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It depends a bit. Just a good work/life balance isn‘t that hard to find, just choose any decent large company out there. It seems though like you want to have

It depends a bit. Just a good work/life balance isn‘t that hard to find, just choose any decent large company out there. It seems though like you want to have both a good balance AND excellence, fast learning and great colleagues. My humble opinion is this can work out shortly, but usually not for long. The reason being mainly that you’re describing a labile situation: as for any company that tackles a worthwhile and lucrative problem (and the others you really don‘t want to work for), but with a chill attitude and a „great engineering culture“ where resolving tech debt, fixing bugs and proper QA gets the front seat over product iteration — there exists or will eventually exist another company who sees the same opportunity, but attacks it with clear vision and the ruthless execution you despise, eventually sucking the more chill company dry of talent and customers. I‘ve seen it all the time. Basecamp against Slack. Atlassian against Github. Note I don’t particularly like this conclusion as well, since I was searching for something similar years ago, but I‘ve found it to hold true in practice. I stand to be corrected by counterexamples though, especially companies that have been around since a decade.

xyzelement 5y ago
I think you are spot on. Also applies to people (nice chill guy, someone is gonna out compete you) and nations.
- robjan 5y ago
  People and companies who grind all the time often make stupid mistakes which undo all the "dividend" from excessive work. They then end up spending more and more time firefighting these issues. The only successful companies I have worked with have had well rested teams. There's also the other factor of attrition. Companies who force their staff to work overtime ultimately can't keep their good staff.
projectileboy 5y ago
I think you’re absolutely right, but I also think you raise some deep, difficult questions on what kind of society we want to live in, what kind of society is sustainable over time, and how we should treat people as they age (who may be unable or unwilling to keep giving 105%). I also think it demands that corporations pay a fair share to support the society that they are a part of.
- marcusverus 5y ago
  >I also think it demands that corporations pay a fair share to support the society that they are a part of. Honestly, talk of corporations to "pay their fair share" is a distraction. The government has proven itself unwilling or incapable of applying effective taxes on corporations. Even if they did, the taxes are ultimately born by consumers, and a ton of waste is created as a result (see the number of people who work full time in corporate tax accounting). The cycle from "they don't pay their fair share", to new tax policies, to failure of those policies, to "they don't pay their fair share" is a distraction that prevents us from taking straightforward steps that would help workers tremendously, like a law to require overtime pay for salaried workers who don't get equity.
dotbob 5y ago
OP here. I don't think that I am looking for a completely chill environment, just something saner than "everything is on fire all the time." I agree that there is a competition. However, I disagree entirely that crazy pressure and long hours win. - In b2b companies, it's all about the sales team, and engineering is more of necessary evil dragged by sales along. - Tech debt and mediocre teams, which I described above, slow things substantially (this is the reason why more hours and bodies are thrown at problems) Also, I know several great engineers and a team of them working regular hours will wipe a floor with a much-much larger team working a huge number of hours (in organizations I mentioned above). (BTW. Usually, such a small team of great engineers go and build a brand new startup. This would solve the tech-excellency problem, but it doesn't solve the work-life balance problem)

xyzelement 5y ago

I think you are spot on. Also applies to people (nice chill guy, someone is gonna out compete you) and nations.

robjan 5y ago
People and companies who grind all the time often make stupid mistakes which undo all the "dividend" from excessive work. They then end up spending more and more time firefighting these issues. The only successful companies I have worked with have had well rested teams. There's also the other factor of attrition. Companies who force their staff to work overtime ultimately can't keep their good staff.

projectileboy 5y ago

I think you’re absolutely right, but I also think you raise some deep, difficult questions on what kind of society we want to live in, what kind of society is sustainable over time, and how we should treat people as they age (who may be unable or unwilling to keep giving 105%). I also think it demands that corporations pay a fair share to support the society that they are a part of.

marcusverus 5y ago
>I also think it demands that corporations pay a fair share to support the society that they are a part of. Honestly, talk of corporations to "pay their fair share" is a distraction. The government has proven itself unwilling or incapable of applying effective taxes on corporations. Even if they did, the taxes are ultimately born by consumers, and a ton of waste is created as a result (see the number of people who work full time in corporate tax accounting). The cycle from "they don't pay their fair share", to new tax policies, to failure of those policies, to "they don't pay their fair share" is a distraction that prevents us from taking straightforward steps that would help workers tremendously, like a law to require overtime pay for salaried workers who don't get equity.

dotbob 5y ago

OP here. I don't think that I am looking for a completely chill environment, just something saner than "everything is on fire all the time." I agree that there is a competition. However, I disagree entirely that crazy pressure and long hours win. - In b2b companies, it's all about the sales team, and engineering is more of necessary evil dragged by sales along. - Tech debt and mediocre teams, which I described above, slow things substantially (this is the reason why more hours and bodies are thrown at problems) Also, I know several great engineers and a team of them working regular hours will wipe a floor with a much-much larger team working a huge number of hours (in organizations I mentioned above). (BTW. Usually, such a small team of great engineers go and build a brand new startup. This would solve the tech-excellency problem, but it doesn't solve the work-life balance problem)