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Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

How committed to be to one's job is a dynamic topic. To me, the ideal dynamic is finding a place that will recognize and reward you for working hard and "owning it" - and to work hard and "own it" in that environment.

In contrast, working hard in a place that doesn't reward you is sad. Slacking in a place where you can succeed more if you try harder is also sad.

I find that some people will perceive themselves to be exploited and orient their life around avoiding it, regardless of the situation (vs, reserving that feeling for avoiding actually exploitive situations.) For example, it's common to see HN posts describing someone as "subjecting themselves to unpaid overtime" when they work hard - meanwhile the person saying it is making $60K while the person being talked about is making $600K. There are some cases where working hard/loyalty/etc can lead to outsized rewards - but you need to be smart and keep your eyes open for that kind of space.

And then, assuming you are in the right kind of environment - allowing yourself to care and be engaged makes your work days much more fun. I think commonly in the example I described, the person that's proud of inoculating themselves from exploitation not only make 10% of what they can, but the exactly 8 hours of work they put in is a miserable drag for them. The guy working harder for 10X the comp might also be having more fun.

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My last job was a corporate hellscape. I worked really hard to move up to assistant manager, then corporate put me in a failing store on the other side of the state and just left me to rot. I had zero employees, just me and the manager. We constantly got berated for not meeting sales targets, which meant corporate sent us less product to sell, so our numbers got worse...

Then there was the mandatory unpaid overtime, the 12 hour days running the entire store solo. It nearly put me in the hospital, and I'm not exaggerating.

Then I got an unbelievable offer for a tech job ten minutes from my house. It was "only" twice my corporate salary, and I'm definitely being way underpaid for essentially being the senior R&D engineer. But it pays enough that my husband doesn't have to work and we don't want for anything. My job is so much fun, and my dedication is definitely noticed and appreciated. They've already given me a raise unprompted, and once we have enough revenue, I expect I'll get a much bigger one. Not that I really care about the money, I feel respected here, and I get to use all of my talents instead of cold-calling people to sell more crap.

I'll never go back to that corporate life. It was absolutely soul crushing for someone who has a lot of initiative and a lot of skills. This is where I was meant to be.

Curious question - how did you make the transition from being a store manager to an R&D Engineer? Was this a skill you already possessed but couldn't utilize before?

My previous R&D lead was a store manager just before as well. He was a stellar lead.

Maybe there is some untapped potential in all the store managers of the world?

I actually bet your experience holding it down and getting shit done in that failing store was a good reflection of your ability and character and helped you get the next gig.

I bet they're great at solving a million little problems, shielding devs and getting shit done. If that's your priority/emphasis they'd be a great source of solid employees.

"the finest steel comes from the hottest dumpster fires" and man is retail often a non-stop dumpster fire. ditto for a lot of other service-ish jobs.

So-called “soft skills” are essential to effective management and hence team cohesion, employee happiness, and lots of other hard to measure metrics which still contribute directly to the bottom line and the team’s ability to deliver. Someone with minimal technical skills and great people skills can still effectively lead strong technical teams. If those skills are not present on a team at all, they will struggle 100% of the time. Nobody may even recognize the struggle if there is no one who can identify these things.

> Maybe there is some untapped potential in all the store managers of the world?

McDonalds is a great leadership pipeline because there's no reason for a competent assistant manager to stick around.

Pretty much. I took the retail job because I couldn't find a programming job. Before that I was a video game programmer. I actually got hired here as a mid level unity programmer, but it quickly became clear that my other skills were more valuable.

I've done electronics as a hobby for most of my life, and I just have a natural talent for engineering and problem solving. R&D is something I've wanted to do since I first heard of it at 10 years old. The stars just never aligned until now.

Why did you not leave more or less immediately? I know that hindsight is 20/20, but still, it is pretty obvious you were not taken seriously at all.

Thats a no-brainer, really.

In the US (assumption of location), we have nearly no social net. We pay 30+% in taxes, but little to show for it if we lose jobs, or dealing with horrific jobs.

And with the spates of homeless arrests, even sleeping under an overpass or rough camping is illegal.

And of course, the worse the job, the less the pay, and the stickier the employees due to not being able to save.

Ive been in similar situations, with terrible jobs, up to and including a manager who ordered me to lie to a state entity over his botched fix.

Those who make income pay 30+% in taxes.

Those who make capital gains do not.

Of course, those who make capital gains don't need a social safety net, but discussions about taxes need to include both tax tracks because they behave so very differently.

If your effective income tax rate is 30%+ in the US, you either have a very high income, easily top decile, or you live/work in Oregon (but that’s only a few million people).

$90k in NYC is >30% effective after federal, state, city, and FICA.

But yea it's probably top 10%.

If you include medical costs outside of FICA, which many other Western countries get for near free after taxes, then it looks... quite different.

I guess certain cities like NYC/Philadelphia might also push effective income tax to over 30% for lower incomes, but for the purposes of comparing income tax rates and capital gains tax rates in the US, it does not make sense to include the social security component of FICA or medical costs.

Edit: I am barely getting 30% in NYC, even including FICA (zip code 10118)

https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes

$90k as single is $27,171, or 30.19%.

$90k as married filer shows $20,758, which is 23.06% (incl FICA).

But, again, I would not include all of the social security portion of FICA (6.2%), since presumably you will be getting some of that back.

Sales tax + local/state/federal taxes + social security/medicare can be above 30% even for folks not in the highest brackets.

Sales taxes and social security taxes cannot be lumped in with income taxes, for the purposes of comparing income tax rates and capital gains tax rates.

I'm the great-great-great-grandparent, and I didn't specify the *type* of taxes.

The state took it from me, either directly before I saw it, at a point of sale, as some convenience fee (restaurants, bars, etc), liquor fees to punish my drinking, or countless other state-sanctioned money transfer.

I like a return on my investment, and the same goes for the government I live in. And although this sounds like some libertarian style drivel, I'm not complaining about the taxes themselves, but what I get in return for what I pay for. And in this country (USA), it aint much. The most I've seen the govt do, after kilodollars paid in, was a whole $1200 singular check during covid. Everything else I "get", is fee'd, fine'd, and taxed to death.

