15 ms·

A lot of companies are actively factoring this into their HR model. Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out. Increasingly this is the direction

A lot of companies are actively factoring this into their HR model. Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out. Increasingly this is the direction western corporations are moving. Their ideal model is: place performance quotas above long term sustainability, people then burn themselves out, you then fire them for performance reasons, and you have them on an aggressive noncompete and threaten them with it when they try to work elsewhere after. Totally consume them. Basically institutionalised "f--k you", gleefully chewing up other human beings. In some ways we're moving to something worse than slavery. At least with slaves they were seen as "assets" rather than "temporary rentals". They had to take care of them out of necessity, so their evil had that limit on it.

barry-cotter 7y ago
Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure like I-Banking, management consisting or law. People know what they’re getting into when they start these jobs. The hours and workload are not a secret. Most people do their two years and get out. A lot of it amounts to pointless hazing but no one is deceived into thinking Goldman Sachs has a great work life balance. The huge majority of companies operate on nothing like this model. Either they aim to build up a workforce for the long haul and as such care about having a sustainable workload, with occasional spikes and lulls, or they’re just jobs that are hard, that suck and that as a result have a high turnover and pay relatively well for low standards in hiring. See working in an Amazon warehouse. The companies that do follow this model suck, like EA, but again that’s not a secret. There’s an inexhaustible supply of suckers for every industry that people really, really want to get into and whether it’s film or video games they’re always awful, though at least film pays better.
- idclip 7y ago
  If you would only take a look at europe ... oh the horrors you will see.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Be clearer. I worked a ton of crap jobs in Ireland and always got out at the end of my shift unless someone didn’t show up and I agreed to work longer because I wanted more money. I have a number of relatives in medicine and professional services and long, hard hours describes their jobs well but it’s not chew them up and spit them out; If you want the big bucks you work the long hours.
    - idclip 7y ago
      Its hard to be clear, without betraying too much. i only have me and my experience and how i see others, and what ive been told. Maybe the downvotes are meritted, though i didnt mean the hard work, i did actually mean that myself and many i know feel its a grind, and not in a good way. You somehow make it sound as if i have something against hard work, but its quiet the opposite. It may very well be that my job is a single case of good ol toxic work environment.
- ianleeclark 7y ago
  > Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure like I-Banking, management consisting or law. I take it you've never worked in a call center? When I did, anything under a `10` (out of 10) on the random surveys they sent out was considered a failure.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    > they’re just jobs that are hard, that suck and that as a result have a high turnover and pay relatively well for low standards in hiring. I have worked in a call centre.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - gonzo41 7y ago
    I did the call center thing for a major bank during university. It was brutal work. But I learned a lot about shameless selling which is pretty useful.
- tsukurimashou 7y ago
  > companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs wasn't my experience at all, I did get "well paid jobs" in startups, but in the end, combining 3 jobs in one and doing 80 hours a week isn't worth it even if your salary looks pretty high.
  - novaRom 7y ago
    How and why someone will work 80 hours a week? Don't they have families, friends, sport, or a hobby? Why is it necessary?
    - fogetti 7y ago
      Because of OKRs. Management is setting it so that no-one can reach the objectives. Then there is some speech that OKRs are not really meant to be completed fully but they will still hold it against you if it's not 100%
    - tsukurimashou 7y ago
      In startups that's usually how they trick you: they hire you even if you don't have much experience, they give you a decent salary, then they make you feel like you have to work more in order to "prove" their choice was the right one. I've also seen this "culture" of "we're one big family" in startups, which just feels weird and forced.
      - alfromspace 7y ago
        One startup I interviewed at, as an experienced developer, told me (paraphrasing here) "you'll be paid a salary lower than what you probably expect, and your first few months you'll need to work overtime to get used to our trendy tech stack, we don't offer health insurance but we do offer...not quite shares, but, sort of ownership interests. You could become a millionaire!" Yeah no thanks.
    - thrower123 7y ago
      No, because these kinds of places suck the blood out of people in their early 20s. Usually after they have moved to a new area and left behind all their social connections. When you're 25 and have no ties and no responsibilities, working 12-15 hours a day isn't the impossibility that it is when you are 35 and have a wife, kids, your own house, and social obligations.
- jaziek 7y ago
  > People know what they’re getting into when they start these jobs. Fresh graduates absolutely do not know what they are getting into when they start their first job.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    No one actually knows what their first job will be like. But trying to hide that you expect 60-100 hours a week is stupidly counterproductive. Banking, law, consulting are pretty straight up about the hours. People would quit halfway through their first month, their first week of you tried to pull 100 hours on those who didn’t know they’d be working those hours.
    - pimmen 7y ago
