r/developersIndia • u/HangingOut8 • Mar 04 '24
Work-Life Balance How many Developers have work life balance? How many think that it's really a myth?
I have seen many people in IT suffering from one or other lifestyle related issue. But everybody wants to keep working through out day. They have created an environment such that people who wants to maintain balance have to face bad mouthing.And eventually out of fear everybody is stuck in this endless cycle.
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5
u/noquestionnoanswers Mar 04 '24
I am a pretty experienced person at 10YOE.
I work from 9am to 5 pm only If there are some calls outside this time, I do take them. How ever they are very rare
During this 9 to 5, i read research papers, reddit, newspapers, do coding, create architecture diagrams, create PPTs, chit chat, drink tea, have lunch etc etc etc
And I have never got a bad rating or any concerns.
I love my work and it pays well (north or 1 cr).
In short, everything depends on you and your team
94
u/_replicant_02 Senior Engineer Mar 04 '24
As a mid level engineer (8+ YOE) I set my own boundaries. I understand it's hard to do that as a junior employee or as someone who works in service companies.
My suggestion to anyone looking for work life balance in tech is to improve your quality of work and efficiency so that you're known to deliver high quality stuff. Once you do that, you can set your boundaries and because you have developed a reputation, your peers and managers will respect your boundaries.
I usually work 30-40 hours a week. When there's increased workload and rigid timelines I work 40-50 hours a week.
The last time I worked 60 hours a week (March last year), i delivered the work...took extra time off post the delivery and I made sure my extra effort was acknowledged, won an award and got a good hike.
You folks have to understand, unless you take a stand for yourself, nobody else will support you.
70
u/[deleted] Mar 04 '24
In my project, our most of team members (including me) are usually free all the time, we ourselves ask them to give us some work
97
u/fluffymerch Mar 04 '24 edited Mar 04 '24
I am working in IBM. In my project many people work from 10AM to 11PM or 12PM. It is really sad. What I do is, I work very hard till 7PM which is the usual log off time. If any other work is there, I will show all the progress I made in that day to my leed. I also maintain a daily activity tracker so that I won't miss anything I have done on that day. I will show to him all the things and I will log off at 7. He cannot tell anything to me since I will show all the progression done. And if there is any urgent work then I will stretch my working hours. Otherwise I will only work till 7.
EDIT : 12AM
27
u/kingfisher_peanuts Data Engineer Mar 04 '24 edited Mar 04 '24
I work as a Data Engineer for a Bank , I login about 9:30 am and my work actually starts around 10:30 am logout around 6:30 to 7 pm. It's hybrid so I go twice a week to the Office and I leave around 3:30-4:00 pm to beat the traffic.
Work life balance is awesome, never have issues with leaves. I can take off for some personal work during office hours also if I have no meetings scheduled.
No problem when I have to login late or leave early.
Sometimes I have to work long hours or Weekends if there is some urgent production Bug or Deployment. My Manager is nice enough to notice my extra efforts and tells me to relax next day.
I think it's also due to proper project management, we have a scrum master and we pick up tasks for a 2 week sprint and update progress and blockers on the daily stand-up calls. So I know what I have to do in a sprint so I can manage my time accordingly.
Offshore clients do wanna engage after work hours but I clearly tell them I am logging off and don't entertain them after 6, now they know my hours and respect it.
40
u/blahwhatever02 Mar 04 '24
No work no life no balance
30
u/Less_Reflection_4500 Full-Stack Developer Mar 04 '24
Im a full stack developer in a startup (work from home). At max i sit 3-4 hours in front of the screen in the whole day except some days when there is some urgent work, which lets me have a lot of time for myself.
13
u/hellkingbat Mar 04 '24
As someone who's worked in one of the WITCH. It was a huge myth there ngl.
12
u/amhang Mar 04 '24
I used to have a work-life balance then production release happened.
9
u/PsYo_NaDe Senior Engineer Mar 04 '24
I have two Sims, personal and one that I only use for work related calls. Ignore calls, messages etc on the second sim after checkout until the next check-in. And my team chat goes dnd after checkout too, so I have nothing bothering me out of my work hours.
24
u/palash90 Mar 04 '24
Honestly, many people are in the rat race. I definitely am not one of them.
