9 ms·

The comparison to equity being getting paid in lottery tickets is apt (IMHO). Nevertheless there has never been a short of pioneering spirits willing to risk i

by cletus 15y ago

The comparison to equity being getting paid in lottery tickets is apt (IMHO). Nevertheless there has never been a short of pioneering spirits willing to risk it all to strike it rich (just look at the gold rushes in the Dakotas, California and elsewhere). This is really the modern day equivalent. There was a thread here last year where people talked about their exits. A common story was "worked my ass off for X years, ended up with $10k". It's survivor bias. There is something to be said for getting paid well. I work for Google, I'm not high-level and I haven't been here forever (~1.5 years) and, honestly, you get paid--and treated--really well. Now you'll never strike it rich but you can live incredibly well and, if you prove yourself, have an awful lot of freedom to pursue your goals with an amazing amount of resources and latitude. Some of the comments in this thread bother me, particularly the 30 days paid vacation a year. In Europe maybe. In the US? Good luck. Never working more than 40 hours a week nor staying late? It just smacks of entitlement. I'm not saying you need to kill yourself for the company but it really is a two-way street. I tried pursuing that once. The end result of that is what Chris Dixon calls "transactional" work [1]. You owe them nothing. They owe you nothing. I've worked in banking and finance and that's as good as it gets there. It's really soul-destroying actually. So I work more than I should. Thing is, I'm never looking at my watch because I enjoy what I do. And if I want to go off for a nap or wander off and see a movie or do something else to relax or recharge I can. Now someone will inevitably bring up that not everyone can do that. Fine. Whatever. You've made other life choices. I get it. The biggest problem startups are facing in hiring (IMHO) is that there is a disconnect between equity offered to early employees and the risk. Last cofounder? 33% or 50% typically (before dilution). First employee? 1-2%. Maybe 3%. We're not in 1999 anymore. You don't need $5-10 million to launch a startup anymore. What used to take $5 million now takes as little as $50,000. The lowering of the barrier to entry means talented engineers are nearly always better off starting their own startup rather than working for yours, unless you have an amazing track record. [1]: http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/ http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/

