

Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much? - verPi

I work at a startup in silicon valley. Most of my colleagues spend a lot of hours at the office--usually at least 12hr days. I know most of these people (including myself) could make substantially more money working at a more established company and that our options are unlikely to be worth more than the salary we will have &quot;sacrificed&quot; by the time an exit opportunity comes along. Now, the reason I&#x27;m at a startup is to learn about doing a startup. But I think most of my peers have zero entrepreneurial ambition. There&#x27;s also a shortage of engineering talent. So.. why are you breaking your back working on someone else&#x27;s dream (and potential fortune) when the incentives (as far as I can tell) don&#x27;t warrant it? If you love hacking, why not keep bank hours at the office and work on your own projects outside of that? I used to buy into the myth that bigger companies that pay proper salaries are like working for some soul-destroying 1960s IBM corporate mediocrity. But now I have friends at bigger companies--the difference seems to be that they have unlimited resources, big annual bonuses, nicer office furniture and less pressure. Otherwise we work on very similar things. Maybe you like to &quot;stay hungry&quot;... well, why not do your own startup instead of staying hungry working on something that will make a handful of people (not including yourself) very rich? I apologize if this comes across as confrontational--that&#x27;s not my intention. I&#x27;m more just kind of baffled, and I assume I&#x27;m missing something, hence the ask. Thanks.
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throwawayay
> Most of my colleagues spend a lot of hours at the office--usually at least
> 12hr days.

I have coworkers and friends that do exactly what you're describing, and I
don't know why they'd tell you they do it, but I have my own theories about
why it would be rational to work long hours for no additional pay.

First, why working long hours seems effective:

\- Showing up at the office isn't really work. I think Woody Allen once said
"80% of success is showing up". When you're present all the time, people tend
to think that you're more important, more useful, and more reliable. I work
from home often, and I can certainly feel my importance in the company
diminishing, even though the quality and speed of my work has never been
higher. Humans seem to highly value grunting at other humans face to face. If
I wanted to move up in the company, I would absolutely have my face seen as
much as possible, and a good way to do that is to be there for long hours.
Besides, it's not that hard to be "working long hours" while actually reading
the internet for most of the day, which is what a lot of people would be doing
at home after work anyway.

\- Hours are also an objective measurement, while performance is often very
subjective. The biggest complaint that I hear from other employees about other
employees is that someone isn't looking busy enough or was barely in the
office at all. If someone produces shitty output, it can be rationalized if
the person is friendly and appears motivated, because we love people who are
trying hard at anything. If someone gets all their work done and leaves early,
they don't look like a team player and people get jealous and resentful. I
think it's a common human response. For office politics, which often
determines salary and promotions, it often makes more sense to be there for
long hours than it does to produce amazing output. People love a martyr.

Some reasons you might choose to put in long hours at a startup or small
company with poor benefits and salary, instead of a BigCo with higher pay and
better benefits:

\- You can gain rank very quickly in a startup. As a programmer, the best I
can really do as an employee is either become a "lead" or move toward
management and try to become a startup CTO. I don't personally find this to
have a lot of value, but I do think it's common for people to work in a
startup for a year or two, get some fancy title and be able to claim credit
for a lot of things, then apply to other companies and try to enter at a
higher level. In a growing startup, you don't have that many stakeholders to
convince of your value, and if showing up is an influential factor in your
promotions, then it could be rational to spend lots of hours at work. I've
seen high-hour-low-output programmers transition to higher levels of
management, obtained mostly through long hours, which they will probably keep
them at the same level in their next job. If you've ever encountered a
bullshitter that adds no value but seems to have great credentials, then long
hours might have been a factor in how they got there.

\- Similarly, other coworkers have transitioned to other teams, instantly
giving them years of "experience" on their resumes. Late nights in the office
helped show the dedication and build enough trust to make that transition
without actually being qualified for the new position.

