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Comment by p1esk | Hacker News Reader

First of all, you can't assume "all else being equal". People are different, and this is especially true for star performers.

If I'm a manager and I notice someone is consistently underperforming (compared to his peers) - it does not matter if the rest of the team is working overtime, or is smarter, or more experienced - I don't care. I will ask the underperformer to step it up (again, don't care if this means working harder, or smarter), and if no improvement after a set period, I will be looking for a replacement. I'm paying top dollar for top performance.

This situation is normal and expected in professional sports. I don't remember hearing about "bad work/life balance", or "being pressured into doing overtime" in conversations about elite athletes' performance. Should we treat elite SWEs differently?

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Remember, this is in the context of companies stating they value impact over effort, the sort of places that brag about their work/life balance. If I'm accepting an offer from such an employer and taking this into account during salary negotiations, I will be rightly pissed off to find out the standard is secretly 60-80 hours a week.

If they're open about expectations, assuming I'm at a point in my life where the trade-off makes sense, then if the compensation is good, that's fantastic. Nothing toxic about that. Not that different from some US manufacturing workers getting paid hourly wages, who make the same kind of trade-off all the time, making damn good money for 60 hours of peak performance a week. Sure, they might end up paying for it by ruining their bodies and drop dead from a heart attack or stroke within a year of retirement if they make it that long, but the risks are no secret.

> This situation is normal and expected in professional sports.

Let's google. The NFL seems topical around this time of year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/01/heres-what-the-average-nfl-p...

> The minimum annual salary for a rookie active roster player with a one-year contract is $480,000 . . . A player with three years’ experience would command a salary equal to at least $705,000, while players with seven to nine years on the field must be paid at least $915,000 . . . the average NFL salary was only about $2.7 million in 2017 . . . That’s less than three-quarters of the average $4 million earnings of a major league baseball player and less than half the typical wage of NBA players, who earn about $7.1 million on average.

I take everything back! Let's not treat SWEs any differently. For that kind of money, I will gladly put in 80 hours a week.

This thread is specifically about Netflix work culture, as reflected in the old slide deck. Netflix does not brag about work/life balance, and is open about their expectation. Also, they pay their senior SWEs >500k a year. Not quite the NFL level, but it's also not as competitive (there is a lot more SWEs than pro football players). Not to mention serious health hazards involved in pro football.

So yeah, it seems like we are in agreement :)

> This thread is specifically about Netflix work culture, as reflected in the old slide deck.

This isn't just about Netflix. The over-arching topic is company anti-values. The context has narrowed since then, first to Netflix, then to a specific slide about not measuring people by hours worked, and so on. But for the heck of it, some other quotes from said slide deck:

> We don't measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office

> Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees.

> Honesty Always

> Pro Sports Team Metaphor is Good, but Imperfect

> Internal "cutthroat" or "sink or swim" behavior is rare and not tolerated.

Again, if the expectation for a workplace like that were 60-80 hours a week, and that fact is clearly and openly communicated, fine.

But if you're making those claims while your top performers are the ones putting in undocumented additional hours and pressuring others to do the same, then I insist that is toxic behavior. Yes, even if they don't brag about work/life balance, though I'll consider it even worse if they do.

> So yeah, it seems like we are in agreement :)

All sarcasm aside, no, we're definitely not!

But if you're making those claims while your top performers are the ones putting in undocumented additional hours and pressuring others to do the same, then I insist that is toxic behavior.

What if your peers actually worked 2 hours a day, and accomplished a lot more than you when you worked 8 hours a day? Would you feel pressured to put in more hours? Would this be toxic?

I'm sorry, but you keep rephrasing this question, I've answered, and I still don't see how the question is relevant.

Sorry, I can't find where you answered it. Quote?

I believe the question is relevant because you seem to equate delivering results with working long hours, and while the two are usually correlated, it might not be the case when talking about star performers. For example, if my peers are all like Jeff Dean in terms of productivity, I would probably feel inadequate. You could even say I would feel pressured into doing more - not by my peers or even my manager - I'd be pressuring myself. This, to me, does not mean the environment is toxic. And that's why I believe the environment at Netflix is not toxic (assuming no other issues).

I'm trying to understand what you mean by "toxic", that's why I keep asking the question.

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