You are reading it rather more harshly than it was meant and ironically your comment has probably exacerbated that. While I wish the discourse here could be my primary focus, I can't spend hours researching each commentator, I say what I honestly feel.
It is a wall of text, it's hard to really pick out what he is arguing.
It is the top comment at the moment and I felt it hadn't been effectively challenged and this is an area that I actually feel strongly about. I fundamentally disagree with the conclusion of his comment, which admittedly may just be mine. In my reading this is what I perceived:
Historical employer/employee relationship + Freedom of contract = unshackled startups encouraging hard work (with an overarching definition of a 'professional' and hard work = lots of hours)
There's an overall theme to his comment which is 'it's a factor of the historical way of the relationship between the law and the employer and the employee'. I don't fundamentally disagree with that. But only if we were talking about accountants or lawyers or retail employees or engineers or architects, etc.
I am cherry picking out the arguments as to why this theory should apply. Why is this a particularly compelling argument for the field of modern startups or programming, neither of which have to be shackled by convention as they're not established industries.
Perhaps he does agree with the general gist of my comment, ignoring any unintentional insult, but the comment and the underlying assumptions about what is career development and hard work certainly didn't. I am attempting to demonstrate that there is no link between many 'professional' industries as they operate on different models. I fundamentally disagree with several statements in there like I think they see it as career development and I will not begrudge them the choice to work exceedingly hard (especially as they are first developing in their careers) to achieve other "unbalanced" goals.
There is no choice if that is the culture of the company or even, as it seems in this case, the country.
Grellas writes thoughtful, balanced posts that come out of more years of experience than the median HN user has been alive, in a domain where most of us know little and are in serious need of a trusted guide.
What he wrote above is a high-quality legal and historical and cultural explanation of why programmers don't get paid overtime in the US, something I've often wondered about.
p.s. I'm sure it's true you didn't mean to be rude, but "A gentleman is one who never gives offense unintentionally." By the way, anybody know who said that?
You guys are taking this too far. I've not been around here that long, but I've seen much ruder posts go by without this level of chastising. It seems like the only reason this moral pile-on occurred was because he dared to challenge one of the celebrated community regulars.
I feel you guys trying to belittle someone into humbling himself before your 'special community member' has clogged up this comment section and completely detracted from the entire discussion. On top of that his argument isn't half bad, which can be justly noted by it being one of the top reply comments.
I don't need Matt to apologize or genuflect to George Grellas. But we get maybe one 'grellas comment every other week when we're lucky, and you can be sure that when someone tries to chase those comments away for being overlong, I'm going to call it out (if nobody else does).
It's not a waste of time or thread space to point out the value that Grellas brings to the site. I'm not doing it because Grellas is "special"; I'm doing it because his comments are extremely valuable. I've never met the guy.
The world will little note nor long remember what was said about Matt Manser on this thread (in fact, neither will I), but at least the thread now says "long 'grellas comments are a good thing". :)
Hm. Was it Newton? No wait! Gandhi! Nah, couldn't be. Dante? No... maybe it was something they used to say at Burroughs. Oh wait no, I know! Eleanor Roosevelt!
:)
Aside: I have roughly the same feeling for someone who's glazed over all Grellas' posts as I do for someone who's never watched more than a single episode of The Wire: envy. You missed out, Matt Manser! Go read his backlog. It's great stuff. Also 'anigbrowl, 'tzs, and 'dctoedt.
>>In my reading this is what I perceived:
Historical employer/employee relationship + Freedom of contract = unshackled startups encouraging hard work<<
Then you should read more closely. (Sorry, I say what I honestly feel.)
I think the comment you extract in the second to last sentence of your post is much closer to what OP is arguing. "It's not for me, but who am I to tell you that you can't reach for that brass ring?" If you read it in that light, from the perspective that free choice is a good thing, the argument doesn't "fall flat on its face".
>>There is no choice if that is the culture of the company or even, as it seems in this case, the country.<<
This would be true, except such countries don't exist. There is always a choice, even in places with notoriously bad working conditions (China, India, Vietnam, etc.) This culture may exist in some companies, but luckily, in more free market systems, most industries aren't controlled by one or two companies. To wit, even in the legal field in the U.S., there are many positions available that only require 40 hour workweeks.
It is a wall of text, it's hard to really pick out what he is arguing.
It is the top comment at the moment and I felt it hadn't been effectively challenged and this is an area that I actually feel strongly about. I fundamentally disagree with the conclusion of his comment, which admittedly may just be mine. In my reading this is what I perceived:
Historical employer/employee relationship + Freedom of contract = unshackled startups encouraging hard work (with an overarching definition of a 'professional' and hard work = lots of hours)
There's an overall theme to his comment which is 'it's a factor of the historical way of the relationship between the law and the employer and the employee'. I don't fundamentally disagree with that. But only if we were talking about accountants or lawyers or retail employees or engineers or architects, etc.
I am cherry picking out the arguments as to why this theory should apply. Why is this a particularly compelling argument for the field of modern startups or programming, neither of which have to be shackled by convention as they're not established industries.
Perhaps he does agree with the general gist of my comment, ignoring any unintentional insult, but the comment and the underlying assumptions about what is career development and hard work certainly didn't. I am attempting to demonstrate that there is no link between many 'professional' industries as they operate on different models. I fundamentally disagree with several statements in there like I think they see it as career development and I will not begrudge them the choice to work exceedingly hard (especially as they are first developing in their careers) to achieve other "unbalanced" goals.
There is no choice if that is the culture of the company or even, as it seems in this case, the country.