      A fresh college graduate at age 22 does not understand what 60-100 hours mean. The closest frame of reference they have is pulling an all nighter before an exam or to get a term project done. They can't contemplate their romantic relationship falling apart, the lack of feedback resulting in continuous self doubt keeping them up at night when they're supposed to be resting or how shallow friendships between colleagues are compared to friendships between students (especially when their colleagues have families). They understand what it means to soldier on despite being tired. They don't understand how much they've taken for granted all that support and feedback that was able to let them cope with the stress, and that now they're on their own.
      - wasdfff 7y ago
        From my friends who recently graduated and took these jobs in nyc, this wasnt so suprising. They expected to work 10-12 hour days. The familial stuff sucks if you were planning on shacking up at 23, but most people just work their day then drink aggresively in midtown before ubering back to whatever 2k/mo studio tenement they managed to find in brooklyn. Take a boozy trip to the hamptons a couple times in the summer, take your LA trip, go to europe. Suddenly working 12 hour days doesnt seem so bad when you have a rolex on your wrist and a high concentration of adderal in your veins. I expect in a couple years it will get old, but people are waiting to settle down well into their 30s these days to extend these years of pure adult independence for as long as they can.
- tarsinge 7y ago
  > Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure like I-Banking, management consisting or law. I'm not sure, I see a lot of companies moving to this model and they are not well paying. They copy startup environments but only in appearance (like a ping pong table for decoration that you are not allowed to play), because of that they justify that you must be passionate and work long hours for a low pay.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure I'm friends with accountants for the big 4 firms - they are in no way, shape, or form, high paying initial positions.
LockAndLol 7y ago
There also seems to be some kind of institutionalized Stockholm Syndrome for this. People are led to believe that: - if they don't accept a job like this, they won't get a job anywhere else - this is the only way to make good money - there is no other way to rise up the ranks - loyalty is rewarded - this is a just sacrifice - they're invincible due to their youth What they're doing however is working / giving away their life for free. It's cheaper for companies to hire people that give away an extra 10-20 free hours a week instead of hiring somebody to work for those extra hours. Even they say "we'll pay you x1.5", they're still making money because they aren't paying x2 for the second person on the payroll. Unfortunately employees will vehemently defend these practices and even pride themselves on working 10 hours a day. They wear it like a badge of accomplishment and even look down others who don't do the same.
tsukurimashou 7y ago
> A lot of companies are actively factoring this into their HR model. Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out. That was pretty much the business model of the few startup jobs I tried
raegis 7y ago
<quote>In some ways we're moving to something worse than slavery. At least with slaves they were seen as "assets" rather than "temporary rentals". They had to take care of them out of necessity, so their evil had that limit on it.</quote> Some of us prefer burnout at reasonable pay than being raped, beaten, and denied all freedoms.
- bengale 7y ago
  The idiocy in viewing these as the two possible options is staggering.
  - intarga 7y ago
    I don't think raegis was suggesting there are only two options, but simply had qualms with the way it was compared to slavery.
- epicgiga 7y ago
  Hence the "some ways" bit. But don't let that get in the way of the high horse you were looking for an excuse to ride.
- missosoup 7y ago
  > raped, beaten, and denied all freedoms. Towards the later stages of slavery, the first 2 were outright illegal, and the third is somewhere on par with wage slavery today. It sounds like a hot take on the surface, but modern wage slavery is objectively worse than late-stage actual slavery in some regards. We have not really progressed as society. The only thing that has really advanced is the availability of entertainment to placate the masses and prevent most of them from realising that they are in fact little better off than slaves. More than half of all Americans are less than 1 paycheck away from homelessness and subsequent incarceration. There is only illusion of freedom, the reality is they're chained to their jobs. Fun fact: medieval serfs had about 4 months of 'free' time each year. Of course it still included housekeeping and various chores, but it was nothing compared to the load of full time employment that everyone experiences today almost all year round.
sneak 7y ago
Slavery is not voluntary, and any individual job is. They are absolutely not comparable. You can always quit and go home. It is insane to compare the two. This is an inaccurate comparison with an agenda.
- ianleeclark 7y ago
  > Slavery is not voluntary, and any individual job is. Why do you assume OP is concerned with only individual jobs? Sure, you can quit working at Target, but you better find something else to fill that gap or you're starving to death in the streets.
- tartoran 7y ago
  Slavery is harsher and involuntary, true, but the comparison stands as this is a softer but veiled slavery. You’re free to go but if other places are like that you’re technically really not free to go anywhere..
- P_I_Staker 7y ago
  I agree that the comparison is horrible, but I have to disagree with you also. My job is not voluntary. Within a relatively short period of time, I could go broke without it (and I have pretty robust savings). I may not be a paycheck away from homelessness, due to my cushy job, but a few months and/or an emergency or two... It could get really bad, quick. Losing employment is perilous for your career. It looks bad to get fired, take time off, or suddenly quit. Then there's the reality that the next job might not be much better. If every job treats you the same, you don't really have a choice. I can't just change my profession on a dime either. This is basically "if you don't like your country, you can just get out" logic... it doesn't work that way in the real world. EDIT: Added a word. Also, I want to reiterate that I agree regarding the insanity of the slavery comparison.
