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You don't have to work at an early stage startup - in fact most people don't. But some people do wish to participate in an early stage startup, and plenty do in

You don't have to work at an early stage startup - in fact most people don't. But some people do wish to participate in an early stage startup, and plenty do in Europe as well. > So you have a good work/life balance. I currently work 4 hours a week. And this is why when I was a PM, we shut down our Amsterdam office and shifted it to Praha, Bucharest, and Warsaw. You won't find as many people who will complain about a 40 hour workweek while earning €80k TCs

thesuavefactor 10mo ago
Working more hours however =/= getting more done. In fact, some experiments show the opposite (within boundaries of course).
- alephnerd 10mo ago
  I agree, but the issue is the impetus behind the statement. The tone which that poster took and the default negative assumption is a negative trait to most hiring managers - especially at the early stage. At an early stage organization, you want your employees to be self-motivated but also open to pull crunchtime if needed (eg. customer escalation, rolled up product launch, pivot)
- throwaway2037 10mo ago
  I disagree. It is more accurate to say that more working hours is a continuum of productivity. Imagine that you have two nearly identical software engineers. One works 40 hours per week and the other 41 hours per week. Which will be more productive? Very likely the 41 hour per week engineer. Now, if you compare 50 vs 51, then 60 vs 61, and so forth, the productivity gap will become much smaller, possibly hard to measure after 60. I have witnessed a few young engineers in my career with simply unbelievable work ethic and talents that could work 80+ hours a week for months on end. It was amazing to see, and their output was unmatched. From personal experience, I worked like a dog in my younger years for two reasons: (1) To become a better engineer, you need to make a lot of mistakes and fix them yourself. (2) Much junior engineering work is just time in front of the screen pounding out simple features for a CRUD app. The more that you complete, the quicker you get promoted.
  - avcloudy 10mo ago
    You're making a feely argument for a phenomenon that has evidence. The evidence is that there's a max amount of work you do per week, and the more you work the less you do per hour - and that max amount is below 40 hours, incidentally. There's effective evidence that people who work 6 hours a day are more productive than people working 8 hours a day, and after 4 hours of active practice, you aren't getting any better. And on top of this, perpetually tired and exhausted people are not at their best. Regardless of whether or not you accept that someone working 41 hours really isn't doing more work than someone doing 40 - you can see that two people working 30 is much better than one person working 60. Working people for long hours is mismanagement, at some level.
Nextgrid 10mo ago
As usual, the problem is not 996 itself but comp. You can get 996, you just have to pay for it. The reason Europeans don't want to do 996 is because the extra effort isn't fairly compensated.
- cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
  Not only is it rarely compensated, it's rarely effective. Software work is bursty and creative, not mechanical and hourly.
  - OhMeadhbh 10mo ago
    you are lucky to have lived a career where that is true. it is largely true in the states and sometimes true in startups. there are corners of the world where it is less true than one would hope.
    - cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
      and the quality of software produced that way shows
    - Nextgrid 10mo ago
      > there are corners of the world where it is less true than one would hope. And it's readily visible in terms of software quality and technological capability of the company.
  - Nextgrid 10mo ago
    I think the occasional burst of activity can and does work, but it’s a budget you need to spend strategically and let it recover. Constant 996 indeed won’t work.
- OhMeadhbh 10mo ago
  if you surround yourself with people who are only motivated by money, you will believe that everyone is only motivated by money. if you surround yourself with people who are motivated by a creative urge to build something they can be proud of, you may start to believe that this is everyone's motivation. it is often useful to think of people as only being motivated by one thing, to see clearly how application of that thing might change their behaviour. but if you believe that is the only thing that motivates them, you will have a very simplistic (and eventually incorrect) model of how they are motivated.
pyrale 10mo ago
> But some people do wish to participate in an early stage startup You don't need to push yourself into burnout as an employee in order to participate in an early stage startup. > earning €80k 80k€ gross is not a lot for a decent SWE in western europe. The reason people complain in Amsterdam is not the hours, it's that your comp is shit.
- hahahahhaah 10mo ago
  140k AUD. In major cities in Australia that is a reasonable mid level salary. I imagine that is good in Prague.
  - pyrale 10mo ago
    It's a much better salary in Czech republic, Poland, etc, yes. 80k a few years ago was the price point at which you would get few Western Europe remote candidate and many Eastern Europe ones.

