[xyzelement]

Alright. Two guys working in a great company. One had the attitude of "no uncomped OT" and leaves at 5. The other guy works till 7.

At the end of the year guy 2 gets an extra 40k comp raise vs guy 1. In 5 years that's a 200k difference.

So by avoiding "uncomped OT" guy 1 fucked himself out of a ton of comp.

OBVIOUSLY this depends on the company and there's no guarantees. I've been lucky enough to work on companies that were like this and this every man for himself short term thinking was poison.

YMMV.

[zabzonk]

> YMMV

it certainly does. i have worked for several investment banks as a contractor, and i can assure you they do not much care how many hours you put in. if you wanted a big bonus (as a contractor, i obviously didn't get one) you had to produce value to the bank. and sitting at your desk until 7pm simply does not do that - actually it costs them money; you probably have no idea what the costs of air conditioning are in the city of london.

also, how much does that 2 hours per day, per year, over 5 years add up to?

[xyzelement]

The fact that it even occured to you to think that I am talking about sitting pointlessly for 2 hours vs creating value means we are coming at this from different directions.

I guess another way to say it - find a place that rewards you for value, and produce exceptional value.

[bigbillheck]

You went from '200k a year' to '200k over five years'.

[xyzelement]

I didn't... But to make it crystal clear.

If you get an incremental 40k raise over someone else, every year for 5 years, you end up making 200 more than them PER YEAR after year 5.

[listenallyall]

We get the math, what is less plausible is 40k raise every year for five years while remaining on the same team doing the same job. Few jobs pay $200,000 at all, very very few pay so well that two people with the same role could be $200k apart. It's not impossible, of course, but that would be an extremely rare situation.

[willcipriano]

HR generally won't allow pay differences that large for the same role.

[xyzelement]

Like I said, YMMV.

200k is the starting developer comp at a FAANG. As you rise in level, 200k becomes the comp range within a level (eg take a look at levels.fyi range for a Google L6 SWE). Same in finance.

Agree that these jobs are few in the grand scheme of things but there are hundreds of thousands of people for whom this type of comp is reality.

People can start at the same level out of school and then make MULTIPLES of that comp depending on what they do.

If this doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you. I am just pointing out that bailing because "this hour of overtime is not compensated" can be very nearsighted depending on your situation.

Specifically, I am talking about someone I know who had this attitude in a company that very clearly rewarded value generation. He did "ok" since it was a great company but he literally had the situation I am describing where others were making 200k more than him 5 years later.

[zihotki]

That's more like an exception than a general rule, IMO. I've seen a lot of opposite examples and none like you're describing.

[zabzonk]

dream on

[jakelazaroff]

Isn’t the point of the article that this tends not to happen? That managers tend to see loyalty as an opportunity to extract unpaid labor?

[robjan]

Guy 2 sold more of his time and compromised his health and personal life by working 50+ hour weeks. He probably also made more mistakes than guy 1 because he wasn't well rested. Nobody got screwed out of comp but their manager who values bums on seats.