It honestly depends on the week, some days I can finish work at around 6 PM and go straight to working on side projects until midnight, and other days I feel like I need a break right after work.
I'm thankful to work at a place where work-life balance is really valued and overtime is never pushed and always avoided.
I believe you on this one Jaime. I made sure to chose the right company for my first job as a Software Engineer but have heard really tough stories of burn out from friends & people on Twitter. 😟
I also agree with the sentiment here. Fortunately, the company I work for also values this balance and they allow me the time to do non-work related stuff because they don't want anybody to suffer from burn out.
Norway has one of the best work-life balance in the world I think.
I have the flexibility to take care of my family and myself because it's culturally prioritized and supported by the belief that is overall good for the team.
Before, while working in a non tech job in the US, I was on the road 4-6 hours a day, working overtime, etc.
Now I only work overtime when the job needs me to which is rare, I get paid holiday time that would require someone to work for over ten years to achieve in the US and I get home in time to pick up my children, go to the gym, etc.
When life is better, I work better, and that is real value to the team and customer.
Better now that the semester is over -- I'm an adjunct professor and the end-of-semester crunch to help students and get grades in is a lot.
Working from home also helps tremendously; I eat at least 2 meals a day with my partner, and we usually take ~2-mi walks together 4 times a week. In general, I can step away from the computer around 6pm every night and am not working into the wee hours of the morning (which I did a lot of when I was a freelancer).
I’m Erhan Kılıç, a curious web developer from Turkey who loves to write software applications and websites.
I have been working as a web developer since 2013.
I work with 3 companies. Two of them remote and other one is normal. Well, most of the time I try to spend my time to do my hobbies and travel but it's not much. I'm trying to earn as much as I can before 35 years old :)
I’m Erhan Kılıç, a curious web developer from Turkey who loves to write software applications and websites.
I have been working as a web developer since 2013.
Hi, sometimes I wonder too :)
One of the remote doesn't require full time work so I can handle their tasks on my freetime. Other remote one doesn't have much job. 20 hours in month, mostly.
Normal one is fulltime job.
As Rihanna would say work work work work work ... Joking aside it's Ramadan for us muslims and it means no eating from dawn till dusk (in Bosnia it's like from 2:50 to 20:15 nowadays but it gets longer every day by few minutes) so I don't take lunch breaks and when I get home if I can't sleep I work more as it benefits me to have some extra hours to be able to exchange them later on for a free day. I can say it's actually good feeling to work more and without breaks when you have no place(lunch,coffe with friends etc) to be later on as you don't feel stres from doing overtime.
I am learning to prioritize play. The company I work at actively supports work-life balance - it's one of our corporate values. We also have unlimited PTO. However, being a workaholic, I find it difficult to step away from work and take time off. So I have been training myself to prioritize non-work activities, schedule them, pay for them, and have them on my calendar. That's the only way I can make myself not work.
I am also getting into the habit of planning a trip out of New York every other quarter. The hustle of the city is addictive and hard to get away from - so I have to physically move away from the city every few months to realize there's a bigger, beautiful world outside of it.
Working in India for a service based company. I used to have this as my work life balance. 3+ hrs of travel every day. With 9 hrs of mandate hrs to be maintained. But end up working more than that. I would say possible 11hrs a day, this includes constant mental stress and pressure.
After working for a year I called this madness all quits and took a break of 20days. I Would be joining Adobe as a contact employee starting from Monday.
The last 6-7 month, I work every day, but I work around 4-5 hours a day. It's better for me cuz after work, I usually don't need time for rest before I can start to do another thing (improve my English or developers skills, reading, met with friends, etc)
I work remotely so I save commute/transit time! Sometimes I work from coffee shops and co-working spaces though, it helps me focus. I work at a great place that rarely requires overtime as long as I meet my hours—technically 8 hrs a day but in reality not that strict, 2 + 2 + 2-3 hrs or thereabouts. I can set my own hours as long as I communicate it with my team lead.
I (try to) prioritize physical exercise (go to gym on avg 2-3 times/week; go for walks), not skip meals and sleep. I allocate time to visit my parents and catch up with friends.
Other than those, I pretty much code all the time. When I'm done with my day job, I either do side gigs sometimes and/or code to learn stuff. I'm fully self-taught AND a latecomer to tech, so I feel like I have sooooooo much to catch up (also, I do genuinely enjoy coding!).