  - sneak 7y ago
    Any individual job is voluntary so long as there is more than one employer in the market. It’s not opinion but fact: you are free to quit your job at any time. You are also likely free to move to any number of different cities that have different job prospects. That is an important freedom, and you should use it whenever you want.
ignoramous 7y ago
> Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out. When I was at Amazon, this was the feeling with some employees around me: The stack-ranking meant they were made to a rat-race every year. I can't seem to recall who, but someone higher-up let it slip when quizzed about higher attrition rate (back in 2010s) that Amazon believed in evolution, and that that meant the slow would eventually give the way for the fast and new. Someone even quipped in an internal email-list that employees were about 8th most important resource to Amazon right after the 7th most important resource: The paper-clips. Interestingly, and in my observation, the managers got more leeway than individual contributors in terms of evolving slowly. I've also seen rest and vest among managers, but rarely among the engineers. Strange power imbalances, if you ask me, existed and could be felt across every organization I worked for.
- coldcode 7y ago
  In my first job back in the 80's a VP sent out a memo to everyone about the importance of reusing paperclips. Naturally it had the opposite effect of us dumping boxes of them in the trash.
  - smallcharleston 7y ago
    That seems a bit odd. Maybe he’s not an effective manager, but why would you go out of your way to not do what he asked?
    - coldcode 7y ago
      Defense Contractor.
- P_I_Staker 7y ago
  I don't find that strange at all. People in power protect their power and cushy life while exploiting others.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  I was wondering if/when Amazon would get mentioned in this thread, lol. --- Cop-out rationalization: conventional wisdom holds that IT/CS folks should jump every 2-3 years or they're leaving money on the table -- and turnover rates reflect that. They're going in 2 years anyway, so get what you want out of them before they go. Most of them can't write fizzbuzz anyway, and it's easy to poach better talent by throwing money at them. > Interestingly, and in my observation, the managers got more leeway than individual contributors in terms of evolving slowly Managers run the system, so the system evolves to support them and their needs, like a more reasonable pace. Another way to look at it is if you've made it through the burnout phase then you're going to hang around longer, so it makes sense to hold on to proven performers who have much longer employment horizons.
pimmen 7y ago
In Sweden we have many protections against this in theory, but the fact that people are willing to take shit means it's not very effective. A person I met who is in the video game industry talked about something that happened at one of the companies he did consulting for. A poor guy at that place completely burned himself out and had to be hospitalized to recover. A month after this guy was burned out, a 23 year old was doing the exact same tasks, with the exact same workload and the same impossible deadlines. Sure, video game development with their crunch time is extreme but it's still very scary that something like this is even legal.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
overkalix 7y ago
Not the first time I quote The Jungle in HN but... "During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again, and Jurgis made more money. He did not make so much, however, as he had the previous summer, for the packers took on more hands. There were new men every week, it seemed--it was a regular system; and this number they would keep over to the next slack season, so that every one would have less than ever. Sooner or later, by this plan, they would have all the floating labor of Chicago trained to do their work. And how very cunning a trick was that! The men were to teach new hands, who would some day come and break their strike; and meantime they were kept so poor that they could not prepare for the trial! We have hundreds more books for your enjoyment. Read them all! But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work on--it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery--it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day. In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the canning factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the girls' earnings almost squarely in half; and so great was the indignation at this that they marched out without even a parley, and organized in the street outside. One of the girls had read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in three days, owing to the rush of new labor. At the end of it the girl who had carried the red flag went downtown and got a position in a great department store, at a salary of two dollars and a half a week. Jurgis and Ona heard these stories with dismay, for there was no telling when their own time might come. Once or twice there had been rumors that one of the big houses was going to cut its unskilled men to fifteen cents an hour, and Jurgis knew that if this was done, his turn would come soon. He had learned by this time that Packingtown was really not a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef Trust. And every week the managers of it got together and compared notes, and there was one scale for all the workers in the yards and one standard of efficiency. Jurgis was told that they also fixed the price they would pay for beef on the hoof and the price of all dressed meat in the country; but that was something he did not understand or care about."
Impossible 7y ago
