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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

A huge part of that is IMO the absurd lack of free time. 40 hours plus commute, overtime and on-call (=total 60-80h) is bad enough in a single-earner household where a spouse keeps up with chores, but two full-time employees or singles not living with parents? They're all but drained in the evening, and when you only have time on Saturday between dealing with leftover chores (=laundry, actual cleaning beyond letting the Roomba roam around) or catching up on sleep, the rare four spots for social life in a month have to be carefully planned. And no surprise either that people don't have children as a result - hard to have them when you're working all the time.

The 40 hour work week needs to go. Now.

ETA and don't forget so many restaurants and pubs either closed down completely, cut opening times or hiked prices thanks to inflation and exploding rents over the last years. It's not just the pandemic that fucked things up.

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This is true :) However...I'd argue that in tech, you needn't put up with this. There's plenty of demand for tech workers who aren't expected to work insane hours, and can have time for kids and hobbies. Not being expected to work insane hours often correlates with not being paid as much. But a poor tech salary is the same as a good salary in many other jobs. You can have a good lifestyle without the big bucks. Doesn't involve living in a big house somewhere posh or having new/large cars etc. Does involve having a meaningful life. :)

> There's plenty of demand for tech workers who aren't expected to work insane hours, and can have time for kids and hobbies.

Even without insane hours and ordinary 40 hours, the problem is: out of 24 hours, you lose 9 hours to sleep (8 hours + 0.5/0.5 to fall asleep and wake up), 3 hours for eating (including making the food and cleaning up), 8 hours to work, 1 hour to commute... that leaves you with just three hours a day of theoretically "free" time, of which you'll set aside at least an hour to decompress from work, one hour to interacting with your spouse - and now you're left with one hour a day of actually "free" time.

No way to fit hobbies or even any meaningful social activity in there and any unplanned events (e.g. a traffic jam, something comes up at work so you need to stay a bit late) completely throw everything off.

I think your job doesn't sound very nice - needing at least 1 hr to decompress, having to stay late because something "came up". Dunno if cycling to/from work would help with de-stressing quicker? (of course, cycling may or may not be feasible where you live). Certainly being stuck in a traffic jam after a hard day at work is no fun either. I'd rather spend longer on public transport if that means read a book, message some friends, even chat to a friend in person that does the same run. WFH even if only 2 days a week, is a game-changer, if you could achieve that. Working 4-days weeks is another big game-changer. I do that and its totally worth the salary hit. Seems a great shame if people feel unable to have kids and/or a social life just due to the demands of work. People also aren't going to be productive employees either if they're unhappy because of that. I think people need to push back against their employers, and the irony is, by doing so they're actually helping their employer because burnt-out people are not useful. But to have the nerve to push back, or switch jobs, one may need some money saved up. Which is very do-able for reasonably frugal people on tech salaries. I hope you manage to get to a better situation somehow :)

I'm not always basing my comments out of my own life - I don't have kids and work mostly from home, but I have a lot of friends not as lucky as I am.

Just bringing back an actual "9-5" would help. None of this "8-5" (because breaks don't count) shit.

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