[tslathrow]

Well I have a lot of experience with 16 hour/day work weeks (have worked at banks most of my life). Yeah, you're right, it's not fun.

It really comes down to the time-sensitivity of your work. For someone in their 20s, I think the perfect balance is less than 80 hours/week but more than 40-50. If you're being paid two standard deviations over US median household income ($120k+), you're going to be expected to put some work-life balance on hold.

"Knowledge worker" makes you sound like you think programming is rocket surgery. VC is actually much closer to knowledge work than programming, and could more realistically have 16-hour work weeks.

[GVIrish]

Honestly for someone in their 20's 50+ hours per week is not a prerequisite for getting to $100k to $120k. Find jobs that are using technologies that are in high demand for companies that respect your work-life balance. Temporary spikes in hours comes with the territory but working 50+ hours a week isn't required. Startup work may have that kind of grind but there are plenty of companies where you can advance your career quickly without sacrificing your work/life balance.

I think the key is learning technologies that are in demand and pay well and choosing jobs where you can build experience in said technologies. Bottom line is that if you spend 60+ hours a week at a job programming in Objective-C for 3 years you're unlikely to make significantly more money than the guy who has 3 years of Obj-C and only worked 40 hours a week. The quality of the experience is what will matter more.

[hpvic03]

Programming is, or at least can be, rocket surgery. Programmers at SpaceX are building and modifying the (figurative) brains of self-stabilizing rockets...

[seivan]

I down voted you for the VC being closer to knowledge work than writing software. Sorry but that is just plain wrong - on both ends.

Hen is right that expecting 40 hours out of a software engineer is ridiculous.

[Cederfjard]

I'm not sure that "hen" has spread quite so much yet that you can expect to use it in English conversation. Nu undrar ju folk varför du kallar OP för en höna. ;)

If anyone is curious what I'm on about, "hen" is a gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish that has had a resurgence in the last few years. It's partly politically motivated and a little controversial, since we generally only use gender-specific ones. Sorry for this very off topic aside.

[seivan]

I don't care. Will still use it and educate. I am aware that it might mean höna for some, but I am expecting curiosity to get the better of 'em and hope they look into it.

[jestar_jokin]

Unfortunately, "hen" in English means a female chicken (or other bird, e.g. a peacock is male and a peahen is female), so all you achieve is giving the wrong impression that your language skills are lacking, AND you could be making a sexist remark (hen might be misconstrued as a condescending term for a woman), the complete opposite of what you intended.

[Cederfjard]

I think it's a bit weird to be honest. Are other Swedes doing this, trying to shoehorn "hen" into other languages?

I've seen "they", in the singular, used as a gender-neutral English pronoun pretty extensively, perhaps that's worth looking into. Either way, kudos.

[webmaven]

English has some invented gender-neutral pronouns as well, such as Zie, Hir, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neut...