
Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You - qw
http://thecodist.com/article/why_i_don_39_t_do_unpaid_overtime_and_neither_should_you
======
grellas
The U.S. has a strong free enterprise foundation and its laws reflect this.
Freedom of contract remains the rule even though it is much criticized in some
circles and has been hedged considerably over the years. In employment, the
old rule was that you could pretty much fire anyone at will for any reason
and, if you did, you incurred no legal consequence. This is pure freedom of
contract. In time, this unrestricted freedom came to be deemed repugnant where
it bumped into important social policies - for example, that employers not
discriminate on the basis of race. Hence, protective laws were passed and
these circumscribed the old unrestricted freedom to have pure at-will
employment relationships that gave an employer an open ticket to fire people
for any reason whatever, even a repugnant one. That said, however, when you
get down to the day-to-day employment relationships that most of us encounter,
the at-will rules still prevail and, with limited exceptions, it really does
remain the case that most people can be fired for any reason at any time and
almost always without legal consequence. This may be seen as good or bad but
it is the way of life under U.S. law with its strong bent toward free
enterprise and freedom of contract.

The same pertains to overtime rules for employees. The U.S. does have a body
of protective laws that require employers to pay overtime for excess hours
worked, either by the day or by the week. But the historic relationship
between employer and employee had a strong bias toward freedom of contract -
that is, if an employer and an employee agreed to a certain working
relationship, that was their prerogative and the government had no say in the
matter. Again, this older form of unrestricted freedom led to consequences
deemed repugnant as a matter of social policy (e.g., sweatshops). Thus, laws
were enacted to abridge the older unrestricted freedom of contract (wage and
hour laws, in the example considered here). But, as in the case of at-will
rules, these laws did not disturb the large measure of freedom of contract
that formerly prevailed except for the specific situations where a policy
judgment was made that the workers were most vulnerable and in need of
protection. Thus, U.S. overtime rules apply without question to low-skilled
jobs and to low-paying jobs and to jobs where the employees have little or no
independence or control over how they perform their duties. But these
protective rules can and do peacefully co-exist with an equally important set
of rules providing that high-skilled employees, skilled professionals,
employees with substantial administrative responsibilities with managerial
functions, and like positions are expressly exempted from the overtime rules.
The idea is that, in a free economy, as a matter of policy, it is better for
parties to retain freedom in defining the work requirements of a position than
for the government to dictate protective rules where the parties are not
deemed in need of protection. In other words, the employer-employee
relationships for such exempt categories are deemed to be healthier if the
parties are free to negotiate salary/bonuses or other compensation that is not
tied to rigid rules about overtime. The laws let the parties have much more
flexibility in deciding how to frame their relationships, and this basically
reflects the old-style freedom of contract that has always characterized the
U.S. economy. Protections were adopted as deemed necessary but they are
limited as a matter of public policy. This can be seen as good or bad but it
is the law in the U.S.

What does this mean in practice? It means, for example, that a computer
professional can be paid a salary of $100K/yr and be asked to work like a
slave, all without overtime compensation. But that same professional, if paid
$30K/yr, is required to be paid overtime for excess hours worked, even if that
person is on salary. One case is treated as appropriate for free choice by the
parties without overriding restrictions; the other is not. And the difference,
in this case, turns on the amount of salary paid - the highly-paid worker is
treated as being able to protect his own interests while the relatively low-
paid worker is not.

Europe clearly has taken a different approach and this too can be seen as good
or bad depending on one's perspective. In general, in Europe, the idea of
open-ended freedom of contract is suppressed in favor of more sweeping
protective laws favoring employees. Whether this leads to a robust economy or
chokes enterprise is open to debate but it clearly differs from the U.S.
approach.

In this piece, the author criticizes the U.S. employment pattern as, in
effect, requiring exempt computer professionals to work for free when they are
required to work excessive hours tied to a fixed salary. In making this point,
the author admits that his European biases are showing. The "U.S. view," if I
can call it that, is not that the worker is being made to work for free but
rather that the worker has not agreed to be paid by any hourly measure but
rather for an overall performance to be rendered, no matter how many hours it
takes. This might be regarded as "slavery," but (taking, for example, the
exemption for executives) does anyone really believe that top executives have
as their focus the exact number of hours worked as opposed to broader goals
related to their job performance. The same can be said of professionals, as
many computer professionals look primarily to the task and not to the hourly
measure as the mark of their jobs. In my field, lawyers too see the hours
worked as entirely secondary to their jobs. For every such executive and
professional who would be deemed "helped" by overtime laws that might be
extended to apply to their jobs, there would undoubtedly be many who would
recoil at the limitations of suddenly not being able to do their jobs without
regard to the scope of hours worked. I don't believe that most such employees
see their work as "slavery" when they have to work excessive hours. I think
they see it as career development. And, in any case, the U.S. law gives such
employees freedom to become "slaves" if they so choose for their own reason.
It is the old freedom of contract and highly skilled, highly compensated
workers in the U.S. retain that freedom to choose, as do their employers.

Work-life balance _is_ very important as well, a point the author emphasizes.
He seems to have made that choice later in life (as did I) and I commend him
for it. But, while I can exhort others too to strive for such balance, I will
not begrudge them the choice to work exceedingly hard (especially as they are
first developing in their careers) to achieve other "unbalanced" goals. People
do accomplish insanely great things by working insanely hard. If they choose
to do this in their work as employees, that is their privilege and, as long as
they are highly-skilled and highly compensated, I say more power to them if
they do it without the benefit of protective labor laws.

~~~
mattmanser
There are two problems with your wall of text.

Firstly your comparison to lawyering is disingenuous, lawyering has the
partnership model, you take a load of young naive idiots, you dangle this
partnership jackpot in front of their noses and then you work them to the bone
doing dull and even pointless work that you bill your clients many $$$s an
hour for while the partners take the bulk of that money home. Lots drop out,
some make partner, the cycle repeats. It's a 'jackpot' industry.

Programming is not that way, there's a massive demand for programmers, there's
not a massive demand for young lawyers.

The second problem is your belief that working long hours = working
'exceedingly hard'.

There's a massive body of evidence that working past 35-40 hours per week that
you're actually _less_ productive in the medium to long term past about a
month, it's bad for your health and the whole scenario feeds on itself in a
horrible vicious cycle as employees who decide to 'opt out' of it get punished
with no promotions and lower raises, perhaps even fired.

You see posts like yours trotted out when anyone puts their hand up and says
'hey, why _are_ we working these long hours?'. Worse still in the UK, where a
lot of companies also have this ridiculous culture, we have contracts in place
specifying the amount of hours to be worked _but they are just ignored_. The
employer is wilfully and knowingly breaking the contract and often lying to
prospective employees in the interviews. But what can you do, you took the job
and you can't have too many jobs in the last 2 years as people will begin to
wonder.

But we have to protect startups and free enterprise right. Because all
managers and CEOs know exactly what they're doing and have been taught that
creating a culture of long hours rapidly creates pointless busy work zombies
where everyone's losing.

And that's where you're argument falls flat on its face. Turns out we're not
actually training any managers they just wing it and one of the intuitive
fallacies everyone subscribes to is that more hours at the desk means more
hours of production that somehow putting more hours means you're working
'exceedingly hard' instead of the truth which is 'exceedingly inefficiently'.

Perhaps it is time for government to step in as the free market's quite
obviously failing at it as they refuse to listen to the scientists and worse
are totally ignorant about studies done 100 years ago.

