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Cutting your salary by 40%

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Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#51

Post by [deleted] »

quickben wrote: post #20
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.…

Keep it professional. Next time he tries to manage you by stress, respond:"okay so let's discuss overtime pay multiplications". He wants you to do more, he won't fire you, so he only has to see the costs properly and understand that you are more serious about the overtime than him. I have one kid so far, and zero overtime, I can't even imagine how it will be with three.

[deleted]

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#52

Post by thegayngler »

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…

I know many people who work lots of hours and the result isn't necessarily good. Those hard workers get lucky some of the time...but much of the time its all show and no substance. Pumping out all that poorly designed brittle code is not helping anyone. You can do a 70 hour week here and there but you can't sustain it long term without negative consequences. It's best to save your 70hr work week energy for when it's actually necessary than it being a regular thing.

In fact even when looking at myself, many times I was "working" lots of hours but in reality I wasn't getting anything done. When I work 40 or less hours and take lots of breaks during the day I got way more done than when I had just been a seat warmer for 70+ hours per week. This is likely due to the fact that having rest periods and breaks allow my brains diffuse mode to also help solve problems. Many of my best ideas come when I'm lifting or playing basketball at the gym.

You are not getting the best version of a person when they chose to work lots of hours and refuse to take time out for themselves. Our brains need plenty of rest in order to function optimally.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#53

Post by doikor »

chrisseaton wrote: post #48
doikor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because nobody on the better paid fields would take such a contract. You could try it but you would most likely lose in the market place of jobs by all the best employees going somewhere else.

As to why having a contract that pays you for the standard work week always I think people just like the security of getting roughly the same amount of money each month (or biweekly or however often you get paid). Especially once you have some money so you have mortgages, loans and credit cards to manage on top of your monthly bills.

Also the hours beyond the normal work week are overtime and come with multipliers for your effective hourly rate so companies try to do their best to arrange things so that minimal amount of overtime is actually done.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#54

Post by mtnygard »

devotedtoneu wrote: post #30
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.…

Not sure why we're not in the habit of naming and shaming these organizations.

Mostly because of non-disparagement clauses in the meager severance package.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#55

Post by Twirrim »

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…

> 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.

It's not in the slightest bit down to convenience. It's because 40 hours was quite simply discovered to be a more productive length of day, well over a century ago, back in the later stages of the industrial revolution.

In the US, if memory serves, the move to a 40 hour working week largely started out at the Ford Motor company back in the early 1900s, after Henry Ford experimented reducing hours and discovered that the number of mistakes made by workers went down drastically, and productivity increased. This swept across the industry because the improvements were impossible to deny. Slowly but surely that spread across other industries until it became the staple.

40 hours isn't done by custom, it's done because it's proven to be the most productive working week. This isn't a case of scientists discovering that "what people are used to is what they're most productive at". For most of the industrial revolution people worked 12hr+ days, and that was considered, even by the labour force, to be perfectly acceptable. Hauling that back to 8 hour days was a herculean task that no major factory owner was going to do without damn good evidence that it would improve things.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#56

Post by AquinasCoder »

The article doesn't claim this is endemic to only startups, and in my experience work life balance among small, medium, and large companies is equally threatened.

Even the term "work-life" balance seems to assume an artificial divide between the two. When work is a facet of a rich life, those extra long hours, the grueling commute, the vacillations of the newest management fad are just not worth it. Not to mention that those with families are severely disadvantaged in a workplace that values hours at the office rather than productive hours.

I am curious to find out how this becomes a culture and whether this is reversible? Does this toxic overstepping begin at companies who once valued a predictable balance between work and life or was there a mistake made in company culture from the beginning? Can a company effectively counter this tendency? However you might answer these questions, it seems clear that throwing new studies out showing that overwork is counter-productive is not changing this trend. It goes back to the age-old idea, knowledge doesn't make you good, just more knowledgable.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#57

Post by richardknop »

UK-AL wrote: post #18
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.…

""Time to put on your big-boy pants" which is ironic since most experienced developers i know work less, and stick to contracted hours.

Agreed from my experience. From what I have seen it's mostly juniors who are putting in extra time consistently in order to either impress their boss or to get up to speed.

Experienced engineers who are often key technical people in companies are much more consistently going home at 6pm. Makes sense as they are much harder to replace so they can get away with working ordinary hours.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#58

Post by falcolas »

Sholmesy wrote: post #39
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.…

Is this not illegal? I'm working in London right now, and have been looking at jobs in the US, but the workers rights seem incredibly hostile, and downright crazy to me...

Most of the time, you'll be just fine. Even with the "at-will employment" clauses, most people are decent people. That said, it only takes 1% of managers being dicks to ruin the image for everybody, and it's sad to say that it's probably more than 1%.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#59

Post by corford »

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.

Confusingly, the email field in your HN profile is not public. You need to add it to the "About" bit if you want people to be able to contact you :)

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#60

Post by richardknop »

Sholmesy wrote: post #39
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.…

Is this not illegal? I'm working in London right now, and have been looking at jobs in the US, but the workers rights seem incredibly hostile, and downright crazy to me...

This seems normal in US from what I have read (could be wrong as I have never worked in US) so I would stay in London if I were you :)
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