Software Engineer, Machine Learning | Hacker News Reader

Software Engineer, Machine Learning

deeplearning.ai

45 pointsfoo10162 comments

Note: The original title of this post was: "Andrew Ng is looking for Software Engineers who routinely work 70-90 hours/week".

A moderator has understandably updated the title to "Software Engineer, Machine Learning".

Thought I should clarify this because this thread was posted to highlight the issue of demanding long work hours. There are two job postings that mention these long work hours.

Job Description 1: https://www.deeplearning.ai/machinelearningsoftwareengjobdes...

Job Description 2: https://www.deeplearning.ai/fullstacksoftwareengineerjobdesc...

Both pages originally said, "many of us routinely work and study 70-90 hours a week".

After a lot of criticism on Andrew Ng's Facebook post, as of now, it has been modified to, "many of us routinely work and study 70+ hours a week".

Andrew Ng's Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1472272026162033

Since the job description includes 70-80 hours I expect that they are paying more. It would be normal to assume a 70/40 or 80/40 pay rate, that is, about twice the normal rate for a leading edge programmer. So, base salary should probably start north of $500,000 per year. And those hours will require working both at work and at home so you should expect a fully funded home-office and half-coverage of your rent. I'm willing to bet that won't happen.

Personally, I would expect at least time and a half applied to those last 30-40 hours as well. Which would be 85/40 to 100/40.

Stupid question: what does a pay rate in the form "x/y" mean?

Normal rate is 40 hours/wk. New rate is (e.g.) 80 hrs per week, so the pay should reflect that. 80/40 or 2/1 or 2x the rate.

Derp, should have been obvious from context. Thanks!

Agreed. If this was a hourly position, and if the base pay was around $150,000, that would put it just shy of the $400,000 range just to account for all the overtime.

Of course, it won't be paid hourly; it's much easier to abuse salaried individuals.

That explains the $12k referral bonus here https://www.ref10.com/

Nowhere near enough.

It should be higher?

Maybe not:

Previous experience with machine learning, such as experience from completing the Coursera Machine Learning and/or deeplearning.ai MOOCs

If that's the experience level, then this is an entry-level job.

Is that even legal to demand a 70+ hour 'work ethic'?

All modern research/studies tend to demonstrate that, beyond 40 hours, productivity does not rise, and, beyond 50 hours, it actually plunge, with quality dropping, employees driven to burn-out, etc.

But still, the stupid mantra from the Silicon Valley is "you have to work 80 hours to be successful"

Why are these CEO/CTO unable to comprehend studies and adopting a totally irrational position ?

https://www.inc.com/tom-popomaronis/science-says-you-shouldn... https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-than-50-hours-m... https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunc...

the name of the game is leveraging explosive, unsustainable growth into a high rate of return into cheap capital into a big payday for founders

everything else is long-term

> the name of the game is leveraging explosive, unsustainable growth into a high rate of return into cheap capital into a big payday for founders

I've come to the conclusion this is the case. Has anyone written on this?

Probably because most people don't really believe these studies (assuming they've heard of them). I'm very doubtful of them myself.

It really just-so happens that the standard US workweek is the exact perfect amount? That sounds incredibly unlikely. And this is a hard thing to study, too.

Moreover, anecdotally, I know plenty of people that work more hours than this, effectively (and also some that work less!).

So basically they are discriminating against people who would like to see their children? 90 hours per week == 12.86 hours per day. That means I clock in close to 7AM and clock out at 8PM every day of the week. This excludes any travel time, meals, etc. My wife called the first two years of graduate school her "grad-student widow years". Even now on occasion I put in that much time, but a consistent 70-90 hour work week is unsustainable if you value family life.

Not even family life. Any sort of relationship at all? Nope.

Any sort of hobbies or things outside of grinding away to get someone else rich? Nope.

Why does anyone accept this shit anymore? This guy should be laughed at.

Some people don't care about people.