~~~
tptacek
You're not arguing with Grellas so much as cherry picking sentences out of his
comment and howling at them in isolation. If we extract the signal from your
comment --- that partner-track law careers are problematic, that working
unreasonably hard is a bad idea for employer and employee alike --- from the
emotion, we find a series of arguments that Grellas himself likely agrees
with.

In some cases I can guess that he agrees with your underlying argument because
he's written comments to that effect in the past (for instance, you can use
the search bar at the bottom of the page to find out some of what he thinks of
partner-track law). In others, unfortunately, I can guess that he agrees
because the very comment you're replying to says that he does.

I think I speak for a lot of people on HN when I ask that you not berate one
of the more uniquely valuable contributors to HN for writing "walls of text".
He writes differently than you and I; longer, yes, but also much more
carefully and considerately. I have never, ever seen him address someone else
on HN the way you just did him.

~~~
larrys
"You're not arguing with Grellas so much as cherry picking sentences out of
his comment and howling at them in isolation."

That's certaintly a creative way to put it. But that is what everyone does
when they make comments. They respond to things they don't agree with. The use
of "cherry picking" in your context seems to indicate taking unfair pot shots.
The use of "howling in isolation" brings up an image of a lonely dog in the
dead of night. Why is that necessary exactly?

"I think I speak for a lot of people on HN when I ask that you not berate one
of the more uniquely valuable contributors to HN for writing "walls of text"."

Then why do you need to say this? If there are people that think that they
will downvote, right?

By the way this is not to say I agree with his language. I think it's great
that grellas takes the time to write a "wall of text".

~~~
scott_s
If you focus on individual points, then the discussion will degrade. Take the
time to synthesize what the overall message from the post is, then respond to
that. The danger of responding to individual points, instead of the message,
is you start arguing about the trees, not the forest. It's the difference
between an honest discussion and a game of "Gotcha!" I admit it's a difficult
balance.

I will sometimes pull out individual sentences from a person's post, but only
if I feel that sentence is representative of their overall point, or it is a
mistaken premise that when corrected, the rest of the post is moot.

------
snprbob86
When I worked for a big company, I had a very simple rule:

If I make a promise to my team that I can reasonably keep, I owe it to them to
do so.

I'd generally aim to under-promise and over-deliver, while feeling like I'm
making a comprable (or bigger!) contribution in comparison to my peers. After
some practice at this, I got reasonably good at estimating work. I'd work 20
to 50 hours per week depending on how accurately I estimate, usually aiming
for (an achieving) about 35 hours of work. Only once or twice did I ever feel
like I really put in any serious "overtime" and I blame that on estimation
inexperience.

I made it a point to explain this philosophy (sans actual target hours) to
every manager I've ever had. I always fed them the "Work/Life Balance" party
line and reminded them that if I wanted my work to be my life, I'd join a
startup (I have since founded one). They all seemed to appreciate my being
forthcoming.

Once or twice I got a panicked email. The team was going to miss a deadline
unless I stepped up to help out! Each time I replied that I had expressed my
concerns about scope and timeline during the planning meetings. I'd remind the
panicked person that we could simply cut the feature (always an option for a
previously shipped product) and would offer my help and time in doing so. No
one ever took me up on it.

~~~
spinlock
It's too bad you couldn't openly tell your team how you were scheduling your
time. It sounds like you developed a very good, consistent process. In my
mind, that's exactly what a large company should be going for because it can
scale.

~~~
snprbob86
I did tell them! See where I wrote:

> I made it a point to explain this philosophy (sans actual target hours) to
> every manager I've ever had.

I simply didn't tell my manager exactly how many hours I targeted because it
was less than the customary 40h/wk.

------
alan_cx
I don't know much about US employment law, and what I do know, I don't like.
But what I do know is this:

No employer has ever, ever given me free money, and I have never expected it.
There for, I have never ever given an employer free time, and never ever will.

To do different is insane. It lowers one's worth since the deal is an exchange
of money for time. It makes the employer think your free time is theirs to
exploit and frankly damn wrong.

Like I say, the day employers give out free money is the time I give out free
time.

~~~
mseebach
So, I agree with the point made in another comment about this not being so
much about overtime, but about crap jobs.

But:

> the deal is an exchange of money for time

It's not really, no. It's an exchange of _work_ for time. If you're doing an
exchange of time, you'll be punching in and out, and the boss worrying about
your "butt in seat" productivity metric is reasonable.

It doesn't necessarily follow that you should work 80-hour weeks for months on
end, but the case where some extra hours in a crunch is warranted makes more
sense. Of course, a good employer would seek to offset that, either with
money, time off in lieu or otherwise, but that ties back to the crap jobs
again.

~~~
neutronicus
There's an asymmetry here:

I want to see the exchange as money for time, because my work is not valuable
to me (I don't get to keep the product!), but my time is. I want an upper
bound on how much of the resource that's valuable _to me_ that the company is
entitled to in exchange for their money.

The employer wants to see the exchange as money for work, because they
couldn't care less how the work gets done. They want a lower bound on the
amount of the resource that's valuable _to them_ that they get for their
money.

~~~
dodedo
And a difference of opinion:

I want to see the exchange as work for time, because I work much more
effectively than many other people. An hourly-rate job is simply not
attractive to me, because the hourly-rate will not effectively capture my
value.

As explained by grellas above, overtime in the US is typically applied to
replaceable workers who's hourly value is a more or less quantifiable
resource. If I'm flipping burgers, painting a house, or banging out simple
webapps based on someone else's design then it's fairly easy to quantify the
value of my time.

However, if I'm working in an industry where force multipliers abound, for
example software engineering, or any sufficiently advanced
executive/management position, I would much rather capture the value of what I
produce -- there simply cannot be a good fit with shoehorning me into an
hourly value rate. It simply isn't an accurate way to represent my value.

This is best exemplified by jobs which supply equity stakes. If you give me a
chunk of your company I'm no longer working for free, when I work overtime.

