We’ve gone full pendulum. Employers are totally in control.
Employers are getting brutally honest with applicants, warning them of long hours and little boundaries.
The Wall Street Journal reports Think Work-Life Balance Is Overrated? You’re Hired!
Shopify wants a product manager who can “keep up with an unrelenting pace.”
Solace, a healthcare marketplace, tells job seekers: “If you’re looking for work-life balance, this isn’t it.”
A job posting for a senior engineer at software company Rilla urges applicants “please don’t join” unless they are eager to work 70 hours a week—in person.
If you think free time is overrated, this is the job market for you. Corporate job listings this summer stress long hours, a competitive business environment and the importance of hustle.
It might seem impractical to recruit applicants with a pitch that loosely translates to “This is going to hurt.” But we’re a long way from 2022.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin in February told employees that 60 hours a week was the sweet spot of productivity. The federal government warned staff this year of a new “performance culture,” insisting on “excellence at every level.” People are logging into more meetings after 8 p.m. than they did a year ago, new Microsoft data show.
After candidates interview at Rilla, which makes AI-powered coaching software for sales reps, they receive a culture statement that outlines several core principles. “We don’t have any strict work policies, but we tend to work 60 to 80 hours every week,” reads one.
What No Overtime?
Sorry, these are salaried jobs not hourly jobs.
In the Good Luck Department
“If I were going to work 70 hours a week, you would have to pay me $1 million-plus,” said Brett Terpstra, a software developer in Winona, Minn., who has applied to about 60 jobs since April. Terpstra said he is picky when he applies: “I automatically opt out of anything that seems like they don’t respect a work-life balance.”
60 applications. I wonder how many companies didn’t respond. Is he even working?
I hear McDonalds offers balance, plus no tax on tips if you get any.
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The other option is to do piece-work, or straight commission. I liked salary plus bonus, of up to 45% of salary. Or join an employee owned company.
But once you have been out of work for six months nobody will hire you.
Good luck.
Is It all that different from the new generation that is on their screen devices all day and night anyhow?
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No paycheck is worth a heart attack so weigh in balance. Some shops are slave drivers, stress kills.
I just put an eraser on the control tab, so it sends a signal that looks like I am working. Meanwhile I am at the water cooler flirting with the girls. Works every time.
Wisdom comes from many places.
Think it was in the 80s and read a book about a couple who both made good money but found the had no money at the end of the month. . Turns out they were spending all of their income to support the job. The cloths/ car/house etc. everything to look the part of the job.
Got some wisdom from a good ole boy in western nc years ago. Talking about a tourist ruby mine where people pay five bucks for a bag of dirt. So and so went and took out out a 250000 dollar loan to build a shed that looks like an ihop just to give himself a job. When there is a perfectly good ruby mine right across the street. That actually looks like a ruby mine. Old pole shed and a loader.
Hard work is for slaves. In any society, the hardest work is done by the people with the lowest pay and the least prospects.
The notion that hard work will get you places is Stockholm syndrome.
What matters is that if something needs attending to, the whole crew pitches in.
Work through the night if required to right the ship.
But people need to invest in working smarter, experiment, mull over, mix it up.
Good ideas don’t come to you when you are just carrying a heavy load long hours. Any employer that can’t distinguish between someone who contributes and someone who puts in long hours is just in the exploitation racket — don’t expect anything, the place isn’t going anywhere either.
Sitting here at my work desk with nobody to care if I am here typing this not checking my subs’ work, I cannot say you are wrong, sir.
If I were still running my own company, I’d be working like a fiend. Now I put in the minimum to keep up appearances. Why should I bother to make some rich prick richer?
I used to have a moral thing about providing value for money, but morals and laws have gone out the window this last decade. A conscience is simply a liability, and doing the right thing usually puts you at a disadvantage.
Trump taught us a new way to behave, and adaptation is necessary.
When you’ve reached the last few years of your life, how many of you will say “I wish I had spent more time at the office?”
Glad I work for myself. It’s a hard time to enjoy life for many Americans. Corporate and oligarchical greed is bottomless and corrosive to our national identity.
I’ve got a 93 yr old coworker, he comes in every single day until 3-3:30. He’s the only one I’ve met who would regret not coming in more.
