3 ms·

If I was stuck with 40 hrs/wk + 2 wks vacation a year I would be pretty miserable, and it occurs to me that this is something I had to recognize and take action

If I was stuck with 40 hrs/wk + 2 wks vacation a year I would be pretty miserable, and it occurs to me that this is something I had to recognize and take action on personally. Well don't keep us in suspense, what'd you do about this?

Joe-Z 9y ago
Can't speak for the OP, but what I did is I found me a job where I only work part-time. At the moment I'm working 30 hours / week, although I had it at 26 / week last year and found this to be optimal to be honest. I still get to do software engineering, which I love, but I also have enough time on my hands to... basically not feel stressed all the time. (I'm certainly not as active as my parent poster, but I try to be engaged in different activities as well). I figured this out very early on in my work-life after falling into depression after my first work year, which prompted me to re-adjust some things in my life. After I got myself back together I looked for a job to get into it again and have been with my current company almost 3 years now. EDIT: Oh, also where I'm from there's 5 mandatory vacation weeks per year, so that helps too. I still try to take all my overtime (which I do still accumulate! :)) in time- rather than money-compensation though.
wutbrodo 9y ago
The initial way that I solved it was periodic, extended sabbaticals (the first one was 15 mos, but that's obviously a little extreme: I like taking 4-6 mos off between jobs). Since then, I've moved to smaller companies that are more conducive to healthier work schedules. I gather that the marginal sale of an hour of labor isn't perfectly efficient, but fundamentally you are still selling hours of labor and there should be some point between 0 and 40 that an employer would want to buy for some value between 0 and $[full salary]. If you can imagine making 20% less without being horribly financially insecure, then trading that top 20% for something that you consider worth it should be doable. This is obviously more feasible with smaller companies, where the cost of managing custom employee contracts isn't infeasible and they're able to be more pragmatic about win-win situations. My current employer is getting someone of my skills for a steal, even if I'm not working a full 40, and I'm getting a work environment that's more than worth the lost salary. In my current job, I make about 35% less than I did in my last job (incl. expected value of equity). This is probably an outlier due to various details of my career. But it's illustrative of how much I'm willing to walk the talk, since I was very clear on the reasons for the switch and decided that they were worth the cost to me. I'm not suggesting that everyone has a magical dream job waiting for them at the perfect point on the salary/quality-of-life spectrum. I'm just saying that, at least among all the people I know, it's a lot more in your hands than a lot of people realize (with the caveat reiterated that some industries are just too slow and dumb collectively to treat workers as anything but inflexible cogs.

Joe-Z 9y ago

Can't speak for the OP, but what I did is I found me a job where I only work part-time. At the moment I'm working 30 hours / week, although I had it at 26 / week last year and found this to be optimal to be honest. I still get to do software engineering, which I love, but I also have enough time on my hands to... basically not feel stressed all the time. (I'm certainly not as active as my parent poster, but I try to be engaged in different activities as well). I figured this out very early on in my work-life after falling into depression after my first work year, which prompted me to re-adjust some things in my life. After I got myself back together I looked for a job to get into it again and have been with my current company almost 3 years now. EDIT: Oh, also where I'm from there's 5 mandatory vacation weeks per year, so that helps too. I still try to take all my overtime (which I do still accumulate! :)) in time- rather than money-compensation though.

wutbrodo 9y ago

The initial way that I solved it was periodic, extended sabbaticals (the first one was 15 mos, but that's obviously a little extreme: I like taking 4-6 mos off between jobs). Since then, I've moved to smaller companies that are more conducive to healthier work schedules. I gather that the marginal sale of an hour of labor isn't perfectly efficient, but fundamentally you are still selling hours of labor and there should be some point between 0 and 40 that an employer would want to buy for some value between 0 and $[full salary]. If you can imagine making 20% less without being horribly financially insecure, then trading that top 20% for something that you consider worth it should be doable. This is obviously more feasible with smaller companies, where the cost of managing custom employee contracts isn't infeasible and they're able to be more pragmatic about win-win situations. My current employer is getting someone of my skills for a steal, even if I'm not working a full 40, and I'm getting a work environment that's more than worth the lost salary. In my current job, I make about 35% less than I did in my last job (incl. expected value of equity). This is probably an outlier due to various details of my career. But it's illustrative of how much I'm willing to walk the talk, since I was very clear on the reasons for the switch and decided that they were worth the cost to me. I'm not suggesting that everyone has a magical dream job waiting for them at the perfect point on the salary/quality-of-life spectrum. I'm just saying that, at least among all the people I know, it's a lot more in your hands than a lot of people realize (with the caveat reiterated that some industries are just too slow and dumb collectively to treat workers as anything but inflexible cogs.