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Comment by fritolaid | Hacker News Reader

in tech, we don't really have 40hr/wk. It's more like 80hr/wk. And work on weekends. If you have a position that requires 40hrs/wk or less and no work on weekends whatsoever, consider yourself lucky. I hear stories about colleagues being overworked on continuous basis.

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Speak for yourself. The vast majority of engineers I know (in the US and Europe) don't do more than 40 hours a week and without weekends, and oftentimes many work even fewer hours, perhaps even 20 hours a week. There are also so many jobs that if you're truly doing more than 40, that's because you want to or at least haven't bothered to start looking to switch jobs.

> If you have a position that requires 40hrs/wk or less and no work on weekends whatsoever, consider yourself lucky.

That's backwards. If you have a position that requires over 40hrs/wk, or any weekend work without overtime pay, consider yourself exploited (and if you're doing it without it being required, consider yourself a scab). Join a union, quit that job, or both.

If you have sufficient equity upside, it’s not unreasonable to put in “extra” time to grow the company.

Agreed if you have real equity ownership (at which point you're not really a worker). Some stock options isn't the same thing.

It's definitely not unreasonable, but nor is /not/ growing the business in order to control one's own working hours.

And in general, if growth is dependent on this, then there is no plan and you should value the equity accordingly.

And meanwhile I hear stories of people clocking in 40 hour weeks on a continuous basis. The reality is that both exist.

Somehow, I've managed to work 40/hr week or less at all of my jobs.

Recently, due to a disability, I've been limited to a max of 40 hr/wk with a restricted schedule (M-F 0800-1800). Unfortunately, I can't do on-call and no matter how severe an incident is in the middle of the night, I'm not available.

No one has an issue with this. In a funny way, it's good I'm on the team because we're always testing the "Kayodé bus factor". Thus far, it's been more than 1.

That is most definitely not the case in Australia. I'm a dev, I never work weekends. I do sometimes work later in the day meaning some weeks are probably a bit more than 40 hours, but I also take long lunch breaks or leave early so some weeks are also probably slightly less. This is the case for all the devs I know as well, and more than a small amount of regular OT is seen as cause to quit and get work elsewhere.

There is an exception for dev managers, who seem to work longer hours generally but definitely nothing approaching 80 hours

In countries where labor laws are strong working more than 40 hours a week in a salaried role is not common. And when there is overtime, it’s often taken in lieu and expected that you get those hours back out of your regular day.

If you have a position that requires more than 40 hours a week regularly, do the math on your hourly rate, and look at hour its affecting your health. If you’re under 25 you’ll probably get away with it, if not the second order impacts on your life are not insignificant, and can make you less productive.

I assume this is referring to the US?

I don’t know anyone who does much over 40 hours in the UK, let alone anything close to 80 hours. A few might pick up urgent tasks on the weekend, but only when needed and not regularly.

I've worked for US companies on their EU offices for nearly 10 years, and there's definitely much less of it here, but I've definitely ran into some US employees who have been less than impressed at how unavailable I am outside hours in that time

I think also depends where in the US. In Seattle, a lot of tech workers are with Amazon. When I worked with Amazon, over two years, there were perhaps two weeks total where I worked less than 50 hours. In that job, and in several that followed, the office was for collaboration, meetings, maybe an hour of actual work, and then at home was where the second workday began in a quiet setting & you put in 3-5 hours additional coding (plus whatever on-call threw at you).

What the hell kind of sweatshop are you working in? Never seen anything remotely like this.

> And work on weekends

I read that Tim Cook has a weekly Sunday evening meeting with his staff; this seems reasonable, since that time might otherwise be wasted on family, friends, or home responsibilities - rather than taking care of critically important Apple business that can't wait until Monday morning.

Sunday evening in California is Monday morning in Asia - if you wait until Monday morning in CA to start things off you burn a whole day.

Now, I doubt Tim is happy with people leaving early on Friday afternoon either - but given Apple’s business and the importance of the Asian supply chain, a Sunday evening meeting is justified.

Also anyone reporting directly to Tim Cook is being paid tens of millions per year for their trouble…

i don’t understand this meme. is it some job-security/gate-keeping attempt, based on scaring new people away from the industry?

You should really try to find a new job. Crazy hours outside of some startups and super high paying jobs in a few sectors are not the norm in tech. Most people I know in the industry in NYC work 35-40 and do just fine.

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