Ask HN: How many hours/week are you expected to work in SV/NY/other tech hubs? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How many hours/week are you expected to work in SV/NY/other tech hubs?

35 pointsandy_adams36 comments

For someone outside Silicon Valley, the salaries being paid to rank-and-file software engineers seem very high - which is great!

However, on many job postings you'll see words like "grit" or "passion" listed as requirements. These are codewords for "we'll work you hard" and "overtime expected", as far as I can tell.

Software Engineers in Silicon Valley or comparable large tech hubs:

* How many hours do you work per week?

* Do higher-salaried jobs require more hours?

Both individual examples and higher-level overviews of the market are appreciated.

Context:

I'm a software consultant working with software companies in tech hubs - but I work remotely. I occasionally check their job postings and am $urprised at the pay rates and wonder if I'm underpaid. But then I think: Are there long hours involved? Is 50+ hours/week the minimum?

View on HN

I work remotely for a company in Silicon Valley. I worked on site for 2+ years before that.

I work 40 hours a week, no more, no less and I have good performance reviews. I think the trend for programmers is to work 40 hours a week and have a balanced life. There is tremendous pushback against working 50 or 50 hours a week lately, and I'm thankful for that.

In NYC, in financial services anyway, you are expected to work around 60 hours per week plus whatever more is needed. You are expected to house your wife in Connecticut and have your parents live with you to help your wife care for any children. The big draw for that is you can typically expect high end salary and bonus around 50% of salary or more - however only if you are present on the date distributed. It’s a very common practice to lay off in November or December, so employers can get the most work out of you without paying bonus or letting you cost through the holidays when things are slow and IT departments are in change freeze.

Since leaving financial services I’ve worked in social media where things are much more family friendly, hours are closer to 40, but salary is about a third less and bonus is closer to 25%.

What is this "bonus" thing you speak of?

Essentially it is a way for the company to allow some variability in your income, in case of an especially good or, more typically, bad year, as well as hinder turnover by withholding a large portion of your compensation until after, typically, the last fiscal quarter of the year. It's discretionary of course so the company isn't on the hook for it and called a "bonus" as if they are paying you beyond what your work is worth. You generally will not have any insight into how your bonus is calculated nor will you be given any idea how to move that number in a positive direction. That was my experience with the bonus pools in the financial industry anyway.

I was being facetious but thank you for the earnest answer.

I don't know about this.

I've worked for numerous financial service firms in NYC for the past 8 years and the most I've ever worked is maybe 45-50 hours when we are doing a production deployment. Also, most people I know either live in the city if they don't have a family or NJ if they do, oddly enough. This is for senior and Director-level positions, too.

But hey that's just my experience, purely anecdotal. Everyone's is different.

What does it mean when people say they work 40 hours a week? does it mean they are focused for 40 hours, or that they spend 40 hours at their workplace (including chatting with colleagues, eating, browsing the web or moving across the building...).

Typically the latter.

I’d need some kind of drug to stay focused 40 hours a week. Although during unfocused times I often come up with subconscious insights.

I work for a mobile gaming company in SV (500+ employees) where the office hours are 10 - 7. I come in just before 9 and I leave at 5. Nobody seems to care and people respect my hours. I receive good performance reviews and I'd like to think I'm seen as a "go-to" person in the company. Sometimes there's a light crunch where I'll pull 50 hours and/or take my work home with me but it's pretty rare. The problem is that it can be so hit-and-miss with these companies. I've watched teams from my last company push 120 hour weeks to get a product done while I still worked 40-45 hours (I wasn't involved with the project thank god).

You could literally work for a company (big or small) where teams or individuals work long hours. I personally don't think working longer hours should be awarded (unless the company is pushing for something) as it makes other people feel they need to work longer. I always felt it makes more sense to work smarter than longer.

I'm in Seattle and the answer is 'It varies'. We have oncalls which can feel like working ~70 hrs/wk, and slower weeks where I'm only really in the office for 30 or so hours.

Usually I'm in office or checking in on stuff from home for about 45hrs/wk. A lot of my office time is spent in conversation or explaining things to juniors, getting coffee, dealing with inter-team communication issues, that sort of thing. Some (like now) is spent browsing the web, which I think of as keeping up with industry trends:)

If I wanted to 'take the next step' in my career, I'd likely have to lose some of my flexibility and have a more butt-in-seat approach. I think most of the management and principal engineers here at AWS are in the 50+ hour club.

I work at a large company in NYC. Based wholly on personal observation, long hours are not uncommon. I often see folks eating dinner at the office. I suspect most people put in ~50 hours a week if not a little more than that.

The number tends to increase with the extent of one’s responsibilities (n.b. extent, not gravity).

As far as expectations go, I don’t think these are normally elaborated in terms of hours for salaried employees. You’re just expected to get your work done, regardless of whether or not it takes you more than 40. The expectation is probably that you put in ~40-50? This is purely speculation on my part, mind you.

