211–220 of 267 posts
I'm quitting my day job and starting freelancing in October this year, in iOS development in The Netherlands, Europe. I'd really welcome a project.
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One of my past employees worked with me for about 6 years, doing four days a week. He asked if it was an option and, while there were days when it was inconvenient given that I run a small business, I didn't mind. He's since moved elsewhere, but I would've kept him on doing three days or fewer hours spread over the week. I wouldn't feel comfortable paying full rate for part time hours under the guise of it being "jus…
I agree that the pay shouldn't be the same in terms of annual compensation, but I see no reason why hourly compensation shouldn't be the same, once fixed costs are accounted for (such as health insurance).
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"all you can do without burning out." If I may, this sounds to me like if you assumed that everyone should be working just one step below burn out limit. And this seems to be shared by so many people. I wonder what is the rationale behind it? Is it a way to maximise income? or to make sure the 1billionth chance to be a new Bill Gates or Steve Jobs is not lost? For me, as a French, it seems obvious that we should be v…
If you don't push yourself, then you don't grow fast enough. Burnout is also bad, so the ideal is to stay exactly one step below burnout.
I don't know what "fast enough" is supposed to be measured by, I guess that depends on your personal goals.
But you clearly have never experienced burnout. "One step below" is dangerously close to the precipice. If you cross the threshold (real life is too unpredictable for tight-rope walking), burnout is not a simple matter of taking that one step back. Recovery takes disproportionately more time than that. And you may not notice you've gone too far before you're already well in. You may cause long-lasting damage. You may wreck your career. You will learn an important lesson or two about what is "fast enough" for what is important in life :)
Analogy: Keeping your flammable documents exactly one degree below combustion temperature. While playing with fire.
I have been working 25 hour weeks for a little over a year now, but agonizing over finding a good number for years before that. I've found that for difficult problems to crack, I may only work 1 or 2 hours per day. But for easier stuff like initial setup, a little refactoring, translating wireframes to layouts, etc, I can easily manage 6 or 7 hours per day. 8+ is too much, and working 3 or more days in a row at that…
Hehe, the web of interests sounds very familiar. I'm using pocket (getpocket.com) to cut down on the number of tabs though, maybe it would be useful for you as well.
Many of my small business buddies [+] start with their first few programmers on this sort of schedule. It generally fits within their/our budgets, gets them continuity versus project-based freelancers, and doesn't cause them to have to compromise on their quality of life through managing you constantly. It isn't my place to mention the salaries I've heard but, anecdotally, they're a) more than anything I earned prior…
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"no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact" tell that to a medical resident...or just about any in-hospital physician, for that matter. many, many people work long shifts and are entirely productive.
I've not worked at a hospital, but I've seen people in somewhat similar circumstances: military exercises, working as leaders at a youth camp -- and while they all get the job done, it's always been clear that they'd do a better job if they had more free time/more sleep -- in short they can work productively (under high strain/stress) for more than 8 hours -- but they'd do better work if they could work fewer hours.…
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a487169.pdf
For an alternative take:
http://theenergyproject.com/blog/sleep-as-a-competitive-adva...
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This is an interesting point, but it assumes that one's 'purpose' in life is to work. That's a pretty sweeping assumption, and one which the guilt is predicated on. Any idea why you feel this way? Would it not be just as valid to say that one's purpose in life might be, for example, enjoyment? Or helping others (not necessarily through a job)? In which case you should feel pretty guilty about going to work for 40 of…
I'm not sure it's bad to feel guilty about this. I'm more interested how people who don't feel guilty see life. I mean surely at some point having aimless fun starts looking a bit like wasted time in someone's life, no? We live to give our tiny contribution to humanity, and we do it by creating something through work. That also brings joy, and we do it to help each other (deviations notwithstanding). But it's a meani…
The biggest question is: What do you want from life? And one way to find out is if you answer the question:"Would you be doing the same if money wasn't an issue?". I think contributing to society through work is hard to define and overrated. Do you think all these silly apps make a difference on the grand scheme of things? Probably not. Does society really need smartphones? It all depends on you and your own values. If you do things that bring you joy, you might be doing more for a healthy society than if you create value through some job that you wouldn't do if money wasn't an issue.
Edit: I started to read this blog recently, which tries to answer what makes a life a good life. Maybe, you'll find some inspiration in there: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/