If you're talking about US chattel slavery, your comparison is way off base and you should probably edit your post. Instead of firing an "underperforming" slave they could be legally murdered. Because all descendants were owned by the master indefinitely they could freely breed and rape "top performers" like animals in order to produce more slaves. When we end up with a corporate system that allows for that level of control of life or death in normal circumstances then maybe you can make your comparison. Institutionalized burn out is not it though.
- abacadaba 7y ago
  Yes but slaves were expensive. You'd go broke if you just murdered all of them.
  - Impossible 7y ago
    Ok torture them into submission then. Still significantly worse than burning someone out in a modern corporate job.
    - mistermann 7y ago
      In history, was torture a preferred approach compared to treating them relatively well, considering the absurd circumstances?
      - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        Read Huckelberry Finn, Jim was treated relatively well, however his family was sold away from him, he did not get to see his wife or daughter because it was valuable to the Widow to sell them. Finally he was going to be sold anyway, to somewhere where he would have the high probability of not being treated relatively well. To be treated relatively well as a slave was a living hell, or as it is generally called, slavery. Damn, I suppose now someone is going to complain about long working hours meaning you never get to see your family anyway.
namelosw 7y ago
It is worse than slavery because companies found they can create an environment for motivated wage slaves constantly competing with each other, aka 'culture'. And fire those who lost motivations in order to strengthen the 'culture'. As a comparison, traditional slavery is extremely inefficient because traditional slaves are far less motivated, the master has to spend his time or hiring people to constantly threatening and beating slaves work.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gdubs 7y ago
Yikes, have we come so far from slavery that people have completely forgotten how atrocious it is? To your other points, one could simply say that as a society we need to move away from short-termism and the dogma of maximizing shareholder value.
leftyted 7y ago
There is a difference between being a slave i.e. being owned and being a "wage slave" i.e. operating under significant coercion. We are all coerced to some degree; that's part of being an organism (coerced by nature) and living in a society (coerced by the crushing weight of social interactions). But we aren't owned. Though it's not your intention, this blurring of categories justifies real slavery. If everyone is a slave then no one is a slave. If "bourgeois freedom" is an illusion then every kind of repression can be justified by the claim that it will bring about "real freedom". Actually, the freedoms that we have are real and they matter.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  (Not OP but) I know it’s an unreasonable and probably inappropriate comparison, but I’m also old enough to have watched the demographics of professional computer programming shift from mostly white guys managing mostly other white guys to mostly white guys managing mostly brown people. I really don’t think it’s my imagination that at least some of the mostly white guys doing the managing have adopted more and more of a plantation-driver mentality.
  - giggles_giggles 7y ago
    This IS an unreasonable and inappropriate comparison. Anecdotally I've been overworked by a diverse group of shitty bosses of a variety of races, nationalities, and genders over the years. Nobody has a monopoly on shitty management. Singling out white men as uniquely shitty managers and then slapping on "plantation driver" is super racist!
    - commandlinefan 7y ago
      Actually I meant I agreed that OP's comparison was (somewhat) unreasonable and inappropriate.
  - thrwaway69 7y ago
    HN does have diverse commenters. In a single day, I managed to see 5 distinct comparison that I wouldn't have anywhere else. Note - this is only just an observation. Really amusing - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Nazi&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Slave&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
ssully 7y ago
You had a really solid post up until the slavery bit. You really need to educate yourself on the history of slavery if you think we are anywhere close to moving to something worse then slavery.
- epicgiga 7y ago
  Not really, I clearly stated "in some ways". As usual, people are hostile to thinking, and are far more concerned with getting their pearl clutching emotional blurts out. This thread is a classic case of that.
marketingfool 7y ago
I can see hr getting cheap people, having loyal senior Engineers teach them, then having the cheap young Engineers burn out. Cheaper than paying 6 figures, and the ones that stick around are permanently under 6 figure earners.
Terretta 7y ago
Serfdom is a better metaphor. Microserfs was published in 1994: “The plot of the novel has two distinct movements: the events at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and the move to Silicon Valley and the "Oop!" project.” ”The novel begins in Redmond as the characters are working on different projects at Microsoft's main campus. Life at the campus feels like a feudalistic society, with Bill Gates as the lord, and the employees the serfs. The majority of the main characters...are living together in a "geek house", and their lives are dedicated to their projects and the company. Daniel's foundations are shaken when his father, a longtime employee of IBM, is laid off. The lifespan of a Microsoft coder weighs heavily on Daniel's mind.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs Turns out the author was onto something: ”When Microserfs first came out, most people thought it was a tightly focused anthropological look at a tiny group of historically transient information workers in the American Pacific Northwest. It turns out they were forming a template of the way everyone else in the world works in and around information. As time went on it became a lot broader, instead of a lot narrower, which is what happened with Generation X.” — Coupland, The Times, June 1998

