6 ms·

I went to a talk once on leadership. One of the suggestions was to get your "go to hell kit" ready. That is, get enough money in the bank (whatever that means f

I went to a talk once on leadership. One of the suggestions was to get your "go to hell kit" ready. That is, get enough money in the bank (whatever that means for you) so that you can walk away if things cross your personal lines, be they moral / work-life balance, whatever. It's a good thing if there's pressure to work silly hours. In my first job (recent grad) before I left the job, I'd been working 5 weekends straight (at least a Sat/Sun). Looking back, insane, now I'd be having a conversation with my manager. Sometimes it's hard when the "norm" is to work these extra hours. Where I live now, I have worked a normal 8:45ish to 5:15ish and haven't had to stay late or work weekends in years. It can be like that, I reckon it _ought_ to be like that. If your contract says 40 hours a week, why would you work more? You're just reducing your hourly rate. Now, I don't mind putting in extra effort if needed, no worries, but if it's the culture that it's just long hours, well that's crazy.

flanbiscuit 10y ago
> You're just reducing your hourly rate. This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime. You can at look at it one of 2 ways. 1. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every time you're working overtime, every minute after 8-hours you're freely giving away to the company. This is your personal free time. 2. Or, like patrickdavey said, you dilute your hourly worth. Say you're a dev who makes $90K, that's roughly $43.xx/hr for a 40 hour work week. But if you're actually working 50hr work weeks you're now worth $34.xx, and so on. The company just saved money on you (or they are making money off you).
- ThePawnBreak 10y ago
  Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?
  - OpenDrapery 10y ago
    You may be more likely to be promoted if you display a backbone. Real straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      I would say the vast majority (greater than 99.99%) of raises come from the threat of quitting. That can either be an active threat (where you approach management for a raise to set expectations) or a passive threat, where management wants to make sure you aren't looking around for better opportunities, and those opportunities will often pay more than they have to raise your salary to keep you, which makes retaining you after you've shopped around much more expensive. Large companies that realize losing institutional knowledge is costly put in programs to make sure there are good expectations on what is required to achieve the next position and what the pay-scale range is for the next position (which also helps fight racism/sexism). You see this at Google (and I'm sure many other large companies), who had identified this as a problem that needed to be solved.
  - geofft 10y ago
    Is that actually true? A good coder or sysadmin who is willing to work overtime is more valuable as a coder or sysadmin than as a team lead or something, where the nature of their work demands less overtime.
    - tachyonbeam 10y ago
      I have a coworker who works harder than anyone else on the team, he's the most productive and knows the codebase in depth. I can see him getting a nice bonus, he deserves it, but I don't think he will be promoted. For one, my boss just hired someone more senior and I think his plan is to move that person into management. The other thing is, it would kill our team's productivity to lose our best programmer, he's too useful in his current role.
  - kraftman 10y ago
    I'd rather just look for a job elsewhere paying more than do tonnes of overtime to maybe get promoted.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- toddchambery 10y ago
  For salaried employees or contract work with capped hours, overtime can also be banked goodwill or converted to flex time. Most office environments I've worked at are not rigidly policy-driven, are populated with sensible humans, and the overwhelming majority of my teammates are working for the success of the team and each other.
  - infinite8s 10y ago
    Sure, the team/your teammates might be working for the success of each other, but that doesn't mean you aren't all being screwed by the company.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  Sure you can put in whatever your contract says and nothing more... Or they could fire you, move you out the fast track career situation, and remove you from the "good" projects.
WhoBeI 10y ago
No work without pay. If they feel that's a bad attitude then they can start offering their products and/or services for free and see how they like it.
WhoBeI 10y ago
No work without pay. If they feel that's a bad attitude then they can start offering their products and/or services for free and see how they like it.
squeaky-clean 10y ago
Another name I've seen this under is having "F You Money". Or in other words, enough money that if you ever need to tell management "F You", you can do so without fearing for you or your family's livelihood. I think this is important anywhere, not just programming. When I was younger, I worked at several fast food places. There was a Burger King job I left within 2 weeks because they had me working insane amounts of unpaid overtime. When I told them I would be leaving they essentially tried to bully me into staying. "We may not be paying you in full, but if you leave you'll be making no money, and that's much worse. You don't have another job waiting, it's just a bad idea to quit. You could become homeless!" Thankfully I was living with my parents at the time and could tell BK to screw themselves. But I feel really bad for other employees in that same situation who either fell for the spiel or legitimately couldn't afford to be jobless for a day.
- kavbojka 10y ago
  That's what I've always called it ;)
ptero 10y ago
One should always have the "go to hell kit" somewhat nearby (e.g., available with at most a few weeks of focused effort). Not having this can make one effectively enslaved to the current job (and not only job) which, at least for me, is very very not good for morale.
kdamken 10y ago
It's also known as "fuck you money", and there's a really good scene with John Goodman in The Gambler about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI So many people, especially in tech, work jobs that pay really, really, really well compared to most people and piss it away on stupid shit. You can choose to save a lot of that money instead and still have a very good and fulfilling life. Eventually, when you have enough savings/investments to cover you for a few years, your life changes. You don't have to worry so much if people are getting laid off, or if your job starts demanding unreasonable things. Here's the article that brought me to that video, and goes more in depth about the concept. I highly recommend it - http://jlcollinsnh.com/2011/06/06/why-you-need-f-you-money/ http://jlcollinsnh.com/2011/06/06/why-you-need-f-you-money/
- x0x0 10y ago
  There's no security in the world like knowing you can tell your boss "fuck you" and be fine for a year or more (except perhaps two years or more =P ). You don't have to do it; you can just always know that you have the cash to walk out the door and never come back. Or you can drive a Tesla. I bet I know which one makes you feel better when you put your head on your pillow at night.
- shostack 10y ago
  The question is where to get that reliable rate of return. As I've thought about my investments, I've also struggled with the notion that I'm very heavily in non-dividend paying equities. While my growth has been great, I'm not really deriving any passive investment income to offset my living expenses (presumably for the opportunity for a higher rate of growth). Do many that aim for this tend to focus more on dividend and income-providing investments instead, despite the lower rates of return?

