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Comment by ctide | Hacker News Reader

I've worked (or, more often, contracted) at probably 10 startups now between San Francisco and Mountain View. I've never regularly worked more than 50 hours / week at a single company. I've never worked at a startup where there expectation was that people were putting in 10+ hour days every day. That's not to say that they don't exist, because I do know people who have worked at the places like that.

People who works at normal places (and have worked at normal places) don't have any inclination to write blog posts about how not awful their employment is, only people who have bad experiences.

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Any advice on finding places like that? I'm going to be looking for jobs soon, and 50 hours per week is more or less my target. Anything more than that and I find my quality of work and life suffer pretty quickly.

When interviewing, I'm worried about a)Seeming like a "slacker" for inquiring about expected hours. I want to convey that I don't mind working late for an urgent issue or close to release time, but that I can't sustain >50 hours b)how do I know they're being honest with me about working conditions?

That's a valid concern. My suggestion would be this: Usually you're being interviewed in multiple rounds by multiple people. Absolutely don't ask an HR person about this, and probably don't ask your future manager. Ask an engineer after a technical interview. They'll probably (a) understand why you're asking and where you're coming from, and (b) or more likely to give an honest answer.

my experience is that places that have the 10+ hour days are the ones where they think that only "slackers" would ask about the work schedule.

Places with sane hours think it's a reasonable question.

As an average, 50 hours per week is way too much-- if you actually work (and don't fill lazy afternoon hours with errands or self-directed learning). The average person of working age can do a stable 60; that means you're imposing psychological monoculture over 83.3% of your available cognitively-intense hours. That burns people out.

Spikes to 50-60 happen and, if you're in a position of ownership, you better be prepared to throw down when they do. But no company should ever set the baseline at 50 hours per week. That's counterproductive and it leads to burnout and catastrophe when spikes occur.

I actually believe in planning based on a 3-hour work day. A 3-hour block of uninterrupted time to focus on work is an expectation and also an entitlement. The other 5? Spend those catching up, learning about other projects, and building skills.

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