From the outside it might appear like you came back to the office after a nice weekend break and quickly knocked out whatever task it was that was on your mind. But it's not that simple and after unloading that task, even though it's Monday you could be feeling like you need a break because you actually just worked through the weekend on it.
Because of this, I feel like engineers are already massively overworked and/or underpaid when you consider their salary based on a 40hour workweek when the real mental effort can be pushing 60-80 hours a week. Things like unlimited/discretionary PTO, flex hours, and management that understands the balance of overtime and undertime keeps things fair. Establishing a 30-hour workweek just seems like going hard in the other direction.
I'm not the highest paid person I know, of course. My low six-figure income can't compete with $300k+ salaries that many surgeons get. I couldn't afford the $1.2M Mediterranean mansion that my dentist lives in. And I'll never get the sort of pay package that big law firm partners can command.
But I'm not performing life-altering surgery. I didn't even have to go to medical school, let alone complete a residency.
I didn't have to start up my own dental practice. And I'm not in my hypothetical dental practice every Saturday morning at 8AM taking care of patients who couldn't make it during the week or couldn't afford to take off work.
I never had to go to law school. I didn't have to pass a single licensing exam. I took out no loans to get to where I am. And I was never worked 80+ hours a week as a young associate.
I worked less than these people to get to where I am, and I continue to work less than them. My work is easier than theirs too. It's less stressful. Even if a problem does consume me for days, including outside of work, it's just not that big of a deal. I started making this income when these other folks were doing nothing but accruing debt. My lifetime earnings won't be all that different from theirs because I got such a tremendous head start.
If I look at friends who are not in any of the above three professions, not a single person comes to mind who makes as much money as I do. Many make half as much as I do but have much more stressful jobs, fewer perks, etc.
And yet apparently I'm underpaid. I don't buy it.
The stressful period for most doctors is getting into medical school, getting through medical school, and getting into and through internships and residencies. That is roughly 10 years or so, and during that time it is absolutely at the pace and pressure I see in software development..but once they finish, for most of them, it is pretty smooth sailing. Those at the top of the game are a different story, but that's true anywhere.
The real difference is that doctors have a powerful lobby that artificially limits their numbers, essentially providing a benefit similar to unionization. You can't massively up the numbers of doctors being trained in the U.S., and you can't import massive numbers of foreign workers to increase supply. No matter how many capable people there are, the numbers will remain artificially constrained.
Software development doesn't have this protection. The only lobby in software development is regularly pushing for massive increases in supply through various channels. Doctors' salaries have continued to rise year after year..not so sure software development salaries will fare as well in the coming years..especially after we convince software devs they are already overpaid ;)
Personally, I feel like I sold my teenage years as a price for my edge in tech. I'm not always sure it was worth it.
It's all about ratios, of course. If the owners/management of a company are grossly overpaid in comparison to the workers who produce - especially if physical overhead is nearly eliminated - then yes, developers are indeed underpaid. And I would posit this is true in many areas of software development. Perhaps not your situation, but overall? I buy it.
Now let's assume it was a $10 million a year business. That means it's now making $11.5 million dollars a year because a software engineer optimized the loading time. That engineer probably makes $100k or so, and he might get a 10% raise since he did such a good job. The remaining $1.49 million gets distributed amongst execs and investors.
Hardly seems fair, when most executives have no idea what's going on, and provide zero value add for that case.
But many many software engineers do. Many of us go to uni and study a traditional degree and therefore, have a lot of loans etc as well as spend 3 to 4 years in University.
Also, learning for a software engineer is pretty much forever since the moment you stop learning is your downfall in software development.
If anything there is an argument that labor in the overall economy is undervalued, and it is destabilizing the long term strength of the economy.
A side note: when you said "I didn't have to pass a single licensing exam" I immediately thought of the way our profession tends to have that kind of exam every time we interview each other. A big part of interview for a software developer is based on the exam-type material; this is very different from the way other professionals, even engineers, have their interviews. (Does not contradict your message, just a note.)
For less used software this might not seem like a big deal, but targeted software can have a larger indicidual impact even if it's only making 50+ people redundant.
Hardly ever you'll find anybody saying that earns too much or works too little. Be humble and enjoy.
"Maybe I feel differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub"
Read: "I can afford to live in a comfortable place and not a closet, so let me generalize such that no dev can afford to live in historically relevant software hubs either."
