Just to clarify, you used the word "abuse" several times to describe a job where you would have to work in office between 8:30 to 5 and pull (I'm safely assuming) half a million dollars a year?
And the comp package I turned down was about $700k at the time, which was 10 years ago. Nowadays it would be a $1M+ job easy.
But not seeing my family is not worth any amount of money to me, since there are other jobs for a lot less that let me see my family and live plenty comfortably.
And if was a blue collar job you got overtime. This job expected you to work onsite 80 hours a week.
A c++ developer requires a deep focus that a typical business 9 to 5 role doesn't
No manager in their right mind would trust code from utterly exhausted people written after midnight to manage billions of dollars of capital.
1. It makes no correction in how an irrational institution is run that first level managers are rational. It just means they are stressed.
2. I met him at a language meetup for another language, he wanted out but would have trouble making half his salary.
(If you wanted me to trust code written by interns and reviewed across distance and language barriers, C++ wouldn't be my first choice, assuming I got a job in banking management, how likely would it be that I could change anything about that?)
And those people that work months away from their families -- they're being abused too. You'll notice that the owners of oil rigs aren't out there with them, for example.
That’s what you said originally, which reads as mostly normal work hours, plus maybe some overtime.
If it was 16 hours a day, then please say so.
> I wouldn't be allowed to take my laptop home, so if I had a hard problem to solve, I'd have to stay in the office the whole time. So basically they expected us to never see our family nor collaborate with anyone.
The part you highlighted says you cannot work from home. That’s unrelated to the number of hours they expected you to work.
OP could have spelled it out, but in any communication there is a level of shared knowledge.
When you read a comment that you understand to be complaining about making nearly a million dollars whilst working 9/5 in the office, a more charitable path would be to examine your own context and shared knowledge, rather than exclaim loudly that OP is a bad person.
Not that you did that, but others have.
A blind spot, I suppose; I have spent my whole working life in the West Coast tech industry - though discussions on this site generally seem to share that cultural context.
Not the person you're replying to, but I was not aware. I guess we have a different cultural backgrounds and some things that are obvious for most of this website are not for me.
Also this makes me even more confused. So OP actually expects being pressured into working overtime (irrelevant where - at home or in the office)? And that's not even their main issue?
What's the point of getting a double salary if you have to work twice as much? Can't they (as a great software developer with a strong work ethics and a good work-life balance they clearly have) just... refuse the overtime?
Re-read your original description again. Nowhere did you say you had to work 16h a day.
National security is different because the rules are imposed from the outside. These are self imposed rules.
Also most defense contractor employees don't work that much overtime and many can take the non-classified parts of their work home.
Umm... wat!?
Sure in theory he would be able to retire sooner etc, but retirement isn’t such a big deal if you don’t hate your job. Also, savings compounds so saving 3x as much doesn’t mean working 1/3 as long especially when you consider social security benefits etc.
I work on a software used (not exclusively) by the USA armed forces.
I work from home for the most part. I can do that while travelling as well but I have some limitations on which countries I can do that from. But I'm not sure of the entire list.
Edit: saw your comment it was actually 80h/w onsite. That is abuse but hey the pay is great.
Silicon Valley sucks :)
But now I have choices, and wouldn't choose that choice again.
That is fine and, tbh, a very healthy attitude. But it is not abusive in any meaningful sense of the word because it is not a worthwhile tradeoff for you personally.
I feel like software development is one of the activities that are difficult to estimate. There's scope creep and sometimes all sorts of deadlines for compliance or feature rollouts and so on, so the actual workload can vary a lot.
Not saying that's okay and shouldn't be considered a planning issue, of course.
In this day and age, in this day of robotics, AI and 1% of population in agriculture, to have to work just to eat and be sheltered is abuse.
It's a radical idea, I get that. Maybe one day it will be seen as a truism, or common sense.
Once food is taken care of, a great pressure would ease off and people would find themselves with more money, which then might be exchanged to less work.
Same reasoning can be apply to housing or even to medical care. The people who build houses would get the best spots for new houses, or the rarest food, or social recognition and status. And so the medics, teachers, etc.
This can't and won't happen in a day. There are many gotchas and unforeseen problems. But we can start working on it and planning and taking small steps towards this goal. It doesn't have to be all or nothing: it can be, for example, 1 hour off the working day every 5 years, for example.
Any engineering job paying double Netflix comp is going to have very high expectations about hours worked and rate of delivery.
It was certainly a memorable experience, but one I never wish to repeat.
I'd go from 30k to 100k regardless of work conditions, but not from 350k to 700k.
Like, if you'd put a button in front of me and pressing it would undo it like it'd never happened, I'd have pressed it without hesitation. And they weren't even working me long hours or being outright mean to me or anything, the place and the work were just dreary as fuck and it was making me feel like shit even in my off hours.
I had another job by month 4, and took a pay hit (though not all the way down to my prior level) to get out fast.
It was my understanding that was the bare minimum, corresponding to times when workload was low.
Crunch time would naturally go way beyond that.
Not what I describe decent working conditions.