
How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout - edu
http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/223723?Source=Taboola
======
crazygringo
> _"Overwork doesn't burn people out per se, but it's doing that without
> knowing the things that replenish you."_

If you're working 130 hours a week, and sleeping a healthy 56 hours a week,
that leaves you with _negative_ 18 hours a week for replenishing yourself. Not
even including showering, eating, etc.

I'm sorry, but merely having dinner with your family on Tuesday nights is not
what it takes to replenish yourself. If that's the only thing I get to ask
for, it sounds like a hellish place to work.

I need _hours_ of replenishment _daily_... you know, like an actual work-life
_balance_.

~~~
blindhippo
I think people are reaacting to the 130 hour note a bit too much. I doubt that
was a common occurence, just an outlier week put in there for effect. If what
you do for work is your _passion_ (ie: hobby, interest, etc), then you
naturally get energy back from the effort you put in. Especially if you see
meaningful results back. In such a situation, Mayer's recommendations makes
sense.

Working for someone else's passion, idea, etc as talent/expertise doesn't
translate the same. The problem with articles like this is that some
manager/entreprenure/"idea guy" is going to read this and make it the rule
around the office, even for the people it most certainly doesn't apply to.

~~~
nickpinkston
I think this is probably the best interpretation of the piece. Both 1.) that
passion restores (this is probably the chief reason to do what you love and
not follow big trends blindly BTW), and 2.) that the 130hr was an outliner
that was brought out of this piece for dramatic effect.

I'd also love to see a poll for who actually does this desk sleeping stuff.
Also, how many of those fell asleep in school often? I just never get sleepy
at a desk - exhausted, yes, but not sleepy...

~~~
einhverfr
I could see sleeping at my desk, but now for late night stuff, I would really
prefer to work from home so I can sleep in my own bed. I dont see why you
should have to sleep at your desk. The only reason really to be in the office
is to interact with other people and unless everyone else is sleeping at their
desks....

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
The cynic in me sees sleeping at you desk a purely showing of how far you are
willing to go for no other reason.

Same with people who eat lunch, often with a work and knife, in their
cubicles. It's not about saving a half hour. Maybe you can eat a sandwich and
type at the same time. But really, are you saving that much time? And if you
are not using your hands, can you not read your email while eating in the
cafeteria?

I perceive things like that as work place theater.

------
leftnode
The paragraph

 _When Mayer suspects an employee might burn out, she asks them to find their
rhythm. They've come back with, "I need to be home for Tuesday night dinners,"
or "I need to be on time for my daughter's soccer games."_

really bothers me. If employee burnout is a regular thing inside your
organization, that's a serious issue that needs solving. But to have to ask
permission to spend time with your family is ridiculous.

If you're working 130 hours a week, something is seriously, seriously wrong.

~~~
unwind
Agreed, it reads like pure insanity.

That you would only be "granted" to have time for your family if you're on the
brink of burn-out is ... horrible. I'm pretty sure that's not the general
guideline about how Google operates, not sure if there's some editing and/or
language barrier here.

~~~
PakG1
I don't think there is any such barrier. I've read multiple articles from
multiple publications about the same Marissa Mayer, and they all have the same
anecdotes and themes. If it's so consistent across multiple publications, you
have to think she really does say all these things. Whether she walks the talk
is another question, but she's probably a freak of nature who is really able
to do so.

~~~
eitally
Moreover, the legend of the über-productive employee who never sleeps is a
double-edged sword and can demotivate the employees that person touches in
ways that far outweigh the direct positive impact to the company that person
has. As stated above, it's one thing to work 12-16hr days during start-up
phase, but if you're doing it as a matter of fact when you're a 30,000 person
company, frankly you're doing it wrong -- even if you're the founder, owner,
board member or C-level executive. Leading via exemplary personal performance
and ethics is one thing; driving those values throughout the organization is
far more important.

------
munificent
In case anyone is wondering whether this reflects Google's current working
culture, let me comment that in my experience it absolutely does not.

In the office I work in, it is virtually empty at 8:00 AM and mostly empty by
7:00 PM. Most people seem to show up around 9:00 AM and leave around 6:00. On
Fridays, the office mostly stops working around 5:00 PM.

There is a cadre of people, typically those without families, who stay a bit
later but it often seems like they stay just long enough to eat the free
dinner and then head home. Those people often also show up around or after
10:00 AM.

