
Cutting your salary by 40% - itamarst
https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/18/when-startups-pay-less/
======
megaduck
I enforce a militant "40 hours only" policy for my employees, and it's
incredible for productivity. When you work longer hours defect rates increase,
code quality drops, and things are on fire all the time. You also lose really
good people due to burnout.

Sustainable pace is super important for creating and maintaining high
performance teams. Crassly, it's just a more profitable way of doing business.

I wish more managers would stop buying into the myth of "time in seat ==
productivity", and look at the real output of their teams. When you actually
run the numbers there's a lot of results that run counter to conventional
wisdom.

~~~
jcadam
Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor. Which is why I fully
understand why my employer is requiring me (and the others on my team) to make
up the 48 hours of labor I lost when I evacuated due to Hurricane Irma (even
though the office was of course closed for much of that time).

I'm spending the extra hours perusing/posting on HN and looking at job
listings :|

~~~
panarky
> Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor.

Not all hours are created equally.

I do my best work with hyperfocus.

I don't just mean more work, but far higher quality work that's at the edge of
my intellectual capabilities.

This is the work that's most rewarding and gives results that I'm proud of.

But I can't get significant time "in the zone" on a 40-hour week.

All the normal but necessary distractions take at least four hours a day, and
I need at least an hour or two of "non-zone" work before I can hit my stride
and achieve flow.

So I find 60-70 hours a week is essential to doing my best work.

But I can't sustain that level of effort continuously for years.

So I balance that out with a week a month of low-intensity "work"
(slacking/procrastinating/socializing) plus at least twelve weeks per year of
contiguous time for uninterrupted travel, long-distance trekking, rebuilding
relationships damaged by hyperfocus, etc.

~~~
hedora
I think you'll find that pushing back on the four hours of usual distractions
per day will be more productive than working long hours.

Personally, I find the usual distractions more tiring than coding, based on
years of experience.

I estimate at least 2 hours of work lost per hour of meeting, once you add in
meeting prep, calendar wrangling, walking, after and before meeting back
chatter, realizing you have 30 minutes till lunch/commute after/before the
meeting, being tired from presenting/listening/arguing, etc.

One strategy is to have meeting-only or meeting-free days, so meetings
primarily ruin your productivity for other meetings and not your actual work.

Meeting-only days scale with team size, but can backfire by enabling the total
number of hours in meetings to increase.

~~~
watwut
"I think you'll find that pushing back on the four hours of usual distractions
per day will be more productive than working long hours."

Pretty much this. When you are explaing long hours by on the job
ineffectively, then you need to deal with on the job ineffectivity -
especially if you are in any kind of leadership position. Otherwise you end up
rewarding innefective workers and punish workers with better organizational
skill.

General feeling that it is ok to work ineffectively because we stay late
anyway was one of the things I resented the most in previous job. And people
who caused interruptions and wasted everybody time were seen as "hard workers"
because they stayed late.

------
adambmedia
I often think about Arthur Rubenstein, the phenom mid-century pianist, for
whom a lot has been written about his mission in early life to "practice as
little as possible." There's a lot of hyped up romanticism in these quotes and
anyone who plays at his level has spent a lifetime playing piano, period.
Regardless, his guidance about spontaneity, creativity, and the relationship
to practicing too much, which I equate to the current discussion on
overworking, is highly interesting.

"I was born very, very lazy and I don't always practice very long, but I must
say, in my defense, that it is not so good, in a musical way, to overpractice.
When you do, the music seems to come out of your pocket. If you play with a
feeling of 'Oh, I know this,' you play without that little drop of fresh blood
that is necessary—and the audience feels it." Of his own practice methods, he
said, "At every concert I leave a lot to the moment. I must have the
unexpected, the unforeseen. I want to risk, to dare. I want to be surprised by
what comes out. I want to enjoy it more than the audience. That way the music
can bloom anew."

Not all work benefits from risk, the drop of blood, the unexpected, that are
all baked into the right amount of effort, but a great deal of valuable and
innovative work does.

~~~
Pharylon
My brother is in a bluegrass band. They've been around for 10 years now, and
there's a lot of music they've played so many times I'm sure they could do it
in their sleep.

There are a few songs that I really do think they used to do better, back when
they were just starting out. Specifically, some of the fast, most technically
difficult songs that they used to play right up until they were at the edge of
what was possible for them. Those songs were full of an energy that they just
don't have anymore, now that they can do them perfectly without a sweat.

~~~
slaunchwise
\+ 1 for bluegrass

That particular form presents an interesting challenge. Many performers tend
to stay with memorized breaks, or within certain patterns, that they can do on
stage without breaking a sweat. The blood only shows in jams or informal
performances. Unlike jazz, where it is not. cool. to play the same solo twice
anywhere.

~~~
elinchrome
This.

------
edanm
As much as I'd love to believe the "work more than 40 hours a week, because
SCIENCE!" party line, I have a hard time accepting it, and I think so do most
people who hear it (outside of HN, at least).

For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens
to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity.

For another, anecdotally at least, most people know plenty of people who work
longer hours and do it successfully. And most of the really successful people
out there will mention that they worked insanely hard at some point. Are they
all lying? All wrong?

The article itself mentions people doing extra hours of coding on personal
projects, and we all know some people who have started companies that way.
What, do these projects simply not exist? How does that make any sense?

You can think it's exploitation to ask people to work hard, but this is to
work on a team with a world-class researcher who most people would _love_ to
work with. Is it too much work for some people? Sure. Are there others for
whom it is worth the trade-off? Probably. Why does everyoªne on HN just assume
they know better than those people themselves, and set off to make them feel
bad and exploited? Working really hard is a totally legit and rational choice
under some circumstances.

(Btw, worth pointing out that this article is at least partly a pitch for a
book about working less hours. Not saying this invalidates its points, but it
is certainly taking advantage of the publicity Andrew Ng's post has gotten to
sell a product).

~~~
Twirrim
> For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens
> to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity.

It's not in the slightest bit down to convenience. It's because 40 hours was
quite simply discovered to be a more productive length of day, well over a
century ago, back in the later stages of the industrial revolution.

