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Cutting your salary by 40%

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Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#211

Post by dx034 »

blub wrote: post #170
shados wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

While I'm not a fan of 60h per week, I'd disagree here. If you work 12h per day you'll still have several hours in the evening and the whole weekend for your partner.

From my observations, relationships don't depend on how much people work, they depend on how much of their free time both partners like to spend together.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#212

Post by webnrrd2k »

naravara wrote: post #198
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…

>I wish more managers would stop buying into the myth of "time in seat == productivity", and look at the real output of their teams. I think a big part of this is the generally ambiguous nature of knowledge work. If you could quantify work into discrete widgets it’s easy to mark people to output, but on stuff that’s fuzzy and hard to quantify it’s not so easy. It actually takes a fair bit of work and intimate knowled…

Just as a first approximation, I think other knowlege workers who have enough money and clout to be in control of their schedule whole work as a good model for optimal number of hours spent working over the long term. For example, look at doctor's who have their own practice. They (hopefully) like their work, and can determine their own schedule. How many hours do they work? How do they structure their time?

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#213

Post by jnordwick »

richardknop wrote: post #174
jnordwick wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 employm…

>> 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. Not really because it doesn't feel like work. You don't have to code in your free time, you can go out with family / gf / friends and do some fun social activity, you can do spor…

The article is about people giving their time away of they are working more than 40 hours. Right now I place a higher emphasis on job advancement. While it might be possible to do it in fewer hours, more hours as long as you can hang definitely help me be better. We have different priorities (I just got out of a relationship and am looking more towards my career at this time).

I am not giving away my time. I am making a calculated decision to put more effort at work.

Maybe it is also that I love what I do for work and work in a highly competitive field So there aren't exactly OSS projects that fulfill that scratch the same itch in me).

(I also run almost 40 miles a week so please dont bother with that old trope and am hoping to increase my mileage this month.)

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#214

Post by gyrgtyn »

etiene wrote: post #38

This is insane. I've actually been looking to reduce my work hours to about 30, because even 40 seems too much. Having had a couple of burnouts before, I want my life to be more than my job, and I truly believe this would make me better at my job in the long term. After a day of full time work I almost never have the energy to do some of the other things I want to do. I want to be able do more open source, learn a fo…

Between jobs once, someone gave me a pity job. It was hourly, 4 hours a day. I did job search stuff the other hours of the day. I was completely crushing it with those 4 hours. It's probably a really good arrangement for an employer if they somehow convince people to do they dicking around on hackernews off the clock. 4 hours of pure output.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#215

Post by kirykl »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #156
tablet wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partially agree with you, but personal productivity varies. So in our company we have a rule "work as much as you like, usually we expect no less than 30 hours, but it is OK to do 50. Anything beyond these ranges is odd".

What would you say if I told you in a given work day, I only work maybe 3-5 hours (including meetings) and still meet all targets? This has been consistent for every job I've ever had.

Same experience. I've used the extra time to start internal side projects, for which a few I've earned $$ for. Surprisingly no one asks how I have the extra time

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#216

Post by Waterluvian »

One of my past employers wouldn't pay me what I felt and showed was fair market value for my skills and what I do for them. So I counter offered to work 4 days a week for the same salary.

A year of 3 day weekends did more for my life and relationships than a raise ever could have.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#217

Post by richardknop »

jnordwick wrote: post #213
richardknop wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. Not really because it doesn't feel like work. You don't have to code in your free time, you can go out with family / gf / friends and do some fun social activity, you can do spor…

The article is about people giving their time away of they are working more than 40 hours. Right now I place a higher emphasis on job advancement. While it might be possible to do it in fewer hours, more hours as long as you can hang definitely help me be better. We have different priorities (I just got out of a relationship and am looking more towards my career at this time). I am not giving away my time. I am makin…

Fair enough but... If you work 80 hours per week. That leaves 8 hours per day of free time. So you need to commute to and form office, sleep, eat, run/exercise, shop and do all the other things you do outside work in 8 hours per day. Doesn't add up to me.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#218

Post by mancerayder »

Twirrim wrote: post #55
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…

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.

That's a relatively biased misreading of the history of the 8 hour day. You're implying that science and factory owners decided on it. Yet the labor movement, industrial action and strife played an outsized role. The 8 hour day movement is an old one (http://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html), and the call for 8 hours was echoed by the labor movement for decades after.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#219

Post by naravara »

webnrrd2k wrote: post #212
naravara wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wish more managers would stop buying into the myth of "time in seat == productivity", and look at the real output of their teams. I think a big part of this is the generally ambiguous nature of knowledge work. If you could quantify work into discrete widgets it’s easy to mark people to output, but on stuff that’s fuzzy and hard to quantify it’s not so easy. It actually takes a fair bit of work and intimate knowled…

Just as a first approximation, I think other knowlege workers who have enough money and clout to be in control of their schedule whole work as a good model for optimal number of hours spent working over the long term. For example, look at doctor's who have their own practice. They (hopefully) like their work, and can determine their own schedule. How many hours do they work? How do they structure their time?

>They (hopefully) like their work, and can determine their own schedule.

Ehhhh. They’re not really as “in control” of their schedules as you would think. Their time is being boxed by financial pressures, generally imposed by insurance and Medicaid/Medicare reimbursement rates, and all the administrative requirements of both complying with burdensome regulations surrounding both their medical practice AND running what amounts to a small business.

They don’t even really necessarily like their work either. Running your own medical practice has a really high burnout rate and many of the people who do it now tend to be older and/or not fully dependent on the practice for their income (e.g. independently wealthy, willing to retire but just wants supplemental income, married and can rely on spousal support financially, etc.).

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#220

Post by googletazer »

dogruck wrote: post #127
grasshopperpurp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professionally successful, or successful as people?

As people. Granted, none of those people are grinding away working for The Man. Instead, they are running their own organizations. Is that not your experience?

Thats probably the most important differential in their drive and success.
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