At the >=100k employee, multiple-decades-in-business, old guard type of company, I had the inverse of what you're relaying, as well. On-call was routinely referred to as the 'week of hell'. Fires tended to crop up due to complacency, general feelings of 'job security', and lack of routine upkeep. These sessions in self-flagellation are dutifully shouldered as 'just the thing it does around this time of month'. These aren't fly by night, back of a postcard companies, but instantly recognizable brands, known as market leaders and 'best company to work for' in their community.

The long hours aren't encouraged, but outright mandated with 50 person standups to keep the Confluence pages up to date when email would better suit the task. We mustn't forget the alignment meeting to have the pre-meeting to talk about the plan of the backlog grooming planning meeting.

I worked for a couple of startups in Berlin and England and I had to work like crazy, then I moved to Norway and started working for a large company(Software Engineer for the oil industry).

Everything is completely different, reasonable working hours, paid over hours no crazy deadlines. On the other hand everything is much slower, e.g. I had to apply for getting a license for Visual Studio and then it has to be approved etc etc.. A lot of bureaucracy.

Overall I've got a better time working here that the startups.

Good luck in your job search.

I wish I could do the 9-5 thing at those companies (given the great pay and benefits, adding a predictable and sane work schedule would be perfect).

You may last a couple years being the odd one out doing strictly 40h a week, but performance review is going to catch up with you at some point.

These days I bite the bullet and stay till 8 or 9pm at the office regularly.

That doesn't sound like a performance review. It sounds like a "are you staying late in the office" review. If the way to get ahead isn't to be good, but to just stay late, is it really worth it? All those extra hours of your life, sitting at a desk, wishing you could go home, but instead flicking through another batch of click-bait articles and padding out your timesheet.

Although I suppose if that's how it is, one could game it. Turn up a little early even, make a big noise so everyone sees you're there (oh, that guy, he's ALWAYS here early - that's what they'll remember, even if you're actually in early less than everyone else), and then just leave for an hour to have a leisurely breakfast. Pretend you have a meeting before lunch and one after, and just go to the gym and take a long lunch; you could even find a "meeting buddy" - someone with whom you have meetings, on the understanding that neither of you will be there. Faking decisions and the like from meetings is easy; generally, you can make the actual decisions in sixty seconds on your own. Identify days that the boss will be in late or leave early and treat those as short days. Get into the habit of podcasts or self-education during those long evenings at the desk. I suppose if one embraces it and games it for what's being measured - time on the clock - it wouldn't be so bad.

I worked at a very large company, one of the top 40 on the stock market. The attitude is quite complacent. Everyone except senior management is forced to work 40 hours. As in they are all given generous vacation time, and the electricity is cut during holidays so nobody can work. Any contact outside office hours is highly discouraged by management.

A lot of those companies are not bad. They attract family people who are super smart and hard-working, but prioritize work-life balance. These giant companies know they can't attract the young and ambitious, so they go for the older and experienced.

You may get a promotion, of course expecting you to send even more hours in the office and work even harder. But that's what you want anyway.

You would be seen as someone who has no life. You would not get respect or higher salary here.

You have to admit, the Swedish way is sane while your culture is crazy.

Everything I hear about your country sounds amazing!

"I only like to stay for a year or less at a given place and then quit "

This is going to start looking bad after a while for full-time jobs. It is perfectly ok if you are freelancing though.

"I have no interest in becoming a lead or a senior dev"

Yep, call yourself whatever you want and get shit done for clients. No titles.

But 40h/week is not what you get when you're freelancing. Freelance is a mix of sales, dev, consulting. You may get 20h/week some days, 60h/week other days. There's an awful lot of stress that comes with arguing with yourself and pushing yourself to keep moving.

I think OP just wants to be comfortable and relaxed.

You can absolutely be comfortable and relaxed and have a steady schedule as a freelancer. Freelancing does incorporate more activities and skills than being an employee with the underlying trade and so it doesn't suit everyone. It might not suit the OP.

But not for because of instability. You can fit all those other activities and skills into the same schedule as the trade work with good discipline and experienced planning. And you can counter the financial stress of any feast/famine cycling of the work with good budgeting.

For most, it takes some time to get the hang of it, but freelancing is not a perpetual hustle. You don't keep arguing with yourself and pushing yourself forever. It just becomes a job that you happen to run for yourself.

You typically get your contracts through recruiters and they typically last 3 to 6 months (sometimes longer). No sales and hustling, just doing your tech work and keeping up to date in your field.

Yeah, those jobs bring in good money and are uncommitted, probably right for OP.

