
Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance - kratiki
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/03/googles-scientific-approach-to-work-life-balance-and-much-more
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Bulkington
Is it possible for anyone who thinks for a living to truly 'segment'? The best
I can hope is really intense distraction: mountain biking, sailing, even golf.
It's amazing how little I consider anything else while playing golf--but I
couldn't get away in the middle of the afternoon unless I had the flexibility
to get good work done from 4-7AM.

Intuitively, I'd bet job satisfaction is right up there with mate selection as
a happiness driver, so it's certainly worth understanding.

But thinking about 'work' (the task at hand) should be distinguished from
thinking too much about all the merde that is 'the job.'

~~~
incision
_> "Is it possible for anyone who thinks for a living to truly 'segment'?"_

Sure.

I'm finding this really hard to articulate, but here goes...

I feel like this should be self-evident, but we've been trained to think
otherwise, to believe that giving so much of our time and energy is completely
normal or even noble.

I've worked with my hands and with my mind, as a full-time employee, a union
member and an at-will contractor.

There's actually nothing terribly special or unique about thinking for a
living - it's still work with energy and opportunity cost for doing it. When
the toll is primarily mental it's harder to perceive, but just as real.

The big difference between knowledge workers and everyone else is what
individuals and workers as a group will put up with.

Tech workers accept being sent home with laptops and cellphones by an employer
who doesn't want to pay three shifts worth of coverage for a 24/7 operation.
Elsewhere this is prevented by unions, regulations and the implicit
understanding that allowing the next man to devalue himself today will devalue
the group tomorrow.

~~~
saurik
I have a difficult time stopping thinking; I consider this a big difference
between thinking and acting: I would even argue I do not have conscious
control over what I am thinking about... it isn't even clear to me I have
conscious knowledge that I _am_ thinking about something (hence why sometimes
I seem to get more done while asleep than I do while actively thinking:
sometimes I purposely go to sleep while working on a hard problem as there is
a good chance I will wake up with an answer). So yes: I agree with you that
thinking and acting can have similar costs and pains and should somehow be
reglated to avoid serious problems, but I haven't figured out how yet: I don't
even use email, and while I'm clearly addicted to my phone (I am at a party
right now... clearly not ;P), taking my phone away would not allow me to stop
thinking about the code I was working on earlier today... I was momentarily
distracted while talking to some people, but as indicated by the person you
were responding to, that's all I seem to be able to hope for: finding things
that are sufficiently distracting to let me reclaim my own brain.

~~~
keithpeter
I know the problem, teaching can be a very absorbing occupation.

What I do is keep a notebook and write stuff down. That seems to 'earth' the
thoughts in some way so I can stop thinking about that. I read the notes when
starting a working day.

~~~
keithpeter
Surprised at downvote, just sharing my own experience.

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calibraxis
These Boss 3.0 names obscure the old concepts. Google's moves are part of
building a "company town." [1] People Operations is "human resources" [2], and
its People Science is the same "scientific management" data-gathering used by
slave-owners [3], corporations and the military.

Model View Culture minces fewer words about how tech corporations mold their
workers' individual identities: ([http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/tech-
workers-political-sp...](http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/tech-workers-
political-speech-and-economic-threat))

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19sfvalley.html?pagewan...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19sfvalley.html?pagewanted=all)

[2] [http://www.google.com/about/careers/teams/people-
operations/](http://www.google.com/about/careers/teams/people-operations/)

[3] [http://hbr.org/2013/09/plantations-practiced-modern-
manageme...](http://hbr.org/2013/09/plantations-practiced-modern-
management/ar/1)

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pmiller2
I'm interested in identifying companies that focus on results and not hours of
"butt in seat" time. What's the best way to do that?

I prefer to be a segmentor, but it seems like a lot of companies prefer
integrators, to the extent that they want, as alluded to in another comment,
to eliminate work/life balance by making work and life synonymous. That's
definitely not for me.

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overgryphon
This can depend more on the particular product group and manager you work for
than which company. All big companies have less than perfect managers, and
some people have a hard time accepting work/life balance choices that are
different than their own.

