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Comment by softawre | Hacker News Reader

9-6 is 40 hours/week with unpaid lunch, and pretty standard in US tech jobs as far as I know. Asking the team to sometimes work 45 hours during busy times seems reasonable to me.

I give my team time to learn new stuff on the job. Obviously I strive to hire smart people so that doesn't take forever.

I am not sure exactly what you are asking for. Companies OK with working 35 hour weeks?

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> Companies OK with working 35 hour weeks?

It seems reasonable to me to target 35 considering it seems reasonable to you to expect overtime.

It's interesting that there aren't more companies doing 30-35hr weeks. With the amount of sentiment like this on HN alone, I'm surprised there aren't engineers going out and starting shorter-work-week companies.

I know of Treehouse which has a 4-day workweek[0], but I can't think of any others.

I can think of a few reasons why companies wouldn't do this ("leaving money on the table", force of habit, investors, scheduling with partner companies, ...) but it's still surprising there aren't more founders taking a Basecamp-like "think different" approach towards working hours.

[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/treehouse-ceos-32-hour-workwe...

Well, I do 35. Took me 3 tries to find a job like that :D

You're on HN, the startup community. The premise of startups is that young engineers give their life to create products in exchange for free food and a bit of experience, while the executives and the VC will take all the returns, if any. It's really not family friendly.

As a consultant who works from home with two (young) kids, it's hard to imagine working these kinds of hours. It seems sort of inhumane.

That's why you have one stay at home parent.

I agree, which is why I upboated you. My wife is a stay at home mom. Makes life way better for all of us, much less stressful for the children and she enjoys it. I wish more women would consider it, especially if their husbands make a living wage. Life isn't all about money.

Fuck that. I make a living wage too, tyvm, and I like my career. Why shouldn't the dad be the stay at home parent?

I used my winnings in the dot com explosion to be a stay at home Dad while my less financially successful wife worked. It was awesome; I think men in general need to try harder than women to forge a really strong connection as parents, so stay at home Dad => parenting equality, all else being equal. I was part time for few years also. Work of course hated it and it was hard to re-enter. I don't regret it of course, and kids are older and my time at work is creeping back up. Now I can do tech work sitting next to them doing homework. The kids tell me their problems and at least listen to my arguments for being the person that knows the most math in the room, regardless of career.

There were sacrifices but a lot of the worries I see expressed about work life balance don't really worry me. With the strong connection to the kids, I can feel how they are doing: I have that mother's sense of can I work late tonight or do I need to focus on the people. I feel the parenting skills also have made me more effective at work, both in cutting out useless activities because my time is sacred and in seeing the non-verbal emotional sides of people. The idea of how people can have trouble saying certain important things and how to respond to that happening is essential when dealing with kids and useful when dealing with engineers. So I highly recommend staying at home for men that have the capacity for it. (It is hard and you have to be almost totally self driven; no one will thank or notice what you do).

You qualify for my personal Real Manly Man Award (TM). ;)

My father was a two time veteran and purple heart winner who never changed the diapers of any of his own kids, but stayed home to care for his first born grandchild when my brother got divorced and got custody.

My family of origin is really, really big on the idea that kids need a full time caregiver. Not so much on the "it needs to be the mother," which is humorous because my parents' marriage was so very old fashioned for so long that no one would have predicted that grandpa would stay home while grandma kept working.

#yougoguy #fistbump

Maybe more men should consider it, "especially if their [wives] make a living wage."

How insulting. Choosing to work rather than spending 24 hours a day with your children isn't always all about money.

No it isn't.

Yes it is.

Agree with the others, it doesn't have to be the wife who stays home. Obviously every family is different, the spouses have different goals and skillsets, etc -- but the decision can certainly be made along goal + skillset lines rather than gender.

Then you know, don't have kids? Expecting your employer to bend over backwards for you, when there are plenty of equally qualified candidates without such specific needs on hours seems a bit daft. The vast majority of workers manage a 9 hour day so your choice to have kids has to take into account the realities of the world.

I'm not employed so I don't have an employer, and I don't work hourly rates, I work fixed price contracts specifically for that reason.

I also can't even imagine working 9 hours a day 5 days a week for the best 30 years of my life, for someone who doesn't give a shit about me. It's not just about kids.

You should at least get the same amount of overtime off after the crunch.

How much work actually gets done after about 4:30pm or so? If your position is a mixture of dev and support, I can see it being a bit more productive after most of the office gets quiet. But otherwise it seems that not much really gets done then.

Now, doing a burst of work from home on a weekend or at night can be really productive. But staying up too late makes the next day at work kind of hard.

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