the graphic designers for logos, etc. If he does this work at work, he needs to not advertise that he is doing it or distract other people from their jobs...

harryf• 9 years ago

From the link in his question he mentions;

Many other software engineers have also complained to me and expect me to take action.

If that's correct, then yes, you have to fire, otherwise it will turn the whole team toxic. Nothing breeds mistrust and resentment like having a co-worker where you feel you're picking up the slack for them.

JoeAltmaier• 9 years ago

It seems likely they could accomplish twice as much in a day as they are currently providing your company. I suggest you talk to them, ask them to dedicate 8 hours to your tasks. Then double their salary, because they're doing twice as much in a day as their peers.

ryandrake5• 9 years ago

Alternatively, if you're happy with the employee's output and don't want to increase his salary, maybe work with him to reduce his official hours. Maybe he can work on his side project on Thursdays and Fridays, at home, on his own equipment.

epynonymous2• 9 years ago

love it!

demonshalo• 9 years ago

Here is an engineer outputting X amount of work for a given work day which is equivalent to his co-worker only that he does it in less time. If you then require that person to work more than X in order to fill his hours, he will be incentivised to work less as he will find it to be unfair that he has to do more than his colleges. Thus, putting down time on his own projects should not be seen as a negative thing. Mainly because he is actually improving his skillset which in return benefits the company he is working for.

This however presume that he is in fact producing as much as his colleges in less time. The only two options I see is to let it continue as it is nothing wrong or cut him some deal where he can work less hours OR grant him a raise and ask him to do more for more pay.

It all comes down to expectations. If that employee meets your expectations then there is no reason to fire someone who is doing well just because he is better and more efficient than everyone else!

33degrees• 9 years ago

The question has precious little detail, but it seems to me there are a few steps that can be taking between learning about the situation and firing the person. How about having a discussion with the employee, and trying to understand why they're doing it?

teddyh• 9 years ago

From The Hacker FAQ¹ (by Peter Seebach, 1999):

Section 2: Productivity.

2.0: My hacker plays video games on company time.

Hackers, writers, and painters all need some amount of time to spend "percolating" -- doing something else to let their subconscious work on a problem. Your hacker is probably stuck on something difficult. Don't worry about it.

2.1: But it's been two weeks since I saw anything!

Your hacker is working, alone probably, on a big project, and just started, right? She's probably trying to figure it all out in advance. Ask her how it's going; if she starts a lot of sentences, but interrupts them all with "no, wait..." or "drat, that won't work", it's going well.

2.2: Isn't this damaging to productivity?

No. Your hacker needs to recreate and think about things in many ways. He will be more productive with this recreation than without it. Your hacker enjoys working; don't worry about things getting done reasonably well and quickly.

2.3: My hacker is constantly doing things unrelated to her job responsibilities.

Do they need to be done? Very few hackers can resist solving a problem when they can solve it, and no one else is solving it. For that matter, is your hacker getting her job done? If so, consider these other things a freebie or perk (for you). Although it may not be conventional, it's probably helping out quite a bit.

2.4: My hacker is writing a book, reading USENET news, playing video games, talking with friends on the phone, and building sculptures out of paper clips. On company time!

He sounds happy. The chances are he's in one of three states:

1. Basic job responsibilities are periodic (phone support, documentation, et al.) and there's a lull in incoming work. Don't worry about it!

2. Your hacker is stuck on a difficult problem.

3. Your hacker is bored silly and is trying to find amusement. Perhaps you should find him more challenging work?

Any of these factors may be involved. All of them may be involved. In general, if the work is challenging, and is getting done, don't worry too much about the process. You might ask for your corporation to be given credit in the book.

2.5: But my other workers are offended by my hacker's success, and it hurts their productivity.

Do you really need to have workers around who would rather be the person getting something done, than have it done already? Ego has very little place in the workplace. If they can't do it well, assign them to something they can do.

① https://www.seebs.net/faqs/hacker.html#section-2

Danihan2• 9 years ago

Always funny realizing what a stereotype you actually are.

snarfy• 9 years ago

Remind him that work done on company time is owned by the company, and that he might inadvertently give up ownership of his side project to the company.

It's not worth the risk.

stinos• 9 years ago

while I don’t know your employee, I know why he’s daylighting

Sorry, you don't (always). I've worked on side projects during office hours before and will probably do so in the future. Yet none of that text applies to me. For me is is is not about feeling underappreciated or bad reviews or money or being fed up by middle management. I am appreciated, get extremely good reviews and get all tasks done, don't care about money enough for it being a factor and there is no middle management to be fed up with. It's just because I took a job which came with a certain amount of freedom I (ab)use that freedom, that is who I am.

Danihan2• 9 years ago

Same, exactly. I frequently have impulses to do things that interest me, I enjoy following those impulses and they've benefited me immensely over the years..

There isn't always some malicious or negative root cause.

bluesnowmonkey• 9 years ago

Co-founder with double digit equity shocked to discover employee with fractional percentage equity more focused on becoming founder than being good employee. Shocked.

evgen• 9 years ago

Employee with fractional percentage of equity and dreams of becoming founder shocked to discover that the IP assignment agreement they signed when starting job means that old employer owns all the IP of his new start-up which he created on old company equipment on old company time. Shocked.

xyzzy4• 9 years ago

The biggest problem I see here is that employees can see eachother's screens. Give your employees more privacy and don't treat them like children. Measure them by their output.

batmansmk• 9 years ago

It reveals several problems you have to deal with:

- not enough work given (it is his manager, not him) - not driven by the mission (it is you, not him) - a distance between you and him - distrust from him to make his ideas come true in the open in the company

The final decision depends on a lot of small factor: is the guy producing a lot? Is he a good element? Why people are complaining about him and throw him under the bus? Was he hiding this activity? Does he confess when confronted? Did you ask him why he was doing it and how? Ask why 5 times to go to the end of his reasons.

