Remember that performative workaholism is poison to life. Every time you put in more hours over the weekend "just because", dial in to a meeting on your vacation, or get on Slack at 10 PM "just to check a few things" - you're shifting the culture to make it that much more acceptable to demand it of everyone. The parents in your meetings that run until 7:30 bitterly hate you.
It might seem OK when you're single, childless, etc. but once that time starts coming from your family you will realize what a prison you've built yourself.
This also applies to new technologies and skill gaps. I'm over 30, and have stopped following the latest javascript trends. I want younger people to be satisfied with the tools that I learned; they're perfectly adequate.
The treadmill of re-inventing the technology wheel also looks like a prison.
The struggle with that is how do you step off the treadmill but stay relatively current. I think about how web pages looked 10 years ago, and in a world of React, I feel like very, very few of the things I learned then help me for more than the very, very basics.
The reality is that engineers with a strong foundation in the fundamentals can pretty much pick up any new technology. The details are different, but the underlying principles of software engineering, algorithms, data structure, distributed systems, etc. are the same.
I guarantee you that a talented kernel hacker, with a few weeks of reading the docs and writing some toy examples, would be just as productive in React as the front-end developer with years of experience.
I work in a pretty niche industry, where hiring people with specific experience in the tech stack is rare or impossible. So, I see this up-close and personal all the time. Fluid intelligence, an understanding of computer science fundamentals, and a demonstrated history of delivering results trumps specialized experience with the specific technology. Every. Single. Time.
Keeping this in mind relieves some of the anxiety of keeping on the treadmill. You might feel like if you don't start getting experience with Kubernetes or Typescript or Airflow that you'll be left behind. The reality is that if you're smart, then if/when you need Kubernetes/Typescript/Airflow, you'll be able to pick it up in a week or two.
I think some of the industry-wide problems with this come down to the fact that HR is too involved in the recruiting process. The typical job listing gets written by someone who's never written a line of code in their life. They just walk down to engineering, talk to the manager, hear something like "we're using Kotlin", then decide to add "5 years of Kotlin experience required".
> I work in a pretty niche industry, where hiring people with specific experience in the tech stack is rare or impossible. So, I see this up-close and personal all the time. Fluid intelligence, an understanding of computer science fundamentals, and a demonstrated history of delivering results trumps specialized experience with the specific technology. Every. Single. Time.
I think that actually helps you look for generic skills and generally good people - if you're guaranteed that your interviewee doesn't have the direct skills your position requires, you look for the generic stuff. I don't know if that translates to other places, who like you said don't need someone smart who can roll with things, but instead a very particular set of skills.
Read and inwardly digest the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
After that, whatever is next on the treadmill is just some new syntactic sugar on top of the fundamentals taught in that book, which you can pick up with a minimum of time and effort.
Occasionally there is something truly new, but those are few and far between.
Also, if you are seriously worried about your earning potential, read this and learn to really apply it, before picking up another Javascript framework:
This isn't so much about React as that the expectations for web applications have skyrocketed in the last five years. Before 2012 or so you could call yourself a front end developer with good knowledge of html and CSS and little bit of javascript. If you were working in the industry back then and you're one of those people, you've had to teach yourself to be a proper software engineer in that relatively small amount of time. It's possible that the complexity growth curve has rounded off and over the next five years things will settle down and mature (fingers crossed).
This is especially important if you're a visible technical leader; you serve as an example for what it takes to get there, so set an example that you can do so without regular overwork.
I love what I do, but I don't ever want to give people the impression or example that becoming a technical leader requires working 50+, 60+ hour weeks. I maintain a work/life balance, and I want people to see that you can maintain that balance at all levels.
I agree if you're talking strictly about salaried employees, because you don't get paid for that overtime work. But as a contract developer if I want to work 60 hours each week, instead of 40, to earn an extra 50% when I invoice them at the end of the month, that is my prerogative.
I'm a contractor. I've been working extra hours continuously for a few months. The money and flexibility are great. However, more than a few times my 6yr old (Whoa, he is 6 already?) has stumbled into my home office at 9:00 PM. I've been telling myself that this should stop. But I've been ploughing on. What if my contracts run out the end of the year? I need to upgrade my skills. So I'm traveling next week for a week long programming course.
I hear first hand accounts of L5 to L6 employees and first level managers working unbelievably hard. The pay off is probably "worth it" if they or their kid don't end up being "a statistic". To be in this place (CEO, Founder, AppMaGooSoft) the odds were always in their favor to begin with. So why would the odds be unfavorable going forward? As a result there will always be a group of employees willing to throw themselves head first into whatever "challenge" "management" throws down.
It definitely is - and if you're paid overtime it's fantastic because it gives the company a signal that yes, this is possible if they need it, but it doesn't come free.
I don't mean that it's bad to work hard, or long sometimes. But it MUST cause the employer some pain.
I'm talking about salary jobs where meetings scheduled to end at 6 routinely run past 6:30 (even though daycare closes at 6:30 too). Where you get non-actionable pages all the goddamn time because it doesn't cost the company anything. Where you say better integration tests should be a higher priority, but nah, it's all good we've got Datadog alarms set up so let's launch that bad boy! Where week-long work trips come with the assumption you'll fly on Sunday and Saturday with no time off in lieu, and people ask how they can reach you on vacation.
