Long Hour Rule

“Let’s work less and smarter to be productive.”

One developer said and went home early.

The real reason was not his fatigue after coding complex things. The real reason was his freelance project. Each evening he resold what he learned from teammates and earned 2x more than teammates. His mediocre performance was not a big problem itself. The problem was the conflict of interests.

Some colleagues felt friction with the team goals and pointed to our principles. So he needed to protect his lucrative status quo and started a tacit war against the principles. He started backtalk to solicit others to violate Code of Ethics and the Principles. He said the Principles are slavery, and the company do not follow them. Now, his work become to explain others why loyal teammates and company are immoral and deserves to be cheated.

Those who wanted more comfort quickly become his friends to avoid responsibility and hard work. Here is a team maximizing their benefits and minimizing efforts and risks to be fired. They had 2 lives - one was to show to others about hard problems they struggle to solve which none can understand with blurred stories. And another life was messing code and gossips against loyal to the company colleagues. They had strong incentives to sabotage interviews and newcomers to ensure they are irreplaceable.

They were proud of their ability to take advantage over the company. They felt like: Now, the company is the slave and we are the rules.

So we have the Long hour rule and we fire for failure to report on a conflict of interests or backtalk/gossips.