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Comment by iamdave | Hacker News Reader

They may also worry you don't want to put in the late nights and long hours they want due to perhaps family obligations

Unless there's something broken, a system down, or a critical issue that needs to be fixed yesterday, I got news for you: I ain't staying late either.

I'm 32 with a dog and a highly opinionated cat. Hire me, or don't. Plenty of other companies out there that respect work life balance and don't insist on the awful notion of "well you don't have anyone waiting on you to get home anyway, why do you care?" (of course I'm deliberately phrasing that awfully, but let's be honest with ourselves here).

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I started insisting on this when I was ~30. I've never had a problem with establishing that boundary early and holding to it strictly. No one has ever held me back in my career as a result.

I have put in long hours in the following circumstances:

* I really, really loved what I was doing, and I just wanted to do more of it

* There was an emergency and I was needed to resolve it. I'm happy to do this if my org has a culture of post-mortems, root causing, and following through on fixes.

* Annual review/perf season. I'm a manager of engineers (as well as an engineer). The one thing I'm willing to bend my boundaries on is making sure my people are well represented at perf time. Ideally I'd get this done in work hours, but I can't always, but I can't let someone lose recognition for their work because I couldn't find the time to write them up positively for it.

>Unless there's something broken, a system down, or a critical issue that needs to be fixed yesterday, I got news for you: I ain't staying late either.

This times 1000. The concept that any company "deserves" more than 8 hours of 5 days (or more) is (in my opinion) disgusting.

I can work 4 hours in the morning...very productive. I come back from lunch and work 2 more--usually dealing with politics and mentoring. Done.

Good for you. As you correctly point out, there are lots of companies that will allow you to strike the work life balance you're looking for.

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