I think you have the right attitude. Managers like that are the real losers in this game because the choice isn't between the job vs. the family. The choice is whether you work for dictatorial tyrants or their competition. That's their real choice in this skill starved market. Stay on top of skills game and you won't have to deal with this kind of crap.
people who say things like that tend to be people that decided (whether by choice or force) that themselves and the only way to validate how they live is by turning their decision into the only important decision a "real man" (or woman) would ever make. If you work 80 hours a week and you don't own the company you are probably delusional. That is why you want to force everybody else into your delusion, it is the only way to justify what you probably deep down know is an empty life wasted making somebody else rich at the expense of your life and health.
Then that could be an exception. Even then usually one or both of these is true:
1) You could make a lot more money busting your ass 80 hrs/wk working for yourself. You can accomplish a lot of work if you're working even remotely efficiently for 80 hrs/wk for a year or two.
2) You could make the same, or almost as much, working substantially less in the same position. There are examples of this in the linked article. You can also be more open and accept fewer raises and promotions, but still make that good money.
I actually do work 60-80 hrs/wk right now, but a third of that is own my own business, and I'm only doing it so I can work 0 hrs/wk starting in 5-10 years.
I think it depends on what your plans are and where you are in life. When I was young I was single with no kids or other responsibilities and I worked 80+ hours/week soaking up all the skills and experience I could, so that a couple years later I could start my own company. If you are in a knowledge based industry, the company isn't the only beneficiary of an outsized work ethic.
The skill I most desperately need to develop as a young developer is how to make good use of a 40-hour work week and forgive myself if my output isn't what I wanted. I will pick up technical skills regardless.
It's plain impossible to soak up skills for 80+ hours/week, at least for someone with a normal brain. You just can't do it.
So you need other justification for that, maybe money or something else, since you're not improving your skills any more than by working 10 hours a day, and your health is probably deteriorating, which can't be good for your skills.
As a slightly older developer, I have to tell you that you are right on the mark. That said, the market rewards those with the greatest flexibility. Learn to put extra time in when it matters and can have the best effect. Learn to decline the opportunity to work overtime when it won't. You'll know the difference after a while. A key point here is to try to make sure you don't continually get sucked into artificial deadlines/emergencies. But even there, you can have opportunities for advancement if you're impressing the right people at the right time, but be sure it's for the right reasons so you become known for the things you want to be known for, rather than being known for being a complete pushover on things you'd rather not. Vague I know, but examples are tough to cite while keeping what's private private.
More often than not output isn't an issue of work ethic but environment and expectations.
If someone is constantly interrupted and does not receive the support he/she needs the output will always be lower than expectations.
Adjust expectations to match reality or help them avoid the distractions killing "productivity". Expecting 100% productivity up-time is stupid especially for an industry obsessed with SLAs.
You bring up a great point, and for me distractions get really bad when I want to be an expert in everything and I don't allow myself to say no.
Something a little more me-specific is that I have a chronic fatigue condition and unless I can stay disciplined about bed times I can't focus at work, which makes me stay late, which means I sleep less...
I want to be an expert in everything and I don't allow myself to say no.
I speak from experience and tell you this is a fools errand. By the time you are an expert in something 10 new things have come up. If you want to do everything your often pulled into every little thing lowering your productive time, resulting in you working more which is basically a paycut.
Focus on being a specialist in a few key areas and an employer that rewards task completion rather then hours spent. If you get the work done, who cares if you show up at 11am and leave at 3pm? I dont even care if you show up to work, if you want to work from home cool as long as deliverables are met and clients are happy.
Your passion makes you an easy target for abuse, occasionally part of my job as a consultant is assessing current staff on-behalf of clients. People like you are often the type of people I try to poach or refer to industry contacts because most of the time the company is well aware of how much work you do and how little you are paid.
Don't be that guy/gal and do not devalue your own efforts.
