
Ask HN: Advancing career without working over-hours? - sambarina
I am almost 30 and started programming when I was 18. I am about to become a father and I already feel that I can&#x27;t work as much as my younger colleagues.<p>At my current employee, people get promoted who put the most hours in, since they then also end up putting more work down and knowing the systems better. I get it, when you work 60 hours each week, you will be the go-to person.<p>But I wonder what people do with familys? I have friends in the big FAANG companies and smaller open source companies. The hours of work is everywhere the same. You put in over hours and nobody complains since you know, you got a pretty good job and you can&#x27;t complain.<p>After so many years however, I lost the ability to oversee bad (project) management and see it more of a: This is badly managed, you should hire two more people for this team etc.<p>I seem to be in the minority though. So I wonder what other people with families do: Are you switching companies to have saner work hours and &quot;downgrade&quot; your work environment? I really like working with ambitious people, but they I haven&#x27;t found a company yet with sane hours but also with people eager to learn. I somehow manage to do both, but still fall behind inside bigger corporations.<p>Any advice or companies who manage both?
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AnimalMuppet
This isn't assembly line work. If your brain is too tired, it doesn't matter
if your butt is in the seat, you're still not going to be effective. In fact,
you may be _negatively_ effective - it may take time to undo the damage that
you are doing to the code base.

One of the rules of XP is "Quit when you're tired." XP is all about going as
fast as you can. The fastest you can go involves quitting when you're tired.
Stay longer, and your productivity goes down, not just that day but the next,
and maybe even the day or two after that.

It sounds like you're working at a place that doesn't understand that. (It
also sounds like you're working at a place that is somewhat exploitative.) To
get a reasonable life, you may have to leave for somewhere else.

Unfortunately, right at this moment is perhaps not the greatest time to be
changing jobs. If your current job is stable and unaffected by Corona, you
probably should think twice before you leave - unless you're pretty sure that
the new job is _also_ stable and won't be affected by Corona.

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_ah
You are confusing effort with impact. They are not the same.

Working more hours _can_ lead to bigger impact, but generally that scales
linearly. The better route to success and promotion is to focus on the
inflection points: the bits that actually move the needle for the entire team
/ company.

Weirdly, as you become more senior in _impact_ you may actually end up working
less. If you have a strong record of delivering the _right things_ then you
can push back on unrealistic expectations. In fact, refusing overwork (except
on occasion) is a powerful signalling mechanism.

If are effective at your job and your management team doesn't understand then
it's time to find a new gig.

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kaskakokos
From my point of view, if someone works 60h/week and you work 40h/week, yes,
he's working 50% more than you, he's dealing with more situations, more
clients, more meetings, more problems... if you and the other one have the
same intelligence, he'll probably move faster. Ok, probably this is a
simplification and the curve can get saturated at one point, because 9
pregnant women can't produce a baby in 1 month... but maybe the saturation
point is not 60h/week, maybe it's higher.

In my case, I've accepted that my career is going to advance more slowly, I've
weighed up my work/career and my life/happiness/family, and the last one
weighed more.

Of course, as other colleagues have said, working smart, finding clients,
thinking 80/20, focusing on goals, looking for patterns... and it will
probably make the curve more vertical.

Where do you live? I think another variable is the work culture of the
country, for example in Spain the work culture is now evolving to allow a
better balance between life and work. In other countries in Europe, for
example, this mentality of working without overtime is fully established.

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aprdm
I have never worked more than 40h a week and always climbed the ladder.

Look for other companies I guess ? A good signal for me is when there are
loads of people with families in the company whom have worked there for more
than 5-10 years.

A red signal is a minority of people being experienced or having families.

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quietthrow
So I get this right you are saying what has worked for you is to find
companies where most people are middle aged with family obligation and have
become comfortable in their jobs. And there you can differentiate much easily
and move up faster than you would at a cutthroat place. as even with a little
more effort in such a place you will stand out which can be done while
maintaining a 40 hour week?

I take it you are single and/or have no other family obligations which gives
you an “edge”?

~~~
aprdm
That was a lot of reading in-between the lines!

The company I work has a lot of very eager and smart people who put 40h a week
and have families. They are experts in their field of work (Image processing).

I would say I have been climbing the ladder because I have good soft-skills
and strong leadership skills. It happened naturally and was not part of an
evil plan or something I tried too hard.

I am OK with not being a programming wizard or using all the latest tech in
every project. I am very good in getting people to work together productively
and having them delivering projects constantly.

I have gone from Senior to Lead in the past two companies I've been at within
6 months and now am now growing a department.

~~~
jameshush
Ding ding ding! This person understands. You will NEVER be able to grow a
department if you work 80 hours a week hero coding. The longer you work the
more irritated you become. The more irritated you are the less people will
like you. When enough people hate you you’ll be fired.

