Work Life balance slows careers

https://www.pathtostaff.com/p/work-life-balance-slows-careers-e9

by elza_1111 • 1 year ago

69 116 1 year ago

Well, at least he spared a moment for a reflection on how it's affecting his family.

serjester• 1 year ago

When I first started at Microsoft, I had a sleeping bag in my office. I coded until 11pm nightly and slept until 3am, at which point I’d code until ~6am, then sleep until my first meeting ~10am.

It’s everyone’s pejorative on what they want to focus on in life, but this is pretty insane. Obviously it worked out for him (so we think), but this sounds like recipe for a couple divorces and kids that hate you (even if he eventually slowed down somewhat).

tpm• 1 year ago

Prerogative. Although pejorative will do in this case.

david-gpu4• 1 year ago

pejorative [0]

I think you mean prerogative [1].

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pejorative

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prerogative

datadrivenangel2• 1 year ago

It's everyone's prerogative. But I certainly am a little pejorative towards the author, as whatever microsoft was building seems unlikely to be that deserving of an endeavor. The world has a place for enterprise b2b software, but I don't think it's a calling worthy of that type of sacrifice.

philk10• 1 year ago

also seems a recipe for poor quality work once you're over 40 hours a week

kwanbix4• 1 year ago

Side note: After 10 years living in Europe, I moved back to my home country and started looking for remote jobs in the US. It's wild what the US calls “quality of life”. In Europe, I had 6 weeks of vacation per year (from basically day 1) in the US, it’s 2 weeks! In Europe, unlimited sick leave is standard (with varying coverage by insurance); meanwhile, a US company bragging about being a “best place to work” was proudly offering 3 sick days per year! Absolutely crazy.

weberer• 1 year ago

Where is "in Europe" in your case? There are around 50 countries, each with their own laws. In Finland, you don't get ANY vacation days until the next time April 1st rolls around. And then, the number of days you get is heavily reduced if you haven't worked the entire year from April-April. Why is it like that? Who the hell knows. Oh yeah, if you take 5 days off, it counts as 6 days. So you essentially have 5/6 of the days that are promised to you on paper.

kwanbix4• 1 year ago

Germany. Spain should be the same.

Arubis2• 1 year ago

Generally speaking, whenever there's been an innovation that allows for efficiency gains since and including the industrial revolution, the US has opted to work as much (or more) and get cheaper goods, and the Euro zone has leaned more towards working less.

vonneumannstan2• 1 year ago

Theres a reason why everyone in the US is driving a $40k Pickup and people in EU are struggling to even get air conditioning lol.

kwanbix4• 1 year ago

As much as I love the US, now that I have lived in both paces, I bet that quality of life in EU is much, much better for 90% of the population. 40k pickup or not.

bgnn3• 1 year ago

I guess this is sarcastic?

Insanity• 1 year ago

Slows careers, but I guess "what's the point" of rushing through your career? You'll likely earn more money, at increased levels of stress, and while giving up on other things life has to offer.

I kind of resonated with the author when I was in my twenties, when I was really focused on work and gave up a lot of 'leasure' time to do so. Nowadays, I think a healthy balance is actually needed to live a full life.

Today I'm a Staff-level IC in my early thirties, and to be honest I sometimes think it would have been nice to linger a bit longer in the other IC levels, to get some more actual programming done versus time spent in meetings & playing a certain amount of politics :)

And as the years go on, I feel that I'm shifting my WLB more and more to the "life" side of the equation.

tayo422• 1 year ago

Your making like a half million a year then? You'll have financial freedom in a couple years...

yladiz• 1 year ago

Let’s assume you can save half of that. In two years, you’ll have 500,000. Is that enough to never work again?

fragmede2• 1 year ago

The rush is to be able to have enough money to retire on, which brings up that parable about the Mexican fisherman and the American entrepreneur.