Freelancing involves so much more unpaid work. It's a mini startup, you are in charge. Startups can be easier mentally because you have a mission.

- I'm ok if others work longer hours. Some people's competitive advantage is working long hours, and when I was younger, same. At 5:30 just get up, say goodbye to your mates and leave, don't seek approval or apologize for leaving

- I focus on being productive, and am willing to spend a little time each Sunday evening planning out my week so I can hit the ground running. I'm focused and working immediately when I arrive, starting with a 25 minute pomodoro. Avoid burning your best brain reading interesting news.

- I'm very organized and comply with all project management practices. My tickets are pristine and up to date.

- I break up larger tickets into smaller ones. It's clear I'm continually getting shit done by closed tickets and commits (note:this does not mean bullshit commits intended to pad stats, just avoiding packing too much work into a single ticket or commit). Commit at least every 3 days.

- I'm hungry to continually improve my skills and spend 30 to 60 minutes in morning at work learning stuff 3-4 days a week. I don't ask, I just do it. Don't be shy about summarizing ways you have become more skilled relevant to job in performance reviews

- I take accountability for my code and am willing to help outside 9-5 if I'm blocking others, but take care to avoid this by writing well tested software and avoiding committing near EOD especially late on Fridays

- avoid people managing and meetings. A trap to avoid is only being left with 2 hours of coding time per day leaving the evenings as only time to focus

- care about your teammates and show curiosity in their expertise. Proactively take some time to help others in balance with individual work. Don't be shy about mentioning these activities in standups or performance reviews

Ultimately I'm very productive and this is recognized. Sure I could be a "superstar" by working weekends but I just don't make a big deal about the fact that I pretty much work 9-5:30 and get my work done.

A note on finding a match: feel out work life balance during interviews. Just sounding curious about the values and how people tend to work can help you filter out mismatches. There are definitely companies that are explicitly incompatible with 9-5:30.

I’m very suspicious of people who say they work more than 40 hours per week. I wonder about how many hours are high productivity and how many are wasted or low intensity. I definitely work no more than 50 and average around 40. I’ve met quite a few who do 60 hours and still meet real obligations.

Life is not a rehearsal and is definitely not a sprint. I challenge people who work 80 hours per week to demonstrate full community/family participation. It’s ok to do it for a short time but don’t kid yourself and think it’s a good idea for long periods.

Another item: 6 weeks vacation is a requirement.

Spoiler: I work for myself. I’m not unique. Plenty of other people are doing this.

I agree. You may feel productive working longer but that doesn't mean you are. The truth often is that this thing which took you 3 hours to finish late in the evening would have been done in 1 hour the next morning with a clear and rested mind.

My contract work is often “deliver this thing at particular milestones and get it into production by this date”. I politely reject contracts that don’t fit me. I’ve had clients call me back and adjust schedules around my availability as I’ve stipulated I’m already allocated for particular weeks.

Caveats: I’m not a startup guy yet I have started various businesses up.

There are lots of industries that are far more sane, but that still need developers. Try looking for a government job for example. Or within fields like logistics, transport, insurance or civil engineering. There a tons of programming opportunities out there that have nothing in common with web based startups. Working on an in-house app for a large logistics company might sound 'sexy', but it can offer a decent wage a stable working situation and far more sane working hours. And the truth is there are lots of genuinely interesting problems to be solved within a lot boring industries. Also you might have to accept you'll be working with some weird in-house COBOL dialect.

Not sure about States, but in Canada you are normally required to not work more than 8 hours a day and you forced take coffee breaks (formerly, smoke breaks) throughout the day. The work load is notoriously low, vacations are very long, bureaucracy is high, layoffs are unheard of and it will take a significant effort on your part to get yourself fired. The downside is that you need to join a union, the pay is low and you won't work with the brightest bulbs. But these are very comfortable and safe jobs, which can be kept for life without much effort... or so I heard.

I'm based in Australia, while i regularly work with teams from the US.

I've found my US counterparts are extremely bad at using their time efficiently and productively, even though, they are intelligent, knowledgeable and easy going (hands down, some of the best problem solvers i've ever worked with).

I was asked to work late once (due to time differences), and they were shocked when i said "i'm only available during working hours". They took it as a slight, or that i was being rude. I was even called "lazy".

It wasn't until i had an "offline" conversation with some of them that we both got the opportunity to discuss each others points of views.

My US counterparts admitted that one of their main reasons for not saying "no", was Health Care, or the risk of losing health care if you lost your job.

I think this (no fault to my US colleagues, i would probably feel/think the same way), results in bad work practices being perpetuated, resulting in unnecessary work hours, or, at least the perception that its required in order for you to be seen to be "doing a good job".

