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Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

Typed on my phone.

Six hours of work? Lie the other 2 and call it a day.

Or, renegotiate a contract for 6 hours per day.

Given how much productivity I presume you bring, I’d lie.

I don’t feel bad about it since companies care too little (in general). If they care, then I would care. E.g. a 10x more productive engineer doesn’t get 10x the pay. I met one of these people, they lied. They worked 2 hours, shipped one hour of code in production, saved the other one to commit on a rainy day and still got employee of the year because they were by far the most productive.

You could also become a freelancer, then you don’t have to lie.

My point is: six hours of productive work should be enough.

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Part of the problem is that I'm a Software Engineer as well as a Business Analyst and Project Manager. I'm also managing a dev team, so it's really difficult to only work 6 hours a day. Hell, I can't even do all my work in a 40 hour work week.

Yes, I realize this isn't a me issue and I'm looking for other work. The problem is that I'm encountering a lot of ageism in this field too.

I simply don’t finish work if I am spent. If I do, then I am worse the next week. I have the luxury of only needing to take care of myself.

Ask to hire for help. The business case is: either you break down, and the company loses a valuable person, or they get extra hands and can resume business operations. And while you’re at it ask for a pay raise because you were likely underpaid.

Ageism sucks. See if you can look younger or see if you can work at a company of a linkedin connection.

I am just brainstorming, you know what might apply to you.

I'd probably be as wiped out of I had the responsibility of three roles.

Have you considered finding something else?

have you thought about joining Government? pretty laid back there. Less pay, but if you are okay with that, its worth it if you value time > money

I have wondered about that. Some jobs I think make you die from within even if they are only 9to5. One buddy of mine had a govt job and complained about it everyday… it made him toxic. He eventually left but took waaaay to long.

trick is to bounce around departments until you get into a good group of non-toxic folks, and your skill level is above everyone. 2 hours of work is the equivalent of 2-5 days of another programmers work, and everyone loves your output.

If you're working from home, its really not that bad, since the other 6 hours of teh day you can learn anything you want. Just have to be near computer incase something happens etc...

I can honesty LY tell you moving from private industry to state government was the best decision I have made. Definitely move around until you find people and a department that you like.

Haha...interesting you'd say that.

I worked for two State Governments, Oregon and Nebraska for a combined 13 years total.

I ended my career at the State of Oregon as an IT Director for a State Agency.

So several things about state employment bothered me to no end:

1. State employee union contracts catered to the lowest common denominator. What I mean by that for one thing, is that you cannot negotiate your salary or your "work out of class" rules/pay.

2. Implementing technology (context was 15 years ago) one always had to consider the public perception. This meant that when iPhones were first introduced, I couldn't consider them as part of my IT planning because of the public perception that I'd be wasting tax dollars on them. Despite the fact that they were superior in every way to what Blackberry was offering at the time.

3. I couldn't buy things off of price agreement despite finding prices lower than what the State had already negotiated.

_I ended my career at the State of Oregon as an IT Director for a State Agency._

I think thats the issue you're too high up in the job ladder to not have any 'work responsibilities'.... If you drop back down to the nameless IT 'tinkerer' programmer , responsibilities will vanish!

You mention "If I could retire now, I would"... so maybe you have certain life logistics preventing you from taking a lower pay-grade... but if not...

Sounds like there is no good answer but a start maybe simplify your lifestyle and talk to your current employer about working 32 hours per week. Most likely they will say no and you will need to jump ship.

This is a great time to find freelance work. Your soon to be former employer maybe your first client.

If you happen to live in Canada, email me, my HN userid at gmail.

Honestly, you're doing 4 jobs, and I assume only being paid for one. Fuck that noise.

I work for a big company that has, in my opinion, good work/life balance and a great work culture, and we're always hiring.

Ageism is not a thing where I work (I am almost your age).

Can't promise anything but some guidance on what to apply for and some personal anecdotes about my time here, but if you're interested, happy to share.

> Honestly, you're doing 4 jobs, and I assume only being paid for one. Fuck that noise.

