8 ms·

Show HN: CalmJobs.io – Work with companies who values work-life balance

124 points by john200ok 7y ago

ArtWomb 7y ago
I'd recommend GitLab too. 100% remote while maintaining double digit y/y growth. I've been to a few of their events. And always hear "this is the best place I've ever worked" ;)
- john200ok 7y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation! I'm currently reading their company culture page (https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/) and doing further research about Gitlab. Since you mentioned Gitlab, I remember their database incident last 2 years and if I remember correctly, instead of blaming and firing the engineer who accidentally deleted the production database, they owned the responsibility and admitted that there were lots of red flags from the company side of things like db backups weren't working etc... I think they handled the issue properly. So plus points for them <3
  - indigochill 7y ago
    Also that thing with adding telemetry-by-default. After the initial surprise and backlash, they were exceptionally transparent throughout the whole process. Although I have always given them points for a solid open core regardless of enterprise, their handling of the situation actually gave me a net positive impression of their treatment of their customers as well.
- awesomepeter 7y ago
  I know they have their reasons, and it may even work for them, but I really loathe their location dependend compensation (as a person living in one). I think their explanations don't hold water. For eg. they actually compete with other remote companies for people working in what they consider "low-wage regions", but those companies pay the same rates for everyone. So they won't get top engineers from those regions, since those engineers can work in other remote companies which pay more (and don't discriminate people based on location).
  - cj 7y ago
    > I really loathe their location dependend compensation Quick thought experiment: would you still disagree location-dependent compensation if they opened a physical office in your region, and priced their offers according to the local market? Companies that have physical offices in multiple regions naturally adjust compensation levels depending on the local talent market. Why should it be any different for remote companies where the only difference is no physical office?
    - awesomepeter 7y ago
      They don't compete in the local talent market, they compete in the global talent market while offering local compensation. If they have a physical office, then they actually compete in the local market. edit: I mean have an office and require to work from there. Companies which have an office and offer remote are naturally at a disadvantage here in the same way, though having an office may help offset the disadvantage (some people don't want to work remotely, having an office to go to from time to time and talk to people, meetings, integration parties, other benefits) edit2: I've also just checked their rates, and for my region they are at best average even accounting for local market prices. So I don't see how they have an attractive offer in any way.
    - 0xffff2 7y ago
      I would absolutely still disagree. I recognize that most companies do it, but it makes absolutely no sense to me. If I'm doing the exact same work for the company, surely my compensation should be based on the value of that work, not the physical location of any combination of the company's offices or my residence.
    - boring_twenties 7y ago
      > opened a physical office in your region, and priced their offers according to the local market? Can't speak for the parent but I live in a city where plenty of tech companies have physical offices, and all of them pay jack-shit relative to the national market. I don't know if I agree or disagree with it, but I certainly won't be applying with any of them. The same thing goes for GitLab.
jtth 7y ago
It's "Basecamp", not "BaseCamp". I'd also recommend rethinking the phrase "work-life balance" because it creates a dichotomy contrasting work against life, which is silly. Work is merely a part of life, and for some people who hold the same values as you seem to (like me), the phrase "work-life balance" is a dogwhistle for a kind of mere lip service to the idea, rather than a real embrace of it.
- dvt 7y ago
  > ... contrasting work against life, which is silly. Work is merely a part of life Work and life are contrasted for good reason: my time does not belong to me when I'm working -- it belongs to my employer. And, for good reason, the employer-employee relationship is asymmetrical. It's as simple as that. Of course, if you run your own company or own a significant stake in the company you're at, then it's true that "work is part of life." But that's not a reasonable default position.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    Exactly. If I could maintain my current lifestyle without being paid, "work" is not a part of my life I would participate in, in the sense I do now. There probably are things one would call "work" that I would start or continue to do, but definitely not my current job.
- duxup 7y ago
  "Work is merely a part of life" I feel like that's something someone would come to me and say in order to be dismissive of work creeping into or enveloping everything else. The dividing line is important because there should be real boundaries sometimes... mostly because people have experienced life without them.
- bovermyer 7y ago
  Work is not merely a part of life. It's something that is unfortunately required in order to enable the rest of life. So categorizing the act of being alive into two buckets ("work" and "life") makes sense. Also, "work-life balance" is a common term. Regarding correction of the Basecamp brand's capitalization, pedantry doesn't serve you well here. It just signals a particular social deficiency.
cbanek 7y ago
I really like the idea of this, but I have to ask - how do you know what companies value work-life balance? Of course everyone says they do... Many times it seems like one company can have some teams that are balanced, and some that aren't. How does anyone even quantify work-life balance?
- stuff4ben 7y ago