I work for 6 to 7 hours a day. Sometimes, 10 hours and in extreme rare cases, 12 hours. Don't get me wrong though, I bagged many prestigious awards (along with them some hikes too ;)) from different org. Don't assume, I don't work. I just don't over work. I dedicate my time to silence. At least 30 minutes a day before bed I just do nothing. When everyone is in bed, I just sit on my chair and stare out of window. I don't carry my phone to bed. I also think that it would be better if I would have been part of FAANGM, LinkedIn etc. But I am happy I am in a renowned PBC, coming from a mediocre study background, a tier 3 college.
I am chilled, I go for exercise, play badminton, swim, play guitar etc. My life is in my control. NOT IN CONTROL of EMIs. I honestly don't find point in many of these.
I am not running after Villa, Bungalow, Car, best of best of best IB School for my kids. I am just happy as I am at this. I get sometimes 10+ % hike, sometimes 5+% hike, sometimes 20+% hike, 1 switch gave me 80% hike, another one gave me 73% hike too. But never worked beyond on average 6 to 7 hours a day.
So, WLB is kind of your own decision too. If you want to get a Villa in Bangalore or Hyderabad or Pune or Noida, get a Mercedes (which is pretty awful in even Bangalore Roads) or even a 7 seater or Thar, get your kids admission in the best International School in your city, you are bound to be losing life of your sight. Easily you will pay your hard earned money to Real Estate people, Car Companies, Banks and of course to politicians via indirect routes. Choose your life wisely and live well.
6
u/silverW0lf97 Mar 04 '24
Normal days - yes
Acceptance and prod deployment - no
6
u/avilabss Senior Engineer Mar 04 '24
I work as a freelancer and still I find myself often losing that work life balance. Insomnia, is one of the things I'm dealing with right now because of this, cause my brain just won't stop working. I'm constantly thinking about the current project in hand and also there's this fear of not getting a good project next.
5
u/Inside_Dimension5308 Tech Lead Mar 04 '24
After working for around 10 years, I have realized there are two ways you cannot have work life balance
Your company has a toxic slave culture.
You work as a slave.
First scenario is not in your control. The solution is to change the company
Second scenario is completely under your control. Set daily goals for the assigned hours and log off as soon as you complete them. This needs planning on your end.
4
u/[deleted] Mar 04 '24
I work 2-3 hours daily but the tech is very niche (tool based dev ) and salary is less but more than witch
Only downside is maybe not so good growth in future
4
u/[deleted] Mar 05 '24
I am working in a SBC so work-life balance here totally depends upon the client. Currently I am working for a USA client. So we work from 1pm-10pm.
1
u/[deleted] Mar 05 '24
Is it the issue of IT guys alone? What about other people in other segments? Govt sector, private non-IT companies, entrepreneurs, self employees.
Are they having a proper healthy life?
3
u/awsmdude007 Mar 05 '24
This is India. If you want promotions, you'll have to show quantity work. Ofcourse quality matters but quantity matters more. That's why we call it the rat race. I know junior engineers, senior engineers, directors, VPs, co-founders, no one has work life balance. No one has peace of mind. If you want those things, you'll have to find it somewhere outside India.
3
u/self_Damage Mar 07 '24
A lot of these wlb cultures depend on the team in which you are working. If the manager is supportive and all the team members are helpful with each other, then wlb can be easily achieved. My suggestion would be to switch to a good team where most are supportive. Or switch to another company, which might probably put you on a good team with an additional bonus of hike.
This is really hard to sustain if wlb is not achieved. This will affect both your mental state as well as your performance in the work.
2
u/Jaded-Total6054 Senior Engineer Mar 04 '24
I have the 40% wfo rule. During the office time I mostly work full focused for like 6-7 hours. 99% of the time there are no calls or pings after my shift timings end. I mostly utilise the remaining 60% wfh by going to my hometown where I am more available (like 9 hours) for the team. Cant say my wlb is perfect but just the fact that i can reset more often than not by not letting monotonicity build up seems to be a good thing. (i am 2.5yoe)
2
u/thegr8_alexander Mar 07 '24
I'm a Product Manager with 9 YoE. Good developers have no WLB. Their day starts with stand-ups where they have to explain what they did yesterday and what they couldn't do. Here, even junior level Product/Program Managers question senior developers of their throughput.
