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Work Life balance slows careers

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Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#71

Post by Aachen »

ipaddr wrote: post #41
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.

I'm not sure it's spoiled. From what I hear of colleagues with kids, they would wish you came home riding a new pony about 12 minutes after you left to work. Another colleague was "gone" too much from the daughter's life and she wished that wasn't the case (he works from home besides like two weeks of the year). They're just not grown ups, not realistic, and (I'd assume) that's normal. Which is to say, I don't think you're at all off in that the kid's wish is to be taken as a loose suggestion at best, but I wouldn't say that they're spoiled just because there exists someone else has it worse

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#72

Post by apwell23 »

hvs wrote: post #53

I don't actually disagree with anything in this article, I would just argue that at some point you might want to consider why you are so interested in "fast career growth". Is it more money? More recognition? More power? To what end? The standard cliches are true as far as I can tell (as I approach 50). "You can't take it with you", "no one wishes on their death bed that they had worked harder", etc. In 10 years, no…

maximize earning potential to early retirement.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#73

Post by vonneumannstan »

kwanbix wrote: post #3

Side note: After 10 years living in Europe, I moved back to my home country and started looking for remote jobs in the US. It's wild what the US calls “quality of life”. In Europe, I had 6 weeks of vacation per year (from basically day 1) in the US, it’s 2 weeks! In Europe, unlimited sick leave is standard (with varying coverage by insurance); meanwhile, a US company bragging about being a “best place to work” was pr…

Theres a reason why everyone in the US is driving a $40k Pickup and people in EU are struggling to even get air conditioning lol.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#74

Post by pjio »

I usually optimize for efficiency of my work hours. While I can be quite productive even with fewer hours in good conditions, coworkers who are willing to spend more hours and be more available can run over me. It's like a fight forced upon one: Who can maintain a bit of productivity while time and focus needs to be sacrificed due to conflict?

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#75

Post by SoftTalker »

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 was probably excited and proud to have an appointment on his Dad's calendar. That moment and the scheduled chess game probably was a bigger deal to him than if his Dad just hung around the house all day.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#76

Post by Aachen »

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…

I don't know that someone who's barely seven can be expected to have an informed opinion that would be worth adding as an appendix. It might be cute, or interesting to learn about child development to see what they would answer at 7yo, or fun to have them read it back five years later, but not to inform your decision by all that much. Figuring out what's in their best interest is what a parent chose to dedicate their life to imo; it's the parent's/parents' responsibility to think for them, not to use their fanciful answers to prove a predictable point

Given the quote, though, it does sound like the parent is not putting the kid's best interests first and foremost

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#77

Post by solatic »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #39

The real issues come when you work hard and just get exploited. That's what's really missing here. Someone who got lucky in life and had their hard work rewarded is telling others that hard work pays. In fact for this author in his field it pays off 100x+ whatever it pays for others. For a salary of a few million a year i too would be willing to work some 12+hour days... for a while. I'd even post a few articles on h…

Yeah there's a very serious bias when an E9 is telling people to work 18 hour days like he did when he was getting promoted every year at Microsoft. Of course an E9 has a latent interest in seeing more lower-level Facebook ICs put in longer hours. If every Facebook IC put in 12+ hour days, that would be a terrific success from his leadership.

... but what are the chances of every Facebook IC getting promoted to E9? If you're the only rat on the treadmill when everyone else is ambling about, maybe you stand out to get promoted. If you join a company where all the rats are on treadmills, nobody wins that rat race.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#78

Post by ian-g »

This has all been a very personal thread

My two cents are that I have hobbies and obsessions that fulfill me and can make me money. I’m keeping the work-life balance and slowly getting better at my hobbies.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to retire early from tech and finish out my time doing something else part time. I started out working on bicycles, I’d like to close things out similarly in a few decades.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#79

Post by kwanbix »

weberer wrote: post #24
kwanbix wrote: post #3

Side note: After 10 years living in Europe, I moved back to my home country and started looking for remote jobs in the US. It's wild what the US calls “quality of life”. In Europe, I had 6 weeks of vacation per year (from basically day 1) in the US, it’s 2 weeks! In Europe, unlimited sick leave is standard (with varying coverage by insurance); meanwhile, a US company bragging about being a “best place to work” was pr…

Where is "in Europe" in your case? There are around 50 countries, each with their own laws. In Finland, you don't get ANY vacation days until the next time April 1st rolls around. And then, the number of days you get is heavily reduced if you haven't worked the entire year from April-April. Why is it like that? Who the hell knows. Oh yeah, if you take 5 days off, it counts as 6 days. So you essentially have 5/6 of th…

Germany. Spain should be the same.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#80

Post by Gee101 »

david-gpu wrote: post #12

> I was Facebook’s first engineer promoted to E9 outside the US. All this, at the cost of my second-grade son making sure he had a reserved spot on my calendar prior to me heading off to work that morning. Was it worth it? > If you want atypically fast career growth, you need to put in the hours. Only you can answer whether the sacrifices are worth it. Ask the kid. Or the spouse. My father had a significant career: m…

I think what complicates the matter is that some people have an inherent drive. They want to see progress and really struggle when it's not happening.

The flip side of the coin is those people might end up alcoholics to try and suppress that drive.

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