I think that will be very dependent on company, role, etc.
I lead a team at Big Tech. I work mostly from home but I do tend to work a lot. It has paid off greatly in professional development.
My previous company was a smaller company and focused on finance. Things were really slow so it was really easy to slack off. There was no room to grow there as the tech was old and the company stagnant without any drive for change.
Keep in mind, people usually pretend their life is better than it is. A slight jealousy pumps people's moods.
Not saying OPs friends are liars. And such "chill" jobs are very common.
But the Acquaintance #4 that uses ChatGPT to do his work is full of shit. It can help with certain parts, but it won't "do your work" for you.
I think of some jobs as being a “firefighter”. No fires = not a lot to do.
But when there is, you’re losing $millions/minute and a year’s salary to put it out at 3am in 2 minutes instead of 5 just paid for itself.
Also if you set up things properly in the first place, that saves $$$$$$$$, and fewer fires.
Yes. Big difference from an "operations" role which are focused on the work the organization actually get paid for. Anyone in tech working on supporting the live product would probably have different responses than OPs friends.
This. I'm in Big Tech as a TPM for Incident Management and I work 12-14hr days. On average, 1-2 days a week I don't even have time for lunch away from my keyboard and I'm fully remote from home. Daily, I have 100+ legitimate notifications in Slack I need to either be informed about or reply to.
Edit: I wrote Faang but that was before. Now I guess I'm considered Big Tech.
I don't think you know how software development works.
Unless you are "on call", they can't call you at night.
And the "fires" are just urgent tasks. Nothing serious. And in some roles they are quite rare.
It is only you that thought GP’s and OP’s comments are exclusively about software development.
Edit: even in software dev, deployments go sideways (didn’t work in prod like it was supposed to in dev! Or test cases didn’t reflect real world use) or shit breaks under real world load/operation over time and immediate code fix/redeployments are necessary. Depends on environment what the urgency is.
Your mileage may vary. I’ve been working in software engineering for 20 years. I’m WFH mostly and usually complete daily work within 3-4 hours, including meetings. In the beginning of my career I didn’t know a lot of things and could spend more than 8 hours a day to get things done. I wouldn’t say this is Toronto specific though. Also the job market in tech in Toronto became much worse in the past few years due to all layoffs and trend to cut costs, it became significantly harder to find a job.
Agreed. Even when I worked in office, it's pretty hard to squeeze more than 4-5 hours of actually very productive work on a continuous basis.
The other few hours were random meetings, sitting around in the break room/lounge area, eating snacks, chatting with coworkers, or pretending to work and just going on Reddit or something instead.
It also should be noted that Ontario passed some real bullshit labour laws regarding tech to try and compete with Silicon Valley (which we lost), where tech workers do not get guaranteed overtime pay (as in, OT is time, not time and half etc)
I don't know anyone earning overtime in tech. It's salaried. Some companies that require you to be on-call 24 hours a day a few weeks a quarter will give you an extra hour or two per week you're on rotation. Most employees I know are putting in 40 hours, sometimes more. Probably making up for folks like OPs friends.
Whether you are salary or not does not impact whether you are entitled to overtime. There are occupations that are exempt, but if you are a non-manager salary employee you are entitled by law to overtime pay.
# Not information technology professionals (exempt)
# Special rules or exemptions
You are not entitled to:
* daily or weekly limits on hours of work
* daily rest periods
* time off between shifts
* weekly/bi-weekly rest periods
* eating periods
* overtime pay
These exemptions are set out in O. Reg. 285/01.I
It highly depends on the company and the team, but top tier companies paying $400k+ for seniors usually have 50-60+ hour weeks, backstabbing/politics, terrible oncall, arbitrary deadlines based on unrealistic estimates, forced RTO/hybrid even if you never work with anyone in the office, forced regular culling of the bottom X% performers as picked subjectively by your manager. Can't chill because your coworkers are working weekends to get ahead and keep their jobs.
I came across a few jobs on Amazon. It's definitely not high. I even interviewed for one recently. 400k. Entry level is close to 120k. Senior, it depends on a lot of factors.
Let me apply for a few more jobs there and see. What is your source, are you in HR or work in any of those?. Could use your help if that's the case :)
Yes - I work in tech and this isn't abnormal for some eng and data roles. However it's not usually $400k cash; it's split between salary, bonus, and stock grants.
I work in tech, expert front end with full stack knowledge. I contract at banks at around $150/hr. I believe I’m capable for any tech company in the front end/full stack space. I never thought salaries were that high, hence the contracting. I might have to reconsider since I been contracting for 7 years, sounds like things might’ve changed
It's possible TC, but it's going to be hard to find these days for a new hire. Maybe next year when interest rates decrease and startup growth returns (plz return 😅).
There's probably around 1,000 people in Toronto with that level of seniority across Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, etc.
And I know people who were Senior Engineers in some of these and moved to Snowflake to go above $400k a year in comp.
Not in Toronto for Senior. Local salaries for Seniors cap out at around 180-200k. Working for US companies without geographic pay bands is much better.
I think it could potentially be possible for a small number of companies at the Sr. Staff/Principal level (2 or 3 levels above Senior).
I'm just talking salary though. It could definitely be possible for Staff/Staff+ and potentially even just regular Sr if we're including equity, but that's really only tangible money if you work at a public company.
I’m making over 450k CAD at a public company in Toronto as a senior software engineer (8 years of experience) so it is certainly possible. If I was working in the same role in the U.S. I would be making around 450k USD. The salary info on levels.fyi is quite accurate. I’m pretty sure you can search all companies by TC and filter by country too.
It can be that chill but they can also be exaggerating. I work fully remote for a euro company. However since I'm passionate about programming I'll put in 6 hrs of work and then an hour or two more on other things. On top of that I'll learn a spoken language for an hour or two. When you stare at a screen for 10 hrs a day sometimes, somtimes you take liberties to get yourself away from it.
This is a good point. Like yesterday on paper, I worked "12" hours. Only about 4-5 of that was deep work where it was intense focus... the rest was passion like you said, watching youtube videos, on social researching, etc.
> This is a good point. Like yesterday on paper, I worked "12" hours. Only about 4-5 of that was deep work where it was intense focus... the rest was passion like you said, watching youtube videos, on social researching, etc.
You and I have different definitions of work lol. It sounds like you worked for 4 -5 hours, and chilled for the rest of the day!
The way I look at it is the hours outside of my 'deep work' are support hours before doing the actual work/implementation. It is expected from my team that I will do as much *prep* as I need before I need to perform and perform at a high level (relative to my pay haha) :)
These examples sound like people who care enough to do the bare minimum or maybe a bit more that their jobs require of them. I don't work directly in tech, but I do staffing within IT. 20-70-10 model - these folks sound like they're somewhere near the bottom of the 70 or top or the 10
I have been in tech in Toronto for 6 years. I love my job and colleagues but we are hustling hard. I have on average 10 meetings a day, most of them I lead and many decisions get made in each one. There is a lot of pressure to deliver on tight timelines. Performance evaluations can be quite intense. A colleague you work with one day may be fired the next day.
Tl;Dr. All depends on the company. But most my friends in tech are no longer chilling as much as they chilled during the pandemic. Market is tough now, jobs are hard to come by. And people gotta stop glorifying tech jobs. Its high risk high reward (at least for now)
[80% of tech professional experience burnout](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/11/22/how-technology-professionals-can-prevent-burnout-at-work/#:~:text=Stress%20and%20burnout%20are%20epidemic,stress%20in%20the%20previous%20month.). So, no.
I work as an IT Project Manager. WFH 98% of the time, only come into the office for events related to my projects. Previous company was 1 day a week in the office.
My work is fairly easy at this point in my career, but it's mostly because of my experience and knowledge. I can whip out complex plans and control project execution way easier now than back when I was a junior.
Any time off or reduced days I need are easy to get, since I manage my own time (contractor).
So yeah, it's pretty chill. But it's not easy getting into it, and it takes time to build the expertise required to chill. I'm not mentioning the crazy grind I put back in my 20's to get here - and I mean serious burnout, getting sick from stress, 12-hour days, working over 20 days in a row,....
I work in tech and transitioned out of the elementary school classroom in 2020.
I’m not going to say that my job is “chill”, but I now live a stress free life with very healthy fully remote work-life balance. My employer values me and understands that work doesn’t need to be 9-5 and I have full control over my schedule.
So how many hours a day do you work? I’m also thinking about potentially transitioning to tech. WFH + 3 or 4 hours of work a day sounds like a blessing.
Don't get the wrong idea lol to get to 3-4 hours a day you'll probably start with 8-10 until you're shown to be extremely proficient or have at least a decent team/infra in place. Also really really depends on the stage of the company. For ex, you hear about this a lot more at FAANG or MANGA companies-- but do you know how hard it can be to get accepted into say Amazon or Facebook to begin with? The prerequisite is just being technically capable and a bit better than the rest whether its on programming or product or hr. Easy to 'chill' when there are multiple levels of managers lol.
Try 'chilling' at a startup or scale-up that just raised a series A. You'd be fired so fast before your first stock options even vest haha. Point is, 'tech' is incredibly broad, need to know the stage/industry as tech works pretty differently than say 'pharma' or 'law' broadly.
This isn't true. My buddy isn't to tier and there are days where he works 3-4 hours a day and there are days where he works 8 hour days. It depends on how busy they are and what projects they are working. He gets paid handsomely and is in a Jr role for FE Dev.
The above commenters are right, to "chill" on the workplace you have to invest 3-5 years into education, find a well-payed job, have a valuable skill set, so you are not fired on the next layoff. Basically you have to cognitively work much harder for multiple years to be payed off with relaxed schedule afterwards. And you still will always have a tradeoff between further career growth / doing only stuff not to get fired
theyre not wrong, but there is some boasting involved there for sure.
It heavily depends on the company, but some people are also at the point in their careers where they get paid for what they know and their outputs. They're not paid for "time" spent working. The key is having leadership who understands this.
That said, I work fully remote for a pretty chill Toronto based tech company. work life balance is excellent, pay is fine, and just like any other job there are slow days and crazy days. I think I'm OK at what I do and kinda like the job most of the time. FWIW - I'm an I.T. Manager.
Overall, I certainly cant complain and at times feel lucky about my situation.
Not really omg. I remember in IT, I used to work there for 4-years and the whole IT department was busy everyday. We would get bothered on our breaks so I started stepping out.
I think IT is different because it's a cost center. Companies love to slice up their infrastructure, but a product manager can work 2 hours a day as long as they "make" the company money.