There is variation from project to project and office to office, but the work
life balance seems _very_ healthy in the offices I've seen. I have kids and a
long commute, so it's important that I don't work late and I've never felt the
slightest pressure to work more hours.

~~~
gouranga
Still sounds crazy. We cruise in between 9 and 10, bail between 4 and 5 and
take an hour lunch. Also we tend to work from home 2-3 days a week.

Then again, they realise that we generate about 650k a year in real hard cash
per head which is pretty good :) That's how a company should look.

we have to buy our own lunch though and spend our spare time doing some
reading and self tuition.

~~~
greggman
So do we, I know lots of fellow google devs that work from home a couple of
days a week. Some of us also work on the shuttle during our commute so we can
count that as work and therefore get home earlier and spend more time with
friends and family than those with similar commute times but no company
shuttles.

------
nathan_long
>> "You can't have everything you want," Mayer cautions. "But you can have the
things that really matter to you. That empowers you to work really hard for a
long period of time on something that you're passionate about."

If by "everything you want" you mean "all the activities you'd like to
schedule outside of business hours," then, um... yes I can. Step 1 is called
"clear expectations." Step 2 is quitting when pressured to do too much. It has
worked great for me.

I'm not passionate enough about _any_ work to pull the kinds of hours she
describes. Heck, even if I were -- even if the project were "build software to
save your own life" -- I'd be writing some crappy code after 60+ hours.

------
s1rech
First of all, I very much doubt that she actually worked 130 hours per week
with any regularity. That comes to 18.5 hours per day, including sundays. Even
assuming that she could survive with 3 hours of sleep per day (yeah, sure), it
leaves almost no time to eat, commute, or god, even going to the bathroom.

And why in the world is she giving advice on burnout?

~~~
j_baker
You know, frequently such a person is the type to make others think they're
contributing merely by being at the office for such a long time.

"Marissa _must_ be getting things done. She works here 130 hours a week!"

Yet if you look, they probably aren't actually _working_ the entire time
they're in the office.

~~~
groby_b
I can't speak for Marissa, but I certainly did pull one or two 130-hour weeks
"back in the day". They _were_ productive. I did pay a huge price for them,
both in terms of reduced productivity for weeks afterwards, and in terms of
health. (I _always_ get a horrible cold after exhausting myself that much)

There are two things to keep in mind:

1) These weeks were _rare_. I'd expect they were rare for Marissa too. You
can't do that anywhere close to regularly. And you don't. Those are heroic
efforts to meet a particular deadline.

2) That was "back in the day". Late 20's, early 30's. As you get older, those
efforts are much harder. (Damn it, all the old people I knew needed next to no
sleep. Can I _please_ finally be old enough for that? ;)

~~~
mratzloff
I've worked long hours too. Being a hero is counterproductive in so many ways.
If a deadline requires that level of exhaustion, you're doing it wrong.

~~~
groby_b
There _are_ deadlines that are worth it. Putting in the extra hours so the
decision demo to the VC guys is smoother? Uh, yes. Same goes for e.g. working
on reducing network traffic before a spike will hit, if that reduction will
save you a million or two.

In all cases, make sure the payout is commensurate with your effort - i.e.
unless you own equity or there is a _large_ bonus attached to that, IMHO you
should tell the powers that be to go pound sand.

And putting in those hours because your manager didn't listen to your
estimates in the first place? Hell no.

~~~
mratzloff
_There _are_ deadlines that are worth it. Putting in the extra hours so the
decision demo to the VC guys is smoother? Uh, yes. Same goes for e.g. working
on reducing network traffic before a spike will hit, if that reduction will
save you a million or two._

Yeah, definitely agree. I was more referring to employee positions without
significant equity, which you touched on in the rest of your post.

------
DrMcFacekick
Maybe it's because I'm not at a company like Google, but all articles like
this seem to do two things: 1) Make everyone who doesn't put in 130 hours a
week at work feel like they're not Working Hard Enough 2) Legitimize unpaid
overtime/ worker exploitation

It seems that the quantity of "time spent at work" is emphasized over the
quality of actual work done. I'd be curious what her work quality was over 130
hours, especially once she was in week 5-6 of working that much.

~~~
mindcrime
_2) Legitimize unpaid overtime/ worker exploitation_

I'm pretty sure most people understand that the only people who are going to
even come close to what she's talking about here are A. founders, and B. early
employees with significant equity stakes. IOW, people who stand to benefit to
an extreme degree, if the company succeeds. In that case, it might actually
make sense to work those kind of crazy hours, since the possible payoff means
financial independence and the chance to live out some of one's dreams.

Now a company that's routinely asking non-founder employees with no equity to
work more than ~40 hours a week on a regular basis... yeah, that's just not
necessary.