I would prefer a strong safety net for everyone. Universal healthcare. Free K-12 school lunches. Free university classes/degrees.

Yeah, I look at the WHOLE package of taxes, what I pay in, and what I get. Well, there's a reason why I'm talking with my partner about leaving the country, and even possibly renouncing. But hell, even US citizenship is a -$3500 hole in my pocket.

True, but the post is about "workers" (who are being abused by management/ownership), who are getting "income". This isn't about the managerial or owner class.

Sure, there's edge cases where founders and early startup workers get paid income and capital (stocks, etc) both, but that's not the scope of the article.

Right, but I detected a whiff of a complaint that taxes were high, so I wanted to emphasize that a huge chunk of the wealth out there is taxed at much lower rates. These are edge cases if you count by number of people, but not if you count by number of dollars. Rich people live in a different world.

I was at the company for three or four years. It was fine working as a floor level employee, and my last manager encouraged me and gave me a lot of freedom to do what I wanted because I really did boost sales. I only took the assistant manager position because everyone around me told me I'd do great.

I lasted six months. The only reason I stayed that long was because we were promised some huge bonuses for meeting our sales targets, which never happened. I got like $50.

My manager gave her two weeks notice a week before I did and our region manager didn't find anyone to cover. He expected me to run the entire store by myself for a week. I said no and walked out. They had to leave the store closed for several days because absolutely nobody worked there. It was extremely cathartic.

This is amazing, thank you for sharing the story and the contrast between a good and bad workplace. It's not that different than marriage - if both parties are committed to acting well, it's amazing. If either party slacks/abuses its a nightmare.

That type of work environment is endemic to retail/hospitality/food service businesses. Combination of low quality of life at work and low pay.

I've never worked in a large corporation, just academia and startups. The nature of exploitation in academia is reasonably well known and you pretty get much what you expect if you go in with eyes open (although there is variation depending on your academic advisor). I transitioned from academia to a startup that was far more exploitive than anything I experienced previously, but the exposure it gave led to another startup that has been the exact opposite (generous compensation and equity, great colleagues, etc).

In each case (various academic labs and the two startups), my loyalty was to the biological problem we were trying to solve rather than to the institution. I selected advisors and startup based on the problem that we were trying to solve (e.g. improving drug development and human health). As long as I thought the institution was making progress, I was willing to overlook a lot. I suspect that the video game industry and a few others might (space!) have a lot of people with a similar view of loyalty (and levels of tolerated exploitation).

I think I agree with everything you've said here, but I want to offer a caution to those who pursue hard work that is fun.

I've worked in all permutations of your descriptions. If I believe in a project and can get good results on it, and much moreso if I'm having fun, I will work very hard. If I don't believe in it or have trouble getting good results or no one cares, then it's very hard for me to motivate myself.

Obviously, I prefer the situations where I'm highly motivated, and in fact I've worked very hard on some projects. Too hard, in fact.

The fact that a project is something you believe in, that you're highly motivated, that you can make a difference with it, or that you're having a lot of fun, doesn't make overwork healthy.

I've overworked myself a couple of times in my life. I hesitate to describe the worst case; I don't think readers will believe my description of what I did. Suffice to say that I worked on a new system project at Apple and was highly motivated to make it succeed (it didn't). I owned a small non-tech business at the same time.

I worked way too hard for a while. I didn't mind it. On the contrary, I was deliriously happy to do it. Nobody had to ask me to work hard. But it still did me harm.

I don't know for sure that working like that caused or contributed to the chronic illnesses I now have, but I do know that the literature on one of them says that it's correlated with excessive hours worked and excessive exercise. I did both. (My side business involved a lot of intense exercise.)

Oh, and if the overwork did cause or contribute to my chronic illness, then it may also have cost me a fortune. I went bankrupt in the process of getting one of those illnesses properly diagnosed and treated. So even if hard work does happen to pay really well, that doesn't necessarily make it worthwhile--not even necessarily financially worthwhile.

Again, nobody made me work like that. I did it because I was motivated and having fun. It was nevertheless very bad for me. That became clear over the months after I did it, and I may still be paying for it.

You might think that I would have learned my lesson from that episode, and that's true to some extent. I've never worked that hard again. I have worked too hard since then, though. It's a consequence of personality traits, I think. It's a trap I can too easily fall into, even though I know better. So I have to keep watch and listen to my loved ones and my doctors when they warn me that I'm trending that way.

In short: don't think that fun and motivation make you immune to the ill effects of overwork. They don't.

thank you for this detailed post - I believe that you and others like you became enablers for a darkside of management at Apple. However with clarity and time you are re-balancing yourself.

source: directly worked at Apple in Santa Clara and Cupertino

There is something severely unexamined about middle management culture in that company, papered over by a culture of silence.

reminds me of the stories of pro ball players who work and train their whole lives to finally get signed, but they're one injury or bad season away from losing the stardom.

I'm the opposite, I have the chops to get mid-grade developer jobs (the leetcode stuff kept me from the "big leagues" of FAANG which I'm fine abstaining from, they would sniff me out very quickly) and live comfortably, but I have next to no motivation to get anything beyond the minimum done. I think ADHD is part of it (but its on me for never getting it diagnosed or treated), and sometimes I feel guilty for "stealing time" from my employer (yet I've never been fired for bad performance, somehow my JIRA tickets always get done-enough to stay afloat). I am passionate about personal projects though, and I love coding. I still get satisfaction from solving bugs, but realistically I'll never be more than a mid-level maintenance coder.

What do you think the threshold where you cross from “hard and fun” to “definitely overwork, you’ll hurt yourself” is? 50 hours a week? (10 hour days) Maybe 55?

I don't think it's that simple. There are too many variables. It's probably different for each person and depends on a host of health-related things. It's probably also different for the same person at different stages of life.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a simple number or rule or formula? We're not that lucky. You have to pay attention, preferably with the help of sensible people who know you and have an interest in your continued well being. And yeah, that can be the luck of the draw, too.