Depends… how bad does your family suck?
Funny!
I do a vast amount of programming: one-offs to solve a particular problem. Anyone who does that sort of work will (eventually) admit that anything beyond 20 hours a week is counter-productive, whatever you do beyond that will have to be corrected and redone at much greater time and cost. The brain just isn’t set up to do that sort of work longer than that, it’s like doing push ups 8 hours a day. These companies that want someone to do AI for 70 hours are insane. It’s not a case of burnout, it’s a case of mental collapse.
Wait a minute, I thought that “AI” (synthetic text extruding machines) was going to revolutionize the workplace, and we’d all be working four-day work weeks by now.
Don’t tell me that is yet another lie from the tech bros! Or that behind that magical “AI” are 100 Indians working in a sweat shop for donuts.
Sounds like the work schedule of some of the cooks at the restaurant I work at, but it’s their choice. We can make our own hours, and some of us are hard core materialists.
I used to want those hours, but I’m 63 now; with different priorities. Pet college students and pet starving musicians are expensive. I like my 4 day, 28 hour work weeks, give or take. More hours on holidays, but that does give me the money for car repairs and such.
When I was working for a Korean Entrepreneur, I figured out that if I stayed until 6:35pm, he would walk past my office (he would look in and wave) and then that Billionaire would exit, jump into his luxury car and go home. That was my signal that I had impressed the Boss and then I would head home. I was the boss of a big Dept so I had PLENTY of shit to do anyway.
“If I were going to work 70 hours a week, you would have to pay me $1 million-plus,” said Brett Terpstra, a software developer in Winona, Minn., who has applied to about 60 jobs since April. Terpstra said he is picky when he applies: “I automatically opt out of anything that seems like they don’t respect a work-life balance.”
I’m not sure I’d want to hire Brett. Doesn’t seem like he’s hungry…yet!
The man wants $275/hr. If he’s that good, he should be able to negotiate “work-life balance”. He can code like the dickens for only 20 hours/day as long as he puts out the work. He can hang with his kids, play golf, eat avocado toast for all I care the other 50 hrs.
275/hr is pretty standard for a senior, once you add in taxes and benefits.
I didn’t know that was pretty standard rate for senior. Perhaps he has a resume that allows him to be selective. Thanks for the info.
I would totally hire Brett! Most companies require working for 70hrs/week because of horrendous goal setting, piss poor planning & execution and inability to see 6 months to 24 months into the future.
Everything is an emergency not because of market needs but because incompetent mid level managers selling pies in the sky to incompetent top level executives for 90% of the product cycle, everybody gets fat raises for awesome on-paper progress and powerpoint engineering and keeping costs low. Final product will fail function or timeline, typically both.
Engineers and other low-level employees then need to work 70-100hrs a week to fix the issue so the mid level and top level folks can claim their “success” of saving the product from the depths of failure!! The delays are then labelled with fancy terms like “fast fail”, “agile”, “learning cycles”, …
It’s a game that happens all over US corporations!! I’ve been there!
Now, Im building my own business. (yeah, I work more than 70hrs a week but I work for myself and my $/hr spent is atleast 5-7x higher ROI after expenses compared to W2). (and I have a PhD in electrical engineering and used to work in tech R&D, just so you can use that to baseline my comment)
The move towards literal wage slavery represents really bad signs for the economy, in my opinion at least. We’ve reached the point where management is so incompetent they’re forgetting why America has historically treated workers better then Trashistansylvania out east. I see it as companies trying to squeeze as much as they can out of this nation before the current vapor market goes belly up.
People with valuable skills anywhere else are McDonald’s workers here, and increasingly people in my field (tech) are taking great deals to move out to places like Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. where they can live well and get paid like they deserve. Add Europe poaching academics Trump has told are unwanted and I see America being India 2.0 in no time flat if it even manages to weather the coming economic storm at all.
And really, who can blame them for leaving? It’s not like America is the bastion of democracy anymore. Quality of life is dropping like a stone, and the place looks more like the USSR’s twilight years by the day. At this point I’m looking at getting in on the doctorate sniping and heading out for Vienna.
