> This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies
Indeed.
80 hours a week (or even 60): Never had to deal with that in over a decade across 3 jobs. In fact, I've never had to work a weekend (and if I did, it was either to fix my own screwup, or because I intentionally slacked off during the week and needed to make up for it).
Slack/email off work hours? Just ask up front in the interview: "I turn off my laptop at the end of my work day, and don't install any work related items on the phone. Is that OK?"
On call? Lots of jobs that either don't involve running an online/web service, or if it does is for some internal company tool where the cost of it being down is low. I've never had on call. However, I did interview at places that did, so the questions to ask in the interview:
"What is the on-call rotation look like?" Typically it's one week per person, rotated by the number of people in the team. Team has 4 people? That's once every 4 weeks (too much for me).
"How often are people called during on-call?" I interviewed in one place where they got 2 calls out of work hours in the whole year. I can live with that.
"What's the process of evaluating those calls?" Do they just expect you to take care of it and move on, or do they have a process to analyze and prevent it from happening again? Some teams move too fast and there will always be calls - they don't want the hit in fixing things.
Incredible idealism. If you work in infrastructure, even development, there's no such thing as shutting down at the end of the day or weekends. 'You never know' if someone senior gets agitated off hours because something is broken, and is expecting a big group on a zoom call
I do work in infrastructure and never had to work out of working hours unless I was oncall. Our on-call rotation is 12h a day for a week, because we have an oversea team taking over. I get oncall every 5 weeks.
You can absolutely find places with good working condition and with a good salary
In New York I am finding the expectations getting higher and the salaries stagnating, to the point that I'm considering taking the plunge into consulting.
There's not a lot of infrastructure job talk on HN as everyone is a software developer or academic type.
Indeed.
80 hours a week (or even 60): Never had to deal with that in over a decade across 3 jobs. In fact, I've never had to work a weekend (and if I did, it was either to fix my own screwup, or because I intentionally slacked off during the week and needed to make up for it).
Slack/email off work hours? Just ask up front in the interview: "I turn off my laptop at the end of my work day, and don't install any work related items on the phone. Is that OK?"
On call? Lots of jobs that either don't involve running an online/web service, or if it does is for some internal company tool where the cost of it being down is low. I've never had on call. However, I did interview at places that did, so the questions to ask in the interview:
"What is the on-call rotation look like?" Typically it's one week per person, rotated by the number of people in the team. Team has 4 people? That's once every 4 weeks (too much for me).
"How often are people called during on-call?" I interviewed in one place where they got 2 calls out of work hours in the whole year. I can live with that.
"What's the process of evaluating those calls?" Do they just expect you to take care of it and move on, or do they have a process to analyze and prevent it from happening again? Some teams move too fast and there will always be calls - they don't want the hit in fixing things.