
What Long Hours Really Mean - johnjlocke
http://wearemammoth.com/2013/11/long-hours
======
dalek_cannes
Every human being deserves an average of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of
family/leisure, 8 hours of sleep and 2 days a week free. _Even a doctor on
whom many lives are depending_. Lives of critical employees are just as
valuable as the lives of those who are affected if they don't work harder. The
whole "if I don't do this, the project will sink / things will be destroyed"
is a self-imposed ransom situation that managers count on.

~~~
com2kid
By what natural law is this true? By what will of nature or physics are you
deriving your statements?

Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that
way.

People around the world deserve not to live in fear of their government
killing them. Women deserve not to live in fear of being raped. Children
should not live in fear of abuse. Yet untold millions starve, are beaten,
tortured, abused, have lives of unimaginable torment and despair, and you have
the gall to talk about how the privileged few should not work so hard?

How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until
suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached.

~~~
normloman
"How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until
suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached."

Chances are, you ain't alleviating suffering around the world by putting in
overtime at your shitty startup job. So feel free to pack up at 5PM.

~~~
gjm11
I can't speak for com2kid, but I am alleviating suffering around the world by
working hard at my (not particularly shitty) startup job. The amount of money
I give to charity is an approximately-constant fraction of my income. If I
work harder I'm more likely to get paid more (and, unless I work so hard as to
be _less_ productive overall, which is certainly possible and a very bad idea,
my employer is more likely to be successful and make my options worth
something), so the starving billions get more money from me.

I don't think this situation is all that unusual. Charitable giving that's a
fixed fraction of income is common practice in many religions (which have a
whole lot of members) and among the "effective altruism" community (which is
small but I bet it's overrepresented among HN types), and is a natural enough
thing to do that I bet lots of other people do it.

(Ideally I wouldn't need to say these things explicitly, but I will anyway: Of
course working harder is not always a good idea; as I said above, it's very
much possible to work harder and merely make yourself tired and therefore less
effective. And of course working harder, whether it makes you more effective
or less, is no guarantee of getting paid more; plenty of employers are quite
unresponsive to their employees' commitment and productivity. If anything I've
said above looks as if it's denying those things then I expressed myself badly
and I apologize.)

~~~
normloman
Giving money to charity is good. But if you worked less, you'd have more time
to volunteer. I'd say that's more valuable.

~~~
gjm11
I think current best estimates are that the most efficient charitable
donations you can make save about one life per $2000 donated. If you're a
decently but not extravagantly paid US software developer (I'm not, but the
money is in the right ballpark) then maybe your salary is $100k/year; let's
say you donate 5% of that before tax, or $5k/year; that's 2.5 lives saved per
year. Most things you could do by volunteering _full time_ probably do less
good than that.

(Of course "lives saved" is an unsatisfactory metric; something like QALYs
would be better. But the lives-saved figure is the one I happen to remember.)

------
tikhonj
I think the last point is also the most important: working longer hours does
not make you more productive on an _absolute_ scale! It's not that you
accomplish less per hour, it's that you accomplish less full stop.

Now, working an 80-hour week once in a _rare_ while? That actually works. If
you have a really important deadline or really need to get something done,
sure. But doing it regularly is completely irrational. Take a look at "Why
Crunch Mode Doesn't Work"[1].

[1]: [http://devopsangle.com/2012/04/18/what-research-says-
about-w...](http://devopsangle.com/2012/04/18/what-research-says-about-
working-long-hours/)

It's also very important not to fall into a trap that demands extreme hours
often. It's too easy to think it'll be "just this once". And if it really is
just once--for some very good reason--then fine. But if you catch yourself
doing it repeatedly, watch out.

If you want to accomplish anything, you should of course be willing to work
hard. But, more importantly, you have to work _efficiently_. Constantly
working long hours might be hard, but it's not efficient. Especially for a
startup, how hard or long you worked simply does not matter--what's important
is what you accomplished.

------
dmd149
I always feel super lazy when I read these articles criticizing excessively
long work weeks. Honestly, I think 40 hours is way too long, especially when
the bulk of it is boring.

That being said, when you're working on something you enjoy and you get into
that "flow" state, time becomes irrelevant. If something is fun and energizes
you, you can do it without watching the clock, which the author does with his
side projects.

If you work at a regular job and say you get into that flow state for 2 hour
or so, when you're done, you realize, "shit, i have to be here for another 6
hours." Then you spend a lot of time dicking around on the internet/answering
e-mails/doing non mentally taxing stuff. However, those 6 hours are actually
pretty draining/depressing because you have to maintain the illusion that
you're working + deal with the guilt that you're not being productive.

I dunno, maybe I'm just especially lazy and would like to spend as little time
as possible working on things I don't enjoy.

