[jedberg]

It's not an eight hour job, you're completely misreading it. It's eight hours required plus another eight each day of overtime. Which is abusive for a software engineer.

And those people that work months away from their families -- they're being abused too. You'll notice that the owners of oil rigs aren't out there with them, for example.

[albntomat0]

> But I would have had to work in their office in Manhattan, be in by 8:30am every day and not leave until after 5 at a miniumum.

That’s what you said originally, which reads as mostly normal work hours, plus maybe some overtime.

If it was 16 hours a day, then please say so.

[cm2187]

16h a day is more like m&a hours. I don't believe a second that a quant, let alone a dev, in a hedge fund does anywhere near that time. Having to work late on rare occasions is a completely different thing though, and is not "never seeing one's family". M&A guys never see their family, they do those hours consistently.

[jedberg]

Read the rest of the comment?

> I wouldn't be allowed to take my laptop home, so if I had a hard problem to solve, I'd have to stay in the office the whole time. So basically they expected us to never see our family nor collaborate with anyone.

[albntomat0]

I did. Myself and multiple other commenters all seem to be on the same page, that your original comment says the job required being in the office 8.5 hours per day, and does not allow work from home. Your follow up comments imply the expectations were an order of magnitude higher.

The part you highlighted says you cannot work from home. That’s unrelated to the number of hours they expected you to work.

[orf]

I think it’s fairly obvious to anyone who has worked in or around finance that while the contractual hours are X, the work requires 2X hours, thus being unable to take your laptop home requires 2X hours in the office.

[marssaxman]

Perhaps it would have been helpful to actually say that given that this is not a forum aimed at or primarily populated by people who work in or around finance. In a general context, "8:30 to 5 and you can't work from home" sounds like a description of the standard 20th century business schedule.

[orf]

Are you really, truly not familiar with the idea that the finance industry stereotypically requires long hours and values work over all else, at an institutional level?

OP could have spelled it out, but in any communication there is a level of shared knowledge.

When you read a comment that you understand to be complaining about making nearly a million dollars whilst working 9/5 in the office, a more charitable path would be to examine your own context and shared knowledge, rather than exclaim loudly that OP is a bad person.

Not that you did that, but others have.

[r_hoods_ghost]

So go home when you get to 5.00. Think. Come back to office at 8.30. Work. That's what most people do.

[userbinator]

you're completely misreading it

Re-read your original description again. Nowhere did you say you had to work 16h a day.

[b4je7d7wb]

It is implied by not allowing to work from home. There wouldn't be a need to work from home if it was a 9-5 job.

[mort96]

Before covid, working from home wasn't really a thing at the company I work for. That meant I arrived at the office some time before 10, was there for around 8 hours, then left. That's what "not being allowed to work from home" means to most people.

[marssaxman]

For most of us, "work from home" means doing your regular work, during your regular hours, from your home office. No additional hours are implied.