In the US, if memory serves, the move to a 40 hour working week largely
started out at the Ford Motor company back in the early 1900s, after Henry
Ford experimented reducing hours and discovered that the number of mistakes
made by workers went down drastically, and productivity increased. This swept
across the industry because the improvements were impossible to deny. Slowly
but surely that spread across other industries until it became the staple.

40 hours isn't done by custom, it's done because it's proven to be _the_ most
productive working week. This isn't a case of scientists discovering that
"what people are used to is what they're most productive at". For most of the
industrial revolution people worked 12hr+ days, and that was considered, even
by the labour force, to be perfectly acceptable. Hauling that back to 8 hour
days was a herculean task that no major factory owner was going to do without
damn good evidence that it would improve things.

~~~
dagw
_It 's because 40 hours was quite simply discovered to be a more productive
length of day_

That was true when most of the workforce was doing manual and factory style
labour. To the best of my knowledge it hasn't been rigorously reproduced for
works that spend their days staring at a screen thinking.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
And if it's not been rigorously tested, then there doesn't seem to be any
strong case to assume that the ideal number for office work is higher, rather
than lower, than 40.

I'm also wondering how commute time (and method of commute) factors into this.
Does 30 minutes of physically strenuous cycling before/after work have a
positive or negative impact on office workers? Does the same time spent in a
car navigating stop'n'go traffic have a different effect? Both involve some
element of mental effort, but both are quite different from the rest of the
days tasks. Certainly in my experience one helped my mental state and one
didn't.

~~~
steventhedev
I recall reading somewhere that one of the best predictors of employee
turnover is commute length. But that was for call center employees, and I
can't recall where I read that, so take it with a grain of salt.

Anecdotally, I once moved from having an hour long commute to a 5 minutes walk
from work. I did end up leaving, but I feel that I enjoyed life much more
living close to the office. Getting an extra two hours every day allowed me to
enjoy life much more.

~~~
dx034
I guess commute doesn't need to be minimized, it just shouldn't be too long. I
cycle to work which takes me 20-25 minutes and I enjoy it. It gives me a break
between work and home so that I can separate the two.

------
etiene
This is insane. I've actually been looking to reduce my work hours to about
30, because even 40 seems too much. Having had a couple of burnouts before, I
want my life to be more than my job, and I truly believe this would make me
better at my job in the long term. After a day of full time work I almost
never have the energy to do some of the other things I want to do. I want to
be able do more open source, learn a foreign language or a musical instrument,
spend time with my partner, study some new cool technology, do some exercise
etc. I was very disappointed to see a big name in the industry to promote
exploitation like that.

~~~
mcv
I'm working 32 hours: 4 days a week. That leaves me a day with the kids
outside the weekend. Oldest kid is at school most of the day, so I take the
youngest to the zoo or something. I heartily recommend it.

It's crazy that we're all still working 40 hours a week. Didn't Keynes promise
we'd have 15 hour work weeks by now? (He did. He didn't anticipate our bosses
taking all the profits from our productivity gains, though.)

~~~
soVeryTired
>He didn't anticipate our bosses taking all the profits from our productivity
gains, though.

He also didn't anticipate zero-sum competition for inflexible goods like
housing. If I want a nice house in a decent city, I have to out-compete and
out-borrow everyone else who might want that house. If everyone around me is
making bank and I want the nice house, then I'd better make bank too. Lots of
us end up working more than we'd like, in a delicate balance between our
desire for _stuff_ and our tolerance of overwork.

Life would be a whole lot easier if we could control our desires but it's
easier said than done.

~~~
chii
> zero-sum competition for inflexible goods

if you consider good housing to be only within a certain distance of some CBD,
then yes, housing is zero sum. But there's lots more space available than
humans right now, and relaxing the distance/centrality requirement will
greatly increase the pool of available housing (and hence, "cheaper").

The only winner when everyone tries to outbid for a small amount of housing is
the original owners.

~~~
richardknop
All the best jobs are in the big expensive cities. Everywhere around the
world, if you want the best job you will need to go to New York, SF, London,
Tokyo, Paris, Munich etc. That's one reason why everybody wants to live there.

Second reason would is to be close to a large number of people which greatly
increases social activities you can do. In a large city even a niche hobby
will probably attract enough people that you can find a group of buddies who
like same things.

~~~
pc86
How do you define "best job"? I want to minimize my commute to work. Right now
I work about 4 miles from my house, which is a 10 minute drive without
touching a highway. If I lived in San Francisco I'd need to make over $300k
just to break event when you look at the insane cost of living, and that's not
even taking into account the higher federal taxes or California taking its
cut.

Most people want to live in big cities _for the big cities_ \- not because of
the jobs there. NYC would be really fun, but I'd need to make an insane amount
of money to have the same lifestyle I have now and a 10 minute commute to
boot. In fact, that'd be impossible, because now I have a yard, a dog, and a
car. A 10 minute commute in NYC would pretty much require me to be in a small
apartment.

~~~
richardknop
>> How do you define "best job"?

If we stay within the context of software engineering jobs, I'd define it as
something using latest tech and pushing new frontiers in different areas (AI,
machine learning, distributed computing, dev ops).

So it would be jobs working with interesting tech (things like functional
programming, or something like Tensorflow, microservices with Kubernetes and
Golang, using newest dev ops and automation stack, distributed systems etc)
and on interesting problems and novel ideas. Majority of these jobs will
concentrate in big tech hubs where it makes sense to invest heavily into R&D
like this.

Outside of major tech cities these jobs will be more sporadic and most jobs
will be for companies which treat tech as a cost centre so you will end up
working on some boring internal CRM systems made from bunch of enterprise
overpriced products with horrible APIs glued together with some Java or PHP
code.

>> Right now I work about 4 miles from my house, which is a 10 minute drive
without touching a highway.

I live about 15-20 min walk from my office currently. If a city has sane
transport system it might be more efficient than driving a car. I understand
commuting to work by car is more of a US thing. At least in Europe in most
major cities you can use mass transit (and most people do). I don't actually
need to own a car and can save money as I don't need to buy expensive piece of
metal that will start depreciating the same day I bought it, no need for
insurance or parking space.

>> Most people want to live in big cities for the big cities - not because of
the jobs there.

Of course. I agree. Lifestyle is a major reason why people want to live in NYC
or London etc. But I also think that unique and plentiful career opportunities
are an important reason. There are simply opportunities you won't wind
anywhere else.

>> In fact, that'd be impossible, because now I have a yard, a dog, and a car.
A 10 minute commute in NYC would pretty much require me to be in a small
apartment.

This is true. I have only lived in tiny apartments my whole life so imagining
living in a house with lots of space and a yard/garden is very appealing.
Definitely would prefer that.