When I was in Paris, visiting my Sales Offices there – – and I was the CORP VP mind you – – and I was in a meeting with top management there: the 5:00pm hour arrived and they all stood up like robots and hit the door. I was astounded. I fired that Regional VP and hired an American guy who lived outside of Paris who was retired and wanted some income. HE KICKED ASS and that Office saw sales ramp up. The French workers were LAZY by comparison to Americans (back then anyway)….
If they are “cadres” it is more like 6:30 or 7 before they even think of leaving. Many times it is much later. Only salaried people leave at 5. What industry were you in?
High Tech and at that time it was Computers and Peripherals (just pre-PC and then PC’s launched just when I cut bait and founded a Motherboard Business…and we had sales offices all over the World.
Well, Doug, salaried Individuals which is what WE all were…we all on a “bonus” program that was at times 3x my salary which by today’s standards was SMALL (less than $150,000).
But the STOCK OPTIONS (ISO’s) were REALLY lucrative and I ended up with 10 Million Shares due to our sales increasing and I was also a Principle Owner….and we went public and I cashed the hell out and never looked back!
Looking back now, I hated the People in the Silicon Valley except for the guys who had a sense of humor and could use Humor to over-lay our constant long hours and stresses (missed shipments, Product Recalls, Warranty Costs, Travel Expenses and Labor Costs).
In the early days, we nearly missed Payroll due to a collection issue which was caused by unpaid “90 days plus” invoices. I could not sleep then.
All of my hair fell out in 4 years from stress. I had stomach issues. THEN, I quit the fucking grind and retired early. Feeling OK now.
When we had those cash flow issues, we all worked harder for FREE!
Congratulations? Those bonuses don’t exist anymore, and it sounds like you rode the dot com bubble and got off before the recession. Thanks for proving the point about baby boomer fantasy land though.
“What do you mean 1970 was 55 years ago? Kids are just too lazy to get hired! Go in and give them a firm handshake! Get in on the ground floor like I did!” – Quote from man who retired over a decade ago with absolutely zero idea how things work now.
Computing hardware (and most tech) today consists of a scant handful of companies with no intent on allowing competition ever again. There is no ground floor anymore, and it’s killing the industry. Nividia in particular has been allowed to get away with more or less lying to investors because they know damn well investors have no clue how anything “AI” works under the surface but are easy to convince it can do anything. Or their graphics cards, which quite literally spoofs performance numbers by hallucinating frames.
As a friendly question, can you tell me about any computer hardware start ups *today* that aren’t Chinese?
Why hire three employees doing 40h a week when you can hire two doing 60h a week? Cui bono? Hint: not the workers.
Because the two doing 60h a week end up actually doing the work of one person doing 40h a week. People doing 4 day work weeks ended up getting way more done and working more despite not having to because they want to keep it that way – but boomers don’t care. They want the 1970s and will tear companies apart to keep things outdated.
My entire field of study is management, and frankly the stuff I’ve seen is horrible. People like some of the people in these comments aren’t just ghouls, they’re deeply, management stupid. They see cost cuts on paper and hamstring a department, blowing millions of dollars in the process and eventually requiring a consultant like me to clean their messes.
The sad part? The elderly lich manager will get to keep his job after ruining a bunch of careers and retire to bankrupt SS just like he did his department.
You get paid peanuts in all the places mentioned comparatively. It’s the reverse, people in those places, particularly tech want to move here and get paid real TC. You’ll get $140K USD equivalent TC in Vienna instead of 650K TC in the Bay Area.
I retired 6 years ago. I am busier now than I have ever been. I have worked by myself, for myself since the 80s. My customers keep calling me; they don’t want me to retire.
Poor soul.
I know why: YOU CALLED THEM BACK!
You like the attention. It’s a drug.
It is. It is alluring to feel wanted.
Congress Is Pushing for a Medicaid Work Requirement. Here’s What Happened When Georgia Tried It.GOP lawmakers want to nationalize Medicaid work requirements to offset Trump’s proposed tax cuts. Yet Georgia’s example shows that this could threaten health care for nearly 16 million Americans and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-medicaid-work-requirement-big-beautiful-bill?
