Hacker News Reader

Comment by charcircuit | Hacker News Reader

I actually don't mind staying late because programming can be fun depending on what you are working on. Having to leave at 5 pm because "time is up" doesn't sound fun.

View on HN

If you get paid by the hour, sure. But if you are salary, you are reducing your hourly rate by doing this. That means you are cheapening the value of your own time. And you are screwing your co-workers. There is nothing wrong with getting into the flow and working a few hours late. Just tell your boss and leave early on Friday. Even if leaving early means coding on your side project.

This is very different than staying late at work because if you don't ship on Monday you get fired.

The brain needs rest after a certain amount of work. Neurotransmitters get depleted, mitochondrial stress builds up, all sorts of things happen if you stress neurons for too long. It might feel good at the moment to keep going, but that might actually be harmful, depending on how strong your metabolism and ability to recovery is. You‘ll pay in some way for it - be it lower performance on the next day, insomnia, or perhaps neurologic disease decades later. Rest is crucial.

If you want to have fun programming, do it on your own projects!

Why not both?

One reason is that it creates unfair expectations for your coworkers, who may have families or partners they want to get home to.

Family and partners are just one of the numerous, totally valid reasons. Just taking time for private life is more then enough reason, no need to specify or differentiate. You should go home at 5pm and have a cool private life even without family or being married!

At least for men, I feel we need to distance ourselfes from the paradigm of being valued only as disposable providers.

It’s a good point. But in an ideal world you should be able to work more and “exceed expectations” without raising the bar to “meet expectations” for coworkers.

Does it come with a good exchange? Do you get paid (handsomely?) after 5pm? I mean power to you for enjoying it, really, but don’t work for peanuts.

Tricking developers into writing useful code is 80% of the purpose of the modern engineering organization.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com