There is so many better output than firing him. As a CEO, your job at that stage includes skills dealing with people. Firing is admitting your failure at that game.

neap24• 9 years ago

It always helps appearances if an employee's "side project" can, in some small way, be incorporated into their job. I've had ideas for web apps before that I've developed as internal company tools just to justify my time at work spent developing them. I don't think this is always required, but it certainly staves off criticism from bosses and co-workers.

ryandrake5• 9 years ago

I was going to attempt a good comment here, but the highest positioned Quora answer from "Don Sevcik" is so good, I don't think it's possible to top it. Seriously. If you're wondering why your employees are disengaged at work, read that top Quora answer. Then read it again and let it sink in. It's great because it centers on the employee's motivation and reasons for working on side projects, and the company's failure to address them.

strongai• 9 years ago

A good employee does their job, and then does more. No way should they be allowed to work for someone else (themselves!) on your dime. Fired.

NumberCruncher• 9 years ago

> “Well you should take on more work to show you are a team player.” Nope. Team Player is code word for “Do more, and never get paid extra for it.”

I wish I could call BS on this.

nathan_f77• 9 years ago

Uhhh, legally that company would probably own everything the engineer has been working on during office hours. So if it's really promising, then they might let him keep working on it. But he won't own any of it, and he can't keep it if he leaves.

I don't agree with it, but I think that's usually how it works, and they would have a strong case.

epynonymous2• 9 years ago

a simple conversation doesn't hurt. i'm guessing he's probably bored or has a lack of motivation to do the full time work and possibly has stumbled upon something more lucrative, he/she could be out of there as soon as the mvp is done! i guess some obvious questions are whether or not this employee is working on open source projects or something for his own potential business, that wasn't clear in the question, if it's the later, have that conversation to figure out why. if it's open source that's not conducive to your company's goals then you need to set the rules and expectations explicitly. this is obviously affecting your team's morale so you need to have some decision on this, and quickly, because you've delayed for too long!

daemin• 9 years ago

To me having some down time in an intellectual job is ok, so some HN, other news is good. So is self education and occasionally watching profession related videos online.

What is not ok is actively working on your own project or for someone else that is not a client of or owned by the company that you work for.

If it is a side project for the company then that could be alright, but the whole point of a side project is that it is done outside of regular hours. If it is work for your own company or another company then that's crossed the line. Technically your employer would own the work you were doing (because they paid for your time and equipment at least), and so could prevent you from sending the work to the other party.

Also don't forget what's happening now between Uber and Google.

tryitnow• 9 years ago

If it interferes with his productivity or the productivity of others, then no.

But they really can't be understood as "office hours" if he's not working for you, right?

shortoncash• 9 years ago

I'd welcome side projects as a mental diversion, but only for a brief while. I don't expect my team to be always on, and I expect them to be distracted partially. I just want them to get the right solution within a reasonable amount of time. It's easy to tell when someone gets sucked in to something they aren't supposed to be doing, versus just taking a much needed mental break without going so far as to take a vacation.

nunez2• 9 years ago

I think that it depends on what the projects are. If they are literally building your competition, then yes, boot them asap, especially if they didn't sign a NDA/non-compete or if your legal team isn't strong enough to enforce it.

If they are just working on non-work stuff, then I would treat it as if they were spending that time on Facebook and reddit (since these are effectively the same): tell them that they aren't productive, then follow formal action if problem doesn't get fixed within some period of time.

The tricky thing is that the smaller the team, the bigger impact their non-productivity has, so that period of time might need to be shorter than usual. If that person is truly entrepreneurial, they will probably just say "fine," work their minimum and crank up their after-hours contributions instead until they can either go somewhere that will support their 20% non work time or decide to go 100% on their side projects

kamaal• 9 years ago

That depends on what the 'side project' is.

There are lot of people in the web development world who regularly practice interview coding/algo/ds questions in office hours. They have to because the same company at which they are working expects candidates to have extraordinary levels of skills in competitive programming, which by the way is not possible without day-to-day practice.

Does this qualify as a 'side project'?

didip• 9 years ago

There are a few things that need to be acceptable for this kind of behaviors, IMO:

1. The enginner needs to produce a certain level of acceptable quality and in timely manner.

2. The engineer wants to participate in activities that ensures quality. E.g. code review, pull request, etc.

3. Related to point 1 and 2, cutting corners and dumping work to his/her coworkers are so not acceptable. Clearly, the engineer has extra time.

I could care less about corporate loyalty, but the engineer needs to satisfy a certain level of SLA at the primary day job.

Almost all daylighters I've seen ruins team chemistry because he/she didn't really hide the side activities AND actually perform less than average, causing the rest of the team to feel salty.

bitwize• 9 years ago

Nah, that's too soft. What you should do is assert IP rights over his side project and then sue him for infringing your rights.

korzun• 9 years ago

Only if the output is an issue, I rather have an engineer who is still excited about coding vs. an engineer with barely any production.

Should I fire an engineer for working on his side projects during office hours?

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