> You’re just expected to get your work done

What does it mean exactly? there is always something new to do when you are done with what you had to do.

I think it means your superior is subjectively happy with the amount of work you are doing.

I'm trying to get at the underlying expectations - "get your work done" can mean a lot of things. At a prior job, it meant that you wrote a TODO list at the start of the week, which was approved by the boss. If you finished in 10 hours, you were done!

But if it's left vaguely defined, "'til the work gets done" can mean weekend hackathons in a we-work-hard culture, no?

It's definitely a vague phrase, sorry. Here's some more detail: my situation's a bit different from other employees (I'm hourly, not salaried), so I can only take guesses, but I think the performance measurement scale is longer-term around here. Basically there's yearly goals/key performance indicators you need to hit. One on one's are the preferred method of checking in to see that work is being done, but the ones I attend are pretty informal—I just provide a general summary of what I worked on that week and where the long term projects are at. The level of formality can depend on your manager, I believe. I think some managers are a bit more clerical and ask for written weekly lists of what you accomplished and things like that. From what I can tell though, there's mostly just an understanding around here that you should be invested in the work and as such be sure to accomplish your goals, whatever that might entail. So, yes, in that sense it is a structure/culture susceptible to things like weekend hours and extra grind. It's not uncommon to see people committing work on weekends or at 10pm on weekdays either--it's not super frequent but it's also not shocking when it does happen. Keep in mind though that NYC in general is quite a bit different than other places when it comes to working. There's a lot of "hustle" around here. I'd go so far as to say it's probably not uncommon for workers in any industry to work more hours if they work in NYC (there's probably some study on this out there somewhere).

The expectations vary mostly depending on a few things, IMO:

1. Life stage of the company (startup vs. mature) 2. Role (rank-and-file engineer vs. leadership) 3. Your management

Location has had less to do with the number of hours worked than the items above.

Startups tend to demand more of their staff because it's an existential problem they're trying to solve - become profitable/acquired/public before you run out of money or someone squashes you. Expectations there will be >40 hours pretty much across the board, and will favor single, probably white men.

Mature companies can also demand more of your time, but typically they are easier places to find roles that will not demand much more than 40 hours a week.

With those things said, you could be working for a SOB that simply demands your presence to prove you're doing the most work possible, and in those cases you should decide whether you value your paycheck or your health/sanity. I've been there and choose health/sanity 100% of the time. Burn out just once and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Single - sure, men - sure most programmers are men, but why would they favour white people? Do they work harder? I’m pretty sure white people are underrepresented in Silicon Valley, while Asians are heavily overrepresented.

Could be I'm wrong. I look at this across all locations (including where I am, in the middle of the country) and the majority of people I worked with that were putting in crazy hours were single white men. Once people settle down they have a way of self selecting out of the jobs with insane hours.

I moved to NYC from a tier 2 city and found the expectations tend to be about the same (~40 hours). That said, a city like NYC can attract and retain type-A people who work long hours, so I think on average NYCers work longer hours than my previous city.

> Do higher-salaried jobs require more hours

No, but moving up the management ladder can require more responsibility and hours.

New Zealand and Melbourne, Australia: Only time I've regularly worked more than 40 hours was when I didn't know any better for a large consultancy. Since minor burn-out I've always maxed my hours to 40 per week unless I'm really enjoying the work (ie I'd rather work than do personal things). This can be dangerous if left unchecked, however I've got a pretty healthy relationship with work.

The only people who seem to work much longer hours are my American counterparts and the occasional person who I believe to have poor work-life balance. None of these people seem to be anywhere ahead or achieve anything more than their colleagues. They often hold the "first in, last out" of the office trope, and shame others for working regular hours as lazy.

I've got enough grey hairs as it is, thanks.

Ah, it's not so precise, especially at a startup. A lot of bias and favoritism, and employee hired after you might curry favor with the CTO and show up 4 hours a week and never get fired, while you get hounded for more (no extra pay) overtime. Such is Silicon Valley.

London: 40hr/week up to 70hr/week, rough contracts and tight deadlines.

Moved to LA 3 years ago, work 40hr/week even though on 5x salary compared to UK. Never felt pressure to work more, but would when required (launches).

I work in SF. It really depends on the company and team, rather than the region. Lately I have been working 35-40 hours per week at Google, but there are times when I've worked more like 50 hours.

I work full-time with salary at an insurance company here in Las Vegas, NV, 9 am to 4 pm with 1 hour lunch. As a .NET software engineer, I lucked out :)

I would say Stockholm is a tech hub in Scandinavia. There I worked 45-50 hours per week.

In comparison to LA where I recently moved back: I work 40 hours a week, barring any emergency that may come up. Though LA isn't really a tech hub so maybe it's not a fair comparison.