\- I know others that would never get hired at a BigCo, especially as a
programmer, but by staying at a startup and looking valuable with long days,
they get many more years of experience, more paychecks, a bigger social
network, and a pathway into management. For people in this position, long
hours are a good way to appear to be contributing without actually having to
perform that well.

\- It's easy to be misinformed about the value of equity, especially if the
founders have done a good job of selling the idea of everyone getting rich if
the company succeeds. Thinking of yourself as an owner makes it easier to
justify working longer hours.

\- If someone has an interest in learning a new skill, working late nights
could be looked at as continuing education that also gets you paid. I'd
certainly have learned more working for free at a company than I did in years
of university, and I put a lot of hours into university work. A company can
also be a useful structure to get help and to grow skills, especially if
you're under-skilled for your position.

\- A lot of people genuinely do want to give their all to something. This
makes sense to me too, because some people certainly do find a sort of bliss
in life-enveloping levels of work and discipline. I think people tend to view
this as an artist thing or an obsessive entrepreneurial thing. If you can find
a deep sense of purpose in your daily job that would make you want to work
long hours, that probably feels just as rewarding to some people as creating
that environment on their own, with less personal financial risk (and of
course, less gain).

> If you love hacking, why not keep bank hours at the office and work on your
> own projects outside of that?

I do exactly that. I work at an app startup, but I keep them limited to about
8 hours a day (well, 7, if you count lunch). I believe I provide good value
for the company, at least relative to the other talent they're able to
attract. I find being in an office to be very mentally draining, so I try to
work from home (which would be much harder at a BigCo), so I'm not burned out
by the end of the day.

When I'm done with work, at least a few days a week, I hack on projects at
night. I've learned so much more in my time outside of work than at work, so
I'm pretty happy with the arrangement. I'll be releasing an app that I've made
using this approach pretty soon. If I can make an extra $40k/year from my
part-time app development, I'm still ahead of what I could get at a BigCo, and
I'm closer to my dream of going indie.

~~~
avinassh
I am curious, what does your app do? Can you give more details if you don't
mind?

------
SheepSlapper
I've worked at three different startups so far, and I think it all boils down
to two things: how much you believe in the product, and what the culture is
like.

At my first startup the culture was really great (in the beginning, at least)
and the product was really cool. I had more fun working in that office than I
would if I had been going out every night after work instead, so the 12 hour
days didn't seem intrusive.

At my second startup, it was the complete opposite. The culture sucked, and
the product sucked. Which is why I put in what you're calling "bank hours" for
a year and then left. Lots of the people there worked much, much longer days
than I, and it's because they either believed in the product or they had
responsibilities outside of work keeping them there (wife, kids, etc).

Just a few anecdotal observations that (so far) held true for all the places
I've worked.

------
elliptic
Richard Hamming's thoughts (from You and Your Research) deserve to be quoted
in full (below). Probably they are less applicable the less research or
speculative work you do.

Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have
tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had
tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I
discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius
and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How
can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his
chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would
be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did
that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office!

What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound
interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person
who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice
outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you
learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it
is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it
is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one
person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will
be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to
heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit
harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say
it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to
study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done.
There's no question about this.

~~~
Oculus
I recently happened upon an interview of Elon Musk on his work ethics:
[http://youtu.be/4Fl9LRgG3_A](http://youtu.be/4Fl9LRgG3_A)

The main takeaway was work as hard as you can (i.e. 80 - 100 hour weeks). Even
if you're doing the same thing as the competition (assuming they work 40
hours), you'll still accomplish in 4 months what they would in a year. Hard
work, tenacity, and a little luck is what separates the smart from the
brilliant.

~~~
mattm
It doesn't work like that though. I'm sure most developers have had the
situation of not being able to solve a problem at the end of the day but the
next morning you end up solving it in 10 minutes. People need rest. Without
rest and recovery, your decision making process gets worse and slower.

The people I've worked for that were putting in 12 hour days always seemed to
be the people that wasted the most time at work.

------
serve_yay
Very advanced forms of gullibility. Plus if you work all the time you don't
have to worry about what to do with yourself. Should you go to a park, or hang
out with a friend, or...? Nah, just get some more coffee and work some more.

