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Comment by jonmb | Hacker News Reader

Are these engineers at Facebook/Google/etc. working the typical 40 hour work week or more like 60-80?

Obviously a throwaway account, but I work at Facebook, on an infrastructure team. I average ~45 hours/week, except for the week I'm oncall, which is about every three months. I probably work 60 hours that week. I get in early (7:30am) and leave early (3 or 3:30), and sometimes I'll review diffs at night, but normally my laptop stays in my trunk when I'm at home.

I work hard when I'm at work, and really focus. I don't do a lot of the extra-curricular stuff that you can easily spend your time on. I'm an L6 and last year earned just north $450K with decent performance reviews. I have damn near a million dollars in unvested $FB RSUs, too, so there's almost no chance I'm going to leave for anywhere that won't match that with equally liquid public shares.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for the response. Sometimes I get the impression that engineers are killing themselves doing nothing but work with occasional sleep, so it's good to hear you're around 45 hours.

Would you mind sharing how long you've been working there and your level of seniority? Would be super interesting to know for at least my reference.

My guess 6 to 10 years

Depends whether you count the half of their workday that is spent on a bus.

That's optional, for folks who WANT to commute (eg, either want a big house in BFE, or want to live the city life, or whatever). If you want a short commute, it's yours -- if you live in the city, work for one of the many tech companies up there. If you want to work at FB, come be my neighbor and walk to work, I live in a great walkable neighborhood <2mi from FBHQ.

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