  Exactly! A lot of times companies say they have an excellent work/life balance, but that's just the HR and Marketing teams that come in at 10 and leave at 4. Meanwhile IT is being worked overtime and development teams are on deadline crunches working weekends and holidays. Sales people (the good ones anyways) are used to that kind of schedule. At least that's been my experience at large corporations and even some startups.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
    Or one product team is doing fine but another is severely overworked, because the current highest-priority requirements are bearing down on them in particular.
    - cbanek 7y ago
      In my experience, it is the overworked teams that are the ones hiring. They need more people to do work, and overworked teams have higher attrition. This is even if you don't have a bad persistent problem (bad manager/toxic environment). Functional, stable teams usually don't add people once they are full and people don't leave often.
  - PascLeRasc 7y ago
    My company sent out a memo this week letting us know that they value our work-life balance, which is why they now allow us to pick one of two 8-hour shifts: 7-4 or 8-6. Also no work-from-home, because we're a family, and you can't be a family remotely. Happy holidays!
    - 7y ago
tnorthcutt 7y ago
This domain looks like it was registered today, and most of the companies on the site are ones that are also on https://peoplefirstjobs.com/ https://peoplefirstjobs.com/ which was announced yesterday by Natalie Nagele of Wildbit: https://twitter.com/natalienagele/status/1207435518205546497 https://twitter.com/natalienagele/status/1207435518205546497
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- neonate 7y ago
  There was also a big thread about "calm technology" a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21799736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21799736.
- frenchman99 7y ago
  Interesting how most if not all of these companies seem to be working remotely.
rationalbeaver 7y ago
Great concept! Bookmarked for future reference. Nitpicky copy edits: In the headline, it should be "value" not "values". Also, I'd update the job buttons to just say "Apply". "Apply Job" sounds awkward.
m0zg 7y ago
The only companies who "value work-life balance" are the ones that let you work part-time. It's, IMO, nuts to spend 40 hours a week at work in this day and age, particularly for software engineers who can demand a relatively high average hourly rate. You can't make all the money in the world.
- esoterica 7y ago
  Why work part time your whole life when you can work full time and retire at 40?
  - dewey 7y ago
    > Why work part time your whole life when you can work full time and retire at 40? How high is the percentage of people who work full time and are able to retire at 40? My guess: Not very I'm not sure what kind of biased view you have but that's absolutely not what's common.
    - esoterica 7y ago
      If you get paid enough to work part time by choice, then you get paid enough to work full time for only part of the regular working lifespan.
      - dewey 7y ago
        Not everything in life is by choice. Maybe you have to work part-time because of kids, illness, no other jobs being available, location etc. and just get by through other support on top of your part time income. That's a very simplistic view of the world that's maybe true in a small bubble but definitely not in the real world.
        esoterica 7y ago
        Re-read the top level comment again. The context of the discussion was that someone suggested that high earning professionals should work part time by choice.
cypress 7y ago
This is a good idea but I think calm has the connotations of being slow and without a sense of urgency. Most people want some sort of fast-paced and motivated environment but not one that expects them to work crazy hours or will insane expectations
paulcnichols 7y ago
Good concept. Props for testing your idea so quickly. This is how its done folks.
BadassFractal 7y ago
Would be interesting to see employers that let you work 2-3 days a week.
zackmorris 7y ago
I'm on the market and really like the idea of a jobs marketplace and recruiters that prioritize work-life balance first. I've been looking at Upwork and things have changed quite a bit since when I was using eLance, oDesk, Guru, etc 5 years ago. My specialty is PHP and iOS/Android development, and back then there might be 3-5 bids on gigs after a client listing was up for a few days. Now it's 10-20 the very first day. My market at least seems to be saturated. I also look on LinkedIn, Indeed and Glassdoor. From what I can tell, just about everything has moved to enterprise, SEO and cybersecurity. The prerequisites now are AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, and specific job roles or languages experience rather than general programming or problem-solving acumen. The vast majority of jobs are full-time. I can find a full-time job for $100,000 per year much more easily than a part-time job for $50,000. Has anyone had any luck working part-time or remote sustainably? I'm concerned that as we head up to the next economic downturn and beyond, that programming will get more and more specialized to the point that it becomes IT. So more about support and maintaining existing infrastructure than breaking new ground or solving new problems. I also feel that most of the new disciplines like SEO and dev ops arguably have little or nothing to do with programming and probably shouldn't be grouped with it. They are representative of the ethical/legal shortcomings of search engines, and conceptual issues with software architecture planning vs agile spinning (chasing profit at all cost rather than paying down technical debt). I guess to me, they represent a shift from the egalitarian future of the 90s and twenty-teens to one where profit trumps quality of life for certain people. Am I misguided here? Is there any chance of getting programmers back to having somewhat independent lives like they enjoyed in the 80s and 90s? This last year I've been considering walking away from programming because it's not about the money anymore. I just don't know if I can give up my whole psyche in 1 and 2 year blocks of my life toiled away on someone else's problems anymore. I admit that I'm actually kind of in crisis about this. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
ericjang 7y ago
Are large tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook considered to have good "work life balance"?
cookingrobot 7y ago
Work-life balance: when work is big and near, and life is small and far away. ;)

