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Comment by etiene | Hacker News Reader

This is insane. I've actually been looking to reduce my work hours to about 30, because even 40 seems too much. Having had a couple of burnouts before, I want my life to be more than my job, and I truly believe this would make me better at my job in the long term. After a day of full time work I almost never have the energy to do some of the other things I want to do. I want to be able do more open source, learn a foreign language or a musical instrument, spend time with my partner, study some new cool technology, do some exercise etc. I was very disappointed to see a big name in the industry to promote exploitation like that.

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I'm working 32 hours: 4 days a week. That leaves me a day with the kids outside the weekend. Oldest kid is at school most of the day, so I take the youngest to the zoo or something. I heartily recommend it.

It's crazy that we're all still working 40 hours a week. Didn't Keynes promise we'd have 15 hour work weeks by now? (He did. He didn't anticipate our bosses taking all the profits from our productivity gains, though.)

>He didn't anticipate our bosses taking all the profits from our productivity gains, though.

He also didn't anticipate zero-sum competition for inflexible goods like housing. If I want a nice house in a decent city, I have to out-compete and out-borrow everyone else who might want that house. If everyone around me is making bank and I want the nice house, then I'd better make bank too. Lots of us end up working more than we'd like, in a delicate balance between our desire for stuff and our tolerance of overwork.

Life would be a whole lot easier if we could control our desires but it's easier said than done.

> zero-sum competition for inflexible goods

if you consider good housing to be only within a certain distance of some CBD, then yes, housing is zero sum. But there's lots more space available than humans right now, and relaxing the distance/centrality requirement will greatly increase the pool of available housing (and hence, "cheaper").

The only winner when everyone tries to outbid for a small amount of housing is the original owners.

All the best jobs are in the big expensive cities. Everywhere around the world, if you want the best job you will need to go to New York, SF, London, Tokyo, Paris, Munich etc. That's one reason why everybody wants to live there.

Second reason would is to be close to a large number of people which greatly increases social activities you can do. In a large city even a niche hobby will probably attract enough people that you can find a group of buddies who like same things.

I think part of the point is that it's not the "best job" if you have to work 40+ hours a week, at least for some people.

Is it really the best job when the out of control expenses in those cities leave you no further ahead than someone working in the 'not the best job' elsewhere? Unless by best job you mean some kind of non-monetary metric, but I'm not sure that holds either. The best jobs for non-monteary reasons in my opinion are also found outside of those cities, but are definitely low paying due to the fact that everyone wants to do that kind of work.

It depends. You are right that you can probably be monetarily better off living in some smaller cheaper city and working as a developer for a non exciting company. Real estate prices in that city are probably something like 3-5 times lower than SF/London.

The downside is that selection of jobs is very lacking in places like that. If you are not happy with your job, or want to try something else (maybe go to a different field within IT), it might be very difficult to find anything new. Also in economic downturn like 2008 there will still be enough new jobs in big tech hubs but anything outside might dry up for couple of years.

Another factor is that even though everything is super expensive and you might be relatively poorer compared to somebody with 60% of your salary but living in a place with 40% cost of living, once you manage to get on a property ladder in a city like SF, given the constantly rising real estate prices, your house will be worth a lot once you repay your mortgage and can be a great way to retire later.

How do you define "best job"? I want to minimize my commute to work. Right now I work about 4 miles from my house, which is a 10 minute drive without touching a highway. If I lived in San Francisco I'd need to make over $300k just to break event when you look at the insane cost of living, and that's not even taking into account the higher federal taxes or California taking its cut.

Most people want to live in big cities for the big cities - not because of the jobs there. NYC would be really fun, but I'd need to make an insane amount of money to have the same lifestyle I have now and a 10 minute commute to boot. In fact, that'd be impossible, because now I have a yard, a dog, and a car. A 10 minute commute in NYC would pretty much require me to be in a small apartment.

>> How do you define "best job"?

If we stay within the context of software engineering jobs, I'd define it as something using latest tech and pushing new frontiers in different areas (AI, machine learning, distributed computing, dev ops).

So it would be jobs working with interesting tech (things like functional programming, or something like Tensorflow, microservices with Kubernetes and Golang, using newest dev ops and automation stack, distributed systems etc) and on interesting problems and novel ideas. Majority of these jobs will concentrate in big tech hubs where it makes sense to invest heavily into R&D like this.

Outside of major tech cities these jobs will be more sporadic and most jobs will be for companies which treat tech as a cost centre so you will end up working on some boring internal CRM systems made from bunch of enterprise overpriced products with horrible APIs glued together with some Java or PHP code.

>> Right now I work about 4 miles from my house, which is a 10 minute drive without touching a highway.

I live about 15-20 min walk from my office currently. If a city has sane transport system it might be more efficient than driving a car. I understand commuting to work by car is more of a US thing. At least in Europe in most major cities you can use mass transit (and most people do). I don't actually need to own a car and can save money as I don't need to buy expensive piece of metal that will start depreciating the same day I bought it, no need for insurance or parking space.