You're a Staff-level IC, but is it at a company doing something you're in love with, in a manner of how you want to change the world and leave the tiniest legacy? or are you just collecting a paycheck?

jleyank3• 1 year ago

Unless you have the magic ticket, a career is a 30-40 year journey. Better to take it with others than going it alone, as you’ll need other people when your cachet fades in the second half. Looking back, I recommend working to live over living to work. And remember, if you don’t separate yourself from your work you’ll have no “you” when you dial back or become unnecessary or undesirable.

And it’s prudent to do “desired things” throughout your life, as your knees might not last or people you want to do things with might not be there. There’s a risk in deferring things until tomorrow as tomorrow might be as you wish it to be.

SoftTalker2• 1 year ago

if you don’t separate yourself from your work you’ll have no “you” when you dial back or become unnecessary or undesirable

I see this with a lot of people I know who retire and find they don't know what to do with their time. Work is all they ever really did.

I know another guy, well into his seventies, who is still working because there's nothing else he wants to do. He'll either die at his desk or in bed.

zaptheimpaler• 1 year ago

A lot of people understood this stuff clearly during COVID and now the conversation is shifting again to the old norms of work and prestige over everything. Life is short, family & friends are important, money can't buy everything and your employer will never love you.

bachmeier• 1 year ago

And remember, if you don’t separate yourself from your work you’ll have no “you” when you dial back or become unnecessary or undesirable.

As long as you pay your bills, nobody's going to tell you to do things differently. Financial literacy gets a lot of attention, but time and pleasure literacy get none, and our culture emphasizes consumption and income. It's rare to hear someone talk about the dollar value of having a big block of time to spend doing whatever makes you happiest in the moment.

PLenz• 1 year ago

Repeating what working women have been saying for decades

ashton314• 1 year ago

Yes, and we all know that money and career accomplishment are really what make life worth living. Families are just messy distractions from what REAL life is all about. /s

datadrivenangel2• 1 year ago

Congrats on getting promoted every year at Microsoft for 8 years, but this seems to be a career decidedly tilted towards money and status in exchange for effort and time. I hope that upon reflection the author concludes that they were on the Pareto frontier for that tradeoff... but I doubt it.

wiseowise• 1 year ago

Work Life balance slows careers

From the author of "Water is wet" and "Don't stick your fingers into meat grinder, if you don't want to lose them!"

More news at 11!

david-gpu4• 1 year ago

I was Facebook’s first engineer promoted to E9 outside the US. All this, at the cost of my second-grade son making sure he had a reserved spot on my calendar prior to me heading off to work that morning. Was it worth it?
If you want atypically fast career growth, you need to put in the hours. Only you can answer whether the sacrifices are worth it.

Ask the kid. Or the spouse.

My father had a significant career: medical doctor with a PhD, yadda yadda. I won't go into the details, but he left much to be desired both as a husband and as a father. At the age of 54, while he was working on a second PhD, he had a stroke that nearly killed him and left him severely disabled until his death at 70.

Was it worth it? His surviving family doesn't think so. I think we would have all been happier if he had made different choices. His mistakes were a big part of why I quit working to spend time with my own family. Ask my spouse and children whether I made the right call.

paulcole4• 1 year ago

If, hypothetically, your kids and wife asked you to work many more hours and earn much more money, would you do it?

hombre_fatal• 1 year ago

If you're stagnating in an entry level job and barely making ends meet, your wife might want you to put your head down or escalate into better job opportunities, and that's a sensible decision.

If you're an engineer at Meta and your wife/kid want you to work even more, then they probably prefer to spend time with your wife's boyfriend, and you deserve some reckoning.

david-gpu4• 1 year ago

Ironically, I worked really hard for a number of years precisely to ensure that my family would be financially safe if something happened to me -- something like what happened to my own father. The difference was that I quit my well-paying job as soon as we had enough to sustain a modest lifestyle.

I will admit that at times I was seduced by the illusion of status, so I get why some people get trapped in that work-first mindset, but it was a very shallow mirage. Just look at your spouse and children and ask whether they would rather have more money, or a more present husband & father.

