I’m not staying at a job past 5 unless I have a share of the company. Screw that. Every startup owner thinks they are unique and that’s why 90% of them fail. If you are working at a new startup the stats says it’s going to be time to look for a new job anyway in a year so why go any extra miles when you don’t have stake? Silicon Valley isn’t a charity
> I’m not staying at a job past 5 unless I have a share of the company. Screw that. Every startup owner thinks they are unique and that’s why 90% of them fail.
Not all companies are the same, and not all companies are startups. I'm back working at the same company which was my first job in tech. Not for the second time, not the third either, but the fourth time now. I was first hired there over 22 years ago in tech support. It's always been a good place to work, that takes care of it's employees (even if it can't pay a huge amount for some positions, there's always a lot of recognition that everyone is needed to make it work, and everyone is appreciated), and I never left because I disliked the company or the work, but because I wanted to focus on school, or explore a new opportunity, or work with family, etc. Our customers love us, and my fellow employees generally like working here, to my knowledge.
They don't expect me or my fellow employees to work past our normal hours (except when on call, or it it's a night-op for sysadmins, which you can generally just take chunks of time off the next day if you like). Yet people do work a little later to finish stuff, or check in to make sure something they did earlier in the week isn't causing problems over the weekend. Because they care about not making problems for their fellow employees, and not adversely affecting our customers, which have a high opinion of us.
All that is a long way of saying that not every company is a startup or behaves as one. People in silicon valley are somewhat conditioned to look for the startups and make that gamble, but there are other choices, and they aren't always nearly as bad as people have been led to believe. Many jobs that are considered shit work can be rewarding if approached the right way. Even IT or programming at a bank can be rewarding if you're lucky enough to have management that mostly gets out of the way and if you cultivate a relationship with the people (the other employees in this case) that you're serving, and see how you make their life better an easier (and there are always opportunities for this, if you pay attention).
> even if it can't pay a huge amount for some positions, there's always a lot of recognition that everyone is needed to make it work, and everyone is appreciated
I can't pay my rent in recognition or appreciation though.
What point are you trying to make? Nowhere in the post does it say the job doesn't pay enough to cover rent. If you are spending a large amount of life employed, it's reasonable to trade off a percentage of the maximum possible renumeration you can achieve in exchange for making that time as pleasant as possible (eg if you luck out and end up working with a group of people you care about and who care about you). It's not as if any extra money you make can ever buy you that time back
There's nothing wrong at all with just seeking maximum income at all times, but that's normally to some end (happiness, security etc): if what you're seeking is partially served by a given job, then you often aren't really gaining much by sacking that job off for one that pays more
But it makes it easier to stay motivated to keep working. Of course, at the end of the day you still need enough to pay the bills. You still have a better, healthier, less stressful life than if you feel you are being exploited or not recognised.
There was no mention of the job being underpaid, was there?
Then, if your definition of “underpaid” is “lower salary than one could get elsewhere”, well, we are all underpaid. But it matters only if your salary is not enough to cover your lifestyle. Bearing that in mind, I’d rather be paid less to work in a nice working environment than better paid in a stressful professional nightmare. I’ve done my share of nightmares already.
If the extra money is enough you may have enough to become your own boss after some time spent being miserable.
I've been quite miserable whenever I worked as an employee (I carefully picked the companies I worked for and I don't really have many complaints - I just can't stand company politics, power plays and stupid decisions from above) but I used my time as an employee to save some money and use paternity leave to build a family. Also, as a sleepless parent, my brain is not in top shape and I'm ok with doing what I need to do to collect a paycheck.
Now, those 5 years being miserable will translate to buying a property in cash somewhere with nice weather, lowering our expenses tremendously (more than half is rent right now) and allowing us to live off some almost passive revenue stream (think, 1 man micro-saas). We're planning to use the free time to build more products and edge ourselves against the risk of not being able to afford our lifestyle and have to go the employee route again.
I mean "some people" is clearly not the person you're replying to and I agree with them. I'd much rather get paid for the work I do. Unless I have a stake in the company, the company is not my family and my work is a means to an end
> the company is not my family and my work is a means to an end
That's fine. I wasn't making some argument that you should work for someone that's like family, just that there's a whole spectrum between "caring about my company stops at shift end" and "my identity is bound up in this place I work".
