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It actually makes me uneasy that 40-50 hours is considered "normal". I know 40+ hours a week is very typical for any fulltime job, but that's SO much time. Between that and driving, cooking, sleeping, doing housework, etc, we have practically no free time (or at least I don't). I also don't feel that I'm any more productive after about 30-35 hours a week; anything over that and I may get burned out, which negates any benefit from the extra time.

Maybe I'm alone, but I doubt it.

I agree, I'd actually much prefer 30 or 35 to 40-50, but our society isn't set up well for that. There are tons of employers who will pay you market rate for normal effort --- normal being defined as 40-50 hours/week of diligent work.

What you can do tho is put up with the 40-50 hours a week for a decade and then have the rest of your life to decide what you want to do with each hour of your day and not worry about how much society thinks you should dedicate to working.

There are many employers who will pay you market rate for 40-50 hours of presence, half of it spent frittering away time on the Internet. But essentially none who will pay you nearly as much for a true solid 20-25 hours of real effort without all the "looking busy" time wasting.

This too. Another reason I am for financial independence

Yeah... I really wish it were the other way around, because I hate wasting all those hours, knowing that nothing good came out of that time.

Someone I know works where a new regime is enforcing hours: 9 to 6. Effectively they have reinvented detention. (NB: don't tell me about Google and Cisco, because this isn't. A fair part of their staff is very effective at 35 hours per week, and another fair part is ineffective at any.)

Or you could go into contract work. :) That's what I ended up doing, and I'm considerably happier now than when I was employed fulltime (and I happen to make more as well).

To be honest, I'm not sure if a decade is enough to secure financial independence, unless you get paid a ton.

I've mentioned this a couple times before but we hire Rails engineers for 24-40 hours a week + health insurance (in fact we're majority part-time at this point).

It's not for everyone, but it works well for us. We're all fresh and relaxed at work, and the free time is great for learning, side projects, exercising, travel.

Anyway, we're actually hiring right now: if you're in the Bay Area and looking shoot me an email.

Retire after 10 years of salary work? I don't think so.

The SV jobs comes with perks that eliminate cooking, doing housework and so on. All 3 meals at work, having a laundry machine and a maid every 2 or 4 weeks plus some really basic clean up is plenty enough to keep your house cleaner than the average american. Also avoid commuting by living close to work. You also integrate fitness into your workday during lunch and so on.

Makes you wonder WHY Facebook is building their own city, or employers provide these types of perks.

This is nothing new, it's probably THE innovation of American industrial capitalism. Mirrors precisely what happened during the steel and then auto manufacturing booms: deliberate company towns.

And the following comes to mind:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

But I don't want to build my entire lifestyle around my job; it should be the other way around. What if I like cooking and eating homemade food? What if relocating to an apartment close to work isn't an option? I get that you have to make compromises, but I would much rather compromise on my job and enjoy the rest of my life than have a great job but compromise on everything else. This is exactly the kind of attitude that pushed me towards contract work instead of fulltime employment.

"But I don't want to build my entire lifestyle around my job; it should be the other way around. What if I like cooking and eating homemade food? What if relocating to an apartment close to work isn't an option? I get that you have to make compromises, but I would much rather compromise on my job and enjoy the rest of my life than have a great job but compromise on everything else."

Amen. I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks it's crazy that we as a society think it's normal to spend almost all our time chasing money.

I think there are a lot of programming jobs that don't provide every meal free and any sort of housecleaning service. In fact, country-wide, I'd say the majority provide neither of those. I feel like outside of the brand-new-startup-with-no-revenue scene, 40-45 hour work weeks are also the norm by far.

Those perks tend to be concentrated in the Bay Area, where they are worth more than elsewhere since people there tend to spend a vast portion of their income on housing.

True, but even elsewhere (I live in Portland, OR), I'm starting to feel the "hussle" attitude infecting startups. I think it has a lot to do with investments: startups with a lot of cash are more likely to overhire and overwork their developers (in exchange for great pay), whereas bootstrapped startups that have less cash can't afford to pay huge salaries, so they instead need to make their company appealing by providing a better work schedule, etc. I don't know that there's a causal relationship there, but it's just an observation I've noticed.

Might work if you don't have a family. All three meals at work? What better way to set up a freeway to divorce for any potential employees who are married?

The life insurance policy protects against divorce.

Hah. That's a good one. It's good when someone else has a dark sense of humor too.

You don't have to have the meals, many people leave by 5pm and some people bring the dinners with them when they leave at 5pm!

But for people who don't want to spend the 2hrs/day total in decent food prep & cooking, it's there for them. Maid service and such is something you usually pay out of pocket, most of the times it's just meals & a gym.

I generally work approximtely from 11am to 6pm (from home, so I have no commute), which adds up to 35h/week, and is more than enough for me.

I can work more if I have to but I'd be pretty miserable in the long term.

I've found it's really only possible for me to do highly focused, productive coding for about 5 hours per day. I can spend other hours doing more routine things but for any kind of serious problem solving or implementation the quality of my output drops pretty precipitously after that.

So much so that it can actually be counter-productive to squeeze in a few extra hours because I'm likely to just make mistakes I have to undo the next day.