barry-cotter 7y ago

Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure like I-Banking, management consisting or law. People know what they’re getting into when they start these jobs. The hours and workload are not a secret. Most people do their two years and get out. A lot of it amounts to pointless hazing but no one is deceived into thinking Goldman Sachs has a great work life balance. The huge majority of companies operate on nothing like this model. Either they aim to build up a workforce for the long haul and as such care about having a sustainable workload, with occasional spikes and lulls, or they’re just jobs that are hard, that suck and that as a result have a high turnover and pay relatively well for low standards in hiring. See working in an Amazon warehouse. The companies that do follow this model suck, like EA, but again that’s not a secret. There’s an inexhaustible supply of suckers for every industry that people really, really want to get into and whether it’s film or video games they’re always awful, though at least film pays better.

idclip 7y ago
If you would only take a look at europe ... oh the horrors you will see.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Be clearer. I worked a ton of crap jobs in Ireland and always got out at the end of my shift unless someone didn’t show up and I agreed to work longer because I wanted more money. I have a number of relatives in medicine and professional services and long, hard hours describes their jobs well but it’s not chew them up and spit them out; If you want the big bucks you work the long hours.
  - idclip 7y ago
    Its hard to be clear, without betraying too much. i only have me and my experience and how i see others, and what ive been told. Maybe the downvotes are meritted, though i didnt mean the hard work, i did actually mean that myself and many i know feel its a grind, and not in a good way. You somehow make it sound as if i have something against hard work, but its quiet the opposite. It may very well be that my job is a single case of good ol toxic work environment.
ianleeclark 7y ago
> Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure like I-Banking, management consisting or law. I take it you've never worked in a call center? When I did, anything under a `10` (out of 10) on the random surveys they sent out was considered a failure.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > they’re just jobs that are hard, that suck and that as a result have a high turnover and pay relatively well for low standards in hiring. I have worked in a call centre.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gonzo41 7y ago
  I did the call center thing for a major bank during university. It was brutal work. But I learned a lot about shameless selling which is pretty useful.
tsukurimashou 7y ago
> companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs wasn't my experience at all, I did get "well paid jobs" in startups, but in the end, combining 3 jobs in one and doing 80 hours a week isn't worth it even if your salary looks pretty high.
- novaRom 7y ago
  How and why someone will work 80 hours a week? Don't they have families, friends, sport, or a hobby? Why is it necessary?
  - fogetti 7y ago
    Because of OKRs. Management is setting it so that no-one can reach the objectives. Then there is some speech that OKRs are not really meant to be completed fully but they will still hold it against you if it's not 100%
  - tsukurimashou 7y ago
    In startups that's usually how they trick you: they hire you even if you don't have much experience, they give you a decent salary, then they make you feel like you have to work more in order to "prove" their choice was the right one. I've also seen this "culture" of "we're one big family" in startups, which just feels weird and forced.
    - alfromspace 7y ago
      One startup I interviewed at, as an experienced developer, told me (paraphrasing here) "you'll be paid a salary lower than what you probably expect, and your first few months you'll need to work overtime to get used to our trendy tech stack, we don't offer health insurance but we do offer...not quite shares, but, sort of ownership interests. You could become a millionaire!" Yeah no thanks.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    No, because these kinds of places suck the blood out of people in their early 20s. Usually after they have moved to a new area and left behind all their social connections. When you're 25 and have no ties and no responsibilities, working 12-15 hours a day isn't the impossibility that it is when you are 35 and have a wife, kids, your own house, and social obligations.
jaziek 7y ago
> People know what they’re getting into when they start these jobs. Fresh graduates absolutely do not know what they are getting into when they start their first job.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  No one actually knows what their first job will be like. But trying to hide that you expect 60-100 hours a week is stupidly counterproductive. Banking, law, consulting are pretty straight up about the hours. People would quit halfway through their first month, their first week of you tried to pull 100 hours on those who didn’t know they’d be working those hours.
  - pimmen 7y ago
    A fresh college graduate at age 22 does not understand what 60-100 hours mean. The closest frame of reference they have is pulling an all nighter before an exam or to get a term project done. They can't contemplate their romantic relationship falling apart, the lack of feedback resulting in continuous self doubt keeping them up at night when they're supposed to be resting or how shallow friendships between colleagues are compared to friendships between students (especially when their colleagues have families). They understand what it means to soldier on despite being tired. They don't understand how much they've taken for granted all that support and feedback that was able to let them cope with the stress, and that now they're on their own.
    - wasdfff 7y ago
      From my friends who recently graduated and took these jobs in nyc, this wasnt so suprising. They expected to work 10-12 hour days. The familial stuff sucks if you were planning on shacking up at 23, but most people just work their day then drink aggresively in midtown before ubering back to whatever 2k/mo studio tenement they managed to find in brooklyn. Take a boozy trip to the hamptons a couple times in the summer, take your LA trip, go to europe. Suddenly working 12 hour days doesnt seem so bad when you have a rolex on your wrist and a high concentration of adderal in your veins. I expect in a couple years it will get old, but people are waiting to settle down well into their 30s these days to extend these years of pure adult independence for as long as they can.
tarsinge 7y ago
> Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure like I-Banking, management consisting or law. I'm not sure, I see a lot of companies moving to this model and they are not well paying. They copy startup environments but only in appearance (like a ping pong table for decoration that you are not allowed to play), because of that they justify that you must be passionate and work long hours for a low pay.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
> Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure I'm friends with accountants for the big 4 firms - they are in no way, shape, or form, high paying initial positions.