~~~
forcefsck
> I want to see the exchange as work for time, because I work much more
> effectively than many other people. An hourly-rate job is simply not
> attractive to me, because the hourly-rate will not effectively capture my
> value.

Why not? If you provide better value per hour than others, you should also get
higher hourly rate. If you just work more hours without more compensation,
then you're just cheap.

------
forcefsck
I agree with the author. We work to make a living, not live to work.

However, he thinks that in Europe there are more human conditions. Well, this
is rapidly changing towards the american system. E.g. the bail out for Greece
was offered with the exchange of passing new employment rules. Some of them
are enabling employers to demand for more work time without extra
compensation, or to fire much more easily without specific reasons. Another
nice change, not yet implemented but soon to be, the employee will not get the
full monthly salary if he had any sick days.

Furthermore, the public pension funds and health care is being demolished.
Soon the only option will be to get in a insurance plan offered by your
company (big companies have already started to offer such plans). So except if
you're one of the very few top talented people, soon you'll be very depended
on your job and will be forced to accept to work more working hours without
any additional benefit.

Romania has already moved that way, and Italy will follow soon. And the rest
of Europe after that.

This mentality that you must sacrifice your life for the benefit of your
company, it is just absurd. If the law was enforcing less working hours and
bigger compensations for overtime, there wouldn't be any competitiveness
excuse. And the developed world should enforce the same work rules to the
developing countries.

It's absurd, especially if you think about how much the unemployment rates
have risen and how much the technology today automates tasks so no humans are
needed, and the production of material goods is so high that most products are
never sold and end in the recycle bin. It screams about lowering the working
hours and the retirement limits instead of raising them.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I have begun to wonder why we don't have a regulatory authority, something
along the lines of a national central bank but for working hours, dedicated to
regulating the work-week. When unemployment and overemployment are low, work
hours are kept stable. When there is a chronic over-demand in the economy, the
work-week is lengthened. When there is a chronic over-supply in the economy,
the work-week is shortened.

First World economies right now have an oversupply problem. Marx predicted the
crises of capitalism due to overproduction and under-demand. We don't need a
complete socialist revolution to deal with this issue (though I'm somewhat in
favor of one), we just need to fine-tune the working week to productivity
levels.

------
spinlock
Here's my problem with people who put in 80 hours a week: they don't write
good code. At my first job - way back in the last millenium - we were creating
a carrier class network device. I was hired to run the mail servers but ended
up building an embedded linux that ran the PowerPC on our hardware - we also
had a Strong ARM that ran a gig ethernet but that was under another guy. So,
how did I go from mail server to an integral piece of the product? I took over
for the guy who put a lot of time into not solving a problem. Before you can
even get linux running on your hardware, you need a boot loader to initialize
your hardware and get it into a state where linux will run. Our "hard worker"
volunteered to write a boot loader and spent 60+ hours a week for the next 6
months writing it. But it never worked.

Management decided to let me take a crack at the boot loader. Now, I was in my
early 20's. I had bars to drink at, a girlfriend to get some lovin' from, and
parties to go to. I didn't want to spend 60 hours a week at my desk. So, I did
what any lazy hacker would do: I found an open source project that was close
to what we needed. The project I started from was PPCBoot and it was started
by Wolfgang Denk for the purpose of booting hardware running a Power PC
processor. I spent 2 weeks telling everyone else in the company that I needed
their help on X, Y or Z; getting them to write some code; and burning the new
version of PPCBoot onto the flash chip. After 2 40 hour weeks, something
amazing happened: it worked. It configured the hardware and handed control to
linux which booted up.

Anyway, that's my reason not to spend more than 40 hours at work in a week.
All of the people who I've seen put in all those hours aren't really working.
They're just playing with a neat project because they've always wanted to
write a boot loader. The purpose of you job isn't to write code, it's to ship
a product. If you keep that in the front of your mind at all times and focus
your efforts on shipping product, you can "work" 40 hours a week and code a
pet project on your own time.

~~~
ajross
Honestly that anecdote just proves that you were a better engineer than the 60
hour boot loader guy. It doesn't say anything about hours other than that some
people will work hard even if they aren't making progress. You aren't claiming
that he'd have done _better_ by spending only 2/3 the time, just that a
solution (that he couldn't find) existed that fit.

Honestly I find myself amused at the extent of the argument here. Most people
I've known in the tech world who work long hours generally do so because ...
they like it. It's a way to define your life. It's a way to feel good about
yourself. I'm sure there are programmers trapped in death march dungeons
somewhere for exploitative wages, but they are the exception, not the rule.

~~~
jiggy2011
I think the point is more that having some sort of time constraint perhaps
helps force you to come up with more realistic solutions.

For example the number of startups with VC investment who seem to have spent
50%+ of their time creating a new NoSQL DB or something.

------
TDL
Please stop comparing overworking or non-optimal work conditions as slave
labor. Slavery means you can not, either because of the law or threat of
violence, leave the service of your master.

I've had bad jobs in my day. One I left (I was a "partner" @ startup) and it
was a financially bad decision, yet it was one of the best decisions I ever
made. Here is the difference between slavery & a crappy job; a person can
choose to leave the crappy job even if it means living hand-to-mouth a slave
can't.

I generally agree with what this author is saying. The best way to start
thinking about your job is as though you are a contractor and your employer is
your client. Remove the boss/employee template from your mind and start using
the client/contractor template.

------
minikomi
I work 3 days a week for quite a large social game / mobile web company here
in Tokyo. They are asking me every 3 months to become a "Seishain" - full time
employee - but I will continue to take the no-benifits, paid by the hour
option. The pay's not great but I'm learning a lot. And I can go home on the
dot at 6.. However, everyone who is not part time is here before I arrive, and
stays after I leave. . . .

~~~
mathrawka
I think that holds true for nearly any company in Japan though. The main
reason people want to become "Seishain" is because you have much more job
security. It is very hard to fire a full-time employee in Japan. And if it is
a large company, there is the pension you get... a large sum of money when you
retire, from the company. It is not uncommon to get an extra 10M - 20M yen
when you retire.

Part-timers don't get any of those... but they get some more freedom in their
lives (unless they choose to go against the grain, which most Japanese don't).