potatolicious 15y ago
I really disagree with the notion of the post here, and I think this part really nails why: > "Thing is, I'm never looking at my watch because I enjoy what I do." So do I. In fact, I love what I do. I'd be extremely disappointed if I had to stop going to work. But it isn't the only thing I enjoy. You want stable hours and liberal time off because there is more enjoyment to your life than writing code and creating software. I dislike long hours not because I dislike what I do at work, but because my life is more than my work. I have other passions, hobbies, people, other things I want to be able to commit to. > "Fine. Whatever. You've made other life choices. I get it." And so have you - so we'd appreciate it if you stop referring to the rest of us as entitled and petulant. I respect your choice to throw the entirety of your life at your primary craft - so respect our choice not to.
- kamaal 15y ago
  Exactly, One more thing that I didn't like about it was the feeling that its OK for the employer to overwork you and then not compensate it, under the pretext of 'interesting work'. This is an old plan used by most companies. I like doing what I do, but I would love to something else if I had the money to free me up. For most people, their area of least incompetence becomes their passion.
  - its_so_on 15y ago
    The plan is a lot older than you think. For millennia, people have married above their station by being interesting.
  - skerrit_bwoy 15y ago
    I'll add that if you LOVE doing what you do for 40 years, straight through retirement, you are one odd duck indeed. The idea of "passion for work" is a power play to get folks to put in more for less. Don't get it twisted. Furthermore, workaholism is for people who don't understand what it means to be human. Steve Jobs was a sucker - almost as much as his followers who didn't realize that he was.
    - 0xDECAFFEE 15y ago
      Say it how it was, Steve Jobs was plain bat shit crazy.
    - bjornsing 15y ago
      > Steve Jobs was a sucker That's really respectful, yea. (irony alert)
    - soup10 15y ago
      Steve Jobs was a sucker because his values were different than yours? Really?
      - loup-vaillant 15y ago
pjmlp 15y ago
30 vacation days with 40 hour work week is standard in most European countries. Why should we sell out private life to corporations?
Jabbles 15y ago
Is there something intrinsically wrong with giving someone 30 days' holiday per year? Surely this is the same kind of freedom to spend your time as you wish that Google (with its 20% time) is famous for? As you said, in Europe this is common, and the viewpoint that it "smacks of entitlement" is puzzling. Is it just a cultural difference? I'm don't think there is any evidence either way that this affects productivity.
- 3pt14159 15y ago
  In my experience Europeans have a different view of life than North Americans. Especially East coasters. In work I find they are more interested in perfection and creativity, and less so on productivity, output, and efficiency. Thirty days of holiday a year is affordable if North Americans would be fine with houses that were 13% less spacious, but most North Americans I met heavily optimize living space, where Europeans outsource their after hour times to pubs and social atmospheres. An "excellent" amount of vacation in North America is 20 days + 7 or so Government mandated days off. I've yet to meet someone under 35 that has a better deal than that, even in tech, and for most workers it is 10 days + 7.
  - tbrownaw 15y ago
    An "excellent" amount of vacation in North America is 20 days + 7 or so Government mandated days off. I've yet to meet someone under 35 that has a better deal than that, even in tech, and for most workers it is 10 days + 7. 27 years old, with 25 "PTO" days + 6 fixed 1.5 day holidays + 2 fixed 2.5 day holidays. Middle-ish USA (Memphis TN).
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    Interesting observation on how Americans optimize on living space. In a certain way I optimized for more time with my family. That comes as #1 priority. That means to thing: more vacation time and minimum commute to work (it take me 7 minutes to get to work). This mean reducing the living space and living in an older house. Granted I am not American by birth so perhaps it is something in the "blood" as they say. Commutes and spending time in traffic is killing me. It is a dead, useless time, it creates stress and eats away at my life little by little every single day. If you spend 1.5 hours driving to work each way, add that time up for 10 years and you'll be shocked. If I wouldn't have a family I might think twice, but thinking that I could spend that time with them instead and being stuck on the freeway is unbearable to me.
rdtsc 15y ago
> particularly the 30 days paid vacation a year. In Europe maybe. In the US? Good luck. Thanks. I get 25 and in 4 years I'll get 30. You just have to work for the right company. As you get older you'll notice that extra money you make from working at a workplace that is giving you only 2 weeks of vacation and expects you to work 50+ hours a week means less and less. As you are getting closer to death the utility of the money you make goes down. A company that makes you take time away from your family is not worth it. Work is fun and is great but that is a hobby. My family is my real focus in life and I will do all I can to spend as much time with them. I am just saying that you can find places to work that is not a startup (if you don't want to expose yourself and your family to that risk), you just have to look.
fleitz 15y ago
Don't dig for gold, sell shovels. 30 days of paid vacation? This is easily achievable, say OK, normally for this position we pay $150K and 2 weeks vacation, so we'll cut the pay by 4% and give you an extra 2 weeks. Then it turns into $144K and 30 days. Most people realize vacation costs money, those that prefer the cash to vacation simply wait til the end of the year and get cut a cheque for their vacation time.
- Periodic 15y ago
  So, in all the companies I've worked for so far you accrue vacation up to a cap, and if you leave the company you get paid out for vacation you don't take. This has lead to a nice chunk of change when I switched jobs in the past. So what a lot of people don't realize is that you pay for every vacation day. If you would get paid out for it at the end then you are opting to get less money overall for some vacation now. Of course, if you did stay with the company forever then vacation is "free" time, but it could also be considered an investment as it usually scales to salary at time of departure. With this mindset, unpaid time off is the same thing as vacation, you're just moving the cost to the next paycheck instead of your last paycheck. Just take some unpaid time off. If you are valuable and productive it probably won't make a difference to the company and it might even make you more productive in the long run. Anyone have a counter argument to this? I've been spouting it for a while and I'd hate to have a gaping flaw.
