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Cutting your salary by 40%

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Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#151

Post by jnordwick »

le-mark wrote: post #143
jnordwick wrote: post #112

What many here dont seem to understand is that you work commensurate with where you want to be. I work longish hours become I'm in finance and want to move up the organization or find a higher spot inn another. I want to know more about all facets of the firm and one day be a principal in a prop trading firm. I don't put in 80+ hour weeks because I want to stay where I'm at in my career. I become involved in more and…

> I become involved in more and take on more reliability because I want more responsibility I the future. I work twice or more what I'm paid to work because I want to earn at least twice as much in the future. Noble sentiment, but in reality you are just marking yourself as a fool, especially to everyone above you. You seem to think that over achieving now will translate to future gains in either salary or position,…

I'm far from a low level grunt in my orgs. So far working hard has proven to be key in moving up. While in my field there isn't such a clear line between management and non management my last two titles have have had a foot in the management side.

In seems to be en vogue to despise hard work today (unless it is manual labor).

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#152

Post by [deleted] »

megaduck wrote: post #149
dogruck wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you determine that 40 hours is optimal? Why not 30? Or 50?

I'm not convinced it's optimal! However, it's a "known good" number that's easy to convince people to follow along with. Running experiments is hard and expensive, so we just haven't tackled that yet. My personal suspicion is that optimal is probably in the 35-45 range, but I'd love to have more data.

[deleted]

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#153

Post by chriskanan »

Asdfbla wrote: post #136

Not that I would strive for it myself, but I think at least it was honest that the job posting was upfront about the requirements instead of being silent about it and then peer-pressuring the employee into 70 hour work weeks anyway because everyone there does it. Who knows, maybe being upfront about it causes the applicants for the job to self-select for those who are confident that they can productively work 70 hour…

I think you are right. Andrew Ng is an academic and I have no doubt he works 80+ hours per week. Working really long hours is common in that world. I average about 60-90 hours per week. I know my colleagues in AI research are working just as hard and so are many of their PhD students.

The biggest problems I have are meetings. I can do research and code for 12-15 hours straight on weekends, but 8-9 hours on meeting days are utterly exhausting. Got to figure out a better way.

Kids would be the real obstacle to my current output.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#154

Post by arien »

etiene wrote: post #38

This is insane. I've actually been looking to reduce my work hours to about 30, because even 40 seems too much. Having had a couple of burnouts before, I want my life to be more than my job, and I truly believe this would make me better at my job in the long term. After a day of full time work I almost never have the energy to do some of the other things I want to do. I want to be able do more open source, learn a fo…

I did cut my salary by 40% voluntarily. I now work part-time (3 days per week, plus the rare emergency). Much better, as I can still pay the bills and got a 4 day weekend to do whatever I please with. I'm also a lot more productive as well both in and outside of work.

The only downside is that I don't have as much spare money as I used to to spend on those free days (e.g. travelling or taking lessons on x/y/z), but there are other low cost hobbies I take instead (my own coding projects amongst them). Socialising has gone up as well.

Working 70+ hours can be fun at some point in life, I've done it before. But it's too easy to get stuck in there and burnout or worse.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#155

Post by otakucode »

megaduck wrote: post #149
dogruck wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you determine that 40 hours is optimal? Why not 30? Or 50?

I'm not convinced it's optimal! However, it's a "known good" number that's easy to convince people to follow along with. Running experiments is hard and expensive, so we just haven't tackled that yet. My personal suspicion is that optimal is probably in the 35-45 range, but I'd love to have more data.

It is "known good" specifically for repetitive manufacturing labor. That's what all of our business structures are optimized for. As work changes to be primarily mental, things will change. It's good that you're thinking about this sort of thing, it will give you a significant advantage in the coming years. Lots of research into how capable humans are of extended periods of mental exertion shows that we can be productive far less than with physical exertion. I suppose it's a good thing that thanks to computers, mental exertion ends up producing productivity multipliers rather than just incremental improvements then!

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#156

Post by dclowd9901 »

tablet wrote: post #121
megaduck wrote: post #50

I enforce a militant "40 hours only" policy for my employees, and it's incredible for productivity. When you work longer hours defect rates increase, code quality drops, and things are on fire all the time. You also lose really good people due to burnout. Sustainable pace is super important for creating and maintaining high performance teams. Crassly, it's just a more profitable way of doing business. I wish more man…

I partially agree with you, but personal productivity varies. So in our company we have a rule "work as much as you like, usually we expect no less than 30 hours, but it is OK to do 50. Anything beyond these ranges is odd".

What would you say if I told you in a given work day, I only work maybe 3-5 hours (including meetings) and still meet all targets?

This has been consistent for every job I've ever had.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#157

Post by philrw »

I studied film production in grad school, and one of the reasons I didn't pursue a career in that industry is because of the rampant, pervasive abuse like that mentioned in the article. "12 on/12 off" was a movement started by an industry veteran that cried for limiting the work days to 12 hours and providing a minimum of 12 hours down time before having to be back on set. It was started after a crew member died from falling asleep at the wheel on the way home from a shoot.

I am so glad to work in a place that a). not only doesn't have insane deadlines and the corresponding pressure but, b). has a sub-discipline dedicated to project management. And that I get to push back with my favorite mantra, "poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#158

Post by otakucode »

edanm wrote: post #21

As much as I'd love to believe the "work more than 40 hours a week, because SCIENCE!" party line, I have a hard time accepting it, and I think so do most people who hear it (outside of HN, at least). For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity. For another, anecdotally at least, most people know plenty of peopl…

It's the 'correct' amount of hours to maximize productivity for repetitive manufacturing labor tasks. Not mental work. We don't have any companies that have looked at the research into how capable humans are of extended periods of mental exertion and what it takes to optimize that.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#159

Post by jcadam »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #156
tablet wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partially agree with you, but personal productivity varies. So in our company we have a rule "work as much as you like, usually we expect no less than 30 hours, but it is OK to do 50. Anything beyond these ranges is odd".

What would you say if I told you in a given work day, I only work maybe 3-5 hours (including meetings) and still meet all targets? This has been consistent for every job I've ever had.

I can definitely believe that. But in my line of work I'm expected to bill at least 8 hrs/day to the client regardless of my personal productivity.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#160

Post by marcosdumay »

dx034 wrote: post #16
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens when every company is doing this ritual? Just look at Japan to see what a 12+ hour / day work culture looks like. Their population and their economy are both slowly going down the shitter thanks to it, depression is widespread, etc.

Not sure if economic problems really come from long work days. Otherwise it'd be easy to boost the economy by forcing people to work less. I totally agree with the health problems it causes though.

> it'd be easy to boost the economy by forcing people to work less

That looks likely. But it will reduce the concentration of wealth (probably, dramatically), so expect some opposition.

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