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Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

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11–20 of 65 posts

Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

#11
Echoing the other comments, freelancing does make sense in your context. For the legwork of selling yourself and managing administrative stuff, there's https://gun.io as a freelance collective. I'm pretty sure there should be other parties offering that kind of arrangement, but I'm not aware of specifics.

Note: I am not related to gun.io, just saw what they were offering through the CTO's Zappa docs and thought it was interesting. https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa

Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

#13
Not the only one. Work for yourself on short contracts with others.

I’m very suspicious of people who say they work more than 40 hours per week. I wonder about how many hours are high productivity and how many are wasted or low intensity. I definitely work no more than 50 and average around 40. I’ve met quite a few who do 60 hours and still meet real obligations.

Life is not a rehearsal and is definitely not a sprint. I challenge people who work 80 hours per week to demonstrate full community/family participation. It’s ok to do it for a short time but don’t kid yourself and think it’s a good idea for long periods.

Another item: 6 weeks vacation is a requirement.

Spoiler: I work for myself. I’m not unique. Plenty of other people are doing this.

Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

#14
post #6

You sound like a good candidate to be a freelancer. Decide your own hours, mostly your own terms and take breaks whenever you want. Only problem is that you have to learn to sell a lot more than what you do as a regular job candidate. "I only like to stay for a year or less at a given place and then quit " This is going to start looking bad after a while for full-time jobs. It is perfectly ok if you are freelancing t…

Freelancer here. Sorry for the downvote.

But 40h/week is not what you get when you're freelancing. Freelance is a mix of sales, dev, consulting. You may get 20h/week some days, 60h/week other days. There's an awful lot of stress that comes with arguing with yourself and pushing yourself to keep moving.

I think OP just wants to be comfortable and relaxed.

Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

#15
This may cut against what some other are saying, but I've found larger tech companies to be very reasonable about the 40 hr work weeks. As you stated, you've had experience all at web startups. Startups tend to encourage the "work-all-day-every-day" mentality whereas (at least in my experience) larger tech companies will let you do your 40 hrs. Doesn't necessarily have to be a strictly tech company. A large corp of any size that has a decent tech department might suit you well, but they may be less open to the long breaks. My experience has been the large companies I've worked at (telco, bank, and largeish internet company) have never encouraged me to work crazy hours. YMMV, good luck!

Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

#16
I suspect that you want to move on from your jobs after a year or less because of burnout, etc. Perhaps if you join a company that has a sustainable working culture and minimal office politics then you would not encounter the same problem.

I happen to work for (and know of others) a Canadian company that values very highly work-life balance and isn't targeting its hiring towards people who work a lot. This creates a culture where you don't need to take several months off to recharge, because your day-to-day is already sustainable. Similarly I don't see any reason why you couldn't take a few months off every so often for personal reasons, but still be able to return to the same job once you felt recharged.

Email me if you want to learn more (email in profile).

Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

#17
post #14
post #6

You sound like a good candidate to be a freelancer. Decide your own hours, mostly your own terms and take breaks whenever you want. Only problem is that you have to learn to sell a lot more than what you do as a regular job candidate. "I only like to stay for a year or less at a given place and then quit " This is going to start looking bad after a while for full-time jobs. It is perfectly ok if you are freelancing t…

Freelancer here. Sorry for the downvote. But 40h/week is not what you get when you're freelancing. Freelance is a mix of sales, dev, consulting. You may get 20h/week some days, 60h/week other days. There's an awful lot of stress that comes with arguing with yourself and pushing yourself to keep moving. I think OP just wants to be comfortable and relaxed.

There is always W2 contracting. Find a few local recruiting companies. You officially work for the recruiting company but you work for short 6-12 month stints for companies. If you’re good in the right market, you should be able to find gigs fast with no sales are marketing.

Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

#18
post #16

I suspect that you want to move on from your jobs after a year or less because of burnout, etc. Perhaps if you join a company that has a sustainable working culture and minimal office politics then you would not encounter the same problem. I happen to work for (and know of others) a Canadian company that values very highly work-life balance and isn't targeting its hiring towards people who work a lot. This creates a…

I really believe work life balance is bs. The best things happens in the extremes.(it depends if you have kids) I think mini-vacation are better. Alternating between the extremes of work and doing a little about person life/family.

Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

#19
post #14
post #6

You sound like a good candidate to be a freelancer. Decide your own hours, mostly your own terms and take breaks whenever you want. Only problem is that you have to learn to sell a lot more than what you do as a regular job candidate. "I only like to stay for a year or less at a given place and then quit " This is going to start looking bad after a while for full-time jobs. It is perfectly ok if you are freelancing t…

Freelancer here. Sorry for the downvote. But 40h/week is not what you get when you're freelancing. Freelance is a mix of sales, dev, consulting. You may get 20h/week some days, 60h/week other days. There's an awful lot of stress that comes with arguing with yourself and pushing yourself to keep moving. I think OP just wants to be comfortable and relaxed.

He wants a corporate job or a job at a larger firm or with a government entity. Startups are fun and not fun.

Freelancing involves so much more unpaid work. It's a mini startup, you are in charge. Startups can be easier mentally because you have a mission.

Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?

#20
post #15

This may cut against what some other are saying, but I've found larger tech companies to be very reasonable about the 40 hr work weeks. As you stated, you've had experience all at web startups. Startups tend to encourage the "work-all-day-every-day" mentality whereas (at least in my experience) larger tech companies will let you do your 40 hrs. Doesn't necessarily have to be a strictly tech company. A large corp of a…

Having worked at Microsoft and being now at another big tech company, that hasn't been my experience at all. Those companies seem to be trying to mimic startup culture internally, so they promote the "entrepreneurial employee" idea and try to organize groups internally as small startups.

I wish I could do the 9-5 thing at those companies (given the great pay and benefits, adding a predictable and sane work schedule would be perfect).

You may last a couple years being the odd one out doing strictly 40h a week, but performance review is going to catch up with you at some point.

These days I bite the bullet and stay till 8 or 9pm at the office regularly.

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