~~~
danjayh
My yard is 11 acres, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. 17 min commute.

------
LogicFailsMe
Unless he's paying seven+ figures annually, all working 70 to 90 hours a week
will get you is a broken relationship/marriage and utter social isolation with
little or nothing to show for it in the end when you realize what a mistake
you've made and unplug from The Matrix, probably 20 to 30 pounds heavier than
when you started.

Work hard. Study a lot. But take a breather now and then. Life is short.

~~~
tracilee
Hi LogisFailsMe, I ran across one of your old posts regarding curing a sinus
infection. I'm trying to avoid a third surgery and hoping you will please let
me know what you used for success? Thank you very much

------
movedx
I wake at 0600 and commute to work, to be in for 0700 at the latest (I cycle
6-7km.) From 0700 to 0800 I work on personal development such as reading a
book or doing some online study (or sometimes I just catch up with online news
as I am now.) From 0800 to 1130 I work. From 1130 to 1300 I dine and take a
walk/socialise. From 1300 to 1500 I work. At 1500 I go home.

Essentially I work for 5.5 hours -- my fingers are on the keyboard, I'm in a
meeting, or I'm thinking through a problem for 5.5 hours per day. We also have
the concept of the eight hour day in Australia (which I believe is a matter of
law, in fact): eight hours of work; eight hours of social time; eight hours
for sleep.

I do this everyday. It gives me a lot of freedom to do the things I want to do
when I get home at about 1530 and makes me feel great. I feel healthier for
it. I can innovate when I get home and work on a project, or spend more time
with my fiancé.

If I ever find my self in a position with a company that the boss(es) don't
like this setup, then I simply show my self the door and find another job.
Life is way too short to be putting my employer before my own life, health,
wishes, and dreams.

Also, I aim to find a job in which I'm solving real social problems (even in a
for-profit manner) and not just doing it for the sake of it or the wage. I
think this is important too.

~~~
okreallywtf
Could I ask where you are in your career and when you started this regimen? I
would like to adopt something similar, I'm not sure if I have the willpower
just yet but I'm seeing one of two options: following your approach or burning
out gradually.

~~~
movedx
I'm a Senior Site Reliability Engineer in Brisbane, Australia. I started out
in the UK at about 27 as a Junior SysAd. I'm 33 now.

I highly recommend you space out your working day like I have, perhaps even
going as far as using a method such as
[Pomodoro]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique))
to avoid burn out. Also, maybe do what I've done, but do it within a 9-5
window for now.

Just remember that burning out for your employer is just isn't worth it unless
you're doing something highly social, like helping starving children,
providing medical support, some sort of charity work, etc., things that are
worth burning out for (in my opinion.) Burning out for your boss' idea of the
perfect mobile game is a joke at your expense :-)

Apps that I use (iOS): "Timetable", to layout the week and get notifications
on when to get up and move on to the next part of the day; "Today", for
reminding me to do things and "checking in" when I've done it - this is for
building habits; "Pommie" as a Pomodoro timer, but I don't use this much; and
"Wunderlist" for todo lists I can share with my fiancé - I have a "Today"
entry that has me checking this 2-3 times per day so I'm always aware of
what's needed to get things done around the household.

Good luck.

~~~
okreallywtf
Awesome, thanks!

------
philrw
I studied film production in grad school, and one of the reasons I didn't
pursue a career in that industry is because of the rampant, pervasive abuse
like that mentioned in the article. "12 on/12 off" was a movement started by
an industry veteran that cried for limiting the work days to 12 hours and
providing a minimum of 12 hours down time before having to be back on set. It
was started after a crew member died from falling asleep at the wheel on the
way home from a shoot.

I am so glad to work in a place that a). not only doesn't have insane
deadlines and the corresponding pressure but, b). has a sub-discipline
dedicated to project management. And that I get to push back with my favorite
mantra, "poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my
part."

~~~
philrw
[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/riverdale-star-
la...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/riverdale-star-late-night-
car-crash-working-16-hour-day-1041899)

------
TeMPOraL
Tangential: I loved the "When programming is your hobby" part of this blog
post. Finally someone accepting, and not dissing, people who _actually like to
code_. The advice is spot-on, too: coding > 40h / week is fine, but why give
up your freedom of choosing what to work on, when to work on it, and when to
take time off, without any compensation?

~~~
rhpistole
Yeah, except what this actually means is, "You don't have any interests
outside of work and you do not have kids that may take you away from work and
you don't have a SO/spouse to tell you that you're being taken advantage of."

It's not really about your interests, it's about you being naive.

~~~
arjie
It's all very nice disparaging people for having found a passion, but when I
read _Masters of Doom_ , I didn't pity John Carmack and John Romero and their
gang for programming all week, then 'borrowing' work computers to program and
play D&D all weekend. I admired them. They found a thing they loved to do with
people they loved to do it with.

Other people have to do many things to be happy, but they found it all there!
These were incredibly intelligent, incredibly creative people expressing their
intelligence and creativity. They weren't lesser men for their passion. It
elevated them.

~~~
dasil003
You're right, we shouldn't disparage people for working long hours in pursuit
of their passion. But we absolutely should disparage investors and founders
who seek to exploit this youthful passion and energy to enrich themselves
without fair compensation. The tricky part is actually defining what's fair.

------
perpetualcrayon
I had an interesting experience in this regard. I was hired by a company who
had a small team of developers. When I first arrived it was obvious they had
built a culture of "work until you drop". Not because anyone above them was
pushing it (at least I don't think so), but they seemed to enjoy "being
heroes".

