Why I hate the weekends (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#231

Post by underwater » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 4:32 AM UTC

throwaway713 wrote: post #221

underwater wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing an outlier of an outlier. To follow your advice our developer has to have well above average skills (250k salary would be relatively senior even at FAANG), be single and live in a share house for 15 years (50k would cover rent for a family in areas with high tech salaries, nothing else) and the tech sector has to remain strong for 15 years (looking back 2004 was 4 years before the financial crisis…

> 250k salary would be relatively senior even at FAANG Not at all. I joined a FAANG company less than a year ago, am not a software engineer, and I'm at about $250k. Senior software engineers are closer to $400k-$500k. See levels.fyi. EDIT: You mentioned salary, but I think you're referring to total comp. Base salary at these companies is indeed lower than $200k except for non-senior positions.

No, referring to salary.

Total comp is great and all, but unless you're liquidating immediately after you receive a grant then you're adding another variable into the mix of things that need to go right.

And the stock portion of your comp being valuable is dependent on the company doing well. True for FAANG, but that's only because by definition that group is the companies that are doing well!

A $200K equivalent RSU grant spread over four years could end up being worth 20K a year or 200K a year, depending on whether you get lucky or not. Remember that the biggest tech companies 15 years ago included Dell, Delphi, Cisco and Yahoo.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#232

Post by kthejoker2 » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 4:52 AM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #179

gnulinux wrote: post #9

This resonates with me. I love my work, I really like what I do, I think it's mentally challenging, interesting, and important for our world and civilization and I believe I'm compensated well enough. But it's tiring ok? And all I can ever do on weekends is lying on my bed watching netflix. I work 9 to 6 and work out intensely for 2 hours every week day. By the time it's saturday I'm both physically and mentally exha…

I'm starting to see this more and more after reading Bullshit Jobs. What's thing where you see something and start seeing it more and more called?

Baader Meinhof phenomenon

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effec...

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#233

Post by anonymous1204 » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 4:56 AM UTC

The short answer to this, is that this is the lazy form of thinking pestering people's minds (especially young) nowadays. People who don't know how to plan their lives, finances, time, studies, family, work, health or whatever it is that needs a solution, and blame it on the system. Just like my ex-girlfriend, she used to talk on and on (and on and on, and on again) about "our system", and then after I broke up with her and she graduated college she didn't start working, she is traveling the world for the past 6 months with government welfare that Europe is so stupid to give. As the years go by she will keep complaining about "our system" but she never did anything to improve "our system", she only consumed. This is called leeching.

Take some responsibility & get what needs to be done quickly and well, and you will buy yourself some freedom, nothing in life is free, and it shouldn't be, since no one should be working and not getting paid for it.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#234

Post by kthejoker2 » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 4:59 AM UTC

muzani wrote: post #201

Synaesthesia wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest reason is because bosses don’t want us to. They want to make as much money as possible, and that’s about it really. The good news is we have made progress, through mass action, people have won the right to weekends, fewer hours and other rights. The final battle is one to win control of the workplace itself, a self-managed and owned workplace.

Even when self employed I don't really want to. I know 5 days/week is unproductive, but it's difficult to scale down to 4. That's cutting down "potential" salary by 20% and with all the fixed costs out there, the potential income loss is much, much higher. But the reality is that being constantly tired is unproductive and having 50% more time off is huge.

Just employ yourself at 25% more than your current rate?

Or do as I'm striving to do and work 5 days a week for less and less of the year. I aim for 35 weeks, basically 2/3 on, 1/3 off. And then I find when I consult for 2 or 4 more weeks it's like a bonus.

It also allows you to work a little harder on Fridays when there's a tanigble endpoint.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#235

Post by Noumenon72 » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 5:05 AM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #11

wilkystyle wrote: post #2

> I feel like my whole life is centered around work. Even though I work a (what is considered) reasonable 40-hour work-week, I feel like too much of time is taken away from me. Not only is it actually being in the office but commuting too. My morning are devoted to getting ready for work: dressing up, packing up a lunch and so on. As someone who also works a reasonable 40-hour a week job, I cannot emphasize enough ho…

I've been working remotely my whole life (freelance developer). It's interesting how jaded I am of driving in general. There are certain intersections in my town where it's common to get stuck at a red light that lasts for minutes. Things like this put me on complete life tilt. All I think about is "how can anyone put up with this every day?". I'm no longer surprised why people go berserk out of no where. I really do…

I use the time at traffic lights to do little stretching and twisting exercises in my seat. Rotating my wrists, punching, wiggling my ankles and hips. Basically the warmup exercises I need to feel healthy at 40, and a good use of dead time. I do neck and wrist twists when I'm on cruise control too.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#236

Post by kngzhi » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 5:07 AM UTC

squeaky-clean wrote: post #222

ajmurmann wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that would have to happen globally. We are still competing with companies in other countries. Chinese startups subscribe to the 996 schedule (9am-9pm, 6 days/week). I'm not sure if 954 allows us to compete.

