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You had no burnout or resentment because you had an enjoyable working environment with what sound like just rewards and you were able to learn valuable things. That's pretty rare in my experience.

My anecdotal evidence is the opposite. I worked extra hours and volunteered for a long time. I took responsibility for things nobody else wanted. My raises and bonuses were trivial. I had one promotion early on from entry level to midlevel. Then I was filling the role of a senior dev and a tech lead for a year each with good reviews and respect of other devs in the department (and some outside it). No promotion, still minor raises and bonuses.

Did you advocate for yourself? Doing good work is half the battle. The other half is "sales and marketing" i.e making sure that people are aware that you're a good worker.

Not too much. They were already singing my praises so there wasn't really anything to add. One of the main problems was it was a dying area of the company that ended up getting outsourced about a year after I switched teams.

Here's the thing: working hard doesn't just benefit your employer. It also benefits you because you'll learn new skills rapidly.

If your employer doesn't recognize the value you're adding, don't just sit around hoping for a raise someday. Use your new skills to find one who will. At least in my experience (as an engineer in the US), this is relatively easy and is considered a normal thing to do in one's career.

"It also benefits you because you'll learn new skills rapidly."

Only if those skills are in wide demand. Moving companies can be risky and complicated depending on one's personal and family issues.

> Only if those skills are in wide demand.

Of course it's not worth spending extra time to learn skills that aren't in demand. This would, by definition, be a dead-end job. If you have a growth mindset like GP, having a dead-end job doesn't mean that "hard work doesn't pay off". It just means that the 'hard work' should go into looking/training/applying for a job/career with more learning opportunities/upside.

> Moving companies can be risky and complicated depending on one's personal and family issues.

"Edge cases exist" is a given. It's still good advice in general.

I don't think personal and family issues are necessarily edge cases. Plus it also depends from where the person is and what the technology industry scene is like there. Nowadays jumping companies is easier and more acceptable (atleast in tech) for sure, but then there's always some uncertainty with respect to interviewing and obtaining offers(and possible stress) in particular when you're past a certain age.

> If your employer doesn't recognize the value you're adding, don't just sit around hoping for a raise someday.

This is key. Staying at a company long-term is not a recipe for success. They're greedy and would lay you off swiftly if it was in their financial interest. You should be greedy too, and don't hesitate to improve your situation if such an option is open to you.

Not every job has 'more work = new skills.'

Usually it's just more of the same.

Yeah, in my experience it's been more time on the system is more learning, but not in hours. It's usually the unusual errors that are the most interesting and informative, but those tend to happen over a fixed time and not hour dependent.

Sounds like you stayed to long with one company. Learn new role, work for few months and jump to another company to the new role, new level and new salary.

Yeah, I should have. I'm too old and have too many family issues to do that now.

I worked pretty hard in my 20s as well, but always in a comfy way. I never pulled all nighters, I luckily worked in markets where there wasn't much need for that. I could make myself work late evenings, but never past when I wanted to sleep. If I was tired the next evening, I'd turn in early. I would say the thing that made it work was not having kids, and having autonomy over when to work and when to take it easy. I can honestly say I learned more in those years than ever before or since.

My housemate worked in investment banking, much longer hours than me, with a fair bit of pressure to be awake when you want to be sleeping. The kind of job where you don't do much during the day, the MD comes in at 6pm, and tells you to make 100 slides by the next day, which he then doesn't use for a couple of days despite the juniors having stayed up all night. Grinding, and all the people who did it got visibly heavier.

From the article:

> Of the 2.96 million deaths, 2.6 million are due to diseases derived from employment such as circulatory problems, cancer, and respiratory diseases. The remaining 330,000 are related to work accidents.

It's hardly surprising a cushy office spares of you of most of these issues. I'm happy to hear your career has been a successful one, but what you describe is completely unrelated to the submitted article.

never waste a good opportunity for unsolicited bragging, even in your 40s, jeez

Curious take. I would think that "a cushy office", which normally means sitting for very long periods, would directly lead to many of these issues over the long term. Indeed, I've seen many research reports and articles over the past decade declaring "sitting is the new smoking".

Sitting is pretty bad, yes. And it's also incredibly common - which is why it gets the press it does. Combined with a sedentary lifestyle, it's a recipe for serious and predictably poor health outcomes.

