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Cutting your salary by 40%

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Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#251

Post by s73ver_ »

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 :|

I really hope the rest of your team is doing so, too. Companies like that don't deserve good employees.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#252

Post by mateo411 »

solomatov wrote: post #210
logfromblammo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't just sue for yourself. Sue to have all their employees reclassified as wage employees rather than salaried exempt, and try to get them to pay out overtime for all that after-hours work.

IANAL, but in the US overtime isn't applicable to software developers.

It's not available to salary workers.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#253

Post by Stranger43 »

dogruck wrote: post #97
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…

How did you determine that 40 hours is optimal? Why not 30? Or 50?

It's what most of the English speaking societies have centred on over time.

Other places say Scandinavia might put it at 37 and some Asian companies might be closer to 45.

But around 40 hours pr week is where most modern societies tend to think work/life balance is reasonable both for the economy and the individual.

The old union slogan used to be 8 hours of work 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of leisure. And in many ways that the origin of our 40 hours woork week when we only works 5 days a week.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#254

Post by michael_storm »

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.

Everyone is different, so good managers set targets based on past performance. If you set the bar at what you can accomplish by working 3-5 hours per day, they'll assume it takes you 8 hours per day, and give you work based on that. If that works for you, great.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#255

Post by pc86 »

jrs235 wrote: post #177
dclowd9901 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well many managers and execs might respond with "well then, give 'em more work! We obviously aren't giving them enough to do!" Salary exempt is usually a losing game for developers. Crappy places will say "we pay you a salary to get the work done" and under staff and/or overwork. If it takes you 60 hours then you have to work 60 hours. But if it only took someone 30 hours they can't leave early because a) deadlines w…

If we're assuming salaries are based on a 40-hour work week, neither A nor B is "bad" for the developer - it's exactly what they signed up for.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#256

Post by s73ver_ »

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 absolutely believe it's exploitation to ask people to sacrifice their lives (which you're doing if you're working that long; you have no time for other things) and not pay significantly higher.

"The article itself mentions people doing extra hours of coding on personal projects, and we all know some people who have started companies that way. What, do these projects simply not exist? How does that make any sense?"

There's a huge difference between working on something for me, for which I have total ownership of, and working on something just to make someone else rich.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#257

Post by RankingMember »

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.

What tends to kill these kinds of arrangements is other employees complaining and wanting the same deal in my experience. aka the "NO FAIR BILLY GETS TO!" factor

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#258

Post by DocSavage »

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…

There's also a lot of research that suggests it's not just how much you practice but how you practice. A recent book, "Peak", covers research into expertise and how deliberate practice is essential rather than just blindly spending lots of time.

I would guess that managers who blindly mandate 70 hour weeks are more likely to be blind to the actual work habits as well.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#259

Post by s73ver_ »

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.

Pay hasn't changed, either. So if companies want to claim that more hours is more productive, they should back it up by increasing pay per hour.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#260

Post by RankingMember »

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?

Working for yourself versus working for "The Man" makes a huge difference because you know every second of that 60 hour week you're putting in is to your direct benefit.

Talk to someone who owns their own business working 60 hours and then someone who's being forced to work 60 hours for their company and you'll be talking to two people with vastly different outlooks.

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