
Dark side of a Valley software engineer - polskibus
http://www.businessinsider.com/dark-side-of-a-valley-software-engineer-2016-7?IR=T
======
dham
Then: Get up at 6am, go to work at grocery store. Get paid $7 an hour. Get out
at 1pm, go to school. Go back to grocery store at 7 work till 12. Wake up do
it again. Weekends nope. Holidays nope.

Now: Wake up at 8 get to work at like 8:45 work till 6 or 7. Sit in air
conditioning all day at a computer. Free lunch. Go home, don't worry about
anything. No tests to study for, no worrying about paying rent. Holidays off.
Weekends off.

Yea development sucks sometimes but it's almost like doing nothing compared to
what I was used to. Sometimes when I get frustrated I just have a flashback of
my old life.

~~~
parr0t
As someone who until Oct last year worked weekends and weekdays getting up at
2:30 am to bust my ass in a bakery for dismal pay and virtually no social life
due to the hours - I work part time as a junior developer now and looking back
at my old life I don't know how the hell I did it. It motivates me to do the
best I can each day so I don't end up back there.

~~~
Ntrails
Similar experience as an ex Chef. 60+ hour weeks, 5 days a week spread over
various split shifts (so rarely 2 whole days off, and half days never really
feel like a break). Working for what comes out as less than minimum wage as
salaried.

In part because of this, I find it really difficult to deal with people I work
with complaining about pay/bonuses/hours etc, because imo what I do now is way
easier and probably less empirically useful (although obviously more valuable
- thanks capitalism).

There is a small part of me that misses the buzz of a busy service though.

~~~
CarpetBench
> In part because of this, I find it really difficult to deal with people I
> work with complaining about pay/bonuses/hours etc,

I get what you're saying and that you likely don't mean any malice, but just
in case: It isn't a competition to see who can have the worst working
conditions.

That kind of rhetoric is the same that those with capital use to suppress
wages/benefits because it's obviously profitable in the long run. It's a
manipulation: Many people want to be seen as industrious, and telling someone
they're entitled because they want an extra vacation day a year is a powerful
manipulation that works much of the time.

Don't be manipulated. The company is almost assuredly making a huge return on
your employment. Don't be afraid to assert your right to some of it.

~~~
lethargic_meat
The best approach is to consider yourself a company. Your time is your
commodity, your goal is to make profit. Don't give for free your commodity,
understand well how is valued in the current market and how to increase that
value.

Never go to ask for a bonus/raise because you "deserve" it, but because your
skills are valued x in the current job market.

------
viraptor
While a lot of the stories are pretty much "this insane thing is considered
normal around here", there's some that I feel are due to management and should
be changed - long hours or not.

> harsh deadlines, huge backlog of tasks, fear to fail

This happens everywhere. Deadlines exist because customers exist. All backlogs
grow until they're silly. Companies may have a fear to fail. But if you have
multiple engineers and they're afraid of failure, that's on the management.

> If I get a page on the road I need to pull over and get on the system in 5
> mins to start debugging.

That's just terrible planning. Why are people on call when they're traveling?
Even some basic rule like adjusting working hours +/-1h for different people
on call to account for commute would help. And we're talking about google who
could just do 8h support in 3+ countries and get rid of on call apart from
n-th tier "the world is on fire" specialists.

~~~
neverminder
Could it be it's just how it works in USA? I'm a software engineer in London
and in the last 2 years I haven't done a single minute of overtime.

~~~
gambiting
I'm pretty sure it's just USA. I make a good salary in the North East of UK
and I was told multiple times by people from US that I'm crazy to work for
that kind of money(If you moved to US, you would easily make 3-4x as much!).
And sure, maybe it's true. But I enjoy working 37.5h/week, having 25 paid
holiday days a year, unlimited paid sick leave and having a job that I
actually like doing - plus I don't really have to think about it once I get
home. Healtcare costs me about $100/month in NI contribution, education for my
children will be free or almost free - Moving to US for some hypothetical
higher salary just does not seem worth it to me at all.

~~~
Grahf
Indeed. Your salary is relative. If you're earning 3-4x more but have to pay
3-4x more on all your expenses, are you really richer? Factor in long hours in
general, unpaid overtime, crunch times, a poor work/life ratio in general,
etc. It seems like the scales are balanced all wrong.

That's my perception as another tech worker living in the UK. I'd love to hear
an argument as to why that isn't the case.

~~~
jsmith0295
Assuming you had money left over to save, yes, you would be. You would be
banking 3-4x as much money, if income and expenses remained proportional

~~~
nilkn
To clarify this post (which I agree with):

Imagine you're making $100 per month right now and spending $95 of it. So
you're saving $5 per month.

You move to the US and start making $400 per month, but your expenses
skyrocket to $380 per month. But you're now saving $20 per month -- four times
as much as you were before.

Now imagine those savings numbers were $1k and $4k, and the difference becomes
a pretty big deal.