  - Kaizyn 15y ago
    Most places won't let you take unpaid time off when you have vacation days left.
  - dlgeek 15y ago
    Once you hit the cap, refusing to take vacation costs you money, as you can't accrue any more.
rickmb 15y ago
Enjoy the Kool-Aid. And the burn-out. No more than 40 hours per week and 30 days paid vacation is not "entitlement", it's common sense. It helps to keep people healthy, happy and productive. QED. Sure, it's doable, and sometimes even necessary (but not even half as much as people like to think) if you're doing a start-up, but as a steady job, it's neither in the employee's nor in the employer's interest.
- roel_v 15y ago
  "QED" I do not think it means what you think it means. Also, please show that 40 h/w and 30 days vacation are the optimum to keep people healthy, happy, productive and employed. If you're just making stuff up, fine, but at least acknowledge it.
hullo 15y ago
Well and also, "rich" is of course relative. I'm absolutely confident a midlevel Google engineer's salary would put him in the top 1% of folks in my hometown (even adjusted for cost of living). And that's just keeping it to the United States.
moocow01 15y ago
"Never working more than 40 hours a week nor staying late? It just smacks of entitlement." Working 40 hours a week is considered being "entitled"? What is entitlement is employers pushing down pay rates by paying on salary while pressuring for extra hours without overtime. Fostering this culture and attitude just collectively serves to push down everyone's pay rate and detracts from the attractiveness of our field.
- fleitz 15y ago
  Then color me entitled. I've had these arguments about how many hours a salaried employee should work. Despite the law saying 40, the lawyer was insistent that they could make me work any amount of hours. The next two weeks I put in 20 hours a week. Then I explained to her that any means any, and that if they didn't like it they could terminate my contract, go spend a month finding a replacement and then explain to the client why they had materially breached the contract. Or they could be reasonable and let me work an amount of hours that is reasonable (and probably more productive). Often when employers demand the most ridiculous of hours are the times in which they are in the poorest of negotiating positions. Businesses use their negotiating position all the time to lower wages, it's not called entitled, it's called business.
  - moocow01 15y ago
    IMHO we need more of this (standing up for ourselves). I think there are some who don't fully realize the extent to which we have been lobbied against by just about everyone involved in this business to allow rates to be suppressed either through sanctioning of unpaid overtime or the facilitation of outsourcing. If you like to work a lot, fine by me - I myself spend a ton of time outside of work building software. But think about how healthy it would be to be paid fairly for going the extra mile when needed on top of your regular duties - its been so long since that has existed in this field that I think hardly any of us have even considered it. I have a few family members who work in other fields in the private sector where overtime still exists - its the only reason I realize we've been hung out to dry by the government and corporations in some respects. Some will argue that the free market removal of protections somehow makes us all better paid - I'm doubtful. I think if we had overtime pay it would create more jobs, promote a better working culture in our sector and attract a hell of a lot more people to want to work here. I wish at least in the mid-size to big businesses, the workaholics would stop looking down at "Joe" for leaving after a solid 8 hours of work and instead would at least start to question why they themselves aren't getting paid extra for staying past 8 hours.
JVIDEL 15y ago
Dude if you are working at Google and _not_ getting paid then the industry would be about to collapse... I think you got a couple of things wrong and that's assuming this was about making an easy million off some code. It is not, the problem here is that most engineers (which aren't working at companies like Google) might not be properly compensated for the work they do, while coworkers in other less critical/relevant areas make more for completing tasks that nowhere as complex as writing decent code. But hey don't look at me! look at all the would-be coders that chose other careers because of this.
ScottBurson 15y ago
The lowering of the barrier to entry means talented engineers are nearly always better off starting their own startup rather than working for yours Yes -- I think a lot of us are starting to figure that out :-)
fholm 15y ago
I'm late to the party, so this is probably not going to be read by anyone, but here's my 0.02$ > Some of the comments in this thread bother me, particularly the 30 days paid vacation a year. In Europe maybe. In the US? Good luck. What's so wrong about 30 days of paid vacation per year? I have 30, I know some (rare though) people that have even more (40+). I work to live, not the other way around. > Never working more than 40 hours a week nor staying late? It just smacks of entitlement. I'm not saying you need to kill yourself for the company but it really is a two-way street. For me, as a someone from Europe (Sweden) this is among the most stupid things I've heard, is it entitlement just because I work as much as my job pays me for? The agreement you sign (usually) says 40 hours per week, 8 hours per day 5 days a week. If they want me to work more, then pay more? And before anyone from the states try to say anything about the economy in Europe and it suffering because people don't work as much, etc. Yours is so much further down the drain we lost sight of it.
paulhauggis 15y ago
"So I work more than I should. Thing is, I'm never looking at my watch because I enjoy what I do" Google and many other companies take advantage of people like you. While I don't ever expect 30 days of paid vacation, expecting me to work past the 40 hours/week (which is most likely in my contract) is outrageous. I work so I can enjoy my time off and anything past 40 hours is my time off. In my 20s, I could make another companies dream my life, but now that I'm in my 30s, I can't do it anymore. Especially when you are not paid any extra and only get a sliver of the overall profits. I will gladly help out in emergency situations, but from your post, it seems like you work late on a regular basis. Oh, and free dinners and fooseball tables don't make up for it either.
bartl 15y ago
>Never working more than 40 hours a week nor staying late? It just smacks of entitlement. I work 38 hours a week. Anything more is considered overtime, and not "part of the job".