The fact is that Medicaid has become bloated with people that simply shouldn’t be on the program. Something has to be done to remove those who shouldn’t be on Medicaid. It’s that simple.
While it’s far from a fix to what has to be done to meaningfully cut into budget deficits, it’s a start and a much needed one as well. Sooner rather than later, similar measures will be needed in all SS & Medicare. Along with defense, these social programs are exploding out of control.
The only way we get to fiscal responsibility is directly through these programs finding as much waste & abuse as we can find.
If you want to know why there’s a massive labor shortage, look no further than the able-bodied persons this Medicaid law targets.
This is so dumb. If you think these mostly imaginary people are going to have a meaningful impact on the economy, I have a bridge to sell you. But first, you better step up to hire some of them… because I certainly wouldn’t for my own business!
If you think these mostly imaginary employable-but-not-employed people are going to have a meaningful impact on the economy, I have a bridge to sell you. But first, you better step up to hire some of them… because I certainly wouldn’t for my own business!
Im not so sure its the people abusing medicare. Well beside a lifetime of living unhealthy.
It seems to me the industry side requires more visits and procedures since they make less per visit. Combined with outrageous cost for meds and such
That’s one side. The other side is that Medicaid increases our taxes and leads to higher health care costs for paying Americans. I’m fair and balanced.
It’s downright crazy that you make a simple statement of fact, and you get down votes. It just goes to show you how polarized America has become.
Melvin i think were gonna lose anyway. People with medicare and cant afford other ins will still go to the emergency room. Hospitable’s cant refuse to treat you. They will pass that cost on to those who can.
If you can’t have a free chai salmon latte in the morning with free Skittles, no ping pong tables or Legos, no nap pods, and no ability to shake down every manager with some grievance or another because you are too busy slaving away, why work at all? And Uncle Bernie says we should only work four days a week anyway, which I’m sure include all of the stuff like Legos and nap pods and probably free Ben and Jerry’s.
and that is assuming they come back to the office
Patrick…there are DOWN-VOTERS here and they are likely the LEAST successful of this Blog’s attendees. THEY WOULD NOT DOWN-VOTE you if they understood the connection to hard work/long hours and income.
YOU CANNOT HAVE THE BIGGER INCOMES (I am talking $500K plus) if you are not willing to be around for clients and bosses.
IT IS A SIMPLE EQUATION.
Is that boot tasty?
You work hard for yourself.
You provide the minimum required to get the salary when working for others.
That’s business. There is no loyalty.
I up-voted your comments.
Trillionaires like – NVDA, MSFT, Meta, AMZN, Googl, AAPL- for them the new prime age for full time jobs is 18/39. Zoomers and Millennials can be tamed to work like mid mgt. Before 2008 the Fed was poor. It had $20B in assets. It could only buy a few US treasuries at market rates. The Fed was prohibited from financing gov debt. After Oct 2008 the Fed became a trillionaire. The Fed trimmed its treasuries and MBS holdings. In order to cut rates and keep them low JP will have to buy US treasuries and MBS, which are collateral in the O/N market. To prevent recession JP will “donate” our money, held by the Fed, to finance SPX.
Human labor is being re-priced. And in most cases, it isn’t upward. An Asia teeming with hungry competitors, automation, and other such factors are hard to argue with. Weird, absurd even, to be cranking out ever more stuff, with less of the intangible personal resources needed to enjoy it. I achieved work-life balance by jettisoning whole areas of “life” others think natural, inevitable and obligatory. I am not going to paint a target on my own back, not going to grab and pull onto my self the yoke of imbalanced servitude. That takes deep thinking about values, and planning. There is just a bunch of excess mishegoss people do not really need. So far so good.
I think Japan used to expect male worker total dedication, but the system promised security in return. The USA has always displaced such risks onto workers, who are relatively “free” in that way. What if I put in my all, for the light at the end of the tunnel, and that doesn’t arrive? I know lawyers in some firms toiled toward partnerships, and many did not get them. I put in crazy hours in my 20’s and 30’s, but it was my own business, sweat equity, sink or swim. Corporate leaders have that equity, but expect that ethos from workers, whose possible rewards are much more contingent.
