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Cutting your salary by 40%

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Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#41

Post by Ascetik »

gwbas1c wrote: post #25
Ascetik wrote: post #10

To add to this, I recently got let go from my job 2 weeks ago . With that said, my boss routinely tried to guilt trip me because I didn't want to work more than 40hrs a week. I have 2 very small children and my wife is pregnant, I can't spend all my time working, nor do I have any desire to. There were a few times I put in a couple of 60hr weeks, but that was only to appease him, not because I felt it was necessary.…

Call up an employment lawyer. Firing someone for not working on their vacation is wrongful termination. Companies that do this need to be sued out of existence.

Although I think I would have a decent case against him, I can't afford legal fees right now. And 70% of our clients were law firms who would be more than happy to represent him.

My separation notice said "Unable to perform job duties", which makes no sense, since I worked there for nearly 2 years with positive reviews and multiple successful projects.

But apparently I'm not working because I want to go home at 6pm and take my unpaid lunch.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#42

Post by CSMastermind »

edanm wrote: post #21

As much as I'd love to believe the "work more than 40 hours a week, because SCIENCE!" party line, I have a hard time accepting it, and I think so do most people who hear it (outside of HN, at least). For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity. For another, anecdotally at least, most people know plenty of peopl…

In my experience, the amount of workload you can handle is highly dependant on the person though everyone will see some diminishing returns after working a few hours straight.

The people who pull 70+ hour weeks successfully tend to have an abnormally high tolerance to stress as well as an abnormally high 'drive'. I'd be willing to bet there's a genetic component.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#43

Post by soneca »

chrisseaton wrote: post #6
foo101 wrote: post #2

The original job postings[1][2] were even more egregious. They originally said, "many of us routinely work 70-90 hours/week". After a lot of criticism on a Facebook post by Andrew Ng[3] (where you can still find residual evidence of the "work 70-90 hours/week" claim), they modified it to, "many of us routinely work and study 70+ hours a week". So to be precise, they were initially offering you a 43% to 56% pay cut. G…

> Getting paid for 40 hours Do salaried jobs always specify a number of hours in their contracts? Otherwise you aren't being paid for 40 hours - you're just being paid to get the job done aren't you?

In Brazil, yes, they always include how many hours are required. Usually 40 or 44 (the maximum allowed by our laws). I think it would be very weird to not have that in a employment contract, as time for money is the essence of employment.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#44

Post by varjag »

edanm wrote: post #21

As much as I'd love to believe the "work more than 40 hours a week, because SCIENCE!" party line, I have a hard time accepting it, and I think so do most people who hear it (outside of HN, at least). For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity. For another, anecdotally at least, most people know plenty of peopl…

The 8 hour work day was with physical labour in mind and makes much more sense in that context. Of course there are limits to office time productivity too and the stress factor of office jobs has considerable spread. That said I'd have 11 hours coding work over 8 hours of labour any day.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#45

Post by doikor »

chrisseaton wrote: post #6
foo101 wrote: post #2

The original job postings[1][2] were even more egregious. They originally said, "many of us routinely work 70-90 hours/week". After a lot of criticism on a Facebook post by Andrew Ng[3] (where you can still find residual evidence of the "work 70-90 hours/week" claim), they modified it to, "many of us routinely work and study 70+ hours a week". So to be precise, they were initially offering you a 43% to 56% pay cut. G…

> Getting paid for 40 hours Do salaried jobs always specify a number of hours in their contracts? Otherwise you aren't being paid for 40 hours - you're just being paid to get the job done aren't you?

This is weird to me.

At least here in Finland when you are salaried for the standard 37.5h work week (7.5h work day with 30min lunch break) if you work more then that you log the hours as overtime and get paid for them or in some form of "flex" time that you turn into vacation days or money (there are limits to how many hours of flex you can have banked up)

I know some smaller companies/start ups work around this but they can very easily get in trouble as doing that is illegal (as in if even a single employee complains to the authorities about not being paid for overtime they are fucked)

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#46

Post by LogicFailsMe »

Unless he's paying seven+ figures annually, all working 70 to 90 hours a week will get you is a broken relationship/marriage and utter social isolation with little or nothing to show for it in the end when you realize what a mistake you've made and unplug from The Matrix, probably 20 to 30 pounds heavier than when you started.

Work hard. Study a lot. But take a breather now and then. Life is short.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#47

Post by Ascetik »

sundaeofshock wrote: post #40
Ascetik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Level 2/3 SysAdmin/Engineer in the ATL area. But I do "develop" in POSH if you can call that coding. I'm learning python now.

Do you have Terraform chops? I'm looking for part-time remote SysAdmin type right now.

I have no idea what Terraform chops is..., but I would be more than happy to entertain your offer!

Is there a way to PM on here?

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#48

Post by chrisseaton »

doikor wrote: post #45
chrisseaton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting paid for 40 hours Do salaried jobs always specify a number of hours in their contracts? Otherwise you aren't being paid for 40 hours - you're just being paid to get the job done aren't you?

This is weird to me. At least here in Finland when you are salaried for the standard 37.5h work week (7.5h work day with 30min lunch break) if you work more then that you log the hours as overtime and get paid for them or in some form of "flex" time that you turn into vacation days or money (there are limits to how many hours of flex you can have banked up) I know some smaller companies/start ups work around this but…

If it's a standard number of hours what's the point in being salaried? Why don't they just pay you hourly?

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#49

Post by hyperbovine »

Ascetik wrote: post #41
gwbas1c wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call up an employment lawyer. Firing someone for not working on their vacation is wrongful termination. Companies that do this need to be sued out of existence.

Although I think I would have a decent case against him, I can't afford legal fees right now. And 70% of our clients were law firms who would be more than happy to represent him. My separation notice said "Unable to perform job duties", which makes no sense, since I worked there for nearly 2 years with positive reviews and multiple successful projects. But apparently I'm not working because I want to go home at 6pm a…

100% of employment law firms would be more than happy to represent you. If the case is as cut-and-dried as you make it sound fees will probably not be an issue, they will work on contingency.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#50

Post by megaduck »

I enforce a militant "40 hours only" policy for my employees, and it's incredible for productivity. When you work longer hours defect rates increase, code quality drops, and things are on fire all the time. You also lose really good people due to burnout.

Sustainable pace is super important for creating and maintaining high performance teams. Crassly, it's just a more profitable way of doing business.

I wish more managers would stop buying into the myth of "time in seat == productivity", and look at the real output of their teams. When you actually run the numbers there's a lot of results that run counter to conventional wisdom.

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