------
yock
This reads like a allegory for Hell. _How to love working 18 hours a day_
could almost be the title of a satire novel on the failings of modern office
life. The fact that she lived it and looks back on it fondly doesn't, in my
mind, reflect positively on her or her employer.

~~~
crusso
I just don't understand the hostility toward someone who has worked
ridiculously hard and has achieved a demonstrable level of success. She did
it, she talks about it, she's happy with the choices she made.

Why so judgmental?

Working hard at things increases your likelihood of success. Is that notion in
question here at HN? True, there is a diminishing point of returns for
everyone where working hard doesn't yield more returns or even produces
overall negative returns... but how can you categorically decry her and her
choice to push her own limits?

I worked crazy hours before I got married and have a lot of financial and
experiential success to show for it. I did it then out of choice. I don't do
it now out of choice. Was I doing something inherently wrong when I was
younger and working so hard?

~~~
jlarocco
My problem with it is that she's managing people and (apparently) expecting
them to work similar hours like it's a perfectly normal thing to work 130
hours a week.

She's giving advice like "Grant employees one must-have freedom." Really? One
whole freedom away from work?

And making statements like, "You can't have everything you want. But you can
have the things that really matter to you. That empowers you to work really
hard for a long period of time on something that you're passionate about."
Gee, bummer, I was hoping to read a book or something, but I'm already getting
to eat dinner, so I guess I can skip it.

I think it's utterly foolish for somebody to work 130 hours a week. I can't
think of any good reason anybody should ever have to do that. _But_ , if
that's what they want, I'm okay with it because at the end of the day it's not
any of my business. But trying to force others to do it is really not cool.

------
lfborjas
Articles like this remind me of Bertrand Russell's [In praise of
idleness](<http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html>):

 _"I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done
in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road
to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work."_

~~~
crusso
I love Bertrand Russell. Such brilliant quotes. I especially love his thoughts
on religion.

Unfortunately, he was no futurist. His view of the manual laborer doing all
the work vs the bosses telling the worker what to do was hopelessly mired in
the past and plagued with his thinking that the industrial revolution's
growing pains were permanent or even worsening.

Given that Peter Drucker was around and writing at the same time, it's not
like the idea that we were heading somewhere better as a society was
unknowable.

This passage in the link you provided stood out to me:

    
    
      The small surplus above bare necessaries was not left to those who produced it, 
      but was appropriated by warriors and priests. In times of famine there was no 
      surplus; the warriors and priests, however, still secured as much as at other 
      times, with the result that many of the workers died of hunger.
    

These days, our warrior/priest caste is actually the government and the elite
corporatists that collude with it. Economy goes up, government spending goes
up. Economy goes down, government spending goes up... strange that.

~~~
heretohelp
Funny you mention that you love Bertrand Russell since he was a massive fan of
idleness and against the cult of overwork.

~~~
crusso
Your mistake would be in assuming that I would commit the fallacy of ad
hominem, I guess.

Religion was pretty well-trodden ground in his time and his thoughts on it
were really insightful. The future of the knowledge-based economic world
didn't seem to be his forte. Regardless, the guy put some thought into his
writings that's worth respecting and he certainly knew how to craft a phrase
that would be quotable for centuries to come.

------
jeffbarr
I don't think burnout directly correlates to working too hard or too much. I
think it is more a matter of working hard without a sense of accomplishment.
Endless toil without material or psychic rewards for a job well done is what
would lead me to burnout.

I have worked with people who claimed to work over 100 hours per week. Upon
closer investigation it generally turned out that they did a lot of personal
business from the office "because they were so busy." Or, they used "I'm too
busy" as an excuse to ignore their spouse or children or to escape a painful
situation at home.

Like the others, I don't buy 130 hours on a sustainable basis. Try to work 60
or 80 hours in a week and see how difficult that is before claiming 100 or
130.

------
pgrote
I wonder how many people are on the opposite side of the equation ... I worked
130 hours a week and lost everything.

Somehow, I think the fact she is who she is leave people with the perception
that working that much is what it takes.

~~~
cheez
Care to elaborate?

~~~
loup-vaillant
Survivor bias. We don't get to hear of the failures. Not in the news, at
least. So, even if 130 is likely to destroy anyone, a very rare breed of
people who have a crazy amount of energy may pull it off. Or maybe working 130
hours a week is too much even for them, but they survive anyway because they
were such geniuses to begin with (not very rational geniuses, but still).

If we had more hard data from large, non-biased samples, then we would know
for sure the various effects of working 130 hours for various people. _Then_ ,
we could build advice on that. (Of course I currently have reasons to think
that such a study would be a waste of time, and that we just shouldn't work
that much, period.)