Perhaps it's for the best, because if it was a specific number, companies would require you to work no less than this number.

>Wouldn't it be nice if there was a simple number or rule or formula? We're not that lucky.

no worries, big corpo will make one box fit all for you while extracting your time and labor. if you don't have enough, well tough.

>You have to pay attention, preferably with the help of sensible people who know you and have an interest in your continued well being

I'd love to have someone with that interest.

>There are some cases where working hard/loyalty/etc can lead to outsized rewards

People are so disillusioned to "hard work == comfortable life" that they might not even recognize it when it's real, or be incredibly suspicious.

There is also a separate, much bigger lesson in that if you make friends and/or play politics, you also don't have to work as hard and still get rewarded (sometimes massively).

When you layer all of these facts, it's really hard to sign up to be a hard worker. It feels more like punishment once you learn how easy the rich people have it.

> When you layer all of these facts, it's really hard to sign up to be a hard worker. It feels more like punishment once you learn how easy the rich people have it.

It is very easy to become extremely bitter when you're being lectured by someone who makes more in a month than you do in a year about "hard work"

Especially when you know their job is basically answering emails, giving a presentation once in a while, and golf trips with customers.

Do you really think that's ALL they do? My manager (who is the director of engineering of the company) does what you are describing and it may seem like a no-work job. However, he also:

-manages multiple, large, multi-year projects across multiple time zones -is a filter for the shit that rains down from upper-management (the most important role of a manager) -if any of these projects fail, he gets blamed (and most likely fired)

Okay, but imagine another Director of Engineering who

- Is responsible for managing large multi-year projects across multiple timezones and basically offloads all of his responsibilities to his direct reports and just asks for status reports now and then

- Is not just not filtering the shit from above but is also a source of shit from above

- diffuses blame downwards instead of taking any for himself, cuts people under him and is never disciplined when projects fail.

He makes as much or more than the guy you report to.

Who holds him accountable? His other buddies in upper management? Maybe eventually, but let's be real here. If he ever does get fired he gets a golden parachute and worms his way in at another company in no time.

Maybe this isn't true at the middle manager-y layer, but it's definitely a pattern we've seen plenty of examples of with executives and other upper management types.

I have had co-workers that got paid the same amount as me and did much less (and knew less). This happens with any job and is not exclusive to management.

This sounds like /antiwork fan fiction.

It’s often ‘I killed myself making everything perfect, and that asshole didn’t even say thanks!’.

Some bosses encourage it, some bosses try to discourage it (and fail), some bosses don’t even notice.

Been on both sides. In the end, the ‘hero’ is usually the one that is the actual problem, unfortunately, and can’t stop.

The accountability comes from the people under him leaving/actual poor results, or doing poor work because of burnout, resulting in poor results.

If it works well enough though, he’s fine.

A lot of folks don’t realize their value when they’re burning themselves out making your case look good, which enables it, and not even getting paid for the effort.

Those people often rant the exact same way you are, while not changing their behavior.

They also tend to be the most angry when their part is make clear though. So I guess it’s a good thing it’s at least semi anonymous here?

How is other people suffering him experiencing accountability?

What does suffering have to do with accountability, if everything important keeps working, no laws are broken, and the org meets its metrics?

If they leave and things blow up, then that impacts things no? Accountability is about ensuring someone gets held to account for the results of their actions.

Accountability doesn’t mean ‘they pay because I’m unhappy’. It means ‘if they break the law, they get punished’. Or ‘if they break the org or don’t deliver results their bosses want they get fired.’.

Being a dick of a boss isn’t illegal. Burning people out (when they do it voluntarily) isn’t illegal. Things they may be doing that cause that tend to be purely subjective and individual, and many people will disagree it’s even happening!

Punishing them for those may be vengeance, or revenge, lashing out, or whatever.

And since no one can make someone happy (or unhappy), and there isn’t even an objective measure of it, society generally doesn’t care about that legally. What would accountability mean in those cases then?

Going to jail because people don’t like you as a boss?

Making a hostile work environment is already against the law and actionable, if it can be proven. It’s a reasonably high bar though, and most environments people are pissed about around here likely don’t meet it.

It’s up to everyone individually to make those decisions and tradeoffs. They’re accountable for the results of continuing to work somewhere, or not, for instance.

It’s a two way street. In the sense of;

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” ― Anatole France

It may not be great, but other alternatives are so prone to abuse and shittiness that I personally haven’t seen many better alternatives.

I think that's what's weird about it. You're not paid for your work, you're paid for the value your work is expected create (although of course there are inefficiencies).

Someone with experience in a higher level role can make it look easy, and it is objectively 'easier' than a lot of jobs. 'Easy' discounts the work someone has often had to do to get into those roles, but it also highlights how privileged some of these people are.

Having a family that prioritizes education, the education actually being good, having the ability to focus on studies instead of needing money or to take care of family, the ability to go to college without worrying about finances... All these are huge levers that get people into these director+ roles, and those are things that aren't available to the wide swath of humanity. People do amazing things despite these challenges, but it's clearly harder to do.

This was basically my reaction when reading that post.

There are definitely crappy managers who don't bring much to the table, but a good manager does those same things but is a lever for their teams (and are invaluable as a result).

"basically answering emails" is usually also done within a context of subject matter expertise and long term career experience. This is akin to saying "programmers just bang on a keyboard and clock out at the end of the day, easy!"

When you're above a certain level you are not the subject matter expert anymore, you hire subject matter experts and have them give you options.

Maybe this isn't true in companies you've worked for, but it's still pretty common for "engineering manager" to be a title held by an MBA with no engineering knowledge.

I had a job where the systems engineering team was lead by a person who had an MBA, and didn't even know what an IP address was. And they were making customer decisions like "This deployment MUST happen tonight no matter what".

I plainly said "I will do my best to do the deployments, but if deployment scripts fail, I will NOT risk customer data to complete this task".

