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The Burnout Machine

unionize.fyi

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Re: The Burnout Machine

#111

Post by trinix912 »

wyager wrote: post #70
philjohn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not demanding per se, but when you're stack ranked against people who ARE ...

A lot of these pro-labor-reg people argue (and I agree with them!) that the ROI on additional hours worked past 40 is pretty bad. If this is the case, then someone working an extra N hours a week won't actually move the needle that much when it comes to performance ranking. My experience has been that the people who choose to work super long hours do not actually perform much better, if at all, than those who don't.…

I agree with this, but I think we need to keep in mind that oftentimes managers and executives aren't aware of how this works in our domain. When it's time to cut someone short, they have to decide between you and me doing 40 hour weeks vs. some other employees putting in overtime. It's not an easy problem to solve though.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#112

Post by singron »

film42 wrote: post #11

I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me th…

I'd like to see unions negotiate better equity deals. For pre-IPO companies, it's typical that the equity is worth nothing, and employees can actually lose money on their equity by buying it during early exercise or when they leave. For a typical employee, equity is too risky and too detached from their individual activity to be part of compensation, and it makes more sense to have different incentives. E.g. SAFEs or convertible notes where you can get paid at the next funding round instead of the IPO between 10 years and never. Alternatively, a union would have leverage and scale to arrange tender offers that individuals wouldn't. Also, during an acquisition, the union can negotiate to waive liquidation preference, since an acquirer doesn't want to buy a company where the employees don't get paid and strike on the first day.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#113

Post by wyager »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #101
wyager wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But tech isn't a blue collar industry, and this is about tech unions.

Why is tech not blue collar? Because you use your brain instead of your hands? You are closer to a plumber or an electrician than to Sergey Brin, griping that you should be working 60 hours a week to develop AI to replace you for Alphabet shareholders.

> You are closer to a plumber or an electrician than to Sergey Brin

I'm also a lot closer to a lawyer or a doctor than I am to a plumber. And very likely on the Sergey Brin side of the distribution.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#114

Post by legitster »

stared wrote: post #100

Software engineering is one of the ways of playing life in "easy mode" (I moved from academia over a decade ago, and I know the difference). This blog post tries to paint it differently - and it feels like it lacks perspective compared to virtually any other occupation. > We’re living in a world where billion dollar tech companies expect us to live and breathe code, demanding 80 hour weeks under the guise of "passion…

> This blog post tries to paint it differently - and it feels it lacks perspective with virtually any other occupations.

On one hand, misery and happiness are relative. On the other hand, try telling a construction worker how hard our lives are sitting in chairs clicking buttons.

My dad used to have to do things like hot tar roofing to pay the bills. So I still consider it a blessing to get to work in software.

I think one thing that needs to be understood better is the concept of "burnout". I think it's wrong to equate it with "working hard". I've known farmers and restaurateurs who work insane hours for decades and never think about burning out. On the other hand, I have felt burned out 3 weeks into a job where I did nothing. I think it has little to do with how hard we work and everything to do with our perception of progress.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#115

Post by BeetleB »

legitster wrote: post #34

This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies. If you only want to work at the flashy unicorns in downtown San Francisco, you are signing yourself up for exploitation. Like any career, if you get off the beaten path there are plenty of pretty okay jobs out there. Especially if you have a marketable skill. This is software, if you have a brain and functional hands - you already own the m…

> This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies

Indeed.

80 hours a week (or even 60): Never had to deal with that in over a decade across 3 jobs. In fact, I've never had to work a weekend (and if I did, it was either to fix my own screwup, or because I intentionally slacked off during the week and needed to make up for it).

Slack/email off work hours? Just ask up front in the interview: "I turn off my laptop at the end of my work day, and don't install any work related items on the phone. Is that OK?"

On call? Lots of jobs that either don't involve running an online/web service, or if it does is for some internal company tool where the cost of it being down is low. I've never had on call. However, I did interview at places that did, so the questions to ask in the interview:

"What is the on-call rotation look like?" Typically it's one week per person, rotated by the number of people in the team. Team has 4 people? That's once every 4 weeks (too much for me).

"How often are people called during on-call?" I interviewed in one place where they got 2 calls out of work hours in the whole year. I can live with that.

"What's the process of evaluating those calls?" Do they just expect you to take care of it and move on, or do they have a process to analyze and prevent it from happening again? Some teams move too fast and there will always be calls - they don't want the hit in fixing things.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#116

Post by Henchman21 »

wyager wrote: post #60
test098 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St... pretty much every team in blue collar industries which have been able to negotiate better working conditions, better pay, and more time off.

But tech isn't a blue collar industry, and this is about tech unions.