It's kind of weird when your (1) livelihood (ie. work), (2) future prospects (work-ish), and (3) entertainment/fun (life) are intertwined in one place, ie. coding! Not complaining, though. 🤷🏽♀️
I pay a lot of attention to keep my W/L balance. Even if I love what I do and I'm full of ideas what else to do, I'm on a very strict schedule and if the time is up, I stop what I'm doing.
As such, I keep my fire burning and I step away frequently enough to have a look at what I do from a certain distance.
This limited time also encourages me to work more efficiently.
Work-life-balance at my current job is awesome. I usually work 9-5 and that's it, unless I have to do a deployment, which I usually do from home around 8ish. I get a work-from-home day every Friday, which usually gives me time to go to my daughter's swim class in the morning and work the rest of the afternoon in my office in the basement.
I've been tempted lately by multiple recruiters offering jobs where I'd be making $25K+ more, I'm just afraid of losing that balance and having to work significantly more time for that salary. Right now, with two small children, I'm not sure the tradeoff is worth it.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
I try to set aside time to go to concerts and such (and just came back from this year's Las Vegas installment of the Electric Daisy Carnival). But, even without work getting in the way of personal time, setting aside sufficient money to do so is always problematic.
Most days I work all day (not in a dev role) and then come home around 7:00PM and study for University until around 12:00AM when I go to bed and then back up at 6:00AM to go back to work.
Whilst work is getting better, it can be extremely stressful and tiring, with the amount of work we are expected to get done.
Up until 6 weeks ago I worked from home and while did more work hours, the work/life balance was better. I'd start work at about 7am (and get up at about 6:55am), stop at 8:45 to take the kids to school and then meet some local friends for coffee and then a workout until 10:30am. I'd work from 10:30 until 2:45pm when I'd go pick the kids up again, then come home and work from 3:15pm to about 5pm. I'd go out to Taekwondo until 8pm then come home and grab some dinner and work another couple of hours before watching some TV and heading to bed at about midnight.
Now I get up at 5:30am, leave for work/dropping the kids in before school care at 6:15, start work at 7-7:30. Finish work at 4pm, home by 5:15-5:30. I have my evenings completely to myself now but I'm more tired at the end of each day and the work enjoyment is less, purely because of the current schedule.
I'm nearing the end of several years as a stay at home parent, working only part-time from home. So honestly my work-life balance is skewed to way too FEW hours for professional work. Looking forward to my youngest starting school.
software developer with almost no qualifications, but a strong desire for learning. i believe that you can make it without qualifications if you push yourself.
don't give up. the difference betw...
not too fantastic at the moment. we're in the middle of a big project, so two days a week i'm working late (6am - 10pm), so from the evening before until the next afternoon i don't see my son. last week we had a work outing, so didn't see him at all on thursday and friday.
we get paid overtime, so that's one good thing at least.
My work / life balance is good, compared to most, but still in flux. I still take problems home with me and have in the last month been kept awake fighting clients in my head. Next steps for me is to work harder on letting stress not get to me :)
Full stack web developer with a passion for consistency, learning from my mistakes and using my gifts to make a significant difference. Experience in Ruby on Rails, Javascript, React
Education
Psychology & Digital Media -- Claremont McKenna College
The worst part about my work week is my commute. Get on the bus at 7:45am, (thank God it’s free), hour and a half there. Get to work at 9:15am. Leave work at 5:24pm. Get back at 7:30pm. But I’m an hourly employee and don’t get paid for those commuting hours :/
Semi struggling, but that's usually a temp thing when I get super busy with work and home stuff at the same time. Working from home full time makes it a little more difficult at times but luckily more wife is a retired IT person so she gets the fact that emergency issues or super busy work times are going to happen, it's the nature of the beast
Surprisingly good. My new internship is just so awesome. It's full of people I highly admire and get long well with, it's a in a no bs and relaxing environment. I do my 37.5hrs of work everyweek. The rest of my time is reading lots tech and non tech books in nature settings. Doing either mountain biking or other outdoor sports. I make no compromise on the activitiees outside of tech
My life IS work+study, all day every day. What I do to avoid burnout is to just do what I want when I want, so I’m never “forcing” myself to study. I love it though so I’ll spend most of my day on it.