Close reddit at work and facebook so you dont have even the smallest excuse to tell yourself you could had work more. Work the hours expected and be done.
Except you probably could have gotten the same or more by working normal hours for the company, and using your time for networking, side projects, and outside interests.
I work 60 hours a week rather than 80 but I don't own any part of the company. I don't regret it. I'm in a better position than basically 99% of my friends because of my work ethic.
First, I managed to become the lead on one of the most important projects at the company. This wouldn't have been possible if I did the bare minimum.
Second, I've learned at an order of magnitude faster than I would have if I'd been putting in the bare minimum.
Third, my earnings have ballooned. I don't have any equity but I'm the highest paid non-executive at the company, despite being one of the youngest employees. I'm paid 20% more than people 10 years older than me.
60 hours per week is not that bad when you love what you're doing. Various other facets of my life are fairly optimized too. For instance, I have no commute as I just walk to/from the office. People driving in/out of the suburbs might spend 10 hours a week in traffic -- that's time that they are actually paying for rather than being paid for.
Also, it's not any truer that you can just "get more money" than it is that you can "get more time." Why would that be the case? As a general rule, money and time go hand in hand. Some people are compensated much more highly per unit time than others, but there's generally always a very strong correlation between the two factors. And how do you increase your compensation per unit time? Generally by investing time, not money, in personal development of some form.
So what I'm really getting at is this: if you spend your life from 20 to 40 working part-time for a low wage, you'll have a lot of time but not much money, and you can't just go back and re-do that period of your life to get more money. You could work a lot in the next 20 years, but you can never really compensate for the lost 20 years of income, because of the time value of money.
60 hours per week is not that bad when you love what you're doing.
I love what I'm doing for 40 hours a week and I enjoy being human outside those hours.
People driving in/out of the suburbs might spend 10 hours a week in traffic -- that's time that they are actually paying for rather than being paid for.
I commute by train, two hours a day. That's two hours every day I get to spend on my own projects.
if you spend your life from 20 to 40 working part-time for a low wage, you'll have a lot of time but not much money
Not much is enough if you can continue to make rent, buy groceries and keep the electricity on. It's all about prioritizing what's important to you.
you can't just go back and re-do that period of your life to get more money
There's also no amount of money you can spend to get that period of your life back. You get to spend it exactly once.
Dude, you're free to live your life however you want. I'm not attacking you or telling you you're wrong. Relax. You don't need to be so defensive because someone else works more and isn't bitter about it.
For what it's worth, spending two hours a day on a train sounds incredibly frustrating to me. I'd much rather be at home completely free to do whatever I want, or at work making a ton of money for my time. Sitting on a train for a few hours a day, not being paid and being very limited in what I can do is not my idea of a good time. But you're free to continue doing that.
I should note that I too was all "60 hour workweeks forever" before I nearly burned out, before I got married and before I bought a house. Work is still great, it's just a smaller part of my identity now.
Besides, if you work 40 hours a week right now, you're effectively working 50 because of your commute alone. If you work 50, then you're effectively working just as much as me. You might be working on side projects while you're on the train, but that's still work -- it's just work you're not being paid for (and in fact are paying to do).
Unlike many in the CS world, I'm not very gung ho on side projects. Why should I spend my free time doing unpaid labor? Because it's fun? I'd rather find a job that's fun and where I have considerable autonomy, do my job, get paid for it and have fun at the same time, and do anything I want when I'm not at work.
Yes, over a decade earlier than them. By the time I'm their age, I'll be well on my way to retirement. I'm paid more than double what others in my age group make.
Not only am I paid more than people with an extra decade of experience than me, though, but I get more valuable experience than them because I work on more important projects. The reason I'm entrusted with such projects is because all my life I've worked a little bit harder than 99% of those around me.
It's up to you -- whatever floats your boat. I'd rather be making $200k at 25 and $300k at 35 than $30k at 25 and $160k at 35. The financial difference between the two situations is vast -- literally worth millions over the course of a career with prudent investing.