If my wife asked me to work harder to make more money, I would question my choice to marry her. But she didn't, she was supportive both while I was working and when I decided to quit. She could see the price I was paying for that salary.

xigency• 1 year ago

Troll / flamebait

pseudosavant• 1 year ago

Between his career, and serving in our lay ministry church, my Dad (indirectly) taught me that I wanted to be around with my kids (unlike him). I definitely don't have the career drive he had. I'm also certainly A LOT happier than he has ever been, and I have a great relationship with my kids.

There aren't a lot of people I meet, that are meaningfully more successful in their career than me, that don't usually make sacrifices I'm unwilling to make for their work/life harmony.

Gee101• 1 year ago

I think what complicates the matter is that some people have an inherent drive. They want to see progress and really struggle when it's not happening.

The flip side of the coin is those people might end up alcoholics to try and suppress that drive.

nancyminusone• 1 year ago

Sorry, but I don't really care about my "career" in any comparable way that I care about my family, or life's other offerings.

mikert892• 1 year ago

If you want to dedicate yourself to your career, you are are far better off starting a company.

Arubis2• 1 year ago

100% true.

If you work your tail off at a bigco, your upside is golden handcuffs, not actual freedom. You'll perpetually have a net worth on paper that drops precipitously if you leave your job and let your options, RSUs, or whatever expire/die unvested. In the meantime, your base comp may look enormous, but if you break it down to an hourly rate and you're busting your ass for 70+ hours a week, you're just getting paid market rate and working a lot more.

If you want to reach escape velocity by sheer wealth accumulation, you need to own the value of your output.

IMHO the best option is to adjust your expectations and find something more rewarding that loves you back.

At length: https://dylanfitzgerald.net/blog/comfortable-satisfaction-pa...

mikert892• 1 year ago

yeah if you leave, you lose all the value you created at the company. they keep it.

Karawebnetwork2• 1 year ago

At what cost?

A career is just one facet of a fulfilled life alongside relationships, health, personal development and joy. Putting everything aside aiming for promotions may look like a success on paper but it often leads to burnout, loneliness and unfulfilled goals in other areas.

You can climb the ladder but if you ignore the rest of your life you may reach the top, only to realize once alone at the summit that your entire kingdom is in disarray.

Perhaps slowing your career can even be wise if the other spheres of your life are suffering. A sabbatical year or even a deliberate downshift can offer the space to realign and rediscover purpose.

There is something to be said about survivorship bias too, many who work hard don't achieve similar outcomes. We often hear from those who worked relentlessly and succeeded but rarely from the many who worked just as hard and didn't see the same results. For example, some studies show that nearly half of the women in tech leave the industry by mid-career, often due to systemic barriers

eastbound• 1 year ago

Some people are just socially inept. As far as I remember, groups have turned against me for no reasonable reason. Saw therapists for years, the best one I kept a dozen years but she grew irritated.

Some people are just born to bring taxes in.

(And before you bring up the smug: Did plenty of sports, windsurf, judo, snowboarding, racketball, plenty of travels, lived abroad, tried both genders, had all sorts of friends. Sometimes you just don’t get how to do social. I just work to forget. It’s so extremely irritating, I used to want to take revenge, humans are just… Nazis would be proud).

So yeah, don’t be smug about people who just work. Sometimes that’s just where they are the least “toxic” according to their environment.

freejazz• 1 year ago

reasonable reason

Just a guess that it lies packed somewhere in your use of the word "reasonable"

LexiMax• 1 year ago

There's a difference, though. From your post, it doesn't sound like you actually enjoy your line of work at all. Instead, it sounds like work is merely being the thing that happens to annoy you the least - something to occupy and stimulate your mind to pass the time.

If my hunch is correct, I think it's only fair to point out that the grandparent was arguing against the career advancement at all costs mindset that the blog is talking about, not situations like yours.

Speaking of which, I am truly sorry you feel the way you do about social stuff. I've grappled with social anxiety and lack of social awareness before, and although I don't think I was ever angry at humanity to the degree you are, I can appreciate how isolating and miserable that headspace can get.

Karawebnetwork2• 12 months ago

In my opinion, this reflects more on the groups you've interacted with than on you personally.