Today is Sunday, but like most days I will start working at 8–10 am, up until about 1 am. I do take a break or two to cook and eat, cooking really winds me down and takes my mind out of the computer which is a nice break.
Usually really good. I'm on a team and with a company that lets me be flexible with what hours I work. I choose the early-in early-out life. I get to work at 6:30 AM and I'm out the door 3:30ish. I usually just miss traffic both ways.
*I do get asked to work extra from time to time. I don't get overtime, but they incentivize it if they have to ask. I appreciate that this is the exception to the rule for me, because there is a culture among my team that some tend to live at work, and the company loves them for it. Work/life balance is probably the single-most important thing for me where I'm at right now so I don't take that for granted.
On a separate note, being the early guy I hear stories about how everybody sees the people who "stay late" and "work extra" and they often get pizza on the company card. People see they come in early but don't notice that they didn't get in until 11:00 or later. The hard part about getting in early is that nobody notices when you are putting in that extra time.
One great piece of advice I received to get noticed was to find excuses to respond to emails when you are in early/late so that people see that you are putting in the time.
Pretty good. The key for me has always been getting into work early so that I can get un-interrupted focus time. I’m sure others do the same by staying later - but I like to start my day accomplishing something. Also, taking lots of notes has helped me compartmentalize work stuff. The more I document, the less I have to think about it outside of work. Speaking of, not responding to Slack messages or email outside of working hours.
10 working hours approximately every day, 4 times a week I exercise (usually before work) and like 4 hours a week playing guitar. IMO I keep a very good balance with a lot of time to myself :)
It honestly depends on the week, some days I can finish work at around 6 PM and go straight to working on side projects until midnight, and other days I feel like I need a break right after work.
I'm thankful to work at a place where work-life balance is really valued and overtime is never pushed and always avoided.
This balance you mention feels like an exception, but we can bend the culture so it becomes a common thing.
I always make it very clear that I work from 8 to 5, no exceptions. If that's not good enough then I'm not your guy.
I believe you on this one Jaime. I made sure to chose the right company for my first job as a Software Engineer but have heard really tough stories of burn out from friends & people on Twitter. 😟
I also agree with the sentiment here. Fortunately, the company I work for also values this balance and they allow me the time to do non-work related stuff because they don't want anybody to suffer from burn out.
Norway has one of the best work-life balance in the world I think.
I have the flexibility to take care of my family and myself because it's culturally prioritized and supported by the belief that is overall good for the team.
Before, while working in a non tech job in the US, I was on the road 4-6 hours a day, working overtime, etc.
Now I only work overtime when the job needs me to which is rare, I get paid holiday time that would require someone to work for over ten years to achieve in the US and I get home in time to pick up my children, go to the gym, etc.
When life is better, I work better, and that is real value to the team and customer.
Hey, Stephan. That's great, thanks for your input.
Better now that the semester is over -- I'm an adjunct professor and the end-of-semester crunch to help students and get grades in is a lot.
Working from home also helps tremendously; I eat at least 2 meals a day with my partner, and we usually take ~2-mi walks together 4 times a week. In general, I can step away from the computer around 6pm every night and am not working into the wee hours of the morning (which I did a lot of when I was a freelancer).
I work with 3 companies. Two of them remote and other one is normal. Well, most of the time I try to spend my time to do my hobbies and travel but it's not much. I'm trying to earn as much as I can before 35 years old :)
Hi Erhan! How do you handle the time and work from the 3 companies?
Hi, sometimes I wonder too :)
One of the remote doesn't require full time work so I can handle their tasks on my freetime. Other remote one doesn't have much job. 20 hours in month, mostly.
Normal one is fulltime job.
As Rihanna would say work work work work work ... Joking aside it's Ramadan for us muslims and it means no eating from dawn till dusk (in Bosnia it's like from 2:50 to 20:15 nowadays but it gets longer every day by few minutes) so I don't take lunch breaks and when I get home if I can't sleep I work more as it benefits me to have some extra hours to be able to exchange them later on for a free day. I can say it's actually good feeling to work more and without breaks when you have no place(lunch,coffe with friends etc) to be later on as you don't feel stres from doing overtime.
