4 ms·

This seems strictly worse than a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter assuming the same 40 hour week. Are there lifestyle advantages?

by codex 13y ago

dangrossman 13y ago
What about a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter would be better? If you think they're strictly better, there must be some huge downside to my lifestyle I mentioned that I don't see. They offer worse hours, less pay, less autonomy, higher cost of living, and they're on the wrong end of the country if I want to keep close ties to relatives.
- codex 13y ago
  The compensation at these is substantially better than what you've mentioned. Some offer regional offices around the country and world. I can see how the extra autonomy and reduced workload would be nice, but I'm not sure you can judge without trying both.
  - goldenkey 13y ago
    It's the freedom. You're a ball on a chain at pretty much any company.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    Glassdoor/Salary.com say an experienced Google software engineer makes $150k/year (including benefits and bonuses). That'd be a big pay cut. So would paying more to rent a one-bedroom apartment out there than I pay to mortgage my 4-bedroom detached house. As for "trying both", I have. I did the internship rounds while in college. Spent 6 months on the west coast with Microsoft, and a year at two smaller companies, as a full-time software engineer. There's nothing about employment I miss. You could double the salary and I wouldn't trade lives with an employee at any of those companies. I wake up in the morning without an alarm, decide what I want to work on, program in my PJs, work as long as I care to, answer a few customer e-mails, and I'm done for the day. Some days I flip the schedule and shop/socialize/veg in the morning/afternoon, then work late at night. If I want a day or a month off, I just take it. If I'm building something new, like the two months or so I spent on Improvely, I probably work about 4 hours a day, which is the most number of productive hours I ever got while working for someone else 8 hours a day. That's 1300 hours a year of time wasted on commutes, meetings, endless e-mails, employee reviews, forced socialization with coworkers, and kissing up to managers so you rank well for bonuses and get better projects. Ugh. There is one downside to what I do. I'm on call to keep the servers running 24/7. That means I pay for some monitoring that can SMS me if something fails, and I carry a Surface Pro in the trunk of my car so that even if I'm away from home I can get to a computer. It's a once-a-year type responsibility. Had a hard drive crash in one server this year, and a power supply pooped out last year. Not a terrible burden.
    - ericthegoodking 13y ago
      cool! not many get the sort of freedom you have!

This seems strictly worse than a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter assuming the same 40 hour week. Are there lifestyle advantages?

by codex 13y ago

This seems strictly worse than a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter assuming the same 40 hour week. Are there lifestyle advantages?

dangrossman 13y ago

What about a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter would be better? If you think they're strictly better, there must be some huge downside to my lifestyle I mentioned that I don't see. They offer worse hours, less pay, less autonomy, higher cost of living, and they're on the wrong end of the country if I want to keep close ties to relatives.

codex 13y ago
The compensation at these is substantially better than what you've mentioned. Some offer regional offices around the country and world. I can see how the extra autonomy and reduced workload would be nice, but I'm not sure you can judge without trying both.
- goldenkey 13y ago
  It's the freedom. You're a ball on a chain at pretty much any company.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  Glassdoor/Salary.com say an experienced Google software engineer makes $150k/year (including benefits and bonuses). That'd be a big pay cut. So would paying more to rent a one-bedroom apartment out there than I pay to mortgage my 4-bedroom detached house. As for "trying both", I have. I did the internship rounds while in college. Spent 6 months on the west coast with Microsoft, and a year at two smaller companies, as a full-time software engineer. There's nothing about employment I miss. You could double the salary and I wouldn't trade lives with an employee at any of those companies. I wake up in the morning without an alarm, decide what I want to work on, program in my PJs, work as long as I care to, answer a few customer e-mails, and I'm done for the day. Some days I flip the schedule and shop/socialize/veg in the morning/afternoon, then work late at night. If I want a day or a month off, I just take it. If I'm building something new, like the two months or so I spent on Improvely, I probably work about 4 hours a day, which is the most number of productive hours I ever got while working for someone else 8 hours a day. That's 1300 hours a year of time wasted on commutes, meetings, endless e-mails, employee reviews, forced socialization with coworkers, and kissing up to managers so you rank well for bonuses and get better projects. Ugh. There is one downside to what I do. I'm on call to keep the servers running 24/7. That means I pay for some monitoring that can SMS me if something fails, and I carry a Surface Pro in the trunk of my car so that even if I'm away from home I can get to a computer. It's a once-a-year type responsibility. Had a hard drive crash in one server this year, and a power supply pooped out last year. Not a terrible burden.
  - ericthegoodking 13y ago
    cool! not many get the sort of freedom you have!