~~~
minikomi
Yeah.. I've been there (at an admittedly insane company), and "enjoyed" the
benefits of cheaper health care, pension.. at the cost of sleeping under the
desk a few nights a week, coming in at 6 or 7 just to read every single mail
which circulated not to get caught out having missed some minor little thing
by my senpai..

Now I balance this with really laid back face-to-face english teaching. It's
actually quite nice. Half the week staring at a glowing box, half the week
talking casually with people who are motivated to learn. edit: I'm quite broke
though!

------
leppie
Like the old saying goes:

"I work for money. If you want loyalty, get a dog."

------
justinhj
I have worked at game development companies for nearly 20 years. Initially I
worked a lot of overtime for free,but after a couple of years I started to
feel the effects on my life. After that I mostly just did not do OT unless it
was paid. One year on a badly run project I doubled my salary through OT pay,
and though my life outside work was not good I was able to put a significant
amount of money aside. The following year hourly OT pay was gone, but the
expectations were not. I made it clear I would only do OT on rare occasions,
such as my work falling behind and a colleague being dependent on it at the
weekend, when he would be working and I would be having a life. Even this
caused resentment and I had to do the walk of shame at 5pm every day, and I
was laid off as soon as the game shipped. The sense of personal failure was
very hard on me at the time, but 12 years down the line, I've had a successful
career in games, while being upfront at the hiring stage about my attitude to
OT. I have worked a handful of weekend days and never later than 8pm in the
week. I didn't miss my son growing up, and I read him a bedtime story every
night. I don't think this is possible for every programmer and every company,
but you can make it work.

------
buff-a
_If you lose your job you may have to pay a lot more (COBRA) for a limited
time_

No, you'll pay the same as you were paying. Its just that before, you thought
you were being paid $100,000 when in fact you were being paid $120,000, and
out of that came your health insurance and the other (more-than-) half of your
social security and income taxes.

~~~
awolf
You pay 10% more on COBRA than your employer was paying on your behalf. But
the gist of what your saying still stands.

~~~
quatrevingts
Plus, COBRA payments are (generally) not tax-deductible, so add another 30-40%
more.

~~~
buff-a
A self-employed person can deduct health expenses against gross income. You
are correct in that COBRA cannot be deducted in this way. But it can still be
taken as an itemized deduction. I'm not a tax accountant, but my tax
accountant is. Another gotcha: if you're taking the 60% markdown on COBRA from
Obama, then no, you're not allowed to write it off at all, but I wouldn't be
complaining about that.

~~~
quatrevingts
Only the portion which is greater than 7.5% of your gross income can be
deducted on Schedule A.

------
x5315
I work at Twitter, where i regularly work longs hours (my standard work day is
something like 10 - 19:30) and am frequently on call. I even spend time at the
weekends thinking and hacking on specific problems.

I feel that the author's post doesn't apply in my case, because:

\- Some of the problems i work on are amazing. They're interesting and fun,
and i enjoy them outside the normal "work hours".

\- Twitter has an "unlimited"—be respectful to your team—holiday policy. I've
probably taken about 6-7 weeks off in my one and a quarter years here.

\- Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served for free. While you might not count
that as 'being paid overtime', the costs of food can add up.

\- This behaviour is not required. I know people who do 9-5 and that's it.
They get their work done within deadlines, and there's no issue with that.

So, am i to assume that Twitter is a huge exception? I'm not so sure. I think
that while Twitter is a special environment, there are many companies that
offer similar benefits.

Maybe the real statement shouldn't be "don't do unpaid overtime", but:

 _"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to
be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way
to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep
looking. Don’t settle."_ \- Steve Jobs

~~~
troels
> Twitter has an "unlimited"—be respectful to your team—holiday policy. I've
> probably taken about 6-7 weeks off in my one and a quarter years here.

Curious as to how these things work in the states. I take it that you pay for
the time off from your salary? (E.g. you don't get any for the period) Do you
have any time off that is paid by your employer?

~~~
jandrewrogers
It is all paid time off. A lot of tech companies in the US have this policy. I
know software developers that have taken two months off (paid) after a big
product launch. It is part of the compensation and perks.

Ironically, this policy is illegal in most European countries.

------
mefistofele
Many industries are forbidden, by law, from unpaid overtime. The law
specifically exempts the software industry from this requirement. Like so many
other things about the culture here, this issue seems to come down to the US
being afraid of its own shadow. We're the greatest country on Earth... we say
so all the time. But to change the law and forbid unpaid overtime for the
software industry, something that will make people's lives better here in the
greatest country on Earth, is to risk losing all these programmers jobs
overseas. A terrifying prospect. So we do nothing out of fear.

~~~
crander
Programmers here are discussing if they choose to work unpaid extra hours or
not. You don't make a country great by forbidding extra work regardless of the
employee desires. You make a country great by allowing employers and employees
to decide amongst themselves case by case. If labor wants to forbid this for
other vocations good for them. I would like to keep my right to work more
hours on salary or not.

~~~
moocow01
Nobody is forbidding overtime work - they are exempting tech employees from
receiving pay for the overtime they work. Much of this legislation was passed
in the US through the lobbying of big tech corporations (Microsoft) to
increase profit margins. I personally would like to revoke my right to work
overtime for free.

~~~
rprasad
They are not prohibiting tech employees from receiving overtime, nor are they
prohibiting companies from paying tech employees overtime.

The law simply _does not require_ companies to pay overtime to tech employees
(along with other, more traditional professionals such as doctors,
accountants, and lawyers).

~~~
moocow01
You're correct in that tech companies _can_ pay overtime but in real terms
this legislation results in no tech companies that actually pay overtime (but
Im sure there is some rare exception). I'm sure there is a bandwagon of free-
market folks who would be quick to point out why this is good for tech workers
but from a practical point of view it has lead to an industry that treats long
hours for the same pay as the norm.

------
wisty
Towards the end, he gets to the main point - the US health system is not set
up for people who aren't wage slaves for a big company. The idea that a
company should pay your pension is also kind of dumb.

~~~
BadassFractal
Bingo. What to do about it though? Would meaningful reform of the current
system be possible? Where could one start?

~~~
etfb
The Australian system is quite functional and, unlike the USA, we still have a
functioning economy. Granted it mainly comes from digging up bits of the
country and selling it cheap to China, but it's not all bad news. The USA
could do with a lot more socialism than it's currently got.

~~~
jacques_chester
Australia was successful before the mining boom started. The policy reforms of
the 80s and 90s are the basis of our long-term success.

~~~
wisty
Well, we were OK in the 90s. The mining boom, and the fact that overseas
lenders are only just starting to question our ability to take in more debt
has what has kept us out of recession, for now.