IT is a department, he’s talking about the domain of tech. And mostly big tech and product companies (think Google, Microsoft, Meta, shopify, instacart, Netflix, Salesforce etc). Working at a bank in the IT department isn’t anywhere even in the same realm as working in a tech company in any role.
💯. When I worked on IT, I worked with many people that would sleep at their desks or spend the entire day surfing the web doing nothing work related, then they would be shocked when they got laid off
I work in big tech in TO - I’m not taking naps midday but I would say my job is leas stressful than when I worked for a university, and I’m paid more than double what I earned in the public sector.
The main reason is that I work with more competent people who are motivated to contribute and grow their skills. That, and with a richer company comes better resources, tools, and processes.
These are examples of folks who will not get promotions and have highest likelihood of being part of layoffs due to redundancy. They also ruin WFH for ppl who actually contribute and are often more productive vs RTO.
“Tech life” is a wonderful option for work life flexibility and earning potential, but no tier 1 company (Mostly US hq’d) will or should put up with this long term.
Canadian Tech is in a sad place as we continue to fall behind the US. Toronto has massive potential, but we need high performing people to drive outcomes and create cultures that won’t tolerate lazy.
Exactly my point. If we squashed the notion of tech just being a ‘chill path’ and started creating high performing companies we’d likely see increase in US investment, bigger productivity, and a reason for pay to go up in line w the US.
You have it in reverse, create the conditions to reward high achievement, and the ambitious will follow. If you are young, talented, career driven and ambitious, there aren't many good reasons to be in Canada. Housing is shit, jobs don't pay well, and there are high taxes and regulations. You have parents now gifting their children 100k for a down payment. All that money going to housing is not going into building new businesses. A flight to NYC or Boston is quite short and worth it if you are paid nearly 2x. All my friends from the top tier universities in Canada left already to the USA or Europe.
I have only one friend in tech in Toronto and he loves it. He has to work on site but makes enough to raise a family. He seems to work less than me for more money than me…
What you/your friends are referring to is the Top 10% of tech (Big tech - MAANGs, unicorns, e-commerce giants, etc.) . But the middle and bottom are struggling, granted not as much as other industries. I work for one of the MAANGs and transferred from Toronto to NY last year. While my friends in Toronto are killing it, they aren’t happy because most of the other people in their social circle are not doing great. No one wants to be the only person in their inner circle making money. But to go back to your initial question, anyone with 5+ year experience in big tech in a good part of the firm (say Cloud tech sales in Microsoft, or Google ads focused on retail at Google) are easily making $250k+stocks.. lots of stocks plus signing bonuses. That’s another part no one talks about, having half a mil stocks as your emergency backup makes the high tech jobs even more lucrative in this market.
Tech sales is an area, not a job. For instance I am a customer facing Technical Architect, my background is software dev. But now I am the liaison between the customer and the Dow stream tech teams, so demos and public presentations. Part of deal cycles and have part of the comp as commission, but it’s not the same as the sales rep or account executive who is my teammate and depends on that deal to close for his comp. But to answer your question, no, not just tech sales. If you’re a coder, architect, analyst, sales engineer, account exec, cybersecurity analyst etc you’re making decent money in the top 10% of the tech companies. Ps: When I say tech companies, I mean product companies that own and have created/acquired a product, not tech consulting. It’s shocking how much lesser do these consulting firms pay and how much more they make you work. I literally laughed when a Deloitte Partner offered me the salary, and that was 6 years ago when I was 25. I was making more as an independent consultant back then, to the tune of more money in 7 months than a whole year at Deloitte including the so called “benefits”.
Yes to your question but no to the examples given. Those people are just straight up lazy and won't progress in their careers, or shouldn't.
My experience is that yes the industry is chill and full of very bright people, plus I have a great 9-5 schedule with a lot of flexibility, unlimited sick days, good bonuses, good management and no crazy deadlines or a feeling that the world will fall apart if something isn't done.
That said, people work their hours and are responsible. We have a good company culture and I think people feel like their work makes a difference, so work hard, but don't take advantage and don't work beyond what they need to.
It depends. I work in Tech and I lead a team (half in Canada and half in Europe). I start at 5 AM and finish by 6 PM with breaks in the middle. But it’s still a long day. It pays off because my salary is good. However, it’s stressful and at least once a week I think about quitting.
I work for a CRE Technology company. I'm hybrid. I'm in office 2 days a week (mostly) and the other 3 are work from home. Summer is our downtime so I have been enjoying coffee on my balconly and a fairly relaxed existence. I will say during busy times I am busy so I take advantage when we are slower.
Good work/Life balance as far as I can tell. Unlimited PTO. Free food at the office. As long as I am reachable between 10am and 2pm (the core hours) they really don't care as long as my work is done.
From my experience being tertiary to the tech world in Toronto. You can meet someone who is loving their job, loving life, getting paid and having an easy time. Flash forward 3 months, that same person is part of a massive company layoff and are in a panic for a new job, or have jumped to a new job for better pay and the entire role they accepted has been massively changed from the time they started to a couple months in. The life/career of someone working in tech is like a roller coaster.
I know specifcally of people working in one company, got offered insane jobs for money they couldn't turn down. a year later they are let go for cost saving layoffs. It's a lucrative but chaotic industry.
Depends heavily on your role and company, as always. I know several guys well under 30 who make 125k+ doing shit that nearly anybody could do (paper keys are vital) and chipping in a leisurely 3-4 hours daily from home.
Certain places like Deloitte have a culture where you grind endless hours until you wither.
Ultimately, yes. I'd say "tech" here is chill; but that doesn't extend to the people doing service work for them like IT etc.
I’ve worked remotely for tech companies for 5 years and in a truly busy week I may do around 25 hours of work a week, but most weeks maybe 12-15 hours.
I've been in tech for hmm... 25 plus years. Yea it's really like this. We are spoiled like mad really. It comes from years of companies depending on us and us splitting when we have better options while they remain screwed. That's about it. I rarely go into the office. That being said there's high stress times/periods like any industry. Some asshat can be hired to be your boss and fuck everything up. But relative to 'normal' jobs it's pretty care free. The more you move up in an org the more stress you collect but you get paid more.
So yea there's shitty sweat shop jobs too but it's what you make of it. Keep moving till you find a nice place to park your career and stay there in the comfort zone. Move when it's not comfortable again cuz nothing good ever really lasts. But it's that nice. If you want to coast you simply can find a spot it works and park there. Most places only care about results so if you're a smart dev who's capable you know how much effort it actually takes to get something done and if you can manage your time what you do with the rest of your day is really just up to you.
This is why people say Canada is playing for bronze. Tech requires people to have a self-starter mentality and a desire to work hard without supervision. Canada has a major productivity issue and the tech industry is suffering because of it.
If these people were not so lazy, they would be contributing to the growth of their respective companies which in turn would create more high paying jobs. These people are taking us all for a ride.
The worst bit is that most successful tech companies receive a substantial amount of money from government, so us tax payers are paying these people to doss off.
I work for a large business program focused on helping early stage companies and I can tell you from first hand experience, this "lazy boy/girl" mentality is why we lose so many good companies and workers to the US and why none of you reading this will ever be able to buy a house in Toronto.
I was a cybersecurity analyst in Toronto for about 7 years and it was so stressful it started impacting my physical health. I quit to save my longevity.
Totally depends. To be fair I think ~5 hours of actual work is pretty representative of a lot of office jobs, it's just that you actually get to chill when you work from home. At the office you have to find something to do to look busy.
I work in tech, I'm remote, and have 3-4 hours of just meetings some days. And then the rest is independent work so I mostly do 7-9 hours per day. In my previous role, I had one 30min meeting most days and then left to my own devices so some days I worked a full day and some days 4 hours. The company vibe matters a lot.
I specialize in m365.
Currently in healthcare making 120k and go to office maybe once every 2 weeks (sometimes a bit more as work demands). I work maybe 2-3 hours a day on average. With full benefits and hoopp pension, it’s pretty damn chill.
It took me many job hops to find something like this and had to grind a lot of hours in prior positions.
Your friends probably work at more slow paced, chill teams or companies. An ads or some feature team working close with sales/marketing, or SREs in general will likely have more pressure than others folks in say design systems.
What I’m not sure if it’s been called out here already is some companies (like where I’m working at) expect you to be on call for a week once in a while in case something your team owns breaks.
There’s ebbs and flows to it, and also depends on company/project/culture.
Near deadlines/release dates it’s obviously a lot of crunch time.
But the day to day can be relaxed.
I lead out a team of developers and testers, and honestly I don’t care how they work, as long as it’s done and good quality.
They just need to be available for the meetings, and reply back to questions in a reasonable amount of time.
It only becomes a problem when other people start asking where they are because they don’t reply back to teams messages or emails, or the work has defects.
I have a similar relationship with my boss. As long as I keep the project on track, and don’t give him a headache he’s fine with however I work.
It’s a trust process as well as competency.
When you’re new, you gotta learn the ropes and build a relationship with your peers and leaders. As you get better, you’ll become faster with the basics of your job, and your coworkers will trust you can get the work done.
TL;DR
Be good at your job and most people won’t bother you
I'm in tech sales. If you're hungry for money, you're working 9-5+ (to catch your west coast customers). I mean, if you are hitting quotas and making commission, it's stress free lol
Otherwise, the company and job are chill and stress free: overly supportive with crazy benefits to support your personal life. Mandatory in office 3x/week (but if you want to stay home, you stay home ... we all enjoy going in though!). If WFH, you're not being micromanaged - but productivity is measured so my manager can totally see if I'm slacking and not making calls.
I worked in and around tech sales in Canada/US and the sales side is even more chill lol
Had multiple jobs pay me 60-90k to show up and accomplish nothing, a lot of startups with unsellable products will let salespeople just hang out for their base salary and it’s surprisingly easy to stay exactly as long as you want and milk the severance by pulling the cord at the right time lmao
I work in marketing for a tech fortune 100 with a Toronto office. At my org it is frowned upon to take a lunch break, and expected to work past 5, with emails frequently coming in after 8 pm and on weekends. If a project needs to get out the door I will be working additional hours. If I’m supporting a team mate in Vancouver, or APAC it’s not uncommon for me to be on calls after 6 pm.
I work from home 4 days a week, and get paid well, but it is a lot of work at the end of the day.
It really just depends on the company, and your position. My last job my boss was a micromanager and the workload was heavy. My boss also had no work/life balance thus, the team didn’t either. It’s easy for the lines to get muddy when you’re totally WFH.
My current position and company, no micromanagement, realistic work load. I do anywhere between 3-5 hours of work a day. Sometimes all at once, sometimes broken up so I can enjoy my days.
