
Jeff Bezos' advice: Don't aim for work-life balance; it's a circle - jrs235
http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezo-advice-to-amazon-employees-dont-aim-for-work-life-balance-its-a-circle-2018-4
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jfv
Easy for him to say. If you're at the bottom, you get little satisfaction or
recognition for performing well, and are instead judged based on things like
how much time you've spent in the office, how much code you've written, and
how much your superiors like you.

Don't listen to what the guy at the top is telling you to do with your life.
Ever. But do nod and smile when he says it.

~~~
tlb
"If you're at the bottom for long / You're doing something wrong."

Definitely don't listen to the people at the bottom telling you how to run
your life. Ideally, listen to people who started where you started, and rose
to where you want to get.

Bezos himself started fairly low.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_educ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_education)

~~~
goalieca
> Definitely don't listen to the people at the bottom telling you how to run
> your life. Ideally, listen to people who started where you started, and rose
> to where you want to get.

There's a lot of bad advice there too. People like to attribute their success
to something they did but most people have no clue why they are successful.
Luck has a lot to do with it and sometimes people succeed in spite of things
they think might help.

~~~
nostrademons
Who would you rather be: the person who attributes their success to their
actions, or the person who complains about not being successful?

You don't necessarily have control over whether you're successful, but you
have a lot of control over how you see yourself and your personal narrative.

~~~
goalieca
Why would i want to be anyone but myself? But to answer your point, arrogance
and ignorance are not something to covet and neither is whining.

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beeftime
"I love to come into the office with tremendous energy", says world's richest
man as he devises even crueler ways to exploit his employees.

~~~
cylinder
It’s easy for him because he distances himself from that aspect and only deals
with what he wants. He hires managers to get their hands dirty for him. It’s
just like how I buy my beef in a tidy packet at a glimmering supermarket and
don’t have to consider the slaughterhouse at all.

~~~
jryle70
We hear all the time that money can't buy happiness, here in HN no less, and
you are saying he has such a perfect life that he doesn't deserve to give any
life advice? Who should we be listening to?

Not sure if you spend time to read at all, but what he said is essentially you
can't be happy at home if you are miserable at work, and vice versa. Which
makes sense to me. Too obvious to be honest.

~~~
s73v3r_
This is true. But he is directly responsible for the culture that makes many
of his employees miserable at work.

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scrumper
In my experience those at the very top are horrified when they find out that
their staff believe that the boss requires them to enslave themselves to the
company.

I believe that in many cases cultures of overwork are intrinsically generated,
not imposed from on high. It could be fear of the boss, it could be a ruthless
layer of middle management, it could be example-setting by perceived high
fliers. Nothing is ever done about it because nobody wants to bother the execs
with that sort of nebulous and sticky issue (especially one which sounds like
whining).

It often happens with very driven and brilliant leaders, the types who
themselves frequently work very hard and very long hours. Doubtless there is
some social primate leader emulation dynamic, something we are helpless to
escape.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Well, even if the CEO doesn't mastermind the overwork, I think a leader is
responsible for everything that happens beneath them. They have full
visibility (if they choose) and hired those middle-managers (or the people who
hired them).

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I suspect that the real problem is the incentives for those middle managers.
The CEO often may set those without understanding the consequences for the
people below the middle managers...

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drenvuk
It's interesting how puff pieces about a specific person usually seem to crop
up all around the same time.

~~~
justherefortart
Well you have to offset treating your employees like shit.

Be a billionaire, then you don't have to worry about your work-life balance.

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tankerdude
Bezos is a really smart guy but here, I beg to differ. I interviewed for a
management role over at Amazon. I asked them what they thought of work life
balance and how many hours are we talking about a week. 60 or so was the
minimum, and that doesn't include lunches. 12+ hour days didn't seem like
something you can sustain no matter how much energy you have.

Sooner or later, you will get physically and mentally exhausted at work, even
though you have lots of fun doing so before you get wiped out.

I also informed them that if your engineers are working 70+ hours a week
basically every week, then you don't have an engineering problem but a
management problem. It's no longer a work-life balance, but purely a work-work
balance, and that it was up to management to ensure that they don't burn their
engineers out.

I didn't get to the next round (thankfully). I didn't "fit their culture". So
I thanked them and moved on. Better for them, better for me.

I personally want people who are effective, and can put in a solid day of
work. I still pull wisdom from, "Debugging the Development Process" back from
1994. I think it still holds true today for many aspects of software
engineering. Or am I really an outdated curmudgeon?

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pavlov
Live the circle. Feed the circle. Be the circle.

Whatever you do, don't be the low-energy guy in a meeting.

Thanks for the "advice".

~~~
jld
"Live the circle. Feed the circle. Be the circle."

Gavin Belson?

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mnm1
I'm sure this applies to the typical Amazon worker sweating out sixteen hour
days in non air conditioned warehouses for close to minimum wage and forgoing
bathroom breaks because of draconian management that starts directly with
Bezos. /s

Bezos is completely out of touch with the reality of work for most workers,
including most Amazon workers. Maybe for CEOs this advice might make sense,
but it's bad advice for most other workers, including most Amazon workers.
It's simply a plug trying to get workers to give up even more of their time in
exchange for nothing so the company can get more out of them. Bezos is the
last person on earth, literally, who should be giving workers advice. Few
people are so out of touch with the lives of regular workers as Bezos is.

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anotheryou
how much truly free time does one have on a work day?

Work, sleep, commute, eat, keep yourself fed, keep you and the house clean,
maybe do some exercise and a bit of whatever out of the ordinary needs to be
done (shopping for new shoes, fixing stuff in the house, doing the taxes).

Leaves maybe 4h and it's fair to have to rest 1 of it with some no-brain
activity.

So 3h for family, romance, hobbies, learning non-job related stuff, politics,
culture, reading, friends, side projects, building things, helping someone,
etc...

~~~
ronnier
That's why I'm doing everything within my power to work towards getting
financially free. It's not easy and it takes time, but I'm getting closer than
I've ever been.

~~~
martin1975
just curious, what does your definition of financially free. entail? living
off residual income or what?

~~~
scarface74
I'm not really that concerned about financial freedom right now. I am
concerned with optionality. Meaning I never want to be stuck at a job I hate.
For me that means a combination of staying marketable, keeping my network
fresh, and being careful about "lifestyle inflation" so I won't have to always
strive for the maximum income.

It's a big stress reliever knowing that if things go bad, you can always jump
ship.

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samstave
Not to be snide - but it's easy for the richest man on the planet to offer
such platitudes while articles came out that his UK employees were pissing in
bottles for fear of retribution for "circling" by the restroom for being less
productive.

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chimtim
Have an expectation that the work-life balance is a circle i.e. it is zero

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webaholic
How practical is it to achieve this "harmony" when you are up late at night
everyday trying to earn "points" in the latest development cycle? Oh well...

~~~
ryanlol
You could work for a while and then flee to $cheaper_place?

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bluedino
Let's go back to 1999 and ask him the same question. Heck, even at 2009 I'd
like to see the changes between those two times.

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martin1975
I heard Bezos is also selling the new 520 bridge...