But it isn't half as hard as extended periods of hard physical labour, day after day, especially as you grow older. Doubly so if you don't have proper medical care, and your employer doesn't tolerate sick days.

These folks have it _much_ harder than we do.

I dunno, is getting exercise all day at work better or worse for your health than sitting down all day at work? Naturally hazardous jobs like coal mines excluded.

It's not just "getting exercise all day"

Manual labor jobs overtax people's bodies. They get older and break down hard. They commonly turn to substance abuse to try and help themselves get through it all.

Some jobs do, but the substance abuse part can be said for chair jobs as well.

Nonetheless, the article's examples sound like clearly attributable job specific cancer risks. Cancer decades later from lots of longterm sitting are harder to account and probably not included.

I actually don't think sitting even more for working 12+ hour days and pulling all nights is good for any of this.

I'd love to know more about the OP's health history and physical fitness.

I agree that it is easier to work more and harder when you are younger. These are also the best years of your life to build a foundation of fitness for the rest of your life.

Pulling all nighters is not health for anyone. It's just when we are younger we are able to bounce back quicker from poor decisions like this.

> I think this is more about manual labour but I'll take the opposite side when it comes to white collar work that working more hours can be better early on in your career.

I have the exact opposite real work experience: I can sustain more manual labor than performing thinking demanding activities.

While I have no reason to doubt your experience, please note that you're probably an outlier. One of the things I strongly believe that Extreme Programming got right is the max 40 hour work week. Some can easily do more than 40 hours and still function, some can do less but 40 hours seems like a happy average. Expecting more is unreasonable and won't lead to more productivity for most.

That's not to say that those who can should work the hours they'd like and see the benefits, but never expect others to be able to do the same, regardless of age and life situation.

I'm not calling into doubt the above poster's work estimates, there are people that work those hours, but I have found that it is extremely, extremely rare.

Across all of the teams I have worked with I have found that if you ask someone how many hours a week they work they will typically say 40+, usually closer to 50. If you ask someone how much they worked the previous week, every week, they will usually say 30-35, or even lower.

I also don't think the majority of them were lying or trying to cover up their work habits, I think they work 50 hours a week the same way someone might see themselves as smart, funny, a good person, or any other nebulous concept. They are a 50, 60, 70 hour per week person.

Also, all but one person who worked extended hours as the above poster claims has been of the "super chicken" type. Typically working for visibility and not to advance their team. I see they posted about their individual accolades and accomplishments but I have no way of knowing if their teams goals were met, if they lifted the performance of the rest of their team or anything else. Many an extreme outlier in performance can be found who has never shipped. Again, not specifically talking about the above poster.

I track my time, and you're just not right in my experience. And not of the majority of people I've worked with. Maybe this is an American thing, but this is certainly not universal.

If you have enough experience and (something approximating) mastery of your craft, you can squeeze out a lot of good work in your 5-6 productive hours of work a day. I've never been impressed at the output from the folks working into the evening - lots of output, yes, but lower quality and a bad tradeoff.

I'm confused, which part am I not right about? It seems like we agree based on your second paragraph.

Agreed with your confusion. I do think you guys are making similar points.

> I said yes to almost all the work I could get. My bosses loved me and I got raises/promotions faster than anyone else.

That culture of “hardwork = reward” is long behind us. Instead of being the “guy who reliably gets things done whatever you throw at them”, I advise on saving one’s sanity and avoid potential burnout by finding a friendly place where they enjoy and have power to make decisions(yes, place exists where even interns can offer decisions and make impacts) and focus on work-life balance more. We are no longer in the golden era.

Also, if one is smart enough to find the vein of the gold mine and settle there, one can learn more with balanced effort compared to working too hard or too much.

That's kind of true. You need to find a smaller company that is growing fast for hard work to translate into reward.I've seen hard workers kill it many times in the right,s maller up and coming company and I've seen hard workers die in bigger, less caring places. It's more about whether management values you the incremental value you bring because it's growing fast or if management is worried about your incremental cost because they already have a large enough position to have market power and are now optimizing for somethign other than growth (i.e. profit maximization by exploiting labor monopsony, minimum spend to defend the market power, etc).

>That culture of “hardwork = reward” is long behind us.

