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The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

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Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#61

Post by Ntrails »

jnordwick wrote: post #30

Let me come in with a contradictory opinion especially on the overtime. You don't work for your current salary, you work for your next one. If you are one of those 9 to 5 ers, don't complain when the guy working 60 hours and more gets that promotion over you. The higher up the ladder you go, the more that will be required of you. Also, startups or high paying jobs will require more of you since you will get getting m…

> If you are one of those 9 to 5 ers, don't complain when the guy working 60 hours and more gets that promotion over you.

And he shouldn't complain that the guy who works 75 hours and fucks everyone else over at the first opportunity gets a promotion over him.

And the management shouldn't complain when they discover they've created a shitty combative environment where everyone sabotages each other and points fingers of blame.

Etc.

Etc.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#62

Post by Practicality »

pjc50 wrote: post #43
ThePawnBreak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

Promotions are a myth told to people to get them to work harder, aren't they? They're quite rare and usually come with moderate increments. Whereas the best way to increase your salary is to move jobs. Salary is only vaguely linked to job title. (I was once promoted en passant , when my first employer wished to inflate the number of Senior Developers assigned to a consulting proposal...)

I've never seen en passant used outside of chess before. It makes sense though, so long as he didn't capture you afterward.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#63

Post by kbenson »

pjc50 wrote: post #43
ThePawnBreak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

Promotions are a myth told to people to get them to work harder, aren't they? They're quite rare and usually come with moderate increments. Whereas the best way to increase your salary is to move jobs. Salary is only vaguely linked to job title. (I was once promoted en passant , when my first employer wished to inflate the number of Senior Developers assigned to a consulting proposal...)

I agree. Unless you are in an environment where there are very specific pay scales for fairly specific positions and levels, with lots of chances for advancement (e.g. Google or the like), expecting a significant raise at your current job is unlikely unless you have a lot of leverage. Put another way, you've been giving the company the extra work for free. People (and companies) don't like to pay for things they're used to getting for free. That just feels like an unnecessary expenditure, so is resisted.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#64

Post by madamelic »

jnordwick wrote: post #59
ThePawnBreak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

Reading all the responses to your comment a few things come to mind: - people on HN have bad jobs with no advancement track for strong technical skills - people on HN don't want to work their way up, then want it handed to them.

>people on HN don't want to work their way up, then want it handed to them

Yes. How terrible would that be. How terrible would it be for someone to have a title / position commiserate to their skills, not how good they are at office politics.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#65

Post by Dayshine »

happychappy wrote: post #51
edw519 wrote: post #4

Finally, you'll need to have the self-confidence or stubbornness to choose and stick to a path that most people don't take. You don't need self-confidence or stubbornness, just commitment to your principles... I have never worked more than 40 hours per week for anyone else. Ever. I arrive at 8. I leave at 5. I don't work from home. Except for emergencies. My definition of emergency: If someone is dying or their produ…

As a manager: If your code blows up in production on a Saturday afternoon, and you don't answer email/skype/phone, you've effectively left me in the shit. I know thats my job, and I will deal with it and survive, but your future work is going to be very heavily scrutinized - borderline micromanaged - until I trust you again But the flipside, if your code blows up in production on a Saturday, and you spend four hours…

>If your code blows up in production on a Saturday afternoon, and you don't answer email/skype/phone, you've effectively left me in the shit.

Um, why aren't you calling the person on-call? If you have up-time requirements then you write out-of-hours terms into your contracts and have designated staff.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#66

Post by kbenson »

OpenDrapery wrote: post #27
ThePawnBreak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

You may be more likely to be promoted if you display a backbone. Real straight shooter with upper management written all over him.

I would say the vast majority (greater than 99.99%) of raises come from the threat of quitting. That can either be an active threat (where you approach management for a raise to set expectations) or a passive threat, where management wants to make sure you aren't looking around for better opportunities, and those opportunities will often pay more than they have to raise your salary to keep you, which makes retaining you after you've shopped around much more expensive.

Large companies that realize losing institutional knowledge is costly put in programs to make sure there are good expectations on what is required to achieve the next position and what the pay-scale range is for the next position (which also helps fight racism/sexism). You see this at Google (and I'm sure many other large companies), who had identified this as a problem that needed to be solved.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#67

Post by mixmastamyk »

ryandrake wrote: post #55

The "paths to a saner week" seem pretty simplistic and unrealistic. Want fewer hours? Work fewer hours! Wow, you don't say?! That simple, huh? The quote from the article is "you always have the option of unilaterally normalizing your hours." Oh reeeeally? Don't like your commute? Don't commute so much. Just snap your fingers and afford to live closer to work! Got it. Want a shorter work week? Just "negotiate" (word m…

While it's true few people can snap their fingers to accomplish these goals, you certainly can over a period of 5-10 years by working on them consciously.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#68

Post by Practicality »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #23
flanbiscuit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're just reducing your hourly rate. This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime. You can at look at it one of 2 ways. 1. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every…

Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

I think a lot of people expect this to be the way it works, and perhaps it should be, but it's not the way business thinks. They see it as you volunteering free labor and that's pretty much it.

There is some research showing that coming in early makes your manager rate you higher. But it seems unrelated to number of hours, ironically. http://qz.com/209513/no-matter-what-the-boss-says-about-flex...

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#69

Post by unprepare »

jnordwick wrote: post #30

Let me come in with a contradictory opinion especially on the overtime. You don't work for your current salary, you work for your next one. If you are one of those 9 to 5 ers, don't complain when the guy working 60 hours and more gets that promotion over you. The higher up the ladder you go, the more that will be required of you. Also, startups or high paying jobs will require more of you since you will get getting m…

Youre conflating 'working more hours' with 'doing more work' - these are not at all one and the same.

A fresh college graduate could spend 60 hours trying to spin up a new web server, where an experienced professional could do the same in an hour. Should the fresh graduate get a promotion for this?

You're right that higher paying jobs require more of you, thats why the barrier to entry is higher. You need to have more experience and know how to do more things. You're not getting paid more because you're expected to work more hours, but because you are expected to be capable of doing more complex work.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#70

Post by toddchambery »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #18
patrickdavey wrote: post #5

I went to a talk once on leadership. One of the suggestions was to get your "go to hell kit" ready. That is, get enough money in the bank (whatever that means for you) so that you can walk away if things cross your personal lines, be they moral / work-life balance, whatever. It's a good thing if there's pressure to work silly hours. In my first job (recent grad) before I left the job, I'd been working 5 weekends stra…

> You're just reducing your hourly rate. This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime. You can at look at it one of 2 ways. 1. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every…

For salaried employees or contract work with capped hours, overtime can also be banked goodwill or converted to flex time.

Most office environments I've worked at are not rigidly policy-driven, are populated with sensible humans, and the overwhelming majority of my teammates are working for the success of the team and each other.

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