Comment by Kranar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kranar | Hacker News Reader

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Contractors is overly broad but plenty of contractors work overtime and very long, stressful hours including weekends and holidays.

Hospitals on the other hand, you're just downright wrong about that. Not only in general do hospital staff work 12 hour shifts including being on-call and having to work abrupt hours, especially over the past year their hours have been absolutely ridiculous. This includes nurses and MDs.

Feel free to review some studies on this issue, it's not hard to find nor is it some kind of secret. Basic Google search pops this up within the first few results:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200130302_The_Worki...

That study shows that in fact, nurses work their regularly scheduled shift less than 50% of the time, and 81% of their shifts involve overtime even though only 7% of it is scheduled in advance.

Here is a study looking at work hours among surgeons and physicians:

https://forums.ucdavis.edu/local_resources/docs/Freischlag-S...

It paints a very different picture from the idea that medical staff work very strict and well regulated hours. Their working hours are very chaotic and extreme.

I don’t need studies, I have a number of friends and family who are doctors and nurses.

You completely missed my point, which is that it is ridiculous for tech companies to compare themselves to a profession that faces literally life and death situations. Comparing to “the past year” (i.e. a historic global pandemic) just highlights the absurdity.

Your OKRs are not COVID patients!

My ancedote, and general data, agrees with the other person that your ancedote is wrong and healthcare is one of the most abusive environments in terms of nursing staff levels, hours, and quality of care. It's like you live in a different world.

Healthcare was easily the most toxic environment I ever worked in as well. The CTO literally was happy to quote that he treated it like a sweatshop because thats how you got the most value out of your human resources.

We literally had contractors fall asleep at the wheel and die driving between sites during marathon crunches where people got written up for leaving to eat / sleep.

My wife is a nurse at a huge national hospital. You're very wrong. 12 hours shifts turn into 13-14 hour shifts. They're so short staffed right now they're offering double pay + cash lump sums that equate it to triple/quadruple pay. But they pay lower than clinics and other hospitals in the area. They don't turn away patients.

You’re not reading what I’m writing. The fact that you know how long your wife’s shift is supposed to be is my point. The fact that nurses are being paid extra money for extra time is my point.

Engineers in Silicon Valley don’t clock in for a 12 hour shift. They are put on salary and any discussion of schedule is discouraged in favor of talking about “hustle” and “team players.”[1]

My point is not “health care workers don’t work hard.” My point is that they are set up with schedules and structure, which tech companies avoid… and then try to point at health care workers or “contractors” to justify the chaos.

Also I bet your wife is not working so hard just so the hospital can meet its financial goals. If she is like most nurses she is motivated by patient care and probably hates the administration, who are usually seen as bean counters who (if anything) impede care. Again, compare to tech companies who build myths around founders and corporate missions to obscure the purely financial stakes of their work.

[1] I know that not all companies operate this way, not all managers do this, not all engineers experience this. But there is obviously some sort of shared experience among a lot of people that the blog post at the top of the main thread is tapping into.

My wife's schedule is 12 hours: 7 to 7. Except nine out of ten times she's there until 8 or 9. It's "scheduled" but much closer to BAT times then sun revolution times. Any talk of schedule is discouraged and nurses are fired very quickly if they don't become "team players". Engineers in the valley have a lot more leeway because hiring is a lot harder. I can actively push back against my managers. My wife would be fired on the spot.

You're making numerous points and your later ones are good ones. But the working conditions for front line workers, including but not limited to their scheduling, hours, pay, etc, are all terrible.

>tech companies to compare themselves to a profession that faces literally life and death situations

I think you have a narrowly defined scope of “tech”. What about the software that controls the Da Vinci robot in the operating room? Do you want someone to say “eh, code quality checks aren’t my job?” Or the person writing flight software for aircraft? Or the safety critical software for a power plant?

The point being, yes, perspective is important but it’s a difference of degree not of kind.

The point being you aren't changing the code of a robot while it's being used.

There’s a time delay that separates these things. That completely changes your approach.

Fair enough on the Da Vinci robot because it's a turn-key product. But I can tell you that people change production code on the fly in safety-critical applications (particularly in the industrial controls space) much more often than many people would be comfortable with.

A better healthcare example may have been, would you be comfortable with people changing the building automation software that controls operating room air exchange rates or oxygen delivery systems?

But again, this isn’t really about software devs so it should extend beyond just SWE roles. It’s about positional duties, regardless if you write code or deliver meds to patients.

All of these systems run into schedule and cost pressures that often causes people to feel overburdened. I don't actually think they are fundamentally different.

There might be difference between healthcare systems in different parts of world.

> Not only in general do hospital staff work 12 hour shifts including being on-call and having to work abrupt hours

Not in EU countries that do not allow the medical profession to opt out of the Working Time Directive.

See"Are the opt-outs related to long hours?" in https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/...

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