I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Having so little free time and so little time to spend with friends and family seems like a sad life regardless of the paycheck.
I agree with this: "Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card." I also agree that "Showing up a lot increases your odds" (in this case meaning working a lot of hours), but I just don't think it's worth the trade-off.
Life outside of work is, for many of us, far more meaningful than work. I thought this feeling was extremely common, but judging by what gets to the front of HN I'm in the minority here.
If I have to work 80+ hours a week to have the absolute financial freedom to live the rest of my estimated 40-50 years on this planet in any way I chose, nevermind ensuring similar benefits accrue to my family, then I think that's a pretty good deal. I still have down time and plenty of fond memories -- you just have to plan how you spend that time a bit better.
I live in a part of the world where a lack of financial resources is death. Every single day I pass by people begging for money and for work, and I live 5min away from my office. My crappy little second hand Fiat is worth more than combined net worth of every person I pass on the street. I remember seeing a documentary once where a labourer said something to the effect of: "I work like a horse so that my children can work like dogs, so that their children can live like people, and their children can be free."
And before any says your children should take care of themselves: try telling that to a child born with severe autism or down's syndrome, or some other disabling birth defect. If you're not planning for your family so that you can enjoy your younger years a bit more fully, you're taking a huge, selfish risk.
I'm much more fortunate than that guy was - my parents worked like dogs.
Remember, there are two variables in the equation: (hours worked) * (hourly rate). Try to avoid the temptation to max out the left side of that equation early in your career, since you have a lot more control over the right side than you think you do.
Look at what you're making now (assuming early career from the tone of your post). Now know with near certainty that you'll be making double that five years from now. Maybe 4x or even 8x by the time you hit 40. Does it really make sense in that context to toss out your entire 20s grinding on that entry level salary? Even though you'll be able to make up the entire difference with a single year of 40 hour weeks fifteen years from now?
Work on your value. Never just trade time for money.
1. 6 years, largely and increasingly specialist financial industry work, earning 5x what I did when I started, so you're right on that point. Unfortunately some curveballs have meant the net effect on my QOL is not as great as you'd expect.
2. Only 40-50 hours of those theoretical (i.e. subject to life) 80 hours number are billable. The remainder are my attempt to escape the rat race -- what is the hourly rate of those hours? Impossible to know - that's where the risk/reward of entrepreneurship lies.
3. As far as I can tell, I have maxed out the right side as a "no name" (although it's quite difficult to know if this is true!). From what I've been reading, and what you've confirmed by saying "work on your value", the next step is to make a name for myself. This is a tricky concept for me. Any advice? My current strategy is to direct my energy at building something in my "rat race escaping" time that will draw attention to me locally, hopefully leading to new opportunities.
The problem with this parable is that it equates two different scenarios. A fisherman without extensive financial resources is not the same as a person with extensive financial resources choosing to fish. Here's some alternative endings, in a country without social and medical support in place, for you to consider:
1. The fisherman develops a serious illness and finds he can no longer support his family. His wife, who was barely getting by on a fisherman's income as a housewife, finds herself working at a local bar, serving drunk, lecherous men every day and night. His son and daughter find themselves unable to afford an education and really don't want daddy to die. With mounting medical bills, the son finds himself involved in crime to support his family and is eventually sent to prison for life for a crime he didn't commit. The daughter meets a wealthy man and everything is great until he starts hitting her. But at least she can support her father, lying on his deathbed in hospital. Daddy eventually dies but by that point she's stuck with 2 kids married to a man she hates.
2. Oh but medical welfare would solve the problem in #2? Setting aside that this is contrary to my stated scenario (a country without medical welfare), consider this scenario: the fisherman loses his fingers and toes in a freak fishing accident.
3. Oh but somehow he managed to afford an insurance policy that paid out on disability? Setting aside how unlikely this is to be for people barely making a living wage, consider this scenario instead: the nearby waters are polluted by an American oil extraction firm, and the fisherman finds himself scrubbing toilets at McDonald's to support his family. The American happens to come by one day and leaves him a nice tip.
None of these should cause a wealthy man to go bankrupt.
It can cause a business to go bankrupt, and a wealthy man to become much less wealthy, but otherwise either you are stupid or you are diversified; and it's easier to 'stay there' than to 'get there'. If a stock market crash or, say, Madoff hurts you then it's bad luck; but if it destroys you then it's stupidity.
For example, Bill Gates should still be wealthy even if Microsoft went completely bankrupt at any point since mid-1980ies. Sure, he probably wouldn't be on his malaria campaign in that case, but it wouldn't hurt his life that much.