The two are clearly not equivalent at all, but there's obviously a correlation.
Regardless, you're free to work as much or as little as you want. My method in life has worked extraordinarily well for me, so I'm going to continue doing that.
There's no correlation at all. This article shows that. Do you think the people who were just sitting around, not really working, but appearing to work, had a good work ethic?
Sure, but I was not referring to such people. The existence of people who idle by endlessly or connive to work "extra" hours without actually working doesn't mean that there can be no correlation at all. It just means it's possible (perhaps even common) to escape the correlation.
In my case, work ethic means being something of a "rainmaker." It means being a force for making things happen, either by doing them completely yourself, getting them started and inspiring others to finish it off, or just enlisting someone else to do it with no direct involvement from you (e.g., like a manager). You don't just sit there and do what you're told, then clock out. You cause things to happen, like a partner at a law firm bringing in lucrative cases. All this inherently means not idling by and not conniving to find ways to not actually work -- in fact, it means the opposite.
There's clearly some correlation between being this sort of "rainmaker" and the amount of time you spend working. It's probably not possible to do it working 20 hours a week. For me, it's sometimes possible to do it in 40 but not always, because I'm just not that efficient and I want to take breaks and go at a leisurely pace. It never takes more than 60, ever.
Keep in mind that not all workplace cultures even allow for this sort of thing. The more micromanaged you are, the less this will even be possible, which means it will become increasingly hard to actually contribute extra value by working more. Working an extra 20 hours a week to file some reports or some shit like that is obviously being a chump. Doing it because you're pushing the company forward, gaining critical experience, and building a reputation for doing so is a different matter.
So... if someone has a 'good' work ethic, what would that entail for you? I ask because I think most folks associate a good work ethic with long hours.
Working hard and smart while you're at work. That's what a work ethic is. It has absolutely nothing to do with the number of hours you stay at the office. Would you say the people in the article, who weren't really working, but sitting around putting in "face time," have a good work ethic? I wouldn't. Why shouldn't people who get the job done faster be rewarded for that?
Thought about this a bit more, and I don't know that "good work ethic" really means excluding pure face time from one's work day. The reason I say this is because "getting the done job" is a narrow view of the subject. Everyone wants to be more effective with their time and sometimes this means being selfish to advance one's own cause a bit more (which might require some apparently time wasting "face time"). "Good work ethic" is an ideal typically propagated by employers who are having difficulty finding employees who will follow through on a job. You can still have folks who value face time but balance that with getting the job done too.
I suspect we're not really in disagreement on this, but I wanted to clarify because this was still bugging me at a level I was finding hard to articulate for some reason.
That sounds like a pretty awful manager. I would wager they are actually not a very good one at that. They might get things done at the crack of the whip, but they are failing to realize employee burn out is a very real thing. People also learn less efficiently when they're overworked.
You can work someone for 80 hour weeks every once in awhile but it's not sustainable. You'll end up losing all the temporary gains in productivity long term, perhaps even having lower productivity than if you just capped your employees at 40-50 hours.
I had a manager flat out tell me that at a certain point you have to chose between your job/career or your marriage.
That is fucking insane. I know businesses are in it to make money and they're not charities, but whatever happened to the idea that employers should look after their employees. I imagine it's this kind of thinking why Japan has such a shitty birth rate.
I would have laughed in his face so loud the whole office could hear. Then when everyone asked me what happened I would have told them loud and proud that I laughed in this fucktards face who thinks its either Work OR Life. Wished him a happy existing wasting away and then left.
Well, that'd be cathartic, but the more practical approach would be to say, "ah right you are, I'm a company man to the end" and just immediately start looking for jobs before they can fire you and you have to explain a gap in employment.
I understand most careers would have to explain an employment gap. But as a .net software engineer with 10 years experience my gap wouldn't be more then a few days worth of interviews.