Medium term, we might be in for a beating, like the US. Long term, we need
more innovation. Name Australian innovation. Easy, right? Now name one
innovative Australian company.

~~~
jacques_chester
The boom was abruptly interrupted here, as it was everywhere else, in 2008
when the GFC kicked off. My old man works for Rio, who dumped _tens of
thousands_ of contractors almost immediately, freezing tens of billions of
dollars of projects.

What really saved our bacon was a) labour market flexibility (ie many
companies renegotiated hours instead of being forced to sack people) and b)
that the Reserve Bank had lots of room to manoeuvre. The Commonwealth could
also borrow deeply because it had no long term debt.

None of these conditions was accidental. They were, as I said, consequences of
decades of sensible reform by both major parties.

> Easy, right? Now name one innovative Australian company.

There are thousands. They're just not necessarily talked about by the HN set.
Off the top of my head there's Cochlear, the half dozen companies spun off
from NICTA, Kaggle, Computershare which was the first of its kind and so on.

------
smadam9
What about the part where programmers work overtime, but not because they are
demanded to?

I consistently see programmers, even in my own team, who happily stay 60-70
hours per week because the idea/concept they are working on means something
significant to them.

I find this phenomenon to be the exception of what your post has mentioned.
Although the post was mostly accurate, I encounter this exception on a daily
basis.

While those 60-70 hrs./week aren't at 100% efficiency, the idea that a
programmer will stay the extra time to produce high quality work while
maintaining their own personal life says a lot about their view of their job
and career. To some, it's just that - a job. However, others see it as an art
(just as any profession, I suppose) and strive to increase their skills - they
understand that invested time equals increased knowledge and a more refined
skill set.

~~~
BadassFractal
If your job is such a great learning experience, or the mission so captivating
that you want to work 70 hours a week on it, you should be allowed to do that.
In my experience few positions will be so exciting that you'll want to do that
though. One can only get so much thrill out of writing CRUD apis for years.

------
leventali
If you are constantly needing to work 70-80 hours a week that generally
implies an issue with planning and/or engineering practices.

------
orblivion
Well, I have an American way of looking at things. Why is 40 hours the magical
number? Why is it that you're working for free after that point? He was
correct in the first place that it's devaluing your hourly worth (assuming
time is fungible). But guess what, if you can't get the job done that the
employer wants to pay you the given salary for in the 40 hours you expected to
satisfy him with, and the employer would let you go if you told him that this
wasn't what you signed up for, you _are_ devalued. The employer hired you for
a certain amount of work and was willing to pay a certain amount of money for
it. If you made an agreement about the work to be accomplished, and did not
make an agreement about hours, and you end up working 80 hours a week, you
_are_ being paid overtime. Your base salary is just much lower because you're
not worth very much to that particular employer at the base salary.

Now, if the employer would _not_ fire you if you put your foot down, it's a
matter of knowing your true worth. And I definitely agree it's worth doing
this if you end up in this sort of situation. Either you part ways from a job
that isn't worth it to you, or you get the conditions that are worth it to
you. Negotiations have some leeway, you don't really know what the other
person is willing to give up.

------
cletus
This is a rant that's a bit all over the place.

The author points out a lot of exceptions (eg working at a startup or
somewhere where you might get something out of it). If you take out all those
exceptions, you basically end up with the crap jobs.

The real problems with a crap job isn't the unpaid overtimes... it's that it's
a _crap jobs_.

The fact is though, you get as much out of pretty much anything in life as you
put in. If you want to working 9-5 5 days a week, you can probably find a job
that'll let you do that if you try, which is fine, but I probably wouldn't
expect anything but stagnating in it.

I too have been a contractor. Never again. It's the ultimate in _transactional
work_ [1]. When I did do it though, I _always_ negotiated an hourly rate.
Employers love a daily rate because what is a day exactly? An hour is
unambiguous.

Health insurance in the US is a problem. This is known. The lack of vacation
here is (IMHO) a problem too.

I now have a great job and I have it because I put in effort (both at work and
outside). YMMV.

[1]: <http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/>

~~~
rickmb
In the real world, there aren't only great jobs and crap jobs. Most jobs are
just jobs. Period. You put in work, you get paid. It's not horrible, it's not
always great fun either, but it's neither awesome nor crap.

This is what most people do for a living. If you call that "stagnating" or
"crap", you missed out half the point of the post: that the majority of people
don't live to work, they work to live. They don't expect to get any
fulfillment out of their job, they get it out of their life _outside_ of work.

The idea that you cannot expect to get much out of life if you only put in 40
hours a week is bullshit that reduces the majority of the population to drones
who's happiness is irrelevant.

~~~
BadassFractal
If you live your work life, say from when you're 25 to 65, working from 9 to 5
on something that you don't really care about but you do just to pay the
bills, aren't those 75,000 hours of your life you flushed down the toilet?

That's almost half of your adult life, if you exclude sleep, that you throw
away just so you can "enjoy" the other 8 hours a day you have. I personally
have failed miserably to be happy with my life if my 8 hours of work a day
sucked or were mediocre, I want all of my waking hours to have meaning. Not
everybody has that luxury, but I feel it's something we should all strive for.

~~~
toadi
Tell that to the people cleaning after you in the office. The people picking
up your trash or the millions of other jobs that pay the bill.

Now if we are only talking in the domain of information workers. There is
still CRUD to be developed or the 1 millionth website designed or other boring
business logic to be developed.

I got this questions many times if you win the lottery would you still be
doing your job. Hell no and I love my job. But there are other things I enjoy
even more...

~~~
BadassFractal
Why do I have to compare my situation to that of a latin-american middle-aged
lady that ran away from the crippling poverty of her country to pursue her
version of the American dream? How does that put in perspective 300 grand I
dumped into six years of education at two top 5 US institutions and years of
experience at industry giants?