The CTO overheard this dictate by our manager. The CTO backed me 100%. And, she was the previous syseng for our dept, and worked up the ranks from helpdesk->syseng->cto. Fucking sharp lady.

I personally have never had a manager who did not at one time or another demonstrate detailed and outside technical knowledge. Maybe I am an extremely lucky outlier but I’ve yet to encounter the mythical MBA Engineering manager. Maybe things have changed over time?

I didn't either until I did. I think it is more common outside of "tech" companies.

people who've always been rich won't have much issue making money without working hard but for people who need to move up the ladder, i'm afraid without working hard you just can't make that leap. You have to work hard and work smart, optimizing for a long term success.

Too many people forget about the second part of the equation which is optimizing for long term success. You optimize long term success by constantly learning, creating and using that to leverage into positions with more responsibility / higher impact.

"When you layer all of these facts, it's really hard to sign up to be a hard worker. It feels more like punishment once you learn how easy the rich people have it."

Play the game, get rewarded. I've been a hard worker my whole life, but I now limit my total output, so my employers don't expect me to over-work myself 100% of the time. Life becomes much easier after this.

It also helps that I'm an hourly consultant. When the shit hits the fan and a company tries to force me to work nights and weekends to make a deadline that was a result of their incompetence/mis-management, they now have to think twice about it because it directly affect the budget.

> It feels more like punishment once you learn how easy the rich people have it.

For sure. A lot of HN went straight into STEM programs and then into STEM roles, and never had a chance to really do crappy jobs. I think of my brother's friend, who went straight to top tier tech school, then FAANG, than another FAANG. Nice guy, but he lives in a different universe and is painfully out of touch for anythign that doesn't involve hyperscalable infrastructure.

I worked wayyyyyy harder in bartending, or retail, or the military than I ever did in any IT/DevOps gig. And in most cases in IT I get paid 4-5x more.

I’ll be the counterpoint and say that all the shit jobs I did were way easier than any tech jobs I’ve had.

Working retail was boring but it was a joke in terms of stress or care. Working doing help desk IT work was similar. Same for other odd jobs I picked up.

Then I joined startups, big tech, etc. all in SV and the stress is insanely high compared to anything else. The hours suck even when you’re an aggressive guy like I am about WLB - because I still have to spend hundreds of hours preparing for interviews every year. It’s mandatory to keep your compensation high and to avoid the new toxic boss you just got.

I left a $1m+/yr job because the stress was too much. Experiences with tech is a wide gamut but my experience is one of it being a shit show. I have friends who get paid well and have good hours and a great work environment but I’ve never been in that side of being happy at my jobs. I keep joining shitty employers/teams - somewhat out of bad luck tbh.

I'm curious - how do you choose a team or a job? I wonder if there is something you're looking for that correlates with stress, or if you're just unlucky

There's very little choice involved. I interview with an assload of companies and go with whoever pays the most and/or whatever opportunity seems best for career growth.

Genuinely, I am rather unlucky. I've talked to many peers and even for people who have interviewed for the same job as I had - I constantly go through a much more rigorous process than others. I had to interview with directors, principle engineers, follow up interviews, etc. in order to get my last job when all my peers just did a typical onsite (2 coding, 1 behavior, 1 system design) for the same role whereas I did that in addition to all this other stuff. Same job and role - no downleveling or anything.

I have never had issues with terrible WLB, but I have also never sought out FAANG in SV (and never have been anywhere $1m+). The closest I've been was Biotech. I am not sure that I would trade my WLB for a much more stressful job that pays 2-3x what I make now. It could mean that my spouse "retire" from work and take care of the home and kids, while still maintaining the ability of hiring external help. In that case, the increase in work stress may be compensated by reduced stress of household management

I wish I could take lower income jobs. Sadly, I cannot. The majority of single women in SV expect a minimum of $500k/yr income (if you intend to marry and have kids) regardless of what they earn. Similar woes now that I live in NYC.

They all want the $3m house, private school, and the full-time nanny. If you get lucky - maybe you find one who will compromise for a $2m house but she'll give up her job.

I hate this dating market tbh.

That's not even remotely true. Not sure where you are dating but there are tons of quality women out there not like that.

>The majority of single women in SV expect a minimum of $500k/yr income (if you intend to marry and have kids) regardless of what they earn.

Did you really fall for that horrible tiktok "trend"?

rerfame it this way: say you have a 500k income and 6 months of savings (so, 250k dollars that is easily accessible. even in some stupidly expensive 4K/month apartment with 4k expenses in everything else, we're talking 2.5 years of living expenses). How much would it cost you to make it your full time job to work out, and figure out how to make yourself more physically appealing? I include changes in diet in that 4k "other living expenses" (even a wasteful $100/day of meals is $3k in expenses. may as well invest in something like Factor or HelloFresh).

You don't even have to quit your job, but it sounds like it's the kind of job that drains you dry. So let's just use that savings on yourself while you still have "you" left. enroll in a bootcamp, make it your full time mission to go out everyday and move around, find a good tailor to get some good semi-formal and formal clothes for you, find some new non-tech interests that let you tell more casual stories, maybe even invest in a life coach and figure out what you are(n't) doing that is(n't) helping. Someone with that income has the money to do all of this very comfortably.

There are way too many "studs" making ends meet on under 70k in high CoL areas to make me feel like someone making 500k can't do anything else to attract a mate. If it's that important, make use of that money you earned through sweat and tears and better yourself. I don't even think you need to change this much (if you're more into nerdy stuff, just find some good tabletop meetups or comic book clubs. You're in NYC you probably have any kind of esoteric social gathering I can name), but clearly there are some deep seeded mindsets or perceptions to correct if this is what you really think.

I'm not going to tell you to accept your body because I don't know you. But if you don't accept it, change it.

I’ve already done all this stuff around physical appearance. It hasn’t helped.

I’m facially ugly, short, and mixed race. These are all factors that single women utterly despise in our dating market.

I’ve talked to a lot of women btw. My talking points are from a lot of experience. I think many men here have not spent much time on the dating market in any recent time.