124 points by john200ok 7y ago

I'd recommend GitLab too. 100% remote while maintaining double digit y/y growth. I've been to a few of their events. And always hear "this is the best place I've ever worked" ;)

john200ok 7y ago
Thanks for the recommendation! I'm currently reading their company culture page (https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/) and doing further research about Gitlab. Since you mentioned Gitlab, I remember their database incident last 2 years and if I remember correctly, instead of blaming and firing the engineer who accidentally deleted the production database, they owned the responsibility and admitted that there were lots of red flags from the company side of things like db backups weren't working etc... I think they handled the issue properly. So plus points for them <3
- indigochill 7y ago
  Also that thing with adding telemetry-by-default. After the initial surprise and backlash, they were exceptionally transparent throughout the whole process. Although I have always given them points for a solid open core regardless of enterprise, their handling of the situation actually gave me a net positive impression of their treatment of their customers as well.
awesomepeter 7y ago
I know they have their reasons, and it may even work for them, but I really loathe their location dependend compensation (as a person living in one). I think their explanations don't hold water. For eg. they actually compete with other remote companies for people working in what they consider "low-wage regions", but those companies pay the same rates for everyone. So they won't get top engineers from those regions, since those engineers can work in other remote companies which pay more (and don't discriminate people based on location).
- cj 7y ago
  > I really loathe their location dependend compensation Quick thought experiment: would you still disagree location-dependent compensation if they opened a physical office in your region, and priced their offers according to the local market? Companies that have physical offices in multiple regions naturally adjust compensation levels depending on the local talent market. Why should it be any different for remote companies where the only difference is no physical office?
  - awesomepeter 7y ago
    They don't compete in the local talent market, they compete in the global talent market while offering local compensation. If they have a physical office, then they actually compete in the local market. edit: I mean have an office and require to work from there. Companies which have an office and offer remote are naturally at a disadvantage here in the same way, though having an office may help offset the disadvantage (some people don't want to work remotely, having an office to go to from time to time and talk to people, meetings, integration parties, other benefits) edit2: I've also just checked their rates, and for my region they are at best average even accounting for local market prices. So I don't see how they have an attractive offer in any way.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    I would absolutely still disagree. I recognize that most companies do it, but it makes absolutely no sense to me. If I'm doing the exact same work for the company, surely my compensation should be based on the value of that work, not the physical location of any combination of the company's offices or my residence.
  - boring_twenties 7y ago
    > opened a physical office in your region, and priced their offers according to the local market? Can't speak for the parent but I live in a city where plenty of tech companies have physical offices, and all of them pay jack-shit relative to the national market. I don't know if I agree or disagree with it, but I certainly won't be applying with any of them. The same thing goes for GitLab.