If I had unlimited money, I would still work in technology and with
technology, I simply love learning and hacking too much. I would not be
writing mindless Java CRUD though, unless perhaps if those were my customers
and I somehow felt that someone's life somewhere will so greatly benefit from
it that I HAVE to do it for their sake.

~~~
toadi
What a stereotyping. I think in America a lot of people have 2 jobs or maybe 3
jobs. They must be loving their job. America is the greatest and best country
if have to dump 300 grand in education.

Luckily I can study at a university in Belgium that's one of the top 100
universities in the world for a fraction of that amount.

Actually If I had unlimited money I would do the same thing as what Bill Gates
is doing now. It benefits people too and you don't have to do the work :D

------
Androsynth
I used to work at a company that routinely worked people well over 40
hours/week. I left because I felt I was losing the best years of my life doing
tedious projects, however I know a lot of people who stayed and who still work
there. Its not like people don't know the situation. No one looks at routine
60 hour weeks and says 'yeah, this is about right'.

Everyone has their own reasons for staying, or for leaving. One big reason is
the 120k yearly salary they make (in SF). But NONE of these people are slaves.
Anyone who uses the term slaves loses all credibility. Feel free to call them
sheeple all you want, but _they're not slaves_.

People need to learn from their own mistakes. You can't teach people lessons
on a grand scale. Everyone needs to find their own career paths.

The biggest problem with employment is not that we need more regulation (no no
no we dont), its that we have a culture where we view jobs as privileges
rather than simply: me exchanging my time for your money. (as others have
pointed out, health care issues are a big factor here)

~~~
jsharpe
A better term than "slave" is probably "golden handcuffs". You are trapped by
what you are given, whether that's healthcare, salary, vesting, etc.

------
ggwicz
"For men fright at relinquishing their material goods, but shackle their time
to others willingly."

This is a paraphrased quote from a weird version of the Stoic Philosophy of
Seneca; I'm sure the correct quote is out there, but hopefully you get the
point:

Your time is your most valuable asset. Dole it out like your employers (or
clients, etc.) dole out their money: carefully.

I know people who'll complain about taxes, drive further to get to a cheaper
gas station, order goods in bulk to save money, etc. all to save some cash.
Rarely do these people have this diligence with the allotment of their time.

Be careful and cautious with how you use your time. View it as something being
spent, and if higher dollars means less free hours then don't do it.

This philosophy, in my (albeit small amount of) experience, helps you avoid a
lot of the issues OP brings up.

Be careful, people. Paper money can blow away in the wind but then be recouped
fairly easily. The few seconds you spent reading this comment, for example?
Permanently gone. Be wary of how you spend your time...

------
thurn
You should be paid to do a fixed amount of work (generate a certain amount of
value for your employer), not work a fixed number of hours. If you can get
that work done in 10 hours a week, everybody wins. If you need to work 70
hours a week to do that work, well, maybe you're not a good fit for the job.

~~~
okamiueru
How do you consider the factor "good work"? You can finish a job quickly, but
it'll bite you (or a coworker) in the ass later, or you can do the job well,
but take you longer.

As a programmer, I can't thing of a worse way of management than the former.
You'd have to start defining criteria for "good work", and then spend tons of
time reviewing. Nightmare.

------
phomer
When I get paid to work I really care that the work I do is worth the money I
am paid. That is, if I'm paid for 40 hours, I feel its important to give my
employer 40 hours of good solid work. From time to time, I don't mind going
above and beyond, things happen and sometimes it takes a significant effort to
correct them, a bit of overtime is fine. But I strongly feel that any of those
companies that pay people for 40 hours of work, but generally expect them to
work 60 or 80 hours most weeks are abusing the relationship on their side.
What they are looking for is a seriously large discount in labor costs. Unless
there is some 'other' form of compensation that balances it out, then it is
clearly abusive (and quickly leads to burnout, so they aren't even getting
value for the hours worked).

Paul.

------
smallegan
I'm not a big fan of unionized work but it is worth mentioning that when
developers agree to work in poor conditions like this it changes the social
norm and negatively impacts the economics surrounding software development.

If 2 developers are working 60 hours a week they are essentially putting a
third developer out of work. (I understand that studies show you can't be as
productive over a certain number of hours but the principle remains the same)
Unless there is a large pool of unemployed developers in the market this need
for developer number 3 will in turn drive the cost for a developer up as the
market will be more competitive. This is simply supply and demand at work.

~~~
jandrewrogers
The weakness in your argument is that developers are not fungible commodities
in practice. You can't just hire a third developer in many cases so no one is
being put out of work. For many companies (like mine) there are far more open
positions than we can find qualified developers to fill them.

The reality in the market is that there is a shortage of developers, or at
least developers with the talent and skill required. This is not an argument
for working 60 hours per week, just that you can't solve that problem by
hiring more developers. There are not enough good developers as it is.

~~~
smallegan
I understand what your saying but if the need for developers truly outweighed
the market the cost would continue to rise until an equilibrium is approached.
In many areas as the cost goes up balance is found with outsourcing.

------
wyclif
_which is not all that common in this industry_

In context, it sounds like he means "which is not uncommon in this industry."

------
mirsadm
I have noticed that the example you set when you start somewhere new is what
is expected of you for the rest of your time at that company. To clarify, if
you start a new job and work for free an extra 40 hours a week then you will
forever be expected to do that.

I made the mistake of doing that to 'prove' myself and I ended up working very
long hours at a place which I wasn't particularly fond of. The person sitting
close to me worked exactly 8-5 from day one. Everybody knew he wouldn't be at
work after 5 and they never expected it.

------
mathattack
Sometimes the overtime is implicit in the rate. If you joint a sweatshop that
pays 100K, you know going in that it's not $50/hour for 2000 hours, it's more
like $40/hour for 2500 or $33.33 for 3000. It's not unpaid, it's built into
the expectation.

The real question is, "How much do you want to work?" If you are a talented
hacker, you can answer that however you want. If you are 21 and looking for
someone to teach you a trade while paying a good wage in a tough job market,
it is a more difficult choice.

------
jcromartie
All I want to know is: why do I have to work as many (unpaid) hours as
necessary to get the job done, but I have to count the hours I take off?

~~~
cconroy
This seems to be a cultural problem with the US. I agree with everything the
author has said, but let me play devil's advocate: What is stopping a employee
-- in a free market with specialized skills -- from adding a provision in
his/her employment agreement for payment for hours worked >40 hrs/wk.

If the employer values you they will either tell you not to work more than the
40, or tell you when you can -- shifting the power to you.

There is no rule -- or should there be, about negotiating such terms.

Switching back, I think this should arrive more from our culture as it takes
an assertive individual to do this as of now. I am a little hesitant to make
such terms gov't mandated -- but I would like to hear arguments for it.

------
fiznool
Whilst I agree with the general principle of not working yourself to death
(nobody ever says on their death bed, 'I wish I'd spent more time in the
office'), I think the author of this piece is missing something crucial.

I regularly work more than 40 hours a week, not because I have to, but because
I want to learn. One day I'd like to go freelance or perhaps start up a
business, but I need to skill up first. I'm lucky that I have a job in my
chosen sector of mobile web development, something which pays me to learn
about the technologies I am passionate about. I am seizing the opportunity to
learn as much as possible so I can be in a position to just work when I want
to in later life.