~~~
mattm
I've also seen guys work long hours because they didn't get along well with
their wives. It was an excuse not to go home.

------
mr_jojo
I tend think it's systemic of tech's new culture that's stuck in a feedback
loop with itself. The recent tech culture seems to stem some huge fallacies
about what it takes to be a "good" programmer and the agenda is pushed by all
the tech companies and charters.

For example, participating in hack-a-thons, commiting to open source,
blogging, tweeting, working on personal projects during the weekend, updating
your linkedin profile, participating in hacker news, etc...

Moderation is key and life is a trade off. So the extra time spent working is
your life slowly being wasted away for some other persons benefit for free.

Additionally, a lot of start ups believe will change the world, they won't.
Your tee shirt or food delivery business aren't going to change anything, but
for someone reason, they sell to their employees these lines and they believe
it.

The pressure to confirm and turn yourself into a model programmer seems more
toxic then anything else.

------
pleenq
I struggled with a similar question to this when I first began working, and I
think my own answers to that one will help you in answering this one.

First, the way you framed the question implies many external motivators for
work don't match with the possible rewards, when in fact a lot of people who
are sweating hard for someone else's dream are driven by internal motivators.
Why not put your all into what your do, regardless of who benefits the most? I
guarantee you, you will gain a lot of insight into what your capabilities are
when you find out your maximum operating capacity. At the very least, when I
see someone that puts enormous effort into something they don't necessarily
believe it, it makes me contemplate just how much effort they would put into
something they truly do believe in.

Next, to completely demolish my last point, I came to understand that all of
these internal and external motivations were very weak when it came to whether
or not I'd execute on something. The truth, as I see it, is that motivation is
like having a sailboat which rely on strong winds to blow you in one direction
or another. When these winds die down in one direction, you start steering
your rudder towards another direction that can return you to the same level of
progress towards your goal. Instead, the key is having discipline, which is
like having an engine that could push out in any direction no matter the state
of the wind. These startup environments are one of the ultimate areas to test
and strengthen discipline, as you have to push the limits that most people
would shrug off as impossible work conditions. Succeeding in that environment
is also a means of building your confidence up in order to take on larger
tasks, such as starting your own business.

It's also possible that a lot of the people you are seeing working long hours
are doing so because they're optimizing for long term gains (such as increased
job skills, more company responsibilities, startup contacts) which will
increase the likelihood of their startup being successful when they do strike
out on their own.

------
johnwbyrd
I've heard it said, "We work eighty hours a week so we don't have to work
forty hours a week." Me, I do it because I have a particular vision, and I
think that the world would be better off if that vision actually existed.
Can't do that while working for a bank.

------
constantinLG
Good to see that i'm not the single one that struggles with such existence
thoughts. Yes, i am a software engineer as well. I love challenges, and really
love to read a lot (marketing, entrepreneurship, things that helps create a
business). As a introduction about me, I wanted to earn a living from my
projects since 17 (there are more than 10 years since then). I started working
on personal projects, and unfortunately, i got the virus. The little successes
has got an amazing satisfaction to me, that couldn't be replicated in any job
i worked. And no antidote found by now :)

For the last 2 years, it got worse and worse. I quit once my job, got a new
one into a bigger company, stayed 3 months, offered the chance to work into a
startup(moderate engineering, moderate decisions), and after 7 months, i am
struggling again with giving up. What still keeps me in here are my personal
projects. I invest some money in few of my projects, because i somehow try to
buy my ticket to quit the full time job and go into the entrepreneurship world
by myself. Or at least, i want to buy a year of my work life, working for me,
as a try-learn-experience.

