Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

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Are programmers freaking lemmings or something?

We're people, damnit. We choose to work overtime for various reasons. Some of which include: putting dinner on the table, keeping our jobs, getting our foot in the door, and so forth.

In my experience there are only 3 cases for working overtime:

1. You're a new, mediocre, or terrible programmer. You've been given three months to deliver a web site using a framework that practically holds your hand and wipes your ass and yet you still need more time. Everything seems hard. There's nothing you can do but brute-force your way to the finish line: stay up late and work that overtime to get it done and make up for all the time wasted googling, procrastinating, and debugging with a shotgun.

2. The suits messed up. They set a deadline without consulting you. They took on a contract with an incredibly short deadline because the business needs the money. They forgot to plan ahead for the big industry conference and they need something to show off to the other suits that will be there.

3. You've entered a culture of slavery. You just got your foot in the door at a big company. Unfortunately things have been sliding downhill and they never told you just how bad it has gotten during the interview process. Some people who stick to their guns will run for the hills, but you've got bigger responsibilities and cannot afford to take another month off job-searching. If you don't join in, they'll just make you look bad and the suits will fire you.

For me it's simple: if I can't get it done in 8 hours a day, someone didn't consult me for an estimate and its their fault. I may choose to work the overtime to get it done, but it's not something I personally tolerate. I value my life more than my work and my free time is important. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do to put a roof over your family's head and dinner on the table.

It's not as stupid as, "programmers love working overtime because they're passionate people!"

I'm passionate about what I do. But I'm passionate about life. Programming is a part of that. Slaving away to make some other dude rich isn't.

There seem to be at least two more cases that I've experienced that aren't on your list:

1. You're learning something new. It will take you X hours of practice to learn it, so if you want to get to the good part and be able to start building cool things with it, might as well get X out of the way.

2. You've got this burning idea for how to do something cool, and if you rest it'll leak out of your brain. Better get it done fast before the inspiration dries up.

There was a period a couple months back where I was pulling 12 hour days and working weekends for about 3 weeks. I had something that needed to be finished, and it was complicated enough that I feared that if I set it aside for anything, I wouldn't be able to load the problem back into my head. So I just did it, spending whatever time it took to get it done.

And then I spent a week or two working 6-7 hour days. I don't keep score, and I don't think my boss does either. From his POV, the project got done, and that's a win for him. From my POV, I didn't have much planned that month anyway, and my employer has been remarkably flexible when I need to take long periods of time off work, or need to leave early and work a shortened day, or just want to come in at 1 and leave at 10.

I won't sacrifice things that are important to me for my job - if an old friend is coming into town and I've got dinner plans with them, I'm not willing to be tied down to my desk. But if it's just a matter of writing some more code or blowing a few more hours on Reddit/HackerNews, I don't really mind writing the code so much.

4. You own shares in an exciting young company. You own your overtime, not the other way around.

Really? Let's do the math:

Let's be very generous, you own 2% of the company, so you are entitled to 2% of the company's profits. Let's be generous and assume you contribute 20% of the company's productivity. Your influence on your 2% is equity is 20% x 2% = 0.4%. For this extra 0.4% compensation, you work 50% more hours.

50% divided by 0.4% is about 125x. So you are on the losing end of this deal by a ratio of 125 to 1. Your "screwed factor" is 125.

Tweak the variables to find out your screwed factor.

I remember thinking in terms my "screwed factor" and how I could make the most money with the least work back when I was in college and my first post-college job.

I found that it just wasn't worth it. I wasted more energy on micro-optimizing my time than I saved, and ended up being less successful. Plus it always just made me feel depressed, enervated, and vaguely guilty.

I'm working for The Man now, a large tech corporation. My stock options are a miniscule fraction of the company's capitalization. My salary is decent, but probably less than I could earn elsewhere. I've already made the company more money than I'm likely to earn in my lifetime, and will likely see at most a few thousand of that in bonuses. I harbor no illusions about advancement or striking it rich through climbing the corporate ladder.

And y'know what? I don't care. I'm happy now. I'm doing stuff that I'd want to be doing even if I were financially independent. Maybe that makes me screwed, but it seems to be working out fairly well for me so far.

I find that it's worth figuring out the big things, and then not sweating the small stuff. If you have a great marketable technologically-feasible idea, go found a startup and do that. If you don't, join a company where you can feel good about however many hours you spend there. Don't sacrifice things you really care about for work, but don't keep score either.

I'm not sure who downvoted you, because you made a good point.

Anyway, I think it's a matter of different strokes for different folks. When I started working post college, I worked a lot of hours, because everything I did was hard. Now I've learned that a "work-life" balance keeps me the happiest. I'm a much better engineer, so I'm more efficient in these 40 hours than I used to be in 60-80 hours. The key has been--when at work, always be productive. When at home, do not think about work.

It helps that I now work at a mid-size company that encourages exactly this. :-)

Now different strokes for different folks--a very ambitious person should probably work more than 40 hours.

If my calculation is wildly off base, please let me know why, I would appreciate it.

Even assuming that this "screwed factor" is something meaningful, you miscalculated it. I think you're trying to find (percentage increase in work over normal hours/percentage increase in pay over normal pay).

If your pay is just a percentage of a company's profits, the amount of equity you hold has no impact on this number. If you working 50% more hours generates 10% more profits (or whatever) for the company, you get 10% more pay for 50% more work, so the screwed factor is 5.

Again, this is assuming that the screwed factor is meaningful in the context of a startup, and it isn't. First of all, the different possible outcomes for an early employee of a small startup can mostly be boiled down to two, maybe three: the startup IPOs and you get rich, it gets sold and you get well-compensated, it fails and you get nothing. Treating your income as a very smooth function of the hours you work is misguided in this kind of scenario.

Second, contributing to a culture of working really hard on the startup (by working overtime) might be more important than the work you actually do in your overtime. Startup employees don't work in a vacuum.

Appreciate it. Can't really understand you right now, running a high fever, but I'll check back later.

This is late and nobody will see this, but what the heck...

You are wrong for two reasons: 1. If you want more than 2%, than you need to start the company yourself. The only way anyone can over come your screwed factor is if they are a founder.

2. 2% of a successful company should make you relatively wealthy, thus negating your screwed factor.

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