6 ms·

Great article. More people need to stand up to their bosses when long hours are requested day in and day out. I had a chat with my boss just the other day aft

• atmosx 13y ago
  Great comment. Too bad it doesn't apply to my reality. Still, I loved it.
• Nicholas_C 13y ago
  >This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. Maybe you live in Silicon Valley, but not everyone does, and not everyone is an engineer. In a lot of professions grinding out 60+ hours is the only way to set yourself apart from coworkers and move up the ladder. Moving upwards may not be that important for an engineer who starts at $100k, but for most people who start out in the $50-$70k range it's the only way to enjoy a higher standard of living, better vacations, and pay off student loans faster. I would like to work 40 hours every week but I don't want to be stuck making <$100k for the rest of my life.
  • pyrrhotech 13y ago
    My comment was mostly targeted to young silicon valley engineers with big salaries but often pushed to work long hours and feel uncomfortable but don't know how to stand up for themselves. However, I don't think anyone should be consistently working over 60 hours a week for any reason. When I say working, I should clarify that I mean going to an office where you have an authority figure telling you that you have to do x, y, and z for them to get a paycheck. I love programming on my own projects and could see myself "working" on those 60 hours a week, but I'd never work that hard to make anyone else rich. However, even for your own projects, you still need to set aside plenty of time to eat meals with your family, play with your kids (if you have any), eat healthily, exercise, and meditate. Balance of life is the most statistically proven path to increasing your happiness and well-being. For those making less than 6 figures, I don't think working ridiculous hours is the answer. For one if you can't think of anything else, become an engineer! I mean you are already on hacker news, what are you waiting for?
    • Nicholas_C 13y ago
      Ah, yes. > I mean you are already on hacker news, what are you waiting for? Haha, I have definitely considered it. I love programming as a hobby to create neat scripts, automate things, and gather/analyze data, but I enjoy finance as a career. Even the hours aren't too bad as I am working with enjoyable/smart people in my current role.
  • agilebyte 13y ago
    Have you considered moving to a different country where you would have a good standard of living without having to climb up on a ladder?
    • Nicholas_C 13y ago
      I wasn't saying my standard of living was poor, I was saying I'd like an even higher one.
      • judk 13y ago
• RussianCow 13y ago
  It actually makes me uneasy that 40-50 hours is considered "normal". I know 40+ hours a week is very typical for any fulltime job, but that's SO much time. Between that and driving, cooking, sleeping, doing housework, etc, we have practically no free time (or at least I don't). I also don't feel that I'm any more productive after about 30-35 hours a week; anything over that and I may get burned out, which negates any benefit from the extra time. Maybe I'm alone, but I doubt it.
  • pyrrhotech 13y ago
    I agree, I'd actually much prefer 30 or 35 to 40-50, but our society isn't set up well for that. There are tons of employers who will pay you market rate for normal effort --- normal being defined as 40-50 hours/week of diligent work. What you can do tho is put up with the 40-50 hours a week for a decade and then have the rest of your life to decide what you want to do with each hour of your day and not worry about how much society thinks you should dedicate to working.
    • georgemcbay 13y ago
      There are many employers who will pay you market rate for 40-50 hours of presence, half of it spent frittering away time on the Internet. But essentially none who will pay you nearly as much for a true solid 20-25 hours of real effort without all the "looking busy" time wasting.
      • pyrrhotech 13y ago
        This too. Another reason I am for financial independence
      • RussianCow 13y ago
        Yeah... I really wish it were the other way around, because I hate wasting all those hours, knowing that nothing good came out of that time.
    • cafard 13y ago
      Someone I know works where a new regime is enforcing hours: 9 to 6. Effectively they have reinvented detention. (NB: don't tell me about Google and Cisco, because this isn't. A fair part of their staff is very effective at 35 hours per week, and another fair part is ineffective at any.)
• wbeckler 13y ago
  You worked all weekend and then your boss gives you back just 2 vacation days? Great job!
  • sliverstorm 13y ago
    You're being sarcastic, but there are times I'd be happy to be able to convert weekends to more vacation days.
• sliverstorm 13y ago
  it costs approximately 20-30k to live a good life... save at least half your paycheck These two things are incompatible for all but high earners. Spend $30k & sock away $30k, pre-taxes that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $85k. Not an obscene salary by any measure, but hardly everyone in their mid twenties is in that position.
  • christiangenco 13y ago
    I'd wager (from various salary polls here, the nature of the tech industry, significant above-average intelligence and a hacker mindset) that the majority of HNers are in a position to save half of their income while living the good life.
  • johnjlocke 13y ago
    It's not what you make, it's what you keep. In SV, it's hard to keep much. That's the trick.
