It sounds like being a contractor and choosing your own hours would suit your lifestyle more.
It is something I'm looking into myself.
Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
41–50 of 65 posts
Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
#42Get out of software. Not software developing, just the software business.
There are lots of industries that are far more sane, but that still need developers. Try looking for a government job for example. Or within fields like logistics, transport, insurance or civil engineering. There a tons of programming opportunities out there that have nothing in common with web based startups. Working on an in-house app for a large logistics company might sound 'sexy', but it can offer a decent wage a stable working situation and far more sane working hours. And the truth is there are lots of genuinely interesting problems to be solved within a lot boring industries. Also you might have to accept you'll be working with some weird in-house COBOL dialect.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
He did say "telco, bank, large internet company". I don't think MS and Amazon are like that. I worked at a very large company, one of the top 40 on the stock market. The attitude is quite complacent. Everyone except senior management is forced to work 40 hours. As in they are all given generous vacation time, and the electricity is cut during holidays so nobody can work. Any contact outside office hours is highly dis…
Seriously, I need names. I have daily daydreams about the “comfy, 9-5, well-paying corporate job”. Maybe it’s the Seattle area but I’ve never heard of one here. Every job ad no matter the company always has the subtle wording that indicates you’ll be working under a lot of pressure and forced to multitask like crazy and spend long hours in the office.
Dunno about US, but in Europe all banks are like that. They know the work is frustrating and boring (they almost never want to rebuild stuff from scratch, so you end up building on decades-old layers of undocumented crap - COBOL etc.) , so they compensate with good pay and low expectations.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
He did say "telco, bank, large internet company". I don't think MS and Amazon are like that. I worked at a very large company, one of the top 40 on the stock market. The attitude is quite complacent. Everyone except senior management is forced to work 40 hours. As in they are all given generous vacation time, and the electricity is cut during holidays so nobody can work. Any contact outside office hours is highly dis…
Seriously, I need names. I have daily daydreams about the “comfy, 9-5, well-paying corporate job”. Maybe it’s the Seattle area but I’ve never heard of one here. Every job ad no matter the company always has the subtle wording that indicates you’ll be working under a lot of pressure and forced to multitask like crazy and spend long hours in the office.
It's common outside the US. A bit insulting to name names. But try looking at companies that are at the $1B-$100B mark for over a decade.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
#45This 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…
This does not reflect my experience at the >10k employee level of company. I've had a more reasonable work week out of the 150 employee consulting firm than I have the 10k employee public software company. At the >=100k employee, multiple-decades-in-business, old guard type of company, I had the inverse of what you're relaying, as well. On-call was routinely referred to as the 'week of hell'. Fires tended to crop up…
You should name and shame, no one wants to work at place like this. Surely it's just individual teams and not the entire org though?
Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
#46Not 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…
How do you find those contracts? I don't have all that much of a network, my former colleagues are either still at the startups I left or working for another startup.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
#47how did you go about self learning and employed?
Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
#48Why 40 hrs? Try 24-32 and you might find the pace suits you better. This might work for a small org that needs a tech person but can’t support a FT tech person. Ideally you’ll be matching your needs/wants with an employer’s needs/wants. So be more aggressive in searching for the right situation, and you might not end up needing to hurn so many bridges. Also, evaluate why you desire to leave. Is it boredom? Difficulti…
> Why 40 hrs? Try 24-32 and you might find the pace suits you better. This might work for a small org that needs a tech person but can’t support a FT tech person.
How do you find these? I've looked for PT work and everywhere wants FT employees or nothing because they say the marginal cost to them between PT and FT isn't much more (admin, training, office space and health insurance costs are pretty much fixed regardless of hours worked)
I end up leaving because I get burned out, because I don't want to drink the Kool-Aid and that doesn't sit well with management, and because I get bored: companies never do something so amazing that I want to keep doing it a year in. It's interesting in the beginning because you learn how the company works, how the software works, you meet new people, maybe discover a new area of the city where the office is in but all that eventually wears out.
Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
#49how did you go about self learning and employed?
Are you asking because you're curious/looking to do the same or because you think that it will help find answers?
Re: Ask HN: I want to be a 40h/week intermediate developer.How do I stay employable?
#50Not 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’m very suspicious of people who say they work more than 40 hours per week.
I agree. You may feel productive working longer but that doesn't mean you are. The truth often is that this thing which took you 3 hours to finish late in the evening would have been done in 1 hour the next morning with a clear and rested mind.