
Software Engineer, Machine Learning - foo101
https://www.deeplearning.ai/machinelearningsoftwareengjobdescri
======
foo101
Note: The original title of this post was: "Andrew Ng is looking for Software
Engineers who routinely work 70-90 hours/week".

A moderator has understandably updated the title to "Software Engineer,
Machine Learning".

Thought I should clarify this because this thread was posted to highlight the
issue of demanding long work hours. There are two job postings that mention
these long work hours.

Job Description 1:
[https://www.deeplearning.ai/machinelearningsoftwareengjobdes...](https://www.deeplearning.ai/machinelearningsoftwareengjobdescri)

Job Description 2:
[https://www.deeplearning.ai/fullstacksoftwareengineerjobdesc...](https://www.deeplearning.ai/fullstacksoftwareengineerjobdescrip)

Both pages originally said, "many of us routinely work and study 70-90 hours a
week".

After a lot of criticism on Andrew Ng's Facebook post, as of now, it has been
modified to, "many of us routinely work and study 70+ hours a week".

Andrew Ng's Facebook post:
[https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1472272026162033](https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1472272026162033)

------
daly
Since the job description includes 70-80 hours I expect that they are paying
more. It would be normal to assume a 70/40 or 80/40 pay rate, that is, about
twice the normal rate for a leading edge programmer. So, base salary should
probably start north of $500,000 per year. And those hours will require
working both at work and at home so you should expect a fully funded home-
office and half-coverage of your rent. I'm willing to bet that won't happen.

~~~
sgy
That explains the $12k referral bonus here
[https://www.ref10.com/](https://www.ref10.com/)

~~~
virtuexru
Nowhere near enough.

~~~
sgy
It should be higher?

------
xroche
All modern research/studies tend to demonstrate that, beyond 40 hours,
productivity does not rise, and, beyond 50 hours, it actually plunge, with
quality dropping, employees driven to burn-out, etc.

But still, the stupid mantra from the Silicon Valley is "you have to work 80
hours to be successful"

Why are these CEO/CTO unable to comprehend studies and adopting a totally
irrational position ?

[https://www.inc.com/tom-popomaronis/science-says-you-
shouldn...](https://www.inc.com/tom-popomaronis/science-says-you-shouldnt-
work-more-than-this-number-of-hours-a-day.html)
[https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-
than-50-hours-m...](https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-
than-50-hours-makes-you-less-productive.html)
[https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunc...](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunchmode/econ-
hours-productivity.html)

~~~
wageslaving
the name of the game is leveraging explosive, unsustainable growth into a high
rate of return into cheap capital into a big payday for founders

everything else is long-term

~~~
DevinTheDude
> the name of the game is leveraging explosive, unsustainable growth into a
> high rate of return into cheap capital into a big payday for founders

I've come to the conclusion this is the case. Has anyone written on this?

------
jswensen
So basically they are discriminating against people who would like to see
their children? 90 hours per week == 12.86 hours per day. That means I clock
in close to 7AM and clock out at 8PM every day of the week. This excludes any
travel time, meals, etc. My wife called the first two years of graduate school
her "grad-student widow years". Even now on occasion I put in that much time,
but a consistent 70-90 hour work week is unsustainable if you value family
life.

~~~
ryguytilidie
Not even family life. Any sort of relationship at all? Nope.

Any sort of hobbies or things outside of grinding away to get someone else
rich? Nope.

Why does anyone accept this shit anymore? This guy should be laughed at.

~~~
fatso83
Some people don't care about people.

------
zaptheimpaler
If you don't like the job, DONT APPLY.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking people who voluntarily wish to
work those hours.

It is in fact much better than implicitly expecting long working hours like
many jobs while not being upfront about it - that can trap people into a deal
they did not fully understand. This is the opposite.

It may be unsustainable for the vast majority of people (me included) - so
what? I don't go around crying about coal miners jobs because it would be
unsustainable for my physical frame, I just choose not to apply.

~~~
wageslaving
This is my industry. I don't want to companies to start expecting a minimum of
70 hours of work for 40 hours of pay. Until they start adding "one-and-a-half
compensation for overtime" to these job, I will always see this as a thinly
veiled attempt to extract free labor from their employees without paying for
it. Companies openly engaging in that kind of behavior worries me, and unless
you own a business, it should worry you too.

~~~
daly
This isn't a job you take for the pay. You ask for enough money that you no
longer care about it (e.g. you just throw money at problems. If your car won't
start, call a towtruck and a cab to get to work).

You can't do this kind of work motivated by money. You have to love the idea.

~~~
zzalpha
So... take advantage of people's passions to extract free labour out of them.

That's _so_ much better...

Or, here's a crazy idea: You could hire _two_ passionate people and allow them
to each live a normal, balanced life, thus preventing burnout and reducing the
chance of mistakes while increasing overall productivity (since studies show
that one person working twice as long is _not_ twice as productive).

Wild idea, right?

------
deweller
I expect very few engineers are actually productive beyond 50 hours a week.

