5 ms·

I agree with this so much. I have been working part time for almost a year now to rebuild a house and it has been very nice. It always seemed weird to me that p

by Sytten 6y ago

I agree with this so much. I have been working part time for almost a year now to rebuild a house and it has been very nice. It always seemed weird to me that people make such high salaries in tech but just don't value time as the main commodity of our lives. The reality is that if you move to a low CoL area and work part-time you will almost certainly be happier. But this doesn't mean you are idle the rest of the time. It means you can pursue what you love. We place way to much value in jobs as an end rather than as a mean to an end IMO. I tend to believe that the work week should have been reduced decades ago.

jjav 6y ago
> It always seemed weird to me that people make such high salaries in tech but just don't value time as the main commodity of our lives. It's not about valuing it, the problem is that finding jobs which allow part-time work is just about impossible. I'd give anything for a job where I can work 40% time for 40% salary, but those don't exist. My wife has managed to arrange 80% time for 80% pay at the G of FAANG for a couple years, but the company absolutely hates the arrangement and tries every opportunity to sabotage it so it's not that great. Also, management demands 40 hours of work for that 80% pay with the explanation that full-time employees are expected to work for a lot more than 40 hours.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  Stories like this remind me that maybe my low-six-figure salary in the bay area isn't that bad after all. I may be dramatically underpaid by FANNG standards, but I'm never asked to work overtime and I'm free to take PTO whenever I want.
  - balfirevic 6y ago
    I'm not from the US so I wouldn't know first hand, but I've read plenty of comments on HN from people who claim to be working for FAANG and just work normal 40 hour work weeks.
hintymad 6y ago
That's partly because high-paying salaries can be a stepwise function with respect to one's time. If you make $500K a year, it does not mean you can make $300K a year by working three days a week. I'm sure many people are capable of pulling that off, but I guess more can't. Software engineering work in corporate requires certain level of continuity. You may be called upon for a meeting. You may need to jump into a conference call for a system outage. You may need to do an in-depth research to debunk your co-worker's design. You may be able to pace yourself, but your teams won't be able to wait, which disproportionally diminish your value. Again, we can argue how to practice essentialism, but the reality is that many people can't or are not capable of doing so. Otherwise, we wouldn't have books about essentialism.
nugget 6y ago
People in tech do seem to value time which may explain why they are disproportionately drawn to the "Financial Independence, Retire Early" (FIRE) movement. The tech industry continues to be much more supportive of 80 hour weeks until you strike it rich and "retire" early, than it is of steady part-time work over many decades of steady-state work-life balance. But the motivation may be the same for many.
- _qulr 6y ago
  I think the motivation is actually age discrimination. It's often much harder to find a job when you're older, so you have to strike it rich when you're younger.
  - ethanwillis 6y ago
    I'm not even 30 and I was told in a reply to a comment where I suggested a research paper from the 70s, "This is what's wrong with you old people, you just want us to read all of this irrelevant stuff". The irony is the replier was 10 years older than me. So the age discrimination bias is so prevalent even older people buy into it.
    - wrs 6y ago
      Yeesh, that’s a doubly-stupid comment...thinking not only that “old people” must be wrong but that “old papers” must be irrelevant.
      - digaozao 6y ago
        Só true. Usually, paraphrasing taleb here, the "old papers" are more important. They resisted the test of time, and the ones that are still talked about (survivors) are the most relevant, and better insights. While the thousands of papers that appear every year, most of them will be irrelevant.
  - ptero 6y ago
    I do not see this around me at all. There is probably some truth in this for the FAANG "work 80 hrs a week, get rich in 5 years" jobs (probably because those who want to work 80+ hours a week and get rich quick-er tend to be young folks without major commitments). However, there are plenty of people around me who are in the 40-60 age bracket, who work in tech, are financially comfortable (even though they do not get FAANG-type salaries), do not work crazy hours and (at least pre-COVID) had no problem changing jobs if the current one became toxic or boring. My 2c.
ethanwillis 6y ago
I would like to also echo this sentiment. I took a job that lets me work with a much more flexible schedule. I changed from doing straight dev work to software dev support for an API SaaS company to facilitate that. I like software development, but I don't think I'm cut out for it in a SV work hard/play hard sense because I like to tinker too much. That's just not a good fit for deadlines, production environments, etc. It's given me a lot less stress professionally which has allowed me to work on personal projects (software and otherwise). In the past few months - Started learning about worm composting and I've been raising e. fetida worms to compost trash. - Started reorganizing my homelab and messing with all my server equipment - Learning about different machining techniques - Working on my cars more, and I hope to take on an EV conversion of an old car soon.
- meken 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on your dev support role? Seems like this would be less flexible than a dev role. I’m asking because I’m interested in support roles as well. What’s the company and name of the position?
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Not OP but I did something similar. Used to do the code/eat/sleep/code/eat/sleep lifestyle but realized I liked to refactor, polish and perfect too much and that was incompatible with the industry's demand to "ship barely working garbage on time". So I became a product manager, then project manager, and instead do coding on my free time. It's great because it lets me stay in software, but in a supporting role and I don't feel the pressure to get on the code/eat/sleep treadmill. The down side is it's a little harder to find jobs. Companies hire software developers by the truck load, but usually only require 1 PM or PJM for every 50 engineers they hire. I keep my skills up and could still pass your company's C++ interview, but honestly I don't really want to.