>> Most people want to live in big cities for the big cities - not because of the jobs there.

Of course. I agree. Lifestyle is a major reason why people want to live in NYC or London etc. But I also think that unique and plentiful career opportunities are an important reason. There are simply opportunities you won't wind anywhere else.

>> In fact, that'd be impossible, because now I have a yard, a dog, and a car. A 10 minute commute in NYC would pretty much require me to be in a small apartment.

This is true. I have only lived in tiny apartments my whole life so imagining living in a house with lots of space and a yard/garden is very appealing. Definitely would prefer that.

My yard is 11 acres, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. 17 min commute.

Unfortunately the only way I can see to relieve this is to support remote/WFH workers who might live in suburbs away from major city centers, or even in a totally different part of the country. That, and decentralizing our entire culture. That'll be much harder.

… or adopt more realistic constraints for what it means to be a decent city.

Absolutely true. I just bought a house in Amsterdam. The seller got over three times what he originally paid for it. I don't regret it, but we can only afford it because we both have excellent jobs. A single good income is just not enough anymore. And it's all the fault of people like me who are willing to pay whatever it takes to live in a really nice city.

You can have a 15hour work week if you are an independent contractor, or if you pair up with a buddy to share your job time, as long as you only demand the wealth of an average person in Keynes's time. Economically, Keynes was spot-on, but he failed to account for political and social changes

… and the irresistible temptation to run the printing presses.

Those are all severe misses.

Go for it! I'm working a 30-hour week right now. Like you, I feel even 40 hours/week of pure coding ist just not sustainable.

Out of the 3 software dev jobs I had up to this point all the people that 'worked' over-time were just wasting more time drinking coffee and chit-chatting with colleagues. Most of the time I just want to put in a productive day, solve 1 or 2 problems and then go home at a reasonable time, so I can actually enjoy my life, not just sit in a damn office all the time.

Also, having worked a 30-hour week for a few years now, I'd actually be willing to work a 40-hour week again, but only if my job then gives me responsibilies beyond just being a coder. Putting in 4-5 hours of really productive coding work a day and then spend the rest of the time on something else, like managerial work is something I can see myself actually doing. But expecting people to produce high-quality coding work for 8 hours a day is just wishful thinking.

How were you able to swing a 30-hour a week job? Was it negotiated or are you consulting / setting your own hours?

It actually started as a side-job while studying. I actually increased to 30 hours/week over time from starting with 20 hours/week.

That said, I think most companies would be willing to find some agreement on reduced working hours if you've proven valuable too them. A friend of mine just recently switched to 32 hours/week over 4 days, after having started out at the company with a 40 hours job. It's really the best option for the company and yourself if one of the two parties isn't satisfied with the agreement anymore.

> I'd actually be willing to work a 40-hour week again, but only if my job then gives me responsibilies beyond just being a coder.

Why would they do that? You don't seem to have shown any initiative or demonstrated how well you would take on extra responsibility.

I'm sorry, but do you know anything about my work as a coder besides that I work 30 hours a week?

I bet you, if you were to ask my boss if I've proven a valuable asset to the company he would sing you a song of praise for my work.

Working long hours isn't everything.

How do you know?

How do you know how much responsibility he has? Plenty of senior people work less than 40h but have a lot of responsibility.

I dropped my standard hours down to 24 just recently and it's been rejuvenating. I do pick up the odd freelance/contract job whem it suits (pay/hours) and spend the rest of my time working around the house and generally relaxing.

It's done wonders for mental health and stress levels. No more sitting in traffic all day, missing half my kids' life, stressing out about not getting stuff done around the house, eatimg crap food on the fly, being too tired to do much in the weekend, and most of all I can spend more time with my wife, which is awesome.

Yes!

This is why I think FTE (Full Time Employment) should be disrupted. But it has to make sense on a societal level. Basic Income is one factor:

https://qbix.com/blog/

Here is another, which I highly recommend to entrepreneurs:

https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2016/11/properly-valuing-con...

I did cut my salary by 40% voluntarily. I now work part-time (3 days per week, plus the rare emergency). Much better, as I can still pay the bills and got a 4 day weekend to do whatever I please with. I'm also a lot more productive as well both in and outside of work.

The only downside is that I don't have as much spare money as I used to to spend on those free days (e.g. travelling or taking lessons on x/y/z), but there are other low cost hobbies I take instead (my own coding projects amongst them). Socialising has gone up as well.

Working 70+ hours can be fun at some point in life, I've done it before. But it's too easy to get stuck in there and burnout or worse.

Between jobs once, someone gave me a pity job. It was hourly, 4 hours a day. I did job search stuff the other hours of the day. I was completely crushing it with those 4 hours. It's probably a really good arrangement for an employer if they somehow convince people to do they dicking around on hackernews off the clock. 4 hours of pure output.

Try starting earlier and finishing earlier. Maybe see if you can do 7-3?

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