Granted, from my perspective it appeared they needed to be heroes in the first
place because they had accumulated so much technical debt they were drowning
in it.

I tried silently to change their culture by coming in for 8 hours, doing my
job, and leaving on time. I don't know if I was ultimately able to change
their mentality, but I certainly turned some heads when they realized that
when I was on a project it never sounded like my fingers stopped typing until
I would leave for the day. That's the kind of efficiency you can attain when
you have work life balance.

~~~
alexasmyths
I was in that situation as well.

Being 10 years older than the rest of the crew, sadly I believe they simply
perceived me as 'old'.

------
Ascetik
To add to this, I recently got let go from my job 2 weeks ago . With that
said, my boss routinely tried to guilt trip me because I didn't want to work
more than 40hrs a week. I have 2 very small children and my wife is pregnant,
I can't spend all my time working, nor do I have any desire to. There were a
few times I put in a couple of 60hr weeks, but that was only to appease him,
not because I felt it was necessary. Like I said, my boss would bully me with
phrases like "When CAN YOU work after hours?" "You're a 40hr work week kind of
guy" "Time to put on your big-boy pants" and other totally demeaning comments.
This was for an IT managed service provider.

The real clincher was that I was let go the day I got back from vacation. The
first thing after he said "I gotta let you go" was "You didn't check in at all
on your vacation".

That was incredibly disrespectful to me and shows a total lack of empathy for
me and my family. I am happy to no longer work for him, although I am in a bit
of a financial bind now.

~~~
quickben
Keep it professional. Next time he tries to manage you by stress,
respond:"okay so let's discuss overtime pay multiplications".

He wants you to do more, he won't fire you, so he only has to see the costs
properly and understand that you are more serious about the overtime than him.

I have one kid so far, and zero overtime, I can't even imagine how it will be
with three.

~~~
evancox10
"he won't fire you"

OP literally starts the post saying he was fired.

------
Waterluvian
One of my past employers wouldn't pay me what I felt and showed was fair
market value for my skills and what I do for them. So I counter offered to
work 4 days a week for the same salary.

A year of 3 day weekends did more for my life and relationships than a raise
ever could have.

~~~
tome
It's quite bizarre to me that they would accept a reduction in working hours
but not an increase in salary.

~~~
Waterluvian
It probably helped that I convinced them (then proved it) that my productivity
really wouldn't fall much. I could do the same work in less time.

Unless you're making widgets on a production line, productivity doesn't
linearly scale with time.

I wasn't at work on Friday, but I was still subconsciously processing what I
had researched, how to solve problems, etc. It's the ultimate "sleep on it" or
"get up and walk around".

~~~
zulln
Did you experiment with other days, or was it just Friday? Was this choice
made by you, or what fitted the job the best?

~~~
Waterluvian
I didn't experiment because I felt it was unfair for my availability to wander
through the week. People learned I was not present on Friday.

I wanted it to abut the weekend so that I could get into my own projects
(coding, building, being with family, etc.) for a longer amount of time.

------
shubhamjain
So few companies realise that working 70-90 hours / week calls for
introspection not celebration. Fortunately, I never had a job where I had to
put unreasonable hours against my will but I have heard stories of people who
went through the ordeal and they share a common element: the capacity to think
better solutions dampens which effectively makes 70 hour work-week, a <40 hour
one.

It's sad that only a fraction of people in managerial positions understand
this dynamic. It's always people who work 'hard', who are more in the office,
get admired and promoted.

~~~
kamaal
Because that is not always possible. In India, in most IT firms, either
budgets are fixed for a project, or there are upper slabs for hourly billing.
What happens is you will eventually run into situations where you are pushing
very aggressive deadlines with limited resources. The only option to do a
project is to work crazy hours.

Its easy to say why don't they scale down for better work hours. If they did,
they wouldn't even have those kind of projects, and by that definition you
wouldn't have a job. Most companies can't do this.

Also in my early career this kind of a working environment was a boon. Sure if
you are only in for a 9-5 job and money, you don't even have to sign up for
something like this. But working crazy hours gives people far more
disproportionately higher learning opportunities compared to peers. I have
seen people volunteer and even fight with managers for these kind of projects
only for the exposure. Do this enough number of years and you get very good at
a lot of other things. Doing side projects, start ups and a range of other
things necessary for a long haul career. Also your ability to contribute with
merely participating in a project goes up way higher than your peers, and that
eventually brings you more opportunities.

>>It's always people who work 'hard', who are more in the office, get admired
and promoted.

Lastly, Is this really surprising to you. Look at how academic performance
works, or how it is in sports, investing or for that matter in other walks of
life.

Quantity of work, has a very deep effect on quality of work.

~~~
shubhamjain
I think it's incorrect to equate working long hours with passionate pursuits
like learning something or working on a side-project. Good motivation, almost
always, never let's you burnout in real terms. Hell, I love creating something
after work and counterintuitively, it makes me feel happier than stressful.
But, I don't count this as work, it's kind of a break for me.

In most cases, the effort put is not in the right direction. Stroking the
brush the same way a thousand times will never make you a better painter if
it's not accompanied with a study of better techniques and introspection into
your mistakes.

I can't deny that sometimes you can have enough motivation to have be 'the
right kind of productive' for long hours but working on the same project
necessitates a break. The break allows you to work out better approaches,
which is not thought out by most managers.

I would be susceptible of any claim that working long hours enabled someone to
learn more. I have often encountered them in my career, and it's never the
case.

------
foo101
The original job postings[1][2] were even more egregious. They originally
said, "many of us routinely work 70-90 hours/week".

After a lot of criticism on a Facebook post by Andrew Ng[3] (where you can
still find residual evidence of the "work 70-90 hours/week" claim), they
modified it to, "many of us routinely work and study 70+ hours a week".

So to be precise, they were initially offering you a 43% to 56% pay cut.

Getting paid for 40 hours when you have worked for 70 hours is a 100 * (1.0 -
40 / 70) ≈ 43% pay cut.

Getting paid for 40 hours when you have worked for 90 hours is a 100 * (1.0 -
40 / 90) ≈ 56% pay cut.

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

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

[3]:
[https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1472272026162033](https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1472272026162033)

