Cutting your salary by 40% • Hacker News Board

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#161

Post by dclowd9901 » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 2:58 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #68

Twirrim wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's because 40 hours was quite simply discovered to be a more productive length of day That was true when most of the workforce was doing manual and factory style labour. To the best of my knowledge it hasn't been rigorously reproduced for works that spend their days staring at a screen thinking.

Hadn't really thought of it before, but there's a compelling amount of evidence out there that sitting down for long periods of a day is very bad for your health, which can only be bad for your overall functionality. Definitely something that should be re-examined... My supposition is that companies know this and won't re-examine because they're afraid of the outcome: paying more for less butts-in-the-seat (the only metric management understands).

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#162

Post by jnordwick » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 2:59 PM UTC

richardknop wrote: post #141

jnordwick wrote: post #112

What many here dont seem to understand is that you work commensurate with where you want to be. I work longish hours become I'm in finance and want to move up the organization or find a higher spot inn another. I want to know more about all facets of the firm and one day be a principal in a prop trading firm. I don't put in 80+ hour weeks because I want to stay where I'm at in my career. I become involved in more and…

You can progress in your career very rapidly by doing 40h of high quality work per week. I know many young people (my generation) who are in their late 20s or early 30s and have made a very fast career progression already and didn't need to work 80 hours per day at all. Also for software engineers you have to take into account continuously upskilling yourself to know the latest tech is something which takes a lot of…

Like a lot of people in financial technology and HFT, I dont work outside projevrs very much. I get a lot of my experience with newer tech inside my job and as well have to deal with some fairlt heavy secrecy issues.

But aren't you just trading the location of work for the most part? I get that experience from within my firm on projects I'm working on while others still work on their skills just outside their employment? It is still "work" in a sense. I realize many don't get the same intellectual benefit from employment that i enjoy but trashing people who do and take advantage of it doesn't seem appropriate.

I've also learned that just knowing how to code better doesn't help you deliver a better product always. For example in my case, even though I mostly work front office I need to know how the back office works as well as how our fiber and colo facilities run. I've done everything from trade strategies to program them to installing rack system to work on fiber negotiations to deal with trade breaks to etc... It has helped me tremendously add value to the firms I work in. There is a lot to be said about knowing your business as well as knowing how to code.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#163

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 3:00 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#164

Post by otakucode » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 3:00 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #83

richardknop wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are expecting me to work extra hours you will have to pay multiple of my normal rate for overtime. I'm sorry but anything else is some form of exploitation or at the very least unfair. And the argument with extra hours working on personal projects is ridiculous. As a matter of fact I am a heavy open source contributor and work on numerous projects in my personal time, some of them already have many hundreds of…

I think GPs point was that people can clearly be productive more than 40 hours a week because so many are. How people should be compensated for their time is only loosely coupled with how many hours they can work. I agree with you that we should be fairly compensated, but I also agree that the dogma of "40 is the max a worker can be productive, possibly less" is wrong in a large number of cases.

The claim to be answered is not 'people can't be productive working more than 40 hours a week'. It's that people would be more productive if they worked less. We don't have to rely on vague anecdotes and 'what about people who are really really sure and feel it very deeply that their personal sacrifice wasn't counter-productive? Shouldn't we just believe them so they can feel their exertion wasn't wasted?' We've got research.

But its quite important to make a distinction between manufacturing work, repetitive physical labor, and mental work. Different organs are involved and they function differently. As nice as some might imagine it would be to only employ machines, in reality we still have to put bathrooms in the workplace, give people a lunch break, and admit that they're sacks of meat. They've got limits, and ignoring them will never be productive.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#165

Post by le-mark » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 3:01 PM UTC

jnordwick wrote: post #151

le-mark wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I become involved in more and take on more reliability because I want more responsibility I the future. I work twice or more what I'm paid to work because I want to earn at least twice as much in the future. Noble sentiment, but in reality you are just marking yourself as a fool, especially to everyone above you. You seem to think that over achieving now will translate to future gains in either salary or position,…

I'm far from a low level grunt in my orgs. So far working hard has proven to be key in moving up. While in my field there isn't such a clear line between management and non management my last two titles have have had a foot in the management side. In seems to be en vogue to despise hard work today (unless it is manual labor).

