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Re: 996

#441

Post by alchemical_piss »

whstl wrote: post #177

996 is just theater for investors. Saw this happening even at YC companies. There was always that stupid expectation of overworking, staying until 9. The reality is that people twiddle thumbs. And the disorganization and micromanagement power plays are enough to negate any additional worked hour. This ranges from pure disorganization in terms of what to build to having 3 hour meetings with the whole fucking company w…

> The reality is that people twiddle thumbs.

No way man. You get hard workers (tm) working hard. I can’t tell you how many h1b Indians are more than happy to respond to my every bark any time of day to work on my visionary line of business SaaS app. People like you are obsolete bozo.

Re: 996

#442

Post by lentil_soup »

santiagobasulto wrote: post #303

You're all answering from a very privileged standpoint. I started my career in tech from a small town in Argentina. When broadband was prevalent around the world (2012) I was still working with a dial up connection on a $200 computer. I grew up seeing what poverty and lack of opportunities does to people, and I was determined to break away from that. I got a job at a startup by sheer luck, and it completely changed m…

Hard disagree. What does privilege have to do with this? Why do you need to work in those conditions because you're poorer? I'm all up for making a huge effort to get out of a shitty situation, but giving it away to a company makes no sense.

I'm also from South America, I don't think promoting people to kill themselves working for someone else is the way out

Re: 996

#443

Post by La-Douceur »

utrack wrote: post #391
unmole wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work for Huawei where 996 or worse wasn't uncommon. While middle management definitely pushed for extended working hours, I didn't get the impression that anyone viewed it as failed management. If anything, upper management knew exactly what was happening and was encouraging it. Hell, you have the likes of Jack Ma glorifying 996, calling it a blessing.

Not a lot of people know, but the 996 in Alibaba included 2 hour long lunch and sleep break, as well as 1 hour for a dinner at 6 pm.

I worked for ByteDance in Singapore. People would show up for work between 10 and 11am, lunch would start around 11:45am or 12, then people would nap until 2pm at their desk. A good, focused engineer could produce the same output as these engineers while only working in the morning

Re: 996

#444

Post by Kwpolska »

scott_w wrote: post #439
Kwpolska wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And can we include on-call in the list as well?

On-call is different because it’s usually paid. Lots of businesses outside of tech do on-call and it’s not controversial at all.

Isn’t 996 paid more than 955? Software engineers on-call is not a great practice, especially if you’re not in a life-critical industry (and most engineers aren’t), even though it’s been normalized.

Re: 996

#445

Post by rsynnott »

abustamam wrote: post #428
citizenpaul wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who have no experience of the reality of working long hours themselves? The majority of rich people do not work for their money. They inherit or "soft inherit" the money. They do investment stuff because it makes them feel big and powerful and important. You can tell by their speech patterns. Meet some rich people in real life and pay attention to just how slow their patterns of speech and movement are on average. M…

I went to a seminar a lot of years back. The grifter on stage was hawking a product on how to invest in venture capital or something. The pitch was "got no money? Use other people's money! Pay $300 to learn how" I don't know how true it is, as I am not about to take this grifters sales pitch at face value, but given that the grifter exhibited a lot of traits that I see in some of these rich investor people, I suspect…

That’s what VC firms generally do.

Re: 996

#446

Post by rogerdickey »

My view on this is very different from most commenters. I love work, and early in my career really thrived in a "996" job. I wrote more about it here as a response to this post, "In defense of 996": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45152608

The first comment on my post was "fuck off". I'm not trying to push my working style on anyone else, I simply like to work hard. What's wrong with that?

Re: 996

#447

Post by rsynnott »

philipallstar wrote: post #312
ohdeargodno wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who have no experience of the reality of working long hours themselves? The vast, vast majority of investors are nepo babies that inherited dad's company and his trust fund. The rest of them that may have worked have deluded themselves into thinking it was because of their "hard work" they got there So uh, yeah, they're dumbasses. But even then: they don't care that long hours have no significant benefit: the people…

> The vast, vast majority of investors are nepo babies that inherited dad's company and his trust fund. Citation needed.

This is incorrect for ‘investors’ in general (in many countries practically everyone’s an investor because that’s how pensions mostly work now) and _may_ even be incorrect for large investors as a class, but specifically for the type of investor who invests, either directly or through a VC fund, in startups, well, I don’t have numbers, but I’d be willing to bet it is correct for _them_.

Re: 996

#448

Post by rsynnott »

graemep wrote: post #263
throwawaybob420 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors are dipshits more often than not. Just because someone has money to throw doesn’t mean they know much about many things.

They also have to be stupid enough not to hire someone why does know things to manage their money for them.

See the story of Theranos. Pretty much everyone who did basic due diligence declined to invest in Theranos; they apparently didn’t even have faked audited accounts for the purpose. But there were enough dumb rich people willing either not to ask the person who knew, or to ignore them, that Theranos had no trouble getting funding.

Now the average VC fund isn’t _as_ incompetent as the average Theranos investor, but it’s still a field where decisions by ‘visionaries’ are often valued over expertise.

Re: 996

#449

Post by epolanski »

citizenpaul wrote: post #370
epolanski wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

55 hours is still insane. I could only do it in a highly growing startup as an early engineer, with the expectation I'm out in few years.

Really? Ive yet to encounter a job that expected less than 55hr as general minimum.

I don't really like the comment I'm about to write but get a life and set foot outside that bubble.

It's also cringe how this kind of comments on "how long one works" come from north americans. It's not cool.

Re: 996

#450

Post by spixy »

whstl wrote: post #177

996 is just theater for investors. Saw this happening even at YC companies. There was always that stupid expectation of overworking, staying until 9. The reality is that people twiddle thumbs. And the disorganization and micromanagement power plays are enough to negate any additional worked hour. This ranges from pure disorganization in terms of what to build to having 3 hour meetings with the whole fucking company w…

lying to investors is also shitty
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