Ask HN: Advancing career without working over-hours?

[sambarina]

I am almost 30 and started programming when I was 18. I am about to become a father and I already feel that I can't work as much as my younger colleagues.

At my current employee, people get promoted who put the most hours in, since they then also end up putting more work down and knowing the systems better. I get it, when you work 60 hours each week, you will be the go-to person.

But I wonder what people do with familys? I have friends in the big FAANG companies and smaller open source companies. The hours of work is everywhere the same. You put in over hours and nobody complains since you know, you got a pretty good job and you can't complain.

After so many years however, I lost the ability to oversee bad (project) management and see it more of a: This is badly managed, you should hire two more people for this team etc.

I seem to be in the minority though. So I wonder what other people with families do: Are you switching companies to have saner work hours and "downgrade" your work environment? I really like working with ambitious people, but they I haven't found a company yet with sane hours but also with people eager to learn. I somehow manage to do both, but still fall behind inside bigger corporations.

Any advice or companies who manage both?

[AnimalMuppet]

This isn't assembly line work. If your brain is too tired, it doesn't matter if your butt is in the seat, you're still not going to be effective. In fact, you may be negatively effective - it may take time to undo the damage that you are doing to the code base.

One of the rules of XP is "Quit when you're tired." XP is all about going as fast as you can. The fastest you can go involves quitting when you're tired. Stay longer, and your productivity goes down, not just that day but the next, and maybe even the day or two after that.

It sounds like you're working at a place that doesn't understand that. (It also sounds like you're working at a place that is somewhat exploitative.) To get a reasonable life, you may have to leave for somewhere else.

Unfortunately, right at this moment is perhaps not the greatest time to be changing jobs. If your current job is stable and unaffected by Corona, you probably should think twice before you leave - unless you're pretty sure that the new job is also stable and won't be affected by Corona.

[_ah]

You are confusing effort with impact. They are not the same.

Working more hours can lead to bigger impact, but generally that scales linearly. The better route to success and promotion is to focus on the inflection points: the bits that actually move the needle for the entire team / company.

Weirdly, as you become more senior in impact you may actually end up working less. If you have a strong record of delivering the right things then you can push back on unrealistic expectations. In fact, refusing overwork (except on occasion) is a powerful signalling mechanism.

If are effective at your job and your management team doesn't understand then it's time to find a new gig.

[kaskakokos]

From my point of view, if someone works 60h/week and you work 40h/week, yes, he's working 50% more than you, he's dealing with more situations, more clients, more meetings, more problems... if you and the other one have the same intelligence, he'll probably move faster. Ok, probably this is a simplification and the curve can get saturated at one point, because 9 pregnant women can't produce a baby in 1 month... but maybe the saturation point is not 60h/week, maybe it's higher.

In my case, I've accepted that my career is going to advance more slowly, I've weighed up my work/career and my life/happiness/family, and the last one weighed more.

Of course, as other colleagues have said, working smart, finding clients, thinking 80/20, focusing on goals, looking for patterns... and it will probably make the curve more vertical.

Where do you live? I think another variable is the work culture of the country, for example in Spain the work culture is now evolving to allow a better balance between life and work. In other countries in Europe, for example, this mentality of working without overtime is fully established.

[aprdm]

I have never worked more than 40h a week and always climbed the ladder.

Look for other companies I guess ? A good signal for me is when there are loads of people with families in the company whom have worked there for more than 5-10 years.

A red signal is a minority of people being experienced or having families.

[quietthrow]

So I get this right you are saying what has worked for you is to find companies where most people are middle aged with family obligation and have become comfortable in their jobs. And there you can differentiate much easily and move up faster than you would at a cutthroat place. as even with a little more effort in such a place you will stand out which can be done while maintaining a 40 hour week?

I take it you are single and/or have no other family obligations which gives you an “edge”?

[aprdm]

That was a lot of reading in-between the lines!

The company I work has a lot of very eager and smart people who put 40h a week and have families. They are experts in their field of work (Image processing).

I would say I have been climbing the ladder because I have good soft-skills and strong leadership skills. It happened naturally and was not part of an evil plan or something I tried too hard.

I am OK with not being a programming wizard or using all the latest tech in every project. I am very good in getting people to work together productively and having them delivering projects constantly.

I have gone from Senior to Lead in the past two companies I've been at within 6 months and now am now growing a department.

[jameshush]

Ding ding ding! This person understands. You will NEVER be able to grow a department if you work 80 hours a week hero coding. The longer you work the more irritated you become. The more irritated you are the less people will like you. When enough people hate you you’ll be fired.