by cletus 15y ago

potatolicious 15y ago

I really disagree with the notion of the post here, and I think this part really nails why: > "Thing is, I'm never looking at my watch because I enjoy what I do." So do I. In fact, I love what I do. I'd be extremely disappointed if I had to stop going to work. But it isn't the only thing I enjoy. You want stable hours and liberal time off because there is more enjoyment to your life than writing code and creating software. I dislike long hours not because I dislike what I do at work, but because my life is more than my work. I have other passions, hobbies, people, other things I want to be able to commit to. > "Fine. Whatever. You've made other life choices. I get it." And so have you - so we'd appreciate it if you stop referring to the rest of us as entitled and petulant. I respect your choice to throw the entirety of your life at your primary craft - so respect our choice not to.

kamaal 15y ago
Exactly, One more thing that I didn't like about it was the feeling that its OK for the employer to overwork you and then not compensate it, under the pretext of 'interesting work'. This is an old plan used by most companies. I like doing what I do, but I would love to something else if I had the money to free me up. For most people, their area of least incompetence becomes their passion.
- its_so_on 15y ago
  The plan is a lot older than you think. For millennia, people have married above their station by being interesting.
- skerrit_bwoy 15y ago
  I'll add that if you LOVE doing what you do for 40 years, straight through retirement, you are one odd duck indeed. The idea of "passion for work" is a power play to get folks to put in more for less. Don't get it twisted. Furthermore, workaholism is for people who don't understand what it means to be human. Steve Jobs was a sucker - almost as much as his followers who didn't realize that he was.
  - 0xDECAFFEE 15y ago
    Say it how it was, Steve Jobs was plain bat shit crazy.
  - bjornsing 15y ago
    > Steve Jobs was a sucker That's really respectful, yea. (irony alert)
  - soup10 15y ago
    Steve Jobs was a sucker because his values were different than yours? Really?
    - loup-vaillant 15y ago

pjmlp 15y ago

30 vacation days with 40 hour work week is standard in most European countries. Why should we sell out private life to corporations?

Jabbles 15y ago

Is there something intrinsically wrong with giving someone 30 days' holiday per year? Surely this is the same kind of freedom to spend your time as you wish that Google (with its 20% time) is famous for? As you said, in Europe this is common, and the viewpoint that it "smacks of entitlement" is puzzling. Is it just a cultural difference? I'm don't think there is any evidence either way that this affects productivity.

