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Comment by Circuits | Hacker News Reader

Workers give their companies too much. Companies expect too much from their workers. It's a catch 22 of the highest magnitude. Imho, most coders lack the personal skills or self respect they need. We don't speak out against injustices enough. We dont request and seek out the personal respect we deserve. Our eyes hurt, our backs hurt, our heads hurt... but we are competing with people from countries where a good paying job is more rare than a vacation getaway so we can't stop making concessions.

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> Companies expect too much from their workers.

(The below will be assuming software developer since you followed up talking about coders).

In the US at least, there's an additional catch 22 because of salary. The average software engineer salary is super high, historically (at least in my experience) because it was compensating people for being oncall, for working off hours, for doing a mad dash to make deadlines in waterfall projects, for being understaffed, for needing to do continual education in your own time, etc.

Now that these super high salaries are the norm and you can't hire anyone with experience without such salaries, companies end up expecting the world from them. Other professions that have similar salary ranges (certain part of finance, law, health, etc) also do.

If salaries were more in line with other type of work (at least in the low end. Nothing wrong with having a wide range), it would be a bit less crazy for someone to work 9/5 and call it a day.

   Now that these super high salaries are the norm 
   and you can't hire anyone with experience without   
   such salaries, companies end up expecting the world 
   from them. Other professions that have similar salary  
   ranges (certain part of finance, law, health, etc) also do.

I honestly wish we could perform the labor version of a stock split and double the number of software engineering jobs and the number of qualified foks while halving the salaries.

I would gladly do my current job for half of what I'm making now if I could work reduced hours.

But no, it's the software industry. The options are generally "unemployment" or "make a bunch of money and work unhealthy hours until you want to die, and then get promoted and work even more" with nothing inbetween. There are exceptions to those norms, but the norms are the norm.

> but we are competing with people from countries where a good paying job is more rare than a vacation getaway so we can't stop making concessions.

In my experience, this is the source of our trouble: we want a middle class life. We want Netflix and a TV subscription and the fastest internet service, we want two cars for our families, we want to be able to eat at restaurants once or twice a month, we want to just buy a new thing if the old one breaks instead of fixing it, we want our house to look the best on the inside and out, we want to take an exotic vacation almost every year.

These are living outside of our means. We can afford these things, but at significant cost to our mental health, to our family and societal obligations, in a word, to our happiness and joy in this life.

I'm convinced that a significant number of us should start living like we're poor, getting rid of all those aforementioned things that have enslaved us, and we'll be significantly happier in life, finally see a way out of our insurmountable debt, finally have the free time we need to do this or that chore we accidentally put off for a few years straight, finally have time to read to our children every single night without the guilt we feel over not using that time to work.

This is certainly true. My wife works in HR. Non-tech employees are quick to make complaints about their bosses and coworkers. One of funny complaint she told me about was from her teammate who gave two weeks notice. Her manager didn't organize a proper going-away lunch. She felt disrespected, so she filed complaint against her manager as she was leaving her current company.

Some people might say that this is typical entitlement mentality. But it still boggles our mind.

When I tried working at a large corporation that I new wouldn't suit me, I noticed an undercurrent of nobody really talking about issues that were holding us back or could help the team and our processes. Naturally I put effort into trying to change that , and would try to professionally adress conflict between team member with them directly or through a manager. Likewise any issues with our work environment and so on. Because nobody else really did this—possibly because they risked their visas—I stood out.

You need a union. One that isn't in cahoots with management. Try the IWW.

Unions aren't a panacea, nor are they something everyone wants.

I, for one, resolved a long time ago never to work in a union environment.

Just look at the hiring process. Almost no other profession accepts a lengthy hiring process as crazy as it is for software engineering now. And the meanest interviewers are fellow engineers.

Us engineers are often too hard on each other while silently accepting abuse from above.

Are you sure about that? I've gone through aero and mechanical engineering interviews that were extremely rigorous and long.

Yeah my interviews as a software engineer have been utterly laughable compared to pretty much any other job that pays comparably. Usually a quick screener interview and then 1-2 additional rounds.

Maybe it’s about engineering in general. The marketing or project manager types I know personally definitely have a much simpler hiring process. They don’t have to study algorithms ahead or do homework projects.

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