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Comment by throwaway5959 | Hacker News Reader

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throwaway5959·

We’re exhausted and there’s little real upside. Makes sense to me to cut back.

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Agree. I used to work 60+ hours to make a huge impact on my firm and our revenue. Now I am like fuck it. Down to 30.

What would you say are some of the positives and negatives that have come about from this change?

Positives - more time with family. We could finally have second child after 7 years of not being able to due to being so busy could even think about it. Domestic / marriage life is much better.

Reduced drinking and late night outings.

Less stress. Focused high priority work Now instead of needing to play politics i many fronts to form alliances to move up.

Time to think retirement and plan for it.

More reading and entertainment. Focused on kids education.

Picked up trading with good returns.

Actually watched sports first time in 10 years.

Same, earlier in my career I was excited by the impact I make, but then it dawned on me, that impact has almost zero impact to my own bottom line. And I failed to come up with reasons why I should kill myself over making other people rich.

You probably feel that way as there was little benefit to you for working 60 hours/week. It is really unfortunate that companies cannot seem to find ways to reward people that enjoy working hard. Sure there are OKRs, etc., but too hard to tie that to the bottom line.

Why do you describe exhaustion as a collective “we”?

I’m saying we as in people working more than 60 hours a week, as referenced in the article.

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