"There are so many software engineers who literally make ~2 code changes a month, few emails, few meetings, remote work, < 5 hours/ week, for ~$200-300k"

This is from a tweet by Deedy Das.

He shared the best 'tactics':

• scheduled slack, email, code at late hours

• private calendar with blocks

• “this will take 2 weeks” (1 day)

• “oh, the spec wasn’t clear”

• many small refactors

• “can you create a jira for that?”

That drives me crazy.

Honestly, I've encountered only a SINGLE developer like that, among the tens I've worked with.

And those rare developers are ruining it for all of us.

All managers start with the best intentions:

• No micromanaging

• Time management freedom

• Measuring performance, not working hours

But what happens when your trust is broken?

When you come back from a vacation, and see that a developer didn't have any progress?

And when you ask about the challenges, you get vague answers about 'rewriting the code a few times'.

Our nature is to WANT to believe the other side. So you give it another chance. You set better expectations, and more structured work. And then it happens again.

You feel you have no choice - you start to micromanage.

Eventually, you fire that developer.

But the harm is already done.

Now, it's much harder to give your trust by default. And when CEOs read about such cases (Deedy even shared a list of 11 companies), everyone will suffer, not only the slackers.

Amazon is not alone, the number of remote positions continues to decline.

What do you think we can do to battle that?