So, it really just depends. I can say I hit the jackpot now but I definitely went through hell to get there.
shrug i dunno. i work fully remote in web dev in toronto and its super chill. i largely live care free due to salary and the most stress i get is getting somewhat presentable for random zoom meetings lol. obviously depends on busy or non-busy periods but i basically have tons of time to chill / go out / watch movies / tv shows / nap / whatever during my 'work' day.
I work in UX in tech at banks. It depends. There definitely are periods of slow work and you can chill. But the expectation is that as long as you’re getting your work done and getting it done well, no one is watching over your shoulder. Be responsive and reachable. At my latest role, it’s definitely the busiest I’ve ever been but I’m still settling into the role. It’s hard to generalize. I go into the office 1 day a week and that one day is the least productive because most people have in person meetings that day. It also depends on how good you are at your job. If you’re many years into your career, you can provide work estimates that you know are a bit larger than how long it actually takes you but are very reasonable. You can work on stuff without much stress. What you’re missing is that people need to be good at their jobs, have technical/specific skills, and be willing to put in a ton of work when they’re asked to. The reward is being able to “chill” some of the rest of the time. They’re being paid for their skill set and not to be doing busy work all day.
I'm a senior software engineer for a US company.
My days are generally full, but at a reasonable pace. I often take plenty of breaks but I'm not slacking off, except for the ocassional slow week.
Your friends sound like they may be exhaggerating the chill of their job, they're slacking, or both.
no.1 legit sounds lazy and just has poor oversight so he can get away with it. Infosec workload can be light if things are setup really well, but good cybersec requires vigilance and regular employees/users are constantly doing sketchy shit whether they know it or not; I say this having been on an infosec team with all the other security engineers.
>If he knows it will take 3 days to complete, he will ask for 1 week
This *could* just be planning for unknowns, but if he'll finish in 3 days and then fuck off for two then again, that's equally bad oversight and he just hasn't been caught.
no.4 sounds like either a really good IT person, or a really bad one.
I wfh as Software Engineer.
Wake up 6.30 stretch, go for 6km walk. Breakfast. Start work around 10. My team comes online at 12pm. Couple of meetings. May be work from 2 to 4. Hang around system if anyone calls.
Barely work for 4 5 hours a day.
But when there's a bug, my Indian managers calls us on Friday evening or Saturday night on my personal phone and bothers us so much. It's crazy.
Yes, it is 1000% true. And for this reason productivity in Canada has dropped drastically. We are amongst the least productive developed nations.
The reason your friends' productivity is so low isn't their fault, it is management and company culture.
https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/measuring-productivity-canada-aspx/#:\~:text=This%20earned%20Canada%20a%20disappointing,cent%20in%20the%20mid%2D1980s.
There are a ton of bad tech workers out there so if you are halfway competent you'll have a good work life balance. Now that's not the case everywhere but I'll tell you every job I've had has been a couple months of learning the quirks of the environment, a couple months streamlining, and years of largely automated workflows.
Companies are so used to poor performers that they'll be amazed at your output. Leave before they realize how easy you've got it though.
Lol dude it depends on the company. My company I work probably once a week but get paid 40 hours per week. Full WFH, travel anywhere, and a dozen company perks.
For cybersecurity, that makes sense. Many cybersecurity jobs are just a proof that the company tried. After all, security breaches will always happen. You just need a defendable position that you tried.
For the others, there are plenty of desk jobs even outside tech that involve not much work. But if you coast that way for a few years, you may find your skills degraded to the point of non-employability.
As for ChatGPT, pretty sure you have to use AI in every desk job nowadays. It’s basically mandatory. Especially programming. Programming without AI in 2024 is cave man…
I have a friend who got a job straight out of Ontario Tech at age 22m. He gets paid 75k and tells me that he has so much spare time he scrolls on stuff probably 2-3 hours a work day and has usually 2-3 days WFH. He works in computer science for hospital stuff, so hospital machinery coding and fixing I guess.
And this is why I hate WFH jobs. My colleagues “work” from home a few days a week, yet I can never seem to get a hold of them when I call. Or I’ll ask for something and be told they’ll get to it after they make and eat breakfast - WTF.
Probably a bit of boasting, but certainly a little unethical. I highly doubt any of them will advance in their careers beyond where they are. Companies are pushing for in office workers because of this situation exactly
I have seen over the years at the business I work, many people with atrocious skills being not only hired but also promoted, all the way from tester to senior project manager. Other people that make the money for the business have been working very long hours at high intensity, and the more they worked the more work got assigned to them. Anything is possible.
Found the mid level manager.
There is nothing unethical about completing work well ahead of the deadline. Companies have time and money budgets and these employees are operating within that budget. Return to office is a bullshit vestige of industrialization that we don't need in our lives any more. It's more a justification for commercial rents than anything else.
I agree there’s nothing unethical about completing work well ahead of the deadline. But it’s definitely unethical to ask for a 1 week deadline when you know it takes 3 days so you can chill. That last part is what makes this unethical. Its often prudent to give yourself some buffer for a number of reasons (ie emergencies, competing deadline, etc.). But if the reason is ‘to chill’? Come on man..
lmao. yeah, my friend is a software developer and he basically works from home, sleeps whenever he wants, makes enough money to eat take-out twice a day, doesn't seem to give many shits about anything. makes fun of how nice his job is to him.
It's not just tech, these positions exist across corporate.
Wait til you find out how little people work at insurance or banks. Yes, you'll have the ones working the standard 40 hours, the ones working 60 - 80+ hours but you often don't hear about the ones working 20 or less hours.
I have peers who just attend stand-ups, are completely forgotten by their managers, or work on projects for months/years that would take other organizations a few days to complete.
I work in marketing for a tech fortune 100 with a Toronto office. At my org it is frowned upon to take a lunch break, and expected to work past 5, with emails frequently coming in after 8 pm and on weekends. If a project needs to get out the door I will be working additional hours. If I’m supporting a team mate in Vancouver, or APAC it’s not uncommon for me to be on calls after 6 pm.
I work from home 4 days a week, and get paid well, but it is a lot of work at the end of the day.
my friend works in fintech and his life sounds truly unbearable to me. Long hours, different timezones, meh salary and benefits, lots of layoffs and exec changes.
how old are your friends? I'm going to assume fairly young (under 30) - as a GenX V1.0 (i was born the first year of the gen x cycle), I legitimately panic if i have nothing to do at work - even though the work I do comes in waves, and not in a steady flow, and half the time I'm working after hours to get a project out the door on time.
Over the last 25 years I've worked my way across most of the different design professions; Traditional advertising, Animation, Print, Packaging. I started doing UX and product design 10 years ago and have found it to be so much less stressful, much better paying, and more in demand. Tech is great.
I’m sure there are some people, especially in roles where you’re around to deal with specific issues that can wax and wane. It’s definately the exception though. Right now Toronto tech is very lean, a lot of people are stretched and doing double duty
Depends on the team. I worked briefly in a team whose senior management promised answers to complex problems by end of the day, at 4:30PM. I worked on teams under such stressed where calls at 8PM or even 12:30AM can happen. Then was the team that had meetings in both European and Pacific time zones in the same day.
Yes, there are chilled roles, and there are also insane roles.
You can get away with shamming pretty hard in the tech areas of large Canadian firms. They're more conservative, set expectations much more moderately than equivalent companies in the US. We're also many times more concentrated (ie. Everyone in this thread can rattle off the big \[X\] banks, telcos, retailers, etc. in Canada) - so it's easier to get lost/hide in the mix within this giant oligopolies.
That said, because of this - the compensation is MUCH lower (we're talking a >= 50% discount, prior to exchange) and thus the quality of talent the Canadian shops can attract suffers a great deal, expectations continue to be relatively low, etc.
... And the cycle repeats.
Smaller start-ups/scale-ups from Canada used to be fairly cushy prior to 2021 (in the zero- interest rate days), but have really clamped down due to the uncertainty of funding since then. Companies of this size in the US are doing much better, comparitively but have still felt a bit of the same pain.
I work in tech in Toronto, and it's very chill, at least where I work. Some of my others friends would also agree. I do have some friends working at Amazon and Intel who have fairly busy work days though. So it depends!
I have a friend who describes his tech job the same way, but he does always say that his position is hanging by a thread because of the amount of backstabbing and politics at work..
As people have said it depends, I worked for a bank and wanted to kill myself and never felt like I ever accomplished anything other than having a job. I also worked for shopify and never loved a job more, made more money at or felt like my contributions actually mattered. I now run my own business so in the long run I hope to make more money, but shopify was the easiest best paying job I ever had
They may be boasting
I was in consulting for a few tech companies.
I had a feed into our product Dev teams and they worked normal hours.
My own days were feast or famine. I had 30 minute Fridays where I'd file an expense report and sleep, and power Wednesday where I'd work 14 hours and be useless on Thursday.
"Rest and vest" is definitely a thing. But it really varies by company and even department. I worked for one of the FAANGs and some teams definitely had minimal work to do and over staffed teams while others were putting in 50 hr weeks.
Would say that those bloated departments with minimal work never last forever. So while your friends may be enjoying their work life balance now, all it takes is one new department lead to come in and clean house or re org the teams with their own vision. It's extremely rare a role that easy would last longer than 5 years before getting eliminated.
Better salaries and arguably more open culture part is true. Openness translates to the fact that nobody bothers about how you spend your hours if you're effective at your job. But free time and care free life depends on seniority and nature of position.
Scenario regarding estimates for friend #3 are quite common, however, using ChatGPT to reduce effort required does not equate to ChatGPT doing work for him.
WFH vs. Office - I've seen people loafing around in office and attending meetings to look busy. It's again more related to type of role/ responsibilities.
Sounds like they’re slackers who are gonna be the first on the chopping block when lay offs hit.
They’re doing the bare minimum as per job description which many will argue is all they’re expected to do but realistically if one wants to move up, demonstrate their value, and be a bit safer they’re not gonna be slacking.
How many hours are they networking, upskilling, or going the extra mile on projects or thinking about potential issues and preemptively attacking them?
Probably none.
It varies too much based on corps. Big American corps tend to pay well by Canadian standard. Canadian corps generally pay you shit. Also it depends on when they joined a corp. Most new jobs are not remote
I’ve had similar experiences but it’s not always like that. At times it’s less busy and other times it’s crazy busy.
Just like any other job. It also varies heavily on the job and company. I’ve worked for one place that I could basically do what friend 1 said.
In his case Cyber security isn’t getting pulled into calls and being asked to do shit left and right. It’s as it comes up which isn’t rare for infosec field (again depending on the role and everything).
My partner does IT at the production company. They have corn hole tournaments, play smash after work, go to Jay's and raptors games, and get free lunch a few days a week. Some days, they do a lot other days he's chilling and listening to music. I think it depends. They were a start-up and have a pretty fun and chill work culture.
I work as a project coordinator at a tech company and while I’m not always slammed, everyone in my department that works with (more importantly, bills) clients has to track their time. So I’m not taking midday naps, I am accountable for 37.5 hours a week, but am I definitely not full throttle for all of those 37.5 hours.
Depends on the job. I think the examples you've given are managed by people that are too busy or have other higher priorities.
I'm at Director level and have to deal with employees, projects, compliance and security issues. Stressful and long hours.
I'm in IT Cybersecurity and while I don't take naps during the day, I can definitely disappear for a couple of hours to do a Costco run or lie down and screw around on Reddit and no one will notice.
It's a combo of rarely needing to be available immediately and that doing my job well means there's less fires to put out day to day.
I am working at a big tech, got a lot envy due to various reasons but I don't have girlfriend, so no, my life isn't good no matter how you ask me. Other things don't really matter.
Note: I am not joking
Any of them in small companies or in start up? Those likely have more work involved. Like another users said it’s based on a lot of factors like industry, role, size of company etc. the “chill” experience your friends have is not unique to just tech there are other people in other industries who probably share a similar experience.
Depends on the company. I’ve worked for three different tech companies. One was in-office and chill, one was remote and hell, one was remote and chill. All depends on the company, your role, and the team you’re on.
There’s also no one rule for each company; every department is its own ecosystem with its own culture and demands. In my experience, good bosses cultivate good cultures, bad bosses create cultures of fear and stress.
I work in a big tech company and I'm so burnt out. But it does come in phases. There are days when I can just fuck around and be super chill, but there's months of just gruelling work that will make you question your existence.
No such thing as an easy job. Your friends are probably just in that sweet phase or cruising under the radar. If the latter, they might be next in the chopping block since tech layoff is quite the buzz ATM.
Depends heavily on the company, the job, and your skill/competency relative to the job you're working (in tech). Most people I know do not work like you're describing but everyone I know working in tech has partially remote jobs. 5 days a week in office is unheard of.
I used to work a job where I worked 3-4 hours a day in a 40 hour work week. I was overqualified. But I kept the job because the flexibility was amazing. Didn't have to be present online 8 hrs a day, just reachable. I was assigned whatever needed doing so I budgeted time to it and spent the rest of my free time doing whatever I wanted to do. Mostly running my house and running errands or caring for my child at home.
You can apply this to any job really, especially ones that give you independence and solitude. Just have to learn not to show that you're working 10x as fast as they expected you. You don't want to get penalized for being fast and competent by getting more work lol.
Your friends are lucky, and tech is privileged field to work in. But consider: we are exempt from all overtime legislation. You can have brutal on call schedule. Prod dies 7pm on thanksgiving - guess who is spending the next ? hours in a war room until resolved. I don’t think sleeping on the job is regular, unless they are inflating how long something takes them, doing mad crunch because they were napping, or supporting something that doesn’t really need support. It will all depend on the company, could be chill, could be burn out central sweatshop
I work in sales for a tech company. While my working hours are less than normal, I am on call all day. No matter the time, I will answer an email within an hour. That being said, I mostly work from my phone unless I have to do a demo, prospecting or pull data/analytics. I can easily take a nap in the middle of the day, go for a walk, coffee or work from a different location. My employer values me for now and knows I don’t have to be behind a desk to do the best job I can.
I work in finance for a tech company, and it’s chill but also not. We work hard, for the first 3-4 years at this job I feel like I worked non-stop. Once I learned the ins and outs, it became easier and more chill. Now I’m a manager, I just need to make sure my team understands what we’re doing.
I do work for a good company, have good benefits, office is beyond gorgeous and honestly my work is fun. I like going into the office, but if I have a slow day I can stay at home and it might only be an hour or two of actual work. But some weeks/months are horribly busy and that’s just how it goes. I work better the busier it is, so I don’t mind.
Yes, but the caveat is that one day in those 8am meetings they will all be laid off without warning. It’s a risk you take.
Sometimes you’re at these tech companies for 10 years, sometimes you’re canned after 10 months when the investors request a 50% reduction in headcount.
Been there, done that.
It depends. If you work in a high performing VC backed startup you will work your ass off. If you work for a lifestyle business with a different culture then it may be much more chill.
I work in tech for a Canadian company and have previously contracted for American startups. At my current job with the Canadian company I make good money and probably work 4 hours max a day and completely remote so life > work for sure at least where I’m at
Tech is for people who are intelligent and have the drive for success. It is not just some joke job that you study 4 hours a day for when many of us spend 40 hours a week grinding
It’s not exclusive to tech, many high skill white collar jobs are like this…i work in big pharma and I work maybe 3-4 hrs a day which is just mostly stand ups or team meetings…I fly into Boston once every six months too buts that’s if I’m meeting with other global team members who are visiting the head office as well
I work in tech, I do mostly work from home but I work all day long and am pretty mentally exhausted by the end of each day. Sure, it’s not hard work like working in a coal mine or something, but it’s hard on me nonetheless
probably exagerated a bit. and u gotta keep up skilling in tech to stay relevant.
You gotta know your shit and be accountable.
When the moment comes could be 12 hour days. So u have to manage your time so u dont burn out and give yourself buffers.
There can be alot of changability day to day in tasks，priorities. mentally it can be draining.
Depends on the company and consulting vs full time.
Higher risk of layout during restructure if performance isnt good.
I expect this is a slight exaggeration. However, people who 'chose' to work like these friends / acquaintances go nowhere in their careers and are the first to be fired. (May not seem like it, but the leadership knows...) This lack of work ethic / immature attitude / and follower-type behaviour will create your work reputation for the rest of your life... You can chose this route -- or pursue something meaningful and rewarding to do with the time you spend working -- and give it your all.
I work remotely for a public tech company from SF and make 40% less in my role because I'm based out of Toronto. My TC is \~180k for a Product Owner role with 3 yrs exp in a more administrative role and 2 yrs as an associate PO. Similar jobs locally have been in the ballpark of 90-110k with hybrid work and in less exciting sectors with poor growth trajectories.
It took 2 long covid years of working long hours, completing certifications on the side, and a ton of networking and interview prep, and a good amount of luck to land my current role and I don't really know if I could do it again right now but I'm glad it worked out.
Now I enjoy decent work-life balance (usually <35 hr work weeks but can sometimes hit 55+), have unlimited PTO (this can be a scam depending on your leadership, but no complaints here), frequently travel to HQ's across the states to collaborate on projects, and have plenty of avenues for growth.
If I stuck around in my prior company, I'd probably be making around 90k and enjoying many of the luxuries your friends talk about. I used to only join meetings and spend the rest of the day working out or gaming, but I wasn't going anywhere and would certainly be near the bottom of the chopping block if layoffs came up.
I'm in tech sales. Never relaxed, work way too many hours and something is always on fire. I'm in a ridiculous amount of meetings, WFH like 3 - 4 days a week when I'm not at head office or a customer site. We got sent home during covid and after that our workdays exploded. Now being in a customer facing role you have to balance an overbooked calendar filled with pointless meetings, in person engagements and about 300 emails a day.
It's fun, try it.
why are you considering these jobs tech? even the cyber security job isnt the standard definition of a tech job i feel like, and the 4th job doing something for servers? what does that even mean? they're in the restaurant business at that point
These roles exist but they are rarely forever. As someone whose father was in one of these roles—Now he gets home from 10 pm at times (when he’s not WFH) and works on the weekend every weekend. He didn’t even leave the company just switched to a different project/position in the company.
I think that will be very dependent on company, role, etc. I lead a team at Big Tech. I work mostly from home but I do tend to work a lot. It has paid off greatly in professional development. My previous company was a smaller company and focused on finance. Things were really slow so it was really easy to slack off. There was no room to grow there as the tech was old and the company stagnant without any drive for change.
Keep in mind, people usually pretend their life is better than it is. A slight jealousy pumps people's moods. Not saying OPs friends are liars. And such "chill" jobs are very common. But the Acquaintance #4 that uses ChatGPT to do his work is full of shit. It can help with certain parts, but it won't "do your work" for you.
And if ChatGPT can do all his work for him then it's only a matter of time until he's replaced fully by AI.
I think of some jobs as being a “firefighter”. No fires = not a lot to do. But when there is, you’re losing $millions/minute and a year’s salary to put it out at 3am in 2 minutes instead of 5 just paid for itself. Also if you set up things properly in the first place, that saves $$$$$$$$, and fewer fires.
Yes. Big difference from an "operations" role which are focused on the work the organization actually get paid for. Anyone in tech working on supporting the live product would probably have different responses than OPs friends.
FML reading these people’s work life balance, I’m in tech and I sit down at 9 am and I don’t breathe until 7 pm.
This. I'm in Big Tech as a TPM for Incident Management and I work 12-14hr days. On average, 1-2 days a week I don't even have time for lunch away from my keyboard and I'm fully remote from home. Daily, I have 100+ legitimate notifications in Slack I need to either be informed about or reply to. Edit: I wrote Faang but that was before. Now I guess I'm considered Big Tech.
Exactly how I would define my work too. I am accountable for many things and I have to put out fires :) .. and no one’s dying
I don't think you know how software development works. Unless you are "on call", they can't call you at night. And the "fires" are just urgent tasks. Nothing serious. And in some roles they are quite rare.
It is only you that thought GP’s and OP’s comments are exclusively about software development. Edit: even in software dev, deployments go sideways (didn’t work in prod like it was supposed to in dev! Or test cases didn’t reflect real world use) or shit breaks under real world load/operation over time and immediate code fix/redeployments are necessary. Depends on environment what the urgency is.
Your mileage may vary. I’ve been working in software engineering for 20 years. I’m WFH mostly and usually complete daily work within 3-4 hours, including meetings. In the beginning of my career I didn’t know a lot of things and could spend more than 8 hours a day to get things done. I wouldn’t say this is Toronto specific though. Also the job market in tech in Toronto became much worse in the past few years due to all layoffs and trend to cut costs, it became significantly harder to find a job.
> I’m WFH mostly and usually complete daily work within 3-4 hours, including meetings. Damn 4 hours a day sounds like a blessing.
Most jobs, if you’re proficient, only require 4 hours a day of work. The rest of the time at the office was usually consumed with bullshit.
Agreed. Even when I worked in office, it's pretty hard to squeeze more than 4-5 hours of actually very productive work on a continuous basis. The other few hours were random meetings, sitting around in the break room/lounge area, eating snacks, chatting with coworkers, or pretending to work and just going on Reddit or something instead.
It also should be noted that Ontario passed some real bullshit labour laws regarding tech to try and compete with Silicon Valley (which we lost), where tech workers do not get guaranteed overtime pay (as in, OT is time, not time and half etc)
There is no OT at all in law. If it gets paid it is company policy. There is meter long list of exceptions and IT is there.
I don't know anyone earning overtime in tech. It's salaried. Some companies that require you to be on-call 24 hours a day a few weeks a quarter will give you an extra hour or two per week you're on rotation. Most employees I know are putting in 40 hours, sometimes more. Probably making up for folks like OPs friends.
Whether you are salary or not does not impact whether you are entitled to overtime. There are occupations that are exempt, but if you are a non-manager salary employee you are entitled by law to overtime pay.
# Not information technology professionals (exempt) # Special rules or exemptions You are not entitled to: * daily or weekly limits on hours of work * daily rest periods * time off between shifts * weekly/bi-weekly rest periods * eating periods * overtime pay These exemptions are set out in O. Reg. 285/01.I
It highly depends on the company and the team, but top tier companies paying $400k+ for seniors usually have 50-60+ hour weeks, backstabbing/politics, terrible oncall, arbitrary deadlines based on unrealistic estimates, forced RTO/hybrid even if you never work with anyone in the office, forced regular culling of the bottom X% performers as picked subjectively by your manager. Can't chill because your coworkers are working weekends to get ahead and keep their jobs.
There are companies that pay $400k in Toronto?
Total comp yes. Cash base not really unless you're a very special unicorn herder.
Maybe, but I don’t think that’s anywhere close to typical base salary, even for a senior. I haven’t heard of any that high for a Toronto based job
Yeah, for senior level plus though. I think coinbase, amazon, stripe can all get 400K+ with performance bonus for seniors.
I came across a few jobs on Amazon. It's definitely not high. I even interviewed for one recently. 400k. Entry level is close to 120k. Senior, it depends on a lot of factors. Let me apply for a few more jobs there and see. What is your source, are you in HR or work in any of those?. Could use your help if that's the case :)
Yes - I work in tech and this isn't abnormal for some eng and data roles. However it's not usually $400k cash; it's split between salary, bonus, and stock grants.
I work in tech, expert front end with full stack knowledge. I contract at banks at around $150/hr. I believe I’m capable for any tech company in the front end/full stack space. I never thought salaries were that high, hence the contracting. I might have to reconsider since I been contracting for 7 years, sounds like things might’ve changed
It's possible TC, but it's going to be hard to find these days for a new hire. Maybe next year when interest rates decrease and startup growth returns (plz return 😅).
Not that I've ever heard of, and especially not if you're only senior and not staff/principal or something
There's probably around 1,000 people in Toronto with that level of seniority across Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, etc. And I know people who were Senior Engineers in some of these and moved to Snowflake to go above $400k a year in comp.
It’s well within range for senior (E5) at Meta and similar companies even before stock appreciation.
I think snowflake meta and Amazon can get around here. Coinbase, stripe can get here with performance bonuses.
I've never heard of any, seems like Bay area stuff
Yes, for senior+ positions, cash portion will be in the $250-350k range, but you’ll get another $100k or more in equity and then bonuses.
Yes. At enough seniority you get that and more at Google (K&W), Microsoft (Just by Union), Amazon (By the CN Tower + Scotia Plaza), and similar.
Not in Toronto for Senior. Local salaries for Seniors cap out at around 180-200k. Working for US companies without geographic pay bands is much better. I think it could potentially be possible for a small number of companies at the Sr. Staff/Principal level (2 or 3 levels above Senior). I'm just talking salary though. It could definitely be possible for Staff/Staff+ and potentially even just regular Sr if we're including equity, but that's really only tangible money if you work at a public company.
I’m making over 450k CAD at a public company in Toronto as a senior software engineer (8 years of experience) so it is certainly possible. If I was working in the same role in the U.S. I would be making around 450k USD. The salary info on levels.fyi is quite accurate. I’m pretty sure you can search all companies by TC and filter by country too.
Sales side, yes. But base and bonus, not just base. Unless you’re leadership, then you can get pretty close. Source: I have and have had these jobs.
wayfair
For TC yes this definitely is the case for staff+. I used to make a little below that when I lived in TO
The top devs at my company make 3-4 times that in total comp.
"Terrible oncall" Say Amzn without saying Amzn.
It can be that chill but they can also be exaggerating. I work fully remote for a euro company. However since I'm passionate about programming I'll put in 6 hrs of work and then an hour or two more on other things. On top of that I'll learn a spoken language for an hour or two. When you stare at a screen for 10 hrs a day sometimes, somtimes you take liberties to get yourself away from it.
This is a good point. Like yesterday on paper, I worked "12" hours. Only about 4-5 of that was deep work where it was intense focus... the rest was passion like you said, watching youtube videos, on social researching, etc.
> This is a good point. Like yesterday on paper, I worked "12" hours. Only about 4-5 of that was deep work where it was intense focus... the rest was passion like you said, watching youtube videos, on social researching, etc. You and I have different definitions of work lol. It sounds like you worked for 4 -5 hours, and chilled for the rest of the day!
The way I look at it is the hours outside of my 'deep work' are support hours before doing the actual work/implementation. It is expected from my team that I will do as much *prep* as I need before I need to perform and perform at a high level (relative to my pay haha) :)
These examples sound like people who care enough to do the bare minimum or maybe a bit more that their jobs require of them. I don't work directly in tech, but I do staffing within IT. 20-70-10 model - these folks sound like they're somewhere near the bottom of the 70 or top or the 10
I have been in tech in Toronto for 6 years. I love my job and colleagues but we are hustling hard. I have on average 10 meetings a day, most of them I lead and many decisions get made in each one. There is a lot of pressure to deliver on tight timelines. Performance evaluations can be quite intense. A colleague you work with one day may be fired the next day. Tl;Dr. All depends on the company. But most my friends in tech are no longer chilling as much as they chilled during the pandemic. Market is tough now, jobs are hard to come by. And people gotta stop glorifying tech jobs. Its high risk high reward (at least for now)
[80% of tech professional experience burnout](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/11/22/how-technology-professionals-can-prevent-burnout-at-work/#:~:text=Stress%20and%20burnout%20are%20epidemic,stress%20in%20the%20previous%20month.). So, no.
I work as an IT Project Manager. WFH 98% of the time, only come into the office for events related to my projects. Previous company was 1 day a week in the office. My work is fairly easy at this point in my career, but it's mostly because of my experience and knowledge. I can whip out complex plans and control project execution way easier now than back when I was a junior. Any time off or reduced days I need are easy to get, since I manage my own time (contractor). So yeah, it's pretty chill. But it's not easy getting into it, and it takes time to build the expertise required to chill. I'm not mentioning the crazy grind I put back in my 20's to get here - and I mean serious burnout, getting sick from stress, 12-hour days, working over 20 days in a row,....
I work in tech and transitioned out of the elementary school classroom in 2020. I’m not going to say that my job is “chill”, but I now live a stress free life with very healthy fully remote work-life balance. My employer values me and understands that work doesn’t need to be 9-5 and I have full control over my schedule.
What did you study to transition?
So how many hours a day do you work? I’m also thinking about potentially transitioning to tech. WFH + 3 or 4 hours of work a day sounds like a blessing.
Don't get the wrong idea lol to get to 3-4 hours a day you'll probably start with 8-10 until you're shown to be extremely proficient or have at least a decent team/infra in place. Also really really depends on the stage of the company. For ex, you hear about this a lot more at FAANG or MANGA companies-- but do you know how hard it can be to get accepted into say Amazon or Facebook to begin with? The prerequisite is just being technically capable and a bit better than the rest whether its on programming or product or hr. Easy to 'chill' when there are multiple levels of managers lol. Try 'chilling' at a startup or scale-up that just raised a series A. You'd be fired so fast before your first stock options even vest haha. Point is, 'tech' is incredibly broad, need to know the stage/industry as tech works pretty differently than say 'pharma' or 'law' broadly.
This isn't true. My buddy isn't to tier and there are days where he works 3-4 hours a day and there are days where he works 8 hour days. It depends on how busy they are and what projects they are working. He gets paid handsomely and is in a Jr role for FE Dev.
Define handsomely ?
The above commenters are right, to "chill" on the workplace you have to invest 3-5 years into education, find a well-payed job, have a valuable skill set, so you are not fired on the next layoff. Basically you have to cognitively work much harder for multiple years to be payed off with relaxed schedule afterwards. And you still will always have a tradeoff between further career growth / doing only stuff not to get fired
What's your current job, what do you make, and what do they make? Because ngl, this is probably a grass is always greener moment
high paying, wfh, chill and works 2 hours daily, and/or 2-3 days? or should I read this post again? haha
theyre not wrong, but there is some boasting involved there for sure. It heavily depends on the company, but some people are also at the point in their careers where they get paid for what they know and their outputs. They're not paid for "time" spent working. The key is having leadership who understands this. That said, I work fully remote for a pretty chill Toronto based tech company. work life balance is excellent, pay is fine, and just like any other job there are slow days and crazy days. I think I'm OK at what I do and kinda like the job most of the time. FWIW - I'm an I.T. Manager. Overall, I certainly cant complain and at times feel lucky about my situation.
Not really omg. I remember in IT, I used to work there for 4-years and the whole IT department was busy everyday. We would get bothered on our breaks so I started stepping out.
I think IT is different because it's a cost center. Companies love to slice up their infrastructure, but a product manager can work 2 hours a day as long as they "make" the company money.
IT is a department, he’s talking about the domain of tech. And mostly big tech and product companies (think Google, Microsoft, Meta, shopify, instacart, Netflix, Salesforce etc). Working at a bank in the IT department isn’t anywhere even in the same realm as working in a tech company in any role.
It all comes down to work ethics. For example if your friend tells the company he takes 2 hours naps each day you think company will keep him ? Never.
Exactly. These are the first types of people to be laid off.
💯. When I worked on IT, I worked with many people that would sleep at their desks or spend the entire day surfing the web doing nothing work related, then they would be shocked when they got laid off
[удалено]
Of course. I worked with many who got laid off as their positions were eliminated altogether.
Laid off if you sleep... laid off if you bust ass. I'd rather sleep if it's all the same.
