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Comment by andrew_ | Hacker News Reader

It's astounding in so far as how unique this conversation is to tech. I've worked as a pipefitter, electrician's apprentice, and general construction hand in the past - I could only imagine how it would go telling my former foreman that I'd like to head off to yoga in the morning for an hour. Big jobs that require overtime to complete get folks to work that overtime - even within a union. If it's not you, it's someone else, and they'll be remembered for stepping up.

Bringing experience in other fields, namely the trades, to the conversation here might make it more clear why these things outlined in the article are seen as extreme entitlement. It's not a lack of work-life balance - something I see and hear about in most industries now - it's about caring deeply about your career, your work, and perhaps the project at hand, while not allowing that work to define your life. Pride and dedication to work can be balanced with family. It's not a zero sum game. What the author is trying to explain, in my mind, is that there is large priority on only one side of the equation (life), while indifference towards the other (work).

We have it AMAZINGLY WELL being in tech, and we have luxuries that are unique to tech and bewildering to folks in other fields.

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I've worked in union shops as well while not being in the union. Union overtime is highly coveted because it's a 2x-3x bonus that a lot of my union friends used towards a downpayment, kids' college tuition, retiring earlier, or starting a business. No one had to step up because everyone was stepping up. And the shop chief usually decided who got that overtime (i.e. young worker trying to buy a house might get higher priority over a senior.)

Also, shops had extremely good work life balance. You were at the timeclock 4:59 on the dot. No one is asking you to stay late, or be on call uncompensated. Your time was your time from 5pm-8am. By their virtue of being always online, tech companies intrude into that worklife balance and it's not unreasonable to ask for some of it back.

This - the mental overhead of a software job is not something that is easily turned off during non work hours - especially with a pushy employer or coworkers with no work life balance themselves.

You can’t cut steel at home after dinner no matter how hard you try if you don’t have the tools. Conversely, I’m sure you have a computer, can you just login to GitHub for two seconds to review this PR I submitted at 9pm...

This is where you ignore the email until the morning. The only place where working offhours has a use is in early startups where money is tight, deadlines are short, and products are loosely defined. If you're working at a well managed company managers will nip it in the bud. Either way I'm not in college and I'm getting my 6-8 hours of sleep. If I work late I arrive late and expect no argument over it.

I've only ever gotten an email like that because someone's ass was on the line for a 12am deadline. You only send an email like that because you are burning a personal favour.

Copying part of my reply to another comment:

If my manager hits me up at 11pm asking for something, sure I can ignore him or her.

Then I come in the next day, they already did the thing they asked for themselves because [insert business reason], and says “never mind”.

Next time it happens, they go to the other dev who is happy to do it at 11pm.

Guess who gets the promotion?

Even if it’s unfair and shouldn’t happen that way - company culture is not something controlled by an contributing engineer.

But I agree with your other points - a well run company will nip this in the bud! That’s exactly the point. It’s not in control of the engineer. It’s company culture. You’re right that I’d say this probably happens much more at startups vs larger companies due to the loose and fast nature.

> my manager hits me up at 11pm asking for something

One thing I learned about management is they are getting more than salary, usually there is a bonus or RSUs attached to everything they do. But they aren't working at 11pm for the good of the company if the good of the company isn't directly benefiting them. Keep that in mind the next time you respond to that midnight email.

> they go to the other dev who is happy to do it at 11pm.

Believe it or not this dev sounds like management material. That's not a compliment! If you think back to every belittling, sociopathic manager/director story you've observed or heard, these are the places they are formed. Now some managers are great leaders and you recognize why they are in that position. The majority are sycophants who kiss the right ass, by working at 11pm on a saturday.

Sadly I totally agree with you, it is true.

There is a social element to that equation though, which is why management in this particular type of situation has the tendency to so often turn into a "cool club" of people who do everything together, hack on the weekends together, drink after work together, etc, and thus the work/life balance only gets worse as the cycle repeats and new managers are initiat...I mean, hired. Because it's in their personal best interest to keep up this culture.

This is a most excellent point. I will say that movement of scope, scheduling, and the like does change during all hours of the day, and calls to the home to talk about that are common after hours.

> the mental overheard of a software job is not something that is easily turned off during non work hours

this is very ignorant.

the ability to leave work at work is a personality trait. the job, or type of job, has little to do with it.

software development is not some exceptionally difficult thing that tortures and haunts developers.