No it's certainly not. I think it's a convenient excuse to not work hard though. People talk. I always get asked, "we're hiring, you know anybody?" I would recommend someone who works hard and never mention someone who doesn't. I had a brilliant but lazy colleague who I've never recommended to anybody.

Every job I've had in the last 25 or so years is because I worked hard and someone noticed and recommended me when they switched jobs or knew someone who was hiring. My first job out of college I had to do the recruiter/interview thing. I worked hard. Every job since has been an offer over lunch.

Working hard matters a great deal.

Working smart matters even more. Some jobs require more working hard (re: long hours and 6 days per week) than working smart though, and obviously employers love employees who want less money per time.

As an employee though, you want to work smart. And that might be working longer SOMETIMES to learn skills, but the chollida1’s post does not give me that vibe. You only get your 20s once, and while they might have thought it worthwhile to trade them for financial security in their 40s and 50s, I wouldn’t say that is an optimal move, or even a necessary sacrifice.

It is the main reason I would advise my kids from becoming doctors. The sacrifices the system asks are far too much. I had much more fun than my doctor friends and they did not end up better off. Spend time with family and friends, do leisure activities that you won’t be able to do when older, etc.

>Working smart matters even more.

I mean yea. Hammering a board to your head all day for 12 hours won't accomplish anything. I figured that goes without saying.

The second paragraph here is what I meant.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lordnacho

Can I ask how much of that time you were in a relationship for? I have a theory that men who achieve a steady, loving relationship early that allows them to do what you did have a huge advantage.

I did the 12 hour days and all nighters too but I eventually got lonely and needed to spend a few years learning how to be social and find a relationship. Now I've found that I'm able to resume the many hours of work and it definitely seems to pay dividends. But I wouldn't be able to do it if I was preoccupied with sex and relationships.

> Can I ask how much of that time you were in a relationship for? I have a theory that men who achieve a steady, loving relationship early that allows them to do what you did have a huge advantage.

Met my wife when I was 25.

I bet you are correct. Having a supportive partner is one of the worlds greatest super powers!!

> I think this is more about manual labour

When I was young, I saw older engineers and ops people die after hours in their offices (of heart attacks, trying to keep up with recent grads who had just spent four years learning something that the older workers were expected to know instantly). There was one really productive older guy who had wired his whole house with RS-232 ports back to a coat closet where he stuffed a minicomputer and AC unit, then he wheeled a VT100 on a cart from room to room and plugged-in, as needed...so he could work around the clock in comfort, but for most everyone else, there were no laptops and they worked at cold/hot office before and after work, especially in F500 and military industrial complex jobs.

This appears to be a Mexican publication talking primarily about jobs involving physical labour. That's a far cry from the desk jobs we have.

It sounds like you enjoyed your path, that's a good thing and it seems like you've been really successful. Most people aren't Jamie Zawinski however (thank god), and don't embrace such overwork. If someone demanded that of me, I'd quit on the spot.

Survivorship bias though, not everyone has great coaches in their life or people who see their potential. You got dealt a good hand and played it well, and that's great, but not everyone is so lucky.

Working 12 hour days I would not recommend to anyone. Go out and play.

I did good too doing the opposite of this advice.

I think it sounds nutty.

> I was able to compress 10 years of experience into about half that time.

Not a dig, as you're incredibly driven and intelligent to achieve all of the above; I will say this can backfire early, for as painful as those 20 YOE first year x20 types are it's much, much worse to endure the HR hurdles from being the opposite.

>I did the learn a language a year thing and that helped me get a job as a compiler writer.

>And I was able to leverage that into becoming a quant as I put in the hours to relearn all the math I'd forgotten from school.

What was your first job role?

> I didn't seem to miss out on a social life and I had no burn out or resentment to speak of from those days

Correction: you don't really know what you missed out on or don't value those things.

that's not a correction, you're just offering potential explanations

Let me challenge the findings of that scientific study with my highly specific anecdote which portrays me in good light.

> Let me challenge the findings of that scientific study with my highly specific anecdote which portrays me in good light.

I don't think I challenged any findings, I mearly showed how working hard in my 20s has helped setup the rest of my life.

I figured that could help people starting gout in their career.

Some of us like to help others around here:)