3pt14159 15y ago
In my experience Europeans have a different view of life than North Americans. Especially East coasters. In work I find they are more interested in perfection and creativity, and less so on productivity, output, and efficiency. Thirty days of holiday a year is affordable if North Americans would be fine with houses that were 13% less spacious, but most North Americans I met heavily optimize living space, where Europeans outsource their after hour times to pubs and social atmospheres. An "excellent" amount of vacation in North America is 20 days + 7 or so Government mandated days off. I've yet to meet someone under 35 that has a better deal than that, even in tech, and for most workers it is 10 days + 7.
- tbrownaw 15y ago
  An "excellent" amount of vacation in North America is 20 days + 7 or so Government mandated days off. I've yet to meet someone under 35 that has a better deal than that, even in tech, and for most workers it is 10 days + 7. 27 years old, with 25 "PTO" days + 6 fixed 1.5 day holidays + 2 fixed 2.5 day holidays. Middle-ish USA (Memphis TN).
- rdtsc 15y ago
  Interesting observation on how Americans optimize on living space. In a certain way I optimized for more time with my family. That comes as #1 priority. That means to thing: more vacation time and minimum commute to work (it take me 7 minutes to get to work). This mean reducing the living space and living in an older house. Granted I am not American by birth so perhaps it is something in the "blood" as they say. Commutes and spending time in traffic is killing me. It is a dead, useless time, it creates stress and eats away at my life little by little every single day. If you spend 1.5 hours driving to work each way, add that time up for 10 years and you'll be shocked. If I wouldn't have a family I might think twice, but thinking that I could spend that time with them instead and being stuck on the freeway is unbearable to me.

rdtsc 15y ago

> particularly the 30 days paid vacation a year. In Europe maybe. In the US? Good luck. Thanks. I get 25 and in 4 years I'll get 30. You just have to work for the right company. As you get older you'll notice that extra money you make from working at a workplace that is giving you only 2 weeks of vacation and expects you to work 50+ hours a week means less and less. As you are getting closer to death the utility of the money you make goes down. A company that makes you take time away from your family is not worth it. Work is fun and is great but that is a hobby. My family is my real focus in life and I will do all I can to spend as much time with them. I am just saying that you can find places to work that is not a startup (if you don't want to expose yourself and your family to that risk), you just have to look.

fleitz 15y ago

Don't dig for gold, sell shovels. 30 days of paid vacation? This is easily achievable, say OK, normally for this position we pay $150K and 2 weeks vacation, so we'll cut the pay by 4% and give you an extra 2 weeks. Then it turns into $144K and 30 days. Most people realize vacation costs money, those that prefer the cash to vacation simply wait til the end of the year and get cut a cheque for their vacation time.

Periodic 15y ago
So, in all the companies I've worked for so far you accrue vacation up to a cap, and if you leave the company you get paid out for vacation you don't take. This has lead to a nice chunk of change when I switched jobs in the past. So what a lot of people don't realize is that you pay for every vacation day. If you would get paid out for it at the end then you are opting to get less money overall for some vacation now. Of course, if you did stay with the company forever then vacation is "free" time, but it could also be considered an investment as it usually scales to salary at time of departure. With this mindset, unpaid time off is the same thing as vacation, you're just moving the cost to the next paycheck instead of your last paycheck. Just take some unpaid time off. If you are valuable and productive it probably won't make a difference to the company and it might even make you more productive in the long run. Anyone have a counter argument to this? I've been spouting it for a while and I'd hate to have a gaping flaw.
- Kaizyn 15y ago
  Most places won't let you take unpaid time off when you have vacation days left.
- dlgeek 15y ago
  Once you hit the cap, refusing to take vacation costs you money, as you can't accrue any more.

rickmb 15y ago

Enjoy the Kool-Aid. And the burn-out. No more than 40 hours per week and 30 days paid vacation is not "entitlement", it's common sense. It helps to keep people healthy, happy and productive. QED. Sure, it's doable, and sometimes even necessary (but not even half as much as people like to think) if you're doing a start-up, but as a steady job, it's neither in the employee's nor in the employer's interest.

roel_v 15y ago
"QED" I do not think it means what you think it means. Also, please show that 40 h/w and 30 days vacation are the optimum to keep people healthy, happy, productive and employed. If you're just making stuff up, fine, but at least acknowledge it.

hullo 15y ago

Well and also, "rich" is of course relative. I'm absolutely confident a midlevel Google engineer's salary would put him in the top 1% of folks in my hometown (even adjusted for cost of living). And that's just keeping it to the United States.

moocow01 15y ago

"Never working more than 40 hours a week nor staying late? It just smacks of entitlement." Working 40 hours a week is considered being "entitled"? What is entitlement is employers pushing down pay rates by paying on salary while pressuring for extra hours without overtime. Fostering this culture and attitude just collectively serves to push down everyone's pay rate and detracts from the attractiveness of our field.

