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My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

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Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#61

Post by pavs »

ignostic wrote: post #6

I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Having so little free time and so little time to spend with friends and family seems like a sad life regardless of the paycheck. I agree with this: "Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card." I also agree that "Showing up a lot increases your odds" (in this case meaning working a lot…

My personal experience. There was a time in my life when the idea of having "free time" was a foreign concept to me. I took 12-14 credits in college, worked 60 hours (mostly graveyard shift), plus I had small online side projects (needed fair bit of time) which was making me $500/month and I was fairly busy socially and had a girlfriend. The commute to my work and to my school were both about 1 hour each (NYC subway) and most of time I would sleep in the train to make up for rest and would sometimes miss my stop. I did this for about 2.5 years (give or take).

Life was bit of a blur, so much was happening, so fast, it was hard to keep track of everything. But I LOVED it. I loved the rush, I loved having something to do all the time. I loved looking forward to vacation times dates or whatever leisure time I could squeeze in.

Now that I am older and have much more free time in my life, I am not even 1/10th as productive as I used to be.

Honestly given the choice I would gladly take a extremely busy life over all the free time I have right now.

Trust me I am not just sitting around with the all the free time I have. I try to take on projects, learn new things, take on difficult physical challenges (training for marathon), but its just not the same.

Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#62

Post by timjahn »

ignostic wrote: post #6

I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Having so little free time and so little time to spend with friends and family seems like a sad life regardless of the paycheck. I agree with this: "Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card." I also agree that "Showing up a lot increases your odds" (in this case meaning working a lot…

THIS. Can't up vote this enough.

Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#63

Post by marvin »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #57
marvin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is so fascinating to me that advertising a job as "not 80 hour work week" is a major selling point. I mean, kudos to you, you will probably attract a lot of skilled developers with this attitude. You will also get almost as much done as someone who does 80-hour weeks. Where I live, by law you're not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week. If a company violates this, you can literally go to court and get a summa…

Where are you? In the UK we technically have a similar thing but the employee can voluntarily opt out. Pretty much every job will request that you sign the opt-out form on day 1. Does the rule apply to an individual or just to the individuals employment at a particular company? For example can a person work 40 hours for company A and then 20 hours of company B, in which case can company B take on work contracts from…

Norway.

Arbeidsmiljøloven (the Law of Workers' Environment) is one of the strongest pieces of legislation in the world to prevent exploitation of laborers. This law has to be followed by everyone who doesn't have an exemption after an agreement between large groups of employers and employees. Basically, most of the nation has the advantages of unionized labor without the big disadvantages (rent-seeking, destructive bureaucratic processes, low productivity).

Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#64

Post by _delirium »

ignostic wrote: post #6

I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Having so little free time and so little time to spend with friends and family seems like a sad life regardless of the paycheck. I agree with this: "Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card." I also agree that "Showing up a lot increases your odds" (in this case meaning working a lot…

I thought this feeling was extremely common, but judging by what gets to the front of HN I'm in the minority here.

I think HN just likes stories about extremes. Stories of people working 80-hour weeks do play well here, but then so do stories of people living in cheap foreign countries and working 10-hour weeks, supported by semi-passive income.

Perhaps somewhere in between is 37Signals' philosophy of pretty regular workweeks (5-day workweeks in the winter, 4-day in the summer) and their "quality of hours, not quantity" philosophy.

Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#65

Post by _delirium »

nerfhammer wrote: post #55
marvin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is so fascinating to me that advertising a job as "not 80 hour work week" is a major selling point. I mean, kudos to you, you will probably attract a lot of skilled developers with this attitude. You will also get almost as much done as someone who does 80-hour weeks. Where I live, by law you're not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week. If a company violates this, you can literally go to court and get a summa…

45+ hours per week is a typical part of any professional career in the US

In terms of in-office hours, that's not really true; it's more of a programmer thing. It's pretty common for engineers in other fields work regular 40-hour weeks, unless something unusual is happening. Partly this is because the classic professional workplace has fixed hours: 9-5 or 8-4. Many people have no choice but to stick to those hours closely, because they commute in carpools, so you can't go in early or stay late unless you convince the whole carpool to do so.

Admittedly, it is getting more common to do some email in the evenings nowadays, which sneaks in some extra non-office work hours.

Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#66

Post by golergka »

_delirium wrote: post #64
ignostic wrote: post #6

I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Having so little free time and so little time to spend with friends and family seems like a sad life regardless of the paycheck. I agree with this: "Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card." I also agree that "Showing up a lot increases your odds" (in this case meaning working a lot…

I thought this feeling was extremely common, but judging by what gets to the front of HN I'm in the minority here. I think HN just likes stories about extremes. Stories of people working 80-hour weeks do play well here, but then so do stories of people living in cheap foreign countries and working 10-hour weeks, supported by semi-passive income. Perhaps somewhere in between is 37Signals' philosophy of pretty regular…

> I think HN just likes stories about extremes.

Isn't it because a story about average Joe working 40 hours a week on a pretty regular job isn't much of a story?

Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#67

Post by xerophtye »

cperciva wrote: post #39
patio11 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Josh is currently downvoted, but is absolutely correct on US employment law. People wanting to run companies take note.

> People wanting to run companies take note. True, but people with time machines set to return them to January 1976 (when this story took place) probably don't need to worry about such details.

Eh? 1976? did i miss something? O_o

Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#68

Post by icebraining »

kissickas wrote: post #50
gotrecruit wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you knew where an alternative source of the same post is, but chose to make that completely unnecessary post about how you don't read articles on LinkedIn, while pretending you haven't read it?

Maybe he doesn't click linkedin links because they track and report what you've viewed if you're logged in, but once it was on pastebin he was happy to give the original source.

Maybe he doesn't click linkedin links because they track and report what you've viewed if you're logged in

All decent browsers support private tabs/windows nowadays, you can just open the context menu to open the link in one. It'd take less time than writing the post.

Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#69

Post by mseebach »

ignostic wrote: post #6

I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Having so little free time and so little time to spend with friends and family seems like a sad life regardless of the paycheck. I agree with this: "Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card." I also agree that "Showing up a lot increases your odds" (in this case meaning working a lot…

I think it's easy for most people to agree that 80 hour work-weeks are typically bugs, not features - especially as they often seem to be a symptom of a dysfunctional working environment.

> Life outside of work is, for many of us, far more meaningful than work.

There seems to be a meme that this should be the case. My work is extremely meaningful to me, and my work place is extremely not-dysfunctional and no boss is breathing down my neck for my to work any number of hours. My personal life is also great. In a Sophie's choice situation, I'd choose my wife, obviously, but I don't accept the dichotomy. I love my wife and I love the time we spend together, but a few year ago when I down with the flu for a few weeks, my brain felt like it turned to porridge. That's not good for me and it's not good for her. Being professionally challenged is extremely important to my private life, and working with people who feel the same way about their work is important to me. Right now, I am getting enormous returns, both mentally and financially, from my work, and so I work a lot. I completely expect the calculus to change when we have children, but we don't yet.

I understand that there are people who don't feel the same way about their work, and there is no merit in working 80 hours for the sake of working 80 hours. But focusing on that number alone and trying to form some objective truths from first principles is not terribly helpful in my opinion.

Re: My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

#70

Post by gregd »

mercer wrote: post #16
ignostic wrote: post #6

I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Having so little free time and so little time to spend with friends and family seems like a sad life regardless of the paycheck. I agree with this: "Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card." I also agree that "Showing up a lot increases your odds" (in this case meaning working a lot…

Maybe here they don't, but I think generally people see things your way. I don't, and I didn't, even before I got into 'tech' and started reading HN. For me, the statement 'life outside of work is more meaningful than work' just doesn't make sense. While I do treat 'work time' slightly differently than 'free time', the difference is not so great for me. It's mostly to keep some ritual and prevent weeks turning into l…

Not everyone enjoys their work. It's a sad reality. Most of us are just lucky enough to keep a monthly paycheck in our chosen fields at a rate that is almost a living wage.

Having said that, and I don't mean this as a slight to you or your particular lifestyle, do you have a significant other or children? This is probably a key question when talking about work/life balance. Because, as with all things, it's very important to strike a balance.

Generally when you're young and have nobody else but you to feed, your work life balance probably looks like WORK/life. Then, when you get married but before kids show up it looks more like WORK/LIFE. Then when kids show up it's work/LIFE. Then, hopefully it remains work/life for a long time and as you age it becomes work/LIFE.

I'm middle-aged and I've discovered that for me, I no longer identify with my job. I'm not what I do as far as work goes. It's gotten to the point that when I meet new people, I feel kind of awkward asking them what they do, knowing full well, the social norm means, "what do you do for a living?" I generally answer that questions with, "I'm a husband and a father...that's what I do.".

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