[solardev]

It's definitely possible to have 9 to 5 software jobs with a good work life balance. For the last decade I've worked for small businesses. nonprofits, and most recently a non tech manufacturing company.

All had 9 to 5 schedules with no expectation that you be there outside of regular work hours unless it was a true emergency. In the last ten years, I've had to work emergencies and overtime maybe a total of 6 to 8 hours total, across all the jobs.

I think that sort of culture is easier to find if you look for smaller companies that largely work together in the same office anyway, vs huge distributed multinational organizations that are always looking for commodity labor from anywhere.

The kinds of companies that look for cultural fit, implicitly or explicitly, also tend to plan around this sort of thing, rather than just blindly making their employees keep irregular hours.

What I'm saying is...this is definitely not something you have to accept as normal. Maybe within a specific part of the industry or at a specific level of management, it's a thing, but if you want is a software job that pays a livable wage and still lets you have a regular life outside work, that's definitely doable. Don't go into games, infrastructure, devops, etc. Find some business that doesn't need round the clock presence. Many of those are software jobs in other verticals. They may pay less, but the sanity is worth it IMHO.

[jrochkind1]

Same, but working for nonprofits is unlikely to make you the salaries you hear about on HN. Same for small/non-IT companies, I'd guess?

I do feel like OP should definitely start looking at other jobs though, it seems likely they can find something with a more reasonable schedule.

Technically, they didn't even ask for 9-5 strictly, they asked for "structured", and I think the implication is: predictable, regular. Even if it includes some predictable, regular scheduled evening time? This seems to me like it should be do-able, but I'm not sure -- I work in nonprofit sector, where it definitely is.

[solardev]

Yeah, I think non-tech in general pays less, and doesn't share equity or whatever. But it pays in other ways: great coworkers, generally sane management (often a bit disorganized, but at least generally people who I can trust and am happy to work alongside, as opposed to the ruthless bloodsucking monsters you sometimes hear about in big tech). And tremendously better work-life balance. I've never had to crunch, release or not, and I've never had anyone yell at me for anything... I would've walked out the door if they had tried, or if they had similarly demeaned a coworker. Shrug. My life and dignity are more important than a FAANG salary. What good is, say, FIRE (the early retirement at any cost movement) if you live the prime years of your life in misery? I'd prefer a happy and modest life any day over luxury indentured servitude with the hope of some future payoff.

That's not to say you should live in abject poverty, but that jobs and careers can offer more fulfillment than simple dollars in a paycheck. I've loved all the jobs I've ever had, because I picked them carefully and chose them holistically, not just based on the highest bidder. Work culture matters a LOT... the people you work with become another family, and the good ones care about you and don't want you to work late just the same as I wouldn't want anyone to sacrifice their kids or their mental health or their passions for work -- coworker, boss, founder, anything.

EVERY job I've ever held, except maybe early retail when I was young, held similar attitudes... let's get together, work hard, respect boundaries, respect autonomy and each others' lives. Most importantly, we all thought of each other as people first and employees/managers/owners second, both before but especially after covid when everyone's private lives became a regular part of their online lives.

If your work environment is actively toxic, man, get the hell out of there. It's not worth whatever they're paying you. You could be happy with much, much less.