There are certainly fields and/or companies where ones pay and position can be commensurate with their effort. Most would agree that these are the exception not the rule, congratulations if you happen to be in that position.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#166

Post by richardknop » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 3:01 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #138

soVeryTired wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He didn't anticipate our bosses taking all the profits from our productivity gains, though. He also didn't anticipate zero-sum competition for inflexible goods like housing. If I want a nice house in a decent city, I have to out-compete and out-borrow everyone else who might want that house. If everyone around me is making bank and I want the nice house, then I'd better make bank too. Lots of us end up working more…

> zero-sum competition for inflexible goods if you consider good housing to be only within a certain distance of some CBD, then yes, housing is zero sum. But there's lots more space available than humans right now, and relaxing the distance/centrality requirement will greatly increase the pool of available housing (and hence, "cheaper"). The only winner when everyone tries to outbid for a small amount of housing is t…

All the best jobs are in the big expensive cities. Everywhere around the world, if you want the best job you will need to go to New York, SF, London, Tokyo, Paris, Munich etc. That's one reason why everybody wants to live there.

Second reason would is to be close to a large number of people which greatly increases social activities you can do. In a large city even a niche hobby will probably attract enough people that you can find a group of buddies who like same things.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#167

Post by panarky » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 3:04 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #148

megaduck wrote: post #50

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 man…

Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor. Which is why I fully understand why my employer is requiring me (and the others on my team) to make up the 48 hours of labor I lost when I evacuated due to Hurricane Irma (even though the office was of course closed for much of that time). I'm spending the extra hours perusing/posting on HN and looking at job listings :|

> Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor.

Not all hours are created equally.

I do my best work with hyperfocus.

I don't just mean more work, but far higher quality work that's at the edge of my intellectual capabilities.

This is the work that's most rewarding and gives results that I'm proud of.

But I can't get significant time "in the zone" on a 40-hour week.

All the normal but necessary distractions take at least four hours a day, and I need at least an hour or two of "non-zone" work before I can hit my stride and achieve flow.

So I find 60-70 hours a week is essential to doing my best work.

But I can't sustain that level of effort continuously for years.

So I balance that out with a week a month of low-intensity "work" (slacking/procrastinating/socializing) plus at least twelve weeks per year of contiguous time for uninterrupted travel, long-distance trekking, rebuilding relationships damaged by hyperfocus, etc.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#168

Post by richardknop » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 3:04 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #5

Tangential: I loved the "When programming is your hobby" part of this blog post. Finally someone accepting, and not dissing, people who actually like to code . The advice is spot-on, too: coding > 40h / week is fine, but why give up your freedom of choosing what to work on, when to work on it, and when to take time off, without any compensation?

Exactly, just because I love programming in my free time doesn't mean I want to work on enterprise Java company code on Sunday. No, thank you. I have much more interesting personal projects to work on that actually excite me.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#169

Post by glastra » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 3:04 PM UTC

darthdev wrote: post #61

In Spain this is quite normal ( they don't say it in the job offer, but is expected that you work more than 40 hours/week ). When you ask to get paid for those extra hours they usually laugh at you. People outside Spain usually make jokes about Spanish "siesta", but in fact we are exploited in the same way this article describes. ( making jokes of course is ok, what is not ok is the exploitation )

There's life outside "consultancy companies" (which in Spain are basically just intermediaries that resell your work for a higher price without any added value).

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#170

Post by blub » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 3:05 PM UTC

shados wrote: post #142

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…

Yup. It's one of those case we want something to be true, but really, it isn't (always, anyway). Sure, some people are absurdly productive on 25 hours a week. Good for them! Keep at it! Others though, not so much. In programming, you also get better by doing it more. So even if it's not "for work", if you have side projects, you will (generally) be better than those who don't, from pure practice. The super high salar…

Your 60+ hours per week guy probably doesn't have much of a life outside software engineering. He'd be working between 8,5-12h/day, depending on how many workdays he puts in.

At that level of time investment, he doesn't have time for a romantic relationship. Almost no one would be crazy to accept so little attention, but even if they would it would be a weak & shallow relationship. They probably don't have time for friendships or even spending time with their family and socialising, which will take its psychological toll.

Unless they magically find time to do some sports and take care not to sit in a chair all time, they're stressing their body a lot, which could lead to a weaker immune system and potentially musculo-skeletal problems.

In conclusion, one can behave like a machine and work 60+ hour weeks, but they're literally trading away their life in order to achieve that.

Get ready to search for a replacement or two for when/if they burn out.