How working unpaid hours became part of the job | Hacker News Reader

How working unpaid hours became part of the job

bbc.com

30 pointspmoriarty10 comments

In my career I have basically never seen an average of 40 hours a week and I don’t know many people in my field who have.

I would say 45-50 hours is baseline and 60 hours happens once or twice a month. Occasionally, once or twice a year, I work 70-80 hours for a few weeks.

I am not proud of this. It is brutal and has taken its toll on me. I dream about retiring early, but am at least 20 years from retirement unless something magical happens.

I don't know if I've ever done overtime except 2-3 specific days I remember very vividly, where we stayed a few hours longer because something was broken in prod.

Are you a dev? Have you strictly worked at large tech companies?

I work at a non-tech and my schedule is extremely chill. I interviewed at other non-tech companies and it seemed chill also.

I have done some crazy hours once, when I solo released a large project I worked on.

Not a dev. I am in marketing.

I'm sorry to hear this. I've had the exact opposite of you - 35-40 hour weeks for 13+ years.

Yes, I've done OT, 2 AM deployments, 5 AM deployments, hours on holidays, etc etc - but I'd always take time off so I can recover, either from PTO or "free hours" approved by a good boss.

If I was even threatened with what you've been through, I'd put my two weeks in. Life is too short to work for free, on a fixed, 40-hour salary, for someone else. It's wage theft, plain and simple.

Are you getting paid enough to cover the extra 15-20 hrs? If not going lateral to just do 40 is a big pay bump

I get paid very well for my field and where I am at in my career. Although this wasn’t always the case.

If you spend those extra 20 hours a week preparing for interviews and looking for a new job your problem will be solved and you'll probably get a bump in pay too

"Remote working has intensified the problem. Average workday lengthened by nearly two hours, research shown UK employers acknowledge staff work additional, unpaid hours. Workers attribute uptick in overtime to loss of work-life boundaries; commutes, offices and lunch breaks have disappeared, " Personally , I think what has changed is people are spreading work out more with breaks , do the school run, get some chores done, go for a walk, so work gets finished a bit later, sometimes a bit in the evening after kids in bed. But that's an improvement as its flexible. I suspect people are keeping quiet about the chores and school runs for fear of being seen as a slacker, and the end result is everyone says they're working more, when possibly they aren't ....

Late stage capitalist hellscape. I wonder how many ppl think about their huge salaries not really being worth it once you're working 80 hours per week.

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