> This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. I get 10 emails a week from recruiters and founders trying to get me to come work for them. Don't put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit.

1. To be in the top 5% of earners nationally, you need a household income of more than $180,000/year[1]. In the San Francisco Bay Area (which includes the Peninsula and South Bay), you'd need household income of $350,000 to be in the top 5% of local earners. Most single twenty-something engineers in Silicon Valley are not earning more than either number.

2. Emails from outside recruiters != decent job offers. Recruiters are drawn to warm bodies, so they'll talk to anyone who they think they might be able to put in front of a company. While some companies choose to work with them, keep in mind that because a relatively small percentage of new hires typically come through recruiters, candidates brought to a company via one are often at a disadvantage right off the bat.

3. A lot of companies here, particularly startups, expect work and work-related activities ("culture fit" often involves extracurricular "fun") to be a big part of your life. What that translates to in terms of hours will vary, but if you believe that those founders attempting to lure you away from your current job are offering you a straight 40 hour work week that guarantees you your weekends, you're probably going to be disappointed.

I'm not saying "put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit" (it almost never makes sense) but the notion that "you can do whatever you want" and take advantage of the hot job market in Silicon Valley is a bit unrealistic.

Based on how your current employer responded to your threat to quit, it sounds like you have made yourself invaluable to your employer. But if you think that a big-name tech company or hot startup would respond as favorably to the same threat because "we have the power, not the employers", I suspect you'd be in for a rude awakening.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-p...

Regarding (1), it seems you're comparing individual incomes with household incomes. Due to the prevalence of dual-income households, this is a fatal mistake. Two engineers married in Silicon Valley, both one year out of college, will easily hit $180k in combined income, probably even $200k or more. That's why the local 5% mark is as high as $350k for households.

We are long way off until women's and gay liberation makes married engineers a common sort of family.

Regarding same-sex marriage, you don't have to be married to live together, and while I can't say for sure, typically in income surveys there's a distinction made between household income and family income, with the latter being reserved presumably only for formally married couples. If this pattern holds true in this case, then these data would include unmarried couples living together.

Also, there are a number of careers in the Bay Area that are going to pay a lot besides software development. I was really just using developers as a metaphor for any job paying in the low six figures.

This is exactly what's wrong with comments on the internet and it makes me mad to see it! Someone makes an argument, then someone else comes and derails the conversation by nitpicking at random stuff just to one-up the person instead of focusing on the overall argument and doing the least bit of reading between the lines.

What the author is doing is called "pulling numbers out of your ass". Whether it's 5% or 6% really doesn't matter! He's making a point. You get the point, don't you? His main argument is "You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers." And this is absolutely true! Any engineer with a bit of people skills and some self-respect (which is like only half of us) can get his/her way. The other half need some personal development before they'll get anywhere in life. It's the sad truth of engineering.

The thing is, what each person wants is different. If you want work-life balance, go work for a 100-person revenue-generating startup. They go home at 5pm. If you want to build your personal brand or get rich, go put in the crazy hours at the latest hot big startup that's trying to prove itself.

Apparently you didn't read my comment because the point was very clear: engineers cannot do whatever they want and expect to take advantage of the currently hot job market.

The author suggested that the average twenty-something engineer in Silicon Valley was in a far higher echelon of earners than is actually the case. Without any confirmation, he took emails he was receiving from recruiters to mean that he had virtually unlimited job options. And he assumed that the founders who were interested in recruiting him would be offering him a high salary in exchange for less than what his current employer demands. All these things give him a false impression of reality on which his argument was based.

No, not every six-figure engineering job in Silicon Valley requires ten hour-plus days day in and day out, but companies are not paying these salaries and offering perks like catered lunches and dinners, house cleaning, the best equipment, a free laptop, group events, etc. with the expectation that their most valuable employees are going to be out the door and off the clock at 5 pm.

If you truly believe that there is an abundance of six-figure 9-to-5 engineering jobs at major tech companies and funded startups here in the Valley, you're simply wrong. And as I noted, if the person I responded to believes that the type of threat he made to his current employer would be well-received at recognizable companies here, he'd be in for a rude awakening.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. When your employer is paying you, say, $140,000/year and needs you on a weekend to put out a fire or finish a major release, unless you have FU money and are working for the fun of it, you had better have another job already lined up if you're going to threaten to quit. And you might as well line up the next two jobs while you're at it because most jobs (in any industry) that pay above a certain amount come with the expectation that you'll go the extra mile when asked.

>This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers.

Maybe you live in Silicon Valley, but not everyone does, and not everyone is an engineer.

In a lot of professions grinding out 60+ hours is the only way to set yourself apart from coworkers and move up the ladder. Moving upwards may not be that important for an engineer who starts at $100k, but for most people who start out in the $50-$70k range it's the only way to enjoy a higher standard of living, better vacations, and pay off student loans faster. I would like to work 40 hours every week but I don't want to be stuck making <$100k for the rest of my life.

My comment was mostly targeted to young silicon valley engineers with big salaries but often pushed to work long hours and feel uncomfortable but don't know how to stand up for themselves.