I couldn’t disagree more. I am thinking about hard problems in the back of my mind pretty much all the time, or am not making progress on them. Software engineering can be like pipe fitting, where there is a blueprint; but it can also be a much more creative search for solutions like looking for a math proof, writing a screenplay, or trying to phrase a legal argument that churns up your background cycles.

Without those periods I would never be able to do the best work I’ve done. There is a lot of pipe fitting in the business - and it’s fine to do only that. But it’s not some personality defect to have work thoughts kicking around in the back of your head, it’s a necessary trait in my experience for the more difficult software jobs.

Well said, totally agree. Thank you for explaining the more nuanced points here better than I could.

IC-level contracting or consulting gigs are often (not always) much more numb - you’re handed a design, a user spec, maybe some existing APIs or infrastructure, and you essentially color in the lines. Other roles require much more organic composition, aka, Zero to One.

Ignoring your last sentence (which doesn't merit response) to disagree with "the type of job has little to do with [the ability to leave work at work]".

Thought work is fundamentally different from physical labor. Work:life boundaries are so permeable. Any but the most ignorant, junior, "code-monkey" -type developer spends a large portion of their cognitive resources on solving problems (as opposed to strictly sitting at the keyboard writing code like a factory worker). Compartmentalization may well be a personality trait or learned skill, but setting down physical tools in the shop before commuting home is completely different from a software dev's home office and potentially round-the-clock work cycles.

> software development is not some exceptionally difficult thing that tortures and haunts developers.

There's definitely a difference between white collar/knowledge work and manual labor or highly people-focused work, though. I've worked retail and food service before and the mental overhead is absolutely different. It took me a long time (years) to learn how to turn off my brain at 5pm and stop programming when I got my first tech job. Not something I had a problem with in more manual industries: when you're not at the workplace, you can't work, even if you wanted to.

Agreed! Is it black and white? No of course not. You can and need to learn how to properly transition between work and home. It takes time. Totally agree with you.

It’s nearly impossible to do when your employer is not on that same page with you, or even worse is instead fighting against it.

> the ability to leave work at work is a personality trait. the job, or type of job, has little to do with it.

This is very ignorant.

There are many outside factors that go into if an employee needs to focus on work after hours, such as accessibility to the working environment, cultural practices at the company, etc.

Who said anything about haunting?

If my manager hits me up at 11pm asking for something, sure I can ignore him or her.

Then I come in the next day, they already did the thing they asked for themselves because [insert business reason], and says “never mind”.

Next time it happens, they go to the other dev who is happy to do it at 11pm.

Guess who gets the promotion?

With two comments quoting the same example, you seem really hell-bent on driving this point home. Ok, I'll bite. How often do you get those 11pm requests that will otherwise get rerouted to someone else unless you respond before 8am? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? A few times per year?

Context matters, because believe it or not, most professionals occasionally go the extra mile no matter what industry they are in. I recently dropped off a motorcycle for a repair, and the young guy working at that shop stayed an hour late to get my business. When something breaks in my house, I have hundreds of people jumping at the bit to come to fix it at any given time, before or after work, weekday or weekend.

Nothing is ever perfect in life, but your criticism of your experience as a software engineer would come across as a lot more empathetic if you started off by acknowledging that you made an excellent career choice to start with, and that this allows you unprecedented career mobility, including the option of easily quitting your job should you have the rare misfortune of having landed at any of the few bad apples that do not reward you for your stress with oodles of money that you wouldn't be able to make anywhere else with that amount of effort and work experience.

Not to mention that if stress and money are not your thing, go and work as a software engineer at an old school Fortune 500 company. I promise to you that nobody will ever ask you to do anything at 11pm there, and you'll still get paid well.

> How often do you get those 11pm requests that will otherwise get rerouted to someone else unless you respond before 8am? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? A few times per year?

Multiple times per month. 3/4 weekends per month. How’s that? Not uncommon in many small startups I’ve been a part of as an employee, founder, or advisor.

Your point is fine, except for the fact that it totally overlooks if an employee is actually already putting in that extra effort, and is just getting taken advantage of by their company.

What if I am already objectively going the extra mile? Who's to say I'm not? My boss. And they will say that. See: Tesla Skips 401k Match for Third Straight Year [1], while simultaneously investing over $1B into Bitcoin.

> and that this allows you unprecedented career mobility, including the option of easily quitting your job should you have the rare misfortune of having landed at any of the few bad apples that do not reward you for your stress with oodles of money that you wouldn't be able to make anywhere else with that amount of effort and work experience.