LockAndLol 7y ago

There also seems to be some kind of institutionalized Stockholm Syndrome for this. People are led to believe that: - if they don't accept a job like this, they won't get a job anywhere else - this is the only way to make good money - there is no other way to rise up the ranks - loyalty is rewarded - this is a just sacrifice - they're invincible due to their youth What they're doing however is working / giving away their life for free. It's cheaper for companies to hire people that give away an extra 10-20 free hours a week instead of hiring somebody to work for those extra hours. Even they say "we'll pay you x1.5", they're still making money because they aren't paying x2 for the second person on the payroll. Unfortunately employees will vehemently defend these practices and even pride themselves on working 10 hours a day. They wear it like a badge of accomplishment and even look down others who don't do the same.

tsukurimashou 7y ago

> A lot of companies are actively factoring this into their HR model. Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out. That was pretty much the business model of the few startup jobs I tried

raegis 7y ago

<quote>In some ways we're moving to something worse than slavery. At least with slaves they were seen as "assets" rather than "temporary rentals". They had to take care of them out of necessity, so their evil had that limit on it.</quote> Some of us prefer burnout at reasonable pay than being raped, beaten, and denied all freedoms.

bengale 7y ago
The idiocy in viewing these as the two possible options is staggering.
- intarga 7y ago
  I don't think raegis was suggesting there are only two options, but simply had qualms with the way it was compared to slavery.
epicgiga 7y ago
Hence the "some ways" bit. But don't let that get in the way of the high horse you were looking for an excuse to ride.
missosoup 7y ago
> raped, beaten, and denied all freedoms. Towards the later stages of slavery, the first 2 were outright illegal, and the third is somewhere on par with wage slavery today. It sounds like a hot take on the surface, but modern wage slavery is objectively worse than late-stage actual slavery in some regards. We have not really progressed as society. The only thing that has really advanced is the availability of entertainment to placate the masses and prevent most of them from realising that they are in fact little better off than slaves. More than half of all Americans are less than 1 paycheck away from homelessness and subsequent incarceration. There is only illusion of freedom, the reality is they're chained to their jobs. Fun fact: medieval serfs had about 4 months of 'free' time each year. Of course it still included housekeeping and various chores, but it was nothing compared to the load of full time employment that everyone experiences today almost all year round.

sneak 7y ago

Slavery is not voluntary, and any individual job is. They are absolutely not comparable. You can always quit and go home. It is insane to compare the two. This is an inaccurate comparison with an agenda.

ianleeclark 7y ago
> Slavery is not voluntary, and any individual job is. Why do you assume OP is concerned with only individual jobs? Sure, you can quit working at Target, but you better find something else to fill that gap or you're starving to death in the streets.
tartoran 7y ago
Slavery is harsher and involuntary, true, but the comparison stands as this is a softer but veiled slavery. You’re free to go but if other places are like that you’re technically really not free to go anywhere..
P_I_Staker 7y ago
I agree that the comparison is horrible, but I have to disagree with you also. My job is not voluntary. Within a relatively short period of time, I could go broke without it (and I have pretty robust savings). I may not be a paycheck away from homelessness, due to my cushy job, but a few months and/or an emergency or two... It could get really bad, quick. Losing employment is perilous for your career. It looks bad to get fired, take time off, or suddenly quit. Then there's the reality that the next job might not be much better. If every job treats you the same, you don't really have a choice. I can't just change my profession on a dime either. This is basically "if you don't like your country, you can just get out" logic... it doesn't work that way in the real world. EDIT: Added a word. Also, I want to reiterate that I agree regarding the insanity of the slavery comparison.
- sneak 7y ago
  Any individual job is voluntary so long as there is more than one employer in the market. It’s not opinion but fact: you are free to quit your job at any time. You are also likely free to move to any number of different cities that have different job prospects. That is an important freedom, and you should use it whenever you want.

