
Ask HN: Do most startups work 65 hours a week? - nullundefined
I&#x27;m not talking about feeling like a phony or being pressured into working over time for free, I&#x27;m talking about official hours that total 65 hours a week. These hours are not during &#x27;crunch&#x27; time, these are ordinary hours.<p>Note: These are non-founder&#x2F;co-founder hours.
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jasonkester
There are plenty of companies that try to get their employees to work those
kind of hours. And, developers being as they are, there are certainly several
who do in fact see that many hours/week.

But really, in order for it to happen, the developers need to allow themselves
to be walked over. Sadly, "being walked over" is a common skill in your
average dev, while "not being walked over" is rare. All it takes is one guy to
stand up for the team though, and sanity will prevail.

I've been that guy on occasion. Developer Employee #1 at a newly funded
startup, I sat in a meeting the first week where the CTO laid out a rough
timeline and the CEO said something along the lines of "these are 60 hour
weeks we're talking about, right?". Amazingly, the CTO didn't immediately say
"of course not". So I did.

To my knowledge, no developer ever worked more than 40 hours in a single week
while I was there.

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damm
No, but that does not mean they won't try. I have worked jobs (back in 2008)
where you worked from 8am to 9pm normally.

However usually those company's prefer the greener type of employee who is
willing to take this kind of abuse. Get a Salaried position and they whip and
beat you to get the work out of you.

President, CTO's can generally spend a lot of time working in order to keep
everything going.

40 hour work week is the LAW in the US FYI; if they are asking you to work 65
hours a week and you are salaried. You are entitled to overtime pay.

Employers love it when employee's don't know the law; it allows them to get
away with not paying them overtime when they are legally entitled.

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kspaans
Do salaried programmers/developers/software/engineers in the US get overtime
pay? In Canada's province of Ontario there is a specific exception in labour
law saying that these kind of salaried employees are exempt from overtime pay:

[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)

[http://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/010285#BK17](http://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/010285#BK17)

(I haven't found definitive answers for other provinces.)

Edit: spelling

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hwstar
If they are an "Exempt" employee, then they don't get overtime. Exempt comes
from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

The US is way behind the curve when compared to other developed countries. I'd
like to see the FSLA updated to the same level of protection as the EU Working
Time Directive.

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Aeolun
I don't think I've ever heard of a startup where anybody but the founders work
65 hours a week and those are not even official hours.

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nullundefined
Thanks-- just to clarify these are regular engineer/developer hours, I will
make a note in the original post that these are not founder/co-founder hours.

~~~
HappyTypist
Absolutely not then. I've never heard of 65 hrs a week either (for non
founder/cofounder)

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dublinclontarf
There are a couple of things about this.

Firstly yes it does happen, it happened at my startup and others that I know.

Secondly, it is an indicator of how inexperienced the team (and management) at
the startup are.

Research has shown that knowledge workers spend typically less than 20 hours a
week doing actual productive work, and beyond that it's ass in seat time (read
Peopleware).

It is somewhat counter intuitive but often (not always) the way to launch (or
whatever your goal) is to work less hours not more. My last gig (which
required considerable programming skill) only needed me to spend 4-6 hours a
day to get a prototype of a truly innovative product.

Most good senior developers don't do more than 40 hour weeks and most good
managers + CTOs don't ask for it because they know it hinders, not helps.

Junior devs often do it because they don't know better and inexperienced
management encourage it because they think more work hours == more work (flat
out wrong).

Finally one of the reasons why this may be the case is it (a)is what startups
to (b) looks good to investors.

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NumberCruncher
It doesn't matter what others do and how many hours they spend in the office.
Only becasue some people do stupid things you don't have to follow them. If
you are "just" an employee (eg. you are not working for the fuck-you-money)
and still work 65 hours a week you are selling your soul for cheap and are
high probably on the way to burn out. Maybe it's time for you to learn to say
politely "no" and to get back to the 40 hours work week.

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cm2012
There are some that exist - I know a company in the adtech space like that.
But my experience has been very flexible.