Have you ever considered that it isn't them, it's just your own perspective and boundaries?

I think it'll vary not just on individual prowess and interest, but in what kind of ways you want to grow. Bartending never "changes" but the people do. Even if every interaction is unique you learn a fundamental dozen approaches and your career is spent optimizing to identify what approach to use on which person. There will be a point where you get very comfortable and into the groove if you enjoy that line of work.

And honestly tech isn't that different. Except you will never get a groove if you move every few years and the stack and tribal knowledge never builds. It's like it a bartender changed towns every year, with each demographic widly different from the last. some skills transfer but you realize others are unique to this demographic and older skills may even be a negative. But if you're someone who always wants to be working on a new problem, this is a better deal. You'll never get "bored" so to speak.

>It’s mandatory to keep your compensation high and to avoid the new toxic boss you just got.

I feel these may go more hand in hand than we realize.

> I left a $1m+/yr job because the stress was too much. Experiences with tech is a wide gamut but my experience is one of it being a shit show. I have friends who get paid well and have good hours and a great work environment but I’ve never been in that side of being happy at my jobs. I keep joining shitty employers/teams - somewhat out of bad luck tbh.

You just made my point for me killer. The median salary in the US is like $57k/yr, and, obviously, for a lot of people it's much less The federal minimum wage is 7.25/hr, which is $15k annually, and people will be often working multiple shit jobs in the middle of nowhere just to make rent and not have the power/heat/water turned off.

Meanwhile this guy is getting $1M and boohoo sooooo stressful. Guess I'll have to go home to my fancy SV apartment and enjoy all of these amenities along with the pay bennies; not living in shit-tier parts of Indiana or NM, or MI, etc.

People would literally kill for half of that salary; often get killed for far less. The average bank robbery is like $6k.

> Same for other odd jobs I picked up.

odd jobs. one offs. this wasn't your life for the next 20 years, and you had options, clearly. how many kids did you have to feed on that money?

This is getting rhetorically close to "there are children starving in Africa so your problems in life are not valid."

>There is also a separate, much bigger lesson in that if you make friends and/or play politics, you also don't have to work as hard and still get rewarded (sometimes massively).

Because there is more to success and life than "hard work". Who can blame people (with money) who are willing to pay extra to be around people they want to spend time with ("make friends")?

There's a trope in the tech work that people should tolerate "angry nerds" because they are 10xers or whatever. Most of the real world doesn't operate that way.

Synthesis: Work hard at making friends and playing politics.

You make very good points and I personally agree with you fundamentally, however your example is a bit exaggerated: there are very few jobs where just "working harder" will lead to a 10× jump in compensation. Making 600K$pa would put someone in the top 1% of earners in the US, obviously not something generalizable to the entire population.

I do agree one must stay on the lookout for opportunities where working harder is rewarded, and also that one should try finding some joy in work. But also that one must stay realistic in their expectations, and that much joy is to be found outside of work (relationships, hobbies, discovery, leisure, etc).

Yeah. You don't get paid for hard work, you get paid for experience applied to lucrative problems.

IMO, you don't get paid for experience either. You get paid the minimum amount your employer thinks they can get away with without you leaving, capped at some fraction of the value you add,(less overheads, risks, etc).

Actually you get paid and promoted for making your vp and csuite earn brownie points.

Thats where the experience comes in

...which is the "applied to lucrative problems" part. VPs and C-suites get brownie points by making money.

Not always. It could be for starting new lines of business or just plan political wrangling. May even be something that loses the company money.

It's common for performance based RSU grants to stack up to this sort of total comp over a few years.

My first job out of college was at a telco making $72k / year.

I worked my tail off. Worked late. Never missed deadlines. Signed on after hours. Learned a lot. Followed process. Took lots of pride in my work.

And I got a lot better at what I do.

When 2 members of my 3 person team departed and all of the work fell to me, I asked for a raise to $90k. Seemed reasonable to me taking on the work of 3 people given my track record.

I was told that wasn’t possible. So I interviewed elsewhere with my updated resume and turned in my notice. Within a day of turning in my notice I got a counter offer.

Apparently, one of the corporate policies at this telco was to only offer significant raises for retention purposes if the employee had another offer. Which was nuts but apparently the only way to find out if you were valued was to interview elsewhere.

At that point, I was so annoyed that I decided to leave anyway…to another job where I worked long hours and was on call. But I learned a lot.

The hard work paid off and I haven’t actually had to interview for a job in about 15 years.

This is what I think about when I hear people talk about not putting in the extra time. If I’d done that, done only the job exactly according to minimum expectations I would have collected a paycheck…and probably been stuck in the same place.

>Apparently, one of the corporate policies at this telco was to only offer significant raises for retention purposes if the employee had another offer.

Yes, and I'm not sure if I feel completely negative about it. On the one hand, just pay up if the value is there, don't play games, right? On the other, the employer is "calling your bluff" about it being, more or less, about money alone. In the end, the policy works, I think.

Yep. The older I get, the more I understand it too.

I consider it a red flag when employers take antagonistic positions, such as “calling my bluff”.

That shows a clear level of disrespect and willingness to play games with my life — and is the sort of outcome one should expect if you allow departments like HR to engage in dark triad behaviors inside the company.

HR treating employees like cattle to exploit is a Day 2 failure mode.

Sure. It’s also really common.

Sure — and literally flies your planes into the ground.

Ask Boeing.

Sure - and do you think that means it doesn’t exist after that, or will cease existing at any point in the future regardless of how much we want it to?

Sure — we see that behavior routinely destroy companies who engage in it, while the opposite causes corporate growth.

This creates a constant flux of new companies engaging in healthy partnership with their employees and old companies cycling back to rekindle growth — and which removes the ones who engage in that problematic behavior, persistently.

So that behavior always brings about its own cessation.

See my point about “Day 2”.

Engaging in Day 2 policy is a choice; working with Day 2 companies is a choice.

There’s nothing at all which requires this phenomenon, other than people make lame excuses as if dark triad behavior is some unavoidable law of physics.