~~~
cheez
Sorry, I had meant I wanted the GP to elaborate on why he or she failed :)

I know all about survivorship bias so I yearn for stories of failure.

------
onitica
Clearly exaggeration on her part about her hours. No one works 130 hours a
week consistently, it is just physically not possible. This article is about
everything wrong with corporate work environments.

1) Productivity is equivalent to time spent in the office. 2) Pressure your
employees to work more than they should - No one should ever have to "ask" to
get a weekday night off to have dinner with their family. 3) Managing
resentment? If you are spending your time trying to manage your resentment to
your job, you probably aren't being productive because you dislike the job.
Nothing spells out bad productivity like disliking what you are doing.

------
famousactress
_Step 3. Grant employees one must-have freedom._

Silly bullshit. First of all, by definition you have to grant _all_ must-have
freedoms. If that's not a deal-breaker than they're not must-haves.. but the
idea that family dinner is a gift from your employer is ridiculous.

~~~
crusso
The people at Google have and are continuing to attempt significant "outlier"
levels of financial and software technological success.

Should they expect to work a 9-5 schedule?

If achieving success at a level that might require that you to sacrifice a
bunch of your family life is your thing, then I guess that Google might be a
place for you. If it isn't, then you don't really have to work there.

So much vitriol in this thread toward a person who made the choice to work
hard and be a part of a company that expects its people to produce. It's not
like there are Google slave camps where they put you on an island, take away
your passport, and won't let you leave.

~~~
ori_b
As someone who works at Google, I can say that (at least within my team)
people do not tend to work unreasonable hours. People will stay late during
crunch time, or when they're on a roll. But there is no expectation that you
will work yourself into the ground. There's an expectation of high
productivity within a 40 hour work week, plus or minus. There's expectations
that people will react to emergencies and deal with them whenever they occur.
But there's also an expectation that this will be rare.

~~~
crusso
That's why I was careful to say that Google expects people to "produce", not
work ridiculous hours.

Plus, I have no idea what Google is expecting its works to do these days. You
say one thing, employee #20 makes it sound like a meal with the family on
Tuesday night is the exception, not the rule.

I will say that if Google doesn't keep a strong work ethic, it will go the way
of Apple in the late 80's and early 90's. I was at Apple when the "work hard,
play hard" ethic somehow shifted to just "play hard". Apple was on the verge
of going out of business for a decade or so because of that lack of drive.

~~~
ori_b
I suspect that's more a result of a response to the low-productivity spiral
that burnout seems to be. You lose productivity, so you push yourself harder,
so you become less productive, so you feel the need to spend more hours, and
soon you end up drained and unable to accomplish anything.

If you're in this spiral, then you need to step back and think of what you
need to do to recharge. That might become a realization that "I've stopped
spending time with my family; I'm going to make sure I'm at dinner with them
every Thursday".

I'd find it extremely strange to hear that someone at Google was prevented
from making time to spend time with family on a regular basis. I wouldn't be
surprised that an employee in the process of burning out needed encouragement
to step back.

~~~
crusso

      I suspect that's more a result of a response to the low-productivity spiral that burnout seems to be.
    

I'm a little lost as to which part of my comment this was in response to. At
Apple in the early 90's, you could rarely find an engineer at his desk.
Working interactively with people was a bit of a mess, what with all the ping
pong, foosball, video game playing, the midday trips to the gym, the beer
parties, and some peoples' weekly offsites to see a movie. The only people
getting any sort of burnout or burns just weren't changing out their bong
water often enough.

------
graiz
That's 18h/day everyday. Or 21H/Day if she gave herself a Saturday. I call BS
on the numbers. I'm sure she worked really hard but the numbers are BS.

Further she thinks that there is causation between her crazy hours and the
ultimate success of Google. Correlation is not causation.

------
samstave
Im sure the private residence at the 4 seasons in SF and the tens if not
hundreds of millions she is worth had plenty to do with her not burning out as
well.

Further, as others noted - that is ~18 hours per day "working" - and if by
"working" we really mean, thinking about her work.

This means that she could just as easily be "working" when being chauffeured
from house to work, or on the plane or eating dinner.

Its not like she needed to be welded to a screen pumping out code at her desk
18h per day... she has a much different output, mostly her thought and
attention, than many others.

~~~
altcognito
Hell no she wasn't. Not as Google employee #20. The implication in the article
is that she was actually working in front of a screen. And while thinking is
definitely "working", I don't do much thinking without at least a desk.