I just wanted to highlight this. Pure gold.

> I'm a Software Engineer as well as a Business Analyst and Project Manager. I'm also managing a dev team,

That's really too much context switching. Of course you're getting burnt.

Effectively pulling all those things off was possible 10 or 20 years ago. The world has gotten too complex now. Unfortunately, it is sort of expected in some shops.

One thing that I find helps tremendously: Don't try to wear more than one hat per day. If you're doing management-related tasks today, don't try to do software engineering on the same day. Even if it means you waste a few hours in a day.

I'm a little younger than you (43), but can very much relate. My current position is similar and trying to do all 3 of those things (and do them well) over the past couple of years has lead me to the verge of burnout. The paradox is that I still love what do, and I really enjoy it when I have a chance to focus on one aspect for longer than 15 minutes at a time.

But the demand to constantly be hyper-productive at all three of those things simultaneously just because I happen to have the skillset(s) means I have a hard time caring about any of them.

This. I have the same problem (ie 4 roles bundled as one role) and I am so tired. After speaking to many people that are far more successful than me in their careers, I was told: 1. You cannot be successful at 4 things at the same time. I do not work like this because it is impossible. You must pick what you are focusing on. 2. Agree with your management where they expect you to be spending your time. Agree on the plan for everything else which is not in the prior category.

While I agree there is a lot of ageism, there is something worse than ageism - obvious fatigue and lack of enthusiasm during interviews. You can read burnout on a person in the first few seconds - you may need to get a break so that you can have the proper mindset for interviews.

I’m afraid of ageism too, and I’m 39. I’m lucky to work for a company that looked beyond this and saw my skills as a self-taught programmer, and took me on with a freelance contract.

My main concern is continuing to find work whenever this current job ends. It’s a good field, and I enjoy it because it’s helpful to society ( nursing related software ) but I know I’m not the greatest programmer out there.

My current gig should last a few more years at least, and I have no plans on leaving this company. Still, ageism and staying current is always on the back of my mind, and a part of me wonders if there’s something I’m missing regarding my career

Early 40’s and I feel very lucky to have a job. I feel certain that once I hit 50 I’ll be unable to get hired. I think the trick is to make sure the job you have by 45 is somewhere that will be willing to keep you as you age.

Honestly, I'm thinking about how to convincingly lie about my age when I'm that age. It's part of the reason why I don't smoke and don't do much alcohol.

And by the way, I hate lying. I know I can do it relatively well, but I almost never do it because I hate the ethical implications and the memory implications of it. The thing is though, when it comes to companies, they have warped things so much that I'm willing to not stand by my own principles. It really feels to me that they threw a backhanded punch first. Fine, they can do that, but then I can throw one back and encourage other people to do so as well.

Oh, and if I'd be in the interview chair as an interviewer, I'd rather look at someone's experience and transferable skills and throw the whole ageism thing out of the window.

There's two things, or their combination, that I find really confusing about ageism and it's apparent prevalence (I believe it, but no first-hand experience being in my 20s):

- 'nobody' stays at one company for decades or an entire career any more (perhaps in part because of the massive decline, at least in the UK, of defined-benefit pensions, so 'you' - employer - are not on the hook for that either), so the the 50yo just has potentially a lot more experience than the 30yo, and in reality no difference in how long they'll work there that's due to their ages

- it's widely known that this is the case, so there's surely a big under-tapped pool of older applicants, with fewer competing offers?

Honestly I think it'd be hard for me not to be ageist (if I were a hiring manager, and it weren't illegal to discriminate on the basis of certain 'protected characteristics' which include age) - I'd snap up that cheap experience!

I’m not the most wizened of veterans, but rarely have I seen someone put in a true solid 8 hours of work in a day (excluding 11th hour crunches), and even rarer with any regularity. The norm in my experience, in-office or remote, is 3 hours per day. It’s kind of like the televised broadcast of American football. Add up all the commercials (distractions), commentary (socializing), and stoppage (eating/relieving) and you’re left with a fraction of productivity. Not complaining; everything seems to have worked out just fine.

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