I think most people would agree that money isn't the only thing most people care about when choosing a job. There's plenty of people here that would balk at writing better missile targeting code, or exploits for a government, or spying software marketed to spouses, or even writing video games that trigger compulsive behavior. For some people, dislike of the work outweighs the fact that they can get paid very well doing it.
FWIW, some of my time in the past was spent working for my brother at his IT company, which also employed our other brother. It's great working with family until it isn't, and when it isn't, it really isn't. I don't recommend working for family most the time, and I don't think people should treat their coworkers as family. I do think people should try to find a job where they enjoy the people they are around and are proud of the work they do, if they can afford to choose a job like that. If you're going to spend close to half your waking hours doing something, I think it's much more fulfilling and better for your mental health to care about more than the amount you're paid if you can afford to.
> But using your money to buy happiness after your ten hour work Saturday is not going to be a big success, either.
It depends. If working 10-hour Saturdays for a year results in me buying a yacht, you can be sure that actual real money bought the happiness that came with my yacht.
It's all a tradeoff and for some things you are unlikely to get the big payoff without a risk involved. Determining where your personal boundaries are with the risk-taking is an individual decision.
TLDR; you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket.
If you have a reasonably high income, I think the tradeof is actually never worth it, because the marginal happiness from money gets so low. Sure I could buy a yacht but that's not going to make me much happier. Buying a mansion by the sea would not really make me much happier either. Sure I might do it if I had the money because why not but that would not accept to work on weekends for a few years to get it even if it was guaranteed.
> It depends. If working 10-hour Saturdays for a year results in me buying a yacht, you can be sure that actual real money bought the happiness that came with my yacht.
Great. Now you have to pay for maintenance, staff, and insurance. So you need to keep making that amount of money or you’ll lose it. The added stress and expenses make it a bit of a poisoned gift.
> TLDR; you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket.
Then you will be stuck working 10-hour Saturdays to pay for the running costs and maintenance of said yacht, which still leaves you with barely any time to actually enjoy your yacht.
That's not meant to imply they don't pay well. I included that as a nod to some people I've known in the past that thought they didn't pay well enough, but I also know they've been much more competitive for tech positions the last decade or so (you have to, being SF adjacent). As for tech support (where I think a majority of grumbling traditionally was), I'm not sure what that's like now. It's also a problem of supply and demand though, lots of people are qualified for that.
It doesn't matter how much you like a specific company if they don't have a need for your skills or your skills don't provide enough to live off of. I'm not saying abandon your tech career to work as a janitor at your favorite company, just that there are lots of other choices for someone in tech other than working at a startup. Some pay okay, some pay quite well. Some may not pay well at all. What someone thinks is worth it is obviously up to them and their circumstances.
> They don't expect me or my fellow employees to work past our normal hours [...]. Yet people do work a little later to finish stuff, or check in to make sure something they did earlier in the week isn't causing problems over the weekend.
You know, managment will become accustomed to that. My first scuffle with US “work ethics” came when I spent a year in a fairly well-known company and yeah, everyone was enthusiastic and passionate and... management expected no less than total dedication and zeal from their underlings.
How does it go? “The beatings will continue until morale improves”
After I left I heard of more grief and drama, burn outs and bitter separations.
> You know, managment will become accustomed to that.
Eh, I'm sure they can, but I think I wasn't communicating that it isn't all people and it isn't all the time. It's not the same people always staying late. It's sometimes that someone stays to finish that last bit or to stop at a good point, but people also take off early routinely to counter that, and feel free to run errands in the middle of the day as needed. It's less that management is getting extra time out of a lot of people than it is that people feel flexible with their time, and willing to give a little here and take a little there, to make sure other people aren't left in the lurch, and neither are they.
I am management and I work at a company that is similar to the post you are replying to and I would never get used to it. If someone does get used to it they have serious value issues (same as if employees take bonuses for granted).
Well, unfortunately it’s something inevitable like entropic decay.
The guy that hired me was someone like you, but was kicked out and replaced with a more ambitious gentleman who must have promised to squeeze us more efficiently.
The problem is that if you look beyond the rhetoric and the propaganda, employee well-being are only second-order to measurable and targetable outputs. There always will be someone that promises to achieve objectives in some other manner, and given enough time they will get their chance and ruin everything