~~~
gambiting
Personally - right now I know that no matter what happens, my employer has to
give me at least 3 months notice to fire me - at will employment is something
that sounds almost like a bad joke around here. There does not exist any
medical emergency, illness or accident, that would put me in any sort of
financial difficulty. Even if 20 helicopters were engaged in transporting me
to the hospital or if I had to be put on treatment costing 100k/month, I would
never pay anything for it, and my NI contribution would not go up. If I lost
my job as a result of an accident I would still be 100% covered. My children
will never have to worry about student debt, because they either won't have
any, or it will be conditional on them working, capped at a certain level and
reasonable.

At the same time, I make enough to pay mortgage on a 4-bedroom house, have a
car that I really like, and have the latest gadgets I like. Sure, I can't
afford a rolex or a ferrari - but that's fine with me. Saving more money while
working in the US and worrying about the above is just absolutely not worth it
to me, but again, that's just my personal opinion.

~~~
nilkn
I didn't mean to suggest you should actually move to the US. Life in the US
definitely feels pretty backwards compared to some European countries these
days, and your examples show that pretty convincingly. I only meant that,
despite just being basic arithmetic, it's somewhat paradoxical that savings
rates can go up in extremely high cost-of-living areas. It "feels" like you've
gained nothing if your income increases by 4x but your cost of living does as
well, but in reality you might actually save considerably more money.

------
pakitan
> _A Google site-reliability engineer starts work at 9 a.m., leaves at 7 p.m.,
> and works in the evenings until about 10 p.m. He 's on constant alert
> because he must respond to urgent pages within 5 minutes. "Go home at 7pm
> with my backpack and fully charged laptop. If I get a page on the road I
> need to pull over and get on the system in 5 mins to start debugging. An
> email alert can wait until i get home._

Can anyone please comment on the veracity of this quote? I'm interested in a
SRE position and I was researching details a while ago and the only info I
found on work hours was someone saying that, given that Google has employees
all around the world, you don't really need to do crazy hours or night shifts.
However, the comment above indicates 12 hour workdays, which is insane. Is
that every day? How does it compare to a Software Engineer position at Google?

~~~
homero
[https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-normal-working-day-for-a-
sof...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-normal-working-day-for-a-software-
engineer-in-Silicon-Valley-like)

~~~
commentereleven
The important bit from that page is:

"I am on-call about 10 days per quarter, usually 3 shifts of 3-4 days each. I
am paid extra for my on-call (after-hours) work, but not at my full hourly
salary because I only work when there are problems after hours (e.g. on
weekends or late at night.)".

Note that depending on the exact team, Software Engineers at Google may also
be part of an on-call rotation.

~~~
pakitan
Yes, indeed, turns out BI just cherry-picked the worst part.

~~~
superswordfish
Ten days per quarter, or forty days per year, in few-day shots at a time. That
amounts to a monthly shift, and is just frequent/heavy enough to have a real
impact on your personal life. No doubt the "extra" pay (let's be real, you'll
never be in the inner circle if you forgo the duty) is barely enough to be
noticeable.

~~~
madgar
> No doubt the "extra" pay (let's be real, you'll never be in the inner circle
> if you forgo the duty) is barely enough to be noticeable.

When allocated 100% to cash (vs. vacation) oncall pay amounts to more than an
extra full paycheck every quarter.

If you don't notice an extra $10,000/year post-tax then please, send some of
your moneybags to someone who appreciates the value of a dollar. Like me.

------
Pirate-of-SV
One of the quotes in this article was written by me on Quora. At the time of
typing my response was intentended to be more of a semi serious rant.

Just thought this would be worth mentioning.

~~~
emilburzo
Which one?

~~~
Pirate-of-SV
The quote between the "thinking beanie guy" and cars stuck in traffic.

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-normal-working-day-for-a-
sof...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-normal-working-day-for-a-software-
engineer-in-Silicon-Valley-like/answer/Mattias-Appelgren?srid=hL5j)

------
LeonM
> 7 a.m. Wake up. 8 a.m. Refuse several job offers from Google, Facebook,
> Oracle, HP and other tech giants. 9 a.m. Write some code that wipes 100 jobs
> by making people less useful. Noon Free food. 1-3 p.m. Wipe even more jobs.
> 5 p.m. Meet with investors that are dying to invest in anything that you
> touch. 7 p.m. Dinner at the Ritz-Carlton. 10 p.m. - Comment on some company
> blog. Post goes viral and the company becomes an overnight success.

I laughed out loud when reading this one, then I got silent as I realised how
accurate this is compared to my current situation, and I don't even live in
Silicon Valley...

------
jondubois
The slide about watching other people getting $1-$20 million payouts while you
get nothing because you joined a few months later is the worst part.

This also happens outside of Silicon Valley but perhaps not to such an extreme
extent.

The current system is far from a meritocracy because a lot of unlucky people
fall through the cracks.

