Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Work Life balance slows careers

pathtostaff.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 122 posts

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#41

Post by ipaddr »

mlsu wrote: post #25

> Our family once bought a Nordic chess set my then-seven-year-old son was excited to use. He asked me whether we could play it together, and I said, “Sure!” He then asked me to put it on my calendar, and watched until I had done so. This was a devastating moment of sudden realization for me. > Only you can answer whether the sacrifices are worth it. Nah, not only you. I think a good appendix to this article would be…

The kid is spoiled. Many Dads work two jobs barely see their family trying to keep a roof over them and food. None of those Dads are beating themselves up because they had to schedule a chess game.

Rich person problem that they solved by not working. Most Dads working two jobs can't.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#42

Post by mattlondon »

There is only so much you can hustle, a lot is out of your control.

We all know people who have repeatedly been given plum projects that are a bit of a fait acompli - highly-visible, wanted, and easy to implement both technically and organizationally - and surprise surprise they get promo after promo for landing high-impact projects. Yet suddenly they arrive in some new team and their career progress grinds to a halt because there is not the same "low hanging fruit" and they can't just slam dunk everything they touch any more. All of a sudden they are left holding some doomed tarball and it is not so easy to look good any more because it's messy and hard and super-complicated and unpopular. They keep putting in the hours yet don't get anywhere.

TL;Dr You need to opportunity, and working more hours won't make those appear every time.

Yes you can try to weasel your way into "making" the opportunity, but then you start playing The Politics Game and that is a totally different kettle of fish.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#43

Post by philk10 »

serjester wrote: post #9
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

Well, at least he spared a moment for a reflection on how it's affecting his family.

> When I first started at Microsoft, I had a sleeping bag in my office. I coded until 11pm nightly and slept until 3am, at which point I’d code until ~6am, then sleep until my first meeting ~10am. It’s everyone’s pejorative on what they want to focus on in life, but this is pretty insane. Obviously it worked out for him (so we think), but this sounds like recipe for a couple divorces and kids that hate you (even if h…

also seems a recipe for poor quality work once you're over 40 hours a week

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#47

Post by munificent »

Loughla wrote: post #36
yladiz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s assume you can save half of that. In two years, you’ll have 500,000. Is that enough to never work again?

Where I live, 500k would be enough to live my life until I die using basic safe investments and planning. I might not be able to take lavish trips, but I could live comfortably off of that for decades. Do you live in an urban USA area?

I don't think that's true anywhere in the USA. You need healthcare, it isn't cheap, and Medicare doesn't kick in for quite a while (possibly never the way politics is going).

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#48

Post by flkiwi »

> He was promoted every year in his first 8 years at Microsoft.

Microsoft has too many layers and they value performative work over any kind of actual leadership experience OR Microsoft's promotions are a sham and leadership select--i.e., filling roles that make the real money--have absolutely nothing to do with these sops to the masses. That's the conclusion I draw from such a bizarre stat. Either way, this guy was played by a system that will happily chew him up before he can realize he wasted his life (unless, of course, this is genuinely what he wanted, in which chase, man, you do you).

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#49

Post by SirMaster »

jajko wrote: post #34

If you live to work, all the power to you. Just don't get kids, the world has enough broken folks who are struggling their whole lives to overcome their childhood and their father figure (or the lack of it). They carry the traumas right into their own relationships, often repeating same mistakes. Listen to people a bit since its easy to notice if you know what to look for, its proper pandemic under the hood in all di…

But if you don't have kids, then you don't really need that much money is what I find at least...
Post reply on HN