None of those would bankrupt me, without everybody getting bankrupt. An emergency fund and a modest lifestyle + a decent tech income = lots of security. I also avoid "straight tech" jobs, where there is no strong vertical experience. I work on data analysis and predictive analytics applications, which means I could easily make a jump into several other fields in no time. Call me paranoid, but I refuse to be the "HTML Designer" of the next crash.
Absolutely a valid, if tangential, point - businesses are not without risks. But if you want the reward, you have to take the risk - and I want the reward. Aside from that, you get to look back over your life and, whatever your mistakes, say "at least I tried". Better than "damn I was lazy, you kids better support me."
The parable is nice, but it certainly does not apply here. To quote the GP:
> I live in a part of the world where a lack of financial resources is death
In that setting, any cent that you can accumulate on you bank account is a life insurance. I can totally understand that the GP wants to spend some time in his life working like crazy so that for the rest he can work less while still enjoying a moderate amount of safety. It certainly beats working part time all your life and worrying about how to pay today's food, heating or rent.
It seems to easy to get stuck in between the two, though - working hard, but not hard enough to retire early, but still not having time to enjoy life as the Mexican fisherman.
> working hard, but not hard enough to retire early
instead of thinking of work, think of it as creating value. If you are employed by somebody, you are creating value for them, which you take a % as salary/wage. If you work for yourself, all the value you create, you get to keep.
This means, that to get financial freedom, you must work for yourself. This is difficult, and often impossible if you don't already have any capital. I feel this is the true problem with society - that the poor cannot retain 100% of the value they generate because they lack the capital to do so, and therefore, forced to work for somebody else, and get back less than 100% of the value they generate.
> to live the rest of my estimated 40-50 years on this planet in any way I chose
It seems like you quite enjoy what you do. When you retire are you just going to give up that completely? If not maybe it is something you consider. You can earn a pretty healthy salary not working 80 hours a week, and you might get some ideas of what you want to do when you have financial freedom, rather than just slouching in front of the TV because you are too tired from working so hard for the past 15 years.
Disclaimer: I'm currently earning >$100k working 40 hours a week doing Rails development. There are smarter people than me out there, there is nothing special about me in that regard. I just don't want to spend every waking minute working at 25.
On hours: I'm reasonably good at what I do. But there are other things I'd enjoy more. Consider that I work 40-50 hours/week at a normal job, and the remaining 30-40 on escaping the rat race or dealing with this troublesome thing called "life". If I'm in front of a TV, it's with a laptop.
On freedom: At 25 and with your income, it's likely you can have plenty of freedom and fun while putting away a fairly decent portion of what you're earning into e.g. ETFs or ETNs and by the time you're my age, 30, you'll have far more freedom than I do.
Unfortunately I was pretty naive at 25, and I have people to take care of now, so my only option is go big or go nowhere. I don't really have any comfortable middle-ground.
Apologies I think I misread your first post a bit, so my comment may have seemed a bit overly harsh.
I don't think the family thing is much of an excuse for having to work 80+ hours though - if anything that should be a reason not to work that hard. I know developers earning what I am, supporting a family like yourself, perfectly happy with their life. I guess it depends what you want though, if you want to send your kids to private school and not have them have to pay for their higher education then of course sacrifices need to be made.
I think it's easy for most people to agree that 80 hour work-weeks are typically bugs, not features - especially as they often seem to be a symptom of a dysfunctional working environment.
> Life outside of work is, for many of us, far more meaningful than work.
There seems to be a meme that this should be the case. My work is extremely meaningful to me, and my work place is extremely not-dysfunctional and no boss is breathing down my neck for my to work any number of hours. My personal life is also great. In a Sophie's choice situation, I'd choose my wife, obviously, but I don't accept the dichotomy. I love my wife and I love the time we spend together, but a few year ago when I down with the flu for a few weeks, my brain felt like it turned to porridge. That's not good for me and it's not good for her. Being professionally challenged is extremely important to my private life, and working with people who feel the same way about their work is important to me. Right now, I am getting enormous returns, both mentally and financially, from my work, and so I work a lot. I completely expect the calculus to change when we have children, but we don't yet.
I understand that there are people who don't feel the same way about their work, and there is no merit in working 80 hours for the sake of working 80 hours. But focusing on that number alone and trying to form some objective truths from first principles is not terribly helpful in my opinion.
"there is no merit in working 80 hours for the sake of working 80 hours"
Bad managers beg to differ with you.
Inevitably this turns into MBA disease where you rank workers by the hours present. Your boss deathmarches you for 85 hours a week and his competition only deathmarches his workers for 75 hours? Guess who's getting the bigger annual bonus, Mr 85 hours of course. You're only willing to work 75 hours, what are you not a team player (aka why aren't you willing to destroy yourself to make me richer)?
Its very hard for someone who doesn't know anything about a domain specific subject to evaluate the quality of a specialist worker. On the other hand its pretty easy to record, graph, chart, and rate number of hours. Half of all managers by definition are below the median; 50:50 odds aren't looking so good.