Given how hard I've worked, I've probably fallen through a lot of small cracks
(but thankfully no major horror stories as described above).

~~~
ryandrake
Yea, seriously. I never thought of myself as an envious person until coming
out here to Silicon Valley and observing the random-jackpot nature of success.
You struggle to afford a home hours away from work, while sitting right next
to someone with the same skills, job title, education, work history, etc. who
has a few million in the bank and drives a new Tesla, and the only difference
is he started at the company 6 months before you did. :-/

------
40something
The real dark side is realizing you've been subsidizing the personal lives of
management for the last 5 years. They get married, buy houses, have kids, etc.

------
leafmc
It's tough, but at some level these people are choosing this lifestyle.
There's no shortage of engineering roles in the world that don't require you
to work in high pressured environments and that don't require you to work out
of hours.

I work 4 days per week rather than the typical 5 and refuse to do out of hours
jobs, using the additional day to have fun with open source, exercise and just
generally keep on top of life. I make well over double the annual average
_household_ income for the UK at 30 hours a week. I'd take that over ladder
climbing as aggressively as possible any day. We really do have it pretty
good.

~~~
justatdotin
so few people in this world are able to enjoy enough.

------
lordnacho
>>If your manager is not a software engineer himself you will have even more
stress.

Someone should do something about this. Certain other professions, such as the
law, protect workers from incompetent management, in many jurisdictions.

It might also attract more people to the profession if you knew your boss had
done something similar.

~~~
bluesilver07
On the other hand, not all managers with a tech background have good people
skills to manage engineers.

~~~
anotherarray
On top of this, if they think "he's slow, I could do this in 5 minutes",
burning out becomes a lot easier.

------
simonswords82
Are Business Insider literally copy/pasting quora responses to create news
articles now?

------
Artlav
Add to that the mental burnout of having to violate the natural project
hopping progression.

The job does not care that you won't be able to get interested in their stuff
for unknown amount of months. It must be done, and now.

Reading these stories - do people actually get paid more for doing more over
there?

Here it's a fixed monthly salary, regardless of how much you do (as long as
the deadlines are met).

------
hhsnopek
Someone has to do this job, in fact the people working these jobs have the
ability to job search after a certain period of time within their company.

To be honest this is stupid this has hit the front-page because there are so
many shit jobs out in the world. And you can't complain for working at one of
the biggest tech companies.

------
lambdacomplete
If working in the SV for such big companies (Google in primis I guess) why do
so many people want to work there? Is it just the "brand" effect or it's
really worth it (salary and perks aside)?

------
k__
This is why I always laugh when someone says "Start-Ups are hard! If you want
to get rich easy, better get a job at a big company with 100k a year"

First, getting such a job is a ton of work and then doing it isn't easy
either.

I mean, how much people even have the education to got into IT and then score
a job at Google for example?

~~~
dasil003
The difference is that at a startup you as one of a handful of individuals
actually make or break the company. You should be getting sufficient equity to
make it worthwhile, and yes you should be wise enough not to burn yourself
out, but you also need to be ready to go the extra mile to give yourself a
chance at success. That doesn't mean let companies take advantage of you, but
there has to be some mutual level of trust and commitment between early
employees or a startup will surely fail.

For larger companies it's more transactional in nature: they have a job and a
budget, and you have your own interests. The agreement you come to is more of
a coldly calculated negotiation.

~~~
k__
Also, you can found your own start-up

------
max_
Is case you cannot access the main link

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.businessinsider.com/dark-
side-of-a-valley-software-engineer-2016-7)

------
daemonk
Doesn't this describe most jobs that require some kind of technical expertise
and creativity? I guess the silicon valley mystique/propaganda really works if
people expect it to be vastly different from other jobs.

------
i0nutzb
So basically the place that everybody knows that is _the_ place where you have
to work 170h/week gets now negative feedback for working that much?

Oh well...

~~~
cmdkeen
It reminds me of the pre-crash stories about corporate lawyers and then
investment banking working mad work weeks. The difference at least in the case
of SV that more people seem to enjoy their work.

~~~
coldtea
The real difference is that a lot of those corporate lawyers and investment
bankers make 3-10x the salary of SV engineer (multiple $ million per year).

~~~
freyir
Of the population that attends law school, passes the bar exam, and practices
law, very few end up as corporate lawyers. And fewer still make multiple
millions per year __. You 're comparing a very broad class (SV engineers) to
an extremely small class (corporate lawyers who make $XM per year).

It may be fair to say that the pay ceiling is higher for the best-paid lawyers
than it is for the best-paid engineers. However, engineers can reach the same
pay or much higher by taking on a management role -- CTO, technical co-
founder, small business owner, etc. -- at which point, IMO, they typically
cease to be engineer.

Investment banking & hedge funds are another matter, and the compensation can
be ridiculous.

 __From Glassdoor:

\- Google corporate counsel ($188k salary, $215k with bonus)

\- Amazon corporate counsel ($180k salary, $250k with bonus)

\- Microsoft attorney ($164k salary, $224k with bonus)

------
fulafel
Don't people have flexible hours so that over 8 hour days get compensated with
paid leave?

~~~
WalterSear
No 'flextime' place that I've ever worked.