  • BillyMaize 13y ago
    I would agree its a bit unrealistic to be able to save half of what you make, unless you are in a relationship. I only make 52.4k a year in a very low cost of living area but once she starts making some money my living expenses will be so low I think it could easily happen.
• lolwutf 13y ago
  I know we're not supposed to do this around here, but I'll do it anyway.... HEAR! HEAR!
• mikegreco 13y ago
  Hold on... you live and work in silicon valley and you claim you can get by on 30k a year expenses? Horseshit. The cheapest rent I've seen around here is 1500 a month, and that's almost 20 grand a year right there. Add standard utilities, food, insurance, and commuting costs and you're already pushing 30k. That's assuming you don't have student loans to worry about. I totally agree that the power is in our hands, but it is far less simple to make that work then you are letting on. There is a reason salaries in the valley are so high... it's damn expensive to live here. If you're in a position where you may get fired for not putting in 60 hour weeks, more often than not your options are work 60 hour weeks or hope you get another gig before you're forced to move out of the valley.
  • pyrrhotech 13y ago
    Roommates or live in the east bay. Or a tiny space on the peninsula. Those are the only financially responsible choices. Personally I own a house in Hayward I bought for $340k and have a roommate. My direct housing costs are about $1100/month, and total expenses around $2500 including all travel, luxuries, etc. Sure that may not be as fun as renting the $3000/month apartment in SF. You have to make choices. Would you rather achieve financial independence at 35 and live with roommates or in a less desirable neighborhood or be forced to work into your 40s? Not saying either choice is correct for everyone, but I definitely made my mind consciously on that question.
  • judk 13y ago
    Reverse it. The salaries drove up the cost of housing. Standard auction economics.
• 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  > This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. I get 10 emails a week from recruiters and founders trying to get me to come work for them. Don't put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit. 1. To be in the top 5% of earners nationally, you need a household income of more than $180,000/year[1]. In the San Francisco Bay Area (which includes the Peninsula and South Bay), you'd need household income of $350,000 to be in the top 5% of local earners. Most single twenty-something engineers in Silicon Valley are not earning more than either number. 2. Emails from outside recruiters != decent job offers. Recruiters are drawn to warm bodies, so they'll talk to anyone who they think they might be able to put in front of a company. While some companies choose to work with them, keep in mind that because a relatively small percentage of new hires typically come through recruiters, candidates brought to a company via one are often at a disadvantage right off the bat. 3. A lot of companies here, particularly startups, expect work and work-related activities ("culture fit" often involves extracurricular "fun") to be a big part of your life. What that translates to in terms of hours will vary, but if you believe that those founders attempting to lure you away from your current job are offering you a straight 40 hour work week that guarantees you your weekends, you're probably going to be disappointed. I'm not saying "put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit" (it almost never makes sense) but the notion that "you can do whatever you want" and take advantage of the hot job market in Silicon Valley is a bit unrealistic. Based on how your current employer responded to your threat to quit, it sounds like you have made yourself invaluable to your employer. But if you think that a big-name tech company or hot startup would respond as favorably to the same threat because "we have the power, not the employers", I suspect you'd be in for a rude awakening. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-p...
  • nilkn 13y ago
    Regarding (1), it seems you're comparing individual incomes with household incomes. Due to the prevalence of dual-income households, this is a fatal mistake. Two engineers married in Silicon Valley, both one year out of college, will easily hit $180k in combined income, probably even $200k or more. That's why the local 5% mark is as high as $350k for households.
• PaulHoule 13y ago
  I have had some cases where recruiters gave me an easy way out of a bad job. I've had some recruiters place me in a position that doubled my pay and challenged me towards greatness. Another recruiter gave me a really hard sell when I owed the IRS a lot of back taxes... If it wasn't for me they might not have pared down the project plan to something achievable and the might never have gotten the i's dotted and t's crossed and got the product in the hands of the customers, but my boss very specifically denied me recognition for my success. The average recruiter, however, is filling a hole that is left behind by somebody who burned out. He's hoping that you can hit the ground running without any training, which is rarely realistic, particularly considering that 80% of programming work is doing what management expects to deliver 20% of the value. Because they haven't trained any of the other people working on the project you'll find that it's difficult to get any questions answered of the order of "how do I get this build consistently?", "how do I get this to build in less than an hour?", "which module is the right place to add that functionality?", "which applicationContext.xml file actually gets deployed to the assembly and how?" and stuff like that.. In a case like that you're set up to fail and you need to "think different" and start with the 80% of the work that gets you 20% of the way there, and then when the special job comes around where you're the best in the world you can sprout solutions like mushrooms.