I don't understand why is it a "discrimination". Yes, even 50 hour week severely limits family time; so what? Just do not apply then, especially since they are totally upfront about the desired working hours. It is not as if you do not have choice - you are already employed, and if you were to switch jobs - there are plenty of places available with sustainable work-life balance. Some people are willing to put in actual effort and time in the work (and get compensated for it accordingly); removing the 70+ hour week part of the job would be the very same "discrimination" against them.

The other option is they are looking for people who are comfortable getting less than 8 hours of sleep a night. This is also not healthy, but can be done.

How is this "discrimination"? You have a choice. You can decide to take the job or not. At least they are up front about it.

For me personally, there isn't enough money you could pay me to work 90 hours a week.

If you don't like the job, DONT APPLY.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking people who voluntarily wish to work those hours.

It is in fact much better than implicitly expecting long working hours like many jobs while not being upfront about it - that can trap people into a deal they did not fully understand. This is the opposite.

It may be unsustainable for the vast majority of people (me included) - so what? I don't go around crying about coal miners jobs because it would be unsustainable for my physical frame, I just choose not to apply.

Ethical considerations and actual productivity hits aside - unless properly paid, the company is opening itself up for lawsuits. EA was sued for working salaried workers beyond 50 hours a week.

My guess is this is being called out because it's symptomatic of a toxic valley culture that clearly values workaholism, to the detriment of people's mental and physical health.

Couple that with a broader obsession in the US corporate workplace for increased productivity at all costs, and I can see why people would see this as beyond the pale.

So, yes, taken as a single point, you're right, simply don't apply. As part of a larger trend in tech workplaces, it's a worrying symptom of a deeper dysfunction.

Working these hours at Google would be stupidity. But startups are different. I've worked for a few. You basically sell your soul to try to make it succeed. If you love the idea the work hours are not the issue. Things go sour when the startup is being sold. Then everyone discovers that only a few people will make money off the effort and you get to watch. It gets toxic quickly.

The problem isn't that people should be forbidden from working hard on something they are passionate about. Its simply that it shouldn't be the norm. And also: that kind of work should be compensated appropriately. From your comments it seems like that is not usually the case for startups.

I agree that there is a larger problem. Taking it out on these guys is completely backwards.

Take it out on the hundred companies who advertise and pay for 40 hr workweeks while really expecting much more. That would be so much better for our industry.

What, because they're honest about it it's more noble?

Sorry, no.

If anything, this is the next step in normalizing this kind of destructive work culture: being up front and unapologetic about wanting to exploit people.

This is my industry. I don't want to companies to start expecting a minimum of 70 hours of work for 40 hours of pay. Until they start adding "one-and-a-half compensation for overtime" to these job, I will always see this as a thinly veiled attempt to extract free labor from their employees without paying for it. Companies openly engaging in that kind of behavior worries me, and unless you own a business, it should worry you too.

This isn't a job you take for the pay. You ask for enough money that you no longer care about it (e.g. you just throw money at problems. If your car won't start, call a towtruck and a cab to get to work).

You can't do this kind of work motivated by money. You have to love the idea.

So... take advantage of people's passions to extract free labour out of them.

That's so much better...

Or, here's a crazy idea: You could hire two passionate people and allow them to each live a normal, balanced life, thus preventing burnout and reducing the chance of mistakes while increasing overall productivity (since studies show that one person working twice as long is not twice as productive).

Wild idea, right?

someone taking this job for $150,000 while working 70 hours a week is helping to depress wages across the entire industry.

I don't care how much I love the work, I get paid the value of my labor or I walk. If that means $800,000 year for 80 hours a week, that's what it takes. There are very few cases I would ever take less compensation then I think my time is worth, even for a job I would love. To me, its a matter of self-respect.

I totally understand that - but I don't expect those working at deeplearning.ai will be paid unfairly.