I work in a data center with electricians, tower climbers, and systems and network engineers. ALL of us are blue collar. Including me, a systems/network engineer. I suggest you investigate this aspect of tech — there’s more to it than VS Code and JavaScript

Re: The Burnout Machine

#117

Post by logicchains »

whoisthemachine wrote: post #85
sophacles wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A union doesn't have to be "workers for company X employees". It can be "web developers union" or similar - this is how the trades organize (see the pipefitters, and IBEW for some examples). Neat thing about this type of organizing is that the union provides training and standardization paths. Both of those make moving between jobs easier. They can also provide a standardized way of differentiating employee levels (e…

I quite like the idea of a trade union or accreditation board for SWE. The idea that we all work by a shared set of standards and terminology is appealing.

If it existed then we'd legally be forced to write awful enterprise-style OO-heavy Java, because that's what all the "software engineering" courses at university taught as best practice.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#118

Post by zug_zug »

goostavos wrote: post #45
protonbob wrote: post #20

The author seems to think that everybody works this way. In reality, many of us work 40-45 hour weeks with no on call and low amounts of meetings. These jobs are in the boring (military, banking, insurance etc) sectors but I make a good, not great, living.

I work at a FANG. Senior SDE. I don't have slack on my phone. I don't read emails (unless someone tells me out of band that one needs a response). Once I close this laptop work is dead to me until the following day. You pick and choose your own involvement. I'm "passionate" about the job. I consider it a craft and a lifelong pursuit. I'm writing a book on the topic. But the job is just a job. I'm here because they gi…

I'm sorry, what?

Most of us would trade our jobs in an instant for a nice fang role where we had 0 oncall. I don't think that option is on the table for everybody.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#119

Post by BeetleB »

rglover wrote: post #50
debacle wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never worked harder in my life than when I worked for myself.

Certainly, but it's far more rewarding than being grist for the mill. You can spend your entire life doing less-hard work, only to wake up at 80 and have nothing to show for it but a bank account that you can't take with you. Building your own thing is a rough go (13 years deep myself), but hell if I don't wake up most days with a shit eating grin on my face.

> Certainly, but it's far more rewarding than being grist for the mill.

Depends on your goals and your personality.

When I list the things I want to achieve in my life, working for myself drastically reduces the likelihood of achieving those things - unless my own business makes enough money for me to retire in a few years (extremely unlikely).

> You can spend your entire life doing less-hard work, only to wake up at 80 and have nothing to show for it but a bank account that you can't take with you.

Amusingly enough, I feel it's even more acute when you work for yourself:

"You can spend your entire life working hard for yourself, only to wake up at 80 and have nothing to show for it but a (tiny) bank account that you wouldn't want to take with you."

At least when you work for someone else (at about 40 hours a week), there's room for hobbies.

I recall a friend of mine - a local inventor (he had a PhD and kept building things, trying to make products out of them, etc). In his mid 50's, he had invented a lot, but his only success was that the business didn't go under. He qualified for food stamps, and hadn't taken a vacation in over a decade. He never had time for a meaningful relationship. He cut his losses and took a regular job. He misses doing deep technical work, but he's much happier.

Smart guy. I knew younger people who worked for him - did more fun technical stuff than I've ever done for a job. They took the lesson to heart and got regular jobs eventually, as well.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#120

Post by robocat »

abuani wrote: post #38
protonbob wrote: post #20

The author seems to think that everybody works this way. In reality, many of us work 40-45 hour weeks with no on call and low amounts of meetings. These jobs are in the boring (military, banking, insurance etc) sectors but I make a good, not great, living.

Yeah that was my take away. I don't doubt there are many company cultures like that, and you see many highly influential tech bros advocate for it. But in my ~15 year career, most of my burnout was due to lack of progress and politics, not 80+ hour work weeks. Now, I didnt make enough to retire in this time, but same as you I do just fine in a very high cost of living state. I've always planned my career to be 30+ ye…

> I want to retire and be able to actually enjoy it.

In hindsight the goal of retirement seems so weird.

Nobody can save their time into an account (your hours of life cannot be transferred). I have many friends that died before 65, or I know retirees with health issues that severely interfere with enjoyment of life.

In theory we can save money by investing for later (money ≠ time). In practice I strongly believe our governments will steal our investments... Demographics suggest that governments will go broke and so governments will take what whatever they can.

I'm in New Zealand and there are clear signals to me that retirement savers will get rug-pulled by our government (changes to age/$ thresholds, but also other various taxation suggestions). A government cannot reduce spending because either (1) voters don't like that or (2) other powerful beneficiaries {businesses, politicians} fight against it.

Background: I chose bootstrapped startup life in my 30s and got a small success by 50 and I'm now possibly retired. I wished I had payed more attention to what retirees actually do because previously I understood little.

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