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noobermin
While I applaud the effort, the only issue here is the sample is restricted
only to "Googlers." That's a bit of bias for their sample already. Google is
hardly an average company, so the results they glean from their employees
might not generalize as well.

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tootie
Interesting stuff. I feel like over the years I've moved from being an
integrator to segmentor. I think it just comes with experience. I have a
better understanding of what to expect, which "emergencies" I can ignore or
postpone. How to avoid putting myself in a potentially stressful situation. I
have a metric for this too. I suffer from a mild medical condition that flares
up when I'm stressed. I used to suffer from it at least once a month. Now I'm
down to every 6 months. I credit maturity.

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zoba
I wonder what sort of life experiences might influence whether one is a
segmentor or an integrator. I am heavily a segmentor, which I suppose I'd
attribute to growing up with divorced parents. I was shared between my
parents, one week at moms and one week at dads. Each house had it's own rules,
toys, friends, etc. I'd never considered it before, but, it seems like I was
raised to be a segmentor.

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jacalata
I wonder how they control for the Hawthorn effect in their 'fix it for just
some people' experiments.

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miloshadzic
Heh. I took a photo of that same girl(I think) on the cover photo when I was
in India:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/miloshadzic/7102823323/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/miloshadzic/7102823323/)

~~~
cclogg
Nice, that was shot on film right? Love the look. Also, seems like a bit of a
light leak... a tip: I once glued some black foam-paper on the door-hinge to
my old film camera, because the original one from the 70's had worn off haha.

~~~
miloshadzic
Yeah all of them were shot on film. I had two cameras, one was a Yashica
GTN(those that don't have a leak) and a pocket Fujica. I'd had fixed the leak
if I knew about it but the thing is I got it right before the trip heh.

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dethtron5000
I would be curious if Googlers on this list feel that Google does a good job
putting these insights into practice.

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QuantumChaos
I didn't really get the point of the article, so I'm just going to comment on
work-life balance at Google in general.

Basically, you are freed from any unnecessary constraints in choosing your own
work life balance. You are judged by the work you do, regardless of how long
it took you to do that work, or which hours of the day you did that work.

The company goes to reasonable lengths to allow remote working, but they can't
make up for the inherent disadvantage of not being in the office/campus when
other people are.

In my opinion, that is the best that a company can do in terms of promoting
work life balance. A company could also actively try and stop people from
working more than X hours, but I don't see why that is a good thing, if a
person really wants to do it.

Many posts on HN suggest that when a person chooses to work long hours, this
is (A) an irrational choice on their part and (B) imposes externalities on
other people, and therefore should be culturally discouraged. On (A), it's
hard to judge all cases, but some people really want/need the money. On (B)
that is really just wanting to avoid competition. If another person is willing
to work longer hours or accept less pay, that is going to harm me, but it is
also how the free market works. I'm happy to accept market wages because
that's how capitalist societies work, and both in theory and practice, they
work* pretty well.

* And by "work" I mean that they provided the overall best outcome, including for the worst off. I added this disclaimer because there is always one comment that says something like "yes capitalism works... for the rich".

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insuffi
Except for B) having nothing to do with free market. 1)The problem with a
long-hours work culture is that long hours don't translate to productivity,
and it's rather hard to quantify productivity in a programming setting. It's
an emotional/managerial phenomenon.2)It's not avoiding competition either. If
the optimal work hours for a programmer are 4-6 hours, then 10 hours surely
will lower his/her productivity and just project "more work". As a result, we
get a badly competitive micro climate based on "projections" of more work.

I suggest you look at how Finland approaches non-competitive study in
elementary and high schools, which propelled them to the top of the world in
terms of quality.

~~~
QuantumChaos
I'm not describing encouraging people to work long hours for the sake of it,
but rather people working longer hours in order to get more done. It seems
like you don't believe it is possible for a company to reward people based on
their actual results, ("it's rather hard to quantify productivity in a
programming setting") but that is what Google does. No one really notices how
much time you spend in the office.

So I would accept your points (1) and (2) to the extent that they apply in a
particular setting. But these arguments don't apply to Google. If a person at
Google chose to work longer hours, and ended up being less productive, that
would really only harm themselves.

