I live just west of Lake Michigan, and what you described would be a high-snow winter here. The lake effect is real. I grew up in the Cleveland area, and I was surprised how much less snow we get in Wisconsin. Longer, colder winters, though.
I lived in Chicagoland for a few years as well, I didn’t notice much of a difference. I would assume that’s similar to Wisconsin.
Of course, I was in apartments with covered parking and snow removal services the whole time, so I didn’t need to care too much.
I do remember the guys in the Chicago office talking about when they got a foot or so of snow and had to walk to the nearby hotel to spend the night, because it wasn’t safe to drive home. I heard stories like that from people in the Michigan office too, but in my 20 years working I still never ran into it. Just lucky I guess.
> lurk in the middle of the road and make a left turn once oncoming traffic is stopped for the red
In the jurisdictions I'm familiar with, this is the proper way to make a left-hand turn. Many intersections are designed such that this is the only realistic way to ever turn left (high traffic, no left arrow).
Most red light rules are written against entering the intersection on red. If you're already in the intersection, you're allowed to safely proceed through and out of the intersection on red. That can be challenging, of course, if oncoming traffic is running the red light.
Just to add a counterpoint, I was hired as employee #3 in 2011. In 2020, I was able to sell 5.8% of my stake for $200K (as part of Series C). In 2021, I sold another 4.4% for $500K (Series D on terms too good to refuse). I still hold equity or options in nearly 0.5% of the company (which is still private).
My wife and I used about half the proceeds of those sales to buy a house (cash offer) in late 2021.
I don’t know what proportion of early employees get screwed, but people who do well are usually smart to avoid posting publicly about it (and I am apparently an idiot).
Maybe I'm bitter from getting burned but I don't think this is really counterpoint. Employee #3 you're just shy of being a co-founder and 2011 was an era where equity grants were real and companies weren't yet so clever about handing out Leprechaun gold.
EDIT: Random aside, but I looked up "leprechaun gold" and I guess the trope of a gold-like substance that disappears from your pocket when you're not looking is actually from Harry Potter and not a part of the traditional folklore.
It would be worse than the nationwide average. Battleground swing states would swing way right. The Republican voters in the suburbs have passports at a much higher rate than the Democrat voters in the poor neighborhoods.
That assumes academic achievement should be the primary aim of childhood. What I learned in school was incredibly important—don’t get me wrong—but what I learned over the summer was arguably more important.
As a child of divorce, I cherished 6 straight weeks at my mom’s house (we only visited every other weekend during school). As a working class kid, I earned probably half my annual spending money over the summer.
My wife and I now have kids, and we’ve always loved to travel (and needed to just to visit family). Summer is the only time available for extended family trips (2+ weeks).
Maybe to you, but I was broke during and shortly after college. If I could have picked up some gig work when I needed it, that would have been a huge help.
In addition to what others have said, daily demands on time and headspace can be overwhelming. My wife spends over an hour every day managing a chronic health condition. Raising kids well takes a lot of time every day. Some have loved ones with high needs that require care. Many spend 2+ hours commuting daily. Many work multiple jobs. Some spend a lot of time traveling away from home. Serious injuries can disrupt exercise routines and cause vicious cycles. Poor finances makes everything harder. Stress and depression can result from and exacerbate all of this.
Appreciate your health and time and focus and good habits while you can, and may you keep them as long as possible.
US software engineer. I have 24 days of PTO, 15 company holidays, and 9 sick days. 10 weeks for parental leave (16 for moms). $240K salary, $400-600K in annual vesting equity. That’s private paper equity, but I’ve already been able to cash out $700K and buy a house with cash.
Fully remote. I can expense $120/month for phone and internet, and a few lunches each month, too. I can get a new laptop and/or monitor sent to me just by asking.
When I do visit the office, the trip is fully expensed. Free daily lunch. Coffee and drinks and snacks everywhere, free. Private desks in a semi-open office with couches scattered around. Lounges with hundreds of board games, nearly all of which have seen table time during work hours.