And in the 80/90’s Japan had a big enough problem they created a term for it:
Karoshi – sudden death from overwork
I guided rafts in japan in the early 2000s. 85 percent women on the trips. I asked why. The answer the men were working.
The dogma that folk should work 50-60 hours a week is junk. The aim of anyone should be to maximise reward for effort. If 10 hours a week will pay your bills, your obligations and achieve the life style and life aims you want, then why donate your life as a minion for a corporation.
We aren’t born to be work slaves so the mega wealthy can buy another super yacht.
As a side note, once AI has replaced all the corporate workers, who buys the products that the corporations make?
What if 60 hours a week won’t pay your bills?
cut your expenses – that’s what everyone did back in the 70’s.
We did BOTH: making a Million net a year and we lived like we made $50K a year back in the 80’s.
Sure, we had luxury cars and a big house, but I bought them well (down markets and used Lexus Vehicles).
Stick with it. You will be noticed if you do 80 hours. The other lazy ones with only 60 hours will never be promoted.
The eager ones doing 80h won’t start their own business either. No matter what you do, the boss always wins and the employee always loses.
The reasons to hustle up: YOU GET PROMOTED into Management. PERIOD. END OF ARGUMENT. THEN, the bonuses flow into your pockets. I was promoted to Director of a Large Corp (you would know them, this was in the Silicon Valley)…early days (1978 to 1992, when I retired early with Stock Options)…and those stock options afforded my family a life since 1993 when I was free to invest in Self-Employment Opportunities. NOW, how did THAT HAPPEN?
Ex-VPs and Presidents I worked with called me with opportunities (REALLY lucrative – – I could not turn them down!). So, I REALLY retired at 50 after minting money from TWO new Companies that I founded with Pals (my friends from the Silicon Valley).
SO, the long hours afforded me CONNECTIONS to people who were movers and shakers.
Now, does that Clarify why long and hard hours PAY OFF. I have been traveling the world since I was 50 (Europe, Asia, South America)….and we are still alive and well financially after those 20+ years of just enjoying the rewards from working hard.
Quite often and my wife will attest to this: I was up at 3am, & flew from San Jose to Boston to meet our top clients. I called them at 4am PST (when they arrived at work at 7am).
That kept me completely busy with product demand. It is simple: WORK HARD and GET RICH.
Obviously, you’ve been away from the job market for a few decades. Nobody gets rich on a salary anymore.
When was the last time you were out side? 1981?
In France 🇫🇷 things are different. Work for 6 months. Get laid off and get severance pay for 2 years. Then 6 months maternity leave. Work with your doctor and get spa time at a resort for six weeks. Must take all 6 weeks concurrently. Some French people I’ve spoken with admit that French workers are lazy. But they seem happy. It is their joy of life mentality.
Germany used to be like that – not sure now though.
Outsourcing mania: Microsoft expands American layoffs while lobbying for even more foreign workers!’From 2021 to 2024, the company submitted H-1B requests at a staggering rate of 5.17 for every 1 net new job it created in the U.S.’
https://www.wnd.com/2025/07/outsourcing-mania-microsoft-expands-american-layoffs-while-lobbying/
The H1B VISA is capped at 65,000 per year. The US employer petitioning for a H1B has to PROVE to the US labor dept. that there are no qualified Americans available for the job and the job has to pay the prevailing US wage for that role.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/wages
This is not how it works in practice though. There is no process to prove that you can’t find another in the US market… worst case scenario, just a letter would suffice.
Don’t tell me that the tens of thousands of Indians in Silicon Valley possess special skills that Americans don’t have…
American businesses prefer H1B workers because they got them by the balls (to keep their visa, they have to keep their job, and do whatever the boss tells them). They are not more knowledgeable or talented, they’re just more agreeable.
well that’s been going on since the ’80s. Jobs go overseas then half come back to a cheaper location because the cost savings either did not materialize or the service/ logistics/ language issues were too high. Bottom line US jobs were significantly cut.
Went thru that 3x…
Frankly speaking I think these ads are written not to hire citizens or green card holders but to hire more visa based employees.
The smart companies will use AI fo improve work life balance while increasing profits for all employees.
“for the employees that are left”.