The worst possible outcome is when professional goals and workplace metrics don't align. So I could do that in 40 hours of serious head down grinding, which would be OK if I only had to be in the office for 40 hours, but worker has to be present for 80 hours to meet the metric goal of appearing busy to show off to the other managers and get that bonus. Wish I could be learning a new language or technology or playing games sitting out on my patio at home for some of those 30-40 hours/week. Well, back to checking social media sites and watching cat videos so the time can get marked off as "present". Unless you're all open plan office in which case you either have to not give a F and do it anyway, or be very stealthy, or most likely just socialize and do busywork. Also over 50 or so hours work quality takes a sharp dive, so at 60 hours you're probably actually accomplishing less than if you worked 40, so now you "need" to work 70, which results in even less milestones accomplished, inevitably the negative feedback loop spirals out of control until you're present for the maximum physical possible time, yet accomplishing basically nothing.
"I think it's easy for most people to agree that 80 hour work-weeks are typically bugs, not features - especially as they often seem to be a symptom of a dysfunctional working environment."
I think, that you think, that I think, that we disagree, but actually I agree with your post and wish to extend it to show that 80-hour weeks not only don't align with personal success as per your well written post, but also 80 hours weeks do not align with organizational/business success.
My personal experience. There was a time in my life when the idea of having "free time" was a foreign concept to me. I took 12-14 credits in college, worked 60 hours (mostly graveyard shift), plus I had small online side projects (needed fair bit of time) which was making me $500/month and I was fairly busy socially and had a girlfriend. The commute to my work and to my school were both about 1 hour each (NYC subway) and most of time I would sleep in the train to make up for rest and would sometimes miss my stop. I did this for about 2.5 years (give or take).
Life was bit of a blur, so much was happening, so fast, it was hard to keep track of everything. But I LOVED it. I loved the rush, I loved having something to do all the time. I loved looking forward to vacation times dates or whatever leisure time I could squeeze in.
Now that I am older and have much more free time in my life, I am not even 1/10th as productive as I used to be.
Honestly given the choice I would gladly take a extremely busy life over all the free time I have right now.
Trust me I am not just sitting around with the all the free time I have. I try to take on projects, learn new things, take on difficult physical challenges (training for marathon), but its just not the same.
Your values are not universal to all humanity. Sometimes I work an 80 hour week. I do this because I'm engaged with something and I don't want to be doing anything else. When I don't want to do that, I work normal hours. I live how I want to live.
I have friends, family, and a life. I'm also naturally introverted, and sometimes I just want to put my head down for a week and jam. This is something I like doing.
Different strokes for different folks man. I think your life is sad if you can't understand that some people are different than you are.
Da Vinci most certainly worked 80 hour weeks, and I am sure he loved every minute of it. Why? Because he got paid to think up cool shit day in and day out. I have worked jobs that were so mind numbingly boring that I could barely muster 30 hours a week when I was single. Now I am married and could easily pull 60-70 hours a week at my significantly more interesting job. Work is the place you will spend most of your life. Do your best to find a place you can live with.
If he did work 80 hours a week, he could have accomplished the same amount of work in half the time, had he given himself breaks. Everyone knows productivity goes down when you work to long.
You should keep in mind that not everyone is able to work "80-hour weeks". I myself would not stand a chance. It is cool if dedicating your life to work like this works out for you, but it is irresponsible to hold it up as some ideal which everyone must aspire to.
I'm not sure if this was the intention of your comment, but I get the general sense whenever this subject pops up on HN that you aren't really doing your best if you aspire to a regular 9-5 workweek. Nothing could be further from the truth - I am a very ambitious guy, but I will refuse to work longer weeks unless it is absolutely necessary. And if so, only for a limited amount of time. Violating this will literally ruin my mental health. I am not the only person who works this way.
> I'm not sure if this was the intention of your comment
Definitely not my intention, although I did not specify. An expectation of anything over a 40 hr/wk average is completely unreasonable IMHO. I only meant to say that some people happily choose to work over that average for periods of time.
It is so fascinating to me that advertising a job as "not 80 hour work week" is a major selling point. I mean, kudos to you, you will probably attract a lot of skilled developers with this attitude. You will also get almost as much done as someone who does 80-hour weeks.
Where I live, by law you're not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week. If a company violates this, you can literally go to court and get a summary judgement to get paid for every hour beyond this you worked, plus a 40% bonus for every hour beyond 40 each week. Most companies here don't do a lot of overtime, yet we're still at the very top of the list of productivity by country.
Where are you?
In the UK we technically have a similar thing but the employee can voluntarily opt out. Pretty much every job will request that you sign the opt-out form on day 1.