I don't want to put you in a box, but consider this example:

"There is no significant difference in the effectiveness of how autistic and non-autistic people communicate, according to a new study, challenging the stereotype that autistic people struggle to connect with others." https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/autistic-people-communicat...

This highlights how much of our perception is shaped by context and societal bias.

Our society is unwell and the idea of a "third space" (a place outside of home and work where people can connect and thrive) has largely disappeared.

Working a lot can be wonderful when it brings you joy. Think of the Japanese concept of Ikigai (生き甲斐), which refers to having a sense of purpose: something that brings fulfillment and makes life feel worthwhile. If your work gives you that, then that's amazing, and you're fortunate.

It could be that you were born to bring nothing but profits and taxes to the community. And that's perfectly fine if it genuinely makes you happy.

The issue, in my view, is that in our unbalanced society work often becomes that default third space. But it's not designed to support human flourishing in that way. By design, it is meant to extract the maximum amount of profit from human resources, with little to no concern for their well-being. This often leads to burnout or disillusionment, especially when decades of effort go unnoticed or fail to make a meaningful impact on society.

Imagine if we had more spaces where we could do meaningful work, not necessarily for profit, in safe and supportive environments that foster connection with like-minded people. Many of us who quietly struggle on our own while still performing at a high level would finally feel like we belong to a supportive group.

billy99k• 1 year ago

Covid helped me with this. I usually spent lots of time outside of work traveling and since I was stuck inside, I used it to completely changes careers and now make more money than I did with my previous career.

andelink• 1 year ago

Short sighted to prioritize career over life. Few people in the US have any self-worth or identity outside their career, at least IME working in tech. It saddens me greatly. “Productivity” is a disease. Some of my closest friends have no idea what to do with themselves outside of work. No one lays on their death bed wishing they worked more.

mlsu• 1 year ago

Our family once bought a Nordic chess set my then-seven-year-old son was excited to use. He asked me whether we could play it together, and I said, “Sure!” He then asked me to put it on my calendar, and watched until I had done so. This was a devastating moment of sudden realization for me.
Only you can answer whether the sacrifices are worth it.

Nah, not only you.

I think a good appendix to this article would be an interview with the 7 year old. If this was my dad, I'd probably strangle him.

ipaddr2• 1 year ago

The kid is spoiled. Many Dads work two jobs barely see their family trying to keep a roof over them and food. None of those Dads are beating themselves up because they had to schedule a chess game.

Rich person problem that they solved by not working. Most Dads working two jobs can't.

jermaustin1• 1 year ago

The kid is spoiled.

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, so I will default to: I hope you are.

The kid isn't spoiled for wanting to play a game with his dad... and he isn't spoiled for watching and waiting for his dad to input "play with son" in his phone.

If anything the father is spoiled. He is a high-earner, who choses to spend more time working than necessary for the advancement of a career. And his family has spoiled him to the fact that he can get away with spending less time on them than they want.

If they were to then prioritize their want to spend time with someone willfully spending extra time at work, that also wouldn't be spoiled.

Spoiled is asking for something, getting it, and asking for more, getting it, and asking for more, getting it, ask... you get it.

The child asking for his father to spend time with him (even if he was demanding NOW!), isn't spoiled, because obviously, as the father has admitted, he has to schedule time for his child.

Aachen2• 1 year ago

I'm not sure it's spoiled. From what I hear of colleagues with kids, they would wish you came home riding a new pony about 12 minutes after you left to work. Another colleague was "gone" too much from the daughter's life and she wished that wasn't the case (he works from home besides like two weeks of the year). They're just not grown ups, not realistic, and (I'd assume) that's normal. Which is to say, I don't think you're at all off in that the kid's wish is to be taken as a loose suggestion at best, but I wouldn't say that they're spoiled just because there exists someone else has it worse

SoftTalker2• 1 year ago

The kid was probably excited and proud to have an appointment on his Dad's calendar. That moment and the scheduled chess game probably was a bigger deal to him than if his Dad just hung around the house all day.

