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Cutting your salary by 40%

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Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#231

Post by k-mcgrady »

yomly wrote: post #227
adambmedia wrote: post #222

I often think about Arthur Rubenstein, the phenom mid-century pianist, for whom a lot has been written about his mission in early life to "practice as little as possible." There's a lot of hyped up romanticism in these quotes and anyone who plays at his level has spent a lifetime playing piano, period. Regardless, his guidance about spontaneity, creativity, and the relationship to practicing too much, which I equate…

Didn't Rubinstein humbly then revisit technique and practise religiously in his 40s? (Not to detract from your point, which I think has value). I think that the middle way is key. I've met people who think work for the sake of work is valuable. Others who wouldn't touch hard work with a barge pole. If you cherish success, both are required. Having met virtuoso pianists, I'd say the context which Rubinstein talks from…

>> Reaching the level of mastery where one can sightread any of the Beethoven concerti or a Liszt etude requires a lifetime of years/decades of dedicated practice, but it is true that once you're at that level, you can find diminishing returns on hard work which encroach upon your creativity.

I would argue that looking at sheet music and playing it requires very little creativity, if any at all. It is in that arena that practice is important. Being able to play anything put down in front of you is only possible with mastery of your instrument. However - if you are creating music mastery can get in the way. Often the best ideas come from stumbling upon things. If you know everything or know how things 'should' be done coming up with original ideas is difficult. Personally I've seen this in guitarists. There are some who are clearly masters of their instrument. They can play anything, at any speed, with a wide array of techniques at their disposal. Most of the time they don't write anything interesting.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#232

Post by raarts »

tome wrote: post #221
Waterluvian wrote: post #216

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.

It's quite bizarre to me that they would accept a reduction in working hours but not an increase in salary.

Things managers really hate to do, #1: Ask superiors for a budget increase.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#233

Post by megaduck »

dominotw wrote: post #192
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 enforce a militant "40 hours only" policy for my employees, and it's incredible for productivity. why not 35, 39 or 42 hours?

Predictability. We pair program, so we need everybody to be there at the same time.

People sometimes work less, due to doctor appointments, child care, home repairs, and such. However, they never work more.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#234

Post by Joeri »

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?

Doctors are not as in-control as you think. "What am I supposed to do? Turn away patients who need care?" (I've heard this verbatim.)

Basically self-employed people either have too little work or too much, I rarely hear from someone who has the balance right.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#235

Post by jmilloy »

richardknop wrote: post #166
chii wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

I think part of the point is that it's not the "best job" if you have to work 40+ hours a week, at least for some people.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#236

Post by rifung »

yomly wrote: post #227
adambmedia wrote: post #222

I often think about Arthur Rubenstein, the phenom mid-century pianist, for whom a lot has been written about his mission in early life to "practice as little as possible." There's a lot of hyped up romanticism in these quotes and anyone who plays at his level has spent a lifetime playing piano, period. Regardless, his guidance about spontaneity, creativity, and the relationship to practicing too much, which I equate…

Didn't Rubinstein humbly then revisit technique and practise religiously in his 40s? (Not to detract from your point, which I think has value). I think that the middle way is key. I've met people who think work for the sake of work is valuable. Others who wouldn't touch hard work with a barge pole. If you cherish success, both are required. Having met virtuoso pianists, I'd say the context which Rubinstein talks from…

> Didn't Rubinstein humbly then revisit technique and practise religiously in his 40s? (Not to detract from your point, which I think has value).

He did but I think the reason he did so was not because he felt it was better for the music but because he had children and he didn't want them to be lazy. I wish I could find the source but I suspect it was from a video interview so I'm finding it difficult to find.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#237

Post by jonas21 »

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?

True, but what if your work is the thing you'd choose to spend your time on, given the freedom to pick anything.

Other comments suggest that this is referring to a job posting from Andrew Ng's deep learning startup. If that's the case, you might have access to expertise and compute resources that you could only dream about if you were working on a side project.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#238

Post by [deleted] »

tome wrote: post #221
Waterluvian wrote: post #216

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.

It's quite bizarre to me that they would accept a reduction in working hours but not an increase in salary.

[deleted]

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#239

Post by j45 »

The reality is in a startup, you're giving up income for equity. Equity rarely realizes to any value unless there is a remarkable alignment of opportunity, timing, skill, delivering a solution, and finding a market.

I have oscillated both ways on the spectrum of less compensation and more time/happiness, and maximizing income at the expense of other areas of life.

"Things never get easier, you just get better."

There is always a focus on what value someone is paid, instead of the value they add and create.

Having a value adding focused mentality (making sure you add value, and knowing how, and having agreement on it), there is less of an issue with facing pay cuts, when you are returning several multiples of your compensation, whatever it might be. Being essential without being irreplaceable is a valuable lesson to learn.

If you want to limit it to 40 hours a week, it has to be that much more organized, focussed, effective to have meaningful impact.

There's also 3 number to think about. What you absolutely need, what you should be getting, and what you want. Aligning your life with where you are at on those 3 fronts will help lower the dissonance a lot more and comparing yourself to the perceived location of others.

The other thing that changes in your 20's is you. You become more well rounded from experience and discover, magically, that you might be good at a few things and like spending your time on other things too.

One reality is the newer you are to working, the more hours you have to work to compare to someone who has 5, 10, or 20 years of development experience to compare. It's less about becoming a 10x developer, and more about learning how to structure and focus your time for maximum benefit both to the employer and yourself on mutual goals.

There's a reason why inexperienced talent is cheaper, and it's an incredible opportunity to soak up more things than you think you can handle. Learning to drink from a firehose isn't for everyone, but it is an invaluable experience to learn how you want your work/life harmony to be.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#240

Post by jsudhams »

panarky wrote: post #173
jcadam wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can definitely believe that. But in my line of work I'm expected to bill at least 8 hrs/day to the client regardless of my personal productivity.

> Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor > I'm expected to bill at least 8 hrs/day I bet you're capable of far deeper, more intellectually stimulating and rewarding work than you're doing now.

I used to be someone who worked only 4 hours max in any company and use remaining time to be on top of tech stacks(SysAdmin). But last four years i self trained on stock trading and it close to be becoming my main job in another year or so. Though i now look for trader jobs where i can trade for profit % but the salaries are no where near in my country for traders.
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