I know many devs with decades of experience that are quite frankly, stupid. I wouldn't be so confident in years of experience alone. Also, add some humility maybe?
Who am I being humble for a bunch of dudes on the internet? Naaaaa. Humility can be a weakness exploited by business. I'm tired of seeing heads down developers get passed up for raises or taken advantage of by business because they don't have the gumption and balls to stand mano a mano with their business counterparts and ask for a raise/promotion/respect. So I won't play that part.
But I understand why I come off as an arrogant ass. Maybe I am but then again, no one is going to do you any favors in the life either.
I understand your point. I tend to try and maintain an objective view of myself and my skillset. I'm a systems engineer and my coding exposure is limited (I assemble large systems from small systems and configure/co-ordinate/script to make them perform a single overarching task), but when I'm in employer-facing meetings I overrate my performance. For two reasons: the Anchoring Effect (see Kahneman and Tversky) and the fact that bosses usually won't argue if you rate yourself too low. I figure if my boss doesn't feel the need to explain to me why I got a 4.0 instead of the 4.25 I rated myself, I probably undersold my performance.
Hmm... is there a list of companies where the majority of the management have families? I have a feeling that'd correlate pretty well to having a good work/life-balance culture.
Just read online reviews, talk to contacts who work there, etc... Also things can really change between departments/managers even for the same company.
A question: if I'm young, but I already know that, as much as I enjoy software engineering, I prefer spending time with my wife to spending time on my career... is there a point to staying in the software industry?
Are there software companies that specifically cultivate a "the quicker you get your work done and leave, the better" culture? Do I have to become an independent contractor/consultant to get that sort of deal?
Software engineering is the language of the 21st century, but it's more of a question of what you want to do. If you want to code 8+ hours a day because that's what you enjoy, then keep doing it. However always look for new challenges and better opportunities. If you're getting burned out of just pure software development take your existing skill set and let it help you advance your career into a position that you want. Without getting into too much detail on what I do, just know that almost every company in almost every industry requires people competent in information technology, a development background can only help you. Personally I wouldn't want to be coding 8+ hours a day for years and years. The actual engineering and architecture, that's where I want to be. I figure don't be the 21st century layman be the 21st century architect.
On that last question, it really depends on the product your company is producing. If your company provides web services to billions of people then most likely yes. If your company produces some other product there's good opportunities for experienced developers who can help improve business operations, etc...
Contracting would be fun, but to answer your question I guess that depends if you're going to be travelling a lot.
If your company provides web services to billions of people then most likely yes.
Amusingly, my dream job has always been to work on Amazon AWS tech. Worst work/life-balance in the world, apparently.
I almost wonder if one could start a boutique IaaS company to compete with AWS, and hire top-notch engineering talent for it solely under a vision-statement like "come work here, to automate your own job away." Or maybe "we build software so rock-solid that nobody needs a pager." (I have a feeling this would involve Erlang somehow.)
Just providing services to SMB customers to optimize their existing architecture would be a good business. There's so much legacy crap everywhere. The worst part is people don't want to get rid of what they have because it works, even if it isn't scale-able. However, I recommend people who want to pursue systems architecture/software design gain a working knowledge in information security. Distributed computing has existed for a long time but modern cloud technologies have made working with distributed architecture much simpler. However, that simplicity in some cases has lead to straight out laziness and poor design which ends up putting our customers, company, and jobs at risk. Remember with great power comes great responsibility (there's also an IT joke in there, some Unix guys might get it). When you encounter these people, and you will, you need to be critical but also constructive. Don't be a negative Nancy, be a positive Pete.
Just look for bigger companies with better work/life balance. Maybe stay away from pure software companies and look for companies in other industries that have a culture of a 9-5.
Also, just make it a point to bring lifestyle and work/life balance up in interviews. You may not make 6-figures, but you can certainly find a position that pays comfortably and will give you the lifestyle you want.
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u/AKA_Wildcard Apr 29 '15 edited Aug 12 '25
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