------
zitterbewegung
I think that its great that it worked for Marissa Mayer. But, the culture of
working over 40 hours is troubling. It really puts into perspective what you
should value. I value my free time too much to take that choice.

~~~
crusso
What's troubling? A culture of working over 40 hours? Or the fact that some
people choose to?

Is it your perception that our culture is moving toward working more hours?

<http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS>

The trend appears to be downward. Yay?

~~~
zitterbewegung
I believe that working that long isn't sustainable and I think that it puts
unrealistic expectations for the average person. I would welcome your trend.
Thank for the data.

------
carterschonwald
Since folks seem to not recall prior articles about marissa mayer, I believe
it's clearly mentioned elsewhere that she's one of those people who via
medical accident/ virtue only need a substantially reduced amount of sleep
compared with most people. The journalist for this article is clearly an idiot
for neglecting that important contextual info.

That Is all.

~~~
libria
That is not all. If you're criticizing the author for omitting facts, it
should go without saying you need to cite them.

~~~
carterschonwald
[http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/fortune/how_i_work/frameset...](http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/fortune/how_i_work/frameset.exclude.html)

"My day starts around 9 A.M. and meetings finish up around 8 P.M. After that I
stay in the office to do action items and e-mail. I can get by on four to six
hours of sleep. I pace myself by taking a week-long vacation every four
months."

and thats just the first google result for "marissa mayer sleep"

~~~
crusso
Kind of an aside, but I find the requirement of providing proof in an argument
to be pretty ambiguous in an age where Googling things is so darned easy.

Sure, I could find a link that gives the quantum dynamics of why water is wet
when I use that fact in an argument... but do I really need to? These days, it
seems that pushing back on people to provide easily knowable supporting
information is just a delaying tactic or cognitive dissonance coping method...
as in "Oops, I just read a really uncomfortable conclusion... I think I'll ask
for proof then close this window before it's actually provided." :)

------
michaelhoglund
Sad. Sad. Sad. This is macho BS, dressed in a cool start-up suit. No one is
productive doing that year around.

~~~
michaelhoglund
Did I say 'year', I meant week.

------
pwthornton
I don't buy that she worked 130 hours a week. Perhaps one week ever. But I'm
still not sure if I buy that. Anything short of documentary proof wouldn't
lead me to believe it.

We do have data that people overestimated how much they work. I'm sure she
worked long hours. I'm sure she was in the office a lot to. But 130 hours?

And 130 hours of actual good work? We also have data on how the quality of
work drops off as quantity begins to add up.

~~~
bretpiatt
I think it comes down to how you define work. If it is "clocked in on a time
card sitting at a desk" 130 hours a week is not realistic long term (it is
18.5 hours per day 7 days a week) -- I agree.

If you define work as "your mind focusing on solving problems or thinking
about the big decisions that need to be made" it is absolutely possible to do
that for an extended period of time.

I regularly sleep 4-6 hours per night and wake up without an alarm clock
(there is a bunch of information about this out there now, example article:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783> ). When I'm awake my mind is
constantly thinking about the projects I'm involved in and how I can
contribute to the team driving a better outcome.

I don't put in 130 hours every week but I'm putting in over 80 -- not because
I have to but because I enjoy it. I'm typically only at my desk or in meetings
at a corporate office 30-40 hours a week. Part of the "freedom" it talks about
is letting people work from where they're most productive in a manner they
choose -- not forcing them into a "one size fits all" approach -- measure
productivity by outcomes not by methods.

I have a "work productivity device" (laptop, tablet, or smartphone) open
consuming information or producing output related to my role easily 80 hours a
week (12-15 hours a day M-F and 5-20 hours on the weekends).

------
wazoox
I did actually worked for about 100 hours a week and more, for a few months in
1998, and I spent a couple of quiet weeks in hospital as a result. This sort
of stupid bullshit about hard work really gets me angry.

------
yitchelle
Is this article trolling? Sure seems like it.

This business week article has some more supporting information about the
Google folks asking permission to do family events...
[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-12/how-to-
avoid...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-12/how-to-avoid-
burnout-marissa-mayer)

------
jwingy
The worst part about an article like this is someone will take this seriously
and believe this is the path towards "success".

~~~
smiler
If you measure success as being in senior management in a big company, it
often is

------
dotcoma
Even assuming she was not commuting to work (sleeping at the office), that
leaves 5.4 hours a day for eating, sleeping, shitting, showering, brushing
your teeth etc. Nobody can do it for more than a week or two.

~~~
antidoh
There are a very few people who can, or can come close. They can make life
miserable for people who work for them, merely by being an example.

In an NPR interview with the woman who wrote Why Women Can't Have It All, the
woman said that Hilary Clinton limits her time in the office for precisely
that reason, so that people don't stay in the office merely because Clinton is
there.

Edit: The quote is in the audio linked from here: The Impossible Juggling Act:
Motherhood And Work, [http://www.npr.org/2012/06/21/155498926/the-impossible-
juggl...](http://www.npr.org/2012/06/21/155498926/the-impossible-juggling-act-
motherhood-and-work)

------
taytus
I love google, but I am calling bs on this.