Primary projects are tracked in a knowledge-sharing system, but I can mostly work on what I want to. I’m encouraged to merge small fixes and refactors without any ticket-pushing at all. Yelling by managers or anyone would not be tolerated.
“At-will” is more FUD than reality in my experience. Most companies, when firing or laying someone off, give something like 2 weeks of severance for every year of service.
That compensation is better isn't in dispute. My question is about worker rights, how much of the stuff you posted is just your company vs US law? Are you protected better by law than someone here would be?
What is more important, the law, or the typical employee experience? If you're in a strong market where workers are in demand (evidenced somewhat by higher compensation), then workers will tend to be treated better for fear that they will leave for another opportunity (remember: "at will"). If workers have fewer opportunities, then how much can the law really help?
Are there specific protections that are lacking in the US that you would expect to result in worse employee outcomes?
I'm not sure what any of that has to do with my question. The person I replied to said that from what he knew worker rights were somewhat better in the US so I asked for examples. How an employer treats you is of course important, but can't really be considered worker rights if they can decide to change that depending on market conditions.
Again, I'm not arguing about who has it better. I am asking a very narrow question about worker rights differences between the two countries. If you want me to say that US software workers have it better, then sure. But that's not really what I'm asking.
I work at more typical software job for an AUS company operating in the US ... AUS workers make less money than the US office but they can rollover PTO indefinitely, right to log off, etc. I think the main reason people come to the US to work from aus is the cost of housing anywhere near the cities is exorbitant and the australian version of the american dream is unbelievably dead.
I wish I could suggest something for you. My path was moving to the Bay Area 13 years ago to work for a small startup, helping to grow it, then going remote after a few years. Startup is a B2B with an ethical technical founder, and it had a credible business model from day 1.
In the past, I would have also found it strange to see tech blowing up in a tight job market. After a decade on the team-building side, though, I feel different.
Interviewing and onboarding are a huge distraction. Interviewing and onboarding done well require hours of attention from the more senior folks on your team.
When a company is hiring, the senior folks involved might be spending 6 hours a week interviewing. For example, I might have 4 45-minute interviews, another 15 minutes prepping for each interview, 15 minutes writing up feedback for every interview, 30 minutes in hire/no-hire discussions for candidates who are close, and another 30 minutes in hiring or interview meta-discussions.
Onboarding takes even more time. If I'm a new hire's onboarding mentor, I'm likely spending their first couple of days close by to answer any and all questions. After that, my work is frequently interrupted for a few weeks as I help them through issues (totally legitimate issues, BTW). We'll be spending extra time pairing with the new hire during the feature development process. Code review for new hires' code takes a lot longer, too.
When you factor all that in, a hiring freeze can realistically free up 10 or more hours of experienced employees' time every week. These are some of the most productive employees on the team.
In that context, it's not especially surprising to me that giving the most productive engineers 33% more productive time would lead to rapid improvements for tech companies, in the short term anyway.
Of course, in the medium-to-long term, a company that's not hiring is building up a huge "personnel debt" that is going to come due eventually. The product improvements will lead to new business, more clients will require more support, the new business will lead to more feature requests, and some employees will move on. The company will find itself without enough personnel to make headway on their product. Then they will have a hiring blitz where they wreck everyone's productive time and the team culture. The new, bigger team will make some headway, but they will still look less productive than the team was during the hiring freeze. The business will stagnate. The company will enact a hiring freeze, or perhaps even lay off team members. And then we're back at step 1.
Perfect explanation of the problem - and if I may suggest the solution is to carve some of those experienced people off as military do into a "training role" - where experienced people rotate off projects onto R&R and then onto training - creating a mini bootcamp that also has knock on benefits of building standards, tech stacks and tooling that "we have always been meaning to build".
Someone recently pointed out that we should learn more from
how militaries grow and survive over the years - this is probably the biggest lesson.
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