jtth 7y ago

It's "Basecamp", not "BaseCamp". I'd also recommend rethinking the phrase "work-life balance" because it creates a dichotomy contrasting work against life, which is silly. Work is merely a part of life, and for some people who hold the same values as you seem to (like me), the phrase "work-life balance" is a dogwhistle for a kind of mere lip service to the idea, rather than a real embrace of it.

dvt 7y ago
> ... contrasting work against life, which is silly. Work is merely a part of life Work and life are contrasted for good reason: my time does not belong to me when I'm working -- it belongs to my employer. And, for good reason, the employer-employee relationship is asymmetrical. It's as simple as that. Of course, if you run your own company or own a significant stake in the company you're at, then it's true that "work is part of life." But that's not a reasonable default position.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  Exactly. If I could maintain my current lifestyle without being paid, "work" is not a part of my life I would participate in, in the sense I do now. There probably are things one would call "work" that I would start or continue to do, but definitely not my current job.
duxup 7y ago
"Work is merely a part of life" I feel like that's something someone would come to me and say in order to be dismissive of work creeping into or enveloping everything else. The dividing line is important because there should be real boundaries sometimes... mostly because people have experienced life without them.
bovermyer 7y ago
Work is not merely a part of life. It's something that is unfortunately required in order to enable the rest of life. So categorizing the act of being alive into two buckets ("work" and "life") makes sense. Also, "work-life balance" is a common term. Regarding correction of the Basecamp brand's capitalization, pedantry doesn't serve you well here. It just signals a particular social deficiency.

cbanek 7y ago

I really like the idea of this, but I have to ask - how do you know what companies value work-life balance? Of course everyone says they do... Many times it seems like one company can have some teams that are balanced, and some that aren't. How does anyone even quantify work-life balance?

stuff4ben 7y ago
Exactly! A lot of times companies say they have an excellent work/life balance, but that's just the HR and Marketing teams that come in at 10 and leave at 4. Meanwhile IT is being worked overtime and development teams are on deadline crunches working weekends and holidays. Sales people (the good ones anyways) are used to that kind of schedule. At least that's been my experience at large corporations and even some startups.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  Or one product team is doing fine but another is severely overworked, because the current highest-priority requirements are bearing down on them in particular.
  - cbanek 7y ago
    In my experience, it is the overworked teams that are the ones hiring. They need more people to do work, and overworked teams have higher attrition. This is even if you don't have a bad persistent problem (bad manager/toxic environment). Functional, stable teams usually don't add people once they are full and people don't leave often.
- PascLeRasc 7y ago
  My company sent out a memo this week letting us know that they value our work-life balance, which is why they now allow us to pick one of two 8-hour shifts: 7-4 or 8-6. Also no work-from-home, because we're a family, and you can't be a family remotely. Happy holidays!
  - 7y ago

tnorthcutt 7y ago

This domain looks like it was registered today, and most of the companies on the site are ones that are also on https://peoplefirstjobs.com/ https://peoplefirstjobs.com/ which was announced yesterday by Natalie Nagele of Wildbit: https://twitter.com/natalienagele/status/1207435518205546497 https://twitter.com/natalienagele/status/1207435518205546497