~~~
chrisseaton
> Getting paid for 40 hours

Do salaried jobs always specify a number of hours in their contracts?
Otherwise you aren't being paid for 40 hours - you're just being paid to get
the job done aren't you?

~~~
doikor
This is weird to me.

At least here in Finland when you are salaried for the standard 37.5h work
week (7.5h work day with 30min lunch break) if you work more then that you log
the hours as overtime and get paid for them or in some form of "flex" time
that you turn into vacation days or money (there are limits to how many hours
of flex you can have banked up)

I know some smaller companies/start ups work around this but they can very
easily get in trouble as doing that is illegal (as in if even a single
employee complains to the authorities about not being paid for overtime they
are fucked)

~~~
chrisseaton
If it's a standard number of hours what's the point in being salaried? Why
don't they just pay you hourly?

~~~
doikor
Because nobody on the better paid fields would take such a contract. You could
try it but you would most likely lose in the market place of jobs by all the
best employees going somewhere else.

As to why having a contract that pays you for the standard work week always I
think people just like the security of getting roughly the same amount of
money each month (or biweekly or however often you get paid). Especially once
you have some money so you have mortgages, loans and credit cards to manage on
top of your monthly bills.

Also the hours beyond the normal work week are overtime and come with
multipliers for your effective hourly rate so companies try to do their best
to arrange things so that minimal amount of overtime is actually done.

~~~
ikeyany
So the point of salaries is to not have to pay overtime? No wonder everyone is
becoming a contractor.

~~~
logfromblammo
The point of salaries _was_ to pay employees by the week instead of by the
hour. My first job had a weekly timecard that consisted of a checkbox: "Did
you work this week?"

Now, every job I have requires me to account for all my hours, so it seems
like the only reason I am not a wage employee is to avoid paying me 150% base
rate for hours worked beyond the first 40 in a calendar week.

------
raverbashing
Oh I think they're on point (with what they want) with that ad

They want the technical wizard with no social life that will give some years
for the company while being paid ~50% less. They call it "strong work ethic" I
call accepting such position "being naive"

Thanks but no thanks

------
atstartup5252
I work at a startup now in a leadership role. I am not a founder and I get
paid less than I could make elsewhere while doing more work. However, working
in a large company is not an alternative for me. Whenever I do I lose my
motivation and phone it in, which damages my mental health because I feel like
I can and should be doing more to keep my brain active. There is more time for
R&R but something deep inside me is unfulfilled and I break down. I need the
action and adventure of a risky bet. If I'm not fighting for my life then
there's no fun in it. I'm going to spend a third of my life working
regardless, so I want it to be exciting and interesting enough to keep me
motivated.

I'm getting to the point in this company where the risk is almost gone and all
that remains is work, and the closer we get to that point the less interested
I am in the business. I'm sure it will feel nice when we're consistently
profitable and can hire more, delegate, etc., but it loses something at that
point too. I won't be as hands-on, will have to work harder to whip the team
into moving in the right direction, we'll be moving slower even if we're
accumulating capital... Not my cup of tea. I find myself exploring side
contracts, ideas for my own businesses, grad school, thoughts of alternative
lifestyles that might make my wife and I happier... Fewer hours worked is part
of that, I'd LOVE to have more time to learn and play, but it's hard to get
there without putting in the effort upfront. The main thing that keeps me
where I am is that I've spent years shaping my role into one where I can learn
exactly what I want to learn, and I'm on the precipice of being able to
finally do that. That's not something one gives up easily.

------
AquinasCoder
The article doesn't claim this is endemic to only startups, and in my
experience work life balance among small, medium, and large companies is
equally threatened.

Even the term "work-life" balance seems to assume an artificial divide between
the two. When work is a facet of a rich life, those extra long hours, the
grueling commute, the vacillations of the newest management fad are just not
worth it. Not to mention that those with families are severely disadvantaged
in a workplace that values hours at the office rather than productive hours.

I am curious to find out how this becomes a culture and whether this is
reversible? Does this toxic overstepping begin at companies who once valued a
predictable balance between work and life or was there a mistake made in
company culture from the beginning? Can a company effectively counter this
tendency? However you might answer these questions, it seems clear that
throwing new studies out showing that overwork is counter-productive is not
changing this trend. It goes back to the age-old idea, knowledge doesn't make
you good, just more knowledgable.

~~~
moron4hire
I wonder about this a lot.

I can be highly productive in certain scenarios, and in others I can really
drag on where others would be much faster than me. It's stuff like, I'm really
good at code that involves math, I'm not so good at operations. Completely
different, unrelated subject areas, but one is viewed as "harder" than the
other, so if I can do one, I'm expected to be able to do the other. I often
end up get a reputation for being a high-performer, because the stuff I'm good
at often gets done during the initial proof-of-concept, and then start getting
the screws tightened down on me from management in a really angry way as it
appears I start slacking off when we hit the later-stages of a project that
involve deployment management and other things that I'm just not very good at.

And it's other stupid shit, like, "if he's a whiz at JavaScript, he must be
great at CSS and terrible at embedded systems." No, in this example, I'm the
opposite.

Of course, it never occurs to them that maybe expecting everyone to do
everything is not the right way to do things. I think, in sum total, I'm
probably more skilled in a broader area of subjects than most people, but I'm
not anywhere near skilled enough across every necessary subject for a full
project to be able to pull one off on my own.

I don't want to focus on just one thing. I do think I provide a unique value
by being very versatile. It _should_ be used as a way to smooth over bumps in
the project schedule while management rebalances staff or highers more people.
I don't mind jumping from 3D graphics into web and database development, or
whatever. I've always believed that all work is worth doing and none "beneath"
me.

But too often, once I reveal I'm more capable than the original position to
which I was hired, I'm expected to do everything, all at the same time. And
that's when things get out of hand. It has at least always _appeared_ like the
people who keep their heads down and their mouths shut during meetings and
don't volunteer anything beyond their job description have a much better time
of their jobs.

------
blauditore
This job seems to be located in Singapore (can be easily found by googling the
quote). On a related note, I recently saw a question on The Workplace SE
mentioning it's common for most devs in Sri Lanka to work 12+ hours[1].