Ok, setting aside the fact that the money is relative to the value created for these companies (see: richest people on the planet and how they got there)...

You didn’t actually comment on the main point. You just said, oh if that happens, you are able to leave. Yeah - that’s the point. It happens. And if it does, you should leave. Not succumb to Stockholm syndrome and act like oh it’s part of “sacrificing for this awesome job”. Even you said it. Go find another job.

If you think this is just happening at "a few bad apples" then I'm inclined to assume you have not experienced a wide variety of startup and company cultures in multiple locales - not saying this is true of you but what it sounds like.

I only used the same comment because another person made a similar point which warranted an identical response.

[1] https://www.pionline.com/defined-contribution/tesla-skips-40...

> many small startups I’ve been a part of as an employee, founder, or advisor

As a significant equity holder in an early stage company, you cannot compare yourself to regular employees. We're no longer comparing professions, and instead are comparing approaches to wealth creation: salary vs equity. Again, if you're not a fan of risk, get a job at a bank.

To bring it back to your original post - you called someone ignorant for stating that leaving work at work is a choice. It is indeed a choice, as we both concluded by stating that this career gives you plenty of opportunity for career mobility.

EDIT: your post changed a couple of times and most recently added some bizarre criticism of capitalism ("setting aside the fact that the money is relative to the value created for these companies"). This is totally off-topic, and frankly I am having a hard time following your reasoning so I'll disengage and just hope you'll find peace and appreciation for the good things in life.

> To bring it back to your original post - you called someone ignorant for stating that leaving work at work is a choice.

It was tongue in cheek. I was literally quoting them calling me ignorant - it looks stupid and is not condusive to good discussion, I agree!

> As a significant equity holder in an early stage company, you cannot compare yourself to regular employees.

I was expressing the fact that I've seen this many times at several companies, as opposed to it being "a few bad apples" as you originally stated. Not that there is any similarity in the experiences of those roles.

The choice to leave work at work on the daily, vs the choice to switch jobs when you're unhappy, are not the same choice - just so we clear that up because I feel like there are two separate points being made here vs the original comment I was replying to.

It is a choice to leave, yes, definitely agree with you there and I appreciate your perspective here. We are definitely privileged to be in such a fruitful field.

It is also a choice to leave work at work, however, there can be ramifications at your expense and out of your control if you do so. That doesn't happen when you are unhappy and decide to start looking for another job, unless you tell your employer you're doing so...

EDIT: I added some hard data points to back up what I was saying. None of the points changed, only added, didn't delete. Apologies if that confused you.

Criticism of capitalism? Lol, you said we should be grateful for all this money we earn in comparison to other industries. I said no duh, we create a ton of wealth - look at the wealthiest people in the world, they come from software - Gates, Musk, Bezos. It makes sense that compensation is higher in an industry where more value is being created.

> so I'll disengage and just hope you'll find peace and appreciation for the good things in life.

Likewise :)

The sucker who's working at 11pm?

More seriously, if this is you, find an employer/manager who's not gratuitously invading your non work time.

Very much agreed. You have to do what is in your control as an employee. If it’s a cultural problem, that usually means your best bet is to simply find a team with better culture. Culture is a hard problem to solve if it’s not right.

Sounds like if you have the potential to be addressing business problems at 11pm you should have an on-call schedule. Your boss just calling people randomly in the night is not a great way to get things done reliably anyway.

Agreed! It's a business problem. It's not a problem of the employee to shift their mentality to suit the demands of their employer. People want to do a good job though. Hence why there is onus on the employer to provide work-life balance. It's not enough to just "not ask" for work on the weekends. You need to proactively discourage it.

It needs to be give and take on both sides, I went back to finish a presentation deck last night until 1am but I'll finish early in Friday or take time when it suits me and I don't have to tell my manager. One of the my direct reports took some time this morning to go do some person errands, didn't use vacation as he steps up when needed. He sent me a courtesy message to say he would be out for a few hours but it wasn't for approval. He gives when he needs to and he takes when he needs to and I trust him to manage that. But trust is needed and I've seen plenty of managers abuse people's goodwill, I can see why unions formalize that in a way.

Every tech company I’ve worked at expected me to bring my laptop home every night “just in case we need you to jump in”

FANG companies also typically pay your cellphone bill, again because they expect to be able to page and call you at any time.

I do the same but I don't jump in right away. We have runbooks and escalation routines. If it gets to the point that I need to "jump in" I take that time back in the upcoming days and weeks.