There's working longer when there's actual work that needs doing, but then there is working longer because your being held hostage to a job because your petrified of getting sick without one.

Case in point, one of my US colleagues was working 2 days after having heart bypass surgery. TWO DAYS!!!!

I've done this, and it's pretty great. I interviewed someone who's been doing it for past 15 years: https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer...

> how do you pull it off?

I'm honest to a fault in every way, with my own personality. When I'm depressed this is self-destructive, but when I'm happy it seems to invigorating to the team mates and friends around me. This seems to click positively with people in general, gives me a lot of rope ;). Confidence in your own truth, I think is the key one-liner here.

> How do you survive?

Living true is freeing, the privilege to be able to do it a blessing. But if your 'truth' is that you're a bitter, shitty person. It will kill you.

Live true but have your core-motives, your convictions, in order. 'Be a positive influence on everyone and anyone I interact with' is a good start.

> What do you tell your managers and your interviewers?

Interviews: play the game. Haven't ever tried the snowflake approach to interviews, haven't seen any evidence to give me the confidence needed to pull it off.

Managers: truth, it's a slow build before you can dump deep truth on people, but bit by bit, let them know what you're about and WHY.

Depending on the temperament of the manager, they either become mates, or they respect/disapprove from a distance.

Hopefully you can pull some value from this stranger <3

There are plenty of clock punchers but typically they don't job hop. If you're not OK working for years, often more than 40 hours, at some company that will eventually become big enough to not be a startup, to accrue enough internal knowledge to have value even when you don't work, you are never going to get to the 40 hours a week long vacation stage. The alternative is the public sector. In academia, you don't get the summers off (research doesn't stop) but it does significantly slow down often for months at a time and you have some variability(based on funding schedule) about what you work on, so that's another option.

(Also, you're in Canada. You can get a seasonal non-tech job and code in the off season. People find "full time dev who quits every 9 months" weird but they'd find "full time contractor who is a rafting instructor/diver/park ranger/snowmobile tour guide and codes to fund their lifestyle, so don't schedule them in the summers/winters" mostly cool.)

Anyway the options are see are:

Contracting - as you mentioned. If they are unsure enough that they make it a contract rather than permanent role, I see no ethical issue in quitting after the contract has finished. The question is then how do you explain this on your next contract. I'm not sure of the answer to that, but lets say you are flexible and say you can work anywhere in the world for work, you'll probably find some companies somewhere who desperately need resources and can't be fussy that someone has a sparkling resume full of 4 year stints in progressively more senior roles at brand name companies, and they'd be happy to take someone with more gaps in their resume than dutch cheese, because they need to get a problem solved quick.

Another option is to find a company that lets you have lots of career breaks. Probably want to work for a big company with the structure, processes and policies to support this. I reckon companies like Microsoft.

Another thing to consider if you can live frugally is a funded PhD and maybe you work on the PhD like crazy 8 months then take 4 months off, come back to it etc. Not sure how realistic that is but it's an idea.

If you can live frugally and be nomadic (or at least willing to avoid expensive cities) maybe freelancing remote would work for you. Earning $30/h but living in Vietnam for example, or even a very cheap part of the US sharing a room might be an options there. Once you get a reputation you might be able to get your earnings up to a normal job or even higher.

As for a PhD, don't you need a masters degree and a topic you feel strongly enough about to spend years dwelling on it? It's not that I don't know what to do with myself, but rather that I don't know how to live my life without playing the rat race.

Besides that maybe think about creating a small business, be a freelancer, or develop a product or service that people want to use.

I feel like we're in similar boats longing for something else, lately I've been questioning my position but I've been here for quite some time and find it very difficult to leave the luxury I have.

I happen to work for (and know of others) a Canadian company that values very highly work-life balance and isn't targeting its hiring towards people who work a lot. This creates a culture where you don't need to take several months off to recharge, because your day-to-day is already sustainable. Similarly I don't see any reason why you couldn't take a few months off every so often for personal reasons, but still be able to return to the same job once you felt recharged.

Email me if you want to learn more (email in profile).

Note: I am not related to gun.io, just saw what they were offering through the CTO's Zappa docs and thought it was interesting. https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa

Ideally you’ll be matching your needs/wants with an employer’s needs/wants. So be more aggressive in searching for the right situation, and you might not end up needing to hurn so many bridges.

Also, evaluate why you desire to leave. Is it boredom? Difficulties working with others? You might find you can address your malaise from this end at the same time.

