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Comment by BinaryIdiot | Hacker News Reader

The few folks I knew who worked at Tesla told me it's basically 60 hours a week at a minimum. It's not uncommon to find someone sleeping in the office or folks going out to dinner and coming right back to work.

The last person I talked to was looking for a new job. He loved what he was working on and felt proud of his work but was also feeling extremely burned out and wanted to stop working every weekend and evening. He also told me they use _literally every_ technical stack. He had worked on a Ruby app, a Python app, a .Net app, a .Net Core app, and many of them are supposed to work together they were just written that way because whoever started it was more familiar with a specific language.

It doesn't sound like a great place to work for to me. I talked to someone at SpaceX who told me similar things but it sounded like their usage of random tech stacks was at least lower than Tesla's.

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For a young person 60 hours should not be a big deal. If it is don't work for a hard charging company. Go do something easier. Or don't work for a company 'like that'. Believe it or not some people are not impacted by that kind of lifestyle (of working so much)

I disagree, no one should be expected to, week in week out, work for more than 40 hours a week. Of course there is regrettable crunch from time to time.

Anything over that, is just unproductive in the long run. People will burn themselves out, which isn't good for a company, and certainly isn't good for the employee.

Nobody is 'expected to' it's what you sign up for. It's like saying you decide to be a policeman or firefighter (not something I would do) and then that they shouldn't be 'expected' to do what the job requires.

Nobody is required to take a job at a company that thinks people should work long hours. And actually new college graduates in some professions (law, medicine, finance) work longer than 60 hours. And if they don't want to work those hours there is someone who would in many cases be glad to take their place.

Simply saying that 'nobody should be required' implies that everyone thinks it's bad.

When I was out of school I was involved in a situation where I worked much longer than 60 hours and did so for at least 5 or 6 years. No vacation nothing. And guess what? It didn't bother me to do that. At all. Just like it doesn't bother some people to be hanging off a rock cliff (not me that is not something I would do).

Bottom line: You are free to choose whatever job you want. If you don't want to work what is required then pick another job. And if enough people don't want to work long hours the company can decide then to change their practices.

The law does not even prevent long hours for most salary workers either by the way (there are labor practices that cover some situations of course.)

Firefighters and policemen get paid very generous overtime for working more than 40 hours a week. And their are caps to how much overtime they can work.

Attorneys get paid lots of money to sacrifice their social lives. Especially at the "biglaw" firms, they get paid well into the six figures and generally 2 years in will make more than a programmer with the same experience. Doctors eventually make far more than programmers after their residency. Finance guys (and gals) nearly 7 figures a year or two into the job...

The law does not even prevent long hours for most salary workers either by the way (there are labor practices that cover some situations of course.)

Again, why should a salaried worker work long hours so that their company can make money if the company isn't going to pay them for the extra work?

> Firefighters and policemen get paid very generous overtime for working more than 40 hours a week. And their are caps to how much overtime they can work.

I do not know any firefighters or policemen who make even what a mid level developer makes.

I used to think this way. Worked at 3 different start-ups, actually.

I lost a lot of my good years and what's worse when you're working so much is you can't even take care of yourself very well. Plus any type of "payout" from equity or similar is incredibly rare and even when it happens it's even more rare for it to be structured in your favor (you likely could be making more elsewhere for less time).

If you actually enjoy it then go ahead. But personally I think it's a mistake for the vast majority of folks and I don't think it's something that should be ever expected. In my experience it has always pointed to poor management. Calling companies better run "easier" is just a cheap shot at putting them down.

Time is your most important asset.

Oh they are, they just don't know it yet. Knowledge comes when a chance to fix anything is usually gone. .

Oh you have that figured out already? How so?

You must have been awesome during the start of the industrial revolution.

Fuck that. Why would should someone sacrifice their entire social life and health so that someone else can make money?

A Tesla recruiter recently contacted me, twice, trying to interest me in a job there (embedded software development). I just ignored the emails; I've heard similar stuff about that place, in regards to the excess working hours. No thanks.

This is par for the course in automotive manufacturing. I don't know about the design side of the house, but 60-70 hour weeks in manufacturing were the norm. I'm not sure it should be viewed as unique to Tesla

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