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Comment by newfangle | Hacker News Reader

Im sorry but 30 to 35 hours a week, especially at a startup is just not tenable for any company except a small lifestyle company

Also i have to laugh at the fact that you "just" want to work at a company thats honest and then you throw in the 30 to 35 hour work week requirement

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My former company had a couple billion dollars in revenue and offered 30-35 hour work week option, the pay was proportional to the 40 hour option. So if your 40 hour salary was $100,000/year then your 35 hour salary would be 87,500/year. The same benefits.

A lot of people took that option, especially parents.

(it was actually 30-39 hour/week option)

I work at an enterprise less than 40 hours a week. I hear from recruiters 3-4 times a week. I don't care about your mission or your culture, just pay me, I do the work, and then go home.

If someone is of the opinion these sorts of orgs don't exist, I put forth that they might not have looked hard enough, and would encourage further exploration to better understand the employment landscape. If you're a startup and expecting workaholics for under market rate with a trivial amount of equity, I can imagine you would be upset your hiring pipeline isn't as robust as you would hope.

No not under market rate, if your goal is to work 30 to 35 hours a week under market rate all power to you but if you expect to be getting paid $400k total compensation or more you better be giving me at least 40 hours of work that i expect from a senior engineer. 5 to 10 hours is a full day of work.

You realize that a vanishingly tiny slice of developers make $400K a year, yes? Yeah, sure, a few companies pay that kind of money to a subset of their people. Nobody else does.

And that's fine. I'd have a hard time not sawing off a hand before working at three and maybe four of the "FAANG" group. And I like having a life, so I'll leave money on the table all day long.

> if you expect to be getting paid $400k total compensation or more

I may be weird, but getting that level of compensation is honestly not something that would be that compelling to me. I mean, all else being equal, more money is better -- but all else is rarely equal.

What I want from a job is to engage in fulfilling work at a company I can be proud to be a part of, while making enough money that I don't have to worry about money very often. For me, where I live, that amount is around $80k (although I currently make a good deal more than that).

If I don't wake up in the morning happy to be going to work, then I'm in the wrong job, regardless of what it pays.

I take it you're in the US? Is there a marked difference between engineer productivity in the US vs countries within the EU?

> Im sorry but 30 to 35 hours a week, especially at a startup is just not tenable for any company except a small lifestyle company

You're right, its still too much. If you want the best engineers to do their best work, I'd put 30 hours as the upper limit.

And im sure that when they work 30 hours they are cutting 30 minutes off of their lunch break and spending less time in the bathroom and on reddit.

You feel you're paying X for 40 hours a week, when a lot of engineers are of the opinion you should only be getting 30 hours for X. Some companies will offer you X for 30 hours, and the rest of companies will have to compete against that (for now) or deal with it when regulation enforces it through labor law (eventually), similar to how unions brought us the weekend [1].

[1] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep...

I have never been paid by the hour. I get paid for producing acceptable code by the deadline.

So, when you produce the acceptable code faster you can go home earlier? No more work in a week? If not, you are paid by the hour, you just wish you would be paid for producing acceptable code by the deadline (me too btw).

Yes, technically I could. But in reality, I have more than one task on my plate and a well-managed company will have figured out how to set the deadlines to maximize the amount of work they get for their money.

However, this is one of the things I ask about when I'm interviewing for a position -- if the company keeps track of hours rather than paying for work product, then it's not likely to be a good fit for me. So, my experience is not random chance and may not be representative of the industry as a whole.

Maybe not, but if you offer better than the competitors, then you get people who are a lot, lot better and, in my experience, one of these people is worth much more than the average person working much longer hours. If you want the BEST people, you have to offer better than the alternatives.

“Why is it I always get my best ideas while shaving?” – Albert Einstein

It's quite a bit more tenable when you admit to yourself that anyone who is nominally putting in 60-hour weeks as a knowledge worker is only actually working for 35 of those hours anyway. Studies show reduced productivity after that point, so you're just going to burn out engineers, and all you'll have to show for it is a butt in a seat.

You go from 30 to 35 straight to 60 when im thinking 40 hours a week. I dont know about you all but if i work 5 to 10 fewer hours a week i would get a lot less done

Have you tried it? I am definitely tired and have generally hit a wall after about 6 hours or so. If I call it and stop, I’m fresh for the next day.

If I instead stay at my desk consistently, my week is over by Friday morning.

60 hours is a joke, I have done 60 hours handful of times. When I was young and when our all systems got hit with ransomware and I was helping out the IT dept.

I agree and think 5-6 hours is the magic number. Then, I start making errors, taking shortcuts and producing shit code. However, if someone is a super human and can code for 60 hours every week, breath code and make $400k at some unicorn all power to them.

In reality, after $75k your happiness will generally not increase very much if you increase your income.

I find that my productivity, when I am specifically constrained to 30 or 35 hours a week, doesn't really change--because it puts a clear value on my time to other people.

Or, put more simply: I end up in way fewer meetings.

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