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> I know several top 1% engineers in the Valley who disengage from recruiting processes when 996 or something similar is mentioned. A few years back, on this

• cmrdporcupine 9mo ago
  What happened? Started with Musk purging half his staff ... I've been around long enough in this industry to see the pendulum swing back and forth a few times. The peak of 2020/2021 was the epitome of "spoiled tech worker" but now we're well on our way the other side, I'd say.
• Herring 9mo ago
  It’s better to look at what didn’t happen: unionization. Americans often remind me of Steve Jobs trying to cure cancer using diets & acupuncture. You know what the solutions are, you just don’t like them.
  • bob001 9mo ago
    Until recently American engineers made a lot of money at comparatively cushy jobs. A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat.
    • al_borland 9mo ago
      Not just that, but the union would likely end up capping their salary much lower so the wealth can be spread around. How hard is the 10x engineer on the team going to work when the compensation is the same regardless? This is where people end up working multiple jobs, if they can keep up with their peers only working one day per week.
      • denkmoon 9mo ago
        That's right, no more "10xers" working 80 hr weeks making those who can't or won't look unproductive.
      • KittenInABox 9mo ago
        Couldn't unions just follow actors' guilds and the like where there are no salary caps?
        • karaterobot 9mo ago
          When we're looking to the actors guilds for direction, you know the future of our industry might be in trouble.
        • bob001 9mo ago
          It's not your choice. It's the choice of the average union member.
      • data-ottawa 9mo ago
        I find it hard to believe workers would vote for a union to lower or cap their wages. That feels like a total straw man. In my experience unions suck when they overemphasize fairness over real world practicalities (see almost anything seniority based). They don't have to be that way.
        • bob001 9mo ago
          There is a large pay disparity. Why wouldn't someone at the 50th percentile vote to have those at the 95th get lower salaries so the 50th percentile goes up a bit?
          • acdha 9mo ago
            That’s not how unions work negotiations work, and the younger worker getting paid less is 100% thinking that they’ll be the senior guy some day.
    • Herring 9mo ago
      Again see Steve. Something can look like a good position and still rapidly deteriorate. This one wasn’t that rapid either, you had plenty of warning. I remember discussing inequality with friends in 2014, and probably knew about it since Occupy Wall Street (2011). Or earlier.
      • bob001 9mo ago
        Engineers were the privileged class. They were part of the group occupy wall street wanted to bring down. Not hard to guess why they didn't want that.
        • mothballed 9mo ago
          I would say more precisely, engineers are closer to the managerial or capital wielding class; usually the adversary of the union.
          • OhMeadhbh 9mo ago
            i disagree. i also disagree that most people developing tech solutions for startups are engineers or are applying an engineering discipline. but i would agree that the majority of people in valley tech firms are closer to the rentier class than they are to working engineers.
          • nebula8804 9mo ago
            They are closer but they are not part of the class so does it really matter how close they are? Engineer still has to trade their time for wealth in the form of work. Capital class has assets that work for them.
            • bob001 9mo ago
              To me the only question is if there's a hypothetical revolution who will end up swinging in the wind by their neck and I have no doubt many engineers working for big tech would have been in that group. There's always nice rhetoric and focused rhetoric to not make too many enemies but the people on the ground differentiate a lot less and have in every revolution.
    • nonethewiser 9mo ago
      Still do
    • mji 9mo ago
      Until recently? Now it's 20x at the AI labs instead of 5x at FAANG.
    • Muromec 9mo ago
      >A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat. So... 500k is the normal pay and 2.5mil is the staff+ pay, right? How many people you know actually make that?
      • TuxSH 9mo ago
        SWE rarely earn $100k gross/yr TC in Western European nations. It's closer to $50k~$80k in many cases.
        • KptMarchewa 9mo ago
          It's higher in Poland lol.
          • zipy124 9mo ago
            Source? Levels.fyi puts it at $67k median. Glassdoor puts it at closer to $40k. Neither of these are above the levels given above.
