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Comment by chabons | Hacker News Reader

> Expecting the attention of someone 40 hours a week seems reasonable

Why should the company be able to restrict your ability to do other work beyond the ability to fire you for cause if it's interfering with your ability to do your job?

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I find it funny that there’s a group of people who say “20-30 hour work weeks result in major productivity gains” meanwhile others say “I want to work 2x 40 hour jobs!”

In other words, should an employer require you to have work life balance by not having more than 8 hours of work obligation per day?

The common answer to this is “it doesn’t matter as long as the work gets done” but I don’t buy it. Engineering isn’t like flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Output is impacted by overworking.

> I find it funny that there’s a group of people who say “20-30 hour work weeks result in major productivity gains” meanwhile others say “I want to work 2x 40 hour jobs!”

You find it funny that different people have different needs and wants?

> In other words, should an employer require you to have work life balance by not having more than 8 hours of work obligation per day?

An employer should get what they pay for -- which is the value of the labor and time of the employee. No more and no less.

Would it then matter if they are a competitor?

You raise a good point, that both moonlighting and non-compete clauses provides employers the ability to fire employees to mitigate risks associated with simultaneous work for a competitor (theft of trade secrets, corporate espionage, etc...). I'm not sure what the correct answer here is, but I'd err towards the burden of proof being more on the employer to show that the employee contributed to a direct competitor using insider information than the blanket clauses we have now.

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