When the job description directly says 70+ hours expected, it puts you in a position to clearly say "Hey since this job will be roughly 70-90 hours, I expect my salary to be commensurate".

Its very different when companies don't clearly state that expectation - that is when the pay problems come in. Its so much worse to advertise a 40 hour job where candidates find out 3 months later how f* they are - those guys deserve the flak for overwork.

Of course, I won't apply. I guess that's common sense.

But I think this trend needs to be called out and discussed. I want to have the possibility of working healthy hours like I currently do at my current workplace for many more years to come. But if this trend becomes pervasive in the industry, I would lose this possibility.

Completely agree about the trend.

All I am saying is most startups advertise and pay for 40 hour workweeks while expecting much more. They are the problem - call them out - not this company! Because false advertising about expected work hours is what really kills you - you don't have the "common sense" choice of not applying because you wont even find out until 3 months into the job!

In contrast, deeplearning.ai, by being honest about what they truly expect they really are doing a huge service to candidates.

Agree. I think it's fair. I know a lot of companies which state they have work-life balance culture but in reality they are in permanent deadlines and do work in a hurry. They also require more from employees than needed. Many jobs require more involvement than standard 40 hours per week but we don't usually count these additional hours (e.g. learning something, communications, etc).

I expect very few engineers are actually productive beyond 50 hours a week.

A young engineer may be able to burn at 70 hours a week for 2 weeks if one is highly motivated. But after a couple of weeks, the amount of productivity will fall off a lot.

more hours != productivity

I routinely work those hours. I love what I do, which is self-directed research in computer algebra. I'm retired, though, so I probably don't count.

90 hours/week = 18 hours/day (assuming 5-day work week). That leaves only 6 hours for other chores, travel and sleep. This is not sustainable.

So I'll assume people who can pull off a 90-hour work week work all 7 days of the week which would amount to 13 hours/day. That still leaves sufficient time for a 7-hour sleep and 4 hours of chores and entertainment.

Now, if you are your own boss where you decide the scope and the deadlines, the work is going to be fun and I can understand that you would not mind working 13 hours/day. But I don't think working 13 hours/day for a boss or a company that considers me a cost in a business transaction of buying my skills is going to be fun.

To provide an anecdote for the effect this has on your life. I worked 70+ hours minimum (106 was my "record") for 5 years and averaged 4 hours and 45 minutes of sleep per night. It was spread out over 6 days a week which made it a little easier.. but it wasn't worth it.

I couldn't keep any intimate relationship, pretty much just dated very casually over that time.

Rarely saw my family.

Saw my friends so infrequently, that I may as well have lived 2,000 miles away. It was a big event any time I saw them which was usually once every 2-3 months.

My blood pressure reached full blown hypertension levels and I needed medication.

It's not a healthy way to live and I've undoubtedly erased years from the end of my life as a result. I don't care how motivated or passionate you are about what you do, this work load isn't sustainable and will forever be a "Dark Ages" era of my own life.

I'd need to be convinced that they had a really interesting problem, one that would keep me awake at night. I'd also need to be convinced they understand the idea that "anything we can solve by throwing money at the problem isn't a real problem". Real problems can't be solved by money and problems that can be solved by money aren't real.

You'll find at a job that a 70% productive day is outstanding. Time not lost to meetings, travel, etc. is rare. Working from home helps because it extends the work time and minimizes the interruptions. My years working from home were the most productive.

As for the 70 hours thing, I work 7 days a week. Since I have no outside constraints the term 'day' gets a bit blurry; sleep happens when it happens, eating happens between keystrokes, etc. In fact, I'm "on vacation" this week at the Outer Banks but reading a PhD thesis. My wife can't understand why I brought "work" to a beach resort. She works in medicine so this really is "escape time from work" for her.

Interesting work is its own motivation. We seem to have lost that idea somewhere. Her work is not interesting so she needs to escape. Mine is interesting and I consider not working as "lost time".