by Sytten 6y ago

jjav 6y ago

> It always seemed weird to me that people make such high salaries in tech but just don't value time as the main commodity of our lives. It's not about valuing it, the problem is that finding jobs which allow part-time work is just about impossible. I'd give anything for a job where I can work 40% time for 40% salary, but those don't exist. My wife has managed to arrange 80% time for 80% pay at the G of FAANG for a couple years, but the company absolutely hates the arrangement and tries every opportunity to sabotage it so it's not that great. Also, management demands 40 hours of work for that 80% pay with the explanation that full-time employees are expected to work for a lot more than 40 hours.

0xffff2 6y ago
Stories like this remind me that maybe my low-six-figure salary in the bay area isn't that bad after all. I may be dramatically underpaid by FANNG standards, but I'm never asked to work overtime and I'm free to take PTO whenever I want.
- balfirevic 6y ago
  I'm not from the US so I wouldn't know first hand, but I've read plenty of comments on HN from people who claim to be working for FAANG and just work normal 40 hour work weeks.

hintymad 6y ago

That's partly because high-paying salaries can be a stepwise function with respect to one's time. If you make $500K a year, it does not mean you can make $300K a year by working three days a week. I'm sure many people are capable of pulling that off, but I guess more can't. Software engineering work in corporate requires certain level of continuity. You may be called upon for a meeting. You may need to jump into a conference call for a system outage. You may need to do an in-depth research to debunk your co-worker's design. You may be able to pace yourself, but your teams won't be able to wait, which disproportionally diminish your value. Again, we can argue how to practice essentialism, but the reality is that many people can't or are not capable of doing so. Otherwise, we wouldn't have books about essentialism.

nugget 6y ago

People in tech do seem to value time which may explain why they are disproportionately drawn to the "Financial Independence, Retire Early" (FIRE) movement. The tech industry continues to be much more supportive of 80 hour weeks until you strike it rich and "retire" early, than it is of steady part-time work over many decades of steady-state work-life balance. But the motivation may be the same for many.

_qulr 6y ago
I think the motivation is actually age discrimination. It's often much harder to find a job when you're older, so you have to strike it rich when you're younger.
- ethanwillis 6y ago
  I'm not even 30 and I was told in a reply to a comment where I suggested a research paper from the 70s, "This is what's wrong with you old people, you just want us to read all of this irrelevant stuff". The irony is the replier was 10 years older than me. So the age discrimination bias is so prevalent even older people buy into it.
  - wrs 6y ago
    Yeesh, that’s a doubly-stupid comment...thinking not only that “old people” must be wrong but that “old papers” must be irrelevant.
    - digaozao 6y ago
      Só true. Usually, paraphrasing taleb here, the "old papers" are more important. They resisted the test of time, and the ones that are still talked about (survivors) are the most relevant, and better insights. While the thousands of papers that appear every year, most of them will be irrelevant.
- ptero 6y ago
  I do not see this around me at all. There is probably some truth in this for the FAANG "work 80 hrs a week, get rich in 5 years" jobs (probably because those who want to work 80+ hours a week and get rich quick-er tend to be young folks without major commitments). However, there are plenty of people around me who are in the 40-60 age bracket, who work in tech, are financially comfortable (even though they do not get FAANG-type salaries), do not work crazy hours and (at least pre-COVID) had no problem changing jobs if the current one became toxic or boring. My 2c.

ethanwillis 6y ago

I would like to also echo this sentiment. I took a job that lets me work with a much more flexible schedule. I changed from doing straight dev work to software dev support for an API SaaS company to facilitate that. I like software development, but I don't think I'm cut out for it in a SV work hard/play hard sense because I like to tinker too much. That's just not a good fit for deadlines, production environments, etc. It's given me a lot less stress professionally which has allowed me to work on personal projects (software and otherwise). In the past few months - Started learning about worm composting and I've been raising e. fetida worms to compost trash. - Started reorganizing my homelab and messing with all my server equipment - Learning about different machining techniques - Working on my cars more, and I hope to take on an EV conversion of an old car soon.

meken 6y ago
Can you elaborate on your dev support role? Seems like this would be less flexible than a dev role. I’m asking because I’m interested in support roles as well. What’s the company and name of the position?
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Not OP but I did something similar. Used to do the code/eat/sleep/code/eat/sleep lifestyle but realized I liked to refactor, polish and perfect too much and that was incompatible with the industry's demand to "ship barely working garbage on time". So I became a product manager, then project manager, and instead do coding on my free time. It's great because it lets me stay in software, but in a supporting role and I don't feel the pressure to get on the code/eat/sleep treadmill. The down side is it's a little harder to find jobs. Companies hire software developers by the truck load, but usually only require 1 PM or PJM for every 50 engineers they hire. I keep my skills up and could still pass your company's C++ interview, but honestly I don't really want to.