
Lessons from Sheryl Sandberg: Stop Working More Than 40 Hours a Week - MarlonPro
http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/stop-working-more-than-40-hours-a-week.html
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overshard
What bothers me is that it matters how long someone works in a week. If you
are getting payed for a 40 hour work week then you should only work 40 hours a
week. If you are getting paid hourly (as I do) who cares as long as stuff is
getting done. Some weeks I work 20 hours, some I work 60 it just depends on my
workload and mood.

If you want to work 40 hours a week and be done then go for it, good for you.
If you want to work 60 hours a week, also good for you. The problem comes with
you start judging other people by how long they work, just because someone
goes home at 5 every day doesn't mean they don't care about their jobs...

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w0utert
^ this

Hours worked must be one of the worst metrics for performance, productivity,
efficiency or commitment. I don't know why people in some countries or
cultures are so obsessed with how long they work, or how few days they take
off. Or actually, maybe I do know why, but it has nothing to do with 'amount
of work done' or 'quality of work'.

I think that more often than not, the people consistently putting in the most
hours are those who take the longest to finish stuff, and care the least about
the quality of their output. Anyone can sit behind a desk 10 hours a day to
impress the boss.

IMO no metric used to assess performance or productivity should include the
number of hours present in the office. Instead of 'hours worked this week' or
'number of days worked this year', the metric should be 'total number of hours
to finish the job', preferably divided by a factor based on the 'amount of
rework or support required afterwards' and/or multiplied by a factor based on
the flexibility of the person doing the work, both in terms of availability as
well as skill set. Of course some of these things are hard to track on a
spreadsheet, so they are rarely used.

Long story short: just try to do the best job you can in the most efficient
way possible, without turning into a bean counter, just because that's the
best way to impress your superior.

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kennu
I am confused when people even consider measuring productivity with hours
spent. It's like trying to measure the brightness of a lightbulb with the
amount of time it's been turned on - two totally different quantities.

Usually productivity can only be estimated by your boss, who measures it with
your salary, which can be converted to $/h or EUR/h. The work you get done is
then logically measured by hours * salary. That's what it's worth to the
company, anyway.

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greenyoda
I'd be curious to know whether Sheryl Sandberg's staff are also allowed to
leave at 5:30. Or is this just a privilege available to a senior executive,
which she might never even consider granting to her underlings? I'd be more
impressed to hear that software developers at Facebook could work the same
hours. Anyone at Facebook have any insights on this?

~~~
nbm
I don't know about staff closer to Sheryl (ie, not in e), but there are
definitely many software and other engineers working 40-45 hours a week fairly
standardly, and I seemingly don't hear enough negative chatter about it for me
to recall hearing any.

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temphn
Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook:

    
    
      http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130
    
      This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. 
      But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did 
      something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding 
      nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. 
    

Lessons from Yishan Wong, Director of Engineering at Facebook:

    
    
      http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-questions-to-ask-yourself-to-determine-if-you-are-ready-to-join-a-startup
    
      Working at a startup doesn't necessarily mean long hours, 
      but it does mean that it's not the hours that count, it's 
      the results.  If you need to work 80 hours to get 
      something done by next week, you will need to do it 
      because otherwise the startup might die - in a large 
      company, this might just result in some mild consequences.  
      Startup life tends to go in bursts.  You should be 
      comfortable with this.
    

Had Mark Zuckerberg left at 5pm in the middle of the news feed crunch, the
company probably would have died before it was able to pay Sheryl Sandberg so
much money to work 40 hours a week. Instead they coded 48 hours straight.

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wpietri
I believe the difference is "normal" versus "emergency". My startup aims for a
sane work-week, but if something caught on fire I would be there until the
fire was put out.

As long as that happens rarely, it's not a problem. And you keep it that way
by carefully analyzing each fire and making sure that you solve the root
causes.

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zht
If only Facebook allowed their employees to work only 40 hours a week instead
of forcing them to work nights and weekends during lock down periods.

She seems extremely out of touch with the workload for Facebook engineers.

[http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/06/facebook-lockdown-
google-m...](http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/06/facebook-lockdown-google-me/)

~~~
nbm
People aren't forced to work nights and weekends during lockdown, although
some teams may up their expectations for people to do that. I haven't been on
a high-priority project for a lockdown, but I imagine it is possible that some
go overboard. I also imagine it is likely that the guys who have good reasons
to not stay late or work weekends also teach the guys that go overboard a
thing or two much of the time. Working a few nights and weekends for a known
short period of time is different from a death march, making it a habit, or
having a culture that expects it all the time. Much like I imagine Sheryl does
a few late nights in a row and an impacted weekend every once in a while to
overcome some time-sensitive hurdles to the company's success.