IMO the author is looking at this from an experienced point of view. Juniors
and those starting out often have no choice but to work a little longer to get
where they want to be in 20 years time. There's nothing wrong with that,
surely?

------
spiralpolitik
Generally IMHO not paying overtime usually masks inefficiencies in your
business. If someone is having to work 70-80 hour weeks to get the job done
then something is messed up somewhere in your process.

Paying overtime is an easy way to spot these area as its immediately visible
to any half brained manager.

------
brudgers
The title is misleading.

[IANAL] In the United States, for a person in a salaried position, work week
hours beyond 40 are not legally classified as overtime.

For salaried positions, the length of the workweek and compensation for
additional hours are always subject to negotiation (for hourly positions
compensation for overtime is also negotiable but cannot be less than the
statutory minimums).

In my opinion, the author's analysis of economics entailed by salaried
positions is rather naive. Hourly rate of pay is often less important than the
monthly or weekly or yearly rate, i.e. cashflow is often the more important
consideration. For example, if one's household maintenance is $10,000 per
month, then monthly income, rather than hourly rate, is likely to be a more
critical issue in regards to compensation.

------
ChuckMcM
Wow, that's a pretty disjoint rant. It boils down to this:

"I'd rather have a work and life balance that I can enjoy."

Which has nothing to do really with working overtime and everything to do
about how you approach work and life. I think one could boil down the
philosophy into 'if you're working too much and your balance is out of whack,
then quit.' And it is quite reasonable. In the Bay Area families can be
especially hard hit by people who over commit.

That being said, in spite of the Author's disdain for economics, the
interrelationship between who is available to work, pay, and whether or not
they are willing to stay, does 'fix' the problem magically.

------
djhworld
There is no contract stipulation in my contract that says I might need to do
overtime. The only mention of overtime is the fact that it is unpaid.

So I've never done it. I get in at 8:30am and leave at 5pm every day.

~~~
tptacek
There doesn't have to be; if you're told to get X done before leaving the
office, and 5pm rolls around with X undone, you can be fired. That's the
nature of at-will employment.

------
railsmax
That's really true And you are right about over hours. Why should I work more
hours and receive money only for 40 hours a week? But sometimes(I mean my
case) if you like your work and project and it is intereting to you to do this
job, why not to work a little more for example, because sometimes you should
finish task today - for your own purpose - not to forget smth. tomorrow. But I
said that only for 1-or max 2 hours a day and only sometimes, and you can use
this hours if you want for example leave work in friday earlier.

------
Strom
_In Europe your health is not tied to your employment in any way._

This statement is just wrong. In Estonia, health insurance is subscription
based, paid as a tax from your salary.

~~~
bnr
So you lose your health insurance when you lose your job? How is health
insurance for unemployed people handled in Estonia?

------
SonicSoul
i'm never a fan of these blanket statements such as "i won't work unpaid
overtime". Some jobs are 35 hours, and some jobs are 70 hours. Some jobs pay
40k, and some jobs pay 200k. Who said that 40hr week is the holy and
undisputed threshold everyone should abide by? Look at construction workers,
some of them work from sun up to sun down, 6-7 days a week (i sure did when i
was younger) and there is no such hour standard. Sure they are often paid on
how much work gets done, but at the end of the month, many won't make more
than someone with a good salary working in an office writing code. I am not
trivializing writing code. that's what i do, and i often work 60-70hr weeks,
and sometimes it's a stressful time. But i do get paid accordingly (not in
overtime, but i consider my salary to be great), and i do get a lot more done
than average person would in 40hrs. I guess if your employer tells you it will
be 40hrs and it turns out to be 70, thats a problem. but in my experience most
of the time you know exactly what you're getting into when accepting a job
(besides occasional crunch times couple times a year).

------
hpguy
If you hate your job and have no interest in the success of your company, good
advice. If you love your job, there's nothing wrong doing it a bit more. I
sometimes see myself work 12 hours a day just because I can't get my mind of a
coding problem. And I sincerely hope the company I work for become successful.

------
ngokevin
Coming from a student, for those who might really enjoy the project they are
working on and have a comfortable enough lifestyle to not worry about money,
working more is its own reward. I am only paid for a maximum of 20 hours a
week though I work more than that since I enjoy working.

~~~
toadi
Well explain to the your children that they can't get more food because daddy
likes the work more over getting paid.

A bit harsh but understand that not all people live in the same context.
Single, student, ...

~~~
ngokevin
I said for those who don't have to worry about money, from a student. But
thanks for restating that.

------
joedev
Work does, quite literally, _kill us_ \-
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/the-worse-the-
econo...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/the-worse-the-economy-gets-
the-longer-people-live-peter-orszag.html)

------
jac_no_k
This doesn't work when one works in a multi-national company. My colleagues in
other locations will eat my lunch because they are less concerned about
work/life balance and a lot more hungry.

~~~
nostrademons
That's when you work smarter, not harder.

I've found that the biggest benefit of working reasonable hours is that it
gives you time & energy to self-reflect and look at your process as a whole.
Most work processes have inefficiencies that can be eliminated if you look at
the process as a whole. If you do that, you can easily accomplish more in 6
hours than your colleagues in other locations can in 12. That in turn gives
you more time to invest in other process improvements and tools, which in turn
let you accomplish still more, and so on.

------
latch
This is stupid. Why? Because you are getting legal advice from someone who
isn't a lawyer. The spirit of his post is fine, but the reality, for a lot of
people, is very different.

<IANAL>

In Ontario, the Employment Standards Act, which defines all of this (and a lot
more) has a ton of exemptions. Here's the exemptions for "Information
Technology Professionals":

[http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/tools/srt/coverage_go...](http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/tools/srt/coverage_government_it.php)

Notice that we are exempt from "Hours of Work", "Daily Rest Periods" and
"Overtime" to name a few. This means that, aside from your employment
contract, there are no laws that protect your right to refuse unpaid (or paid)
overtime.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
It's good thing you're not a lawyer because nothing he said violated the law
or a contract. :) Unless I missed it, the only thing he discussed relating to
laws was how other countries dealt with this sort of thing. Refusing to work
unpaid hours is just fine, perhaps you will be fired, but it is definitely
you're right but no boogeyman is going to come and lock you up for banging out
mindless Java code to meet some unrealistic deadline.

~~~
latch
First, he suggests that no one should work overtime, which isn't practical for
people who can't afford to get fired. Second, he suggest that there's no
benefit to working over time, while many would see keeping your job as a
benefit.

I'm not sure if he realizes that refusal to work overtime can, in itself, be a
reason to get fired, or if that consequence simply doesn't matter to him.
Either way, saying that they shouldn't matter to any one else is incorrect.

