On the opposite side of this argument. I was there. I was shit in college but managed a degree and self taught programming. I was hustling hard to graduate and convince someone to hire me as a programmer even though I had no degree. I was 23 at the time.

If you are in this scenario, just you, no wife kids etc. What is wrong with working really hard on a problem? I loved the startup and it fit my perfect niche. I would grind 12 hours days, but also had lots of freedom. Remote work, unlimited days off etc. Sure at sometimes you get burnt out but you are a sponge soaking up everything you can.

now i'm 28 with wife and kids, no overtime for me. I still work extremely hard and lazer focused, but i show up at 7:30-8am and leave at 4 everyday :p

> What is wrong with working really hard on a problem?

Because you're normalizing abusive workplace practices. Need I explain further? It's not right, it's not okay, and if you tolerate it, you do a disservice to your colleagues. Maybe you don't care, that's fine. But when you say "What's wrong?" I will point out that it is not to be commended or supported.

If your employer encourages, supports, or allows this sort of behavior to exist, I hope you find yourself on the business end of a lawsuit.

It seems like what's wrong is if it's not telegraphed that this is expected beforehand. We're all adults here and should be able to make informed decisions about how we want to live. Some of us want a lot of pressure and to not sit around bored wondering what to do with our lives.

When I was in grad school, 100 hour weeks and working 100 days straight was the norm. Also I made 25k a year. And I loved it, because I loved doing science and I got to be paid to do what I loved. And also, it's maybe worth mentioning that your experiments don't give a damn about labor laws. There really are some important societally beneficial things that simply won't get done if there aren't crazy fuckers like me around (not necessarily the projects I happened to work on, they all turned out to be crap)

Honestly what made me mad was that there were a lot of kids who got out of college, and went to grad school because they didn't know what to do next and nobody told them how crazy grad school was. These jokers depressed the asking price for a grad school salary.

I'm on team work/life balance but, in this case, I agree. First job out of school I had an engineering job (not software) in the oil business. Spent lots of time living in shipyards and offshore. Long days. Etc.

But I had a lot of responsibility. Was sort of thrown in the deep end with respect to a lot of things. It was a great experience out of school and, in retrospect, was absolutely the right job choice relative to my other options.

Would I have wanted to have done it long-term? (I left after 3 years to get another degree.) No way.

It's "pissing in the pool" for the rest of us. I know it feels validated internally because it worked out for you though.

Even when I did a startup, I held pretty normal hours. Working on someone else's problem to make them rich is silly to me. I think it's something that you either get or you don't. I don't plan to convince you to change sides, but I'd 100% of the time rather spend hours 8 or 9 through 12 working on my own hard problems. They're easy to create. I definitely had more responsibility, did more coding, and felt more energy at a startup than a big corp though. Pay and nearly everything else was shit in comparison.

If someone did 10-12 hour regularly on my current team, we'd be pissed. It would set a new normal and management would think they could start replacing people until they get 10 of those guys that are willing to sit here half the day.

I don't think it sets the normal. We had a great senior dev who never worked a second past 8 hours, never did prod support during off hours, never picked up the phone on the weekend, etc. But when he did work, he delivered way more than the junior devs did. He works there to this day, at a great salary, with no pressure to work OT.

Sorry, but that's ridiculous. People have different levels of dedication to their work. If you want to do 40 hours a week, that's fine, but don't crap on someone who wants to put in more effort.

Sounds like a union where they'd beat on the new guy who actually tried to be more efficient.

Versus management demanding everyone work 50-60 hours a week in an at will employment state? I won’t disparage your work ethic, but recognize that allowing yourself to be exploited enables your company to more easily exploit the unwilling, and without labor protections, it leads to systemic employee abuse.

You can’t say it doesn’t happen. HN is littered with these abuse stories.

I get what you're saying, but don't try to act like working more is equivalent to being more efficient.

Wait, I enjoy my job, want to write code and get lost in my work and you think that’s pissing in the pool?

I know some people at work that sort of have your mindset. I think it’s the worst. Not only do they not want to help someone who’s passionate you now make me suspect they’re incentivized to undermine hard workers as well, since they make you look bad.

Fine, take it easy at work, I don’t care. Just don’t make it harder for people who are trying to get work done.

I want you to work hard, I just need you to be paid more (hopefully a lot!). I'm saying it's better if I'm paid less than you.

What I don't want is for you to put in more effort for the same pay and establish a "new normal".

That's all it takes for us both to be happy. I don't want to hold you back, m'dude.

You are being exploited. Do you get compensated 1.5x your base for all those 12 hour work days?

Making multiples of what the median American household makes, sitting in front of a computer, in an air conditioned office full of free food is being exploited?

I'm sure a lot of American workers are being exploited but I'm not.

At most startups (with illiquid equity), TC adjusted for cost of living (assuming Bay Area) is probably not far from median American household. Employers take advantage of youthful zeal which prevents ICs from understanding their true worth to the business. After startup engineers reach the point where 12 hours days become unacceptable from a logistics standpoint (kids, burnout), what do they have to show other than enriching their founders? If they enjoy programming and would do it in their spare time, why not dedicate 8 hours towards their job and 4 hours towards a personal project with potentially much higher personal reward?

> what do they have to show other than enriching their founders?

I don’t get it. Being debt free and having a big pile of money, and a body that still works since I haven’t been doing backbreaking manual labor?

So you recognize the abuse disparity. Good! You can then understand why people fight against abuse despite the complaints from the comfortable.

I recognize that a lot of workers in America are exploited and abused. And I support policies to mitigate that. However, trying to associate myself with those or comparing my minor inconveniences to that of blue collar workers seems like it would be extremely spoiled and tone deaf given how exceptionally privileged the average tech worker is compared to blue collar workers.

On salary (not hourly) this is a useless question.

Say they make 100k/yr. With 40hr weeks that's roughly $50/hr. With 60 hour weeks and 1.5x base pay, you could say it's $20/hr. It's all the same.

What you seem to be asking for is for companies to pay you the same, just say your base is lower so they can pay you 1.5x you base for appearances sake.

Now, optics aside, if you take an offer with an expectation of 40 hrs / week and they make you work 60, then sure. That's exploitation. But if the expectations are clear upfront, "base pay" is just legalese.

Maybe I can rephrase. Is OP's base 1.5x that of the average (8 hr/day) worker base at comparable companies?