
Work/Life Balance Will Make You a Better Software Engineer - adamnemecek
https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/11/10/work-life-balance-software-engineer/?
======
Arjuna
My favorite work-life balance commentary comes from Darren Aronofsky's film
_Pi_ :

 _Sol Robeson_

You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine
if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the
time.

It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks. Insomnia haunts him and
he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end.

Finally, his equally exhausted wife... she's forced to share a bed with this
genius... convinces him to take a bath to relax.

While he's entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise.
Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that's a way to determine
density... weight over volume.

And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams "Eureka!" and he is so
overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king's palace to
report his discovery.

Now, what is the moral of the story?

 _Maximillian Cohen_

That a breakthrough will come.

 _Sol Robeson_

Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. You listen to your wife, she will
give you perspective. Meaning, you need a break, you have to take a bath or
you will get nowhere. There will be no order, only chaos.

Go home, Max... and you take a bath.

~~~
nitpicker9123
This is the first time that I hear the claim that Archimedes was married.

Wikipedia: "It is unknown, for instance, whether he ever married or had
children."

~~~
a-priori
It's a parable, not a claim. Since it's unknown whether he was married, just
suppose he does. Then you can tell a story where the moral depends on him
being married.

------
aetherson
Yeah, I'd like to see some actual data. Some kind of scientific study,
anything.

I don't say this because I'm a proponent of work-at-any-cost culture -- I'm
not. I work about 45 hours a week, no weekends or nights outside of rare
emergencies. That's certainly good for my mood and my relationship with my
family and so forth.

But I see all these articles in which they suggest that after 40 hours a week,
your productivity crashes or goes negative or whatever, and it strikes me as
wishful thinking. The universe does not often line up to give us win-wins like
this. My belief is that, probably, for at least a lot of people, if you spend
a few years working super hard, you'll probably gain a lot of skill and be
highly productive. Maybe if you keep that up for decades, accumulated stress
will make it a net negative. Maybe some people have really low tolerance for
stress and will much more rapidly turn to net negative.

But the idea that it is universally or near-universally true that everyone is
more productive on a 40 hour week is at best under-argued, and, I'd guess,
probably mostly untrue.

~~~
DougN7
Completely agree. And the fact that the breaking point is a nice round 40,
which just happens to correspond with our culture's 5-day work week and
typical 8 hour day is a little too convenient to believe.

~~~
lazerwalker
The apocryphal story I've heard is that the 5-day / 8-hour workweek came from
Henry Ford doing rigorous research on productivity in his factories (and that
40 hours/week was less than the norm at the time).

I'd believe that's true, but I'd also believe there's reason to suggest that
what holds for factory workers doesn't hold for information economy workers.
(Although anecdotally, I find that I'm WAY more productive when working closer
to 6-hour work days than 8-hour days.)

~~~
Declanomous
>I find that I'm WAY more productive when working closer to 6-hour work days
than 8-hour days.

I'm glad someone else has noticed this. The fact that I still end up feeling
burned out if I constantly work 8 hour days has made me feel very lazy. It's
weird, I feel like I can work at top speed all the time if I work 6 hour days,
but if I try to maintain that same pace with longer days then I hit a wall. In
effect, I need to pace myself to work 8 hour days.

The only time I feel like I need a day longer than 6 hours is when I'm in
meetings all day. Meetings and working seem to use two different kinds of
energy. So I could meet for 3 hours about something and work for 6 hours just
fine, but I'd be wasting my time if I was attending 3 hours of meetings each
day.

The thought above pretty much reinforces my belief that the hours we work have
nothing to do with productivity, and everything to do with an illusion of
fairness. My boss spends more than half his day in meetings. It probably
wouldn't look good if I was working 3 hours less than him each day just
because I don't have as many meetings to attend. The issue is even trickier
when I consider the fact that many of my coworkers need less concentration to
perform their roles, and would be perfectly fine working 5x10s by their own
admission.

------
supergeek133
You know what makes me the most productive? Working when I have the motivation
to do so, I don't mean "I only want to work when I want"..

But sometimes it'll be midnight, and you'll get that brainpower flowing for
some reason (I tend to be a night owl)...

Thankfully my position is flexible enough to then take the associated breaks
the following day if I need to, or just go home if I'm not super productive
(meetings permitting anyway)

~~~
no_protocol
Flexibility like this is amazing for individuals who desire it. I'm in a
similar position.

I'm not so sure it would work well if I had teammates that needed constant
interaction.

~~~
supergeek133
I have one, and it's challenging sometimes. Analysis Paralysis really gets
under my skin.

------
mi100hael
How many people out there really keep working on the weekends voluntarily as
the author seems to suggest? I'm pretty clear with my coworkers/boss that the
only time I'm going to work after-hours or weekends is in case of rare,
extreme emergency. There's no expectation that I work weekends, so I'm
definitely not going to do it voluntarily. I like programming and like
learning new things so I often do work on a side-project of some sort, but
that's firmly my time, not my employer's.

~~~
dahart
I don't know how many other people do, but I do, since I'm in a startup and
I'm my boss. I'm worried that I might get fired any day now by myself for not
working hard enough. ;)

Seriously though, it's harder to avoid in startups, and this forum is more or
less dedicated to startups, so I'd expect quiet a few people here do land in
this boat. I'd also guess side projects that involve programming probably
count as work, as far as what the author intended, and everyone here has side
projects going.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of managers that subconsciously reward
extra time, and plenty of workers that will put in a little extra to get
ahead. It's not fair or good for work/life balance, but it happens. Drawing
your own hard line is a good thing, and nobody should be expected to put in
unpaid time, but sadly it doesn't work the same for everyone everywhere, and
being too vocal about extra work can have unintended consequences.

