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Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

40 hours is already more than most western nation's salaried full time work maximum, it's also more than the American average, and more than the worldwide average. Though I'm sure those averages are skewed heavily by the way employment has changed in the last decade, with the contractification of the work force, the gig economy and full-time work becoming less common.

Is it typical to work more than that as a white collar worker at Tesla?

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Conversely, if you only look at the hours worked for people who make $200k+, you'll probably find that 40/wk is on the lower end. I think it's fair to say that North American engineers (like myself) are handsomely well-paid for the amount of time we put in, compared to really any other market in the world.

> 40 hours is already more than most nations salaried full time work maximum,

Citation? 40 hours is a standard full-time work week in many locations. Are you trying to suggest that “most nations” have work limits lower than 40 hours per week? Because that’s not true at all.

37.5 in the UK last time I worked there.

Sorry I've made an edit since your reply, I meant to write western nations, but in fairness I can't find any good collated citations, and it's not likely to be "most western nations" as I thought anyway. So I guess just consider my comment an anecdote. But anecdotally (ie based on googling around) it is around 38 hours in NZ, Australia, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, France, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Luxembourg. It's usually reported as an average of hours worked by a full time employee, but in at least a few of these countries it's actually a government set maximum.

It wasn't really the 40 hours I was taking issue with anyway, as that's pretty reasonable. But what does it mean to say that if you want to work remotely, you have to put in 40 hours at the office as well, shouldn't that be all you have to put in? It's just a loaded way to communicate.

Those maximums in Europe are largely ignored in high-paying roles (like what Tesla engineers would certainly be).

As an example, in London when you get a high-paying finance job, on day 1 the HR person comes by your desk and has you sign a waiver to waive away any rights to overtime and to accept that you will work as and when needed regardless of national limits.

Edit: I would also like to point out that when I did that job, the builders working on the skyscraper next door were working substantially longer hours than my 50ish hours per week, and probably for substantially less pay.

Oh I know, it's implicit, but I guess there is a big difference between implicit and writing it down in such a way that makes it clear that more is expected of you, like I feel this email does.

> Those maximums in Europe are largely ignored in high-paying roles (like what Tesla engineers would certainly be).

Automotive engineers in the EU definitely do not work illegal overtime on a regular basis.

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