It's not part of the culture. People sometimes quietly grouse about the lack of vacation time or the number of hours but no one is willing to publicly do anything about it for whatever cultural reason.
So in this culture, is it common to do a few years of high-income work with 12hr days and high compensation, and then you get a "quieter" job somewhere else when you need a job that allows you to pick the kids up at 4.30pm? Or how does it work? Obviously children aren't unheard of in Silicon Valley, and as far as I understand it's a pretty progressive part of the US, so I assume that families have two careers to worry about? Something doesn't add up if long days are norm.
> is it common to do a few years of high-income work with 12hr days and high compensation
People working the longest hours aren't necessarily making more money because of it. There's no overtime.
People don't want to make less as they go on in their careers, and don't want to look like they don't want to work a lot, so if they take less time they try not to do so overtly.
> then you get a "quieter" job somewhere else when you need a job that allows you to pick the kids up at 4.30pm?
Recalibrate your expectations. No one is leaving work at 4:30pm. 45 hours a week is called "40 hours a week" and no one works just 40 hours a week. People don't expect to do very much outside of work except on the weekends.
To me that seems insane. With the work I do, at 50 hours, I would be seriously burnt out (I used to be at a previous job). NOT good for the company.
By working ~40h I maintain my strength and keep delivering really good results. But when I sometimes do 1-2h overtime I notice that others (who come to work at 9:30-10) also leave at 5:50-6, so generally in Germany I'd say regular work hours are a given thing and most people don't do that much overtime, at least in IT. I've heard bad things about creative industries like ad agencies, or IT companies with lots of young engineers w/o kids.
I mean why would I work more - for more money, sure, but not for free. My employer doesn't pay me "overmoney" for the same amount of work, does he? I at least get an overtime account and this year I managed to reduce it by ~10 hours. With different overtime policies I definitely would NOT have taken the job - NOT good for the company ;-)
Thanks for the insights.
Perhaps it is time for companies to compete for talent on these parameters instead? I think I've seen some companies trying to attract talent like that now that I think about it (was it stack exchange perhaps?). I might underestimate the power of the almighty buck here, but I'd take the employer that says "we value work/life balance, when we say 40h/week we mean it literally, we allow remote work, and we have 5 paid weeks off".
As for my questions above, it still doesn't add upp. Either you don't have kids as long as you hold one of these jobs or at least both parents can't have such jobs, so it's basically a job that requires one parent to stay at home at least part time? Or you need a nanny to pick up your kids after school/kindergarten?
My guess is that you are going to say that normally one parent (and not a random one) just stays home for years after having kids, but that would be a real blow to my view of SF/NYC as progressive...
It seems odd to me that people making a lot of money (which I hope these salaries are considered), wouldn't just invest a huge chunk of it in family/free time, by simply working less hours, e.g. 75% at 75% pay.
With my european glasses, the salaries look huge, but of course I haven't factored the cost of living and certainly not the impact on work/life balance. I hold a well paid (by local standards) full time dev job, and I drop off kids at 8 and pick them up at 4.30. Every other day my wife does that so I can work a bit longer. I never manage to do 40h at the office, but it's considered normal for people with kids to leave early and do an hour or so of work in the evening.
Not sure what my point is, I guess it's that I'm surprised of how a "culture of work" can form in this way in a country that is often percieved as valuing family quite a lot, especially in progressive regions where presumably equality means a lot. Also I'm surprised of how employers (candidates, rather) aren't pushing the compensation in a more work/life balance friendly direction. Especially since these were visa applications, a lot of which I assume come from people used to 5w holidays and actual 40h workweeks.
> I might underestimate the power of the almighty buck here, but I'd take the employer that says "we value work/life balance, when we say 40h/week we mean it literally, we allow remote work, and we have 5 paid weeks off".
Almost universally what you see in job ads and recruiter spam is "we offer exciting challenges" and that they've created the most fun place to work ever and if they mention compensation at all they offer "market salary" or "salary commensurate with experience", to the point where all these different messages sound pretty much the same.
I get hundreds of messages on linkedin and they all sound like the above with exciting challenges with a market salary, but I don't recall anyone attempting to promise above-market salary or better vacation time, even once. You would think that you could get a competitive advantage by promising tangible benefits as you suggest, but I've never seen it.
Some do mention being more flexible with remote work though.
> so it's basically a job that requires one parent to stay at home at least part time?
Yes, basically.
> Or you need a nanny to pick up your kids after school/kindergarten?
In the US children are universally bussed to/from school, you don't need to come pick them up yourself. So once they're old enough that they don't need constant supervision they often have a couple hours to themselves at home.
> My guess is that you are going to say that normally one parent (and not a random one) just stays home for years after having kids, but that would be a real blow to my view of SF/NYC as progressive...
In terms of labor conditions? CA and NY have a handful of better labor protections than the rest of the country, but progressive by your standards? absolutely not.
> It seems odd to me that people making a lot of money (which I hope these salaries are considered), wouldn't just invest a huge chunk of it in family/free time, by simply working less hours, e.g. 75% at 75% pay.
That would be great. I would totally do that.
Remember, people don't get paid by the hour so there's no counterincentive to employers using social pressure to get you to put in as much time as possible. There is no concept of a set number of hours you're supposed to work.
> Also I'm surprised of how employers (candidates, rather) aren't pushing the compensation in a more work/life balance friendly direction.
Yes. People are not willing to fight for this.
> Especially since these were visa applications, a lot of which I assume come from people used to 5w holidays and actual 40h workweeks.
The bulk of these these are from Asia or India where the salary differential might be very large.
