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Comment by bruu_ | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I could see investment bankers laughing at this article. I definitely feel like technology is WAY more flexible, where you can do the "hardcore 12 hour days" 200k/yr track and also the "10-5 with lunch" lazy man's 60k/yr track.

If you want to spend a bunch of time with your family and work 35 hours a week, guess what man, you can't drive a nice car, own a big house in Los Altos, or send your kids to private school. Pick a lifestyle and accept the drawbacks that come with it.

There's seriously nothing wrong with moving to a second tier city and making 60k/yr. Let the people who love stress and success do their thing in the Bay Area

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This is the most self congratulatory self-justification I've ever heard. Really? Lazy man's track?

I'm sorry but if you're GIVING away your life for a company that you don't hold SIGNIFICANT stake in for a regular salary (even at 200k/yr) then you're the chump. Guess what, your time isn't endless. Your 20s-30s (hell, even 40s) will pass away. All you've done is provide free labor so some executive can cash in on his/her 7+ figure income.

This is not even considering the romantic and naive assumption that working 12-hour days will give you success. Or that "stress and success" are in any way correlated. Oh well. This is how tech companies lure naive people into such hours.

This is speaking from someone that's had 9-6 with lunch "lazy man's" jobs that paid 200+k/yr.

There are tons of people who make bank and don't work ridiculous hours. They aren't very visible because they don't want to seem rude rubbing it in people's faces. They also don't want to have to explain themselves or go down the rabbit hole of whether they've "earned" their wealth and success and so on.

That's an interesting justification you've come up with. I hope others realize that there are more options than that. There's plenty of room to both be well-paid and work reasonable hours. Given that it's well understood that creative work falls off to nothing after 8-10 hours/day (and by 12 marginal productivity is often negative), it would be kinda weird if the correlation went the way you suggest.

Wasn't that based on a study of Ford factory workers?

So anywhere that's not San Fransisco is a "second tier city?" Appreciating and experiencing the non-material pleasures of life such as vacations and time with your family is considered a drawback?

Plenty of rich people don't work 100 hrs/week. Many rich people "let [their] money work for [them]" so to speak.

Rich people are a bad example if they let their money work for them. That means they are coasting on society's shoulders which is not a sustainable model for all of society.

I think the point of the article is where you draw your ethics line, decides what you might call a success and what you might call a drawback.

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