A contrarian take on working long hours • Hacker News Board

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#41

Post by hypertele-Xii » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 6:49 AM UTC

msla wrote: post #21

dleslie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that you are aware that you are greatly empowering your employer by intricately interleaving your work and concept of life. If your social network, your personal support network, your community and self are tied to your work; then your employer has tremendous power over you.

Two people can have political disagreements without one of them being ignorant.

In principle if two people disagree politically, they are both ignorant. If they were enlightened, they'd agree on a common policy.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#42

Post by TameAntelope » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 6:54 AM UTC

dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #29

TameAntelope wrote: post #13

I'll give you an actual contrarian take on working long hours: I like it, and I'm really tired of people commenting on what hours I keep. I enjoy my work. It's what I'd be doing in my spare time if I didn't need or have this job. I've thought about this, and I think I'd stick around at my role even if I hit a windfall, because I want to see this through to the end, one way or another. Sometimes, in order to do the ki…

The fact that you're posting some giant message about how much you work means it's unlikely you are truly working as many hours as you think. Use a tomato timer and hit the "Start" button every time you're truly doing work and "Stop" button when you're not. Bathroom breaks, employee chats, heating up lunches, break walks, posting on HN, etc... All that shit doesn't count. Get back to us with the #s after you've done…

I completed 32 pomodoros last week, which is above my average of ~25 for the past year and change, and a lot of my job isn't focused work, and none of that pomodoro time included any of the project management, meetings, or conversations I had with the team to figure out what we're up to, what the problems are, and what we're doing next.

But that's not the point. The point is the 9-5ers have held the higher moral ground for years now, and I'm tired of having to apologize or justify my preference for longer work hours because it makes them feel bad. There's nothing wrong with what their work/life balance is, but there's also nothing wrong with what my work/life balance is.

Honestly it's not that bad if you work weekends. You still have plenty of time to do other things, you just can't get as into your hobbies as you might like. I had to quit my WoW raiding team to devote more time to this job, for example. I don't think anyone would argue my decision there was a huge loss, and honestly the ~15 hours a week I was dedicating to WoW is much better spent on work and work related things.

I'm definitely procrastinating right now by typing all this out, so this time doesn't "count", but it's usually during my 5 min breaks between 25 min sessions, so I don't consider it lost time.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#43

Post by kevinventullo » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 6:56 AM UTC

10000truths wrote: post #28

dleslie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that you are aware that you are greatly empowering your employer by intricately interleaving your work and concept of life. If your social network, your personal support network, your community and self are tied to your work; then your employer has tremendous power over you.

This is a needlessly adversarial take. An employer that values you will empower you with commensurate compensation.

They absolutely will not. They will pay you the minimum amount they can to keep you around which, if you love your work so much you’d do it for fun, isn’t a lot.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#44

Post by onion2k » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:02 AM UTC

10000truths wrote: post #28

dleslie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that you are aware that you are greatly empowering your employer by intricately interleaving your work and concept of life. If your social network, your personal support network, your community and self are tied to your work; then your employer has tremendous power over you.

This is a needlessly adversarial take. An employer that values you will empower you with commensurate compensation.

An employer that values you will empower you with commensurate compensation.

If someone on my team chose to work 80 hours a week because they loved what they do then I would actively discourage them, and remove them from the team if they continued. Having someone like that around has several negative impacts;

- It makes other people resentful of the fact they have to work longer hours, or change their schedules, to keep up with features or testing. That leads to more staff churn.

- It's harder to have discussions about the work being done when someone is working outside of office hours, which leads to things being done as one person sees fit, or needing to be reworked often. That annoys other people on the team.

- Other people on the team who choose not to work more than their contracted hours would be very annoyed if they saw hours as a factor in compensation, leading to more staff churn.

- In a small business that charges for time in days, someone working 16 hours a day is essentially giving the customer work for free. If you charge for 2 days work, and tell the client you're doing 2 days work, but only work 1 day, that's dancing around the edges of potential fraud. A client could very reasonably argue that if you did the work in 1 day they should only pay for 1 day...

I would much rather have a good team of people working well together than have one hero doing most of the work.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#45

Post by HWR_14 » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:05 AM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #37

HWR_14 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple solution - work two jobs. I don't care if you work 80 hours a week. I don't think it's healthy or sustainable, but maybe it is for you. And I certainly don't think your fatigued work it's as beneficial as putting in a good 40 hours. But feel free. There is no reason it has to be the same job. Make two sets of 9-5ers happy. Meanwhile, if you set a standard that makes people expect your coworkers to work 60…

Simpler solution: work with people who share my values. This isn't theoretical. I'm currently doing it, and it's immensely fun!

Out of curiosity, I wonder about two personal questions. How old are you and how are you compensated for the extra hours? I'm not sure you're willing to share, but if you're working 60 hours you should have equity or extra pay.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#46

Post by TameAntelope » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:08 AM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #45

TameAntelope wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simpler solution: work with people who share my values. This isn't theoretical. I'm currently doing it, and it's immensely fun!

Out of curiosity, I wonder about two personal questions. How old are you and how are you compensated for the extra hours? I'm not sure you're willing to share, but if you're working 60 hours you should have equity or extra pay.

I have equity, yes, and I'm not comfortable talking about my age but I will say my wife works harder than I do and we don't have any children.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#47

Post by Arainach » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

10000truths wrote: post #28

dleslie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that you are aware that you are greatly empowering your employer by intricately interleaving your work and concept of life. If your social network, your personal support network, your community and self are tied to your work; then your employer has tremendous power over you.

This is a needlessly adversarial take. An employer that values you will empower you with commensurate compensation.

Name one case where this has been true. It's not the case at any business, even ones with the lavish funds to do so. Just about everywhere, new hires will be making more than tenured employees of comparable level regardless of their expertise and proven value.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#48

Post by djrobstep » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #46

HWR_14 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, I wonder about two personal questions. How old are you and how are you compensated for the extra hours? I'm not sure you're willing to share, but if you're working 60 hours you should have equity or extra pay.

I have equity, yes, and I'm not comfortable talking about my age but I will say my wife works harder than I do and we don't have any children.

You’re not comfortable talking about your age? Why not? Can you just give a broad range?

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#49

Post by listenallyall » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:21 AM UTC

This is meta-strange. Bragging about long hours makes someone sound ridiculous, like a humblebrag that is actually the opposite of a brag. But it's also ridiculous to claim to be "terrified" to write a blog post in which 98% of the audience agrees, actually just thinks it's common sense.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#50

Post by mrwh » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:22 AM UTC

galoisscobi wrote: post #10

I'm at a FAANG where people work really long hours (working on weekends/till 8 pm at night on weekdays are a normal occurrence) and we have some execs that really value butts-in-seats/gotta be in the office type mentality and are very excited for return to office. I struggled with the culture for a long time because I naturally don't feel inclined to be in a distraction riddled office or work long hours. I find the s…

Are you in the eng side or non-eng? My experience of FAANG life has been 40 hour weeks, with weekends worked on the rarest of rare occasions (none so far this year). But I'm aware that non-eng units have a more brutal time of it.