That is of course your choice, but if you do that for a long time, there's a chance of burning out, divorce, losing touch with friends and family etc. Money isn't everything.
'Money isn't everything' is kind of truism. Stories abound, however of divorce, losing touch with friends and family once a person faces money troubles. Note that I am not trying to justify any particular way. It is just things are going to happen irrespective of one's outlook towards money.
This seems like a classic case of you projecting your value system on your peers. The reality of the situation is that is that there are a ton of ways to live a fulfilling life. Not all of them require strong family values, and there isn't any legal pressure to adopt family values as far as I can tell. I would actually put the onus on you to learn to work with colleagues who value work over family. If you can't live harmoniously with your values and your employer, you should find another job.
Strong second on this one. I don't have a family; that doesn't mean I don't value time outside work (and the relationships I get to build during that time) extremely highly.
100% agree that the habits to have a more balanced life starts when you're young, single and childless... working 24/7 doesn't just turn off because you have a kid, it takes time and practice to reprogram your life habits
What bothers me about this attitude is that it totally ignores the rewards for working hard for at least part of your life, and it also relies on the idea that everyone subscribe to the same theory, which makes those pushing it suspicious in their motivations.
"You shouldn't work hard because if you do, it makes me look bad and I don't want to look bad or work hard."
Some people have lives and the capacity optimized towards working many long hours. You can't tell us to stop, it's not fair.
The thing about "at least part of your life" in that equation is that there will always be fresh meat coming down the line "just doing your time".
Also, it's OK to work hard. Work your ass off if you like. Just try not to get shafted. If nothing else it would help if overtime rules were meaningful.
> you're shifting the culture to make it that much more acceptable to demand it of everyone.
I would argue the cowards who refuse to ever stand up to employers are the cause. If you aren't able to push back on your boss, you're fucked regardless of how many hours I choose to work.
There is a problem in thinking any one thing is "the cause". It's a multi-faceted problem of many self-reinforcing causes. The comment above talking about "shifting the culture to make it that much more acceptable" is a nod to the subtlety of what contributes to this.
All parties, employers and employees both, need to see how they do this.
> The comment above talking about "shifting the culture to make it that much more acceptable" is a nod to the subtlety of what contributes to this.
I see no "nod to subtlety" as you claim. All I see is a claim that one employee's overwork is what enables the boss to force you into overwork.
For this to happen one needs 1) routine culture of overwork, 2) and employer who leans into this fact, and 3) an inability or unwillingness to push-back.
If you solve for #3 you've made #1 and #2 irrelevant.
Calling for others to stop willingly work as much reminds me of an old film I'd seen as a kid wherein a new employee starts at a loading dock, and after his first highly performant day the old-timers come along and give him a talking to about his making them look bad.
You'll only look bad if your team and boss expect the "above and beyond" to become the new norm, and this isn't a rule. It is a result of shit conditions.
Just as expecting your coworkers to go above and beyond is bad, so is chiding them for willingly working harder than you.
I think you underestimate how easy it is for a CEO, manager, or even high-performing/high-status peer or IC to set the tone and give implicit instruction to others without ever intending to do it.
I have seen it in very mundane things that are not nearly of the magnitude of consequence of this topic. And also, in big things, such as expectations around working hours and standing up to unreasonable requirements.
Perhaps one aspect is that if a behavior is perceived to be a path to success in an organization, it will be emulated, rightly or wrongly, consciously or not. It's important to create an environment where many can thrive.
When has any production/productivity increase not become the new norm? Have you ever finished a 6 month job in 5 and been given 6 months again the next time. Everywhere I’ve worked if you finish a month early you just get 2 months less the next time because obviously you weren’t challenged enough
Maybe you can "push back" and get out of additional work. But when it's that time of year for raises or promotions, who do you think is going to be the first in line?
Let's be clear -- the biggest responsibility for change rests on those who have the most power. Those "cowards" may have no savings and could be fired at the drop of a hat.
But if what you mean is that employees have a choice between passively accepting the status quo or trying to act collectively to improve their conditions, then yes, I agree.
If everyone stood up maybe we could have some sort of organized labor...wait, that's the ticket, a union! (Seriously, I think that's more in line with what's needed, otherwise you become the squeaky wheel most likely to be replaced when belt tightening comes.)
> The parents in your meetings that run until 7:30 bitterly hate you.
It's just not true at all, and seems quite dramatic. A lot of people enjoy working on weekends or putting in long hours some days. When I was younger I would do it regularly, and I certainly don't begrudge or "hate" younger, childless colleagues who do that now, even if they involve me sometimes. Nor did I build myself a "prison". Stop demanding people live their lives how you want them to.
I come in on the weekends sometimes, because I'm bored or lonely or have work that needs to be done. I get paid for the privilege and I love my job, and it means I never have to stay past 5 during the week. Granted I work in academia where the norm is to stay till 8:00 and weekend work is necessitated by the projects we work on, but I personally don't have to. If I had a family things would be different though.
It might seem OK when you're single, childless, etc. but once that time starts coming from your family you will realize what a prison you've built yourself.
STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW.