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If what you want is a low stress environment, you're like me. Some pieces of advice: 1) This goes without saying, but avoid startups. The more established the

If what you want is a low stress environment, you're like me. Some pieces of advice: 1) This goes without saying, but avoid startups. The more established the company, the better. Big corps are much more likely to respect a 9-to-5 workday and much less likely to call you at 2 am. 2) Try to work in a BTB product, not a BTC. BTB means way fewer customers, and fewer customers means fewer eyes looking for bugs, which in turn means a lower probability of finding an unexpected bug that needs to be solved yesterday. This sounds a bit cynical, but really isn't because of my next point: 3) There is an even better way to avoid bugs in production: have a very good and thorough testing system. When interviewing, ask about the testing process and how likely are they to detect bugs before a client runs the code. If you are looking for a job as a tester, instead ask the following: how automated are the tests and the build system? The more, the better. 4) This might sound bad, but it's my best piece of advice about jobs: look for a workplace that has lots of women (yes, they exist. For certain charitable definition of "lots", at least). Especially older women. Bonus points if you see pregnant women. Double bonus points if people are allowed to work less hours in order to take care of their kids, and you know a few people taking advantage of this situation (IDK how frequent is this in the US. Here in Spain it's common and regulated by law). Triple bonus points if there are many women in managerial positions. I realize that all of this sounds sexist, but whether we like it or not, the weight of childcare and housekeeping still falls mostly on the shoulders of women. So, if you find a company with lots of women, it usually means that the company offers very good work-life balance. As a bonus, you avoid one common source of stress: the competitiveness that pervades certain brogrammer companies. There are also some points to consider that apply to every job: learn to forget about work the moment you exit the office (have something to do on evenings. Something for yourself, something not related to your job); try to make commute pleasurable (walk to your job, use public transport so you can read, etc); avoid romantic relationships with colleagues, especially people you work closely with; etc. EDIT: typo.

cleandreams 8y ago
If you want the startup life, find a startup where the founders (white men probably) have small children and professional wives.
- lloyd-christmas 8y ago
  Except if the significant other is part of the business. Family businesses tend to not care much for (or are oblivious to) employees' outside lives, since their work/life is already one and the same.
  - pm90 8y ago
    Meh, it can go either way. The first company I ever worked for was a sorta family business. The owner was also the CEO and was very responsive to the needs of employees. He would throw parties in their manor, and everyone knew each other well and there was much less rivalry/competition to climb the proverbial ladder. Very true about working for people who're married with kids; this gave the owner, and the company, a kind of professionalism that has served me well in my own career. They were really kind-hearted people, until it came time to make some serious decisions about the future of the company. Often times family businesses are unwilling to sell or dilute their equity since their identity is so tied to the company. This became a huge deal when there were talks of taking the company public, accepting outside investment etc.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- pjg 8y ago
  This is a "stereotype" and may be the case some of the time, but definitely not the rule. I'm doing a product startup in fintech. Extremely high stress levels i.e. we've had 4 near death experiences in the first 3 years of our startup (one had to do with money running out, others more to do with specific business we're in). We've not just survived but improved! However there is no traditional work-life balance. I typically work 6 days/week and some/many others in the company do too. I have kids and working spouse but trade my time 50:50 with my spouse in terms of spending time with kids. Bottom line: Your mileage may vary, but just because a founder is married with kids is no guarantee of a 9 to 5 daily routine
- l_t 8y ago
  Choose a startup where: - People regularly take vacation time. - They're happy to hear that you care about work/life balance and will not work more than 40 hours a week except in emergencies. - You're not strongly invested in whether the company experiences long-term success. - They have a moderately refined change control process (e.g. Scrum, but anything works as long as it collects all the work in one place to be prioritized and scheduled). - You don't have to go on-call. (For many, this can be quite stressful.)
mlboss 8y ago
Very helpful advice. Another positive thing about big companies is that you are allowed to work on long term/researchy projects.
l_t 8y ago
Good point about the testing system. Test coverage plus a good CI/CD system goes a long way to reduce "deployment anxiety", in my experience. Untrustworthy tools or broken processes can be a major source of stress. But, I wouldn't completely discount startups as an option. There are startups that respect their employees time and offer a great environment for low-stress workers, at least at the 10+ employee level. (I don't have much experience with startups smaller than that). If you value self-determination, a startup can be a great option.
ioddly 8y ago
> have something to do on evenings. Something for yourself, something not related to your job I'm curious what everyone does for this. I've attempted to find a few things but nothing has strongly clicked with me. Most of my interests right now are on the computer, which makes it hard to disengage, and I definitely need to do more to get a handle on it.
- dpc59 8y ago
  sports and art
- gordaco 8y ago
  Personally, I study physics and maths. And read, and listen to weird ethnic music on youtube. And play videogames. I mean, there are so many things in life. You already spend 8+ hours a day at work, there's no point in spending even more when you get home.
  - exikyut 8y ago
    I'm not sure whether you intended what you said to be read this way, but I took "there's no point in spending even more when you get home" to mean "stop watching the clock when you get home, and just chase stuff." My words, unsure if yours.
    - gordaco 8y ago
      Yes, it's more or less what I meant. As long as you go to bed and eat at the right time, otherwise forget that clocks exist. And maybe more importantly, forget that your job exists.
- thx11389793 8y ago
  fabrication, welding, juggling, playing music, working on and riding motorcycles, doing acid in the woods. it takes some doing but it's well worth the effort to move your leisure time away from device-focused activities. the sense of life balance gained is palpable.
soulchild77 8y ago
> Try to work in a BTB product, not a BTC. BTB means way fewer customers, and fewer customers means fewer eyes looking for bugs This! I worked for two huge (~60 and ~600 million page impressions per month) online communities for a total of 15 years. The level of stress induced by the users whenever something broke, was changed (even only slightly) or they just had a bad day was horrible and led to all kinds of fuzzy health problems (mainly panic attacks and hypertension). I was very attached to the product and always strived to make the users happy, and that played a big part in the problem. Making slight changes to the interface oftentimes resulted in users insulting us like we had renovated their living room without permission. Can you imagine what it was like when a bug in Apache's mod_cache suddenly cached session cookies? I always loved the job, but that made it so hard to draw a line and not letting it get to me. Afterwards I switched employers and started working on a B2B platform in the banking sector. Of course, the enterprise has a different set of problems (in my case, no clue what the requirements really are), but your corporate users are just used to a different kind of standard (hint: way lower than your average Bootstrap frontend). They pay very good money, let you work on interesting things, technology-wise, and users are mostly easy to satisfy.
- karimf 8y ago
  Can you elaborate more about the stories about working on online communities? I've been inclined to work on BTC rather than BTB because I imagined it will have more impact than the other (e.g. facebook vs salesforce)?
  - soulchild77 8y ago
    Admittedly, I only concentrated on the bad stuff in my post. Both communities were focused on everyday problems, one dealt with parenting and the other was about cooking (recipes). I wouldn't have stayed for over 10 years with the former if there were never any positive things. It always felt a bit like I was doing something for the greater good (I don't want to sound arrogant here). Seeing how women finally got pregnant after many frustrating months (or even years) with the help of one of our tools (a period tracker) was very rewarding. There were people supporting each other when one of them lost child after child during pregnancy for whatever reasons. Most of the users that kept complaining about everything were long-time users. Many didn't have anything to do with the main topics of the platform. They just stayed because they liked the community and discussed politics or whatever in one of the sub-forums. In the end, the company was bought by a large publisher, all the staff (12 people or so) was basically let go (after 10+ years) and nowadays it's an almost unusable user-interface mess with ads in every corner. Oh, and that one specific sub-forum the users used to complain about stuff? Yeah, that was shut down completely to just shut everybody up. What a simple and effective solution for a pesky "problem" ... To be honest, I never liked the idea of being heavily dependent on advertisement to finance the platform, but sadly that's just the way the Internet works. After I became a father of two, my priorities shifted towards my family and I'm now more interested in doing something good for and especially WITH my kids instead of working a stressful job.
princekolt 8y ago
I guess this still applies to your point number 1, but I'll say it anyway: Avoid small B2B companies that have one or two big customers among a bunch of smaller ones. These big customers know they have leverage over the company and will make it do whatever they want, and then change their mind completely 3 months later, at the expense of your sanity. You could ask during interviews "how many customers do you have? are they big?" and usually the company tries to brag that they have that one big brand name, but in my experience this is a red flag. Be careful.
segmondy 8y ago
Remember folks, little risk, little rewards. If you pick this type of role, don't seethe when you see your peers earning 3-10x more. Don't claim you are underpaid.
- triplee 8y ago
  On the flip side -- remember your total compensation package. If you work a 60+ hour week, that higher salary broken down to an hourly and compared to the 8 and skate 40 hour a week job suddenly isn't so high. Also compare PTO and other benefits, especially considering "unlimited PTO" often offered by many fast paced places is usually a lie. There's often other benefits in big places that aren't directly salary, but pay off in other ways (discounts, better health care, etc.) And there's the added non-financial benefits of lower stress. There are pretty big cons to the bigger corporate world, B2B, etc., but money isn't as big of a difference as it first appears.
  - segmondy 8y ago
    Hey, if you really want to compare along that line, then Salaries should be divided by 24hrs. If you get a job working 1hr a week, making $500/hr. You can argue that you're making more money than most of us, but I'll argue that most of us will be living more comfortable and be happier than you even if we are working for 60-70hrs a week. At the of the day, it's about being able to meet your needs, being able to save so you don't worry much about the future, enjoying your work and also finding time to enjoy life outside of work. If you're able to do this, it doesn't matter if you work 40 or 60hrs. IMO, Optimize for TC and Happiness. If you can find joy in your work, it won't matter. It's easier to enjoy 80hrs of work that you love than suffer through 40hrs of work you hate.
- msh 8y ago
  Not necessarily. Some bigco's, esp in finance, can provide very good worklife balance together with good pay. Maybe not top of the market google pay but nowhere near the levels you mention.
triplee 8y ago
Literally everything you just said, and I can't say I could really have said it better. Also -- a fair amount of federal/state govt. and some contracting roles for govt. fit the bill here too. Certain very large nonprofits as well.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

cleandreams 8y ago

If you want the startup life, find a startup where the founders (white men probably) have small children and professional wives.

lloyd-christmas 8y ago
Except if the significant other is part of the business. Family businesses tend to not care much for (or are oblivious to) employees' outside lives, since their work/life is already one and the same.
- pm90 8y ago
  Meh, it can go either way. The first company I ever worked for was a sorta family business. The owner was also the CEO and was very responsive to the needs of employees. He would throw parties in their manor, and everyone knew each other well and there was much less rivalry/competition to climb the proverbial ladder. Very true about working for people who're married with kids; this gave the owner, and the company, a kind of professionalism that has served me well in my own career. They were really kind-hearted people, until it came time to make some serious decisions about the future of the company. Often times family businesses are unwilling to sell or dilute their equity since their identity is so tied to the company. This became a huge deal when there were talks of taking the company public, accepting outside investment etc.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
pjg 8y ago
This is a "stereotype" and may be the case some of the time, but definitely not the rule. I'm doing a product startup in fintech. Extremely high stress levels i.e. we've had 4 near death experiences in the first 3 years of our startup (one had to do with money running out, others more to do with specific business we're in). We've not just survived but improved! However there is no traditional work-life balance. I typically work 6 days/week and some/many others in the company do too. I have kids and working spouse but trade my time 50:50 with my spouse in terms of spending time with kids. Bottom line: Your mileage may vary, but just because a founder is married with kids is no guarantee of a 9 to 5 daily routine
l_t 8y ago
Choose a startup where: - People regularly take vacation time. - They're happy to hear that you care about work/life balance and will not work more than 40 hours a week except in emergencies. - You're not strongly invested in whether the company experiences long-term success. - They have a moderately refined change control process (e.g. Scrum, but anything works as long as it collects all the work in one place to be prioritized and scheduled). - You don't have to go on-call. (For many, this can be quite stressful.)

mlboss 8y ago

Very helpful advice. Another positive thing about big companies is that you are allowed to work on long term/researchy projects.

l_t 8y ago

Good point about the testing system. Test coverage plus a good CI/CD system goes a long way to reduce "deployment anxiety", in my experience. Untrustworthy tools or broken processes can be a major source of stress. But, I wouldn't completely discount startups as an option. There are startups that respect their employees time and offer a great environment for low-stress workers, at least at the 10+ employee level. (I don't have much experience with startups smaller than that). If you value self-determination, a startup can be a great option.

ioddly 8y ago

> have something to do on evenings. Something for yourself, something not related to your job I'm curious what everyone does for this. I've attempted to find a few things but nothing has strongly clicked with me. Most of my interests right now are on the computer, which makes it hard to disengage, and I definitely need to do more to get a handle on it.

dpc59 8y ago
sports and art
gordaco 8y ago
Personally, I study physics and maths. And read, and listen to weird ethnic music on youtube. And play videogames. I mean, there are so many things in life. You already spend 8+ hours a day at work, there's no point in spending even more when you get home.
- exikyut 8y ago
  I'm not sure whether you intended what you said to be read this way, but I took "there's no point in spending even more when you get home" to mean "stop watching the clock when you get home, and just chase stuff." My words, unsure if yours.
  - gordaco 8y ago
    Yes, it's more or less what I meant. As long as you go to bed and eat at the right time, otherwise forget that clocks exist. And maybe more importantly, forget that your job exists.
thx11389793 8y ago
fabrication, welding, juggling, playing music, working on and riding motorcycles, doing acid in the woods. it takes some doing but it's well worth the effort to move your leisure time away from device-focused activities. the sense of life balance gained is palpable.