~~~
ficho
+1, this reads more like corporate branding on how cool can early googlers be
more than anything else. I'm pretty happy for her if she manages 130 hours a
week, but this doesn't work for everyone... if any.

I don't really care in the debate of working your ass off or staying sane and
mentally fresh to be productive, but Google pushing this fact is just plain
sad.

What are we supposed to react? Just awe in admiration at the necessary self-
destruction we're supposed to imitate?

Plus I was at the talk and it was sadly sadly corporate. If there is one thing
I remember about Marissa Mayer is that she does the whole corporate PR / tough
questions avoiding thing very well. In my mind this is what makes her so
successful..

sad sad sad

~~~
crusso
> but Google pushing this fact is just plain sad.

Do you think it's part of some larger corporate effort on their part?

Seems like they need to talk to the employees who posted contrary statements
in this thread. They don't seem to be on-message.

> Plus I was at the talk and it was sadly sadly corporate.

Wouldn't you expect someone highly successful in a corporate environment when
asked about work environment issues to give you a very successfully-minded
corporate type of answer?

The surprise to me would have been if she had given an answer like, "I only
work 3 hours a day, then I exercise, meditate, spend time with my family, and
get a good 10 hours of sleep. That's the kind of work-life balance that
everyone can have and be filthy rich like I am!"

That would have been a great deal more surprising and interesting. Sadly,
reality marches on and acts all boring and serious like reality tends to do.
Work hard, eat your vegetables, stay in school, don't do drugs... totally
boring. :)

~~~
ficho
I don't think its a conscious decision on Google's end. They have grown, and
as it becomes larger as an organization it faces different challenges. PR and
communication becomes naturally very different for a large organization, it is
much more scrutinized, subject to easy criticism etc. So some sort of party
line attitude is necessary.

It's a thin line to walk, between honest truthfulness and too much marketing
bs. I think Google is a bit too much in the latter these days, but I still
have good faith in it.

------
stuffihavemade
130 hours = ~18.5 hours a day, 7 days a week

------
trapped123
I really hate these types of employees. First of all they raise employer's
expectations that all the other workers will be willing to put in free hours
for them. Second by working for 130 hours they are basically taking away jobs
from 2 other people who could be gainfully employed if these types of
employees worked a normal schedule. Obviously the counterpoint is that these
guys really loved their work so much that they didn't really mind. But in that
case isn't it better that they do some charity work, help more needy people
rather than helping fill the coffers of mega corporations.

~~~
orangecat
_Second by working for 130 hours they are basically taking away jobs from 2
other people who could be gainfully employed if these types of employees
worked a normal schedule._

One could say the same about technology in general, and some foolish people
have.

 _But in that case isn't it better that they do some charity work, help more
needy people rather than helping fill the coffers of mega corporations._

I'm pretty sure Marissa Mayer has donated far more to charity than most of us
ever will.

------
zwieback
Wow - I feel heroic when I work late one day a week and my kid's events are
automatically non-negotiable. Guess I shoudl be glad I'm not working at Google
and still making a good living - can it last?

------
robwhitley
To each their own. Like many other treatments of the mind/body, the effects of
this kind of behavior may be seen down the road.

------
theorique
If a person can work 3x normal (40 x 3 = 120 hours, which is almost the 130
hours she claims to have worked in the past) and generate 10-1000x the value
of most people, it might be a worthy tradeoff for some time.

In the long run, however, it can be hard to sustain that kind of pace.

~~~
Retric
There is evidence that for a wide range of jobs working 3x normal produces .5x
to 1.5x as much output.

~~~
theorique
That I find more believable ...

------
davidw
These days, she relaxes by diving into a Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool of
money.

------
mhartl
_Hard work, she says, has been the key to Google's success, as well as her
own._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_and_sufficient_condi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_and_sufficient_condition)

------
njx
Meditation is the key for me. I think more and more people especially people
in the Tech and involved with startups should practice it.

I work 12 hrs daily but spend around 1-2 hrs in meditation and it seems to
flush out everything.

