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Comment by etempleton | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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