fleitz 15y ago
Then color me entitled. I've had these arguments about how many hours a salaried employee should work. Despite the law saying 40, the lawyer was insistent that they could make me work any amount of hours. The next two weeks I put in 20 hours a week. Then I explained to her that any means any, and that if they didn't like it they could terminate my contract, go spend a month finding a replacement and then explain to the client why they had materially breached the contract. Or they could be reasonable and let me work an amount of hours that is reasonable (and probably more productive). Often when employers demand the most ridiculous of hours are the times in which they are in the poorest of negotiating positions. Businesses use their negotiating position all the time to lower wages, it's not called entitled, it's called business.
- moocow01 15y ago
  IMHO we need more of this (standing up for ourselves). I think there are some who don't fully realize the extent to which we have been lobbied against by just about everyone involved in this business to allow rates to be suppressed either through sanctioning of unpaid overtime or the facilitation of outsourcing. If you like to work a lot, fine by me - I myself spend a ton of time outside of work building software. But think about how healthy it would be to be paid fairly for going the extra mile when needed on top of your regular duties - its been so long since that has existed in this field that I think hardly any of us have even considered it. I have a few family members who work in other fields in the private sector where overtime still exists - its the only reason I realize we've been hung out to dry by the government and corporations in some respects. Some will argue that the free market removal of protections somehow makes us all better paid - I'm doubtful. I think if we had overtime pay it would create more jobs, promote a better working culture in our sector and attract a hell of a lot more people to want to work here. I wish at least in the mid-size to big businesses, the workaholics would stop looking down at "Joe" for leaving after a solid 8 hours of work and instead would at least start to question why they themselves aren't getting paid extra for staying past 8 hours.

JVIDEL 15y ago

Dude if you are working at Google and _not_ getting paid then the industry would be about to collapse... I think you got a couple of things wrong and that's assuming this was about making an easy million off some code. It is not, the problem here is that most engineers (which aren't working at companies like Google) might not be properly compensated for the work they do, while coworkers in other less critical/relevant areas make more for completing tasks that nowhere as complex as writing decent code. But hey don't look at me! look at all the would-be coders that chose other careers because of this.

ScottBurson 15y ago

The lowering of the barrier to entry means talented engineers are nearly always better off starting their own startup rather than working for yours Yes -- I think a lot of us are starting to figure that out :-)

fholm 15y ago

I'm late to the party, so this is probably not going to be read by anyone, but here's my 0.02$ > Some of the comments in this thread bother me, particularly the 30 days paid vacation a year. In Europe maybe. In the US? Good luck. What's so wrong about 30 days of paid vacation per year? I have 30, I know some (rare though) people that have even more (40+). I work to live, not the other way around. > Never working more than 40 hours a week nor staying late? It just smacks of entitlement. I'm not saying you need to kill yourself for the company but it really is a two-way street. For me, as a someone from Europe (Sweden) this is among the most stupid things I've heard, is it entitlement just because I work as much as my job pays me for? The agreement you sign (usually) says 40 hours per week, 8 hours per day 5 days a week. If they want me to work more, then pay more? And before anyone from the states try to say anything about the economy in Europe and it suffering because people don't work as much, etc. Yours is so much further down the drain we lost sight of it.

paulhauggis 15y ago

"So I work more than I should. Thing is, I'm never looking at my watch because I enjoy what I do" Google and many other companies take advantage of people like you. While I don't ever expect 30 days of paid vacation, expecting me to work past the 40 hours/week (which is most likely in my contract) is outrageous. I work so I can enjoy my time off and anything past 40 hours is my time off. In my 20s, I could make another companies dream my life, but now that I'm in my 30s, I can't do it anymore. Especially when you are not paid any extra and only get a sliver of the overall profits. I will gladly help out in emergency situations, but from your post, it seems like you work late on a regular basis. Oh, and free dinners and fooseball tables don't make up for it either.

bartl 15y ago

>Never working more than 40 hours a week nor staying late? It just smacks of entitlement. I work 38 hours a week. Anything more is considered overtime, and not "part of the job".