~~~
evangineer
That's 1-2 hrs in meditation per day? What particular type of meditation do
you practice? How long have you been practicing?

~~~
njx
Yes avg 90 mins daily. Recently I have been doing Kriya yoga but have been
doing meditation for longer than 10 yrs

------
josscrowcroft
Forget employees - this is important reading for the self-employed or work-
from-homers... how do you prevent burnout when you're grinding on your own
projects, or freelance work?

It might be pretty standard advice, but important to remind oneself - I'm very
rarely strict with myself about taking time off or finding my 'rhythm'
activities as she calls them.

------
Kynlyn
If you have to ask permission to attend your daughter's soccer game or have
dinner with your kids then that is a fucked up place to work; regardless of
how much salary or stock options they throw at you.

If your boss brags about working insane hours then brace yourself for a shitty
environment.

------
redwood
Burnout shouldn't even be an issue in the American economy. We should actually
all work a bit less, earn a bit less, and hire more people. What are we
creating? a lot of hard work to make our lives hell?

------
known
People seek respect & admiration.
[http://www.greatandhra.com/viewnews.php?id=38662&cat=10&...](http://www.greatandhra.com/viewnews.php?id=38662&cat=10&scat=25)

------
SonicSoul
i think this article lost a lot of merit because 130hrs/week were mentioned. i
am guessing this was some kind of record and happened once, but because of the
way it was mentioned (proudly, to illustrate that she's a badass) the article
seems to insinuate this amount of hours could be sustainable, and worked
around with a few anti-burnout tricks.

if this advice was given for ~60hr weeks, it would actually be a lot more
credible.

------
fghh45sdfhr3
_130 hours a week_!

Workaholics are bad for the long term health of any large company.

Workaholics can be wonderful, incredibly productive people. Most of the time
they are not. But let's just concentrate on the ideal workaholic.

Workaholics enable last minute heroics disaster management. But if you're
doing that, even if you do it successfully, just the fact that you are doing
it, means you messed something up. You shouldn't need last minute heroics on
your projects. _Well_ managed projects don't do that.

And even more importantly the more long term your project is the more
important it is to manage it well and avoid last minute heroics.

The long term quality and maintainability of large projects really suffers
with such emergency heroics. In fact, each and every one of your death marches
over the years could have been a great success. But together they've made all
future progress far, far, far slower that it could have been had you not had
the need for death marches in the first place.

 _Exceptions apply to small projects who only care about reaching a milestone
NOW, not about long term TOC._

On any large and complex project there will be huge pressure to engage in last
minute heroics. If you literally do not have that option THAT forces you to
manage your project better.

But combine that huge ever present pressure with workaholics and you're almost
guaranteed to take advantage of a death march.

Imagine it is a death march for only one person, the company workaholic. A
wonderful person, who is also a technical genius. That person takes on a
complex feature, and implements it over a weekend, pulling at least one all-
nighter. Normally that person is 10x more productive than average so in that
weekend they make HUGE progress.

Now remember the old adage about any developer who is indispensable should be
fired immediately? Sounds harsh, but think about it.

I pride myself on working hard to never make myself indispensable. Produce
maintainable code, far less complex than I am capable of, document, train
colleagues, etc. That's the _minimum_ needed for long term health of any large
and complex projects.

What happens if the ideal workaholic gets hit by a buss right after that
weekend death march? Now everyone else will have to come up to speed on their
code, and that _will take longer_ than if they had been allowed to write it
themselves, over a week or two, with that workaholic's help and guidance.

What happens if the workaholic does NOT get hit bu a buss? Great, but again
overall development is slowed down. it went a lot faster for that one weekend,
but everyone now still has to come up to speed to keep the project going.

You rob from the future to save the present and you drop a lot of the money on
the floor while doing that.

Really, really well managed projects explicitly forbid last minute heroics.
That's how you know management knows what it's doing.

------
treetrouble
Satire?

------
heretohelp
"Grant your employees one must-have freedom"

I'm the CTO at a startup and I have employees that are my responsibility. The
mere idea that it's appropriate for me to _grant_ one of my people a personal
freedom that was theirs to begin with is offensive.

A company that requires overwork from its people, especially salaried people,
in order to sustain itself doesn't deserve to exist. Paid overtime is another
story and is a common aspect of the how the manufacturing sector works.

I'm sure Mayer is a good manager, people have attested to as much in this
thread. The article appears to be designed to hack together a particular
attitude towards work/overwork piecemeal from an interview with Mayer that I
don't think she adheres to.

This article makes me want to defenestrate myself and join the Socialist
Party.

I'll be avoiding entrepreneur.com in future.

~~~
crusso

      A company that requires overwork from its people, especially salaried people,
      in order to sustain itself doesn't deserve to exist.
    