Next, lest this selfish hot take get too tonedeaf, time to write off our 6 figure privilege! Since this is a recent accomplishment, let's ditch any sort of humility toward the the talented software minds who came before who made the efficiencies of our day jobs possible. Instead, we'll roll with some terrible analogies to completely non-sequitur professional industries!
• I'm not performing life-altering surgery, because emotional hyperbolic appeals will distract from the fact I base my insight into the most valuable industry in the world on 7 paragraphs of anecdotes. Forget that the fundamentals of medicine and the practice thereof bear almost no relation to that of computer science and software development.
• Wheee! I love talking about dentists with mansions. I got my teeth cleaned last Saturday, and I've never had to be on call for any sort of systems admin role. Speaking of things I've never had to do, thank god I come from an ever increasing minority of people who can afford to live a comfortable lifestyle without taking on student loan debt early in life.
• I don't need a graduate degree to get precious time in a lab with equipment I absolutely must have to do my job. Unclear if I've ever met anyone who's tried to further themselves with a IT licensure, but since those aren't in vogue any more, I'll just make dreamy comparisons to one of the most antiquated, regulated industries out there. I've worked less, but people I know are stuck in debt forever working 80+ hour weeks in BigLaw!
Despite the option of a meaningful career alternative to the above, developers shouldn't try to build on their gains. Let's just foreclose even the notion that there are people working out there who are underpaid because they don't have coworker peers, or they are just the "IT guy", or are a woman or minority, or because some doctor, dentist, or lawyer has an idea.
"My lifetime earnings won't be that different because I got such a tremendous head start" ...so why should I try to build others up?
In these kind of discussions, I often point out how software is pretty unique in that due to supply/demand, there's no labor unions or collective bargaining. But maybe it's a good thing, because I'd never want you speaking for me when it comes to how much any of us are being paid.
There are very few technical teams inside that seem to come even close to that, so I'm extremely doubtful that managers are going to be sufficiently disciplined to keep their staff down to 30 hours, nor employees sufficiently empowered either. It's so hard to see this as anything other than a way to pay people less for comparable work.
I've found that this is a much less stressful and more productive way to approach most things in life.
> Some of the 60 hr/week employees are gunning for promotions and probably don't care about work life balance. Why should everyone have to compete with that?
That seems totally reasonable. It's similar to the way tech companies have a concept of a "terminal level" where it's considered fine to spend your whole career with no pressure or expectations to earn further promotions.
Why would you go against a theory that all evidence pointed toward? I think what you meant is that despite what it looks like at first glance, there could be reasons why this is a good idea. You should present evidence for those arguments, maybe based on personal experience
I'd love a 30 work week (if I wasn't trying to fast track towards retirement): those 10 hours (or more if working 4 days and not having to commute one weekday) would be entirely mine.
It's not that most people can't take their mind off of work, it's that they often have to meet various unrealistic deadlines, or else. It's not their own choice, insofar as they want to keep their job.
Though as others have suggested, a 3 month vacation every year might be an even better approach to a 75% work schedule.
In any case, what you describe seems like a pretty big limitation to me. If your employer isn't asking you, or pressuring you, to do more work, then they really shouldn't be held responsible when you do. I wouldn't paint my neighbor's house without having been asked to and then be upset with them for not asking me to (and therefore not paying me to) paint their house. That's nonsensical, but it's also an analogy with limited applicability.
The project never fully leaves your mind and often I'll go home and mull over the reasons why things might not be working or how to start another task. No "actual" work gets done, but I'm still working; just as you described.
Do you think carpenters never think about work after hours?
I'm not saying two hours per day (or an extra weekday or whatever) is entirely trivial, just that one has to be very fastidious and organised to take advantage of it. Even so, the economics of human task-switching and overhead, particularly in high cognitive load professions like software, are such that the marginal utility of two extra hours is going to be low. Life is not a spreadsheet, where one gets home at 3 PM and $ENJOYMENT or $NECESSARY_ERRANDS immediately commence. I'd probably just catch a breather for a few hours, if lucky, or catch up on the traffic from other life stressors gnawing at me.
Is that worth making 25% less? I don't know about that. I suspect most people would just negotiate a "75%" salary that still makes them reasonably happy.
I did a 4 * 10 job one summer when I was a teen. It was REALLY nice to have Friday as "recovery" day before the real weekend started.
I'm not sure how my family would tolerate me being gone 4 * 10, though.
Or in a simpler sense: You need someone to perform weekly maid service? $X please. You want a foundation dug and poured for your new satellite office? $Y please. Hourly wages in many cases are just inviting abuse and drain employee productivity and motivation.