Aachen2• 1 year ago

I don't know that someone who's barely seven can be expected to have an informed opinion that would be worth adding as an appendix. It might be cute, or interesting to learn about child development to see what they would answer at 7yo, or fun to have them read it back five years later, but not to inform your decision by all that much. Figuring out what's in their best interest is what a parent chose to dedicate their life to imo; it's the parent's/parents' responsibility to think for them, not to use their fanciful answers to prove a predictable point

Given the quote, though, it does sound like the parent is not putting the kid's best interests first and foremost

picafrost• 1 year ago

Nobody will remember the extra hours you put in except your family and friends.

jleyank3• 1 year ago

They say nobody wishes they worked more as they're passing...

stellalo• 1 year ago

Career shortens life

jajko2• 1 year ago

If you live to work, all the power to you. Just don't get kids, the world has enough broken folks who are struggling their whole lives to overcome their childhood and their father figure (or the lack of it). They carry the traumas right into their own relationships, often repeating same mistakes. Listen to people a bit since its easy to notice if you know what to look for, its proper pandemic under the hood in all directions.

The ones I've met in this category, always a stellar career, but what was at home, if anything, was less then stellar and the link to corresponding personality traits was pretty obvious. Now I don't think its exclusively either/or situation for everybody, but for most of us it is and certainly would be for me.

I prefer putting down the foot from throttle after some hard-earned leaps in life, and enjoy family time and me time. Right now planning final touches for a 2 week solo adventure vacation in remote Indonesian islands (Togian). Thats after spending 4 weeks of vacations this year with family, and planning another 4-5 together till end of year. While getting paid top 1% of European software dev salaries. Don't need more work wise, there is literally nothing positive that career progression can bring to my life.

Company has rather flat salary structure once you put in enough years, so even moving 2 positions up wouldn't bring much more cash. Work would be much less creative and stress and politics would rise significantly. Good place for some high functioning sociopaths, not so much for more sane folks. Literally would get paid worse per some imaginary mental energy unit put in. No, thank you I am fine.

SirMaster2• 1 year ago

But if you don't have kids, then you don't really need that much money is what I find at least...

jajko2• 1 year ago

If you don't have kids, whats the reason to take some 100% corporate job? Life is darn too short and world is so beautiful and amazing to explore. I've seen few setups that work long term like that and none involved office time. No need to hoard wealth rather live in the moment(s). That really starts to make sense if you need to settle down ie for kids.

AnotherGoodName• 1 year ago

The real issues come when you work hard and just get exploited.

That's what's really missing here. Someone who got lucky in life and had their hard work rewarded is telling others that hard work pays. In fact for this author in his field it pays off 100x+ whatever it pays for others.

For a salary of a few million a year i too would be willing to work some 12+hour days... for a while. I'd even post a few articles on how hard work is great and rewarding.

solatic• 1 year ago

Yeah there's a very serious bias when an E9 is telling people to work 18 hour days like he did when he was getting promoted every year at Microsoft. Of course an E9 has a latent interest in seeing more lower-level Facebook ICs put in longer hours. If every Facebook IC put in 12+ hour days, that would be a terrific success from his leadership.

... but what are the chances of every Facebook IC getting promoted to E9? If you're the only rat on the treadmill when everyone else is ambling about, maybe you stand out to get promoted. If you join a company where all the rats are on treadmills, nobody wins that rat race.

black6• 1 year ago

How many Sergeants Major are there at the FAANGs?

More seriously, I've never heard the E9 designation outside of the military. What does it mean?

c-hendricks• 1 year ago

Philip talks about how he believes work-life balance is a myth if you want to level up.

I'm so glad I'm not these people, and no one I associate with is either.

mattlondon• 1 year ago

There is only so much you can hustle, a lot is out of your control.

We all know people who have repeatedly been given plum projects that are a bit of a fait acompli - highly-visible, wanted, and easy to implement both technically and organizationally - and surprise surprise they get promo after promo for landing high-impact projects. Yet suddenly they arrive in some new team and their career progress grinds to a halt because there is not the same "low hanging fruit" and they can't just slam dunk everything they touch any more. All of a sudden they are left holding some doomed tarball and it is not so easy to look good any more because it's messy and hard and super-complicated and unpopular. They keep putting in the hours yet don't get anywhere.