I hear they are hiring over in Oxnard for jobs picking strawberries. If he hustles he might make minimum wage…
There are going to be plenty of job openings but not for jobs his ilk would want to do.
I’m working 12 hours per day at 65..
sorry to hear that…
73 yo… still working, self employed, 6 days a week ,, it’s not always a 10 hrs day, but more than 7…
When did you get divorced?
He could be widowed 🙂
The title should say: new IT job requirements… All these examples are for IT development jobs. A tiny pool of overall jobs in the economy.
Many older people would gladly give up their money to have their youth. Many younger people refuse to give up their youth for money. I would say the youth will win this intrigue against menopausal battleaxe companies that think they rule.
The social contract has been broken, and hardships will no longer achieve the benefits that it did for the Baby Boomer generation.
So I expect the political “free stuff by other means” redistributive promises to resonate strongly. It will probably hit a critical mass politically at some point.
Everything is already being redistributed at an alarming rate now in the form of the concentration of wealth direction. Has been for years.
When ever quality of life concerns are brought up it is called some name like socialism, communism, redistribution, equality, happiness in a pejorative fashion.
I know from experience that in this nation, once you get set up in the groove where all the perks of having an abundance of money or assets set in, that material and monetary abundance is self replicating and sometimes effortless. That first million was the hardest to make. The rest were easier.
Give humanity a break. You all are going to be dead soon enough, and you can’t take it with you.
They had me well & burned out by the time I was 55. I grew tired of being the 20% of the Pareto principle. The workforce at my last job had 60% utilizing FMLA, another 10-15% on work restrictions. The able bodies are being run into the ground. This is why many are ghost jobs, many of the “taken” jobs are friends & family, common in government, thus outsourcing and contracting. Mass deficits keeps the jig going. Think of all the people who learned to work the system vs. work, and at the same time, how can you blame them, they take the easiest path or route. Also, in work places, the easy jobs go to DEI / females, while the hard jobs, occupational hazards go to males, it’s always been this way, but now worse, just my opinion from how I have seen this play out.
The short of it: The Trump Labor Department cares not at all if employees are protected even a little bit.
Salaried people were never protected. It was assumed that you could easily find a new job if your employer was unreasonable because you had valuable skills.
Over-production of elites has been a thing and the market is glutted.
My daughter is in a job that hourly even with a four-year degree and she has no interest in “moving up” so she can provide unpaid labor.
As I said … its not supposed to be like that .. but for the next 3.5 years it likely will be.
Unless Trump was wearing a Reagan Halloween mask this has been going on long before he came along.
Whether it’s by design or not, this kind of expectation (long hours) will weed out older job seekers. Having worked long hours in my youth, I don’t think I could do it now. Plus, my mental acuity – as they say – is diminishing. In another ten years I won’t be fit for anything except being president of the United States.
Is this a record…? 47 upvotes…
Pretty funny… 😁
Going to be an interesting collision
Many places pay absurd salaries ($400K plus) but expect the world. I didn’t make that kind of money, but I did well in my 35 years in IT. I averaged 50 to 60 hours in my day job and 10 to 20 building my side business (real estate rentals). It did happen. I’ve talked to many folks who don’t believe you should have to work 40. So there are plenty who are not terribly realistic on both sides. Good news is folks I knew who worked for the gov’t made less, but were compensated for working more than 40 … and got retirements that have not been seen in the private sector since the 1950s. I have extended family who worked for a state hospital from 18 to 48 .. retired at 48 with 80% of salary plus COLA plus benefits. Will be paid far more in retirement than in their career. They also contract back periodically for absurd hourly rates. So as long as the taxpayers don’t mind paying 3x for services … it’s a great gig.
It sounds like you don’t grasp/appreciate the devaluation of the dollar that has occurred since you first started working in IT. 400K today doesn’t go as far as 80K did in 1990 (relative to auto +housing +medical+food).
https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/
Except this is a % issue. Other than the cap, 8% of 80K removes 8% of after tax income the same way that 8% of 400K.
my first reaction is that warnings/heads up from these companies is necessary after years of dealing with too many people who believe work exists only to give you money and vacation days.
Yep and a generation who’s been self-esteemed into not wanting to work even a 40-hour week!
A generation that’s had it’s way for far too long