ignoramous 7y ago

> Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out. When I was at Amazon, this was the feeling with some employees around me: The stack-ranking meant they were made to a rat-race every year. I can't seem to recall who, but someone higher-up let it slip when quizzed about higher attrition rate (back in 2010s) that Amazon believed in evolution, and that that meant the slow would eventually give the way for the fast and new. Someone even quipped in an internal email-list that employees were about 8th most important resource to Amazon right after the 7th most important resource: The paper-clips. Interestingly, and in my observation, the managers got more leeway than individual contributors in terms of evolving slowly. I've also seen rest and vest among managers, but rarely among the engineers. Strange power imbalances, if you ask me, existed and could be felt across every organization I worked for.

coldcode 7y ago
In my first job back in the 80's a VP sent out a memo to everyone about the importance of reusing paperclips. Naturally it had the opposite effect of us dumping boxes of them in the trash.
- smallcharleston 7y ago
  That seems a bit odd. Maybe he’s not an effective manager, but why would you go out of your way to not do what he asked?
  - coldcode 7y ago
    Defense Contractor.
P_I_Staker 7y ago
I don't find that strange at all. People in power protect their power and cushy life while exploiting others.
blaser-waffle 7y ago
I was wondering if/when Amazon would get mentioned in this thread, lol. --- Cop-out rationalization: conventional wisdom holds that IT/CS folks should jump every 2-3 years or they're leaving money on the table -- and turnover rates reflect that. They're going in 2 years anyway, so get what you want out of them before they go. Most of them can't write fizzbuzz anyway, and it's easy to poach better talent by throwing money at them. > Interestingly, and in my observation, the managers got more leeway than individual contributors in terms of evolving slowly Managers run the system, so the system evolves to support them and their needs, like a more reasonable pace. Another way to look at it is if you've made it through the burnout phase then you're going to hang around longer, so it makes sense to hold on to proven performers who have much longer employment horizons.

pimmen 7y ago

In Sweden we have many protections against this in theory, but the fact that people are willing to take shit means it's not very effective. A person I met who is in the video game industry talked about something that happened at one of the companies he did consulting for. A poor guy at that place completely burned himself out and had to be hospitalized to recover. A month after this guy was burned out, a 23 year old was doing the exact same tasks, with the exact same workload and the same impossible deadlines. Sure, video game development with their crunch time is extreme but it's still very scary that something like this is even legal.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

overkalix 7y ago

Not the first time I quote The Jungle in HN but... "During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again, and Jurgis made more money. He did not make so much, however, as he had the previous summer, for the packers took on more hands. There were new men every week, it seemed--it was a regular system; and this number they would keep over to the next slack season, so that every one would have less than ever. Sooner or later, by this plan, they would have all the floating labor of Chicago trained to do their work. And how very cunning a trick was that! The men were to teach new hands, who would some day come and break their strike; and meantime they were kept so poor that they could not prepare for the trial! We have hundreds more books for your enjoyment. Read them all! But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work on--it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery--it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day. In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the canning factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the girls' earnings almost squarely in half; and so great was the indignation at this that they marched out without even a parley, and organized in the street outside. One of the girls had read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in three days, owing to the rush of new labor. At the end of it the girl who had carried the red flag went downtown and got a position in a great department store, at a salary of two dollars and a half a week. Jurgis and Ona heard these stories with dismay, for there was no telling when their own time might come. Once or twice there had been rumors that one of the big houses was going to cut its unskilled men to fifteen cents an hour, and Jurgis knew that if this was done, his turn would come soon. He had learned by this time that Packingtown was really not a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef Trust. And every week the managers of it got together and compared notes, and there was one scale for all the workers in the yards and one standard of efficiency. Jurgis was told that they also fixed the price they would pay for beef on the hoof and the price of all dressed meat in the country; but that was something he did not understand or care about."

