
If you stay in the office any longer, I’ll start charge you rent - sebazzz
https://ayende.com/blog/184195-A/if-you-stay-in-the-office-any-longer-ill-start-charge-you-rent
======
fabricexpert
That 60+ hour week job ad is a bit weird- surely anyone good who reads it
would immediately be put off? Why would you include that?

Then I read the CEOs reply after being called out for it on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/larbysamirouche/status/10314168074526351...](https://twitter.com/larbysamirouche/status/1031416807452635136)
If you don't want to look at twitter:

"Update: @dhh Nobody @GitHub cares about your tweets. The post expired. Focus
on your irrelevant development framework, failed career as a race car driver,
or Basecamp, which as you know, has no future and has been replaced by much
better alternatives that are highly innovative."

@dhh created Ruby On Rails

No wonder their website is still "under construction". Who funds these kind of
narcissistic idiots?

~~~
ericcholis
Wow...can easily call out @dhh for "unsuccessful" attempts at various
endeavors, but fails to recognize his impact on the very industry this guy
works in? Basecamp, being around since 1999 with 50 ish employees and
contributed heavily to the remote work culture. 17 years profitable is nothing
to sneeze at either.

I'd call a guy who can even try to be a race car driver in his spare time
immensely successful.

------
c17r
I’ll admit in my early 30s I did 7a-12a 5 (sometimes 6) days a week. But I was
the founding CTO and had a good amount of skin in the game. My hours broke
down as: 7a-4p support, calls, meetings, being available to the team. 4p-12a
working on my coding tasks.

It also involved walking around 6p-7p and “kicking out” others. Very rare was
anyone else there on the weekends with me.

Do I regret it? No.

Would I do it again? Hell no.

~~~
sujal
It sounds like you made a choice, and like the examples he cites in the
article, you had significant upside. And, kicking everyone else out meant that
you were aware of the tradeoffs, at least conceptually. Think a lot of us have
chose tradeoffs like that in our lives. The thing that's tacky here is that
the CEO assumes his employees need to behave like a founder.

------
EZ-E
Working anymore than 40h a week as developper for someone else is non-sense is
you just earn a fixed salary

~~~
baldfat
I have never had a salary job that did not require on a regular bases over 40
hours a week. I worked for a college and during August I would work easily 70+
hours a week getting ready for the school year.

~~~
saiya-jin
On contrary, I never had such a job - always 40h weeks, having 6 different
employers. In past 15 years I worked literally once hard over whole weekend,
to deliver on Monday 1am. In my current work I had to come during weekend once
every few months for go-live, but it was due to business nature of employer -
you can't patch ebanking or banking core integration during week (unless
fixing showstoppers of course).

I have some colleagues around me who work more than I do, for no good reason -
they don't get pay more because of this, some vague promise never put on
paper/email that maybe yearly bonus will reflect that (it rarely does), or
they might get a raise (they rarely do), or even get promoted (happened like
once in past 6 years). Surprisingly, their private life ain't very rich, they
definitely don't compensate "quantity with quality".

The remaining life that you have - be it next 30 or 60 years, NOW are the best
times to enjoy it. You will not get healthier or stronger over time, you will
not have more free time or motivation. You can't put a price on a life lived
well. What you definitely can do is having regrets later, when its too late.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Yup, I work 35-40 hours a week, outside of emergencies and legislative
deadlines.

------
Yizahi
Apparently this guy and his biggest "admirer" in that thread were both sued
for fraud (separate cases):

[https://twitter.com/larbysamirouche/status/10314168074526351...](https://twitter.com/larbysamirouche/status/1031416807452635136)

[https://www.scribd.com/document/153765712/Class-Action-
Lawsu...](https://www.scribd.com/document/153765712/Class-Action-Lawsuit-
Against-Eagle-Web-Assets-Ryan-Eagle-Harrison-Gevirtz-Others-In-Cook-County-
Circuit-Court-Chicago)

------
marsrover
I saw this Twitter thread yesterday and it was really strange and
cringeworthy.

I saw this guy Ryan Eagle[0] and man I just don’t think I’ve ever not liked
anyone as much as I now dislike him.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/realryaneagle/status/1031541248451125248...](https://twitter.com/realryaneagle/status/1031541248451125248?s=21)

~~~
bdcravens
I noticed both Ryan and Larby (job poster) are in Chicago, same city as DHH. I
find it hard to believe being involved in Internet marketing and angel
investing they don't know of Rails and DHH, and being in the same city as him,
almost makes me think this is a joke the 3 came up over beers.

------
peteboyd
This is why I stopped practicing law and started my own web design company
where I could set my own schedule. We strive to work 35 hour weeks and usually
come in around 35 to 40 per week. Burnout will happen at higher numbers.

------
jstanley
> I’m going to assume that this job pay six to nine times more than the
> average developer can make

[...]

> I’m assuming there is no such upside.

So which is it? :)

~~~
j2ko4r
You cut both sentences midway through in full they read:

>Based on the job posting and the interaction of the CEO on twitter, I’m going
to assume that this job pay six to nine times more than the average developer
can make, because otherwise I can’t really figure out why anyone would work in
such a place.

And,

>For this job posting, again based solely on the text and the CEO’s behavior,
I’m assuming there is no such upside.

The first quote is a complete enclosed thought about how for such a large
downside there _must_ be a large upside. It sets up the rest of the article.

The second quote comes much later in the article after he's explored why he
thinks the 60+ work week is such a bad thing and given examples of careers
where it is prevalent and that in most cases come with an upside to balance
it. He's returning to the starting assumption and coming to a conclusion for
the article based on all the points he's made in it including that the
behaviour of the CEO makes it unlikely in his opinion that the job really will
pay the employee back for all they give up to work a 60+ hour week.

This isn't a contradiction you've just smashed together two sentence fragments
without considering the context that led up to them.

------
ericcholis
I think somewhere there exists a perfect happy balance between work hour
requirements, project productivity and employee hours. My ideal candidate is
okay with a 45+ hour requirement, BUT does not become a clock-puncher.
Hopefully putting in 50+ because they want to or are deep into a project and
can't step away. But, will easily coast out of the office after 40 hours on
occasion.

I think the focus needs to be on setting a reasonable baseline and encouraging
productivity without sacrificing well-being or the work/life balance.

edit: I think maybe I wasn't clear about my last point. I'm very much on the
life side of the work/life balance. I'm okay with an employee who puts in 35
hours but is meeting/exceeding expectations. In fact, I encourage it. It's up
to the manager and the individual to have an understanding of what's expected.

~~~
sosilkj
"BUT does not become a clock-puncher"

if my employer is tracking everything i do and asking me to log time against
tickets/projects etc etc . . . yet doesn't expect me to be intentional about
defending my own time/life outside of work? sorry, but it goes in both
directions.

~~~
ericcholis
I can't ever see myself requiring time tracking on projects, that's far too
scrutinous. Unless we were billing hourly on project.

It's more about finding that balance of what the business needs and what the
employee needs. Setting standards and expectations is important so that
there's very little left to question or ambiguity if an issue ever comes up.
BUT, it's up to the manager to decide if there's other factors outside of
hours worked that contribute to productivity. I doubt that I'd ever write up
or fire somebody for putting in 35 hours and is meeting project/productivity
requirements.

I lean more towards the life side of the work/life balance. The company I
currently work for has purchased vacations for employees who took little or no
time off. Not out of policy, but out of need.

