Well that is such a unique case. I’ve never heard any employer being okay with clocking hours that were not actually worked. And in your case it’s essentially just a raise with extra steps.
Government RFP states that they’ll pay 25€ for an hour of software engineering work at most, for an example. You already know nobody is breaking even on less than AT LEAST 35€ an hour considering the salary + other expenses of having an employee, and yet companies send in proposals. How? Because they’ll just bill more hours to make up for the difference.
Similar things happen in the private sector, but to a smaller degree because the rates are higher to start with.
None of it is on paper for anyone whatsoever. But you just know that if your company has been getting the same hourly rate from a vendor for many years, they’re probably invoicing you more than an hour per hour as their engineers get more experienced and inflation goes up.
The flip-side is that sometimes I’ll overthink a task, completely restart it realizing I wasted an entire day on it and it should’ve been 2 hours. I’ll then take some hours off, the bill ends up being between what I think it should’ve taken and what it actually took me.
But this is not what that discussion is about. The person above said that the employees should pay their AI usage with part of their salaries. We’re not talking about freelancing or similar.
When I’m employed for 100k a year, 40h per week, I can’t just only work 20h per week, but claiming to have worked 40h. My employer would not be very happy about that, because my pay is not directly bound to the amount of deliverables I create but how many hours I actually work.
And with AI they just hope, that I get the work of 60h done in only 40h. If I just work less without disclosing it and someone finds out, I could say goodbye to my job and probably also get sued.
If THEY want you to use AI then of course they better be paying for it.
If YOU want to use AI then IMO it’s completely fair to pay for it yourself and just work less assuming your output stays the same.
The article makes it sound like people are opting to use AI for simple tasks, burning tokens just because they can. I’m gonna have to agree with the person above that it’d be stupid for a company to pay for that and especially stupid to encourage it.
Now, for the 40h thing: Not such a huge thing in the software engineering world, at least in some parts of the world. The average person has 2-3 hours of being truly productive in an average day. It’s why you have things like ping pong tables and playstations in offices and in some companies I’ve worked at, it wasn’t really a problem to leave before 5 PM after getting in at 10 AM and having an hour long lunch. So the hours worked to hours paid balance is already a bit fluid. Of course it comes with the expectation that when shit hits the fan, you work overtime.
Well that is such a unique case. I’ve never heard any employer being okay with clocking hours that were not actually worked. And in your case it’s essentially just a raise with extra steps.
It’s how all contracting works around here.
Government RFP states that they’ll pay 25€ for an hour of software engineering work at most, for an example. You already know nobody is breaking even on less than AT LEAST 35€ an hour considering the salary + other expenses of having an employee, and yet companies send in proposals. How? Because they’ll just bill more hours to make up for the difference.
Similar things happen in the private sector, but to a smaller degree because the rates are higher to start with.
None of it is on paper for anyone whatsoever. But you just know that if your company has been getting the same hourly rate from a vendor for many years, they’re probably invoicing you more than an hour per hour as their engineers get more experienced and inflation goes up.
The flip-side is that sometimes I’ll overthink a task, completely restart it realizing I wasted an entire day on it and it should’ve been 2 hours. I’ll then take some hours off, the bill ends up being between what I think it should’ve taken and what it actually took me.
But this is not what that discussion is about. The person above said that the employees should pay their AI usage with part of their salaries. We’re not talking about freelancing or similar.
When I’m employed for 100k a year, 40h per week, I can’t just only work 20h per week, but claiming to have worked 40h. My employer would not be very happy about that, because my pay is not directly bound to the amount of deliverables I create but how many hours I actually work.
And with AI they just hope, that I get the work of 60h done in only 40h. If I just work less without disclosing it and someone finds out, I could say goodbye to my job and probably also get sued.
If THEY want you to use AI then of course they better be paying for it.
If YOU want to use AI then IMO it’s completely fair to pay for it yourself and just work less assuming your output stays the same.
The article makes it sound like people are opting to use AI for simple tasks, burning tokens just because they can. I’m gonna have to agree with the person above that it’d be stupid for a company to pay for that and especially stupid to encourage it.
Now, for the 40h thing: Not such a huge thing in the software engineering world, at least in some parts of the world. The average person has 2-3 hours of being truly productive in an average day. It’s why you have things like ping pong tables and playstations in offices and in some companies I’ve worked at, it wasn’t really a problem to leave before 5 PM after getting in at 10 AM and having an hour long lunch. So the hours worked to hours paid balance is already a bit fluid. Of course it comes with the expectation that when shit hits the fan, you work overtime.