You sound like my old boss. I'm a combat vet, and he said to me, before memorial day, "What's a holiday? I don't take holidays. I'm here all the time.."
Pissed me off. Dude is the CEO and partial owner, so it's completely different. If they want to pretend to be Elon Musk and want me to as well, they better at least pay like it to justify the lack of work/life balance. I am a human being whose existence is entirely indepedent of whatever job I currently have. Crazy thought, I know.
I am only a bit salty because having consulted across a wide array of industries and been the miracle worker one man show in some of them, I have seen it everywhere.
Oh, and back on subject, of course at this place I was shoved into an open office with the devs...
As an American who moved to Germany, that mindset was completely removed here. Not only do people tell you to take your vacation time if you don't, they get worried if you are working too much or too hard.
It's a great relief to be here and see a different mindset outside that of the "all work no holiday" cultures you can find in the states.
Honestly I sometimes wonder how much my traveling and experiencing other cultures influenced my perception of this subject. Even in Iraq I feel like the Arab concept of time (flexible guidelines) really rubbed off on me, spent some time in Germany/France as well and loved how slow life could be.
In this day and age I feel like all many people want is retired-style life but then they entangle themselves in debt and job quagmires they don't excape till they are 65. I also highly disagree with the characterization that retirement is sitting around doing nothing. Retirement to me is the chance to pursue your true passions and interests unencumbered by an unrelated need for finances supplied by a wage-slavery job.
Totally agree. Germany has its ups and downs as you know, but I like it more since the approach to life and work life balance is much better. Whether it's the generous social systems or not is more of a political debate, but the focus on "living life" is much greater here, and I enjoy it.
I don't think those are really relevant to the discussion, because we are talking about lack of incentive. If I was working at space-x and getting the subsequent pay bump, I might consider it worth it. The current problem is outside of the few big guys in SV, the rest of the country is underpaying and overworking IT staff.
You can underpay and underwork, and have low turnover and medium-high return on talent, or you can overpay and overwork, with a high turnover but a high return on talent, but to underpay and overwork is a recipe for hemmoraging talent.
9-5 is office hours. Be ready and willing to respond to any requests. When you get the actual assigned ans scheduled out work done is your problem. Perhaps you should work late, at home, at night, in the morning before "office hours".
Drives me effing nuts! Salaried exempt doesn't mean slave labor. It means the work I do requires thinking and since I am always thinking it makes more sense to just pay me a predetermined amount instead of going hourly and trying to figure out if I should be compensated for the commute to and from the office when some of my greatest ideas and innovations occur. God forbid my idea comes while not on the clock! I might not choose to assign the IP over to you! I still only anticipate implementing ideas and performing tasks for approximately 40 hours per week. You're paying for my brains not my key pushing skills.