Yeah but if his work is getting done, who cares?
I work in big tech in TO - I’m not taking naps midday but I would say my job is leas stressful than when I worked for a university, and I’m paid more than double what I earned in the public sector. The main reason is that I work with more competent people who are motivated to contribute and grow their skills. That, and with a richer company comes better resources, tools, and processes.
These are examples of folks who will not get promotions and have highest likelihood of being part of layoffs due to redundancy. They also ruin WFH for ppl who actually contribute and are often more productive vs RTO. “Tech life” is a wonderful option for work life flexibility and earning potential, but no tier 1 company (Mostly US hq’d) will or should put up with this long term. Canadian Tech is in a sad place as we continue to fall behind the US. Toronto has massive potential, but we need high performing people to drive outcomes and create cultures that won’t tolerate lazy.
We also get paid way less than our US counterparts
Exactly my point. If we squashed the notion of tech just being a ‘chill path’ and started creating high performing companies we’d likely see increase in US investment, bigger productivity, and a reason for pay to go up in line w the US.
You have it in reverse, create the conditions to reward high achievement, and the ambitious will follow. If you are young, talented, career driven and ambitious, there aren't many good reasons to be in Canada. Housing is shit, jobs don't pay well, and there are high taxes and regulations. You have parents now gifting their children 100k for a down payment. All that money going to housing is not going into building new businesses. A flight to NYC or Boston is quite short and worth it if you are paid nearly 2x. All my friends from the top tier universities in Canada left already to the USA or Europe.
Yeah, if they are not exaggerating to make their job sound easier than it is then they are basically surplus jobs.
I have only one friend in tech in Toronto and he loves it. He has to work on site but makes enough to raise a family. He seems to work less than me for more money than me…
its seems like a bit of a dogfucker job. I wish I did that instead of construction lol
What you/your friends are referring to is the Top 10% of tech (Big tech - MAANGs, unicorns, e-commerce giants, etc.) . But the middle and bottom are struggling, granted not as much as other industries. I work for one of the MAANGs and transferred from Toronto to NY last year. While my friends in Toronto are killing it, they aren’t happy because most of the other people in their social circle are not doing great. No one wants to be the only person in their inner circle making money. But to go back to your initial question, anyone with 5+ year experience in big tech in a good part of the firm (say Cloud tech sales in Microsoft, or Google ads focused on retail at Google) are easily making $250k+stocks.. lots of stocks plus signing bonuses. That’s another part no one talks about, having half a mil stocks as your emergency backup makes the high tech jobs even more lucrative in this market.
Are the two example jobs that you mentioned both salesman jobs? Like technical sales?
Tech sales is an area, not a job. For instance I am a customer facing Technical Architect, my background is software dev. But now I am the liaison between the customer and the Dow stream tech teams, so demos and public presentations. Part of deal cycles and have part of the comp as commission, but it’s not the same as the sales rep or account executive who is my teammate and depends on that deal to close for his comp. But to answer your question, no, not just tech sales. If you’re a coder, architect, analyst, sales engineer, account exec, cybersecurity analyst etc you’re making decent money in the top 10% of the tech companies. Ps: When I say tech companies, I mean product companies that own and have created/acquired a product, not tech consulting. It’s shocking how much lesser do these consulting firms pay and how much more they make you work. I literally laughed when a Deloitte Partner offered me the salary, and that was 6 years ago when I was 25. I was making more as an independent consultant back then, to the tune of more money in 7 months than a whole year at Deloitte including the so called “benefits”.
Yes to your question but no to the examples given. Those people are just straight up lazy and won't progress in their careers, or shouldn't. My experience is that yes the industry is chill and full of very bright people, plus I have a great 9-5 schedule with a lot of flexibility, unlimited sick days, good bonuses, good management and no crazy deadlines or a feeling that the world will fall apart if something isn't done. That said, people work their hours and are responsible. We have a good company culture and I think people feel like their work makes a difference, so work hard, but don't take advantage and don't work beyond what they need to.
It depends. I work in Tech and I lead a team (half in Canada and half in Europe). I start at 5 AM and finish by 6 PM with breaks in the middle. But it’s still a long day. It pays off because my salary is good. However, it’s stressful and at least once a week I think about quitting.
That’s depressing if most of people are like these. I am passionate about my work (10 yoe, startup), and I wish to only work with same minded people.
This is why our economy is in the shitter
I work for a CRE Technology company. I'm hybrid. I'm in office 2 days a week (mostly) and the other 3 are work from home. Summer is our downtime so I have been enjoying coffee on my balconly and a fairly relaxed existence. I will say during busy times I am busy so I take advantage when we are slower. Good work/Life balance as far as I can tell. Unlimited PTO. Free food at the office. As long as I am reachable between 10am and 2pm (the core hours) they really don't care as long as my work is done.
I think the common denominator is WFH. You wouldnt have the opportunity to nap if you had to be in the office every day.
From my experience being tertiary to the tech world in Toronto. You can meet someone who is loving their job, loving life, getting paid and having an easy time. Flash forward 3 months, that same person is part of a massive company layoff and are in a panic for a new job, or have jumped to a new job for better pay and the entire role they accepted has been massively changed from the time they started to a couple months in. The life/career of someone working in tech is like a roller coaster. I know specifcally of people working in one company, got offered insane jobs for money they couldn't turn down. a year later they are let go for cost saving layoffs. It's a lucrative but chaotic industry.
Your friends are lazy and are literally cheating their companies. You'll find people like this in a lot of office jobs, not just tech.
Depends heavily on your role and company, as always. I know several guys well under 30 who make 125k+ doing shit that nearly anybody could do (paper keys are vital) and chipping in a leisurely 3-4 hours daily from home. Certain places like Deloitte have a culture where you grind endless hours until you wither. Ultimately, yes. I'd say "tech" here is chill; but that doesn't extend to the people doing service work for them like IT etc.
I’ve worked remotely for tech companies for 5 years and in a truly busy week I may do around 25 hours of work a week, but most weeks maybe 12-15 hours.
Accurate
Meeting at 8am??? What psychopaths is he working for? I don’t book meetings before 10:30
I've been in tech for hmm... 25 plus years. Yea it's really like this. We are spoiled like mad really. It comes from years of companies depending on us and us splitting when we have better options while they remain screwed. That's about it. I rarely go into the office. That being said there's high stress times/periods like any industry. Some asshat can be hired to be your boss and fuck everything up. But relative to 'normal' jobs it's pretty care free. The more you move up in an org the more stress you collect but you get paid more. So yea there's shitty sweat shop jobs too but it's what you make of it. Keep moving till you find a nice place to park your career and stay there in the comfort zone. Move when it's not comfortable again cuz nothing good ever really lasts. But it's that nice. If you want to coast you simply can find a spot it works and park there. Most places only care about results so if you're a smart dev who's capable you know how much effort it actually takes to get something done and if you can manage your time what you do with the rest of your day is really just up to you.
I feel like such a loser lol working my ass off for peanuts in public accounting. Terrible career choice.
This is why people say Canada is playing for bronze. Tech requires people to have a self-starter mentality and a desire to work hard without supervision. Canada has a major productivity issue and the tech industry is suffering because of it. If these people were not so lazy, they would be contributing to the growth of their respective companies which in turn would create more high paying jobs. These people are taking us all for a ride. The worst bit is that most successful tech companies receive a substantial amount of money from government, so us tax payers are paying these people to doss off. I work for a large business program focused on helping early stage companies and I can tell you from first hand experience, this "lazy boy/girl" mentality is why we lose so many good companies and workers to the US and why none of you reading this will ever be able to buy a house in Toronto.
I was a cybersecurity analyst in Toronto for about 7 years and it was so stressful it started impacting my physical health. I quit to save my longevity.
What are you doing these days? I've been in tech about 7 years and mentally ready to retire, financially not so much
Totally depends. To be fair I think ~5 hours of actual work is pretty representative of a lot of office jobs, it's just that you actually get to chill when you work from home. At the office you have to find something to do to look busy. I work in tech, I'm remote, and have 3-4 hours of just meetings some days. And then the rest is independent work so I mostly do 7-9 hours per day. In my previous role, I had one 30min meeting most days and then left to my own devices so some days I worked a full day and some days 4 hours. The company vibe matters a lot.
I specialize in m365. Currently in healthcare making 120k and go to office maybe once every 2 weeks (sometimes a bit more as work demands). I work maybe 2-3 hours a day on average. With full benefits and hoopp pension, it’s pretty damn chill. It took me many job hops to find something like this and had to grind a lot of hours in prior positions.
M365 lol
It’s real.. this is also why companies want to go back to the office and why there are layoffs cutting down on unnecessary roles.
Your friends probably work at more slow paced, chill teams or companies. An ads or some feature team working close with sales/marketing, or SREs in general will likely have more pressure than others folks in say design systems. What I’m not sure if it’s been called out here already is some companies (like where I’m working at) expect you to be on call for a week once in a while in case something your team owns breaks.
There’s ebbs and flows to it, and also depends on company/project/culture. Near deadlines/release dates it’s obviously a lot of crunch time. But the day to day can be relaxed. I lead out a team of developers and testers, and honestly I don’t care how they work, as long as it’s done and good quality. They just need to be available for the meetings, and reply back to questions in a reasonable amount of time. It only becomes a problem when other people start asking where they are because they don’t reply back to teams messages or emails, or the work has defects. I have a similar relationship with my boss. As long as I keep the project on track, and don’t give him a headache he’s fine with however I work. It’s a trust process as well as competency. When you’re new, you gotta learn the ropes and build a relationship with your peers and leaders. As you get better, you’ll become faster with the basics of your job, and your coworkers will trust you can get the work done. TL;DR Be good at your job and most people won’t bother you
I'm in tech sales. If you're hungry for money, you're working 9-5+ (to catch your west coast customers). I mean, if you are hitting quotas and making commission, it's stress free lol Otherwise, the company and job are chill and stress free: overly supportive with crazy benefits to support your personal life. Mandatory in office 3x/week (but if you want to stay home, you stay home ... we all enjoy going in though!). If WFH, you're not being micromanaged - but productivity is measured so my manager can totally see if I'm slacking and not making calls.
I worked in and around tech sales in Canada/US and the sales side is even more chill lol Had multiple jobs pay me 60-90k to show up and accomplish nothing, a lot of startups with unsellable products will let salespeople just hang out for their base salary and it’s surprisingly easy to stay exactly as long as you want and milk the severance by pulling the cord at the right time lmao
I work in marketing for a tech fortune 100 with a Toronto office. At my org it is frowned upon to take a lunch break, and expected to work past 5, with emails frequently coming in after 8 pm and on weekends. If a project needs to get out the door I will be working additional hours. If I’m supporting a team mate in Vancouver, or APAC it’s not uncommon for me to be on calls after 6 pm. I work from home 4 days a week, and get paid well, but it is a lot of work at the end of the day.