Learned the hard way in my early 20s. Now I only put in the extra hours when
the site is down, I’m on pager duty, and we’re losing 100k+ dollars every few
minutes. I’m friendly and very organized. I manage my own Jira board and let
my boss know when we need more people on a project. Definitely not a
programming wizard but boy can I get two different departments working
together.

~~~
aprdm
Yeah it is crazy to hear some people work 60h as the norm and 80h, wtf?

I've done a couple of 50-60h stints in my career for rolling out a big project
globally or things like that and I was... absolutely... exhausted and drained.

I couldn't think straight, I was being rude to people I love.

To think that people can actually put this amount of hours constantly (am
talking 60h!!!) is mind blowing. Maybe my brain is just different and it can't
do more than the regular hours.

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godot
This is a complicated topic with no single right answer because the situation
involves so many factors. Here's a few things to keep in mind. First, if the
company truly only values those who overwork, it may be signs of a somewhat
toxic environment and may be a reason to look around. Not saying it must be,
there's a lot of other factors. Even a company that values overworking could
be a good place to stay for other reasons too. I wanted to state this early
and get this out of the way first (just so I can clarify that I don't discount
the possibility that the company can be bad).

Then, you can also try to understand what the company leadership truly values.
In my experience, most company leaderships truly value impact, not working
hours, but it's easy to conflate or even confuse the two; it's even possible
that leadership values impact but to other regular employees it may _look_
like they value hours.

In my own experience, companies and leadership that I worked for usually value
impact; and over the years, what I've gathered is that the best way to make
good impact to the business is to truly understand the business and domain
knowledge deeply and communicate effectively, as an engineer. I'm nearing my
late 30s with a young kid now and had similar thoughts as you a few years ago.
It turns out ultimately what employers care about isn't the amount of hours I
put in; but rather if I understand the business and domain deeply, I can
correctly spend my time on the most impactful things; and can communicate
these things effectively. I have hardly ever worked over hours in my past 2
years at my current company; and am still highly valued.

On a totally different note though, it is also worth considering taking up a
less intense role (if that truly is a problem at your current place) during
the first year or two of your fatherhood. It's well worth the break time from
developing your career to spend much needed time with family instead -- not
just the baby, but your spouse who'll no doubt need you to be there for very
much. Part of my reasoning to switch away from my last job was for this; and
it just so happened that I also ended up at a good (remote) company that isn't
all about working hours but good impact.

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tuxwins
> In my own experience, companies and leadership that I worked for usually
> value impact; and over the years, what I've gathered is that the best way to
> make good impact to the business is to truly understand the business and
> domain knowledge deeply and communicate effectively, as an engineer. I'm
> nearing my late 30s with a young kid now and had similar thoughts as you a
> few years ago. It turns out ultimately what employers care about isn't the
> amount of hours I put in; but rather if I understand the business and domain
> deeply, I can correctly spend my time on the most impactful things; and can
> communicate these things effectively. I have hardly ever worked over hours
> in my past 2 years at my current company; and am still highly valued.

This is eloquently put. Resonated with me. Would you mind getting in touch
offline for a short discussion and help answer some questions of mine? I will
take a No as well. :)

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vpEfljFL
What was your behaviour couple of years ago? Have you worked overtime? Did you
have older colleagues that time?

The answer is simple. If you don't want to work overtime then don't do it and
see what will happen. Most likely nothing.

Think about how you can deliver move value to the company by working smart
instead of putting more hours (hint: automate your job, try to bring new
clients).

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burntoutfire
I've worked in many places and my impression is that, , workplaces and
managers are incredibly diverse, on basically any possible dimension. A
workplace that suits your needs definitely exists, the question is how to find
it.

In my case, I've just randomly stumbled upon into it some time ago and I'll
probably stick with it for as long as possible (Before that, I've mostly had
jobs that I felt were a not a great fit). Unfortunately, "randomly stumbling
upon" is not much of a strategy, but I guess it's points to changing jobs
often. I don't believe that the important aspects of a job can be sussed out
during an interview, so you essentially need to take a chance on a job, join
the company and, if that's not what you were looking for, leave 1-2 years
later. Repeat until satisfied.

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logicslave
Only take on high value, high visibility work. Position yourself to get this
work. Play politics. When you switch jobs, overstate your previous role,
create a persona, a coherent timeline of professional progression.

Thats it, otherwise you have to work hard like everyone else.

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jameshush
I agree. It’s this simple. But it’s not so much playing politics as it is
using common sense to work on things that make money or cut costs. Or writing
code in a way that another team in the company can easily use.

Did this for two and a half years. My boss quit and took me with him to a
better gig. Your network is your net worth.

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JMTQp8lwXL
I'd imagine if you switch to a company that asks less of you, you will get
promoted more slowly. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

~~~
wolco
No relation to getting promoted.

If the company is growing quickly you will be promoted quickly. If it is
getting smaller people get laid-off demoted. If it's holding steady than
working extra hours might make you more valuable if someone leaves.

Working 20 more hours only marginally increases your chances. Marry the owners
daughter would work better.