thesuavefactor 10mo ago

Working more hours however =/= getting more done. In fact, some experiments show the opposite (within boundaries of course).

alephnerd 10mo ago
I agree, but the issue is the impetus behind the statement. The tone which that poster took and the default negative assumption is a negative trait to most hiring managers - especially at the early stage. At an early stage organization, you want your employees to be self-motivated but also open to pull crunchtime if needed (eg. customer escalation, rolled up product launch, pivot)
throwaway2037 10mo ago
I disagree. It is more accurate to say that more working hours is a continuum of productivity. Imagine that you have two nearly identical software engineers. One works 40 hours per week and the other 41 hours per week. Which will be more productive? Very likely the 41 hour per week engineer. Now, if you compare 50 vs 51, then 60 vs 61, and so forth, the productivity gap will become much smaller, possibly hard to measure after 60. I have witnessed a few young engineers in my career with simply unbelievable work ethic and talents that could work 80+ hours a week for months on end. It was amazing to see, and their output was unmatched. From personal experience, I worked like a dog in my younger years for two reasons: (1) To become a better engineer, you need to make a lot of mistakes and fix them yourself. (2) Much junior engineering work is just time in front of the screen pounding out simple features for a CRUD app. The more that you complete, the quicker you get promoted.
- avcloudy 10mo ago
  You're making a feely argument for a phenomenon that has evidence. The evidence is that there's a max amount of work you do per week, and the more you work the less you do per hour - and that max amount is below 40 hours, incidentally. There's effective evidence that people who work 6 hours a day are more productive than people working 8 hours a day, and after 4 hours of active practice, you aren't getting any better. And on top of this, perpetually tired and exhausted people are not at their best. Regardless of whether or not you accept that someone working 41 hours really isn't doing more work than someone doing 40 - you can see that two people working 30 is much better than one person working 60. Working people for long hours is mismanagement, at some level.

Nextgrid 10mo ago

As usual, the problem is not 996 itself but comp. You can get 996, you just have to pay for it. The reason Europeans don't want to do 996 is because the extra effort isn't fairly compensated.

cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
Not only is it rarely compensated, it's rarely effective. Software work is bursty and creative, not mechanical and hourly.
- OhMeadhbh 10mo ago
  you are lucky to have lived a career where that is true. it is largely true in the states and sometimes true in startups. there are corners of the world where it is less true than one would hope.
  - cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
    and the quality of software produced that way shows
  - Nextgrid 10mo ago
    > there are corners of the world where it is less true than one would hope. And it's readily visible in terms of software quality and technological capability of the company.
- Nextgrid 10mo ago
  I think the occasional burst of activity can and does work, but it’s a budget you need to spend strategically and let it recover. Constant 996 indeed won’t work.
OhMeadhbh 10mo ago
if you surround yourself with people who are only motivated by money, you will believe that everyone is only motivated by money. if you surround yourself with people who are motivated by a creative urge to build something they can be proud of, you may start to believe that this is everyone's motivation. it is often useful to think of people as only being motivated by one thing, to see clearly how application of that thing might change their behaviour. but if you believe that is the only thing that motivates them, you will have a very simplistic (and eventually incorrect) model of how they are motivated.

pyrale 10mo ago

> But some people do wish to participate in an early stage startup You don't need to push yourself into burnout as an employee in order to participate in an early stage startup. > earning €80k 80k€ gross is not a lot for a decent SWE in western europe. The reason people complain in Amsterdam is not the hours, it's that your comp is shit.

hahahahhaah 10mo ago
140k AUD. In major cities in Australia that is a reasonable mid level salary. I imagine that is good in Prague.
- pyrale 10mo ago
  It's a much better salary in Czech republic, Poland, etc, yes. 80k a few years ago was the price point at which you would get few Western Europe remote candidate and many Eastern Europe ones.