~~~
djKianoosh
a lot of comments here dance around the "quality" of hours.

the "flow" state you describe is quality time. we all pretty much like that.

on the flip side, if i'm at home 12 hours a day but my wife is in the other
room and my child is watching tv while i'm on my phone checking twitter and
hacker news... you get the point.

all these numbers and thresholds are practically irrelevant. quality of time
spent is key...

------
dev_jim
"Working for free" after 40 hours never resonated with me. It comes out of
hard fought labor battles, but an assembly line is difficult to relate to when
I'm eating free snacks in my comfy Aeron chair and working on things that
generally interest me.

I think the biggest issue here is misaligned expectations between boss and
worker. Personally, I've always gone into a job understanding what it was
going to take to be successful. My comp expectations are adjusted accordingly.
In trading bonds, which is nearly a 24 hour market, it does require >8 hours
on the trading floor. At the end of the year my boss doesn't really care about
my hours as long as our customers are happy and I've produced PnL.

~~~
throwaway092834
I agree with your overall perspective.

I'd like to add that the statement "If you’re salaried, you’re working for
free" is inaccurate in two very important dimensions:

1) Equity stake. The 40 hour workweek was invented for laborers, not owners.
Would the author admonish a business owner to only work 8 hours a week? At
what level of ownership stake does it become acceptable to work more than 8
hours?

2) Compensation increase through recognition and achievement. Working extra
hours may not increase one's immediate paycheck but after many years in this
business I feel comfortable saying that consistent hard work generally results
in rather substantially increased compensation and opportunity in the long
term.

~~~
consultant23522
I had the opposite experience. Working long hours never got me a raise or
promotion. Successful projects got me raises and promotions, but I generally
don't need to work even 40 hours to make that happen. Once I lifted my head up
out of the code and started taking a more business approach to my work rather
than engineering approach, that's when my value and income skyrocketed. The
guys I know that rack up those 50+ hour weeks every single week get the same
3% raise they've always gotten and most of them are pretty bitter about it.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
This is why hitching yourself to the wrong boss can be extremely detrimental
to your career. A good boss would compensate and promote any 50+ hour rockstar
performer for making him look good. As the organization gets bigger, the
manager with the most senior people often wins, regardless of competency. If a
boss is not giving out raises and fighting for promotions, he is going to have
to play out more political capital in order to get anything done, or to cover
his ass when shit doesn't get done.

------
Wingman4l7
Working even half an hour extra each day adds up to ~3 weeks a year of extra
work that you're not getting paid for. That's several thousand dollars in
wages. It's easy to dismiss a half-hour here or there but if you sit down and
run the numbers, it's quite an unpleasant conclusion.

~~~
matwood
What if your salary already has that factored in? What if you wouldn't have
that salary without those extra 3 weeks/year you are working? To say it
another way, if I only work 1 hour/day and run the numbers it is a great
conclusion.

~~~
Wingman4l7
That's kind of what I'm getting at, though. If a job is advertised at $50k,
and then you find out they expect you to work 9 hours a day instead of the
usual 8, it's really more like $44k. Such discrepancies just make it harder to
compare apples to apples when looking at the job market.

------
SubuSS
Most of these articles that deride long work hours don't account for the
following:

1\. When you are the smartest in the room, you can get away with 40 hours
because what you produce in 40 hours will be orders of magnitude ahead of what
a normal guy produces in 80 hours. Trouble comes when you start being part of
super smart teams (mine has about 9 engineers sharing around 150 years of
systems/db building expertise amongst them). Here 40 hours gets you only to
the 'achieved level'. For some people this is not good enough, especially if
they come from a continuous string of 'excelled levels'.

2\. I am not paid to do 40 hours of work. I am paid to get things done. Some
things are automatable (which we do) but a lot of things require NLP and is
hard to automate. These we do manually. They add up.