flanbiscuit 10y ago

> You're just reducing your hourly rate. This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime. You can at look at it one of 2 ways. 1. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every time you're working overtime, every minute after 8-hours you're freely giving away to the company. This is your personal free time. 2. Or, like patrickdavey said, you dilute your hourly worth. Say you're a dev who makes $90K, that's roughly $43.xx/hr for a 40 hour work week. But if you're actually working 50hr work weeks you're now worth $34.xx, and so on. The company just saved money on you (or they are making money off you).

ThePawnBreak 10y ago
Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?
- OpenDrapery 10y ago
  You may be more likely to be promoted if you display a backbone. Real straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    I would say the vast majority (greater than 99.99%) of raises come from the threat of quitting. That can either be an active threat (where you approach management for a raise to set expectations) or a passive threat, where management wants to make sure you aren't looking around for better opportunities, and those opportunities will often pay more than they have to raise your salary to keep you, which makes retaining you after you've shopped around much more expensive. Large companies that realize losing institutional knowledge is costly put in programs to make sure there are good expectations on what is required to achieve the next position and what the pay-scale range is for the next position (which also helps fight racism/sexism). You see this at Google (and I'm sure many other large companies), who had identified this as a problem that needed to be solved.
- geofft 10y ago
  Is that actually true? A good coder or sysadmin who is willing to work overtime is more valuable as a coder or sysadmin than as a team lead or something, where the nature of their work demands less overtime.
  - tachyonbeam 10y ago
    I have a coworker who works harder than anyone else on the team, he's the most productive and knows the codebase in depth. I can see him getting a nice bonus, he deserves it, but I don't think he will be promoted. For one, my boss just hired someone more senior and I think his plan is to move that person into management. The other thing is, it would kill our team's productivity to lose our best programmer, he's too useful in his current role.
- kraftman 10y ago
  I'd rather just look for a job elsewhere paying more than do tonnes of overtime to maybe get promoted.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
toddchambery 10y ago
For salaried employees or contract work with capped hours, overtime can also be banked goodwill or converted to flex time. Most office environments I've worked at are not rigidly policy-driven, are populated with sensible humans, and the overwhelming majority of my teammates are working for the success of the team and each other.
- infinite8s 10y ago
  Sure, the team/your teammates might be working for the success of each other, but that doesn't mean you aren't all being screwed by the company.
jdavis703 10y ago
Sure you can put in whatever your contract says and nothing more... Or they could fire you, move you out the fast track career situation, and remove you from the "good" projects.

WhoBeI 10y ago

No work without pay. If they feel that's a bad attitude then they can start offering their products and/or services for free and see how they like it.

WhoBeI 10y ago

No work without pay. If they feel that's a bad attitude then they can start offering their products and/or services for free and see how they like it.

squeaky-clean 10y ago

Another name I've seen this under is having "F You Money". Or in other words, enough money that if you ever need to tell management "F You", you can do so without fearing for you or your family's livelihood. I think this is important anywhere, not just programming. When I was younger, I worked at several fast food places. There was a Burger King job I left within 2 weeks because they had me working insane amounts of unpaid overtime. When I told them I would be leaving they essentially tried to bully me into staying. "We may not be paying you in full, but if you leave you'll be making no money, and that's much worse. You don't have another job waiting, it's just a bad idea to quit. You could become homeless!" Thankfully I was living with my parents at the time and could tell BK to screw themselves. But I feel really bad for other employees in that same situation who either fell for the spiel or legitimately couldn't afford to be jobless for a day.

kavbojka 10y ago
That's what I've always called it ;)

ptero 10y ago

One should always have the "go to hell kit" somewhat nearby (e.g., available with at most a few weeks of focused effort). Not having this can make one effectively enslaved to the current job (and not only job) which, at least for me, is very very not good for morale.

kdamken 10y ago

It's also known as "fuck you money", and there's a really good scene with John Goodman in The Gambler about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI So many people, especially in tech, work jobs that pay really, really, really well compared to most people and piss it away on stupid shit. You can choose to save a lot of that money instead and still have a very good and fulfilling life. Eventually, when you have enough savings/investments to cover you for a few years, your life changes. You don't have to worry so much if people are getting laid off, or if your job starts demanding unreasonable things. Here's the article that brought me to that video, and goes more in depth about the concept. I highly recommend it - http://jlcollinsnh.com/2011/06/06/why-you-need-f-you-money/ http://jlcollinsnh.com/2011/06/06/why-you-need-f-you-money/

x0x0 10y ago
There's no security in the world like knowing you can tell your boss "fuck you" and be fine for a year or more (except perhaps two years or more =P ). You don't have to do it; you can just always know that you have the cash to walk out the door and never come back. Or you can drive a Tesla. I bet I know which one makes you feel better when you put your head on your pillow at night.
shostack 10y ago
The question is where to get that reliable rate of return. As I've thought about my investments, I've also struggled with the notion that I'm very heavily in non-dividend paying equities. While my growth has been great, I'm not really deriving any passive investment income to offset my living expenses (presumably for the opportunity for a higher rate of growth). Do many that aim for this tend to focus more on dividend and income-providing investments instead, despite the lower rates of return?