Does the rule apply to an individual or just to the individuals employment at a particular company?
For example can a person work 40 hours for company A and then 20 hours of company B, in which case can company B take on work contracts from company A using the same employee (who may or may not be the owner of company B)?
Arbeidsmiljøloven (the Law of Workers' Environment) is one of the strongest pieces of legislation in the world to prevent exploitation of laborers. This law has to be followed by everyone who doesn't have an exemption after an agreement between large groups of employers and employees. Basically, most of the nation has the advantages of unionized labor without the big disadvantages (rent-seeking, destructive bureaucratic processes, low productivity).
> In the UK we technically have a similar thing but the employee can voluntarily opt out.
There's a maximum 48 hour work week, which the employee can opt out of. That 48 hours is normally averaged over 17 weeks. (I have no idea what happens if an employer tries to use median or modal instead of mean). But the employee can not opt out of the other requirements.
The 48 hour maximum doesn't cover people who control their own working hours (ie, start up founder); the armed forces, the police, and the emergency services, in some circumstances; domestic staff living in a household; some boat crew.
Trainee doctors used to be exempt. They're now covered, but averaged over 26 weeks.
Some staff are not allowed to opt out - airline pilots for example.
Workers can opt in and opt out of the arrangement, but they must give some notice if they had previously opted out and now want to opt in.
And all of this is for workers over the age of 18 - 16 and 17 year olds can only work for 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week with no averaging.
The UK negotiated an opt out to the 48 hour maximum enforced by the European Working Time directive, though as you say it's something the individual has to agree to (though that can be just by agreeing to a job that stipulates the opt out in the contract).
I live in the UK and work in IT and have never had a contract that didn't automatically opt me out of it, however my wife is a doctor and they're all covered by it so work a maximum of 48 hours.
Worth noting that it's averaged over time rather than a set maximum for an individual week.
Also worth noting that individual countries can have stricter policies. I believe France has a lower maximum.
Of course there are substantial subsets of UK workers that "can" stick to 48 hour working hours, but where "everyone" know full well their career is fucked if you don't opt out.
Major law firms, for example, where the expected level of billable hours might eek in below an average of 48 hours, but given the amount of non-billable time, it's basically impossible to meet expectations and get promotions if you don't opt out, and you'll eventually find yourself sidetracked so thoroughly there's little reason to stay.
My ex works in one of those places - one of the magic circle law firms -, and she keeps fantasising about opting back in once she's set aside enough money that she can risk having legal career go down in flames.
I live in the UK too, and work in IT, and have never seen a contract that even mentions the working hour directive at all. If I did come across one, I'd probably laugh in their faces and leave, as it'd indicate bad things about the working environment to me.
At the moment I work strictly 9-5 due to childcare commitments (though I do occasionally have to handle emergencies from home). As in, I leave between 5pm and 5.04pm or so, every day.
The contract is fine but a worker can cancel the opt out if they wished (in writing, giving I think 7 days notice) and (in theory at least) they can't be discriminated against for doing so.
Worth noting too that the average of 48 hours a week is calculated over 17 weeks so under even under a WTD compliant agreement you could have someone work a month of 60 hour weeks so long as you reverted to 40 hour weeks for a while after to bring the average back down.
The problem here is that any piece of legislation in this category with a "in theory at least" clause against discrimination will become meaningless. This type of legislation must be mandatory, or at the very least subjected to individual exemptions based on centrally negotiated agreements.
In terms of in-office hours, that's not really true; it's more of a programmer thing. It's pretty common for engineers in other fields work regular 40-hour weeks, unless something unusual is happening. Partly this is because the classic professional workplace has fixed hours: 9-5 or 8-4. Many people have no choice but to stick to those hours closely, because they commute in carpools, so you can't go in early or stay late unless you convince the whole carpool to do so.
Admittedly, it is getting more common to do some email in the evenings nowadays, which sneaks in some extra non-office work hours.
Finding the right people for our team is far too important to outsource. We don't work with recruiters. Seriously, we have a recruiter vodoo doll; if you contact us we're going to stick a pin in it.
Love it. I'm a C# dev on the other side of the world from you, but I'll be here if you ever need me.
I thought this feeling was extremely common, but judging by what gets to the front of HN I'm in the minority here.
I think HN just likes stories about extremes. Stories of people working 80-hour weeks do play well here, but then so do stories of people living in cheap foreign countries and working 10-hour weeks, supported by semi-passive income.
Perhaps somewhere in between is 37Signals' philosophy of pretty regular workweeks (5-day workweeks in the winter, 4-day in the summer) and their "quality of hours, not quantity" philosophy.