In both places expectations are unwritten, so to speak, as laws prevent abuse of labor. However in either case you are pretty well compensated for overtime.

What made you move back to LA, and is there anything you miss about Stockholm?

London: 37.5-40 hours a week.

There's no hard and fast rule. Working for banks in NYC, 50+ is very common. Same for many startups who are in "growth mode". Wherever you go, hopefully you're judged by your output, not how long you're seated in a chair.

> hopefully you're judged by your output

Why do people say this like it's impossible (or even difficult) for your employer to demand output that realistically would take 50 (or 60, or 70...) hours a week? Unless you are literally God, they absolutely can, and if they are abusive, they absolutely will. Whether you get judged in output or in ass-hours has zero bearing whatsoever on their ability to be abusive!

Gurgaon, India. Working in a startup. We have to consistently push up to 80-100 hrs per week. Sorry state of affairs I can say.

RO, start-up-mode: 50-60 hrs; corporate (telco, fmcg, financial services): the usual 40 hrs/week.

> However, on many job postings you'll see words like "grit" or "passion" listed as requirements. These are codewords for "we'll work you hard" and "overtime expected", as far as I can tell.

I was talking with some younger friends here in Seattle, and they expressed similar concerns. This was a total shock to me, because I've been involved in hiring at multiple firms and we use those terms not just in our postings but in our internal discussions for evaluation, etc, and we DON'T mean what the fears are.

In my experience, talking about "passion" is basically shorthand for "we won't have to train you and we'll have minimal mentorship - you'll learn and improve on your own". So..not really a _positive_ meaning, but a very different one from the fear. We don't expect people to put in long hours - the normal 40ish work-week, maybe with a crunch day or two each quarter, roughly speaking. But we do expect/want that people are coming in with the interests to improve and the existing skill to do so. Most places are severely shy of "senior" people (In part, IMNSHO, because they keep trying to hire "senior" people rather than committing to getting more "junior" devs) and as a result they don't have people with the time to spare for proper mentorship.

While this expectation has been consistent across the places I've worked, that doesn't mean it's a universal truth...but I've not seen anything that suggests "passion" and "grit" mean "will work stupid long/hard" outside of the game industry and startups. (Notably, most places rush to get to the point when they can recruit as "post-startup", meaning they no longer ask for those kinds of hours).

I'm in Seattle, and to address your questions:

* Roughly 40 hours/week, normally a bit less (8-4, with a work-provided lunch so I end up not working for only a short time). In the course of a year I expect to have maybe 5 days that I do crazy hours (12-15+ hours/day) and maybe 10 days that I do long (10ish hours). Probably work about 2 weekend days/year on average (excluding answering a text/message, or doing a small code review - anywhere from 5-15 of those on weekends/year, each measured in minutes, not hours)

* Higher paying jobs (I've done 90k - 180+k in Seattle) haven't required more hours, though being willing to put in hours when something real comes up is always taken as helpful and does a lot to help with promotions and bonuses. The trick has been finding places that defines something "real" in terms you agree with. Prod issues that really impacts a customer and comes up 1-2 times/year? Cool. Being "on-call" each month means you WILL get a call? Not cool.

* Certain positions DO expect more hours, particularly when a problem arises. Generally Ops people and those that have to resolve production-critical bugs. This should all be openly available info before and during interviews, though you may have to ask.

That said, I've also noticed a name cachet - My Amazonian friends, depending on their teams, have put in some hours I would consider stupid. They do this WITHOUT a pay bump relative to others in the area/field - getting the name on your resume is considered worth the extra effort. Then again those on other teams have done nothing outside of my norm.

To put this all in context - I moved here ~7 years ago, and have worked for 3 companies out here. I've more than doubled my salary in that time, but my workload hasn't changed too much. One place shifted from a good work/life balance to having "crunch-time" start to extend to being very frequent - I left, and so did most everyone else. One of the big benefits of a high-demand area is that you can be assured of being able to safely leave a company, so work-you-crazy certainly happens and in places, but cannot be the norm.

Thank you for your detailed answer! I'd say if you're going to put "passion" and "grit" in your job description, you should also specify 40 hour workweeks. Maybe I'm jaded, but those are just codewords to me for "wants to work overtime".

I'm certainly keeping that in mind...but why do you believe those are codewords for that? Is that assumption, rumor, or based on personal experience?

Some personal experience, some anecdotes, some assumption. Nearly every time I've read a job posting using similar language, when I've been able to actually talk to the developers there I find out that yep: it's long hours expected.

There's specific words, like "self-motivated" or "willing to learn deeply" to convey the ideas you're talking about, without meaning working extra hours. But when a job posting uses the vaguer "passion", "grit", or similar hustle-y words, it's just a red flag to me that they're being non-specific - they probably have a reason.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com