TL;Dr You need to opportunity, and working more hours won't make those appear every time.

Yes you can try to weasel your way into "making" the opportunity, but then you start playing The Politics Game and that is a totally different kettle of fish.

qgin• 1 year ago

We really should install arcade game style high score screens at cemeteries.

munificent2• 1 year ago

Arguably, that's what cemeteries are. You can drop a lot of money on a bigger and bigger tombstone or vault.

flkiwi• 1 year ago

He was promoted every year in his first 8 years at Microsoft.

Microsoft has too many layers and they value performative work over any kind of actual leadership experience OR Microsoft's promotions are a sham and leadership select--i.e., filling roles that make the real money--have absolutely nothing to do with these sops to the masses. That's the conclusion I draw from such a bizarre stat. Either way, this guy was played by a system that will happily chew him up before he can realize he wasted his life (unless, of course, this is genuinely what he wanted, in which chase, man, you do you).

lapcat• 1 year ago

I'm in the middle of reading the book "Apple In China" by Patrick McGee. A few excerpts from one chapter:

The eighty-hour workweeks and increasing need to be in Asia at inconsistent times, with little warning and often for unknown durations, caused massive stress on the engineers' mental health and their marriages. They were primarily men, and some of their wives took to calling themselves "Apple widows" because their husbands were around so infrequently. So many marriages were broken up during the first year of Jobs's comeback that informal preventative measures were established to contain further damage. Engineers called it the DAP, or Divorce Avoidance Program. In the late 1990s, the acronym referred to to when an engineer couldn't come in to work that day because his marriage was on the line.
One engineer says the reason he left Apple after more than a decade is that during a routine medical appointment, his doctor noted his high blood pressure and said, "Okay, I need you to do two things for me: lose weight and quit Apple." The doctor explained that that the stress would basically kill him.
Jon Rubinstein, who worked for Steve Jobs on and off for sixteen years, called the long workweeks "shattering," and it's what led to his own departure later on. "A lot of people got sick at Apple," he once said. "The list goes on and on of people who got terminally ill or really ill... and I was worried that if I stayed, I'd end up damaging myself, and my health was, frankly, more important."

hvs• 1 year ago

I don't actually disagree with anything in this article, I would just argue that at some point you might want to consider why you are so interested in "fast career growth". Is it more money? More recognition? More power? To what end?

The standard cliches are true as far as I can tell (as I approach 50). "You can't take it with you", "no one wishes on their death bed that they had worked harder", etc. In 10 years, no one at your office is going to care how much time you put in at the office, but your partner and kids will. Do you want them to resent you for it?

apwell23• 1 year ago

maximize earning potential to early retirement.

mandevil• 1 year ago

This is the same guy, right? Who burned out so totally he ended up working in an Amazon fulfillment center for six weeks?

https://www.jasonshen.com/169/

edu• 1 year ago

Seems to be the same, yeah… kind of weird. Looking for attention?

mparnisari• 1 year ago

When I first started at Microsoft, I had a sleeping bag in my office. I coded until 11pm nightly and slept until 3am, at which point I’d code until ~6am, then sleep until my first meeting ~10am.

oh my god

thatandyrose22• 1 year ago

In other news, scientists confirm fire is hot!

If this is the path you want and your career is the most important thing then go for it.

If you think you're doing this for some deferred reward you're delusional.

Your life is "ending one minute at a time"

mingus88• 1 year ago

My dad was a workaholic. Also as is typical with boomers they raised us as latchkey kids

I made it a requirement for my career that I wouldn’t treat my kids the same way. I set boundaries with work and am very upset when work intrudes

Could I have made more money and had more status?