I read this comment and realised something. Although it's not particuarly my goal to work 80 hours a week:
I would rather work 80+ hours a week in something that I valued and that complemented/benefitted my life, than work 40 hours a week in a job where I was always waiting for my free time to come around.
Maybe here they don't, but I think generally people see things your way.
I don't, and I didn't, even before I got into 'tech' and started reading HN. For me, the statement 'life outside of work is more meaningful than work' just doesn't make sense.
While I do treat 'work time' slightly differently than 'free time', the difference is not so great for me. It's mostly to keep some ritual and prevent weeks turning into long blurs.
In fact, I've never really treated 'work' as something so discrete. In high school, as soon as I figured out the 'tricks' to not getting kicked out of school and not failing classes, I spent most of my time doing what I wanted. I could skip many classes and engage in the few that interested me. And I had loads of time and energy left to learn stuff that I wanted to learn. Often I could make a deal with teachers to not go to class because when I was present, I was active and engaged, and I treated them like, well, just people, not bosses.
In university, there were less hoops to jump through, and there was more freedom, but once again I skipped classes I didn't care for (while making sure that I'd still have a decent grade and participate in group work), and actively engaged in the fun classes. Despite my absence, my targeted interested usually meant that I was one of people that the professors 'knew', rather than just a a face in the crowd.
And now, as a freelancer, I do make a point to set aside blocks of time for work, but for the most part I primarily try to make sure that I enjoy whatever I'm doing. Every once in a while a project feels like a chore, but for the most part I can choose the projects or the parts of projects that I enjoy or that I learn from.
Most of the time 'work' doesn't feel different from 'life outside work'. I love talking about my work and I'm baffled by my friends who make a point of actively avoiding the topic on a Friday pub night. I occasionally work in the weekend, but it doesn't feel like I'm 'losing' any of my weekend because of this. I occasionally take on projects that pay shit but are fun or helpful, and 'subsidise' this with bigger, often less fun projects.
Meanwhile throughout high school and college I saw classmates go to every class no matter the value, diligently do all the exercises 'just because', and complain about how it all sucked. Working as a contractor, I see colleagues drag themselves into work on Monday after a rough weekend of 'outside work life', and joke on a Wednesday about how it's almost Friday. And complain about how much work sucks.
I do get that not everyone has the freedom to find work that they enjoy, but what I don't get is that so many people do have that freedom, and quite a good safety net (especially here in Europe), but don't exercise it.
The happiest people I've known were generally the ones that didn't make a strict separation between work and 'life', but instead found work that didn't feel like work most of the time. It took a lot of creativity, effort and uncertainty to get there, but the results were worth it.
EDIT: I do realize that OP acknowledges this, so perhaps this should not have been a reply. apologies.
Not everyone enjoys their work. It's a sad reality. Most of us are just lucky enough to keep a monthly paycheck in our chosen fields at a rate that is almost a living wage.
Having said that, and I don't mean this as a slight to you or your particular lifestyle, do you have a significant other or children? This is probably a key question when talking about work/life balance. Because, as with all things, it's very important to strike a balance.
Generally when you're young and have nobody else but you to feed, your work life balance probably looks like WORK/life. Then, when you get married but before kids show up it looks more like WORK/LIFE. Then when kids show up it's work/LIFE. Then, hopefully it remains work/life for a long time and as you age it becomes work/LIFE.
I'm middle-aged and I've discovered that for me, I no longer identify with my job. I'm not what I do as far as work goes. It's gotten to the point that when I meet new people, I feel kind of awkward asking them what they do, knowing full well, the social norm means, "what do you do for a living?" I generally answer that questions with, "I'm a husband and a father...that's what I do.".
No offense taken. I do not have children and currently no SO, and I do realize that this makes a big difference. As I mentioned, I do understand that not everyone has the luxury of finding 'nice' work. What I said applies mainly to those that DO have this luxury. I just think a lot of people, especially in Western Europe, have this luxury and don't use it.
Shouldn't the knowledge that your freedom is likely to diminish as you get older actually motivate one to not lock into a particular job directly post-college, but instead do everything to ensure that you're on a right 'track'? It just seems so important to make sure that the thing you do with most of your productive time is actually something you enjoy...
As for work/life balance: I'm by no means a workaholic most of the time. I work to save a bit, and I keep a low financial profile, and as a result I could potentially get by (currently) on even just two days of work a week. The reasons why I've worked hard were generally 1) saving/pension, 2) passionate about a project, or 3) saving to take significant time off to explore (which in turn often offered me new avenues of revenue or fulfllment)
But to provide some context. My main inspiration has come from a somewhat unusual childhood and the unusual lives of the adults that I grew up around, especially my parents. They went 'off the beaten path' early in life: young parents with three young children off to work in a developing nation (and before that basically volunteering). I believe this choice has been crucial in their path. It resulted in years of poverty and uncertainty, but they were young and happy, and found they didn't really need that much. And here in western europe, we have a pretty good welfare system for the real emergencies.
