61–70 of 89 posts
To be honest this is stupid this has hit the front-page because there are so many shit jobs out in the world. And you can't complain for working at one of the biggest tech companies.
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As someone who until Oct last year worked weekends and weekdays getting up at 2:30 am to bust my ass in a bakery for dismal pay and virtually no social life due to the hours - I work part time as a junior developer now and looking back at my old life I don't know how the hell I did it. It motivates me to do the best I can each day so I don't end up back there.
Similar experience as an ex Chef. 60+ hour weeks, 5 days a week spread over various split shifts (so rarely 2 whole days off, and half days never really feel like a break). Working for what comes out as less than minimum wage as salaried. In part because of this, I find it really difficult to deal with people I work with complaining about pay/bonuses/hours etc, because imo what I do now is way easier and probably les…
I get what you're saying and that you likely don't mean any malice, but just in case: It isn't a competition to see who can have the worst working conditions.
That kind of rhetoric is the same that those with capital use to suppress wages/benefits because it's obviously profitable in the long run. It's a manipulation: Many people want to be seen as industrious, and telling someone they're entitled because they want an extra vacation day a year is a powerful manipulation that works much of the time.
Don't be manipulated. The company is almost assuredly making a huge return on your employment. Don't be afraid to assert your right to some of it.
Then: Get up at 6am, go to work at grocery store. Get paid $7 an hour. Get out at 1pm, go to school. Go back to grocery store at 7 work till 12. Wake up do it again. Weekends nope. Holidays nope. Now: Wake up at 8 get to work at like 8:45 work till 6 or 7. Sit in air conditioning all day at a computer. Free lunch. Go home, don't worry about anything. No tests to study for, no worrying about paying rent. Holidays off.…
The months before, during and after interview season were the worst. I had to add 10 hours a week to study 1-2 months beforehand. Then during the interview season, I had to miss classes to go on 7 hour east to west coast flights, with return flights landing at 3 AM local time. After the interviewing season ended, there were mountains of work from missing classes and neglecting school work.
Now it's 10 AM - 7:30 PM (including meal time, I never eat at my desk) with free breakfast, lunch and dinner with no deadlines to worry about. During the undergrad years, I was studying by memorizing the answers to all permutations of a problem because of stress and multiple deadlines a week, but now I have the time to understand the how's and why's of the questions and answers.
Also the money that can effectively be used buy time is nice. I can afford to pay people to fix my toilet/unclog my sink/build IKEA furniture/etc. and have the money to order grocery delivery/drop-off laundry/take-out/etc.
While a lot of the stories are pretty much "this insane thing is considered normal around here", there's some that I feel are due to management and should be changed - long hours or not. > harsh deadlines, huge backlog of tasks, fear to fail This happens everywhere. Deadlines exist because customers exist. All backlogs grow until they're silly. Companies may have a fear to fail. But if you have multiple engineers and…
It doesn't happen everywhere.
I work for Pivotal. In my first month I took a train from NYC to Philadelphia to take a weekend course I was interested in. I left the office at 6pm sharp, when we close. At 7pm the train pulled out of the station. I was bored, so I opened my laptop and logged into my work email.
I bounced a few emails back and forth with client devs, who will still in their office. Then at 8pm I closed my laptop and continued merrily on my way.
On the following Monday I was told, in no uncertain terms, to never work after hours again.
The latest I've worked in the office is 6.30pm. Because I thought I'd broken our public cloud. By 6.15pm I had multiple people wandering up and asking why I was still working.
We just now introduced pager duty for teams with operational dependencies. And the policy is: if you have a reason not to answer, then don't.
I am constantly amazed at what people will put up with. Really amazed.
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Yes, indeed, turns out BI just cherry-picked the worst part.
Ten days per quarter, or forty days per year, in few-day shots at a time. That amounts to a monthly shift, and is just frequent/heavy enough to have a real impact on your personal life. No doubt the "extra" pay (let's be real, you'll never be in the inner circle if you forgo the duty) is barely enough to be noticeable.
Then: Get up at 6am, go to work at grocery store. Get paid $7 an hour. Get out at 1pm, go to school. Go back to grocery store at 7 work till 12. Wake up do it again. Weekends nope. Holidays nope. Now: Wake up at 8 get to work at like 8:45 work till 6 or 7. Sit in air conditioning all day at a computer. Free lunch. Go home, don't worry about anything. No tests to study for, no worrying about paying rent. Holidays off.…
Agreed. As soon as I start complaining about how hard and stressful my job is, I always try to remember how lucky and privileged I am, in the grand scheme of things.
"I'm training my off-shore replacement, but at least I'm doing it in air-conditioning!"
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I'm pretty sure it's just USA. I make a good salary in the North East of UK and I was told multiple times by people from US that I'm crazy to work for that kind of money(If you moved to US, you would easily make 3-4x as much!). And sure, maybe it's true. But I enjoy working 37.5h/week, having 25 paid holiday days a year, unlimited paid sick leave and having a job that I actually like doing - plus I don't really have…
Indeed. Your salary is relative. If you're earning 3-4x more but have to pay 3-4x more on all your expenses, are you really richer? Factor in long hours in general, unpaid overtime, crunch times, a poor work/life ratio in general, etc. It seems like the scales are balanced all wrong. That's my perception as another tech worker living in the UK. I'd love to hear an argument as to why that isn't the case.
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Indeed. Your salary is relative. If you're earning 3-4x more but have to pay 3-4x more on all your expenses, are you really richer? Factor in long hours in general, unpaid overtime, crunch times, a poor work/life ratio in general, etc. It seems like the scales are balanced all wrong. That's my perception as another tech worker living in the UK. I'd love to hear an argument as to why that isn't the case.
Assuming you had money left over to save, yes, you would be. You would be banking 3-4x as much money, if income and expenses remained proportional
Imagine you're making $100 per month right now and spending $95 of it. So you're saving $5 per month.
You move to the US and start making $400 per month, but your expenses skyrocket to $380 per month. But you're now saving $20 per month -- four times as much as you were before.
Now imagine those savings numbers were $1k and $4k, and the difference becomes a pretty big deal.
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That's also the reason why I love being on part-time. I only get 70% salary, but I get 12 hours more time each week for my own projects, or just for hanging out in the city before sundown.
Have you aways worked part time as a developer? I didn't think it was a common thing but sounds lovely. Can you talk about it some more?
I did have to bust my ass a bit to get to the point where I had the skillset and the knowledge necessary to do it, but I'm glad I did. That I am at this point is probably some of why I feel freer to criticize the tech industry--I've been on the bottom and I've since largely stepped out, and it's ugly looking in on it.