Why not? We're currently competing with 955.

I'm pretty astonishing about that movement happening in the West(or USA only?). Because, by contrast, in China, 996 is the current trend in tech companies.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#237

Post by WaltPurvis » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #116

nathias wrote: post #61

if you don't like what you're doing, stop doing it

That is pretty trite. Most people don't have that luxury.

True. It's also true that most people don't have the luxury of complaining that 40 hours of indoor office work is too hard (even downright unethical and inhumane). Most people in the world wouldn't even be able to conceive of the concept of complaining about the inhumane torture of having to do 40 hours of indoor office work per week.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#238

Post by danShumway » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #99

pjc50 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is entitled to talk about their subjective experience. Nobody has to listen to it. And it feels a little rude to go all Four Yorkshiremen on people and tell them they don't really have it hard. .. unless they're recommending some action be taken, of course. And this blog post isn't. It's not a demand for policy, it's just talking about life.

> Everyone is entitled to talk about their subjective experience. Maybe that's part of the problem. Not that everyone is entitled to talk about their subjective experience, but that everyone feels entitled to talk about their subjective experience -- and many are socially blind and comically out of touch when doing so. That's where memes like "first world problems" came from... Everybody should be able to talk about…

> It's not like there aren't real problems to complain about that are shared among people and don't make someone look like self-absorbed

I think this approach to suffering is problematic. Feelings are not a contest. When I talk about things that hurt me, I don't care if someone else thinks that I'm "self-absorbed." The point of expressing myself and being vulnerable about things I'm dealing with is not to make me look good.

It's to sort out my thoughts so I can better understand what I'm feeling, it's to connect with other people who understand me and can offer solutions, it's to find other people who are going through the same things so I don't feel like I'm alone, and it's to show other people who are going through the same things that they're not alone.

Expressing yourself to other people is healthy, even for rich 0.1% people. It only becomes an issue when it causes you to stop caring about other people or dismissing their problems as irrelevant. I don't see any obvious indication in this post that OP has done that. OP can simultaneously say, "this is a hard thing I'm struggling with" and "other people have it worse" at the same time. They're not exclusive concepts.

And not to poke fun, but the framework you propose is honestly just silly if you start to break it down: is it uncouth for the middle-class to complain about rising health care costs, given that many US prisons don't even offer adequate health care at any cost? Is it a problem for the homeless to complain about eating food out of trash cans when poorer people in other countries are mixing dirt into their flour? You mention divorce as a shared issue, but really that just shows how out-of-touch you are with the plight of modern sex-slaves in ISIS controlled territories.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#239

Post by james_s_tayler » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 5:10 AM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #23

mavhc wrote: post #17

We moved from a 7 day working week to a 6 day working week about 2000 years ago, and to 5 days about 100 years ago, it's time to move to 4 days. In addition the 5th day should be used for lifelong education, people should be expected to learn about all the new things that have been invented since they left school, or refresh what they're not good at.

> In addition the 5th day should be used for lifelong education It's tough because in tech, spending significant time (probably totaling about a day per week) needs to be spent on continuing education and employers (and spouses) are not keen on letting it happen on "their" time. I've been doing Ruby on Rails for four years and even that -- a relatively stable, mature framework -- is a grindy treadmill of continual le…

I'd love to do 4 days work 1 day education for exactly this reason.

Though I've come to point where I'm starting to approach it strategically. For the most part the only thing that really matters is how employable you are. So long as you can find a job that meets your standards you are fine as you learn the minutiae on the job and it's always different for every job so you can't prepare in advance.

With that in mind this year I'm focusing mostly on the fundamentals doing deep dives into knowledge with extremely long half-life. I've got about 280 hours of courses I'm making my way through on Pluralsight this year. I'm about 1/4 the way through. Just started my SQL playlist and already I'm so glad I'm taking the time to dive deep on it. The difference between now and the end of the year will be night and day.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#240

Post by Noumenon72 » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 5:11 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #98

> Our lives are high maintenance. We need to maintain our relationships with our spouses, friends and family. We need to take care of ourselves with exercise, hygiene and so on. Our houses need to be kept clean and our fridge full of food. And to be able to do all that, we need work to make a wage so we can pay for what keeps us alive. Nothing that a short stint in the developing world doing a non-desk job for a mont…

Yeah, I worked mandatory 53 hours in a plastic factory for years, sometimes six twelves in seven days. You still manage to take care of most things. Then sometimes when the economy slowed we would go down to 36 hours a week. That would show us just how much time off that actually is. Just working an 8-hour shift instead of 12 means you come home and have four-plus hours of your own time for whatever you want, every single day.

After that, programming is so far from exhausting that I work overtime just because I feel like I'm not doing my fair share any more.