        • Muromec 9mo ago
          I rounded up a bit for nicer numbers, but it's more like 75-95 than 50-80 this year.
          • TuxSH 9mo ago
            For good companies; there are _quite_ a few companies that underpay and not as many interesting job opportunities. Let's just say "at least 2x~2.5" and move on. Also, even if you did not mention it, UK is a bit of a special case (English-speaking countries that has thus been attracting quite a lot of international talent (and companies) at least until recently), I wouldn't put it in the same bucket as EU countries.
            • Muromec 9mo ago
    • ta-asdo989 9mo ago
      I had a job in twenty-nine When everything was going fine I knew the pace was pretty fast But thought that it would always last When organizers came to town I'd always sneer and turn them down I thought the boss was my best friend He'd stick by me to the end Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! Ain't got a word to say He chiseled down my pay Then took my job away "Boom" went the boom one day It made a noise that way I wish I had been wise Next time I'll organize
  • Aurornis 9mo ago
    There are unionized engineer jobs in the United States. Every time this conversation comes up people act like we don’t have any unions, but that’s not true. There are unionized engineering jobs. One of them even tried striking a couple years ago, quite publicly. They ended the strike a couple days later without gaining anything. I think American engineers know their situation and options better than you think.
  • Onavo 9mo ago
    Steve Jobs was also an expert at suppressing software engineering wages. Karma has a funny way of coming around.
  • thedevilslawyer 9mo ago
    Unionization does not happen because it's typically anti-immigrants. It's an unworkable solution, and liking it will magically make it work.
    • oenton 9mo ago
      Curious, what do you mean by 'anti-immigrants'?
  • raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    Exactly how do you think unions would help for tech workers?
• tyre 9mo ago
  I would tell a recruiter directly that 996 is a red flag. Prior to that it was cracked (née 10x (née ninja)) engineers or sigma grindset or whatever. It's performative. If you bring people together to build something that they actually give a shit about, you'll out-perform a group of people who are grinding out of fear. And you'll _definitely_ out-perform the kinds of people who are buzzword heavy.
  • OhMeadhbh 9mo ago
    i agree. but. there's something in the behaviour of these unicorns that should be examined. the idea that an engineer can be a ninja, 10x or unicorn independent of the processes of their environment and working group is laughable. i have known several people who were identified as "highly productive" and they all had some individual traits like a) they were very good with individual time management, b) were not afraid to say when they didn't understand something and c) were all pretty smart. (and d, knew how to give good code review comments without pissing people off.) but... they also needed an environment where they could push back and say things like "i do not feel participating in today's 1-on-1 meeting (or meeting with product management) is a good use of my time", where task design gave them chunks of work that were appropriate and they were given the freedom to identify (and avoid) "wicked" problems. which is to say... i don't think the story of the ninja/unicorn is complete fantasy, but management has to understand how it's real and craft an environment where an engineer's inner-unicorn can emerge.
    • tyre 9mo ago
      I've been an early employee (sub 10 and 20) in two unicorns and another (a presidential campaign) that didn't have a valuation but did the equivalent. People did not work 40 hours per week, and I feel comfortable saying that the companies could not have been as successful if people had. The common threads were: - incredible ICs - founders who spiked in the most important areas for that market - a mission that everyone truly believed in - a culture of people who deeply cared about one another but were comfortable pushing back (as you said!) It's incredibly rare to find all of these together. I agree that management is responsible for helping others thrive, but not necessarily that they should shape the environment to fit any engineer. Some people want things (projects, challenges, roles) that don't make sense in that company's context. It's okay, especially when it's hard, to agree that this isn't the place for someone.