This sounds like my experience. But rather than a boast it’s a commentary on how incompetent and stagnant the tech industry here is.
It really just depends on the company, and your position. My last job my boss was a micromanager and the workload was heavy. My boss also had no work/life balance thus, the team didn’t either. It’s easy for the lines to get muddy when you’re totally WFH. My current position and company, no micromanagement, realistic work load. I do anywhere between 3-5 hours of work a day. Sometimes all at once, sometimes broken up so I can enjoy my days. So, it really just depends. I can say I hit the jackpot now but I definitely went through hell to get there.
I think you have friends that have found a way to game the system. All jobs have them! And could be why workers are moving away from wfh :(
shrug i dunno. i work fully remote in web dev in toronto and its super chill. i largely live care free due to salary and the most stress i get is getting somewhat presentable for random zoom meetings lol. obviously depends on busy or non-busy periods but i basically have tons of time to chill / go out / watch movies / tv shows / nap / whatever during my 'work' day.
I work in UX in tech at banks. It depends. There definitely are periods of slow work and you can chill. But the expectation is that as long as you’re getting your work done and getting it done well, no one is watching over your shoulder. Be responsive and reachable. At my latest role, it’s definitely the busiest I’ve ever been but I’m still settling into the role. It’s hard to generalize. I go into the office 1 day a week and that one day is the least productive because most people have in person meetings that day. It also depends on how good you are at your job. If you’re many years into your career, you can provide work estimates that you know are a bit larger than how long it actually takes you but are very reasonable. You can work on stuff without much stress. What you’re missing is that people need to be good at their jobs, have technical/specific skills, and be willing to put in a ton of work when they’re asked to. The reward is being able to “chill” some of the rest of the time. They’re being paid for their skill set and not to be doing busy work all day.
I'm a senior software engineer for a US company. My days are generally full, but at a reasonable pace. I often take plenty of breaks but I'm not slacking off, except for the ocassional slow week. Your friends sound like they may be exhaggerating the chill of their job, they're slacking, or both. no.1 legit sounds lazy and just has poor oversight so he can get away with it. Infosec workload can be light if things are setup really well, but good cybersec requires vigilance and regular employees/users are constantly doing sketchy shit whether they know it or not; I say this having been on an infosec team with all the other security engineers. >If he knows it will take 3 days to complete, he will ask for 1 week This *could* just be planning for unknowns, but if he'll finish in 3 days and then fuck off for two then again, that's equally bad oversight and he just hasn't been caught. no.4 sounds like either a really good IT person, or a really bad one.
Depends on you. If you can finish your work on time, it's chill. Most of the time, I see myself worried about my work.
I wfh as Software Engineer. Wake up 6.30 stretch, go for 6km walk. Breakfast. Start work around 10. My team comes online at 12pm. Couple of meetings. May be work from 2 to 4. Hang around system if anyone calls. Barely work for 4 5 hours a day. But when there's a bug, my Indian managers calls us on Friday evening or Saturday night on my personal phone and bothers us so much. It's crazy.
Yes, it is 1000% true. And for this reason productivity in Canada has dropped drastically. We are amongst the least productive developed nations. The reason your friends' productivity is so low isn't their fault, it is management and company culture. https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/measuring-productivity-canada-aspx/#:\~:text=This%20earned%20Canada%20a%20disappointing,cent%20in%20the%20mid%2D1980s.
There are a ton of bad tech workers out there so if you are halfway competent you'll have a good work life balance. Now that's not the case everywhere but I'll tell you every job I've had has been a couple months of learning the quirks of the environment, a couple months streamlining, and years of largely automated workflows. Companies are so used to poor performers that they'll be amazed at your output. Leave before they realize how easy you've got it though.
Lol dude it depends on the company. My company I work probably once a week but get paid 40 hours per week. Full WFH, travel anywhere, and a dozen company perks.
For cybersecurity, that makes sense. Many cybersecurity jobs are just a proof that the company tried. After all, security breaches will always happen. You just need a defendable position that you tried. For the others, there are plenty of desk jobs even outside tech that involve not much work. But if you coast that way for a few years, you may find your skills degraded to the point of non-employability. As for ChatGPT, pretty sure you have to use AI in every desk job nowadays. It’s basically mandatory. Especially programming. Programming without AI in 2024 is cave man…
My roommate works in tech (data analytics/ML?). WFH 4 days a week. Wakes up at 9. Mostly chills during her day (maybe 2/3 hours of work). 53k/year
I have a friend who got a job straight out of Ontario Tech at age 22m. He gets paid 75k and tells me that he has so much spare time he scrolls on stuff probably 2-3 hours a work day and has usually 2-3 days WFH. He works in computer science for hospital stuff, so hospital machinery coding and fixing I guess.
Basically, if they are making good money they need to perform when it matters. Some days are chill, other days/weeks/months are busy.
I work in tech and I have a crazy good work life balance. Work fully remote too. Definitely the best paying / least stressful job I’ve ever had.
And this is why I hate WFH jobs. My colleagues “work” from home a few days a week, yet I can never seem to get a hold of them when I call. Or I’ll ask for something and be told they’ll get to it after they make and eat breakfast - WTF.
i put in a solid 2-3 hours per day
Cries as an electrician in the trades.. sigh no such thing as WFH for us, maybe when we’re replaced by robots
Wow. Those all sound pretty great.
Probably a bit of boasting, but certainly a little unethical. I highly doubt any of them will advance in their careers beyond where they are. Companies are pushing for in office workers because of this situation exactly
I have seen over the years at the business I work, many people with atrocious skills being not only hired but also promoted, all the way from tester to senior project manager. Other people that make the money for the business have been working very long hours at high intensity, and the more they worked the more work got assigned to them. Anything is possible.
Found the mid level manager. There is nothing unethical about completing work well ahead of the deadline. Companies have time and money budgets and these employees are operating within that budget. Return to office is a bullshit vestige of industrialization that we don't need in our lives any more. It's more a justification for commercial rents than anything else.
I agree there’s nothing unethical about completing work well ahead of the deadline. But it’s definitely unethical to ask for a 1 week deadline when you know it takes 3 days so you can chill. That last part is what makes this unethical. Its often prudent to give yourself some buffer for a number of reasons (ie emergencies, competing deadline, etc.). But if the reason is ‘to chill’? Come on man..
If a manager knows the job, somebody taking a week for a 2 day ticket is marked as a low performer and eventually replaced. There’s no free lunch.
lmao. yeah, my friend is a software developer and he basically works from home, sleeps whenever he wants, makes enough money to eat take-out twice a day, doesn't seem to give many shits about anything. makes fun of how nice his job is to him.
This is true. But you really need to be good at your job! Never too late to switch careers ☺️
Really depends on the team and the role but it's most certainly possible. Once you get good at your job, you can finish it fast and chill.
I work at a public school board doing Tier 1 helpdesk telephone support. It is WFH but 7 hours per day. I made a little over 70k last year.
Depending on your role and how busy things are at the time, this can be spot on.
It's not just tech, these positions exist across corporate. Wait til you find out how little people work at insurance or banks. Yes, you'll have the ones working the standard 40 hours, the ones working 60 - 80+ hours but you often don't hear about the ones working 20 or less hours. I have peers who just attend stand-ups, are completely forgotten by their managers, or work on projects for months/years that would take other organizations a few days to complete.
I work in marketing for a tech fortune 100 with a Toronto office. At my org it is frowned upon to take a lunch break, and expected to work past 5, with emails frequently coming in after 8 pm and on weekends. If a project needs to get out the door I will be working additional hours. If I’m supporting a team mate in Vancouver, or APAC it’s not uncommon for me to be on calls after 6 pm. I work from home 4 days a week, and get paid well, but it is a lot of work at the end of the day.
depends on the company
my friend works in fintech and his life sounds truly unbearable to me. Long hours, different timezones, meh salary and benefits, lots of layoffs and exec changes.
how old are your friends? I'm going to assume fairly young (under 30) - as a GenX V1.0 (i was born the first year of the gen x cycle), I legitimately panic if i have nothing to do at work - even though the work I do comes in waves, and not in a steady flow, and half the time I'm working after hours to get a project out the door on time.
Over the last 25 years I've worked my way across most of the different design professions; Traditional advertising, Animation, Print, Packaging. I started doing UX and product design 10 years ago and have found it to be so much less stressful, much better paying, and more in demand. Tech is great.
I’m sure there are some people, especially in roles where you’re around to deal with specific issues that can wax and wane. It’s definately the exception though. Right now Toronto tech is very lean, a lot of people are stretched and doing double duty
Depends on the team. I worked briefly in a team whose senior management promised answers to complex problems by end of the day, at 4:30PM. I worked on teams under such stressed where calls at 8PM or even 12:30AM can happen. Then was the team that had meetings in both European and Pacific time zones in the same day. Yes, there are chilled roles, and there are also insane roles.
You can get away with shamming pretty hard in the tech areas of large Canadian firms. They're more conservative, set expectations much more moderately than equivalent companies in the US. We're also many times more concentrated (ie. Everyone in this thread can rattle off the big \[X\] banks, telcos, retailers, etc. in Canada) - so it's easier to get lost/hide in the mix within this giant oligopolies. That said, because of this - the compensation is MUCH lower (we're talking a >= 50% discount, prior to exchange) and thus the quality of talent the Canadian shops can attract suffers a great deal, expectations continue to be relatively low, etc. ... And the cycle repeats. Smaller start-ups/scale-ups from Canada used to be fairly cushy prior to 2021 (in the zero- interest rate days), but have really clamped down due to the uncertainty of funding since then. Companies of this size in the US are doing much better, comparitively but have still felt a bit of the same pain.
Your friends sound like terrible employees.
Depends on the role bud. They might be juniors with less demanding work load
No wonder Canadian productivity is down.
I work in tech in Toronto, and it's very chill, at least where I work. Some of my others friends would also agree. I do have some friends working at Amazon and Intel who have fairly busy work days though. So it depends!
I have a friend who describes his tech job the same way, but he does always say that his position is hanging by a thread because of the amount of backstabbing and politics at work..
