Ask HN: Advancing career without working over-hours?

I am almost 30 and started programming when I was 18. I am about to become a father and I already feel that I can't work as much as my younger colleagues.

At my current employee, people get promoted who put the most hours in, since they then also end up putting more work down and knowing the systems better. I get it, when you work 60 hours each week, you will be the go-to person.

But I wonder what people do with familys? I have friends in the big FAANG companies and smaller open source companies. The hours of work is everywhere the same. You put in over hours and nobody complains since you know, you got a pretty good job and you can't complain.

After so many years however, I lost the ability to oversee bad (project) management and see it more of a: This is badly managed, you should hire two more people for this team etc.

I seem to be in the minority though. So I wonder what other people with families do: Are you switching companies to have saner work hours and "downgrade" your work environment? I really like working with ambitious people, but they I haven't found a company yet with sane hours but also with people eager to learn. I somehow manage to do both, but still fall behind inside bigger corporations.

Any advice or companies who manage both?

I have never worked more than 40h a week and always climbed the ladder.

Look for other companies I guess ? A good signal for me is when there are loads of people with families in the company whom have worked there for more than 5-10 years.

A red signal is a minority of people being experienced or having families.

From my point of view, if someone works 60h/week and you work 40h/week, yes, he's working 50% more than you, he's dealing with more situations, more clients, more meetings, more problems... if you and the other one have the same intelligence, he'll probably move faster. Ok, probably this is a simplification and the curve can get saturated at one point, because 9 pregnant women can't produce a baby in 1 month... but maybe the saturation point is not 60h/week, maybe it's higher.

In my case, I've accepted that my career is going to advance more slowly, I've weighed up my work/career and my life/happiness/family, and the last one weighed more.

Of course, as other colleagues have said, working smart, finding clients, thinking 80/20, focusing on goals, looking for patterns... and it will probably make the curve more vertical.

Where do you live? I think another variable is the work culture of the country, for example in Spain the work culture is now evolving to allow a better balance between life and work. In other countries in Europe, for example, this mentality of working without overtime is fully established.

You are confusing effort with impact. They are not the same.

Working more hours can lead to bigger impact, but generally that scales linearly. The better route to success and promotion is to focus on the inflection points: the bits that actually move the needle for the entire team / company.

Weirdly, as you become more senior in impact you may actually end up working less. If you have a strong record of delivering the right things then you can push back on unrealistic expectations. In fact, refusing overwork (except on occasion) is a powerful signalling mechanism.

If are effective at your job and your management team doesn't understand then it's time to find a new gig.

No relation to getting promoted.

If the company is growing quickly you will be promoted quickly. If it is getting smaller people get laid-off demoted. If it's holding steady than working extra hours might make you more valuable if someone leaves.

Working 20 more hours only marginally increases your chances. Marry the owners daughter would work better.