All successful entrepreneurs teach us not to give up the full time job until
we have a plan, savings, and our business already make some money working part
time. I hardly follow this advice, but this is the way i'm trying to follow
with my projects. Thanks to them, i didn't quit. The last 2 weeks were so
unproductive for me at job, my mind is only at my projects, investments, and
planning my escape to work for myself. My projects, my business...

So far by now, i can only advice you in what works for me: part time work on
your business, consolidate your escape plan. To me, DNhub.com, GetCode.org and
easyCustomMaps.com are my source of motivation to continuing what am i doing
now..

------
dreaminvm
There are incentives that come with working at startups like broader job
ownership, stock options (long term investment), and agile development. Then
there are incentives that are inherent in all Big Corps. like the large
bonuses you mentioned, job security and generally acceptable work hours.
Choosing between the two really boils down to your own ambitions and value of
time off from work.

Personally, I am very happy at a Big Co. because my schedule is flexible and
not insanely demanding (45hr/wk).

------
ChrisGeniusly
For me, I've been on all sides of this. Employee of a well funded company with
lot's of benefits, great income and a Shit-Ton of rules, policies and
procedures. I've been an entrepreneur starting my own company, building
everything from a mere idea, raising capital, hiring teams, the whole
experience.

Currently I'm an employee and fairly large share holder in someone else's
startup. The wages are not that great, but we are a close team, we all live
together, we share cars, we hang out together, we're a "family". As we become
more and more successful the perks get better and better. We go from sharing
apartments to sharing houses, from sharing a car to sharing more cars. We went
from working on top of each other in the apartments to our very large and well
decorated offices and the family grows. I get to try different approaches at
solutions and have way more control over the outcome than I ever had as an
employee at a big well funded corporate job.

We all have our own 'why', but logic might not be it. For me, I really enjoy
having a mission and being on that mission with my friends. As it's been said
"it's about the journey".

~~~
atomical
The term community might be more appropriate for what you describe.

~~~
ChrisGeniusly
Certainly more succinct.

------
kuni-toko-tachi
Working at a company is a lot like buying a stock with your time. Some
companies are like buying stock that won't appreciate much in value, but pay a
reliable but boring dividend. Others are riskier but promise high returns.

However, there are also many companies that do neither. They are not worth the
investment of time. In those companies, the investment of time is highly
unproductive and therefore extremely detrimental.

Where you choose to work is a critical life decision. Many times people who
become successful simply chose, by luck or insight, a better place. Effort is
not a reliable measure of outcome, just as a wealthy individual can go broke
making poor investment choices.

------
TheAndruu
For pride in knowing you helped something grow from scratch, vs. the
sluggishness of a big company plodding along.

There's a lot that goes into it. Personally, I like to get things done, and
experience the sense of accomplishment in seeing visible results.

Life at a big company can mean monotony and difficulty in seeing where your
part of the big machine actually makes a difference.

~~~
bigpeopleareold
Making a big difference at a startup actually feels worthwhile when you can
trust that the people around you also are making a big difference. Otherwise,
it's just pitifully useless work.

I agree with this, of course, and would bear the same opinion if things
actually worked for me.

This was my experience this year and I am now glad I have a regular salary now
(in a medium-size public company ... the monotony is a relief. :))

------
edman
I once was like most of your colleagues. I am an software engineer and I
worked in startups for couple of years. In the end I worked my ass off for
nothing. But I guess I can only blame myself. The problem was that I didn't
have a clear vision of where I wanted to be in the future.

~~~
bigpeopleareold
I feel a similar fate befell on me.

I wanted to gain things from working hard at the startups I was employed at,
but it turned into dead-ends. I even tried being a bit entrepreneurial myself
with a startup founder, but that fell flat. In part, I think I was around the
wrong people and in the other way, I was not being more critical enough.

I've come to the point that if a company wants me to work more, that a) I am
fairly compensated for my value or b) give me partial ownership immediately
and the dignity of my position. Otherwise, I am not interested.