~~~
insuffi
1) No such thing as long hours for the sake of it. It's always to get more
"done". And like I mentioned in my parent post, there's no such thing after a
certain number of hours. 2)I don't believe it's possible for a company to do
that, or at least not to the extent that you're saying. 3)Based on some of the
interviews people have had here with Google, it seems that Google could use
some more "reward based on performance" in their culture.(or a lot)

p.s. Keep in mind that my competition point still stands. Longer and longer
hours are of no good. It's a slippery slope. And yes, I think such competition
is poisonous and detrimental, even if some more work gets _done_. Working more
hours just pulls everyone down,* in regards to your free market comment. It's
price competition.

*even if it's not projection, but actual performance. Soon enough, everyone is working more and more to catch up to you, and everyone's miserable. That's not sustainable practice.

~~~
orangecat
_Soon enough, everyone is working more and more to catch up to you, and
everyone 's miserable._

That's an argument against high performance regardless of hours. But I doubt
many Googlers are miserable because they have to "compete" with Jeff Dean.

~~~
insuffi
I guess it is. It _sounds_ wrong to me as well, but there's only so much
performance you can fit into certain hours. Thus, more hours are bound to
become the norm, in my opinion.

~~~
nostrademons
That assumes productivity remains constant, which has historically been a poor
assumption, both in the economy at large and with individual people. When you
do something a lot and have a modicum of intelligence (and most Googlers do),
you figure out new, more efficient ways of doing things. That lets you
accomplish more while working shorter hours.

The unfortunate thing is that if you're really good at making things more
efficient, people want you to do it all the time, but if you're paid for
results (Googlers are) and decent at setting boundaries (by and large Googlers
aren't, but this is an individual-responsibility thing), you can work out
compromises that give you both professional advancement and time for a life.

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dave1629
What's missing from this is that Google's culture is designed to eliminate
work-life balance by making as much of life as possible focus around work. A
significant part of the compensation for Google employees is in the form of
good "free" meals (including dinners), lots of services, entertainment, etc.,
all without leaving the Google campus. Would be interesting to see how the
results are different from similar surveys done at a company like Microsoft
that doesn't have such an all-encompassing work environment.

~~~
jacques_chester
Microsoft pretty much _invented_ the all-encompassing work environment. The
nickname in the 90s for the Redmond campus was "The Velvet Sweatshop".

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mrjj
Blah-blah-blah HR stuff, blah-blah-blah, leaders, goals, performance, roles.

The true science approach should aware that massive surveys can measure
everything but the thing you want.

People don't "trust" that survey anonymous and trying to reflect what they
expected to say in survey. Human can't seriously tell something to the stone,
communication doesn't work this way. If there is a really stone of anonymous
survey, human have to give him imaginary human trait, expectations and ability
to evaluate him. "What are you want from me, dear stone?" So, confidentional
procedure doesn't mean that people anser like it is confidentional.

Interviewer presenation - that the sociological surveys is actually measure,
and there is only the ghostly shape of personal realtion behind this.

The second thing is the question interpretation: "I don’t like to have to
think about work while I am at home." Can mean: 1\. I don't like any serious
thoughts at home. 2\. I thinking all time about work ant don't like this. 3\.
I just don't like and not thinking. 4\. I'm deep in self-estrangement and
prefer not to thing about work at all.

Event "think" can be perceived in many ways: specific persons, tasks, it
domain at all.

How massive survey is doesn't matter until we have raw data in hands. Some
manipulation with R or whatever and there is a some groups and strict
classification, some more and there is completely different classification,
one question data can change everything or be just excluded to make picture
"clear".

The point is that any changes in methodology of survey researches usually
demonstrate applied catastrophe theory when any shift can significally change
the results. Don't trust any conclusions without detailed step-by-step
description of methodology.

In general, measure the pressure, scan brains, make tests aimed to somatic
responces, use anal probes, but dont't ask the questions if you really want to
understand something about people.