I am learning to prioritize play. The company I work at actively supports work-life balance - it's one of our corporate values. We also have unlimited PTO. However, being a workaholic, I find it difficult to step away from work and take time off. So I have been training myself to prioritize non-work activities, schedule them, pay for them, and have them on my calendar. That's the only way I can make myself not work.
I am also getting into the habit of planning a trip out of New York every other quarter. The hustle of the city is addictive and hard to get away from - so I have to physically move away from the city every few months to realize there's a bigger, beautiful world outside of it.
Going to the Bees and harvestimg the honey from them 😉🐝thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i...
Ayy I love bees 🐝 😁, they help with a lot with mah plants 🌱.
Heads up, to embed images in markdown (what DEV uses for its posts) you use the syntax:
Working in India for a service based company. I used to have this as my work life balance. 3+ hrs of travel every day. With 9 hrs of mandate hrs to be maintained. But end up working more than that. I would say possible 11hrs a day, this includes constant mental stress and pressure.
After working for a year I called this madness all quits and took a break of 20days. I Would be joining Adobe as a contact employee starting from Monday.
The last 6-7 month, I work every day, but I work around 4-5 hours a day. It's better for me cuz after work, I usually don't need time for rest before I can start to do another thing (improve my English or developers skills, reading, met with friends, etc)
Not that good, but not horrible.
I work remotely so I save commute/transit time! Sometimes I work from coffee shops and co-working spaces though, it helps me focus. I work at a great place that rarely requires overtime as long as I meet my hours—technically 8 hrs a day but in reality not that strict, 2 + 2 + 2-3 hrs or thereabouts. I can set my own hours as long as I communicate it with my team lead.
I (try to) prioritize physical exercise (go to gym on avg 2-3 times/week; go for walks), not skip meals and sleep. I allocate time to visit my parents and catch up with friends.
Other than those, I pretty much code all the time. When I'm done with my day job, I either do side gigs sometimes and/or code to learn stuff. I'm fully self-taught AND a latecomer to tech, so I feel like I have sooooooo much to catch up (also, I do genuinely enjoy coding!).
It's kind of weird when your (1) livelihood (ie. work), (2) future prospects (work-ish), and (3) entertainment/fun (life) are intertwined in one place, ie. coding! Not complaining, though. 🤷🏽♀️
I pay a lot of attention to keep my W/L balance. Even if I love what I do and I'm full of ideas what else to do, I'm on a very strict schedule and if the time is up, I stop what I'm doing.
As such, I keep my fire burning and I step away frequently enough to have a look at what I do from a certain distance.
This limited time also encourages me to work more efficiently.
Work-life-balance at my current job is awesome. I usually work 9-5 and that's it, unless I have to do a deployment, which I usually do from home around 8ish. I get a work-from-home day every Friday, which usually gives me time to go to my daughter's swim class in the morning and work the rest of the afternoon in my office in the basement.
I've been tempted lately by multiple recruiters offering jobs where I'd be making $25K+ more, I'm just afraid of losing that balance and having to work significantly more time for that salary. Right now, with two small children, I'm not sure the tradeoff is worth it.
In a word, "fsck'ed".
I try to set aside time to go to concerts and such (and just came back from this year's Las Vegas installment of the Electric Daisy Carnival). But, even without work getting in the way of personal time, setting aside sufficient money to do so is always problematic.
Most days I work all day (not in a dev role) and then come home around 7:00PM and study for University until around 12:00AM when I go to bed and then back up at 6:00AM to go back to work.
Whilst work is getting better, it can be extremely stressful and tiring, with the amount of work we are expected to get done.
Up until 6 weeks ago I worked from home and while did more work hours, the work/life balance was better. I'd start work at about 7am (and get up at about 6:55am), stop at 8:45 to take the kids to school and then meet some local friends for coffee and then a workout until 10:30am. I'd work from 10:30 until 2:45pm when I'd go pick the kids up again, then come home and work from 3:15pm to about 5pm. I'd go out to Taekwondo until 8pm then come home and grab some dinner and work another couple of hours before watching some TV and heading to bed at about midnight.
Now I get up at 5:30am, leave for work/dropping the kids in before school care at 6:15, start work at 7-7:30. Finish work at 4pm, home by 5:15-5:30. I have my evenings completely to myself now but I'm more tired at the end of each day and the work enjoyment is less, purely because of the current schedule.