However, I don't think anyone should be consistently working over 60 hours a week for any reason. When I say working, I should clarify that I mean going to an office where you have an authority figure telling you that you have to do x, y, and z for them to get a paycheck. I love programming on my own projects and could see myself "working" on those 60 hours a week, but I'd never work that hard to make anyone else rich.

However, even for your own projects, you still need to set aside plenty of time to eat meals with your family, play with your kids (if you have any), eat healthily, exercise, and meditate. Balance of life is the most statistically proven path to increasing your happiness and well-being.

For those making less than 6 figures, I don't think working ridiculous hours is the answer. For one if you can't think of anything else, become an engineer! I mean you are already on hacker news, what are you waiting for?

Ah, yes.

> I mean you are already on hacker news, what are you waiting for?

Haha, I have definitely considered it. I love programming as a hobby to create neat scripts, automate things, and gather/analyze data, but I enjoy finance as a career. Even the hours aren't too bad as I am working with enjoyable/smart people in my current role.

Have you considered moving to a different country where you would have a good standard of living without having to climb up on a ladder?

I wasn't saying my standard of living was poor, I was saying I'd like an even higher one.

Research suggests you won't enjoy that higher standing as much as you are think you will.

Wow, that must be depressing. In my country (Australia), our full time work week was recently re-defined from a maximum of 40 hours down to 38 hours per week (you can work a 'reasonable' amount of overtime, but it's discouraged because it usually accumulates as time-in-lieu so you can take those hours off at your leisure later on), you get a minimum of four weeks (paid) annual leave and at least 9% superannuation on top of your wage paid into your retirement fund (possibly going up to 12% in 2019).

I'd hate to feel pressured into working crazy hours like that.

I have had some cases where recruiters gave me an easy way out of a bad job. I've had some recruiters place me in a position that doubled my pay and challenged me towards greatness. Another recruiter gave me a really hard sell when I owed the IRS a lot of back taxes... If it wasn't for me they might not have pared down the project plan to something achievable and the might never have gotten the i's dotted and t's crossed and got the product in the hands of the customers, but my boss very specifically denied me recognition for my success.

The average recruiter, however, is filling a hole that is left behind by somebody who burned out. He's hoping that you can hit the ground running without any training, which is rarely realistic, particularly considering that 80% of programming work is doing what management expects to deliver 20% of the value. Because they haven't trained any of the other people working on the project you'll find that it's difficult to get any questions answered of the order of "how do I get this build consistently?", "how do I get this to build in less than an hour?", "which module is the right place to add that functionality?", "which applicationContext.xml file actually gets deployed to the assembly and how?" and stuff like that..

In a case like that you're set up to fail and you need to "think different" and start with the 80% of the work that gets you 20% of the way there, and then when the special job comes around where you're the best in the world you can sprout solutions like mushrooms.

it costs approximately 20-30k to live a good life... save at least half your paycheck

These two things are incompatible for all but high earners. Spend $30k & sock away $30k, pre-taxes that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $85k. Not an obscene salary by any measure, but hardly everyone in their mid twenties is in that position.

I'd wager (from various salary polls here, the nature of the tech industry, significant above-average intelligence and a hacker mindset) that the majority of HNers are in a position to save half of their income while living the good life.

It's not what you make, it's what you keep. In SV, it's hard to keep much. That's the trick.

I would agree its a bit unrealistic to be able to save half of what you make, unless you are in a relationship. I only make 52.4k a year in a very low cost of living area but once she starts making some money my living expenses will be so low I think it could easily happen.

Hold on... you live and work in silicon valley and you claim you can get by on 30k a year expenses?

Horseshit. The cheapest rent I've seen around here is 1500 a month, and that's almost 20 grand a year right there. Add standard utilities, food, insurance, and commuting costs and you're already pushing 30k. That's assuming you don't have student loans to worry about.

I totally agree that the power is in our hands, but it is far less simple to make that work then you are letting on. There is a reason salaries in the valley are so high... it's damn expensive to live here. If you're in a position where you may get fired for not putting in 60 hour weeks, more often than not your options are work 60 hour weeks or hope you get another gig before you're forced to move out of the valley.

Roommates or live in the east bay. Or a tiny space on the peninsula. Those are the only financially responsible choices. Personally I own a house in Hayward I bought for $340k and have a roommate. My direct housing costs are about $1100/month, and total expenses around $2500 including all travel, luxuries, etc.

Sure that may not be as fun as renting the $3000/month apartment in SF. You have to make choices. Would you rather achieve financial independence at 35 and live with roommates or in a less desirable neighborhood or be forced to work into your 40s? Not saying either choice is correct for everyone, but I definitely made my mind consciously on that question.

Reverse it. The salaries drove up the cost of housing. Standard auction economics.

Great comment. Too bad it doesn't apply to my reality. Still, I loved it.

I know we're not supposed to do this around here, but I'll do it anyway.... HEAR! HEAR!

You worked all weekend and then your boss gives you back just 2 vacation days? Great job!

You're being sarcastic, but there are times I'd be happy to be able to convert weekends to more vacation days.