Sure - except plenty of companies and gov’ts are steady state this way and don’t end up destroyed by it. At least any faster than any other companies/gov’ts seem to be.

You’re ’just world’ hypothesis’ing all over the place here.

I’m not saying it’s good behavior. It’s far more widespread than you’re giving it credit for, and it has far less connection to bad results than you are giving it credit for.

Often, the ‘good’ companies just paper over it better, but it’s still the same policy - but fewer folks end up seeing it so directly.

How else can an employer decide who to give a raise to or not? What prevents everyone from asking for a raise?

I think the employer-employee relationship, especially when it comes to salary, is inherently antagonistic because our interests are basically 100% oppositely aligned. An employee always wants to be paid more; an employer always wants to pay less.

> an employer wants to pay less

Your dark triad mentality is showing through:

An employer doesn’t have an inherent reason to pay less — they have an inherent reason to increase value of the company.

That people conflate the two goals of the company is purely a result of unchecked dark triad thinking in HR — and the preference of exploitation over growth.

This is a Day 2 failure mode because the substitution of your real goal (“make more money”) for a dark triad goal (“maximally exploit my workers”) leads to self-defeating behavior on the primary goal: you make less money by exploiting your workers.

However, as it satisfies the desire to abuse from unhealthy people, we tend towards that defective behavior when dark triad behavior isn’t regulated appropriately.

I wouldn't necessarily say that wanting to pay an employee less is "exploitive," just as I wouldn't label an employee's desire to make more an attempt to exploit the company either. I'm just saying that those are opposing goals that are going to make it difficult to build a fully aligned relationship between the two parties.

Not sure I really understand how this position relates to the Dark Triad concept. I thought that these days DT was really only bandied about by people in the pick-up community with something to sell to frustrated men.

I would call attempting to earn more than a fair share of the value you create “exploiting the company”. You’re the one creating a false impression by insisting that those are the only goals one could have in this situation:

You can interact in modalities besides trying to maximally exploit your partner — and game theoretically, those cooperative modalities are dominant.

The mistake you’re making, due to viewing the world through a Machiavellian lens, is supposing that’s the only or even optimal strategy — when empirically and theoretically it’s not.

That you closed out with a lame insult (“muh incels!”) shows perhaps my comment struck closer to home than you’re comfortable with.

I have worked for two big American companies (global headcount ~300-400k) and two big companies from Europe (global headcount ~50-70k - hard to find any bigger that have their HQ here).

These "dark triad" corporate failure modes you describe I've always suspected are a distinctly US-American phenomenon and I have always avoided companies headquartered in the US because of this. We do have exploitative companies founded here as well of course but their practices pale in comparison to what I've seen people go through at the American counterparts.

And this is why pay transparency is a legal right, as part of discussing working conditions with colleagues.

Then again, I think the next step to move towards is to recognize that we techies are going towards "factory code-work", and to respond with unionization appropriately. And unions arent just for getting more money, but also demand for payment of overtime, sane vacation policies, remote work, and more.

And yes, I'm an 8-n-skate. Want me longer? Fuckyoupayme. I dont work for free.

Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Accept a counter. Never. Why?

If they didn't recognize your value before and they only recognize it when you threaten to depart, they aren't respecting you any more w/the counter; they're just using that to stave off the impending issues that arise and will likely take any future opportunity to recoup that 'loss'.

I actively advocate, in advance, for my team. They have clear expectations on what the next step in their career w/us is and have a general idea of what to expect salary wise when they reach it. If they're looking, it means that I have failed them in my #1 core competency and priority as a leader to ensure they are getting what they need out of their day to day and I would prefer they openly communicate with me in advance of their feeling a need to look.

If you are not getting this out of your current leadership, find a new job where your leader will be someone will be that advocate for you. Very often, people are a company's most valuable asset and they should work hard to retain that asset without rigamarole.

I wish a had a manager like you, even just once in my life.

sighs deeply

Keep up the good fight. I hope your people appreciate you.

They claim to like me and, being that several of them have worked with me at multiple companies over a 15 year span and at least one other has requested I take them with me in the future, I would probably say they appreciate my style.

That said, to respond to another commenter, policy can certainly cause friction with this sort of methodology and I have definitely run into it in the past. But, leaders exist to navigate company politics so their direct reports have more time to deal with the work they do; any friction encountered that is insurmountable points to deeper organizational issues and can (and in my case does) necessitate my moving somewhere that allows me the autonomy to build strong teams and develop high performing teams.

It doesn’t harm to negotiate. Yes, there was clearly a failure, but it could have been a middle management or HR level fail. Or a poor policy.

I think the first thing I struggle with in this worldview is that companies don't think about roles as "how much value" they bring to the business. If they did, most ICs would be paid far more highly. But since employees negotiate as individuals, and companies negotiate as huge orgs (or cartels of orgs a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...), an employer is able to pay you just enough so that you won't leave.

Without a competing offer, how can they be sure that you'll actually leave? Showing them that you can forces their hand. But you're still extremely unlikely to be receiving anywhere close to your supposed "value" to the business, and unfortunately mere managers can't really change such a fundamental misalignment.

An example I have from work is: We all have the idea that we're working 40 hours a week, on Monday to Friday, averaged across two weeks. This sets the normal pace, but I have no problem pulling one or two 12 hours days to put out some massive production fires. It just has to be clear: This means at least 1 day of me not working, usually - if you add in overtime rates - much rather 2. Weekend work is handled in a similar way. 3-4 hours on a weekend are 1 weekday off.

If a company respects this and cooperates this way, I'm perfectly fine pulling long hours if necessary, or weekend work if the criticality explains it.

But at the same time, if you start micro-managing my hours and start being picky if I organize my hours on a day around some long-running tasks I just need to wait for... I mean be happy I'm doing laundry off the clock or counting reduced time while the archive system is shoveling data towards servers, which requires minimal monitoring. And I have a phone notification setup if it does something weird.

This has always been how I work as well.