As a personal favour I will fire off a private message to whichever colleague is on call if I see they are floundering. Because I'm a good guy and believe the help I give today may be requited down the line.

I disagree only in that I worked salaried positions in the trades for some time. While most trades are hourly, there does exist a salaried contingent. The thinking that extra asks from your employer is an intrusion into your life is inherently, entitlement. Solid companies and management will repay that extra effort, in one form or another.

> The thinking that extra asks from your employer is an intrusion into your life is inherently, entitlement.

Let's get this straight an entitlement is something that is owed. If I buy health insurance and go to the hospital I am entitled to use it. If I pay for unemployment in my salary and become unemployed I am entitled to it.

> in one form or another.

Banking and housing unfortunately does not work this way. I can only present a paystub or W4 when applying for a loan or renting a flat, any other form of compensation is disregarded. My dedication to the job should be remitted through my salary, a employee pizza/ice cream party doesn't mean a thing to me.

Well by your definition then I’ve come to makepeace with my entitlement, then, if this is truly entitlement to not want a work life that thinks it can intrude on my non-work life without me saying something about it and trying to minimize the blast radius.

Yes, I’m entitled. I’m entitled to being defined by more than just how I make money. Yep. 100%

Glad we could have this talk. Feels good to finally get that out.

"Human rights, democracies, and whatever... It's all ~~nonsense~~ entitlement..."

(https://pics.me.me/thumb_translated-by-memritv-org-human-rig...)

Even within the world of tech the contrasts are striking.

I worked for a tech company based in the Midwest that was acquired by a company in the valley. I regularly went on visits to HQ. Some of the folks I met complained strongly about things like lunch not being provided... as often. And their lunches were amazing, with drinks, and socialization.

I came from a place that maybe once a quarter someone would order a bunch of cheap-o pizza... maybe, unless they were concerned about the budget (like $300 worth of pizza matters). And what that meant was you went and grabbed a piece of pizza and went back to your desk...

That's not to say one is right or one was wrong (both locations could have certainly used a little of each's culture / traditions), but the privileges of the tech world (particularly some companies) are generally pretty amazing, and I'm not sure folks who have never left those places really get it...

I sometimes feel like I'm talking a to aliens from another tech world when it comes to their complaints, like they're from that space ship in WALL-E.

I think its a little disingenuous to say that these people are privileged. Make no mistake, there was plenty of cost/benefit analysis done with things like in house lunch. It attracts people to the company, less people leave for lunch and stay around their coworkers and possibly talk about work more, takes less time so they work longer per day.

google is definitely getting a net gain in profits from providing lunch, they are not doing this out of the kindness of their heart.

I'm in IT, but I've worked as electrician and carpenter for some years. IMHO this is not easily comparable as you'd think.

You can easily estimate the time required to perform some physical tasks. It's a bit different if you're working on something you never did before, but again as an electrician or carpenter this rarely happens after the training period. Working more hours generally does result in more work done, although the physical factor makes this work-life balance waaay more obvious to whoever is working.

In IT I'm constantly working on things which are slightly different than before. Time estimation is big common issue in the field. I'll be fully honest and say that working 4 or 8 hours a day makes absolutely no difference in work being done for me, except in very rare cases. Dedication has nothing to do with it (I love what I do). Technically I'm not stopping to work at the 6pm hour mark, my brain keeps thinking about technical issues also during off hours and the weekend.

I don't know about you but I felt physically tired, but satisfied at the end of the day when working as a carpenter. Sense of accomplishment was much more rewarding. When coming home I would enjoy something different. The next day I was recharged.

When working on problem-solving, I don't feel physically tired, but I can still feel exhausted in a way that prevents me doing other things. It's much, much harder to find a good balance. And I'd stress this again: putting more working hours sitting in front screen is not necessarily achieving anything.

Note also that these crazy perks as outlined in the article are not my experience in IT working in several places in EU. Yes, our working hours are more flexible due to the nature of the job, but I've yet to see such entitlement in my career. Maybe I've been unlucky.

The energy drain of software development is something I struggle with. I’ve worked as a painter and can relate to wrapping things up for the day and coming home physically exhausted but with energy remaining. Especially with Covid ‘work from anywhere all the time’ it’s very difficult to find a balance as a software slinger.

I've actually had the opposite experience working as summer labor for facilities maintenance.

It was extremely 9-to-5; well, technically, 7-to-3:30. Most people worked most of the time, because it was hourly, but if you needed to arrange to not, it wasn't a big deal, because you were hourly, and moreover, not customer-focused. If (nearly) everyone took the same day off, you just needed a skeleton crew for emergencies and the maintenance just got done a day later.

