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The Burnout Machine

unionize.fyi

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Re: The Burnout Machine

#421

Post by SoftTalker »

jacobgkau wrote: post #194
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…

My initial reaction to this whole thing was the same as yours (not that I have any love lost for academics). Software engineers do basically no physical labor and usually get paid better than many people who physically work way harder. On the whole, software engineers are not "the victim," as you said. However, your examples made me think. > In other places, you can have a typical 40h/week job at a salary way better…

Software developers, unlike many other professions, can be self taught at almost no cost. You don't need a license, you don't need to pass any qualifying/gatekeeping exams, you don't need expensive tools, you don't need any supplies or inventory. Consequently there is a never-ending supply of new young developers who are hungrier than you and will do the work for less or do more work for the same.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#422

Post by palmotea »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #407
dasil003 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 25 years experience, the other thing is environments vary a lot, even within a single company. Things can be dysfunctional for lots of reasons, sometimes due to individual incompetence at various points in the hierarchy, or just systemic/cultural issues that no one has the vision or influence to identify and fix. When you're young and inexperienced, but technically brilliant, it's easy to miss the forest for the…

This leads to a more fundamental observation. That if unionization is so cleary net positive for most workplaces, then it wouldn’t need any sustained agitation campaigns in the first place. As any company that unionizes would near automatically gain a huge competitive advantage.

> That if unionization is so cleary net positive for most workplaces, then it wouldn’t need any sustained agitation campaigns in the first place.

> As any company that unionizes would near automatically gain a huge competitive advantage.

No, your "observation" has a fundamental flaw: There's no general "net positive for most workplaces," because different groups have different interests.

Unionization is a "net negative" for certain groups (managers, owners) and a "net positive" for others (employees, if done right). That's why there are sustained agitation campaigns against it.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#423

Post by habosa »

I’ve only been in tech for 10 years but I’ve worked at companies of various sizes (FAANG, a 50-person startup, and now a mid-sized “unicorn”) and I’ve never had to work crazy hours. Maybe leading up to a launch I’d work past dinner occasionally but mostly my work weeks have been 40-45 hours consistently.

Am I just lucky? I mean obviously I’m lucky relative to the world (tech has been lucrative and interesting during this decade) but are others in tech really working crazy hours all the time?

I have worked with some people who seem to turn any job into a 24/7 thing but they were either workaholics or under-qualified people trying to substitute quantity for quality. And it did not seem to pay off for them.

I’ve always thought that San Francisco was a pretty laid back city. Working until 7 is “late”. My friends in NYC think that’s early.

I will say that I’ve always thought oncall as a concept is odd and somewhat exploitative. Only software engineers and doctors seem to carry pagers. And software engineers (mostly) don’t save lives.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#424

Post by echelon »

DrillShopper wrote: post #311
echelon wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been an IC.

If you got a 10 figure exit then you're not working class.

I'm such a scatter brained dumbass sometimes. I meant "near 8 figures". I'm nowhere near "three commas" of wealth. I was emotionally responding to these pro-union comments between work and can't simple math.

I still can't fathom the headspace of people wanting to do less and be entitled to more while the rest of the world is catching up and offering a better value. The lasier we get, the less likely we'll be picked to do the work. And this is such a goddamned cushy job. Are we so fucking entitled we're complaining about our career? Seriously?

I also can't reason about why people think this is about money rather than building cool shit. If this is your hobby and you enjoy building, why wouldn't you want to do this? Especially if you pick your problem space?

Why are there so many people like this on a startup forum? Shouldn't everyone here be hustling and working hard? I don't get this attitude, and I don't want people like that on my team to drag me down.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#425

Post by echelon »

dmarlow wrote: post #416
Veserv wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You claim to have gotten a nearly 10 figure exit, yet you claim you made 450 k$ TC in your last job [1]. Even a maximally conservative estimate of 100,000,001 $ for a “nearly 10 figure exit” (being literally 1 dollar over 9 figures) would get you over 4 M$ annually in risk free treasuries. Why would you work for 450 k$? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43429259

Maybe he's counting decimal places too?

Yeah, I fucked that up [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43431883

Re: The Burnout Machine

#426

Post by DavidPiper »

bawolff wrote: post #312
karaterobot wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> High pay is usually a sign the job is compensating for being shitty in other ways. Or that it requires a set of skills that not everybody has, or that there is a competitive market where employees can select jobs based on pay. Those are two other reasons. Indeed, I have to question the premise that high pay and shitty jobs go together. I can think of plenty of shitty, low-paid jobs.

> Or that it requires a set of skills that not everybody has Sure, but its skills easy enough that teenagers self-teaching is considered common. Its much easier than most "professional" jobs, like doctor.

I don't think we should assume that teenagers being able to self-teach something makes those skills "easy".

When we hear stories like those the reaction tends to be "damn that must be a really smart kid".

I don't see any reason why equally smart kids couldn't teach themselves medicine, just as many professional sports players, artists, musicians, mathematicians, etc, tend to start playing from a very young age.

Some external differentiators seem to be "access to learning materials" and "regulation of access to a profession". As an example for that second point: there is absolutely a level of professional and personal maturity I expect from a doctor, that I don't expect the tech industry to screen for. Though I'm also not suggesting the current student -> doctor pipeline is ideal either.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#427

Post by echelon »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #400
theamk wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they can. Imagine the unions that make it hard to fire people - either because of individual performance, or because of downsizing. 1. Tech workers are currently treated well - good hours, good salary, great benefits, etc... (until they are fired / position is eliminated). 2. If unions appear which make firing people hard, companies would stop hiring in US, and switch to India or temp contractors.

Brother they’ve been threatening that for decades. If that was possible they would have done it 40 years ago.

Wake up. Engineers in other countries are just as good as we are. The only reason we don't hire remote is that the business functions here keep the same hours.

You throw unions into the mix and suddenly dealing with the time difference becomes the lesser evil.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#428

Post by xboxnolifes »

guy234 wrote: post #404
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most developers are paid more than 2x the median wage. For HN, that difference is probably 3x-5x or more. If class consciousness is on the rise, HN's readership is in the classes that the lower economic strata are going to be rising up against. If you have any illusions that the proletariat will welcome you with open arms for your claimed solidarity, think again or you might be in for a shock; specifically, a short,…

how is the proletariat oppressed by an ordinary non-management software developer?

It doesnt matter. What matters is what side you are perceived to be on.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#429

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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…

>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).

well I have worked all sorts of physically demanding jobs, digging ditches, building offices, tearing down offices...

So yes Software Engineering is easy - except when it's not. When it's easy it is real easy. When it's not it is significantly worse than most of the time at these other jobs. It is hard to explain the stress that a computer can give you when it is refusing for hours to do what you tell it to, but that stress is a lot worse than the stresses of landscaping in my experience.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#430

Post by polloslocos »

pdfernhout wrote: post #381
jacobgkau wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My initial reaction to this whole thing was the same as yours (not that I have any love lost for academics). Software engineers do basically no physical labor and usually get paid better than many people who physically work way harder. On the whole, software engineers are not "the victim," as you said. However, your examples made me think. > In other places, you can have a typical 40h/week job at a salary way better…

Some tangential thoughts and rambles on this to try to get at the deeper issues, first from Jeff Schmidt about his book "Disciplined Minds" which encourages solidarity of intellectual workers: https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ "Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identi…

Thank you for maintaining such an interesting, eclectic set of reading materials on the topic. I’ve already skimmed through a few of your suggested readings and I’m sold on your general approach. This is going to be something I keep coming back to over time.
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