If you call me at 10pm I'll pick up the phone, if I roll in late or sneak out early or take a long lunch, I don't want to hear anything about it. quid pro quo.

> In contrast, working hard in a place that doesn't reward you is sad. Slacking in a place where you can succeed more if you try harder is also sad.

I understand the place where this comes from, but I don't agree. I think this is a very personal thing and there cannot be a single approach that works for everyone.

But for me, if I'm not trying my very best I can't continue doing the job. I'm internally motivated, I know that I'm doing a great job and can be proud of the work, I don't need others to tell me.

I can think of two jobs I left over these sorts of issues.

One was abusive -- VP told my manager to write me up over an email I sent out asking a question about software they were using. That was on a Thursday, I was gone the following Monday. I was later told that VP was removed because she regularly made people cry (she was just mean).

One because I realized the politics meant I couldn't do a good job. I had stepped into a fight between a manager and a CISO and the CISO made sure we were setup for failure. 2-3 months after I left they moved the manager directly under the CISO and he quit.

but in general I've not found myself getting exploited. That doesn't mean I always agree with what management is doing but it's generally been well-meaning by earnest people and I sometimes think if people feel they're constantly running into management like this they might be mis-interpreting. Oddly enough, I've found the larger companies (multi-billion dollar companies) to be more pleasant than smaller companies where it seems tribalism is much more rampant.

I totally agree and thank you for sharing these anecdotes. I think your point is a good one - ideally you find yourself in a work environment that lets you be the kind of employee you want to be (and ideally that means a productive and engaged employee in a rewarding environment)

I'm curious how the rewards in the "best places" to work look like. There was a famous study that found that developers are happy when they get enough money not to care, but in real life this doesn't seem to be the case. Whenever I speak with my management buddies, they always lament about engineers who complain they're not being appreciated enough. When asked what proper appreciation would look like, they always give various answers which always boil down to money (i.e. "you could praise me in front of everyone for the great job I did, but actually want a raise / more money than the guy I perceive to be a slacker").

If we're being honest, one is employed by the company to make them money, so it will always more or less boil down to this. Would anyone be satisfied that they made their boss a million more, while getting a pat on the back and the same salary?

Praise is cheap. If a company really appreciates you, they will give you money. It's how they keep score. (Or some cash equivalent like stock, or options.)

to paraphrase Mad Men:

"you don't appreciate me!"

"that's what the money is for!"

(I am the person you're responding to). For me personally, comp is an indicator that I am working on something important and that I am being appreciated - so yes, when I talk about being "rewarded" I am talking about comp and other tangibles like flexibility, etc. in addition to respect. And look, if a company has been good to me but there's a tough year and everyone gets small raises, I can roll with that as part of the longer term commitment, but that has to be offset by fat raises in fat years.

This might be different for people who are happy to work for small comp in a non-profit or a lean startup, but I struggle to relate to that personally (doesn't mean they are wrong but its not for me.)

I really like your formulation of the issue. I am currently in a tough spot where I'm not recognised and rewarded, and after some reflection I had two choices: either I slow down to the level of everyone else, or I find somewhere else to work. I chose the latter, based on the perspective you describe here. For me, life is too short to waste it at half-power most of the day, and I actually feel bad when not working hard. Working only enough to pay the bills is probably more sane, but I cannot do it. The challenge now, of course, is to find somewhere where this attitude is adaptive.

(I am the person you're responding to.) I think your attitude is right and will pay you in the medium or long term if not immediately. You can't control what you can't control but you CAN control a lot - how you work, how you look for job, etc. You'll be fine!

I suspect almost everyone on HN isn't legally bound to their employer, so I also reject the "exploitation" bit.

But I do want to challenge the compensation argument:

> For example, it's common to see HN posts describing someone as "subjecting themselves to unpaid overtime" when they work hard - meanwhile the person saying it is making $60K while the person being talked about is making $600K.

Higher paying jobs naturally have higher expectations. OTOH, I've also had managers/ employers who used "we pay you well" an excuse for all kinds of garbage treatment, specifically _avoidable_ garbage treatment: short notice evenings, weekends, _holidays_; denying vacation to compensate for staffing; pressuring folks to return from (legally protected) medical or family leave; required to do work completely out of the job's scope; and so on.

Now, some jobs are inherently like that. If the expectations are set up front and adhered to, then it's a free choice on each side. IME, lots of jobs don't have to be that way, the expectations aren't set up front, and expectations change. It takes only one jerk with a title to ruin things.

The employee side of it is to become the "de facto" owner of something important, and making the calculated move to "big salary raise or I'm leaving". Obviously you need to be backed up with another offer and be prepared to leave.

You can't use that often, but doing it at the right time, it works. Worked for me at least :)

told a coworker to do the same thing recently, lol.

like "bro if you get hit by a car things are gonna get ugly -- so leverage that"

we'll see if he will

// and making the calculated move to "big salary raise or I'm leaving"

Even better is to be in a place that's smart enough to pay people to begin with because it hires the "best" (ie people with options.)

Agree, but over the years - and being in the meetings salary raises are discussed/approved/rejected - I see this pattern that companies only act if they perceive urgency.

The quiet person doing an absolutely amazing job is never seen as an urgent case. It is sad and I don't agree with this view at all, but my opinion is not enough to change the system, so I need to live with it.

Even in that case, I'd never do the "big raise or I am leaving" move and I wouldn't respect someone who did. If you gotta play that card, I'd do something much softer like "hey, I love working here but it's getting a little hard to keep hanging up on these recruiters offering me 3X.. can we talk?"

What's the difference?

I've done this, and company didn't take me seriously. So then I did get an offer and said I'm leaving - then they actually did something.

I respect your PoV and I know lots of people who consider “big raise or leave” move unethical.

Personally I think it is a negotiation and a financial transaction - I’m trading my time for my salary and I better make the most out of it.

At the same time - from a negotiation perspective I find unlikely showing your hand in the way you describe is going to work in your favour. In practice, it also has the potential to backfire and you being branded as “disengaged” and a “flight risk”.