In both cases, companies seem to intentionally exploit this by explicitly
filtering out candidates not willing to go such lenghts. Pretty pathetic.

[1]: [https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/97039/how-
to-a...](https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/97039/how-to-answer-
when-asked-are-you-able-to-work-long-hours-in-a-job-interview)

~~~
rhcom2
I think it's in Palo Alto.

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

~~~
blauditore
This is funny - the same wording can be found here:
[http://startupjobs.asia/job/33056-backend-developer-fast-
gro...](http://startupjobs.asia/job/33056-backend-developer-fast-growing-
startup-lomotif-singapore)

------
Asdfbla
Not that I would strive for it myself, but I think at least it was honest that
the job posting was upfront about the requirements instead of being silent
about it and then peer-pressuring the employee into 70 hour work weeks anyway
because everyone there does it.

Who knows, maybe being upfront about it causes the applicants for the job to
self-select for those who are confident that they can productively work 70
hours? Maybe the research only applies to normal people like us and the
mythical super engineer they are looking for can do it (pure speculation, I
don't know the research - I guess even super programmers have biological
limits).

Then again, it's probably right to be wary of such job postings so that they
don't create a general atmosphere in the industry that such working hours are
necessary, whether you want it or not.

~~~
chriskanan
I think you are right. Andrew Ng is an academic and I have no doubt he works
80+ hours per week. Working really long hours is common in that world. I
average about 60-90 hours per week. I know my colleagues in AI research are
working just as hard and so are many of their PhD students.

The biggest problems I have are meetings. I can do research and code for 12-15
hours straight on weekends, but 8-9 hours on meeting days are utterly
exhausting. Got to figure out a better way.

Kids would be the real obstacle to my current output.

------
darthdev
In Spain this is quite normal ( they don't say it in the job offer, but is
expected that you work more than 40 hours/week ). When you ask to get paid for
those extra hours they usually laugh at you.

People outside Spain usually make jokes about Spanish "siesta", but in fact we
are exploited in the same way this article describes.

( making jokes of course is ok, what is not ok is the exploitation )

~~~
glastra
There's life outside "consultancy companies" (which in Spain are basically
just intermediaries that resell your work for a higher price without any added
value).

------
TheKarateKid
I'm glad to see more awareness of corporate exploits on tech workers, and the
push back against it.

In my experience, people involved in the IT/CS are very passionate about their
work but often less outspoken than people in other industries, like finance
and business. To see people taking advantage of these qualities for their gain
is very frustrating and I hope it doesn't work out in the long run for this
company and others like it.

------
Steeeve
Not sure if it was something that I was linked to here on HN, but I read an
article recently that showed the average worker is productive for 3 hours per
day - and one of the most popular non-working activities is searching for
another job.

I'm a firm believer that success is defined by balance. Balance in all aspects
of life - balance between family and self, balance between pursuits in which
you are driven and those which you enjoy, balance between being social and
productive. I regret to say that I have only achieved this on rare occasions.
I am a work-a-holic, and frankly I think that's a bad role model for my
children to see.

Well rested, happy people with healthy social lives can accomplish twice the
work in half the time as a constantly stressed work-a-holic. When crunch time
comes, they can spend the extra hours and put in that extra effort. Somebody
who is already run down when crunch time comes not only has less to give, they
have other priorities fighting for that time - because those other priorities
are ALWAYS fighting for that time and losing.

------
bitL
Founders with a major stake in a company can work as much as they like; if
they expect regular folks to sacrifice their lives so that they can profit
from it immensely, they can take a hike.

------
jnordwick
What many here dont seem to understand is that you work commensurate with
where you want to be. I work longish hours become I'm in finance and want to
move up the organization or find a higher spot inn another. I want to know
more about all facets of the firm and one day be a principal in a prop trading
firm.

I don't put in 80+ hour weeks because I want to stay where I'm at in my
career. I become involved in more and take on more reliability because I want
more responsibility I the future. I work twice or more what I'm paid to work
because I want to earn at least twice as much in the future.

Worrying about how many hours you are putting in against your current paycheck
isn't very forward looking for your career.

~~~
slaunchwise
Pro tip for getting ahead: learn the difference between 'commiserate' and
'commensurate'. Otherwise you will be unintentionally funny.

~~~
wiredfool
Perhaps it's the sleep deprivation showing.

------
j45
The reality is in a startup, you're giving up income for equity. Equity rarely
realizes to any value unless there is a remarkable alignment of opportunity,
timing, skill, delivering a solution, and finding a market.

I have oscillated both ways on the spectrum of less compensation and more
time/happiness, and maximizing income at the expense of other areas of life.

"Things never get easier, you just get better."

There is always a focus on what value someone is paid, instead of the value
they add and create.

Having a value adding focused mentality (making sure you add value, and
knowing how, and having agreement on it), there is less of an issue with
facing pay cuts, when you are returning several multiples of your
compensation, whatever it might be. Being essential without being
irreplaceable is a valuable lesson to learn.

If you want to limit it to 40 hours a week, it has to be that much more
organized, focussed, effective to have meaningful impact.

There's also 3 number to think about. What you absolutely need, what you
should be getting, and what you want. Aligning your life with where you are at
on those 3 fronts will help lower the dissonance a lot more and comparing
yourself to the perceived location of others.

The other thing that changes in your 20's is you. You become more well rounded
from experience and discover, magically, that you might be good at a few
things and like spending your time on other things too.

One reality is the newer you are to working, the more hours you have to work
to compare to someone who has 5, 10, or 20 years of development experience to
compare. It's less about becoming a 10x developer, and more about learning how
to structure and focus your time for maximum benefit both to the employer and
yourself on mutual goals.

There's a reason why inexperienced talent is cheaper, and it's an incredible
opportunity to soak up more things than you think you can handle. Learning to
drink from a firehose isn't for everyone, but it is an invaluable experience
to learn how you want your work/life harmony to be.

