It's a form of White Collar / 1st World Corruption.
Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value is Fraud.
Woaaah there buddy!
Did you read the all of the OP's post? He's never been fired and gets middling to good performance reviews. Continuing to pay his salary implies that the company it's getting a fair deal. This is obviously not fraud in any legal sense.
Characterizing this dynamic as "White Collar corruption" is a totally warped, an in my view, offensive. If there is any corruption in this scenario, it's on the side of the employer. If the OP's situation is widespread within the company, failing to recognize and remedy it could very well be a breach of fiduciary duty owed to the shareholders. Not a lawyer, but I'm pretty positive that ignorance or incompetence is not a legally valid excuse.
In my view, the real issue here is that salaried employees are almost never compensated in proportion to actual value that they generate. A flat rate arrangement, assuming no significant bonuses, results in a zero-sum game with diametrically opposed incentives for the two parties. The employer maximizes value by trying to as much work as possible from the employee. And the employee maximizes his hourly rate by working as little as possible, with the ultimate goal of infinte dollars per hour at 0 hours worked.
The incentives become perfectly aligned if the pay is based on some objective measure of generated value. Moreover, I would would argue that it would be fairly straightforward to come up with a logical metric for every single position within a company that generates revenue. These can be proxies instead trying to estimate revenue growth or cost reduction to every single employee. Moreover, the dollars tied to a given position's reward metric would be subject to market rates the same way that salaries are today.
Yes and he clearly indicated he's lying about issues.
There's likely a major gap between what the company wants/thinks he is doing, and what he is actually doing, and this is facilitated by his misdirection (i.e. admitted lying), and probably the political incompetence of the situation overall.
One one hand - it's fraudulent to misrepresent your work.
On the other hard - it's still fraudulent even if the company is not able to properly assess the work.
I agree that it's likely not some kind of legal issue - that's not the point really, but it's still a form of fraud.
If you agree to provide a service and due to your customers inherent trust, and their inability to do proper oversight, you still need to provide that service.
But what is offensive is the Peanut Galleries Commenters acceptance of a person who is admittedly lying and misrepresenting themselves as somehow 'not a problem'.
It's shameful for someone to lie, misrepresent and take advantage of another group.
What is 'warped' is this bizarre gaslighting of the employer for somehow 'being corrupt' because they are being lied to by an employee?
In what upside down universe does an employee lying about their work make the employer corrupt?
"the real issue here is that salaried employees are almost never compensated in proportion to actual value that they generate"
That's mostly separate question.
"A flat rate arrangement, assuming no significant bonuses, results in a zero-sum game with diametrically opposed incentives for the two parties. T"
This is wrong, 90% of the world is paid for their time, that doesn't make incentives 'opposed'. They are aligned, just maybe not perfectly.
"The incentives become perfectly aligned if the pay is based on some objective measure of generated value. Moreover, I would would argue that it would be fairly straightforward to come up with a logical metric for every single position within a company that generates revenue. "
I'm going to gather you're new to this, and have never hired people, set salaries or worked on a large team?
The situation that the OP is in is common - precisely because measuring value and oversight is actually really hard, especially in software.
It's a bit glib to suggest that somone could come up with some magic metric relate to profit that aligned incentive, it's the Holy Grail of HR. There's too much ambiguity in the system.
"TL;DR - Don't hate the player, hate the game. "
Players that cheat, either employers or employees should be called out.
Having some reasonable degree of professional standards, which include trust (on all sides), is what makes the system work, along with intelligent management and oversight etc..
It's a form of White Collar / 1st World Corruption.
Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value is Fraud.
Woaaah there buddy!
Did you read the all of the OP's post? He's never been fired and gets middling to good performance reviews. Continuing to pay his salary implies that the company it's getting a fair deal. This is obviously not fraud in any legal sense.
Characterizing this dynamic as "White Collar corruption" is a totally warped, an in my view, offensive. If there is any corruption in this scenario, it's on the side of the employer. If the OP's situation is widespread within the company, failing to recognize and remedy it could very well be a breach of fiduciary duty owed to the shareholders. Not a lawyer, but I'm pretty positive that ignorance or incompetence is not a legally valid excuse.
In my view, the real issue here is that salaried employees are almost never compensated in proportion to actual value that they generate. A flat rate arrangement, assuming no significant bonuses, results in a zero-sum game with diametrically opposed incentives for the two parties. The employer maximizes value by trying to as much work as possible from the employee. And the employee maximizes his hourly rate by working as little as possible, with the ultimate goal of infinte dollars per hour at 0 hours worked.
The incentives become perfectly aligned if the pay is based on some objective measure of generated value. Moreover, I would would argue that it would be fairly straightforward to come up with a logical metric for every single position within a company that generates revenue. These can be proxies instead trying to estimate revenue growth or cost reduction to every single employee. Moreover, the dollars tied to a given position's reward metric would be subject to market rates the same way that salaries are today.
TL;DR - Don't hate the player, hate the game.