PS: please note I’m saying this in good faith, don’t read my comment with a snarky/sarcastic conotation :)

Hell no, I personally would never stay after giving an ultimatum like that. If the backup offer is more, I'd just take it and leave. If it's the same, I'd leave if management is toxic. If it's less, I'd still leave if management is toxic but probably burn a few bridges along the way :)

I think the right strategy is to try and select for a place that rewards you properly for hard work in interviews. If you're in a place that doesn't slacking is generally bad for your career so my advice is mostly to move on rather than slack. It's very hard to keep your career on an upward trajectory if you put in two years of slacking somewhere. At some point that's going to hurt you in terms of the sharpness of your knowledge and what you can demo/talk about on your successful projects when interviewing.

>At some point that's going to hurt you in terms of the sharpness of your knowledge and what you can demo/talk about on your successful projects when interviewing.

I don't think this is a real problem IMO. If you learned it in the first place, you can learn it again after slacking off for a bit. You might need a few months for the focused effort, which is honestly not a cost but probably what we in the industry call a sabbatical.

It may add some risk to getting a job if your life is suddenly turned upside down after slacking and you need a job right this instant. That slacking might fail you some interviews, but not all of them. Even in this situation, there are financial options and temp jobs to get by with.

I don't think anyone should ever be convinced that if you stop practicing something that your ability disappears completely. I'd put some faith into the idea that you can relearn it just as well or better when the need arises.

I'm not saying your ability disappears completely. I also think it depends on the job market you're in. At my current company we interview under 1 in 1000 applicants because we get over 500 applications a day for open roles. The job market right now is not the same as the job market three years ago where you easily got 10 interviews, could pass 3 of them and then have a competitive negotiation with multiple companies. If you need to be in the top 0.1% of applicants to even get an interview you're going to get far fewer interviews. This is especially true if you are trying to push the limits on compensation and applying for positions that may be a slight stretch for your current experience.

I think "slacking" is a very politically loaded word. For example, it has a strong connotation with dodging the draft [0]

Doing less on the clock and doing less in FOSS/personal learning are two separate categories. You can do less on the job without inhibiting growth by using that energy for personal work

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker

How do you determine if a situation is "actually" exploitive? On one hand, you could say that no employment arrangement is exploitative if the employee agreed to the terms. On the other hand, you could argue that every employment arrangement is exploitative if the employer is making profit and thus could may employees more than they are.

> you could argue that every employment arrangement is exploitative if the employer is making profit and thus could may employees more than they are.

Employer is also bringing in the value to the relationship: most software projects, for example require more than one person. If you was just a freelancer you wouldn't even be considered by the client, when they choose the vendor. Your company also insulates you from legal and financial risks (such as contractual penalties for not delivering the project on time). That's why they take some part of the profit. Now, what the fair split is, that's an endless debate.

> I find that some people will perceive themselves to be exploited and orient their life around avoiding it, regardless of the situation...

Right it works both ways; some people will be blind to being exploited. It really makes me doubt that I have anything even remotely close to an objective view of things that are close to me.

// makes me doubt that I have anything even remotely close to an objective view of things that are close to me.

So first of all, that is the wisest perspective on life! Human perception is objectively limited and recognizing that we may not be seeing (or even capable of seeing) reality is empowering.

But on the topic of exploitation vs fair compensation, I don't think it's impossible to figure out where you stand if you can move your feelings out of the way. Say you're a developer making 600K in my previous example, where an average dev is making I dunno, 150K. Being at 4X the average is a pretty good sign that you have a pretty decent gig going. Can you and should you push it to 700k? Absolutely! But probably no room to feel victimized.

On the flip side, if you're making 60K and hear of someone making 600K - it's less obvious how much of that is you and how much of that is someone underpaying you because they are greedy or because they can't? To suss it out - question #1 is - can they even afford to pay more? Like if you work for a mom-and-pop whose whole profit might be 600K for the year, you're in a pretty capped situation no matter who you and and what you'd do, so in terms of pure comp you should find something else. And then - how do you know if you're "as good" as the guy making 600K? One thing to try would be to interview for those FAANG jobs and see how close or far you're to landing them. If you are capable and persistent, you find yourself there. Maybe not making 600 but not making 60 either. On the flip side, if you can't then maybe you can't and maybe 60 or something like that is fair.

Still no guarantee of objectivity but this is how one would gather the data.

> But on the topic of exploitation vs fair compensation, I don't think it's impossible to figure out where you stand if you can move your feelings out of the way...

See, I'd like to think that's something I could (and already) do, but from the outside watching other people try to do this and fail utterly -- anything from "If you have a boss, they are exploiting you period" to blind loyalty to a company that clearly is exploiting people -- I do have to spend some time second guessing myself.

> Can you and should you push it to 700k? Absolutely! But probably no room to feel victimized.

People always compare themselves to their peers. If you are making 600k at FAANG then yes, you are better off than those making 150k working for a small software company in Pennsylvania, but that is completely irrelevant to you. What matters is that your FAANG colleague, two desks away, is making 700k - he's not better developer than you, is he?

Maybe not, but it helps to remember that productivity is hard to measure and that what they value may not be what you value.

Yeah it’s funny, I’ve generally always worked hard and been rewarded. Occasionally I’ve had a bad job or a bad boss and I’ve moved on quickly. I do have an anti-authoritarian streak (got me in trouble in school), but I’ve never felt exploited in the workplace.

A big part of this is the privilege of working in software where my skills are highly valued. But even here I see people with a victim complex all the time. The whole “the only reward for getting done early is more work” indicates a deep misunderstanding of both the problem-solving leverage we have as software engineers as well as how to have your value be recognized by your employer. It’s not about working more hours, it’s about understanding the business and making your own work effective. This is completely orthogonal from maintaining clear work/life boundaries, which you should also do, and most reasonable places don’t have a problem with.

Trouble is that it is really hard to find these places and the place might be like that when you join and stop being it as it grows, so there's never a good solution other than continuing to go other places and see if they're better.

I totally agree. This is very on point

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