Impossible 7y ago

If you're talking about US chattel slavery, your comparison is way off base and you should probably edit your post. Instead of firing an "underperforming" slave they could be legally murdered. Because all descendants were owned by the master indefinitely they could freely breed and rape "top performers" like animals in order to produce more slaves. When we end up with a corporate system that allows for that level of control of life or death in normal circumstances then maybe you can make your comparison. Institutionalized burn out is not it though.

abacadaba 7y ago
Yes but slaves were expensive. You'd go broke if you just murdered all of them.
- Impossible 7y ago
  Ok torture them into submission then. Still significantly worse than burning someone out in a modern corporate job.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    In history, was torture a preferred approach compared to treating them relatively well, considering the absurd circumstances?
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      Read Huckelberry Finn, Jim was treated relatively well, however his family was sold away from him, he did not get to see his wife or daughter because it was valuable to the Widow to sell them. Finally he was going to be sold anyway, to somewhere where he would have the high probability of not being treated relatively well. To be treated relatively well as a slave was a living hell, or as it is generally called, slavery. Damn, I suppose now someone is going to complain about long working hours meaning you never get to see your family anyway.

namelosw 7y ago

It is worse than slavery because companies found they can create an environment for motivated wage slaves constantly competing with each other, aka 'culture'. And fire those who lost motivations in order to strengthen the 'culture'. As a comparison, traditional slavery is extremely inefficient because traditional slaves are far less motivated, the master has to spend his time or hiring people to constantly threatening and beating slaves work.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

gdubs 7y ago

Yikes, have we come so far from slavery that people have completely forgotten how atrocious it is? To your other points, one could simply say that as a society we need to move away from short-termism and the dogma of maximizing shareholder value.

leftyted 7y ago

There is a difference between being a slave i.e. being owned and being a "wage slave" i.e. operating under significant coercion. We are all coerced to some degree; that's part of being an organism (coerced by nature) and living in a society (coerced by the crushing weight of social interactions). But we aren't owned. Though it's not your intention, this blurring of categories justifies real slavery. If everyone is a slave then no one is a slave. If "bourgeois freedom" is an illusion then every kind of repression can be justified by the claim that it will bring about "real freedom". Actually, the freedoms that we have are real and they matter.

commandlinefan 7y ago
(Not OP but) I know it’s an unreasonable and probably inappropriate comparison, but I’m also old enough to have watched the demographics of professional computer programming shift from mostly white guys managing mostly other white guys to mostly white guys managing mostly brown people. I really don’t think it’s my imagination that at least some of the mostly white guys doing the managing have adopted more and more of a plantation-driver mentality.
- giggles_giggles 7y ago
  This IS an unreasonable and inappropriate comparison. Anecdotally I've been overworked by a diverse group of shitty bosses of a variety of races, nationalities, and genders over the years. Nobody has a monopoly on shitty management. Singling out white men as uniquely shitty managers and then slapping on "plantation driver" is super racist!
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    Actually I meant I agreed that OP's comparison was (somewhat) unreasonable and inappropriate.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  HN does have diverse commenters. In a single day, I managed to see 5 distinct comparison that I wouldn't have anywhere else. Note - this is only just an observation. Really amusing - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Nazi&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Slave&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

ssully 7y ago

You had a really solid post up until the slavery bit. You really need to educate yourself on the history of slavery if you think we are anywhere close to moving to something worse then slavery.

epicgiga 7y ago
Not really, I clearly stated "in some ways". As usual, people are hostile to thinking, and are far more concerned with getting their pearl clutching emotional blurts out. This thread is a classic case of that.

marketingfool 7y ago

I can see hr getting cheap people, having loyal senior Engineers teach them, then having the cheap young Engineers burn out. Cheaper than paying 6 figures, and the ones that stick around are permanently under 6 figure earners.

Terretta 7y ago

Serfdom is a better metaphor. Microserfs was published in 1994: “The plot of the novel has two distinct movements: the events at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and the move to Silicon Valley and the "Oop!" project.” ”The novel begins in Redmond as the characters are working on different projects at Microsoft's main campus. Life at the campus feels like a feudalistic society, with Bill Gates as the lord, and the employees the serfs. The majority of the main characters...are living together in a "geek house", and their lives are dedicated to their projects and the company. Daniel's foundations are shaken when his father, a longtime employee of IBM, is laid off. The lifespan of a Microsoft coder weighs heavily on Daniel's mind.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs Turns out the author was onto something: ”When Microserfs first came out, most people thought it was a tightly focused anthropological look at a tiny group of historically transient information workers in the American Pacific Northwest. It turns out they were forming a template of the way everyone else in the world works in and around information. As time went on it became a lot broader, instead of a lot narrower, which is what happened with Generation X.” — Coupland, The Times, June 1998