------
option_greek
I wonder which one of this the author is referring to:

[https://www.deeplearning.ai/fullstacksoftwareengineerjobdesc...](https://www.deeplearning.ai/fullstacksoftwareengineerjobdescrip)
[http://startupjobs.asia/job/33056-backend-developer-fast-
gro...](http://startupjobs.asia/job/33056-backend-developer-fast-growing-
startup-lomotif-singapore)
[https://www.deeplearning.ai/machinelearningsoftwareengjobdes...](https://www.deeplearning.ai/machinelearningsoftwareengjobdescri)

------
jackschultz
I always see posts like this, talking about the negativity of long working
hours, but I do get curious the percentage of jobs in each of the categories.
Categories like:

\- Forcing only 40 hour work weeks \- Not forcing, but expecting 40 hour work
weeks \- Not forcing, but expecting overtime work weeks \- Forcing (or talking
positively about) over 40 hour work weeks

All the blog posts and comments talk about how necessary those standard weeks
are (I absolutely agree), but knowing the commonality of both would be great
to see.

In my case, I'd guess forcing of 40 hour work weeks is more common than we
think.

~~~
Retric
In government consulting at large companies it's very common for people to
work ~40-44 hours a week including lunch. I often see people work less than 40
hours if you exclude lunch breaks.

It's not uncommon for people to have literally nothing to do for long
stretches while say waiting for clearance paperwork / between contracts / etc.

Sure, you get paid less but cost of living is also less and frankly your often
working on things more important than selling Ad's.

------
asah
This was presumably written by someone who's never worked at a successful
startup and had equity worth something, let alone seen the tax difference
between salary and equity (capgains in the US). Don't take an offer that you
can't afford to live on -- but salary ain't the point of startup compensation.

As for 40 hour workweeks, most startup jobs have 20+ hours of overhead:
commuting, breaks, meals, random email, "status update" meetings, etc. If
you're working 40 hours, you're getting 15 hours of real work done (
[https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-
aver...](https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-
worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html) ). Even "real work" includes
repetitive tasks and not focused learning. At hour 40, the boring stuff is
done and you're working towards Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours of focused
learning.

tl;dr: if you're motivated by 9-to-5 and 10% raises -- then a startup isn't
for you. No need to crap on the rest of us who love it.

~~~
s73ver_
Except the odds are that the salary is the only thing you'll actually see as
compensation.

~~~
asah
Obviously YMMV. My hit rate is about one in two, with wildly varying
numerators.

Even excluding googlers and facebookers, I have dozens of friends who've made
millions apiece. Bay area mortgages paid off, kids off to college debt free,
parents healthcare paid for, etc.

~~~
s73ver_
Dozens, out of several million who live in the Valley. That's still pretty
poor odds.

------
didibus
I like to call it the difference between efficiency and productivity.

When you're efficient, you get more things done. Normally that comes from
working more, either by doing more hours or cutting out distractions. So you
might get more done in a week.

Being efficient does not mean you are productive. Productivity I think of as
getting more value out of less effort. It comes from good prioritization,
working on what matters most, focusing on the important.

Depending on the work, you'll need to be more productive or more efficient. In
programming, equal effort tasks have very different outputs. So much that no
amount of efficiency can catch up to good productivity. Choosing priorities is
critical. Being productive is harder, because its a skill, you have to develop
an intuition, measure, reason about the opportunities, predict which tasks are
worth a lot and which are useless.

Efficiency vs Productivity is one of the bigger difference between a junior
and a senior developer. Its the difference between good management and bad.

One of the issues is management schools do teach a lot about techniques to
make people more efficient. And certain jobs benefit, like maybe a call
center, a truck driver, etc. Not programming though.

------
teekert
Smart trick, you will notice that people will be more rested, better motivated
and thus almost as productive as in 70+ hours! But they will earn a lot less!

------
wakamoleguy
> But a manager that is pushing you to work 70 hours a week isn’t a manager
> who plans ahead for unexpected work. No, this is a manager who solves
> problem by telling you to work harder and longer.

This seems like a little bit of a leap to me. Is it obvious that these two
aspects of a manager are inherently related? In my experience, I have also
seen that solving a problem by throwing longer hours at it is a net-negative
in productivity. You may hit a tight deadline or put out a fire, but it tends
to be followed by a period of lower productivity from exhaustion. Overall,
your team has picked up increased volatility with a lower average output.
You'd be better off if you could predict and catch the problem early.

I could imagine a team, though, that is accustomed to putting in 70 hours a
week, and a manager that carefully manages the process to make sure that those
70 hours are as predictable as possible. The post would imply that all
managers who ignore one aspect of a healthy team or project (sane work hours)
would be ignoring all aspects. I don't know if that's a fair leap, but maybe
in practice it is true.

------
rogy
I used to be incredibly efficient in the beginning of my first job, i could
easily do 8 hour days of fairly solid coding.

Then came the investment and the big client and the 'big time' and i spent 6mo
doing 12-14 hour days and managed to do less work per day. And i never
recovered in that job.

It took changing jobs twice to get my swing back (didnt help that job 2 was
the total opposite, lazy uninspired team)

------
alexeiz
I work as a software developer. Instead of working more hours I found another
approach quite useful for productivity which is almost quite the opposite. The
idea is that every day you have to call it a day at a certain hour. Let's say
your bus leaves at 5:30pm and if you're late, the next bus is only at 6:30pm.
So you'd better get all your work done by 5:30pm to catch the first bus.
Amazingly, this is quite a productivity boost for me. I don't want to waste
any time at work, because if I do, I'll either have to stay late, or not get
things done. It also allows me to prioritize tasks better. For example, at
5:00pm I'll try to wrap up my current tasks and I don't start any new tasks
that can take more than 10 minute to complete. Another positive aspect of this
approach is that each day I go home with a clear picture of what I have
accomplished that day. And that feeling of accomplishment makes me want to
come to work the next day.