Of course a flat fee would be rather difficult to implement in direct customer service sectors. Hiring a cashier to process a certain number of customer check-outs or a certain amount of purchases for a flat fee would be problematic, because there's no way of knowing how long that would take (so the employee can't schedule the rest of their life) and the employer wouldn't want the employee to have much control over what time of day they work.
Frankly though, if you love what you do you always take your work home with you (mentally anyway). So at the end of the day, there is no on/off switch for engineers (along with other types of careers) so although engineers are some of the highest paid you want them to be paid higher?
I am not saying I would disagree but also not saying I think I am under paid by any stretch of the imagination.
Were I only getting 75% of the pay of a full time worker, you can be sure I'd never put in a single additional hour.
I could say that a drop in my hours to 40 / week would be nice, but I'm the one who chooses to work longer hours. There's no expectation of longer hours where I am. I'm also usually not productive 8 hours in a row every day, sometimes significantly less than that. It ends up being very much a give / take scenario.
Oh my gosh, exactly this! When I am working on a theoretical maths problem, there is just no end to the work! On the train home, when I'm eating, when I'm taking a shower, it goes on and on (it's especially bad for maths because it's pure mental gymnastics - not even pen & paper needed unless you have specific calculations). I have to make a conscious effort to stop that - but then I have to clear many 'temporary variables' in my mind (losing time and effort) and the problem remains unsolved for the time being. Plus I cannot work on any other intellectual pursuits in the meantime because my mind is exhausted. It drives me nuts.
I'd like to see proper hour counting, like a check in and check out. Where any hour above 30h comes at an extra cost to Amazon, like double pay. So that they would be incentivised to actually tell me to stop working and send me home.
I know some people might say, that's up to you, just don't let yourself work extra, but at a company like Amazon, you can actually lose your job or at least not be promoted from delivering less then the other employees. You're ranked against your peers, so deciding to work only 30h would hurt you in the long run if the others started putting in 35h, 40h, 45h, etc.
Now, the idea of a clock that tells me to go home seems super appealing.
I wonder if the group that does this will be viewed as lesser, e.g. work on less interesting projects, be less likely to be promoted, than the "40" hour employees.
To me this seems like a purely PR driven move after the lambasting their culture has taken lately.
There's a tendency for people to think that HR software and other internal tools are less important than public products, but if the company is allocating employees properly, that doesn't really make sense.
The engineers working on this HR software all passed the same technical interviews that everybody else did. Amazon could have easily allocated them to some flashy consumer product, but management decided that it's important to have a team working on HR software. So either somebody made a horrible miscalculation when they decided to build the HR software, or this work is equally valuable to all the other work happening.
A major problem in HR or payroll software or something similar might cause some massive headaches for your employees, but it won't be as noticeable outside the company as a major outage or problem affecting customer data.
Amazon experiments. It's not about bold PR moves to make waves and attract attention. It's about trying everything, even ideas that might sound bad, and seeing if they actually work. This? This is the same idea. Try it out on something less important (HR software, sure, why not) and see what happens.
In the worst case, a bit of internal software is late. That's a low-cost risk to see if you can find a way to reduce developer costs efficiently.
As jaded as I sound, I do think there's a place for workplace flexibility. What would really tell me the executives are committed to it: Calculate their actual FTE's - average work week hours divided by 40 - and make sure there are at least that many physical FTE's.
A few of my folks were angry about this and claimed to be working 50-60 hour weeks. My response was "there's a easy solution to this problem". They cut out the excessive OT, which was mostly unneeded, and not too much changed.
Great!
Let's be honest - most working professionals (especially in Software) earn more money than they need. I think it's much better to have more time - time with you family, time to be outdoors, time to be healthy - than it is to have more money
Amazon is a sweatshop. The expectation is salaried employees put in ungodly hours.
All this is doing is giving people more freedom to burn themselves out at home, while further blurring the lines between work and life and throwing in a 25% pay cut as the cherry on top.
It's like the opposite of Google campus life, but with the same goal.
I wouldn't agree with this broad generalization. I work in Alexa and the work environment on my team is pretty awesome. Lots of freedom to try new things, good work life balance, and generally a high level of respect for engineers. I turned down Google to come here and I have no regrets (though not to imply that Google isn't equally awesome).
I now work at a much better place where I feel more valued and my work life balance is simply amazing in comparison.
