7 ms·
There's a difference between working fixed hours, working a fixed amount of time, and working within boundaries. I think it's a level you work your way up. Ear
by darkerside 5y ago
There's a difference between working fixed hours, working a fixed amount of time, and working within boundaries. I think it's a level you work your way up.
Early career, just work fixed hours. You don't have a sense for what is reasonable yet, and this is a good way to build up a work ethic and understand your limits.
Once you're comfortable there, tweak your hours as needed. This might mean working the same irregular hours every day (parents can schedule around their kids) or just making sure that when you hit a number, you call it a day (wake up early and work so you can go hiking in the afternoon).
As you get to know yourself better, you'll know when you've put in good day's work, when you have capacity to keep going, and when you need to dial it back.
This last stage is important if you aspire to leadership roles. In these roles, you are never done, there is always more you can do to improve your business, so you need to find your sustainable boundary and stick to it.
- scarface74 5y agoUnless you own the company, it’s not your business. Act accordingly.
- ysavir 5y agoWhat's your implication here? That non-owners are lesser and therefor should bend to the wants of the owner? That only owners have a right to the lifestyle they want?
- gunfighthacksaw 5y agoThat’s one way to look at it, but the opposite from how I read it. My interpretation is not to ruin my health for a company I hold less than 0.5% stock (options) in. The amount of skin I have in this game is not enough to make me sacrifice the little pleasures that keep me sane.
- ysavir 5y agoThanks! That reading makes sense.
- Silhouette 5y agoMy interpretation is not to ruin my health for a company I hold less than 0.5% stock (options) in. I agree but don't ruin your health for a company you do hold significant stock in either. There is hard work and pulling your weight. There is having faith in your vision and giving it your best shot. And then there is being just plain stupid and making yourself ill or worse for something that is still only about money in the end.
- scarface74 5y agoEven if you own 20% of the company, statistically the chances of it being worth anything besides toilet paper is slim.
- verve_rat 5y agoI believe they are stating the opposite. If it is not your company, if you don't own a large share of it, then work your hours and switch off. Any bullshit about putting in extra work because you are in a "leadership" position is just that, bullshit to extract more value from you and transfer it to the company. Do what you are paid for, no more, no less.
- _acco 5y agoGreat attitude to ensure you never own a company.
- vangelis 5y agoI do own my own company. It's pretty easy.
- cosmojg 5y agoOwning a company is fairly trivial. Just fill out the requisite paperwork[1] and boom, you've got a company. Making it profitable is the hard part. [1] https://corp.delaware.gov/howtoform/ https://corp.delaware.gov/howtoform/
- ISL 5y agoCreating a company is easy. Staying on top of taxation/regulatory filings is more difficult.
- WarChortle 5y agoThis whole grinding is the only way to make it attitude has to stop. Do the work you get paid for. I imagine if someone started their own business, their attitude would be vastly different then working for a company on a fixed salary.
- plainnoodles 5y agoGreat attitude to make sure you understand the realities of the system and protect yourself from being exploited by it more than is already inherent in the relationship between wage labor and capital.
- thomascgalvin 5y agoI read that as "don't kill yourself for someone else's profit."
- gumby 5y agoI think scarface74 was making the opposite claim: it’s not your company so fulfil your obligation but don’t put the company’s interest ahead of your own.
- Scarblac 5y agoThere was an implication that in leadership roles there is always something more to be done, and you have to watch out you don't do too much. But that's true for non-leadership roles just as much. So I read it as, even if you're in a leadership position, the company isn't yours, so you don't need to act as if it is.
- Koshkin 5y agoWell, when you accept a job, you make a promise. So do what you must to get the job done then, on time.
- scarface74 5y agoI make a promise to trade around 40 hours of labor for money each week.
- emaginniss 5y agoYou make a promise to do a reasonable job. Sometimes it's the company that makes a promise for you (feature and deadline specified) and then it's not really your responsibility to complete the promise.
- soperj 5y agoYou must have not had shit management yet, or are cruising for burn out.
- scarface74 5y agoYes, and when the pay/bullshit ratio goes in the wrong direction, I get another job.
- vangelis 5y agoLittle did they know the promise being talked about the promise sales makes to customers.
- suifbwish 5y agoIf you own your own company your hours are whatever it takes to get your bank account where you want it no more no less.
- dasil003 5y agoPeople say this all the time, but I think it's an arbitrary and self-defeating perspective. First of all, if you want to maximize personal benefit, it's not clear that owning your own business is the way to go. Sure, there's a higher ceiling, but many rank and file engineers at big tech are making $1M+ due to stock appreciation without working particularly hard. By contrast, building a business that you can even pay yourself $100k is non-trivial—either you raise money and take on a whole new level of stress that comes with investor expectations, or you do the bootstrap grind which has a high chance of failure and almost no chance of keeping it to a solid 40 hours/week. Second, if you have equity comp you are in fact an owner. You might not have much direct impact to that number, but at least your interests are aligned. And even if you don't have equity, the quality of your work reflects on both your reputation as well as your actual skill development. Of course you should truly evaluate whether your company is treating you fairly and expectations are realistic, but do so objectively instead of starting from a management-vs-labor ideology.
- scarface74 5y agoRead one of my replies below. I’m not saying you should own your own business to maximize your income as oppose to spending a few months “grinding leetCode (tm) r/cscareerquestions”. Not that I did to get into BigTech. But that’s another story. Equity in a private company is statistically meaningless and any one person being able to move the needle on a 1.6 trillion dollar market cap company is negligible.
- dasil003 5y agoYou're missing the larger point which is that if you make your money by working for other people, your reputation and your skillset in that environment matters. Yes, you should look out for yourself first, but that doesn't require taking an adversarial stance to management. To the contrary, if you make some effort to understand your manager and the broader business context, you can reap much larger rewards. Obviously that assumes your boss is not a muppet, but in that case you have bigger problems. The idea that you just job hop to promos is currently true for the low end, but there's a glass ceiling there. As a hiring manager, someone who got promoted to staff+ in a reputable company with a high bar is an order of magnitude stronger signal than someone who was hired directly into that level at the same company. Also, the current market and comp for software engineers is a result of the decade bull run of big tech. This will not continue forever. I was around during the dotcom bubble as well, and I can tell you, when the music stops you won't wanna be the guy who has a series of two year stints with progressively higher salaries but no close contacts who will fight to hire you.