Hacker News Reader

Comment by kfk | Hacker News Reader

The thing is: who leaves at 5pm? It's 8:15pm and I am still here (OK, I work in an office, but still). I think working from home you can get free time simply being more productive. I know I would do that. At work, you have to be there, even just to wait that your boss is finished with task A, so that he can finalize task B with you. Then you have the commute, mine is 90 minutes per day.

Bottom line: I don't have time, I get home very tired, the work I do could be done in less time or better distributed through the day.

View on HN

Are you serious? I'm out of the office by 5 at the latest: I have to catch a bus that stops running at 6:15 and I have a 45-minute commute.

I tell my boss when I have to leave, and then I leave by that time. If he needs something from me, it will have to wait until tomorrow unless it's an emergency.

Control your own life!

Did you get in at noon? Why would you work somewhere that requires those kinds of hours? With a 90 minute commute on top of that? Not trying to be condescending, it's just that those kinds of things would be a huge motivator for me to find another job.

I found a place 15 minutes from my house, and everyone in the office is gone by 5, sometimes earlier on Fridays. I hope you find a better job soon.

Not everyone has a great work situation.

The general HN sentiment is one of finite work hours, great work conditions and great pay or people quit. In an ideal world, I love that notion. Many people here are fortunate enough to have the leverage granted by the current job market to insist on those things (or quit and walk into another better paying job the next day).

Unfortunately, for those that are not engineers, or don't live somewhere with incredibly high job demand, many people take what they can get and suffer. The alternative is often losing your mortgage, not being able to pay for college, etc.

There may also be other factors keeping them at that employer (particularly if they are in a rural area and there literally aren't any other options closer).

So as much as I agree with you in spirit, the pragmatic part of me is wondering what will happen to people with this attitude when the economy shifts, and suddenly the job market isn't so hot anymore.

Let me answer your question: they will be treated as low level engineers and they will have to suck it up or will have to go into management and work 10 hrs days. How much gets an average RoR nowadays? How much did he get when the tech was shiny new? Coding per se won't get the million $ salaries they want, it's bound to go down. Even today, they look at what the best 5% gets and they think all coders get that, most coders don't, most coders in West Europe get very average salaries.

It's ludicrous to see people making the point of their perfect >40 hours job now, let's see in 5 or 10 years when the market is saturated.

While that's a fair point, I would say that you always have a choice to make. 3 years ago I was doing customer service, driving an hour both ways, and getting paid a very mediocre salary. I wasn't happy, so I taught myself to code and after a year of that got a job as a front end developer, for a lot more money and a much better commute.

While I understand that everyone's situation is different, you can always try to change and improve it.

"The thing is: who leaves at 5pm?" People with boundaries?

People who respect themselves.

That's not really fair. Some people enjoy working like that, some people find that the salary they are making (and enjoying) require those kind of hours, etc.

> (and enjoying)

... when?

So WFH at night if you need to but leave the office at 5 and see your family/friends for dinner.

I really like sitting in the office when everyone's left and have my dinner while researching or actually doing my work. As opposed to meeting friends/family over dinner.

How do you enjoy a salary without time? Do you just glance at your mobile banking app in between meetings for kicks?

Do you think they are at the office 24/7? I'm sure they are driving kick-ass cars to and from work, wearing high end clothes, eating awesome food when they get home to their kick-ass house and just generally enjoying the overall secure feeling of having a good paycheck.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit.

Why? The fact that this lifestyle doesn't appeal to you doesn't make it any less valid.

Who leaves at 5pm? People that want to have dinner with their families, maybe?

It's almost like everyone is different...

I am always gone before or at 5. I am always here before 8. I am never late, I don't take lunch breaks, and I never stay late.

I've never had an employer complain about this. I've had some bosses who regularly work past 5, but they understand that I am in the office before they are each morning and that although I am flexible when big projects are due, there is a limit to what I will tolerate before I start looking for work elsewhere. I learned the hard way that you have to draw those lines yourself, otherwise someone will draw them for you.

While I typically don't leave as early as 5 (unless I skip lunch), I don't stay much later, either. I'm always out by 6 unless my coworkers and I went out for a ridiculously long lunch or something.

The good side of working at a defense contractor.

I never leave at 5pm, but I do normally wake up at 1pm... I hear this sort of schedule changes when you get a real job.

It doesn't have to. Look for a distributed company, tolerant of people in different timezones (likely also tolerant of those with different sleep patterns). 1pm where you are is 8am somewhere.

Or look for a place that needs people willing to do nighttime deployments, finish up things that have a next-day deadline, infrastructure, etc. A lot of people are happy not to have to do that, so having people that prefer it anyway is valuable to them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com