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Comment by awillen | Hacker News Reader

If they're totally open about it, who cares? Whoever interviews will know what they're getting into and can negotiate accordingly. If they find some workaholic who's happy to put in 100 hour weeks in exchange for a healthy chunk of the company, what's the issue?

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If you can't be competitive without grinding your people into hamburger you don't deserve to exist. We need to build a more human-first society and it starts by eliminating these sorts of "loopholes" letting businesses off the hook for abusive practices "because people knew what they were signing up for"

Indentured servants knew what they were signing up for too, it was still selling yourself into slavery.

Whatever developer takes this job will inevitably be able to quit and get another, high-paying job with fine WLB whenever they want. It's not comparable to indentured servitude in any way.

There is absolutely a difference between offering poor working conditions to people who are powerless and easily exploited, vs. offering them to people who have a tremendous degree of power and the ability to exit those poor working conditions at any time.

Good point. There are probably 100 seniors at UC Berkeley EECS ready to sign up for this opportunity.

The problem is accepting companies with poor working conditions also serves to normalize poor working conditions.

Also, if people want to grind they can do so at at any company. I don’t think any company is going to tell them to stop working. The difference is if the company promotes that culture.

People who know what they're signing up for are signing up because it's their least worst option. Taking that away sounds counterproductive without a way to materialize a better option. And if you could get them a better option, you wouldn't have to eliminate the worse options, would you?

Only on HN would someone compare software engineering to slavery. Give me a break.

A key point about slavery is that you couldn't shrug and walk away anytime you wanted.

Exactly! “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.” (probably apocryphal) Sir Ernest Shackleton

A reply on Twitter had a well-put answer, "This is how you say 'we only want to hire young people' without technically violating labor laws."

It’s unlikely that “healthy chunk” will be that large - the usual pattern is someone crunching their health & relationships away only to end up with a fraction of what the insiders get - but the bigger issue is what it says about managerial competence and ability to run a project. People working under strain that long are less productive than in a more humane environment and more likely to make mistakes, and given how this sounds like them trying to avoid hiring an appropriate number or people it seems likely that they will make other bad strategic calls as well. Even if you’re a sociopath, I’d think twice about making my business depend on something which is one burnt-out person away from stalling.

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