I don't think the distinction is really "tech versus non-tech" or even "white-color versus blue". I think the real distinction is jobs that have deadlines for one-off projects versus jobs that ... don't, where you just do the same tasks over and over because they keep needing to be done. Building maintenance is a lot like building construction, it uses the same skills to do the same things, but one uses a small number of people to do the work over fifty years that the other does with a large number in one.

The two types of work require different mindsets and different lifestyles. When you have a deadline, one big thing to accomplish before you rest, it makes sense to work long hours and monomaniacally to meet those deadlines. When you are in it for the long haul, you need to pace yourself.

This. The article author describes a number of symptoms. Viewed through my lens of abstraction, he's arguing about passion for the job/product/team. People who are passionate about what they do are often frustrated when surrounded by those less passionate.

I notice in some of the comments either in support of or against this guy, there's a subtle distinction. Those against say things like "I'd never work for this guy." And those more supportive, say things like "I'd like to work with this guy."

I see in tech often that there are those who want to view it as an idyllic "team play" game. We're all on the court together trying to score goals. And there's another segment that see it in the more traditional factory worker. Clearly defined roles, chains of report, advancement up the pyramid.

Overtime is remembered a lot less than you think. I have family in the trades and they much prefer their union jobs to my programming one.

Yes, I get paid more, but I also work more, in an area where I can’t afford a house.

You aren't constrained to live in those areas to make a living, though. I'm a senior/principal level developer living just outside of Boston (I can walk to a subway in 30 minutes or just hop on a commuter rail stop in about five) and I can very comfortably afford a 4-bed house on a single salary. And the Boston area is not cheap.

Like many cities that have expensive areas (and Boston/Cambridge certainly do), it's often fairly easy to get to suburbs--some of which have downtown areas--that aren't Midwest cheap but are fairly affordable. I live quite a bit further out but I'm still able to drive in for an evening or take commuter rail in for a day.

I think the fact that it's hard to get out of the expensive areas in the Bay Area in a reasonable amount of time gives a lot of people a false impression of the situation with other expensive cities.

That is so true.

I work in IT of a non-Tech company and it's sometimes crazy to think that just because our industry is so short-handed on IT people we get paid so much more compared to the guys in the company "doing the work". I think it's probably fine because we also play a vital role in the company's success and it's good taking pride in your work, but some of my colleagues act like they are the reason we are making any profit. They are running the tool that enables our sales, but they are not the ones doing the actual selling. Just because the company has been around longer than there has been commodity sales order software and they are still running it does not mean they are the cause for all the revenue in their tool.

We have it amazingly well and we should make sure to be nice to other people, especially since we are privileged.

You can’t commit a fitted pipe to the company repo at 2am on a weekend. You also can’t be pressured to. Well you can - but we would instantly recognize that one for what it is - ludicrous!

>> We have it AMAZINGLY WELL being in tech, and we have luxuries that are unique to tech and bewildering to folks in other fields.

Yep, even other highly paid fields! Can you imagine a surgeon scheduling their surgeries around yoga classes?

Yes they do. I have a few doctor friends, like for any customer facing job they cannot just show up an hour late. But they have a lot of control on their schedule and they do schedule it around their yoga classes, prayer schedule, kids stuff etc.

I have news for you buddy...

That’s exactly what they do.

There is the old stereotype of a MD canceling appointments because of a Tee-Time conflict, after all.

Nah. My parents are doctors and I know quite a few surgeons. They might schedule their work around kids and family and whatnot, but none of them will opt to go to yoga or whatever when there is a pending surgery.

I know of only one guy who is a plastic surgeon and he is like that, but he’s also one of the best in his field and a bit of a prima donna...

Ok, I hear you. However, I cofounded a medical startup with 3 surgeons, seeing their day to day routine pretty closely, at their offices, at home, etc...

And they definitely worked around their own schedule. They either owned their own practice, or worked at a larger one, and controlled their own scheduling via their team. Surgeries are scheduled weeks or months in advanced. Only when an emergency came in they needed to shuffle things around - basically the same thing with engineers and planned deployments vs random outages.

> none of them will go to yoga with a pending surgery

Ok, yeah, of course they are not going to just up and leave when there is an appointment or deadline. That has nothing to do with whether or not they chose the time of that appointment in the first place.

> They might schedule their work around kids and family and whatnot

s/kids/exercise/g

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