soulchild77 8y ago

> Try to work in a BTB product, not a BTC. BTB means way fewer customers, and fewer customers means fewer eyes looking for bugs This! I worked for two huge (~60 and ~600 million page impressions per month) online communities for a total of 15 years. The level of stress induced by the users whenever something broke, was changed (even only slightly) or they just had a bad day was horrible and led to all kinds of fuzzy health problems (mainly panic attacks and hypertension). I was very attached to the product and always strived to make the users happy, and that played a big part in the problem. Making slight changes to the interface oftentimes resulted in users insulting us like we had renovated their living room without permission. Can you imagine what it was like when a bug in Apache's mod_cache suddenly cached session cookies? I always loved the job, but that made it so hard to draw a line and not letting it get to me. Afterwards I switched employers and started working on a B2B platform in the banking sector. Of course, the enterprise has a different set of problems (in my case, no clue what the requirements really are), but your corporate users are just used to a different kind of standard (hint: way lower than your average Bootstrap frontend). They pay very good money, let you work on interesting things, technology-wise, and users are mostly easy to satisfy.

karimf 8y ago
Can you elaborate more about the stories about working on online communities? I've been inclined to work on BTC rather than BTB because I imagined it will have more impact than the other (e.g. facebook vs salesforce)?
- soulchild77 8y ago
  Admittedly, I only concentrated on the bad stuff in my post. Both communities were focused on everyday problems, one dealt with parenting and the other was about cooking (recipes). I wouldn't have stayed for over 10 years with the former if there were never any positive things. It always felt a bit like I was doing something for the greater good (I don't want to sound arrogant here). Seeing how women finally got pregnant after many frustrating months (or even years) with the help of one of our tools (a period tracker) was very rewarding. There were people supporting each other when one of them lost child after child during pregnancy for whatever reasons. Most of the users that kept complaining about everything were long-time users. Many didn't have anything to do with the main topics of the platform. They just stayed because they liked the community and discussed politics or whatever in one of the sub-forums. In the end, the company was bought by a large publisher, all the staff (12 people or so) was basically let go (after 10+ years) and nowadays it's an almost unusable user-interface mess with ads in every corner. Oh, and that one specific sub-forum the users used to complain about stuff? Yeah, that was shut down completely to just shut everybody up. What a simple and effective solution for a pesky "problem" ... To be honest, I never liked the idea of being heavily dependent on advertisement to finance the platform, but sadly that's just the way the Internet works. After I became a father of two, my priorities shifted towards my family and I'm now more interested in doing something good for and especially WITH my kids instead of working a stressful job.

princekolt 8y ago

I guess this still applies to your point number 1, but I'll say it anyway: Avoid small B2B companies that have one or two big customers among a bunch of smaller ones. These big customers know they have leverage over the company and will make it do whatever they want, and then change their mind completely 3 months later, at the expense of your sanity. You could ask during interviews "how many customers do you have? are they big?" and usually the company tries to brag that they have that one big brand name, but in my experience this is a red flag. Be careful.

segmondy 8y ago

Remember folks, little risk, little rewards. If you pick this type of role, don't seethe when you see your peers earning 3-10x more. Don't claim you are underpaid.

triplee 8y ago
On the flip side -- remember your total compensation package. If you work a 60+ hour week, that higher salary broken down to an hourly and compared to the 8 and skate 40 hour a week job suddenly isn't so high. Also compare PTO and other benefits, especially considering "unlimited PTO" often offered by many fast paced places is usually a lie. There's often other benefits in big places that aren't directly salary, but pay off in other ways (discounts, better health care, etc.) And there's the added non-financial benefits of lower stress. There are pretty big cons to the bigger corporate world, B2B, etc., but money isn't as big of a difference as it first appears.
- segmondy 8y ago
  Hey, if you really want to compare along that line, then Salaries should be divided by 24hrs. If you get a job working 1hr a week, making $500/hr. You can argue that you're making more money than most of us, but I'll argue that most of us will be living more comfortable and be happier than you even if we are working for 60-70hrs a week. At the of the day, it's about being able to meet your needs, being able to save so you don't worry much about the future, enjoying your work and also finding time to enjoy life outside of work. If you're able to do this, it doesn't matter if you work 40 or 60hrs. IMO, Optimize for TC and Happiness. If you can find joy in your work, it won't matter. It's easier to enjoy 80hrs of work that you love than suffer through 40hrs of work you hate.
msh 8y ago
Not necessarily. Some bigco's, esp in finance, can provide very good worklife balance together with good pay. Maybe not top of the market google pay but nowhere near the levels you mention.

triplee 8y ago

Literally everything you just said, and I can't say I could really have said it better. Also -- a fair amount of federal/state govt. and some contracting roles for govt. fit the bill here too. Certain very large nonprofits as well.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]