As a result, they developed something of an entrepreneurial/adventurous spirit and never quite got back to normal, even though they've been 'home' for the past decade.
Their entire approach to life just seems... different, and not primarily because of personality, but because they never went for the 'default'. They never lived above their means. They learned to be happy with very little.
My father has a 'regular' job nowadays, but it's something he's passionate about, and there has always been a certain fluidity in how he treats work and the rest of life. My mother started a business a few years ago (shop) and suddenly had to learn everything that comes with that.
What I always remember most is that despite growing up relatively poor, and despite a relative lack of security, despite serious illness and hardship, and despite a background that isn't all that great, they're among the most happy people I know. And I think it's primarily because their whole life has been an adventure that they faced together, with us, the kids, in tow. And I've met too many people like them to think they're just a lucky exception.
That said, I do not mean to imply that it is the only valid approach, or that this is an option for everyone. It's just that I'm baffled by how many people don't even try.
(also, as I'm getting older I'm becoming more and more convinced that having a family is one of the most gratifying things you can have in life, and at least something I deeply respect. I'll probably get me one of those eventually even if it does mean losing some 'freedom' :) )
I have to clarify one thing for you though. Having a family IS extremely gratifying but it doesn't come at the expense of freedom. Simply put, your priorities change. What may seem like a loss of freedom to you now, will probably become less and less important to you as you take on a family.
There is something immensely gratifying in doing work that you're also passionate about..don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that for a lot of people I know, a job is simply a means to an end. That end being, putting food on the table to feed your family and if you're lucky, your SO can stay home with the kids for a while (which I was fortunate to be able to provide for). I wouldn't say that I'm passionate about my work. I enjoy it but it's not who I am. I don't identify with it anymore. I identify with how my children are as people and I identify with my relationships with others. The old adage is true, I will never say to myself (on my deathbed) that I'd wish I'd spent more time in the office...
> I have to clarify one thing for you though. Having a
> family IS extremely gratifying but it doesn't come at the
> expense of freedom. Simply put, your priorities change.
> What may seem like a loss of freedom to you now, will
> probably become less and less important to you as you take
> on a family.
Hmm. I'm glad this is true for you. It's certainly not true for me (or most parents I'm close friends with).
Don't get me wrong, I love my wife and daughter and wouldn't trade them in. But I have mourned my adventures lost and I expect I will continue to do so.
It's certainly also true that emotionally well-balanced people don't dwell too much on the impossible, and I strive to find joy in the very different opportunities parenthood presents. I also have found my priorities adjust with partnership and parenthood, so some adventures no longer have the same allure.
But I would never counsel unattached people that parenthood doesn't entail dramatic loss of freedom. That just sounds like crazy talk to this parent.
Rather, I'd say: parenthood can be wonderful! But I sure recommend getting your fill of adventure before embarking on reproductively oriented sexual activity.
Interesting. Maybe it's all about changes in priority throughout life. I feel frustrated to see so many of those around my age settle for and into something that perhaps at a later time would be fine, but just seems like a waste currently.
I'm still pretty young, but I already notice how priorities change. I feel less of a need to be part of a 'clique' than a few years ago, for example. But I'm happy that in my college years I joined a student organisation and had all the 'clique' I needed, because I'm pretty sure it would've felt like something I'd missed out on otherwise.
My frustrations don't primarily stem from a belief that there is one 'path' that makes everyone happy, but primarily from the belief that, living in the richest part of the world at a time where we're still doing quite well (Holland/Germany/etc.), it's such a waste to settle for less than something that makes you happy. And yet many of my peers do just that. I often try to think of ways to change that, while being mindful that my path to happiness does not apply to everyone (or I try to, anyways. Plenty of youthful arrogance left in me!).
Anyways, thanks for the advice/perspective. I'm sure that my priorities will change significantly as I age, and I try to be mindful of that fact.
People avoid talking about work on Fridays because for the most part it boring to listen to. That's not to say interesting things don't happen at work but for someone that's not directly involved making or missing say a major project deadline is irrelevant to them. And the specific's of designing a new CPU / Space Probe / Power Supply rarely interests someone in say Marketing.
Sure after a few years you may pick up a few generally interesting story's, but there rare and people only want to listen to those story's once.
That's true. But what this means is that I actively try to hold back from talking about work to avoid being a bore... but I still want to! The people I know that actively avoid it, often avoid because they just don't care for their job.
Most of the work in software is done in head without computer. I think I effectively write code for maybe 1h-2h a day in very high intesity bursts, rest is just refining ideas/architectures in head. The latter I can do it while doing some boring house chore or while driving.