Also, the entire health care angle is weird. Both Canada and UK have public
health care, but both work a lot of overtime:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4149835.stm>
[http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Unpaid+overtime+grow...](http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Unpaid+overtime+growing+problem/1889928/story.html)

~~~
potatolicious
It's only impractical in a poor job market. I take it you write code?

As a fellow Canadian, I have only one suggestion: get the fuck out of Canada.
The market for programmers is piss poor, the selection of jobs anemic and
mostly drudge-work monkeying. There are other geographies that offer much more
interesting work, double-to-triple Canadian salaries, and a strong enough
employment scene that _nobody_ can hold much over your head, least of all
fears of being on the street.

You sound like you're being bullied. Your employer is holding your basic
survival over your head to get you to commit to unreasonable demands. I'd
highly suggest turning this around.

~~~
latch
I was in Canada for most of my life. I'm in Asia now. I agree, getting the
heck out of Canada is a good idea.

None of this is about me. I just think the article really comes off quite
sheltered..."I can do what I want and who cares if I get fired, so should
you!"

~~~
potatolicious
> _"I just think the article really comes off quite sheltered..."I can do what
> I want and who cares if I get fired, so should you!"_

I don't see that sentiment in the post.

There are two takeaways for me from the post:

1 - You have more chips to play with than you know, particularly in this
industry. We're not fighting over factory line work here, we're people with a
highly coveted skill set that is (at least for now) at incredibly high demand
world-wide. Abusive employers would _like_ for you to believe that you have no
choice but to submit, but in reality people in our line of work have an almost
comically absurd number of options right now. If you are programming and
dealing with this, you probably don't actually have to, and your fears of
getting fired and unable to find other work are likely unfounded.

"You're going to get fired if you don't submit to my unreasonable demands, and
you're lucky to have a job at all!" is usually a scam. Triply, quadruply true
for our field.

2 - If you _do_ find yourself in a position where your freedom to say "fuck
you" to an abusive employer is compromised (no other jobs in the area,
collapsing industry, etc), you need to get yourself away from that kill-zone
as quickly as humanly possible. If you need to retrain your skillset, do so.
This is a problem that will never correct itself, and you _can_ get out. If
you have high expenses that limit your savings rate, and thus your
unemployment runway, do something about it. Your employment mobility is _the_
negotiation leverage in this line of work, and you should never do anything to
compromise this (like, say, take out an unwisely large mortgage).

------
Flow
If there are no cost of overtime, I think the company lack a feedback on how
well planning, estimation and execution do.

With no feedback there are less reason to change the company for the better.

------
eli_gottlieb
If you don't like unpaid overtime, move to Massachusetts! Programmers aren't
overtime-exempt here.

------
joedev
"Work hard and go home!" - Amen, amen, amen!

------
gnosis
The culture of overwork in America in general (not just in IT) seems simply
pathological, and I just don't understand it.

The crazy overtime that people in the medical profession are expected to put
in is probably one of the most egregious examples, because lives could
literally be lost as a consequence of errors made due to lack of sleep and
overwork.

Lawyers are typically worked to death at law firms.

Wall St is famous for making people slave away virtually non-stop -- making
work your life and having no life outside of work is quite common. Of course,
big bonuses are promised -- and delivered to senior people -- but more junior
people often aren't so lucky.

Even teachers, who many people think "have it so easy", actually spend a huge
amount of time outside of school hours grading papers and making lesson plans.
Their "long vacations" are also typically filled with work-related activities.

And don't even get me started on how low-wage employees and undocumented
workers are typically treated.

It seems no matter where I look, people are working their assess off in
America -- and suffering the consequences: burnout, a shitty life/work balance
through which their families, friends, and their non-work lives suffer.

And for what? It's not like many of the companies these people work for
couldn't afford to hire more people to reduce the workload to sane levels.

I'm really amazed at how highly skilled employees at prestigious law firms and
Wall St firms are made to work like mad. Those firms could easily afford to
hire more junior people to pick up some of the lower-level work -- but they
don't.

As a result, a lot of these firms are like revolving doors, with people
dropping like flies. The carrots of money are dangled in front of their faces,
but otherwise the firms don't really seem to care about their employees -- and
will often drop them without a second thought (even if business suffers as a
result, which it often does).

And it's just so incredibly dangerous and downright unethical to make doctors
and nurses work a crazy amount of overtime with little or no sleep.

Why is it so difficult for these companies to offer their employees a healthy
life/work balance? Why is a big paycheck is supposed to solve everything? Why
don't more companies offer their employees a healthy amount of time to sleep
at night instead of just more cash?

Business will improve as productivity improves as a result (and business
should know this well by now, as there have been tons of studies to show it).
Employees and their families will be healthier and happier. Healthy and happy
employees are clearly better employees, especially compared to the super-
stressed near-burnout heart attack candidates that so many of these firms seem
to prefer to cultivate.

Improving the life/work balance seems like a huge win-win situation for both
employers and employees, and a no-brainer. What am I missing?

------
dustingetz
you get a bad deal when you negotiate without leverage.

------
kamaal
Its not always about the money I earn now, or over the next two weeks. Looking
at thing from that perspective is not just a narrow minded way of looking but
a very destructive thing over the longer run.

I push 16 hours work day packed with productivity at the extreme, why? Sure I
don't get paid for all that immediately. But bear in mind incrementally over
the years I have learned tons more than the average guy. I am also better
trained to perform on my current job than my peers. The chances of me doing
some thing big are higher, I am better aligned to a good job/promotion or a
raise.

Basically when somebody is talking of career development and over time this is
what they mean.

I joined this industry 5 years back. Without fancy degrees, Ivy league brand,
marks and grades. Today I'm far ahead of most of my peers who joined with me
then. Ofcourse I have faced a lot of ridicule, mockery as to why like a fool I
do so much work for free. I am not doing anything for free, I am just ok with
temporary loss in compensation for a premium later.

In you and your research by Richard Hamming -
<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html> , This point is
mentioned:

 _Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have
tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had
tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I
discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius
and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How
can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his
chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would
be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did
that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office!

What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound
interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person
who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice
outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you
learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it
is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it
is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one
person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will
be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to
heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit
harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say
it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to
study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done.
There's no question about this. _

And trust me this incremental learning and productivity give mindblowing
results over time.

------
pullo
first world problems

------
utkarshsinha
Do you know there are people working in sweatshops at really low wages? Be
glad you're not there yet.

~~~
utkarshsinha
Seriously?

