

Ask HN: Working 40+ hours/week in a corporate setting? - fjabre

Seems that there's been a lot of posts about working 40+ hour work weeks for large companies that treat their employees like shit on HN recently. <p>I wonder how many on this board have found themselves in similar situations and why we continue to let ourselves get pulled into these situations in the first place. I don't like throwing words out there like <i>unionizing</i> but isn't that what people do in face of unfair labor practices?
======
clueless123
My experience working with large companies is that the work can be boring, non
challenging and with lots of politics. That said, if you know how to work
within the rules of their game, you don't have to work that hard, make easy
steady money and still be considered a great employee. My theory is that good
coders tend to be awful at office politics, so we suffer more than necessary
when bounded to the inflexible rules at large companies. I learned to handle
that from manager who couldn't code his way out of a paper bag, but really
understood people.

Someone should come up with an office politics for dummies.. and this would be
my first entry: nobody can treat you like shit unless you allow them too.

(feel free to add your own entries ) :)

------
kls
It's why I went freelance. Win loose or Draw, I am going to work long hours,
it's just the nature of the industry. At least freelancing, I make more money
per hour, I set my own schedule, I get to work from home a lot, and most
importantly as a father of 4, I get paid for every hour that I am away from
them. Was I scared s __tless to jump, sure I was, I left a $150,000 exec job,
but in hind sight it was the greatest decision I ever made.

~~~
fjabre
I completely agree. It's a novel concept it seems when you get paid for the
hours you actually work instead of feeling pressured into doing so because
that's what your peers are doing. I think people let it go far too often in
the tech industry.

------
johngalt
We do it to ourselves.

We enjoy and take pride in our work. So it's already breached our defenses. If
we didn't care, it would be that much easier to say "not my problem" and leave
at 5:00.

~~~
fjabre
I also enjoy working hard on challenging problems but I don't enjoy working
that hard for free.

~~~
johngalt
Have you ever worked on a challenging project of your own just to satisfy your
own interest. How much did you pay yourself?

Paradoxially people work harder on what they do for free. Not because it's
free, but because they are choosing the work of their own volition. In fact we
even pay other people to create challenging work for us. Ever done a crossword
puzzle? Lifted weights at a gym?

The problem we have here is that there is overlap. We aren't factory workers.
Most people on this board could land a cushy in-house IT-Admin job rather than
run on the development treadmill, but they refuse. Instead they deliberately
seek jobs that demand everything from them. Why?

There are similar issues in other fields. Attorneys work long hours,
secretaries don't. Bankers work long hours, tellers don't.

