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Comment by dasil003 | Hacker News Reader

It's not the shirt that bothers me, it's the fact that Google tries to create this kind of work culture internally with perks designed to keep you at work longer, and then they sell this shirt so they can profit even more from the wider developer community's passion.

I know that Google pays their developers well, and personally I am a bit of a workaholic myself devoting long hours to my company, but still there is something that I find unsettling. I wouldn't deny anyone their passion, and I wouldn't judge someone for spending all their time programming; the hair I want to split is doing so as part of a cheerleading exercise for a major corporation just feels exploitative somehow. Maybe that criticism is unfair, but Google is no stranger to handing down unfair decisions ;)

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Don't they have the right? I mean, a developer that's talented enough to attract attention from Google then surely they'd be smart enough to know what constitutes working 'too much.'

I don't think Google exploits its workers anymore than they exploit themselves. If you think you've worked too much, then go home? If they ask you "hey, do you want to pull a 80-hour week this week?" why should you say anything other than: "fuuuuck no"

Going even further, it wouldn't shock me if at least a subset of Google programmers go home and -- sit down and start programming something else. If they were going to do it anyways, and Google's going to pay them their dues, hell, I'm all about it.

Eat, sleep, code, get paid, repeat.

> I mean, a developer that's talented enough to attract attention from Google then surely they'd be smart enough to know what constitutes working 'too much.'

Of course not, not at all. We all have different skillsets, and good coding ability does not mean you're good in everything else.

Which is not at all what I said. I didn't even mention coding abilities.

A developer does a lot more than just write code, but let me clarify: Anybody that's smart enough to hold a job should know when they are being asked to work too much.

I don't think knowing when you're being asked to work too much is a thing that comes automatically with whatever job skills you're hired for. Even if you work in management or HR, where having a sense of "too much work" is part of your job, you might not be objective enough to apply that expertise to yourself.

And even if you know you're working too long, you might not feel empowered to do something about it. This could be because you literally don't have the power—your employer requires everyone to work unreasonable hours—or because you lack the confidence or skills to use it.

Ear, Code, Perk, Sleep, Repeat is quite a different story!

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