How do you find these? I've looked for PT work and everywhere wants FT employees or nothing because they say the marginal cost to them between PT and FT isn't much more (admin, training, office space and health insurance costs are pretty much fixed regardless of hours worked)

I end up leaving because I get burned out, because I don't want to drink the Kool-Aid and that doesn't sit well with management, and because I get bored: companies never do something so amazing that I want to keep doing it a year in. It's interesting in the beginning because you learn how the company works, how the software works, you meet new people, maybe discover a new area of the city where the office is in but all that eventually wears out.

We are just too stuck in the 40hr work week tradition right now. We should really be looking at our goals and output, not the number of hours per day we’ll commit to working. But that’s a tall order to change. And a lot of people would fail inder this setup because they are not goal-oriented, they just show up, take directions, and go home.

The alternative is as others are suggesting, have no employer, set an income goal or quality of life goal, and adjust your output to meet it. Unfortunately you cant just make money appear by writing code, so part of your goal/output config will involve finding a market for your output.

If this is too much work I would just do what you’re doing until people wont hire you any longer. I expect there will still be someone who will hire you ;)

Really what you’re feeling seems really normal and I suspect most people feel it. Working forty hours for the vast majority of employers is a poor way to experience “life”. You have a skill set that lets you stop and start as you wish to; most people in the world don’t have that luxury.

If I were you I would look into becoming financially independent as quickly as possible, so you can leave this grind and explore life on your own terms. The market is so strong right now that you should take advantage of it. It might not last! If your motivations for working changed, you might also find you can stick around a little longer.

1. It's okay to just want to get work done and get paid and go home. That's what most people do in most jobs, even in tech. Flashy VC-chasing startups are a little bubble, over-represented on HN and in the media. Most of tech workers are working outside of that bubble and are doing exactly what you want (in terms of hours per week and compartmentalization).

2. The semi-annual schedule you want is also okay, but much less common. Because it's less common, fewer project managers and departments are ready to adapt to it. And as an intermediate developer (rather than a senior) you have less leverage to ask them to adapt. This is why you're not telling them ahead of time, and why you're left feeling "dirty".

3. It's good you want to normalize things and be more open about your preferences and needs. It's a sign of maturity in your career (and maybe yourself).

And I think you have a few things to think about going forward:

- Why do you want to leave places after 9-12 moths. Is it just because you like to take a few months to yourself. Would you be willing to go back to the same place after the break? To a hiring company, that's a hugely more palatable than if you just disappear, and is exactly the kind of thing you can directly negotiate after you've qualified for a job and before accepting an offer.

- Do you just want different projects (after your break)? Then you can absolutely apply to an agency or contracting firm. Many have struggle to maintain 100% utilization for their workers and would welcome people who are okay on their own between assignments. If you can slip off their roster/payroll during slow times and hop back on when work picks up again, they'll be happy!

- Do you want to just avoid commitment altogether? Then consider independent contracting. You take on a bunch of other responsibilities (hustling for work, nagging for payment, etc) but you can take unpaid breaks whenever you want and you can structure engagements so that you're not working with clients for longer than you'd want. You're in control of everything.

TLDR: there are probably hundreds of thousands of people like you. Maybe millions. Figure out the next detail in what you need and you'll see the path ahead.

I spent the middle decade of my career with a partner at home who needed regular care-taking. I needed to put that ahead of any traditional career treadmill and so I worked remotely for a mid-sized contracting firm and was clear about my availability. They gave me the work I needed, and I preserved the time and space I needed.

Because I worked for the same firm all that time, and did good work, I established a strong and trusting relationship that afforded me increasingly more flexibility and control.

Plus, by volunteering to support the other sides of the business like Sales, Recruiting, etc I learned more than enough about contracting to be quite confident and successful when I eventually decided to go out on my own -- which gave me even more control.

I can't tell you if it's a path that would make sense for you, but it was a very rewarding one for me.

The downside is I'm paid about half of what I should be making.

It is something I'm looking into myself.

Easier said than done. This part seems to be the hardest, from reading comments of other freelancers and contractors in several forums, not just HN.

Any concrete tips, "hacks" that work, that you can share in this context? The fact that software engineers are generally bad at marketing and selling themselves ("Imposter syndrome" much?) makes this part of contracting, freelancing that much harder.

Good places to learn are things like the Rails tutorial on their website, the Ruby koans, or the Doug Crockford book about JS, frontendmasters.com. Treehouse was also helpful for learning the basics of CSS but I didn't love the cartoonish story around the lessons.

Above all, find a problem you have and think about how you could solve it with technology I would say, it will let you put into practice what you're learning and guide your direction by researching the things you're stuck on.