I find such strong visceral statements like this really curious and am trying
to understand them. Do you resent people who want to work ridiculous hours? Or
just the companies that expect their employees to put in overtime?

Do you resent companies that expect overtime from employees as sort of a
shared sacrifice on the hopeful way to something like an IPO or buyout where
everyone gets a reward for that sacrifice?

If I have a choice to work at company A where I can put in minimal hours and
company B where the company expects me to put in "unpaid" overtime. Do you
view company B as not deserving to exist?

Do you not support my desire to work in the company and environment that I
wish to? Would it be for my own good for company B to be shut down?

    
    
      Paid overtime is another
      story and is a common aspect of the how the manufacturing sector works.
    

Are you under the impression that Google employees haven't been
extraordinarily compensated for the hours they've put in?

    
    
      This article makes me want to defenestrate myself and join the Socialist Party.
    

If only everyone who wanted to join the Socialist Party would defenestrate
themselves. I commend you for that choice. :P I kid. I kid.

~~~
heretohelp
>Do you resent people who want to work ridiculous hours?

Hell no, if it makes them happy then that's fine, but if it starts producing
burnout or interfering with their ability to perform, they need to ratchet it
back and chill out. (Which has happened at my company, I've had to intervene
and tell a coworker to relax and take some time off.)

My coworkers have nothing to prove to me by spending all day and night at the
office.

>Or just the companies that expect their employees to put in overtime?

You're not really being precise enough. It depends on the reward structure and
how frequent it is. The infrequent push to finish a release, fine. A
consistent/constant expectation that salaried (no paid overtime at all)
employees be working over ~40 hours a week is obscene. It's different, I'd
argue, for lawyers and factory workers as their reward structures are a bit
different.

>Do you view company B as not deserving to exist?

Only if said overtime is necessary for their business model to function. A
business that has to abuse its own people in order to exist is just a scam
hidden by abstraction and cultural acceptance. If it's doing so out of greed,
then the reward structure needs revised. Law firms resolved this a long time
ago.

>Do you not support my desire to work in the company and environment that I
wish to?

I'm talking about abusing people who don't want to work all that overtime and
spend time with their families. My company already has one person in
particular who works odd/lots of hours. I don't begrudge him that, it's just
an aspect of how he manages his time. My issue is with categorically expecting
unpaid overtime of all employees, week-in, week-out with no real reward above
the usual salary.

You appear to be constructing some sort of opposition to your preferred way of
working when there is none.

>Are you under the impression that Google employees haven't been
extraordinarily compensated for the hours they've put in?

Are you under the impression that Google is still minting millionaire chefs?

~~~
crusso
> You appear to be constructing some sort of opposition to your preferred way
> of working when there is none.

You said you wanted to kill yourself after reading an article about someone
who talks about working hard and her management techniques at one of the most
highly successful technology companies in the world that is listed as THE best
company to work at in the country. Exactly how am I misunderstanding your own
words and how much are you to blame for putting them together the way you did?

> Are you under the impression that Google is still minting millionaire chefs?

Seriously, number one in the country. I'm not exaggerating.

[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-
companies/2012/f...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-
companies/2012/full_list/)

Are you under the impression that there aren't other reasons to work someplace
besides just the money?

~~~
heretohelp
What are you trying to prove exactly? That I'm coffee-deprived and tired?

Google being a good place to work at really has nothing to do with demanding
overtime of employees.

For that matter, Google isn't even guilty of what I'm talking about.

Given those two statements, everything you've just said is null.

What an immense waste of time.

~~~
crusso
> What are you trying to prove exactly?

Just trying to probe the depths of the reasoning of someone posting something
that's contrary to the conclusions I've drawn from life.

> What an immense waste of time.

If you say so. I gained another little data point in my mental model under the
section of "Why do some people react so strongly against others who profess to
work hard?" So, thanks.

~~~
heretohelp
That's a bad data point.

I'm not against working hard, I'm against forcing others to work hard for your
benefit without commensurate reward.

What is so difficult to understand about that?

~~~
crusso
In the context of Google, your use of the terms "forcing" and "commensurate
reward" are decidedly oxymoronic. I'd make the case that in the US and most
other Western countries, your use of those terms doesn't really make sense.

Do you live in some non-free society where you aren't allowed to quit a job
and find another more suitable to your liking? Maybe you live somewhere where
you aren't allowed to start your own business and take part in deciding your
own compensation? I'd guess North Korea, but your English is extremely good
and I didn't think they were allowed to access the Internet.

------
dsolomon
Pay developers more than 60K/70K year and you'll prevent burnout. How about
paying for equipment you cheap bastards.