A young engineer may be able to burn at 70 hours a week for 2 weeks if one is
highly motivated. But after a couple of weeks, the amount of productivity will
fall off a lot.

more hours != productivity

------
daly
I routinely work those hours. I love what I do, which is self-directed
research in computer algebra. I'm retired, though, so I probably don't count.

~~~
samoright
90 hours/week = 18 hours/day (assuming 5-day work week). That leaves only 6
hours for other chores, travel and sleep. This is not sustainable.

So I'll assume people who can pull off a 90-hour work week work all 7 days of
the week which would amount to 13 hours/day. That still leaves sufficient time
for a 7-hour sleep and 4 hours of chores and entertainment.

Now, if you are your own boss where you decide the scope and the deadlines,
the work is going to be fun and I can understand that you would not mind
working 13 hours/day. But I don't think working 13 hours/day for a boss or a
company that considers me a cost in a business transaction of buying my skills
is going to be fun.

~~~
daly
I'd need to be convinced that they had a really interesting problem, one that
would keep me awake at night. I'd also need to be convinced they understand
the idea that "anything we can solve by throwing money at the problem isn't a
real problem". Real problems can't be solved by money and problems that can be
solved by money aren't real.

You'll find at a job that a 70% productive day is outstanding. Time not lost
to meetings, travel, etc. is rare. Working from home helps because it extends
the work time and minimizes the interruptions. My years working from home were
the most productive.

As for the 70 hours thing, I work 7 days a week. Since I have no outside
constraints the term 'day' gets a bit blurry; sleep happens when it happens,
eating happens between keystrokes, etc. In fact, I'm "on vacation" this week
at the Outer Banks but reading a PhD thesis. My wife can't understand why I
brought "work" to a beach resort. She works in medicine so this really is
"escape time from work" for her.

Interesting work is its own motivation. We seem to have lost that idea
somewhere. Her work is not interesting so she needs to escape. Mine is
interesting and I consider not working as "lost time".

Andrew has the possibility of "interesting work" but I'm going to bet they
screw it up with things like "required sensitivity training", meetings,
"required plans and schedules", "interviewing new employees", "friday lunch
gatherings", skip-level interviews, open-plan floor office space, investor
presentations, morning standups, on-call phone coverage, skype meetings, slack
interruptions, agile card games, progress reports, company security protocols,
random phone calls, trip reports, trip refund paperwork, employee ratings,
changing goals, offsite meetings, time tracking, parking issues, pair
programming, etc. All of which are examples of time-sinks I've experienced on
the job. I can't spend 3 weeks absorbing a relevant PhD thesis "between
meetings". I can't write really difficult programs without huge blocks of
uninterrupted time.

~~~
foo101
Andrew Ng mentions in the job posting that they want dirty work as well as
design work to be done.

"Since we're an early stage company, you should be flexible in your tasks and
do whatever is needed, ranging from dirty work like data cleaning, to high-
level work like algorithm design."

~~~
daly
Can you hire temp work to do data cleaning? (Aka, solve it with money? with
mechanical turk?). If so, don't waste my time. If the data cleaning requires
judgement then that's fine. Every job has dog work. I have to chase references
for the papers I read which takes days of effort. But doing it right (aka
"providing quality") is important here. Quality matters.

------
ejjpi
why don't they just hire 2 persons instead of 1 and split the work? let's put
an end to this toxic behavior from companies. working 70+ hours per week
doesn't make you a better employee or the world a better place.

------
TheM00se
This says learning and studying takes 70 hours a week so perhaps its not
working for 70 hours a week, but there's a strong learning component which
could be done outside of the job. Working as an ML Engineer there's a good bit
of learning outside of the job and reading up on the latest papers which can
take a lot of time outside of work.

------
calvinbhai
It's 70+ hrs of working "AND LEARNING".

I'm not sure what the mean by that, or if that was added later, but the
"learning" part looks like a reasonable amount of effort for those who are in
this field with only 3 to 5 yrs of experience.

------
sgy
Also, there seems to be a ~7600 USD referral bonus on for the position here:
[https://ref10.com/](https://ref10.com/)

~~~
sgy
Updated to $12,000 now

~~~
gaius
Must be setting it dynamically with Machine Learning.

------
kloncks
I genuinely don't understand the criticism. You don't find or enjoy working
70-90 hours healthy? That's your view and you likely shouldn't apply for this
position.

Even assuming this is crazy, what's wrong with crazy people recruiting
similarly minded crazy people? It's most obviously not a fit for anyone who
wants to work 40 hours or wants to see their kids or whatever, but for those,
there are plenty of other jobs. I just find it crazy that because of your
personal views on work-life-balance, you expect Ng to have to change his
desires for you. That seems wrong to me imho.

~~~
wageslaving
All I can see are the economics of it. If he was paying his engineers $600,000
/ yr in compensation for all the overtime they're working, I would have no
trouble with the arrangement.

However, software engineers rarely get any form of compensation for extra
hours work outside of small vanity bonuses. This is just someone looking to
take advantage of the fact they can get free labor out of their employees by
"encouraging" them to work an extra 30 to 40 hours a week.

------
SoCool
I seem to see this as an upfront declaration on the requirements. I think,
this 70+ hours work week involves reading and learning too.

------
shaimagz
They work so hard they forgot to test the website on mobile browsers