Learned the hard way in my early 20s. Now I only put in the extra hours when the site is down, I’m on pager duty, and we’re losing 100k+ dollars every few minutes. I’m friendly and very organized. I manage my own Jira board and let my boss know when we need more people on a project. Definitely not a programming wizard but boy can I get two different departments working together.

[aprdm]

Yeah it is crazy to hear some people work 60h as the norm and 80h, wtf?

I've done a couple of 50-60h stints in my career for rolling out a big project globally or things like that and I was... absolutely... exhausted and drained.

I couldn't think straight, I was being rude to people I love.

To think that people can actually put this amount of hours constantly (am talking 60h!!!) is mind blowing. Maybe my brain is just different and it can't do more than the regular hours.

[godot]

This is a complicated topic with no single right answer because the situation involves so many factors. Here's a few things to keep in mind. First, if the company truly only values those who overwork, it may be signs of a somewhat toxic environment and may be a reason to look around. Not saying it must be, there's a lot of other factors. Even a company that values overworking could be a good place to stay for other reasons too. I wanted to state this early and get this out of the way first (just so I can clarify that I don't discount the possibility that the company can be bad).

Then, you can also try to understand what the company leadership truly values. In my experience, most company leaderships truly value impact, not working hours, but it's easy to conflate or even confuse the two; it's even possible that leadership values impact but to other regular employees it may look like they value hours.

In my own experience, companies and leadership that I worked for usually value impact; and over the years, what I've gathered is that the best way to make good impact to the business is to truly understand the business and domain knowledge deeply and communicate effectively, as an engineer. I'm nearing my late 30s with a young kid now and had similar thoughts as you a few years ago. It turns out ultimately what employers care about isn't the amount of hours I put in; but rather if I understand the business and domain deeply, I can correctly spend my time on the most impactful things; and can communicate these things effectively. I have hardly ever worked over hours in my past 2 years at my current company; and am still highly valued.

On a totally different note though, it is also worth considering taking up a less intense role (if that truly is a problem at your current place) during the first year or two of your fatherhood. It's well worth the break time from developing your career to spend much needed time with family instead -- not just the baby, but your spouse who'll no doubt need you to be there for very much. Part of my reasoning to switch away from my last job was for this; and it just so happened that I also ended up at a good (remote) company that isn't all about working hours but good impact.

[tuxwins]

> In my own experience, companies and leadership that I worked for usually value impact; and over the years, what I've gathered is that the best way to make good impact to the business is to truly understand the business and domain knowledge deeply and communicate effectively, as an engineer. I'm nearing my late 30s with a young kid now and had similar thoughts as you a few years ago. It turns out ultimately what employers care about isn't the amount of hours I put in; but rather if I understand the business and domain deeply, I can correctly spend my time on the most impactful things; and can communicate these things effectively. I have hardly ever worked over hours in my past 2 years at my current company; and am still highly valued.

This is eloquently put. Resonated with me. Would you mind getting in touch offline for a short discussion and help answer some questions of mine? I will take a No as well. :)

[vpEfljFL]

What was your behaviour couple of years ago? Have you worked overtime? Did you have older colleagues that time?

The answer is simple. If you don't want to work overtime then don't do it and see what will happen. Most likely nothing.

Think about how you can deliver move value to the company by working smart instead of putting more hours (hint: automate your job, try to bring new clients).

[burntoutfire]

I've worked in many places and my impression is that, , workplaces and managers are incredibly diverse, on basically any possible dimension. A workplace that suits your needs definitely exists, the question is how to find it.

In my case, I've just randomly stumbled upon into it some time ago and I'll probably stick with it for as long as possible (Before that, I've mostly had jobs that I felt were a not a great fit). Unfortunately, "randomly stumbling upon" is not much of a strategy, but I guess it's points to changing jobs often. I don't believe that the important aspects of a job can be sussed out during an interview, so you essentially need to take a chance on a job, join the company and, if that's not what you were looking for, leave 1-2 years later. Repeat until satisfied.

[logicslave]

Only take on high value, high visibility work. Position yourself to get this work. Play politics. When you switch jobs, overstate your previous role, create a persona, a coherent timeline of professional progression.

Thats it, otherwise you have to work hard like everyone else.

[jameshush]

I agree. It’s this simple. But it’s not so much playing politics as it is using common sense to work on things that make money or cut costs. Or writing code in a way that another team in the company can easily use.

Did this for two and a half years. My boss quit and took me with him to a better gig. Your network is your net worth.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

I'd imagine if you switch to a company that asks less of you, you will get promoted more slowly. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

[wolco]

No relation to getting promoted.

If the company is growing quickly you will be promoted quickly. If it is getting smaller people get laid-off demoted. If it's holding steady than working extra hours might make you more valuable if someone leaves.

Working 20 more hours only marginally increases your chances. Marry the owners daughter would work better.