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
neonate 7y ago
There was also a big thread about "calm technology" a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21799736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21799736.
frenchman99 7y ago
Interesting how most if not all of these companies seem to be working remotely.

rationalbeaver 7y ago

Great concept! Bookmarked for future reference. Nitpicky copy edits: In the headline, it should be "value" not "values". Also, I'd update the job buttons to just say "Apply". "Apply Job" sounds awkward.

m0zg 7y ago

The only companies who "value work-life balance" are the ones that let you work part-time. It's, IMO, nuts to spend 40 hours a week at work in this day and age, particularly for software engineers who can demand a relatively high average hourly rate. You can't make all the money in the world.

esoterica 7y ago
Why work part time your whole life when you can work full time and retire at 40?
- dewey 7y ago
  > Why work part time your whole life when you can work full time and retire at 40? How high is the percentage of people who work full time and are able to retire at 40? My guess: Not very I'm not sure what kind of biased view you have but that's absolutely not what's common.
  - esoterica 7y ago
    If you get paid enough to work part time by choice, then you get paid enough to work full time for only part of the regular working lifespan.
    - dewey 7y ago
      Not everything in life is by choice. Maybe you have to work part-time because of kids, illness, no other jobs being available, location etc. and just get by through other support on top of your part time income. That's a very simplistic view of the world that's maybe true in a small bubble but definitely not in the real world.
      - esoterica 7y ago
        Re-read the top level comment again. The context of the discussion was that someone suggested that high earning professionals should work part time by choice.

cypress 7y ago

This is a good idea but I think calm has the connotations of being slow and without a sense of urgency. Most people want some sort of fast-paced and motivated environment but not one that expects them to work crazy hours or will insane expectations

paulcnichols 7y ago

Good concept. Props for testing your idea so quickly. This is how its done folks.

BadassFractal 7y ago

Would be interesting to see employers that let you work 2-3 days a week.

zackmorris 7y ago

I'm on the market and really like the idea of a jobs marketplace and recruiters that prioritize work-life balance first. I've been looking at Upwork and things have changed quite a bit since when I was using eLance, oDesk, Guru, etc 5 years ago. My specialty is PHP and iOS/Android development, and back then there might be 3-5 bids on gigs after a client listing was up for a few days. Now it's 10-20 the very first day. My market at least seems to be saturated. I also look on LinkedIn, Indeed and Glassdoor. From what I can tell, just about everything has moved to enterprise, SEO and cybersecurity. The prerequisites now are AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, and specific job roles or languages experience rather than general programming or problem-solving acumen. The vast majority of jobs are full-time. I can find a full-time job for $100,000 per year much more easily than a part-time job for $50,000. Has anyone had any luck working part-time or remote sustainably? I'm concerned that as we head up to the next economic downturn and beyond, that programming will get more and more specialized to the point that it becomes IT. So more about support and maintaining existing infrastructure than breaking new ground or solving new problems. I also feel that most of the new disciplines like SEO and dev ops arguably have little or nothing to do with programming and probably shouldn't be grouped with it. They are representative of the ethical/legal shortcomings of search engines, and conceptual issues with software architecture planning vs agile spinning (chasing profit at all cost rather than paying down technical debt). I guess to me, they represent a shift from the egalitarian future of the 90s and twenty-teens to one where profit trumps quality of life for certain people. Am I misguided here? Is there any chance of getting programmers back to having somewhat independent lives like they enjoyed in the 80s and 90s? This last year I've been considering walking away from programming because it's not about the money anymore. I just don't know if I can give up my whole psyche in 1 and 2 year blocks of my life toiled away on someone else's problems anymore. I admit that I'm actually kind of in crisis about this. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

ericjang 7y ago

Are large tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook considered to have good "work life balance"?

cookingrobot 7y ago

Work-life balance: when work is big and near, and life is small and far away. ;)