this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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It's definitely not the proper way to do anything if you have a family. You should not have to choose between being a present parent and being paid what you're worth. But a lot of companies, Google included, take a dim view of people who refuse to work as many hours as they can.
I get to choose though. I have unlimited time off/sick days, roll into work at whatever hour I want and can take time that I need to do other things. Nobody is forcing me to stay, and I had the opportunity to tell them how long it would take. I am also free to call it off and extend if I need.
I work a lot, but the company isn't enforcing bad work life balance. Imagine if you had a job where your boss paid you hundreds of hours of overtime beforehand, and left it to you to decide when and if to take it, would you not sometimes do overtime when you feel it's your responsibility?
You may get to choose. All those people whose bosses tell them they're needed to come in on the weekend again do not. It's not legal to enforce overtime, but it's done in practice all the time.
Yeah thats definitely not ok, but in recent years I find work life balance, or at least the facade, has been a bigger part of company pillars. It's really taboo to ask someone to stay past 4pm no matter what time they started. Nobody on any of my teams, and none of the teams I've ever been on have had mandatory overtime (that's illegal in Canada for the most part unless they're paying double bubble). Given we are salaried they can't pay us overtime, so they pay us "ahead of time".
I think you're right, the pursuit of profit should not go against how we live as a society, but a lot of these FAANG workers are really cushy. I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel bad for the factory worker who is at risk of losing his job if he doesn't do OT because he is short staffed and they are threatening to move the factory. I don't feel bad for well paid engineers who decide to stay.
I would caveat your comment about FAANG workers being cushy. The majority of their workforce these days are contracted versus permanently hired on with the company proper. Those contractors/subcontractors get treated like disposable shit.
I would say that it is not the proper way even if you have not a family
The sad reality is that a lot of people evade parenting by spending way too much time at their work. To some extent using work as an excuse to spend less time educating and spending times with kids.
So you either get the social stigma of not willing to have kids, or you do get some kids and actually don't want to spend time with them ?
Obviously, some parents find the right balance between the two and actually care about the kids enough to keep work in check but I'm starting to think that's more an exception than the norm.
Sorry if this is rough to read or offensive. As I said, I work 39h a week and most of the higher ups at work do 41/42+ hours a week easy. It's obvious than they choose work before education. There is a point where it's just physically impossible to be there for your kids while spending that much time work. Don't even get me started on these higher ups spending so much time working even when they do get home.
This is a really assuming comment, lol. Are there people like that? Absolutely. Is it the norm? Highly doubtful. Without some hard data, can't really say one way or another, I suppose.