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

Cutting your salary by 40%

codewithoutrules.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 451 posts

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#81

Post by walshemj »

doikor wrote: post #45
chrisseaton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting paid for 40 hours Do salaried jobs always specify a number of hours in their contracts? Otherwise you aren't being paid for 40 hours - you're just being paid to get the job done aren't you?

This is weird to me. At least here in Finland when you are salaried for the standard 37.5h work week (7.5h work day with 30min lunch break) if you work more then that you log the hours as overtime and get paid for them or in some form of "flex" time that you turn into vacation days or money (there are limits to how many hours of flex you can have banked up) I know some smaller companies/start ups work around this but…

your not salaried one of the key features of salaried jobs I sno fixed hours of work and no OT.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#82

Post by walshemj »

aetherson wrote: post #11
chrisseaton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting paid for 40 hours Do salaried jobs always specify a number of hours in their contracts? Otherwise you aren't being paid for 40 hours - you're just being paid to get the job done aren't you?

I mean, sure. But if you have a typical programming job, it's not like there's a clean finish line. There's always more work to do, but at some point you need to pack up and go home for the night.

then your employer needs to plan better and descope where required

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#83

Post by Godel_unicode »

richardknop wrote: post #34
edanm wrote: post #21

As much as I'd love to believe the "work more than 40 hours a week, because SCIENCE!" party line, I have a hard time accepting it, and I think so do most people who hear it (outside of HN, at least). For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity. For another, anecdotally at least, most people know plenty of peopl…

If you are expecting me to work extra hours you will have to pay multiple of my normal rate for overtime. I'm sorry but anything else is some form of exploitation or at the very least unfair. And the argument with extra hours working on personal projects is ridiculous. As a matter of fact I am a heavy open source contributor and work on numerous projects in my personal time, some of them already have many hundreds of…

I think GPs point was that people can clearly be productive more than 40 hours a week because so many are. How people should be compensated for their time is only loosely coupled with how many hours they can work.

I agree with you that we should be fairly compensated, but I also agree that the dogma of "40 is the max a worker can be productive, possibly less" is wrong in a large number of cases.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#84

Post by Nursie »

edanm wrote: post #21

As much as I'd love to believe the "work more than 40 hours a week, because SCIENCE!" party line, I have a hard time accepting it, and I think so do most people who hear it (outside of HN, at least). For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity. For another, anecdotally at least, most people know plenty of peopl…

It's not working hard though, it's working stupid. You get tired and become less effective. You make more mistakes and you end up going backwards.

Now, people will vary in this, but as a general metric, if you try to get programmers to routinely put in long hours, you're on to a loser.

Personal projects are different, and are not generally deadline-riven stress-fests.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#85

Post by danielharrison »

etiene wrote: post #38

This is insane. I've actually been looking to reduce my work hours to about 30, because even 40 seems too much. Having had a couple of burnouts before, I want my life to be more than my job, and I truly believe this would make me better at my job in the long term. After a day of full time work I almost never have the energy to do some of the other things I want to do. I want to be able do more open source, learn a fo…

I dropped my standard hours down to 24 just recently and it's been rejuvenating. I do pick up the odd freelance/contract job whem it suits (pay/hours) and spend the rest of my time working around the house and generally relaxing.

It's done wonders for mental health and stress levels. No more sitting in traffic all day, missing half my kids' life, stressing out about not getting stuff done around the house, eatimg crap food on the fly, being too tired to do much in the weekend, and most of all I can spend more time with my wife, which is awesome.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#86

Post by Godel_unicode »

megous wrote: post #69
edanm wrote: post #21

As much as I'd love to believe the "work more than 40 hours a week, because SCIENCE!" party line, I have a hard time accepting it, and I think so do most people who hear it (outside of HN, at least). For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity. For another, anecdotally at least, most people know plenty of peopl…

> For another, anecdotally at least, most people know plenty of people who work longer hours and do it successfully. And most of the really successful people out there will mention that they worked insanely hard at some point. Are they all lying? All wrong? You have it reversed. Get a sample of people working 70 hours a week and see how many are successful by some chosen measure compared to those who work 40 hours.

I don't think so. Everyone isn't the same, some people have more or less capacity to handle long hours. I personally feel that mastery and enjoyment have a large role in how many hours you can work.

If you're working on something you love and are good at, you're going to be productive longer. I think just measuring hours is missing the point.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#87

Post by arjie »

rhpistole wrote: post #24
TeMPOraL wrote: post #5

Tangential: I loved the "When programming is your hobby" part of this blog post. Finally someone accepting, and not dissing, people who actually like to code . The advice is spot-on, too: coding > 40h / week is fine, but why give up your freedom of choosing what to work on, when to work on it, and when to take time off, without any compensation?

Yeah, except what this actually means is, "You don't have any interests outside of work and you do not have kids that may take you away from work and you don't have a SO/spouse to tell you that you're being taken advantage of." It's not really about your interests, it's about you being naive.

It's all very nice disparaging people for having found a passion, but when I read Masters of Doom, I didn't pity John Carmack and John Romero and their gang for programming all week, then 'borrowing' work computers to program and play D&D all weekend. I admired them. They found a thing they loved to do with people they loved to do it with.

Other people have to do many things to be happy, but they found it all there! These were incredibly intelligent, incredibly creative people expressing their intelligence and creativity. They weren't lesser men for their passion. It elevated them.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#88

Post by autokad »

edanm wrote: post #21

As much as I'd love to believe the "work more than 40 hours a week, because SCIENCE!" party line, I have a hard time accepting it, and I think so do most people who hear it (outside of HN, at least). For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity. For another, anecdotally at least, most people know plenty of peopl…

are you referring to the fact that the company in question is andrew ng's start up?

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#89

Post by richardknop »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #83
richardknop wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are expecting me to work extra hours you will have to pay multiple of my normal rate for overtime. I'm sorry but anything else is some form of exploitation or at the very least unfair. And the argument with extra hours working on personal projects is ridiculous. As a matter of fact I am a heavy open source contributor and work on numerous projects in my personal time, some of them already have many hundreds of…

I think GPs point was that people can clearly be productive more than 40 hours a week because so many are. How people should be compensated for their time is only loosely coupled with how many hours they can work. I agree with you that we should be fairly compensated, but I also agree that the dogma of "40 is the max a worker can be productive, possibly less" is wrong in a large number of cases.

You might be right that some people can be productive more than 40 hours per week because I am one of them.

However my point was that when negotiating salary you can't really say "I can be productive 70 hours per week" and therefor ask for 40% higher salary. It doesn't work that way and what you negotiate is based on your skills mostly in comparison to other people who are assumed to put in cca 40 hours per week.

So even if you can be productive for 70 hours per week, I wouldn't do it and instead invest that time in your family and yourself, making your life outside of work richer and more fulfilling. Otherwise you will just be working for free the extra 40% of the time and never be compensated for it by most companies.

Finally, you only have one life so spending most of your life in the office or commuting in and out of office is quite a waste of your time. You should use your free time to enjoy your life imho and experience more things.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#90

Post by solomatov »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #32
gwbas1c wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call up an employment lawyer. Firing someone for not working on their vacation is wrongful termination. Companies that do this need to be sued out of existence.

> Call up an employment lawyer. Firing someone for not working on their vacation is wrongful termination. In which jurisdiction?

IANAL. In the US. You can argue that there's an implicit assumption that you will not work on vacation in the employment agreement. Most of the US states are at will states, i.e. a person can be fired for no reason at all, but having a wrong reason, especially when documented in a termination letter, might be a cause for litigation.
Post reply on HN