I am not US based and I've always wondered about this. In virtually every other western country, it doesn't matter if you're "salaried" or not - your employer is legally prohibited from not paying overtime. If your employment contract says you work 9-5, then anything outside those hours must be compensated, often at a higher rate (1.2x-1.5x is not uncommon in many European countries).
In the context of the US labor law, does being "salaried" functionally equal "being required to work unlimited overtime"?
While I would not like such workplace, it sort of makes sense. It's similar to what Elon Musk said once - if you work more then everyone else, over time it becomes noticeable. Perhaps Musk shops reward you better?
Simply only showing up in the office 30 hours a week would be enough to put your team on the bottom end of the stack.
Amazon is organized such that the politics are vicious and anything that can be used to put another team down (And thus elevate your team in the stack) will be used.
Managers like Bezos are proud of creating this toxic cult like culture because they rationalize it and are not interested in hearing about how they are screwing up.
A real example of this is Bezos claiming after the NYT article that if anyone saw abuse they should email him directly... and now the ex-amazon alumni group has grown by several people who did exactly that and were fired.
My boss was committing felonies on the PacMed grounds on a regular basis, drove %80 of his team to leave, and he still got promoted.
Because he was good at politics and BS (and terrible at actually getting product done, easily wasting %25 of our time with nonsense because he didn't understand how the system worked but wanted to "manage" (which really meant micro-manage.))
Felonies, I'm not kidding.
That doesn't seem like a good deal to me. I don't want a 25% pay cut for 25% fewer mandatory hours of work. As other commenters have pointed out, unless this comes along with a reduction in responsibilities and/or increase in staff, the same amount of work still needs to be done. And most exempt employees already work more than 40 hours a week.
Add to this the fact that the Washington Post is owned by Bezos, and this just seems like a clear PR stunt to me, and a lame one at that.
If you're supposed to still accomplish the same amount of stuff in 75% the time then that's just clearly not going to work. Can't fit 10 pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.
But anyway, yes, I'm sure it's either a PR stunt or bound to fail or both.
This is a telling statement. Why are we still stuck on a minimum of 40 hours being 'full-time'? After over a century of productivity increases, and with ever-increasing automation, we could soon be at the point where a 15-hour work week is the equivalent of an old 'full-time' work week. Now is a good time to start nudging down expectations.
The pay cut is wrong, however. The fact that people are producing much more now in 30 hours than they used to produce in 40 argues against that. If a company is profiting from the benefits of that productivity, but can't afford to pay the employees for their work, then it needs to change something else.
Agreed. As technology advances, we have a much less need for labor. Yet we are not yet at the stage of "Star Trek abundance", so people still need to work for a living. A cultural shift to a shorter standard work week will be essential, I feel, to avoid having catastrophic waves of unemployment.
I'm not sure about the pay cut being wrong however. That may be necessary to some extent, society-wide. But if nearly everything is becoming automated and dirt cheap, one's standard of living need not necessarily decrease. It may dramatically increase, even if the dollar amount of your paycheck doesn't change (or even if it goes down).
Regardless, there are weeks people will have to pull extra hours to complete work, such as during product launch week.
If this were a program made up of full-time employees, I would be interested to see the number of overtime hours this team will accumulate. Otherwise, I don't see what's so interesting about this experiment.
BTW, I work extra hours because sometimes I just want to work extra hours. Sometimes, I just want to pull extra hours to get the most boring stuff out of the way.
Instead of a 30-hour pilot, make Friday a half-day for everyone.
Now not burning gas and time and nerves stuck in traffic every day and being able to have lunch with my family is a nice bonus. But if that is considered "taking it" easy, a potential employee wouldn't benefit from that either, that would be time and resources just wasted (I guess car mechanics and gas stations would benefit from that at some point).
Also, you sound disgruntled, why don't you do the same if you feel your team allows it?
The arrangement I'd be most excited by is a team with forced three month sabbaticals yearly (or honestly even 6 month sabbaticals). Of-course with the normal amount of vacation time added as well.
The way it would work is: Say a team is supposed to have 8 people. Hire 25% more people and schedule sabbaticals such that there is always ~8 people working. Additionally, you could ensure that there is never a time where two developers go more than 2 months without working together.
Benefits: Increases the supply in the job market; Reduces income disparity; Improves employee work-life balance.
(My personal ideal is ~8 days on (12-16h/day), 6 days off, and then a month or two off twice a year.)
I mostly used the extra time for friends and family, and to write books.