Certainly, but my kids like spending time with me and they’re the whole reason I’m chasing a salary in the first place

jleyank3• 1 year ago

Although the generation of latchkey kids might have turned out better socialized or better organized than those that followed. Society was different back then, but the people entering adulthood seemed to have it going.

benterix• 1 year ago

What I learn form the article is that for the author, his career is extremely important. But for most people, work is just an aspect of life, not an end in itself. There is enough space in this world for both types.

slwvx• 1 year ago

What’s true at the personal level is true at the national level. Americans enjoy greater prosperity than Europeans due largely to longer work hours.

So there are tradeoffs at the individual level and for countries. The author of the article is in favor of less family time and more work, but acknowledges the tradeoff. Even so, I'm not so convinced that it's quite such a straightforward tradeoff as described in the article and elsewhere in the comments here. I think that going more towards the European model would result in better social stability, better mental health of families and workers, and lower economic inequality. I.e. the American style of gung-ho work ignores many externalities that are implicitly included in the European model (however poorly-defied the "European model" is).

throwawaylaptop• 1 year ago

There is also something to be said for getting a running start. I started in car sales because I mostly wasted my mechanical engineering degree. I worked 2 years straight, only taking two days off a year because they closed the building for Thanksgiving and Christmas day. I became top 0.1% nationwide basically within 9 months. I made enough to pay off my house at 28 years old. I had an amazing reputation and executives of the public corporation I worked for would come talk to me when they were in town. Being that good so quickly (the few people ahead of me in the United States had been selling for a decade plus and operating off repeat customers, so by some metrics I was easily #1 in the United States), gives you many advantages that come from recognition and reputation. Would I do that at 40+ with kids? No. But I also wouldn't need to if I had done it as described from 24-30 years old.

m_a_g• 1 year ago

After seeing this post and the discussions in the comments, I created a poll to gauge how many hours the HN crowd typically works. Curious about the results.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44639573

pjio• 1 year ago

I usually optimize for efficiency of my work hours. While I can be quite productive even with fewer hours in good conditions, coworkers who are willing to spend more hours and be more available can run over me. It's like a fight forced upon one: Who can maintain a bit of productivity while time and focus needs to be sacrificed due to conflict?

ian-g• 1 year ago

This has all been a very personal thread

My two cents are that I have hobbies and obsessions that fulfill me and can make me money. I’m keeping the work-life balance and slowly getting better at my hobbies.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to retire early from tech and finish out my time doing something else part time. I started out working on bicycles, I’d like to close things out similarly in a few decades.

mrbonner• 1 year ago

He clearly made his point and got lucky with the payoff from his deep job devotion. But here's what hits differently for many of us: we pour our souls into our work—late nights, weekend debugging sessions, going above and beyond—only to watch promotions pass us by, raises get "deferred," and our contributions fade into corporate silence.

The aftermath? It's not just disappointment—it's emotional devastation that leads straight to burnout. And here's the kicker: once you're truly burnt out, you're looking at years of mental recovery. Years. Your relationship with work fundamentally changes, your confidence tanks, and that passionate developer who once stayed up until 3am solving problems? They might never fully return.

This industry has a serious problem with recognizing genuine effort versus just celebrating the success stories. We need to talk more about the psychological cost of unrecognized devotion and how it's quietly destroying talented people who just wanted their work to matter.

aeblyve• 1 year ago

Definitely tend to think that working a lot (not necessarily all in one organization, and for a pretty expansive definition of "work") is the way to have a good life. Even before starting to think about money.

NalNezumi2• 1 year ago

Each to their own but things worth pointing out is:

Some people work hard but aren't as lucky with the "being rewarded for their hard work" part. A grain of salt required for lucky people's advice. Especially the one with short memory and rose tinted glasses (as other commenter noted, this guy seemed to have burned out[1]). It's Probably more a rationalization to himself and people around him (his kids and wife I guess) sugarcoated as an advice.

Second is people saying "I can retire early if I work hard now" I mean sure. Toil away the best years of your life when you have the most youth, beauty, energy and freedom so you can enjoy leisure when your body is aching and getting a good sleep is hard. I'm not that old but did my stint of "16 hour days 7 days a week" at startup and my reward was useless options and chronic illness flaring up (requiring two minor surgeries down the line). Glad I tried it out tho (minus the physical and mental health toil)

Work life balance slows career. Prioritizing work might speed it up. But I'm not sure the point of a career is the goal, but the journey itself.