• huflungdung 9mo ago
  [dead]
• Aurornis 9mo ago
  > And now, the strongest claim this blog can make is that some engineers in the US would disengage from recruiting? The statement was specifically about top 1% engineers in Silicon Valley. That’s a very, very small subset of all engineers in the US. The pointy end of the talent spectrum in SV is a very weird place because it has had a lot of engineers for whom work is life. Living at the office and having coworkers working 24/7 might be something they like. I’m not condoning this or saying it’s common. It’s not common. However, once you narrow down to the extreme outliers in the long tail of talent distribution you will find a lot of people who are downright obsessive about their work. Their jobs also pay north of $1mm including equity, so spending a few years of their life 996ing on a topic they love with energized people isn’t exactly a bad deal for them. In general, if a recruiter told an average engineer that 996 was expected that would be the end of that conversation. Average US engineers are not signing up for 996 for average compensation.
  • the_mar 9mo ago
    I am this person (not a genius or whatever) but work is absolutely life for me. I still absolutely resent the 996 culture and would never do that. I'd like to have agency when I want to abuse myself
• AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
  Sentiment is changing If you had enough time to look back through my post history, you’ll find back in 2021 2022 I was loud as hell Screaming from as high as I could on this board primarily that we need to be doing everything we possibly could do to unionize, build labor cooperatives etc. and absolutely nobody gave a shit. I would get roasted every time and that’s fine I know what I’m doing. but the attitudes are changing and while it’s frustrating to have to deal with that I feel like being a Hector on this topic is just the entry fee. I’m extremely dissatisfied at the pace and scale and lack of leaders and organization and push back and etc… so I expect the next two years to be really really really bad and the hope is that people wake up at a large enough scale that they actually are able to affect something but I don’t have a lot of hope for that. What I describe is not real activism imo but at least I can tell you from first hand documentation that sentiment is changing.
• exabrial 9mo ago
  Former Alibaba employee for a season of my life. I have to be careful with my next sentences because on the internet because it's easy for people to read things in a vacuum and interpret in the worse possible way, so don't do that because thats not how I mean it. The 996 hours are not useful work. It's appearance over productivity.
  • numpy-thagoras 9mo ago
    Yep, if you were to watch what happens at a 996 shop, it's people literally living their at-home life with their fellow employees for most of the time.
    • Gravityloss 9mo ago
      Why is this theater kept up?
      • nemomarx 9mo ago
        Bosses like it, and maybe it keeps people from interviewing for other jobs?
      • exabrial 9mo ago
        It's societal. I don't really have a way I can translate it for someone raised in the Western culture. Counter example: While westerners would look at 996 with confusion, Chinese would look at Western "intellectual property" constructs with confusion. To them it's not "copying", it's they figured out a better way to do it and the rest is fair game.
  • burnt-resistor 9mo ago
    The mythology is: - 30 people between the ages of 18 and 25 sharing a tiny, single office room working on folding tables and CAT 7 cables hanging from the ceiling - Whiteboards from floor to ceiling on every wall covered in scribbles and diagrams in red, black, and blue pen, half-erased with some "SAVE FOREVER" circled parts - Typing really fast on loud, clicky keyboards - Doing nothing but coding or working 18 hours/day with no life at all - Living at work in sleeping bags - Surviving on cold delivered pizza, hot instant ramen, and coffee with only a mini fridge, a microwave, and a coffee pot - Spending absurdly little money on everything The problem is that if even one gigabusiness began vaguely in such a manner, someone will declare some aspect(s) were "essential" and try to cargo cult the "hard work" pseudo-signals without considering sustainability or that it's even necessary. There are far too many engineers who will overwork themselves until they reach burn out or will not maximize real productivity by working less and taking breaks/vacations, and then won't want to work on a venture at all anymore. PSA: Don't be a sucker and don't work for below market rates. Eschew working for other people and megacorps when possible; form unions, worker-owned co-ops, and/or get significant amounts of preferred liquidation-preference shares.
• JTbane 9mo ago
  The fact that 996 is coming to America is an ill omen for worker's rights and, well, society in general IMO.