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Comment by tlogan | Hacker News Reader

Congratulation! This is how it should be done.

And I have a question....

All professors of management and organizations understand that work week should be defined differently for knowledge workers. And that most the important quality of knowledge workers is initiative.

So if you have 80 hours work week and all innovation or initiative is dismissed, that can mean two things:

1) you are not "knowledge worker" but just "coding monkey" (it is "above your pay")

2) the company sucks

Majority of tech companies require 7-day work week and they discourage any initiative.

Does this mean that majority of programers are not actually hired as "knowledge workers" but as "coding monkeys"? Or that majority of tech companies suck?

EDIT: This 7-work week is actually based on calculation: 5 days * 10 hours per day + 5 hours on weekend (just check email) which is 55 hours per week => 7 working days of 8 hours each.

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    Majority of tech companies require 7-day work week

I've been working as a professional programmer for the last 12 years, in 4 companies as an employee and a couple others as a consultant/freelancer. In none have I seen 7 day work weeks as a standard, nor have I heard of such from any of my many friends who also work as programmers. Am I an outlier?

PS I agree that tech companies (among others) often have a culture of overworking.

I put answer in my comment. Here is the answer:

This 7-work week is actually based on calculation: 5 days * 10 hours per day + 5 hours on weekends (to check email). All companies I worked required 10 hours per day. 9 to 5 is not looked nice unless you don't login in the evening and "do some emails".

Which tech company has 9 to 5?

There are plenty of tech companies that are very 9 to 5. People have lives and families outside of work. I've worked at three startups now and have yet to work at one where I routinely worked long hours. Good, competent managers who have lives outside of work definitely helps.

> This 7-work week is actually based on calculation: 5 days * 10 hours per day + 5 hours on weekends (to check email). All companies I worked required 10 hours per day. 9 to 5 is not looked nice unless you don't login in the evening and "do some emails".

I cannot believe you think this is the norm for tech companies.

I've worked 9-5 type hours at three companies. At my current employer, the office is empty by 6pm.

>>Which tech company has 9 to 5?

Plenty do. In fact, outside of the startup world, 9 to 5 is probably much more common in tech than in other industries.

You poor soul. That is not the standard. I work strictly 7.5 hours a day for 5 days. Anything else = pay me more for my time.

If you are working your schedule (10 hours a day, what the actual fuck), you are being taken advantage of.

>10 hours a day, what the actual fuck

I'm confused at your balking. Perhaps because I work in finance and shit hours are the norm, but 10 hours a day is not ridiculous. I work that almost everyday unless it's a busy week.

Yeah, finance. That explains it.

I'm in finance...

What do you do in finance?

I develop internal applications in the investment banking sector.

Ah, by in finance I meant working directly in finance. I work as a financial analyst.

Even my buddies who work directly as analysts pack their shit up at a certain time. I guess it's just that we have great management that cares for us. It's our banks policy to very strictly enforce work life balance. You get scolded if you do too much over time, regardless if things aren't getting done.

I would like to clarify that I would love to work 40 hours a week. I was only saying that 50 hours isn't exactly horrible.

I used to slightly better hours in Hong Kong, but now I hear it has got worse (i.e., other have echoed the 10 hours per day number that you mentioned). I was offered an Executive Director role at a big bank and could not get myself to say 'yes' because we all know what that means : blackberry operator 24 x 7. :-(

any normal one

anything over 40hr is overtime and I expect to get paid for it and not to do too much of it anyhow

I've mentioned one experience before. In the past 13 years, I've been at two large companies and three startups. The large companies never required seven-day work weeks on a regular basis, crunches yes (a couple of times a year), regularly no. Of the three startups:

- one was in the 40-50 hour week normal expectation, no serious spikes due to the way we worked over a 2 year period. - one was 40-50 hours per week with regular (every 2-3 month spikes) - one was completely insane and expected 60+ hour weeks (it was saner pre-"coming out party", but barely). This company had no concept of planning, if things were behind, the solution was more meetings rather than cutting features. Senior management on the team was more apt to either not be around or play ping pong while engineers worked away. Technically, it was the most diverse project I ever worked on, but the most poorly run...that was a reflection on immediate management. Launch was 60+ hour weeks plus I got the fun of doing ops since I knew most of the system.

That third company taught me a lot, probably most directly, the value of work life balance and, especially as a lead, pushing back on poor planning and management. My goal as an engineer has always been to deliver and provide end user delight, but that needs to be balanced with balance for myself.

Totally agree. Engineers are stripped of all their power when their ability to choose their projects has been taken away. They get reduced, as you said, to simple code monkeys. It's insane.

Doubtful any research has been done on the matter, or that you could accurately do a survey or dig through data (Resumes? Job postings?) to get an answer.

However, statistically speaking, it's likely not an either/or scenario. I'd be willing to bet that it varies greatly and there is no "majority," additionally what about the companies that suck and only hire monkeys?

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