The message is that the company is going to make it easy to work on and focus
on the particular high-priority projects you are involved in by increasing the
rate and operating hours for shuttles and kitchens, and making it even more
culturally acceptable (and even dutiful) to avoid distractions like meetings,
lower-priority projects, and so forth. Obstacles to getting work done, whether
during usual office hours (which are already not that usual) or not, are
reduced or removed.

For me, the lockdown concept gave me an opportunity to consider working on
more important things than the things that just happened to be in my tasks
list, my appointment calendar, what people in team meetings thought was
important, and so forth. Lower-value meetings started happening less
frequently or being indefinitely postponed. In terms of time, I think I ended
up working less at the end of lockdown than I did before it started.

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bishnu
Sheryl Sandberg leaves work at 5:30; she doesn't stop working at 5:30 [1]. In
that same article it goes to great lengths to talk about how late she stays up
working and how early she would start to ensure people didn't think she was a
slacker.

[1] [http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/facebook-sheryl-
sandberg...](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/facebook-sheryl-sandberg-can-
leave-early-why-arent-you.html)

~~~
rkudeshi
I believe that was in reference to what she USED to do, to avoid the slacker
stigma. Now she works less hours, proudly.

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plg
makes total sense. why work > 40 hrs per week if you're already making an
annual salary of $30,491,613 (2011, Wikipedia)... $14,659 per hr assuming 52
weeks x 40 hrs/week.

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rollypolly

      In six of the top 10 most competitive countries in the
      world (Sweden, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark,
      and the United Kingdom), it's illegal to demand more
      than a 48-hour work week.
    

The fact that it's illegal doesn't mean it's not happening.

~~~
njs12345
It's certainly not illegal in the UK if the employee signs a waiver when
hired:
[http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/WorkingHour...](http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/WorkingHoursAndTimeOff/DG_10029426)
(see "Opting out of the 48 hour week")

~~~
bmj
Is this typical for, say, the software industry there? I wonder if it's the
equivalent of non-competes and intellectual property agreements here:
ubiquitous enough that most people don't even blink when they are part of an
employment contract.

~~~
AlisdairO
In the UK it's fairly typical to work a 37.5 hour working week in the software
industry, with 20-25 days vacation. I work at $BIGCORP and work approximately
those hours, as do the vast majority of my coworkers (apart from at
intermittent crunch periods). My experience in previous businesses was roughly
the same, as is that of my friends in other companies - apart from a couple
who work longer because they want to.

This does _not_ apply to the (much higher paid) work available in programming
in the banking sector, where substantially longer work weeks are typical.

~~~
njs12345
You'll definitely get one for any finance job, even an internship.
Interestingly, they can't compel you to sign, but if you don't sign, they make
you jump through all kinds of hoops w.r.t reporting your hours and such and
mire you in so much bureaucracy you can't get anything done.

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mea36
As a woman in a start up and indeed generally as a member of a start up, I
find this recent uproar about Sheryl Sandberg quite frustrating.

I'll admit that I didn't watch the interview that she just did. However, I did
see her speak this past year at the Grace Hopper Conference. Yes, she goes
home at 5.30 to eat with her kids, but in this digital age it doesn't mean she
is done with work. She just uses technology to timeshift and work when it best
fits into her life. She goes home so she can be with her kids while they are
awake but she's still responding to emails and does work after her kids are
asleep. This is the beauty of digital age.

While I don't have kids, or a even significant other, I do, however, have a
personal life that I refuse to sacrifice because I am in a start up. I'm sure
many of you feel the same; this means I do work, I go out with my friends,
come home and do more work. Maybe I wake up earlier then everyone else, work
on weekends, etc. This is no different than what Sandberg does.

~~~
heretohelp
Be productive, ignore the haters, do your thing.