I'm nearing the end of several years as a stay at home parent, working only part-time from home. So honestly my work-life balance is skewed to way too FEW hours for professional work. Looking forward to my youngest starting school.
not too fantastic at the moment. we're in the middle of a big project, so two days a week i'm working late (6am - 10pm), so from the evening before until the next afternoon i don't see my son. last week we had a work outing, so didn't see him at all on thursday and friday.
we get paid overtime, so that's one good thing at least.
My work / life balance is good, compared to most, but still in flux. I still take problems home with me and have in the last month been kept awake fighting clients in my head. Next steps for me is to work harder on letting stress not get to me :)
I don't really know, but I guess, not bad.
At the moment I sleep until noon and work like 3-4h a day for 3-4 days a week.
I but I do many job related stuff in my free-time. Reading technical stuff, mentoring, etc.
The worst part about my work week is my commute. Get on the bus at 7:45am, (thank God it’s free), hour and a half there. Get to work at 9:15am. Leave work at 5:24pm. Get back at 7:30pm. But I’m an hourly employee and don’t get paid for those commuting hours :/
Semi struggling, but that's usually a temp thing when I get super busy with work and home stuff at the same time. Working from home full time makes it a little more difficult at times but luckily more wife is a retired IT person so she gets the fact that emergency issues or super busy work times are going to happen, it's the nature of the beast
This is a particular month for me because I am recovering from a minor back injury, at least for one more week.
I make sure I finish work at 5 30 pm, then I work on passion projects or try to learn something before going to dancing classes.
Despite the fact that my role is Software Developer, coding is also a great hobby for me so I look for even more interesting problems.
Roughly 40 hours/week, plus driving to/from the office.
Most of the remaining time is spent helping with our daughter, cleaning, and sleeping. And then hanging with family on Sundays (most times).
No side projects, but 🤷
Surprisingly good. My new internship is just so awesome. It's full of people I highly admire and get long well with, it's a in a no bs and relaxing environment. I do my 37.5hrs of work everyweek. The rest of my time is reading lots tech and non tech books in nature settings. Doing either mountain biking or other outdoor sports. I make no compromise on the activitiees outside of tech
My life IS work+study, all day every day. What I do to avoid burnout is to just do what I want when I want, so I’m never “forcing” myself to study. I love it though so I’ll spend most of my day on it.
Today is Sunday, but like most days I will start working at 8–10 am, up until about 1 am. I do take a break or two to cook and eat, cooking really winds me down and takes my mind out of the computer which is a nice break.
Usually really good. I'm on a team and with a company that lets me be flexible with what hours I work. I choose the early-in early-out life. I get to work at 6:30 AM and I'm out the door 3:30ish. I usually just miss traffic both ways.
*I do get asked to work extra from time to time. I don't get overtime, but they incentivize it if they have to ask. I appreciate that this is the exception to the rule for me, because there is a culture among my team that some tend to live at work, and the company loves them for it. Work/life balance is probably the single-most important thing for me where I'm at right now so I don't take that for granted.
On a separate note, being the early guy I hear stories about how everybody sees the people who "stay late" and "work extra" and they often get pizza on the company card. People see they come in early but don't notice that they didn't get in until 11:00 or later. The hard part about getting in early is that nobody notices when you are putting in that extra time.
One great piece of advice I received to get noticed was to find excuses to respond to emails when you are in early/late so that people see that you are putting in the time.
Pretty good. The key for me has always been getting into work early so that I can get un-interrupted focus time. I’m sure others do the same by staying later - but I like to start my day accomplishing something. Also, taking lots of notes has helped me compartmentalize work stuff. The more I document, the less I have to think about it outside of work. Speaking of, not responding to Slack messages or email outside of working hours.
I think what I work on is my life at this point. I'm being serious.
I’m curious, today is Saturday: what’s your schedule like?
It's a bit crazy for me at the moment, mostly conference talks alongside consulting is pretty damn hard.
I am in need of aong break at the end of 2019
When someone brings up work/life balance question I normally follow up with. Are you referring as single person, married or parent. All different.
10 working hours approximately every day, 4 times a week I exercise (usually before work) and like 4 hours a week playing guitar. IMO I keep a very good balance with a lot of time to myself :)
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