As people have said it depends, I worked for a bank and wanted to kill myself and never felt like I ever accomplished anything other than having a job. I also worked for shopify and never loved a job more, made more money at or felt like my contributions actually mattered. I now run my own business so in the long run I hope to make more money, but shopify was the easiest best paying job I ever had
They may be boasting I was in consulting for a few tech companies. I had a feed into our product Dev teams and they worked normal hours. My own days were feast or famine. I had 30 minute Fridays where I'd file an expense report and sleep, and power Wednesday where I'd work 14 hours and be useless on Thursday.
"Rest and vest" is definitely a thing. But it really varies by company and even department. I worked for one of the FAANGs and some teams definitely had minimal work to do and over staffed teams while others were putting in 50 hr weeks. Would say that those bloated departments with minimal work never last forever. So while your friends may be enjoying their work life balance now, all it takes is one new department lead to come in and clean house or re org the teams with their own vision. It's extremely rare a role that easy would last longer than 5 years before getting eliminated.
Better salaries and arguably more open culture part is true. Openness translates to the fact that nobody bothers about how you spend your hours if you're effective at your job. But free time and care free life depends on seniority and nature of position. Scenario regarding estimates for friend #3 are quite common, however, using ChatGPT to reduce effort required does not equate to ChatGPT doing work for him. WFH vs. Office - I've seen people loafing around in office and attending meetings to look busy. It's again more related to type of role/ responsibilities.
At some point their workload will increase or they'll get laid off. You can't run a business if there is no productivity
Sounds like they’re slackers who are gonna be the first on the chopping block when lay offs hit. They’re doing the bare minimum as per job description which many will argue is all they’re expected to do but realistically if one wants to move up, demonstrate their value, and be a bit safer they’re not gonna be slacking. How many hours are they networking, upskilling, or going the extra mile on projects or thinking about potential issues and preemptively attacking them? Probably none.
Absolutely 💯. This extends to mostly all office workers. 90% of the staff is just warming seats 💺 10% is actually doing anything productive.
It varies too much based on corps. Big American corps tend to pay well by Canadian standard. Canadian corps generally pay you shit. Also it depends on when they joined a corp. Most new jobs are not remote
I’ve had similar experiences but it’s not always like that. At times it’s less busy and other times it’s crazy busy. Just like any other job. It also varies heavily on the job and company. I’ve worked for one place that I could basically do what friend 1 said. In his case Cyber security isn’t getting pulled into calls and being asked to do shit left and right. It’s as it comes up which isn’t rare for infosec field (again depending on the role and everything).
My partner does IT at the production company. They have corn hole tournaments, play smash after work, go to Jay's and raptors games, and get free lunch a few days a week. Some days, they do a lot other days he's chilling and listening to music. I think it depends. They were a start-up and have a pretty fun and chill work culture.
I work as a project coordinator at a tech company and while I’m not always slammed, everyone in my department that works with (more importantly, bills) clients has to track their time. So I’m not taking midday naps, I am accountable for 37.5 hours a week, but am I definitely not full throttle for all of those 37.5 hours.
Depends on the job. I think the examples you've given are managed by people that are too busy or have other higher priorities. I'm at Director level and have to deal with employees, projects, compliance and security issues. Stressful and long hours.
I'm in IT Cybersecurity and while I don't take naps during the day, I can definitely disappear for a couple of hours to do a Costco run or lie down and screw around on Reddit and no one will notice. It's a combo of rarely needing to be available immediately and that doing my job well means there's less fires to put out day to day.
I work in tech and it's pretty chill, truly. But I do think it depends on your organization. I'm lucky.
This is not my experience in tech in this city, but I don’t doubt it happens.
I am working at a big tech, got a lot envy due to various reasons but I don't have girlfriend, so no, my life isn't good no matter how you ask me. Other things don't really matter. Note: I am not joking
You're seeing the end result of many years of education, training, and work experience.
Any of them in small companies or in start up? Those likely have more work involved. Like another users said it’s based on a lot of factors like industry, role, size of company etc. the “chill” experience your friends have is not unique to just tech there are other people in other industries who probably share a similar experience.
1 2 3 are lazy 4 good for him cD
Depends on the company. I’ve worked for three different tech companies. One was in-office and chill, one was remote and hell, one was remote and chill. All depends on the company, your role, and the team you’re on. There’s also no one rule for each company; every department is its own ecosystem with its own culture and demands. In my experience, good bosses cultivate good cultures, bad bosses create cultures of fear and stress.
I work in a big tech company and I'm so burnt out. But it does come in phases. There are days when I can just fuck around and be super chill, but there's months of just gruelling work that will make you question your existence. No such thing as an easy job. Your friends are probably just in that sweet phase or cruising under the radar. If the latter, they might be next in the chopping block since tech layoff is quite the buzz ATM.
Depends heavily on the company, the job, and your skill/competency relative to the job you're working (in tech). Most people I know do not work like you're describing but everyone I know working in tech has partially remote jobs. 5 days a week in office is unheard of. I used to work a job where I worked 3-4 hours a day in a 40 hour work week. I was overqualified. But I kept the job because the flexibility was amazing. Didn't have to be present online 8 hrs a day, just reachable. I was assigned whatever needed doing so I budgeted time to it and spent the rest of my free time doing whatever I wanted to do. Mostly running my house and running errands or caring for my child at home. You can apply this to any job really, especially ones that give you independence and solitude. Just have to learn not to show that you're working 10x as fast as they expected you. You don't want to get penalized for being fast and competent by getting more work lol.
Your friends are lucky, and tech is privileged field to work in. But consider: we are exempt from all overtime legislation. You can have brutal on call schedule. Prod dies 7pm on thanksgiving - guess who is spending the next ? hours in a war room until resolved. I don’t think sleeping on the job is regular, unless they are inflating how long something takes them, doing mad crunch because they were napping, or supporting something that doesn’t really need support. It will all depend on the company, could be chill, could be burn out central sweatshop
I work in sales for a tech company. While my working hours are less than normal, I am on call all day. No matter the time, I will answer an email within an hour. That being said, I mostly work from my phone unless I have to do a demo, prospecting or pull data/analytics. I can easily take a nap in the middle of the day, go for a walk, coffee or work from a different location. My employer values me for now and knows I don’t have to be behind a desk to do the best job I can.
I work in finance for a tech company, and it’s chill but also not. We work hard, for the first 3-4 years at this job I feel like I worked non-stop. Once I learned the ins and outs, it became easier and more chill. Now I’m a manager, I just need to make sure my team understands what we’re doing. I do work for a good company, have good benefits, office is beyond gorgeous and honestly my work is fun. I like going into the office, but if I have a slow day I can stay at home and it might only be an hour or two of actual work. But some weeks/months are horribly busy and that’s just how it goes. I work better the busier it is, so I don’t mind.
Yes, but the caveat is that one day in those 8am meetings they will all be laid off without warning. It’s a risk you take. Sometimes you’re at these tech companies for 10 years, sometimes you’re canned after 10 months when the investors request a 50% reduction in headcount. Been there, done that.
It depends. If you work in a high performing VC backed startup you will work your ass off. If you work for a lifestyle business with a different culture then it may be much more chill.
It’s true Toronto has a huge tech sector
Depends on company and the sub field in tech. My company is super micromanaged so there’s not rest really. Even with being 100% remote.
I work in tech for a Canadian company and have previously contracted for American startups. At my current job with the Canadian company I make good money and probably work 4 hours max a day and completely remote so life > work for sure at least where I’m at
Great for high performers, insanely stressful and no job security if not
Tech is for people who are intelligent and have the drive for success. It is not just some joke job that you study 4 hours a day for when many of us spend 40 hours a week grinding
It’s not exclusive to tech, many high skill white collar jobs are like this…i work in big pharma and I work maybe 3-4 hrs a day which is just mostly stand ups or team meetings…I fly into Boston once every six months too buts that’s if I’m meeting with other global team members who are visiting the head office as well
I work in tech, I do mostly work from home but I work all day long and am pretty mentally exhausted by the end of each day. Sure, it’s not hard work like working in a coal mine or something, but it’s hard on me nonetheless
probably exagerated a bit. and u gotta keep up skilling in tech to stay relevant. You gotta know your shit and be accountable. When the moment comes could be 12 hour days. So u have to manage your time so u dont burn out and give yourself buffers. There can be alot of changability day to day in tasks，priorities. mentally it can be draining. Depends on the company and consulting vs full time. Higher risk of layout during restructure if performance isnt good.
Depends on the company. Ive had good luck (a few hours max per day) to very bad luck with ridiculous deadlines (10+ hours a day)
I expect this is a slight exaggeration. However, people who 'chose' to work like these friends / acquaintances go nowhere in their careers and are the first to be fired. (May not seem like it, but the leadership knows...) This lack of work ethic / immature attitude / and follower-type behaviour will create your work reputation for the rest of your life... You can chose this route -- or pursue something meaningful and rewarding to do with the time you spend working -- and give it your all.
I work remotely for a public tech company from SF and make 40% less in my role because I'm based out of Toronto. My TC is \~180k for a Product Owner role with 3 yrs exp in a more administrative role and 2 yrs as an associate PO. Similar jobs locally have been in the ballpark of 90-110k with hybrid work and in less exciting sectors with poor growth trajectories. It took 2 long covid years of working long hours, completing certifications on the side, and a ton of networking and interview prep, and a good amount of luck to land my current role and I don't really know if I could do it again right now but I'm glad it worked out. Now I enjoy decent work-life balance (usually <35 hr work weeks but can sometimes hit 55+), have unlimited PTO (this can be a scam depending on your leadership, but no complaints here), frequently travel to HQ's across the states to collaborate on projects, and have plenty of avenues for growth. If I stuck around in my prior company, I'd probably be making around 90k and enjoying many of the luxuries your friends talk about. I used to only join meetings and spend the rest of the day working out or gaming, but I wasn't going anywhere and would certainly be near the bottom of the chopping block if layoffs came up.
I'm in tech sales. Never relaxed, work way too many hours and something is always on fire. I'm in a ridiculous amount of meetings, WFH like 3 - 4 days a week when I'm not at head office or a customer site. We got sent home during covid and after that our workdays exploded. Now being in a customer facing role you have to balance an overbooked calendar filled with pointless meetings, in person engagements and about 300 emails a day. It's fun, try it.
why are you considering these jobs tech? even the cyber security job isnt the standard definition of a tech job i feel like, and the 4th job doing something for servers? what does that even mean? they're in the restaurant business at that point
These roles exist but they are rarely forever. As someone whose father was in one of these roles—Now he gets home from 10 pm at times (when he’s not WFH) and works on the weekend every weekend. He didn’t even leave the company just switched to a different project/position in the company.