------
ksk
After reading such articles I'm always left with the feeling that as software
engineers we think we are in some kind of magical domain that is completely
different from where the rest of worlds engineers/scientists do their work. I
work with a lot of scientists, and most of them have pretty much zero sense of
work life balance. They work long hours, often work on weekends, are obsessed
about their work, and exhibit all the "red flags" as blog posts like these
like to point out. Yet, they are extremely productive; many are world-class
scientists who hold dozens of patents. And its not just me, I'd say a TON of
scientific and cutting edge engineering work is done by people toiling long
hours with not a semblance of a balance in their lives.

(N.B. I'm not endorsing one way or the other, but the insistence of articles
like this that X requires Y often goes unchallenged)

~~~
Swizec
> I'd say a TON of scientific and cutting edge engineering

The problem is that most of us _think_ we're doing cutting edge engineering
work, but really we're not. We're just the manual laborers of the information
age. Artisans at best.

We the average joe engineers of the world, need rest and work/life balance.

That said, Feynman is famous for crediting the stepping away from work work
and going back to joyous play, with making discoveries that lead to a Nobel
prize. If he kept pushing himself and toiling on the busywork that Real
Research was pushing on him, he'd never get anything done.

~~~
ksk
>That said, Feynman is famous for crediting the stepping away from work work
and going back to joyous play, with making discoveries that lead to a Nobel
prize. If he kept pushing himself and toiling on the busywork that Real
Research was pushing on him, he'd never get anything done.

Hmm, I don't recall him ever saying that. Do you have a cite for that?

What I do recall is him saying he often worked on problems that served no
greater purpose, essentially for the fun of it rather than any assumed
utility. He may very well have been toiling for long hours on those problems.

~~~
Swizec
It's from Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. Here's a 1874 day old HN thread
about it that also links to a full quote:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3033359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3033359)

I remember seeing it in youtube forme once, too. Might be this 1 hour
interview, but I can't find the exact timestamp now:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zZbX_9ru9U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zZbX_9ru9U)

------
personjerry
Why is the end goal to be a better software engineer? It seems like to me that
life itself (and hence work/life balance) should the priority of anyone. If
anyone disagrees, I would love to hear your thinking.

~~~
shados
Many people like to take something they're good at and push it to it's
absolute limit. For some it's Starcraft, DOTA or League. For some its
parenting. For some its wall climbing. For some it's an open source project.
For some its their day job. In that last category, some are software
engineers.

------
overcast
I certainly do not work on my off hours for the company I work for. However I
WILL work on my own projects on off hours for my own personal
ventures/amusement. Often times, this is how I learn most of my new
technologies.

~~~
Pfhreak
These aren't, in my view, necessarily orthogonal. I recently had a big,
ambiguous project on my plate where I had to learn some new technologies. I
had a good time making toy prototypes of the system I would eventually end up
building.

It was my off hours, it furthered my work, and it was fun and fulfilling for
me. The best is when your work gives you ambiguous problems that feel like
side projects you'd normally want to do anyways.

------
liquidise
> _You need a hammock to solve hard problems_

Tangentially related to this point (less so the section itself) is the benefit
of a comfortable working environment. Personally, i have found that a curved
chaise is the absolute peak of laptop coding comfort, especially for late
night sessions.

If you have space and are in the market for some new furniture, i would urge
people to give them a try.

~~~
sotojuan
I don't even want a hammock or chair—just a quiet room would be a good start.

------
shados
I strongly believe and practice work/life balance. While I love my job, I love
coding, I have several open source projects, etc, and I do sometimes work on
nights and weekends, I can't sustain it for very long before I crash and burn.

That being said, the best engineers I know all work crazy hours. Even when
they don't they're absurdly productive, but on top of that, they work insane
hours without skipping a beat. They shouldn't, they don't need to, they'll get
promoted without it easily...but they do anyway. And they still manage.

I don't know what to say to that. But that's my reality, at least.

~~~
pmiller2
How does someone like you (and me) compete with those people who can sustain
the crazy hours?

~~~
shados
We don't. Not everyone can be a nobel prize winner. It's okay to be second
best sometimes :)

~~~
pmiller2
I'm ok with second best. I just want to make sure I can still get hired in X
years.

------
deepGem
This is true if the 40 hours that you spend is on deep work. You are pushing
your intellectual limit all the time. Practically this isn't the case right ?
Most of our work, whether we like it or not, falls into the realm of JSON
parsing. 50-60 hours of such work is still fine in my opinion.

------
j8m88
This post pretty much makes the statement a lot of scientific research has
already proven. Your brain needs rest in order to form new neural connections
(especially when you're learning). Working long hours to the point where you
are experiencing mental fatigue is counterproductive to one's efficiency and
overall output. Even for those people who are capable of pulling 12 - 16 hour
days their productivity wanes after a certain point and are more prone to
producing lower quality work and making errors.
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-
downtime/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/)

------
debt
Work/life balance makes you a better person too

------
WhitneyLand
This premise is just wishful thinking. Work life balance may make us happier,
it may be the best choice to lead a fulfilled life, but it's wrong to suggest
it's going to make us win at software development.

List the people you would rate as the top 10 computer scientists or engineers
over the last century. Now, how many of these people worked only 40hrs a week
or less?

If you're not interested in greatness, or maxing out your true potential, then
balance is a fine (maybe wiser) choice. But please don't discredit obsession
and single mindedness after they have been the force behind so many
accomplishments.

------
ThomaszKrueger
Except that a software engineer has a pretty set salary ceiling and it is much
easier to get a side job at night then get a comparable salary raise. The
temptation to perform extra work is just too big.

------
debt
Norman mailer use to say that if he woke up and didn't feel like writing that
he'd write himself into a good mood.

If whatever you're working on isn't doing that, do something else.