My take is that it depends how you define working, or a job.
If its something you do because you have to for the money, a means to an end, then I agree with you. 80hrs is near slavery, even the standard 40 ish hrs is my idea of pure living hell. But, 80 hrs of that? No.
If, however, you are doing something you would literally be doing anyway because its "you", then the number of hours "working" is no longer relevant. Even if the job is 40hrs pw most people, who sort of are their job, will be working one way or another regardless of being in a place of work or not. When I have been in this situation, even if Im doing the family or social thing, my head is still on the project. All I want to do is leave, and keep "working". But its not "working", it is simply what I want to be doing. I just happen to be being paid. To me, that is not "work", or a "job".
It's a maturity thing. I worked 80+ hours a week in my 20's, couldn't understand why anyone (my co-workers) wouldn't. The work fascinated me, and was secondary to getting spannered in bars and clubs, which is what others my age were doing.
Things slowed in my 30's - the social thing got more important, and I'd seen and done enough to realize how appallingly inefficient most of planet earth is, so I started doing stuff on the side for myself. Net effect is my work week dropped to maybe 50/60 hours a week. When I hit 42 I became a father, and now 40 hours a week seems unobtainable. I probably average no more than 35.
You choose your path. What seems right today may not be right tomorrow. I regret none of it, and given the chance would do it exactly the same again.
to be frank about it those types are literally gambling away time of their lives. they're going for a huge payoff which might mean they won't have to work ever again.
all these posts about "making an impact" and "being good at what you do" are all bullshit posturing. they really want is marketing material to show investors that they can be trusted with their money. the problem is that those kinds of shitpiles get confused with actual content around here.
it's like the hacker news equivalent of meme posts on reddit, except instead of karma points they're hoping for actual dollars.
I absolutely hate the idiots that praise long work. Praise hard work. Praise efficient work. If you're working 80 hours a week (and aren't a founder), then you are a chump.
The whole point of work is to fund your life. People lose sight of this and started romanticizing long hours.
I guess I'm possibly damaged in that I don't find life (including my own) to be inherently valuable unless I'm doing something I'm good at and/or effecting some kind of change on things (it just happens that the things I'm good at and changes I can effect are fairly marketable and so they became my job).
I don't work to live, or live to work, I work to work and live because the alternative (very probably, at least) lacks opportunities for interesting work or socialization.
I try to get into hobbies (which seem to by definition be doing sorts of work which aren't marketable or impactful) but it's hard to find the point in them. I'll likely never get good enough at say, guitar for it to matter in any way.
If I've got nothing social to do on a Sunday evening, closing a ticket at least makes the customer and/or a few hundred of their end users a bit happier come Monday morning. If I'm hourly on the project then it's a few more bucks for my retirement account. All in all, it handily beats feeling like an idiot clumsily flailing on my guitar for a few hours - though I sometimes choose to do that anyway.
> Two weeks before the class was over, the head of the deployment team asked, “Steve, are you single?” Yes. “Do you like to travel?” Sure. “Why don’t you come to Korea with us when we ship the system overseas.”
The first of those questions was completely unnecessary, and invited a potential employment discrimination lawsuit; it fairly directly implies they might not have made the offer if he wasn't. It would have sufficed to find out if he was willing to travel.
Its a dangerous question to ask anyway, not because its against the law, but because it is somewhat ethically grey - the candidate would feel they've been discriminated if they had answered that question "poorly".
> There is no federal law about Marital status discrimination, only state law, and not all states.
Asking a woman if she's married could lead to being accused of sex discrimination -- "she's married, and she's a woman, so she'll want to quit to start a family" [or, "she'll have extra home responsibilities because we all know women do the bulk of the work at home"]. I'm not saying that would be a sure-fire claim, just that it could open the door to that accusation.
The weirdest part of the meta discussion is the fixation on legality rather than morality of finding out if someone is single.
Also its an extremely bad business strategy. Take a single dude who probably loves the night life to Korea on a deployment, what could possibly go wrong? If you're planning a party that sounds like a fun plan. On the other hand I hate traveling, so if you pick me I'll get that system up and running faster than any human being on the planet, which sounds highly profitable.
It was likely asked in a perfectly moral way as in, "Do you have any family reason why you couldn't pick up and move to another country next week?"
Moving someone to another country is a huge life change. More so if there is a spouse and/or children involved. Sadly, political correctness makes casual concerns something to be litigated over.
> It was likely asked in a perfectly moral way as in, "Do you have any family reason why you couldn't pick up and move to another country next week?"
A "perfectly moral" (and more appropriate to the goal) method would be to exclude the reference to family and just as "Do you have any reason why you couldn't pick up and move to another country next week?"
I mean, if the intent isn't just to discover information about their family structure, there is no reason non-family reasons would be less relevant than family reasons.
People say things. Some of it is immoral. Some of it is stupid. Some of it is neither, maybe just throw-away. In this case, actually, the original question about having a family stuck in the author's head (not in a bad way) for decades. He thought of it as a good way to introduce the next part of his story.
It seems a shame to me that we're so knee-jerk politically correct that we can't allow people to not say things perfectly the first time, even when their intent was perfectly harmless.
You are blowing this so much out of proportion. I wouldn't have given that question a second thought. Why should I? It's a perfectly normal question and I can understand why it is being asked. If you are single, you have the flexibility to travel.
If you aren't, you have a family to look after and that opportunity will be reserved for someone else. I'd be excited if they asked, I'd be thrilled to travel.
It would have sufficed to find out if he was willing to travel.
Ah, but it would not have sufficed. They were planning to go whoring in Korea. (Yes I am reading between the lines here.)
That's why they asked, "are you single?" A committed man is more likely to spoil their fun. He might abstain, he might look askance at the other men, he might underscore their infidelity.
You're right, however life is never perfect. Most people make statements/questions off the cuff (without the assistance of a team of lawyers whispering into their earbud communicator).
So if you're in a position of responsibility over employment, sit down for an hour or two and learn the handful of questions which you should never ask, lest you get sued.
I think you may be overthinking this a bit much. It seems like it's just a joke about extended business travel, and they would have made the offer either way.
> Trust your instincts
> Showing up a lot increases your odds
> Trust that the dots in your career will connect
> Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card.
So basically, his advice is to just hope everything works out okay. What he doesn't explicitly point out is that all of the success in his story is based on being a really good bullshitter. If you can bullshit well, you can get promotions, you can get jobs, you can get a lot of things. If you can't bullshit well, you're out of a job with barely any cash in a place you're not familiar with, and probably soon calling your parents to wire you gas money to get back home.
I've also been fired the first day on a job. But I had savings to fall back on, and then got a much better job a few months after. Trust your back-up plan, not connecting the dots.
Maybe, but being the kind of person to hustle your way into a job in a situation he described is pretty impressive in itself, and he showed a lot of savvy in a short space of time in gathering the intelligence to work out the pitch that meant they had to hire him.
So yes, 'showing up' a lot is very important, but it's not the only lesson I take from his story by a long shot.
As a mid-40s year old male, I can assure you that working 70+ hours a week will eventually kill you. Your body will respond in ways you never expected in your youth. And it's insidious. It will sneak up on you and catch up to you when you least expect it. If you're lucky, there will be time to take corrective action.
For me, the stress has manifested itself in the following ways, I have high-blood pressure, I have fatty liver, I have high cholesterol, I'm overweight, my eyesight is horrid, I grind my teeth while I sleep which has resulted in broken teeth, I have one gold crown and another chipped tooth and have a really messed up "sleep" schedule.
I have chronic back problems, allergies and get frequent colds.
All of this due to the stress of working long, hard hours. Keep in mind that I have a diet which is better than the typical American's. I've cut a lot of sugar out of my lifestyle.
If I drove all the way across the country and heard that on my first day. My middle finger would be raised very high as I shouted profanities as I walked out the door.
But the author kept his cool and it worked out, maybe a trait I need to develop.
Seems like the guy has a point. Title's been changed. And the meta-data of the source publication (http://steveblank.com) is lost in the process. About par for the course. Linkedin is a needless re-direct.
I don't understand the elitism that happens around here about where content is located. It's fine to say that you don't use regularly Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook etc because the signal/noise ratio is bad or it's not something you want to sign up for. But to refuse to click a public link to even see what it is?
so you knew where an alternative source of the same post is, but chose to make that completely unnecessary post about how you don't read articles on LinkedIn, while pretending you haven't read it?
Maybe he doesn't click linkedin links because they track and report what you've viewed if you're logged in, but once it was on pastebin he was happy to give the original source.
Maybe he doesn't click linkedin links because they track and report what you've viewed if you're logged in
All decent browsers support private tabs/windows nowadays, you can just open the context menu to open the link in one. It'd take less time than writing the post.
I don't believe private browsing masks your IP, and I'm not sure it changes your user agent either. It's very likely LinkedIn can still track your activity if you're browsing in a Private tab.
LinkedIn was on HackerNews for doing _just that_ a few weeks ago. That is, associating your IP address with your identity and tracking whose profile you clicked (to report back to them) even when you're not logged in.
I agree with this: "Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card." I also agree that "Showing up a lot increases your odds" (in this case meaning working a lot of hours), but I just don't think it's worth the trade-off.
Life outside of work is, for many of us, far more meaningful than work. I thought this feeling was extremely common, but judging by what gets to the front of HN I'm in the minority here.