------
mador
A lot of wanting in the comments in this thread. People really want to believe
that one's productivity drops off a cliff after 40 hrs. Whenever I read these
types of threads, which so often bubble up to the top of HN, I wonder why
people are so energized in trying to convince _others_ that they ought to work
less (actually, I don't).

~~~
kamaal
Its for one simple reason. If there is a sizable(but not majority) chunk of
people who work above average hours, they will very likely produce above
average quantity and quality of work. By that very virtue they will be more
competitive, better and well ranked above the remaining majority. And it will
eventually lead to having an effect on things like compensation and long term
career viability. If you as a young person want to work less, your older self
will want to work lesser, and it keeps getting harder to catch up, to a point
you will eventually have to give up.

This will eventually create a lot of long term problems for non-participants
in this crazy work hours work life. There fore they ask for some sanity as a
overall work culture.

This is nothing new to software. My dad was a bus driver at a factory, he used
to tell me that people who picked up over time work were routinely hated, by
the remainder who didn't want to or couldn't.

Nobody likes to watch themselves being at an disadvantage due to their own
actions.

------
muzani
Unpopular opinion: Working longer hours could be fun and exactly what some
people are signing up for.

Some people might want more than a job. They want a lifestyle. A new family, a
tech monastery if you will. They want to immerse themselves in work. Even with
sleep, there's plenty of time for family, just not hobbies.

Of course, if you're looking for just a way to pay the bills, it's not a very
good one.

Most of the companies that work extra long hours don't really accomplish
anything though, and the extra time is used for busywork that doesn't change
the bottom line. If your metric is hours worked and not work done, you tend to
do a lot more light tasks that you can do for long hours, instead of the
short, intense, really important ones.

------
gerbilly
I think this must be the posting:

[http://startupjobs.asia/job/33056-backend-developer-fast-
gro...](http://startupjobs.asia/job/33056-backend-developer-fast-growing-
startup-lomotif-singapore)

------
qwtel
I see it the other way around: Any programming (or similar) job that doesn't
compensate you as if you were working 70 hours a week is taking money away
from you. These are not the 1900s and you are not assembling widgets in a
factory. Your work goes with you wherever you are, quite literately in the
form of your smartphone, and more insidiously by not getting off your mind.
Maybe it's just me and I lack the skill to forget work at 5 p.m. sharp, but my
suspicious is that half our industry comes up with solutions to work-related
problem while they are at home, on holiday, etc.

------
valuearb
I don't disagree with the authors point that expecting massive hours without
corresponding extra compensation is wrong.

But I can't believe the blanket assertions I've seen that working 40 hours a
week is the proven output maximization limit. If I work 40 hours from monday
to friday, and I have nothing to do on Saturday, and a strong desire to
implement a an important customer request, how is working 4 or 5 hours on my
day off going to result in negative output?

~~~
TheKarateKid
There's a difference between doing it occasionally when you desire to, and
being expected to do it every week against your will.

------
kzisme
Interestingly enough I've been asked a few times to start coming in on
weekends. I've also heard the phrase thrown around: "We'll have to start
putting in extra hours during nights/weekends".

I don't think these sort of things _work_ for companies, but to appease a
manager they likely have to be done at some point. Long-term I don't think
this is a viable solution, but sadly it will keep happening for the time being
:/

------
henrik_w
This article argues that "every hour you work over 40 hours a week is making
you less effective and productive over both the short and the long haul"

[http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...](http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/)

------
andy_ppp
Forgetting the article a second; I’d happily work for 40% less than the going
rate as long as I can work remote full time...

~~~
txttran
You can! And usually with only a slight pay cut. There are a lot more remote-
ok and remote-only companies now.

~~~
richardknop
The pay cut from my experience can be pretty dramatic. Whenever I have replied
to a remote job ad and asked about salary it would often mean 40%+ pay cut for
me.

------
ojbyrne
"many of us routinely work and study 70+ hours a week."

The use of "study" suggests to me that the job posting is not as slavish as it
sounds. "Late into the evening" could mean 6pm.

I recently read an MIT career guide that recommended aiming for a 60 hour week
- 40 hours for your current employer, and 20 hours for your career.

------
srtjstjsj
The headline and thesis is completely bogus, because the author has no idea
how much Ng's company pays or how much an applicant is earning elsewhere.

~~~
ryen
The job posting is here: [http://startupjobs.asia/job/33056-backend-developer-
fast-gro...](http://startupjobs.asia/job/33056-backend-developer-fast-growing-
startup-lomotif-singapore)

And the salary looks pathetic (in USD)

------
dogruck
The most successful people I know work much more than 40 hours each week.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
Professionally successful, or successful as people?

~~~
dogruck
As people.

Granted, none of those people are grinding away working for The Man. Instead,
they are running their own organizations.

Is that not your experience?

~~~
RankingMember
Working for yourself versus working for "The Man" makes a huge difference
because you know every second of that 60 hour week you're putting in is to
your direct benefit.

Talk to someone who owns their own business working 60 hours and then someone
who's being forced to work 60 hours for their company and you'll be talking to
two people with vastly different outlooks.

~~~
dogruck
Well, you either are The Man, or you work for The Man. The choice is yours to
make.

I agree with you, but the point stands. They're able to be productive and
happy while working more than 40 hours per week.

------
pedrosanta
An important cautionary tale indeed: don't be a sucker. #protip

------
quuquuquu
Cool post!

What happens when every company is doing this ritual?

I'm starting to notice a very bad trend. Just like how LA has record numbers
of homeless people, it also has a high vacancy rate.

Similarly, despite plenty of "open positions", candidates are being denied
left right and center, even as they do their best to signal that they will do
anything for the job.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> What happens when every company is doing this ritual?

Just look at Japan to see what a 12+ hour / day work culture looks like. Their
population and their economy are both slowly going down the shitter thanks to
it, depression is widespread, etc.

~~~
dx034
Not sure if economic problems really come from long work days. Otherwise it'd
be easy to boost the economy by forcing people to work less.

I totally agree with the health problems it causes though.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Otherwise it'd be easy to boost the economy by forcing people to work less.

Well have we tried it?

~~~
bryanlarsen
Henry Ford did, to great success.

------
srtjstjsj
Articles like this show why the economic growth of the 21st Century will be in
East Asia. This generation's educated Westerners are too comfortable and
complacent.

~~~
s73ver_
Part of the huge problem is people thinking that wanting to have a life
outside of working to make someone else rich is "complacency."

