

How do you make programmers in a startup work 60–80 hours a week? - mooreds
https://medium.com/@gerrydimova/how-do-you-make-programmers-in-a-startup-work-60-80-hours-a-week-9ddc1bd6abb4

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minimaxir
Relevant discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923882)

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dragonwriter
> How do you make programmers in a startup work 60–80 hours a week?

Make this expectation clear when hiring them.

Pay them appropriately.

Better question: _Why_ make your programmers work 60-80 hours a week. That's
way past the point where you are likely to see diminishing marginal utility
for each hour of work, and probably into the range where you are, if done over
more than a very short spurt, you are likely to see diminishing _total_
utility for each hour they are demanded to work. And you are definitely going
to increase burnout/turnover risk. So, why do it?

(Yes, the actual medium.com article is _not_ at all about the question asked
in the title. But, anyway...)

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mooreds
> Pay them appropriately.

By paying them appropriately, I assume you mean at a market hourly rate?

That's one of the two contexts where I as a developer would be interested in
working more than a 40-50 hour week.

The other context would be where I had substantial ownership and believed in
the product.

~~~
dragonwriter
> By paying them appropriately, I assume you mean at a market hourly rate?

I'd actually assume that above-average work hours would command a premium
price above the "market hourly rate". As with most things, free time as a
declining marginal utility, which means _sacrificing_ free time has an
increasing marginal _disutility_ which must be paid for by what is offered in
exchange for that sacrifice. (This idea is reflected in wage & hour rules that
require non-exempt employees to be paid a premium for overtime; while
programmers may generally be FLSA exempt and not subject to that requirement
-- largely because they are in a class of labor with skill and responsibility
that is presumed to be able to negotiate appropriate reimbursement -- the
basic principle behind it still applies.)

But, yes, I mean "pay them what is appropriate in the market for the extra
time".

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marssaxman
Easy: just set all of your investors' money on fire.

Oh, no, wait, that's just an easier way to accomplish the same result.

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sirbetsalot
Sadly this is still a relevant question due to the fact that if you give your
programmers every leeway they will take advantage, not work, slack for 2 weeks
and do nothing. happens all the time.

As a boss nothing angers you more then paying someone 7-10k a month on top of
all the taxes and costs and watching them bitch and complain about coming to
the office and commit nothing until the "feel like it" under the guise of
"programming happens when it happens". This is real money and it is painful to
raise it and just give it away. The developer doesn't have to answer to the
angry investors and have their reputation ruined forever when the company
fails. They get to skate off and go work at Facebook with valuable "startup
experience" under their belt.

The reality is that 99% of programmers have bad attitudes and if you find the
gem that actually pulls the cart with you, hold on to that unicorn with every
ounce of your being.

~~~
mooreds
Do you think that 99% of all employees have bad attitudes, or is it just
developers?

I'm asking because I've met very few developers who "commit nothing until they
'fell like it'". Those don't sound like professionals, they sound like
children, and I agree, it would be frustrating to depend on someone like that.

~~~
sirbetsalot
99% of developers cannot organize themselves and develop a monstrous amount of
high quality code in a short period of time. 100% of developers can demand big
paychecks, all of the perks, working from wherever they want, never working in
an office and work on their own time when they feel like it.

As an employer I used to be upfront and tell developers there is a 90% chance
you will be gone in the first week, but if you make it i'll pay you 15k a
month no problems and give you anything you want.

I went from a 75% bad hire rate to a 0% bad hire rate after that. just 1 data
point here.