I would do it myself but I don't have the extra day to write books :) and I'm a terrible writer.
Actually, I did a bit research and it seems the symbol you used is not even a mathematical one. It stands for "care of" and "signifies an intermediary who is responsible for transferring a piece of mail between the postal system and the final addressee."
So you can, I guess, disregard my question.
The only type of companies I could see getting away with this would be pure software companies or agencies. Otherwise, I can't see it fitting many models or personal finances.
I think that's true of every tech successful company. There's always more +EV work to be done than people to do it, and recruiting quality people is never easy.
It seems short-sighted to suggest that the existence of this problem necessitates working long hours. There are lots of factors to consider:
* It's possible that somebody working 30 hours is actually more productive than somebody working 40 hours, so productivity goes up under the new policy without hiring anybody new.
* It's possible that many more people could enter the workforce if a 30 hour week with a flexible schedule was possible. This working style could be appealing to students, retired people, stay-at-home parents, artists, etc.
* Maybe it's actually okay for productivity to go down. If the company is able to remain stable while getting slightly less done and having much happier employees, perhaps that's a net gain to society.
There are teams where all horror stories you hear are common occurrences(although less so in recent years) and others where it's an absolute pleasure.
I think most people would rather have the extra money, for various reasons. If I owed a couple hundred grand on a mortgage or was saving to send my kids to college, I might think the same but as it is I have no house and no kids and relatively low living expenses, so I can afford to be a little bit self-indulgent and take a 3-day weekend every week.
But what's the justification for a more-than-pro-rata loss of stock grants?
Or you really did mean it was impossible, in which case... math checks out.
On the one hand, you get more people thinking about the problem for the same amount of money. (And most people do sometimes think about work problems off the clock.)
On the other hand, more people means more coordination, communication, and disagreements. There's a reason people like small teams.
How does this sentence make any sense?
(I'm assuming you were confused by "same benefits" and "75% pay". Benefits, in this context, is the non-cash benefits: health insurance, PTO accrual, etc.)
To each their own, but this is why I don't want to dev for a living.
* - 3 day weekends every week is an awesome thing for me.
Even if you can squeeze more productivity into 30 hours the temptation should be resisted.
The outfit I work for intentionally gives 9 hours of work to new employees and has them work an 7.5 hour day. It's intentional and brilliant. New people do not know they don't have to do 9 in 7.5. Old timers coach them but it is a very hard thing to tell someone to work slower.
I think Amazon will realize more productiviy in 30 than in 40 (in some cases)
What's next? Unlimited PTO? :)
last job i worked at had 42 hours and after 2 years i've been totally burnt out; now i'm motivated, usually well rested and concentrated. when my concentration drops i go home for the day, if i'm working on a hard problem that occupies my mind i'll stay a couple of hours more (but only if i want to, which i usually do). i haven't had to do crunch time for several years and when that was the case they asked if you wanted to volunteer and if you said no that was ok.
also if my project lead tells me there's not much work to do right now and if i want to take off time now would be a good time to do so i'll usually do it.
additionally, if you want to it's possible to work from home if there aren't any reasons speaking against it (meetings) - many colleagues work one fixed day a week from home (i don't because i love the quiet conditions and free, potent coffee).
in my opinion this benefits both me and my employer. i'm motivated, concentrated, productive and loyal - currently i can't imagine working somewhere else full time, even for higher pay. i do regard my employer as fair and really want the company to succeed, not only because of my workplace security but also because i think they're doing it right and that's how it should be done. there's no us-vs-them mentality.
pay is good but i'm probably not going to become a fabled startup millionaire here; quality of life is, in my opinion, unbeatable. currently i don't know any people who lead a more comfortable life than i.
I wouldn't object to that as Amazon didn't create the rules, they are just operating within the system in the most efficient way they can.
What I find concerning is that the rules are changed in the West to incentivise part time work (which doesn't pay living wages in other sectors than IT) over full time work, effectively leaving more and more workers dependant on welfare.
It's what we see here in the EU too since the crash in 2008. Many jobs were lost and the recovery was mostly in part time jobs where the government has to support these workers with additional payments in order for them to survive.
Amazon, is that 30 in decimal or hexadecimal?
I love my job but I have had jobs I've hated. Work sucks, go Amazon. If widely adopted, this would represent a massive reduction in taxation imposed on the average American family. A two-income family working 25% less hours pays over 25% less in taxes. Progressive taxes work both ways, Feds :)