I'll do some overtime and all nighters when it's required, rewarded, and I feel like the work matter to me.

[1] https://www.jasonshen.com/169/

ryandrake2• 1 year ago

Second is people saying "I can retire early if I work hard now" I mean sure. Toil away the best years of your life when you have the most youth, beauty, energy and freedom so you can enjoy leisure when your body is aching and getting a good sleep is hard.

This argument always comes up, where we just assume one's "best" years are in their 20s and 30s, and people can't enjoy leisure at 60. My response is always "Make hay when the sun shines." I can accept you're probably at your cognitive and physical peak in your 20s and 30s, and I'd argue that's the time to max out your earnings, because you may not be able to when you're 60+. I look back at my 20s and 30s, and even though I spent most of them working and not really goofing around having fun, I wish I spent even more of them on my career and saving, due to compounding interest and investment gains. If I did, I might be retired already and spending 100% of my time on fun, instead of playing financial catch-up. Probably the worst thing you can do, financially, when you're 22 and just graduated from college is to take a gap year backpacking in Bali or horsing around in Ibiza or something.

In summary: You can have fun and/or work when you're young. You can also have fun, but might not necessarily be able to work when you're older.

NalNezumi2• 1 year ago

I think we are in agreement though.

You can do both: work hard for a while, enjoy life for a while. Compounding interest is real, it's only limited if you're in a rush to "retire early".

I'd rather find a job I like, that doesn't break me, and enjoy my life and passion(sometimes coincide with work), up until actual retirement age. Most people (in tech) that aim to retire early usually end up working after retirement anyway, just on their own condition.

Enjoying "life" is also a skill. I've been surrounded by workaholics and many of them had to essentially learn that later. (myself included)

TedDoesntTalk• 1 year ago

Do you know how many “mights” and “may not” are in your post? A lot.

You “might” lose half your investments after working 16 Hour Days for 20 years to a divorce. You might get hit by a bus.

Nothing is promised except for this moment, right now.

sitzkrieg• 1 year ago

when i worked hard in tech, i was often the first to be promoted, and the first to be included in layoff rounds. no thanks

amusable• 1 year ago

To each their own, but as a counterpoint to many of these comments, I know plenty of people in tech who prioritize their family at the cost of their career & health/fitness. I think most tenured people at FAANGs are doing that actually. 99% of all parents I know at FAANGs have high blood pressure, can't run a mile straight, deal with chronic pain due to sitting all the time, have low grade diabetes or need to take multiple types of psychiatric medications due to never being able to achieve financial freedom.

I think financial freedom _needs_ to be a priority for your long-term health, especially if you want to have a family. And achieving financial freedom requires sacrifices elsewhere in your life.

And in general, I think it's totally fine to work hard if you want to, but you absolutely need to make sure that you're getting an exponential amount of payout for every hour of overtime you put in.

lucyjojo• 12 months ago

i have no financial freedom, i have a family, do little overtime, and suffer from little stress.

that said, if i die, the mortgage gets nullified and my wife/kids get the house. and if i'm alive, i should be able to make enough money (which is - not much).

+ i keep healthy enough to avoid most chronic stuff that would stop me from working until the house is paid, so i see no reason to stress.

28304283409234• 1 year ago

Yup. Meanwhile my teenage kids still come to me with their actual real life problems and sorrows. They take me seriously because I have always taken them seriously. By spending my precious time with them instead of with my boss.

Career schmeer.

indigoabstract• 1 year ago

Can anyone explain why was this article flagged?

drbojingle• 12 months ago

Luck being something you can't control is wrong. We know shit just happens so you set yourself up so that when it does your ready.

Ie if you like seeing birds I recommend taking a camera. Not because it'll improve your luck but because you'll be ready to strike more often when the moment comes.

Work Life balance slows careers

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