
Don't Work 80 Hours a Week for Elon Musk, or Anyone - pmoriarty
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ev3b3p/dont-work-80-hours-a-week-for-elon-musk-or-anyone
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whoisjuan
If you're going to work 80 hours a week, at least work for yourself, while
doing something where you are free and where you can use your passion to fuel
the extra work. Work in something that is fun for you, that will make you
grow, that will help you to learn new things and hopefully it will allow you
to build equity for yourself.

Working 80 hours for someone else while sacrificing freedom, mental health,
family time, leisure time and self-development time (although someone could
argure that you will grow at that job) is simply financial stupidity. The
return over investment through the lens of your needs hierarchy will yield
incredibly low results.

Life is short. Your impact at a company like Tesla is going to be nominal
regardless of how many hours you put into work. There are some exceptions to
that, but that would be the case for most. If you are going to drink that
kool-aid of "here we work long and hard because we are changing the world", at
least be ready to face the realization that this might not be true. It will
definitely not be true at the scale of your micro-universe where more
significant things like relationships and health will be affected.

If it's an early startup, there's a chance that you can have exponential
impact by putting more hours into work, but still, 80 hours is not gonna
accomplish anything for anyone, especially in this BS tech culture where
people work hard for the optics and rarely because doing it can lead to
concrete and actionable decisions and progress.

If you're going to work 80 hours for someone else, don't tell anyone that
you're working 80 hours. Don't use it as a badge of honor. Don't try to
capitalize on your suffering. It makes you look stupid.

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ToFab123
Was at LEGO many years ago. I remember that a couple of guys in the same
department started to clock in overtime. A few days later a manager come by
the department and ask everyone to stop working. He wanted to find the root
cause for why people was working overtime, because according to LEGO
management, overtime is a sign of a process that does not work and that there
is something wrong in that department.

~~~
toasterlovin
This is such a paternalistic view of people and what they want out of life.
Yes, overwork is often an issue. And it is often indicative of underlying
problems. But there are lots of people who want to work more than 40
hours/week. We are created by DNA. Part of that legacy is competing with other
organisms for limited resources. I work a lot. Because there are things I want
which can only be obtained with money. And the price of some of those things
is determined _by what other people will pay_.

~~~
wakamoleguy
What about the other perspective, from the company's side? They set up their
processes, expectations, and pay based on a 40 hour work week. It's great that
you want to work and be paid more, but they have no obligation to be the ones
to provide that. Maybe they are trying to actively discourage that feeling of
animalistic competition within the office, because it will have a negative
impact on the organization, external to the individual's choice to work
longer.

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adetrest
I never understood this almost deity like admiration that people have for
individuals like elon musk or Jeff bezos (amongst others). They are massive
jerks who have built amazing fortunes at the expense of their employees. Why
are we admiring that? How is that a laudable goal in life?

~~~
lxmorj
Zerosumism

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sumanthvepa
I'm an independent consultant, and I have slightly more nuanced version of
this. First: all of us, Musk included, work for someone. In Musk's case, he is
working for his shareholders. There are two distinct, but correlated values
you need to consider with work. First, is the value that your work creates for
other people. This is captured by the price you charge for that work. The work
could be direct labor (as in being an employee,) or it could be the labor that
goes into a product sold to a customer (this would make you an entrepreneur.)
The second is the part of that value you are able to capture for yourself. The
higher the proportion, the greater your benefit. But remember you really care
about the absolute compensation you get, not the proportion of the value
create. You can be a small cog in the machine at Tesla and make $500K a year
or you can be an entrepreneur and capture 40% of your revenue as after tax
profit for yourself and make $150K. There is surely some hedonic value in
being independent, so depending on how much you value your freedom, that $150k
might well be worth $300K to you. In which case, you would be indifferent to
either working for Musk or for yourself. Of course a proper calculation, would
take into account growth prospects at both Tesla and your own business. I made
this calculation before leaving Microsoft, and preferred to take my chances as
independent consultant even though the initial income was less than a 10th of
what I made at Microsoft. But eventually my income turned out to be 3x greater
than I would have earned at MSFT over the same period, so the trade-off was a
good one. But remember, this only because I was a low levels employee at
Microsoft. My prospects at Microsoft were not good enough to get me to a CVP
position or better in any reasonable timeframe. For a person with a realistic
prospect of making VP or better at a FAANG, the calculation is considerably
more in favour of remaining an employee. In both situations it makes sense to
work as hard as possible to maximise the likelihood of a positive outcome for
you. So work as hard as you can in the direction that is most likely to give
you the greatest benefit.

~~~
shanghaiaway
If you're independent, you can live in a way that gives you a lifestyle that
would require a salary as an employee of $500k-1M

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benzofuran
I interviewed at SpaceX a few years back and can roundly confirm that
everybody I interviewed with, barring a VP, had what I'd call "the fear" in
their eyes - I ended up not getting an offer based on my lackluster college
GPA (this as a 10+ year experienced senior engineer), but it was concerning
enough I'd have likely not taken it had one been extended.

I appreciate what he's doing but the means are questionable - chew up folks
for a few years until they're too burnt out to go on, then recruit fresh grads
on name and the chance to be a part of something amazing.

~~~
VintageLight
I'm interested in what you mean by "the fear"?

~~~
shanghaiaway
The fear that comes from knowing that if you say or do anything, no matter how
minor, you may lose your job if your narcissist CEO disagrees with it.

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torstenvl
> _Stanford economist John Pencanvel reviewed World War I-era factory data and
> more recent literature to conclude that exceeding 50 hours in a week leads
> to diminishing returns_

Applicability questionable.

> _exceeding 50 hours in a week ... may actually reduce output_

> _But Musk is smart. He’s not talking about that kind of efficiency. He’s
> talking about m[in]imizing what he, the man with $24 billion, spends on his
> own workforce.... [so he 'll] try to draw extra work out of you_

Extra work doesn't make him richer if it results in reduced output. The
arguments here are in internal tension.

~~~
pesmhey
There’s also the tribal knowledge that you spend the last 10% of the time on
90% of the project. Perhaps every hour after 40 is diminishing, but required
to achieve your goal. Could be true, could be a fallacy, but just saying that
after a certain point you get diminishing returns maybe misses something
either way.

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epberry
I’m not sure using WWI era factory data is the best way to support the point,
but I agree generally. For me, decision making ability is vastly reduced if
I’m tired or burned out.

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WheelsAtLarge
Nothing could be truer. You end up harming your mental and physical health for
someone else's benefit. Musk does it but ultimately he is doing it for
himself, no matter what he says.

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devoply
Work 80 hours a week, make sure they pay you at least $250-300k for it. Retire
after 10 years.

~~~
PascLeRasc
*Retire after 10 years if you’re still alive.

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lamarpye
You should have your eyes wide open about the ROI from any job. IMO working
long hours for a big payoff can be worth it, a lot of fortunes and great
things have been done with this method.

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tessi3r
I think more people need to realize that the buzz / bullshit around "startups"
in this day and age is used significantly to trick naive noobies / NCG's into
working insane hours with sub-par pay and sometimes no benefits.

All under the guise of "changing the world" or "disrupting". IMO, people who
take time to think about things and implement solutions at a reasonable pace
are just as productive if not more productive than people who feel like they
always have to be "pushing".

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lxmorj
Zerosumism