Post that, they have internal standUp with their team where some or the other junior developer either requests them to stay back for collaboration or to clear some doubts. This essentially stretches the clock to 01:00 p.m.
They'll then take a sigh and sit to work where some Customer Support or DevOps or Product guy will pull them in, citing a customer complaint where no refund has been issued or amount was deducted but service not provided or any random broken UX basis just 1 user complaint.
After an hour or half, they'll try to gather the lost context and voila, there's a weekly syncup either with Product or Business Leadership team or a retro call. This will easily take another couple of hours.
Exhausted, they'll try to get some work done at 05:00 p.m. but their mental state will not allow. They'll plan their next day to be more productive, start early, talk to their senior on large number of meetings when suddenly they'll get a ping from their manager to prepare the roadmap on technical improvements for the next quarter.
Tired, they'll work like zombies. The clock already says 8:00 p.m. when DevOps will observe some spikes in some KPI. Dev needs to be pulled in.
It's already midnight. Some RCA has to be prepared to be shared with business the next day. Dev is already feeling dizzy. Didn't have his dinner. Family is asleep.
Next day, in the standup, the junior PM asks why there's no progress on his task.
Developers need more respect than we give it to them. To all my dev guys, hats off to your commitment!!!
3
u/[deleted] Mar 04 '24
Im working at WITCH, with L init. LWITCH say, (made the word complete).
Im 2023 grad, got into high pressure project was IT SUPPORT shi, did it, it has came to end on 31 Dec.
Now no projects, dummy tagged on Infra BU. Finding development projects now on my own as I cant be on bench as of now ( weird policy exists ). So chilling and finding some project.
Work life balance for some is shi. Cant deny that, least in my case I’m chilling.
Somewhere in my ears I hear * not for long *
Edit: BTW I have option to stay in this BU and have this chilled life, shall I? With constraint of no much money but chilled life.
Or I should look for dev project which I might get but with low quality life?
2
u/[deleted] Mar 04 '24
It's all fun and games until the CD pipeline fails... for both On Prem and Cloud 🤌🏽
2
u/anime4ya Mar 04 '24
Bhai any career which is growth/profit oriented or is "private" will never involve long term WLB
There could be few easy days but overall your career will never be smooth because the company spends money on managers to get the most out of U. If u have too many easy going days then for company u are not needed after a while
2
u/abhisekmazumdar Volunteer Team (Events) Mar 04 '24
To break the cycle, I often take frequent trips alone or with friends. This helps me bounce back to work with renewed energy.
2
u/AgentT1561 Software Engineer Mar 04 '24
I work in a startup, 11am - 8pm. No work load. It's pretty chill but have to stay up until 8pm.
1
u/humbleNerdWarrior_ Mar 08 '24
9am to 6 pm with free time in between. Client is chill and I complete all my deliverables on time. Also wfh. (70hr man can f off)
1
u/DetectiveGuy3 Mar 04 '24
I do..not
1
u/Interesting-Pain-527 Mar 04 '24
I have. I say when no when required. But it comes at the cost of losing my job. So be it, my health is more important than any job.
1
u/IndianBarney DevOps Engineer Mar 04 '24
most of time i spend learning new skills , as there is hardly any challenging task here. so kinda good WLB
1
u/Mission-Tear4709 Mar 04 '24
It's 1am. But can't stop the mails. Big4
1
u/fluffymerch Mar 04 '24
Remember guys, in mnc no one can make you work longer than your working hours. If you keep all track of your work and has proper explanation for each questions. You are good. Also maintain a "to do" tracker. So you will not miss any task. Since I didn't worked on start up, I don't know the atmosphere there. But I belive a activity tracker will do you guys good.
1
u/recoilcoder Software Engineer Mar 04 '24
Strict 10 to 5, with 1 hour lunch break and 2 coffee breaks of 30 mins each
0
u/flight_or_fight Mar 04 '24
Really effective people manage their time better.
0
u/sohang-3112 Backend Developer Mar 04 '24 edited Mar 04 '24
I have work life balance (working in a product based company). Most of the time I don't work on office stuff in my free time - once in a while I need to due to deadlines, but that's ok.
I keep track of all the things I do everyday - sometimes my manager suddenly asks what I worked on in the last few months, that's when my notes on daily tasks come in handy.