Andrew has the possibility of "interesting work" but I'm going to bet they screw it up with things like "required sensitivity training", meetings, "required plans and schedules", "interviewing new employees", "friday lunch gatherings", skip-level interviews, open-plan floor office space, investor presentations, morning standups, on-call phone coverage, skype meetings, slack interruptions, agile card games, progress reports, company security protocols, random phone calls, trip reports, trip refund paperwork, employee ratings, changing goals, offsite meetings, time tracking, parking issues, pair programming, etc. All of which are examples of time-sinks I've experienced on the job. I can't spend 3 weeks absorbing a relevant PhD thesis "between meetings". I can't write really difficult programs without huge blocks of uninterrupted time.

Andrew Ng mentions in the job posting that they want dirty work as well as design work to be done.

"Since we're an early stage company, you should be flexible in your tasks and do whatever is needed, ranging from dirty work like data cleaning, to high-level work like algorithm design."

Can you hire temp work to do data cleaning? (Aka, solve it with money? with mechanical turk?). If so, don't waste my time. If the data cleaning requires judgement then that's fine. Every job has dog work. I have to chase references for the papers I read which takes days of effort. But doing it right (aka "providing quality") is important here. Quality matters.

why don't they just hire 2 persons instead of 1 and split the work? let's put an end to this toxic behavior from companies. working 70+ hours per week doesn't make you a better employee or the world a better place.

This says learning and studying takes 70 hours a week so perhaps its not working for 70 hours a week, but there's a strong learning component which could be done outside of the job. Working as an ML Engineer there's a good bit of learning outside of the job and reading up on the latest papers which can take a lot of time outside of work.

It's 70+ hrs of working "AND LEARNING".

I'm not sure what the mean by that, or if that was added later, but the "learning" part looks like a reasonable amount of effort for those who are in this field with only 3 to 5 yrs of experience.

Also, there seems to be a ~7600 USD referral bonus on for the position here: https://ref10.com/

so people are being rewarded for sending their friends to work long hours?

A lot of people voluntarily work for long hours, especially in tech/research and especially if they like what they're working on

I've never met anyone who voluntarily enjoys working 70-90 hours a week.

I've met several people who work even more than that

This can only last a short while. In time you would have sufficiently damaged their health and wellbeing that they will stop it and curse you for it. But what do you care.

Why would you stop someone passionate and determined? Their wellbeing is a personal matter in that regard.

I have worked 18 hour days doing software development and the costs this has on health aren't realized until later, at which point the damage can sometimes be irreversible. The workers are too naive to realize it in time.

Updated to $12,000 now

Must be setting it dynamically with Machine Learning.

I genuinely don't understand the criticism. You don't find or enjoy working 70-90 hours healthy? That's your view and you likely shouldn't apply for this position.

Even assuming this is crazy, what's wrong with crazy people recruiting similarly minded crazy people? It's most obviously not a fit for anyone who wants to work 40 hours or wants to see their kids or whatever, but for those, there are plenty of other jobs. I just find it crazy that because of your personal views on work-life-balance, you expect Ng to have to change his desires for you. That seems wrong to me imho.

All I can see are the economics of it. If he was paying his engineers $600,000 / yr in compensation for all the overtime they're working, I would have no trouble with the arrangement.

However, software engineers rarely get any form of compensation for extra hours work outside of small vanity bonuses. This is just someone looking to take advantage of the fact they can get free labor out of their employees by "encouraging" them to work an extra 30 to 40 hours a week.

I, personally, criticize it because I consider it to be abuse. The individuals hired for these kinds of conditions are typically underpaid and overworked, and come out of it burnt out and hating their profession.

EA did this, and were successfully sued for it. The consequences for their actions were greater than just being sued, however; an entire generation or two of game developers were burnt out on their passion and moved away from the gaming industry.

I seem to see this as an upfront declaration on the requirements. I think, this 70+ hours work week involves reading and learning too.

They work so hard they forgot to test the website on mobile browsers

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