3\. It is VERY hard to hire good senior engineers. My company (Amazon) pays a
ton of money, has offices in great cities but still we find hiring hard. This
means you won't be offloading a bunch of those anytime soon and to be
competitive, you have to do this.

4\. Many of us do this not out of coercion, but because we want to. I
personally have a set of goals, own a bunch of stuff that I really want to get
done. 8 hours is not enough.

5\. As you grow senior, you spend a ton of time co-ordinating work. This means
unless you dedicate time before and after regular office hours, you personally
aren't going to get coding done. And somethings require your personal
coding/debugging effort - no way around it.

Family setup is personal: At least in my case, thankfully my wife chose to be
a home maker and a full time mom. This frees up a lot of my responsibilities
and allows me to focus harder on my job for the betterment of the family as a
unit. YMMV.

EDIT: I always plug my team, so will do it again here. We are hiring. If you
want to work with world class engineers in a great & growing service (AWS
DynamoDB) - PM me. I chose this for the learning and no regrets till date.

~~~
kulkarnic
This is bunk. You're paid to do work which can be done in 40 hours/wk or
you're being exploited (and so are a lot of other people). When you're 60
would you rather have memories with your kids, or have the satisfaction of
writing lots of code in the 2010s that is not being used anymore because it
got obsolete/automated? (don't believe that can happen? Talk to rule-based AI
researchers from the 80s)

The only reasons to do long hours are because a) you need a temporary career
boost, and b) you're Batman and the world depends on you.

~~~
gordaco
I would add that a lot of employers (and I suppose that also VCs, but I
haven't had the experience first hand) love to try to make you think you're
Batman, in order to trick you into long hours.

~~~
SubuSS
How often does that work? Doesn't it become obvious that you aren't one after
the first deathmarch?

------
gaius
Those who fail to read _The Mythical Man Month_ are doomed to... actually,
just doomed.

~~~
jacques_chester
I'd add _PeopleWare_ to that reading list, if only for introducing the concept
that overtime is offset by "undertime".

~~~
thenomad
And let's just add _Slack_ in there for demonstrating all the benefits that
not overworking people has.

~~~
jacques_chester
I've always meant to get read _Slack_. I read _The Deadline_ and _Adrenaline
Junkies and Template Zombies_ , both were excellent.

------
jroseattle
I've found that long hours are indicators, sometimes of good things and other
times not. Long hours over a lengthy duration of time have shown me two
things: 1) an individual's work ethic, and 2) bad management.

In the tech industry, specifically with software development, I've had teams
I've managed where we needed to pull longer hours in order to meet a deadline.
And my teams stepped up, because we all wanted to succeed. The long hours were
a known entity, and weren't the negative _long hours_.

I've also had teams forced into the negative long hours, and those were my
fault (or rather, they were my responsibility to manage and I didn't do a good
job.) Environments that somehow believe that those of us in the tech industry
somehow enjoy acts like the "diving catch" and being "the savior" offer no
value, other than learning what not to do.

The biggest thing to be cautious with long-hour situations is burnout. The
negative long-hour scenarios can lead to resentment, but those feelings often
pass after a while. Burnout, on the other hand, can have very real long-term
consequences.

------
jasonkester
Well said. Most of the points can be derived from the first one ("You are
working for free"), much in the way that most of Mechanical Engineering can be
derived from F=MA. Once you take that idea on board, the motivations behind
companies, managers, clients, etc. creating a culture of "Heros That Work Long
Hours" become rather transparent.

Adding "long hours don't actually mean you get more stuff done" into the mix
is just a little ironic icing to the whole situation.

~~~
lnanek2
The thing is most early startup employees dip heavily into the equity/options
side of the compensation. So they aren't working for free, they are working to
make their equity share worth more by helping the company succeed.

------
e12e
This posts seems to resonate well with the "Electronic Arts Spouse"-post from
2004:

[http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html](http://ea-
spouse.livejournal.com/274.html)

(Poor management, poor planning, dropping productivity per hour worked as the
workday is increased).

It's nothing new of course, Ford pushed for 8 hour shifts, not out of the
kindness of his heart.

As for working "for free" \-- that could be seen as poor labour laws. Norway
has very strict rules regarding work hours (and compensation). Not that
they're not broken -- but generally only managers (or others who
_realistically_ can set their own hours) are allowed effectively unlimited
over time.

------
kitd
This reminds me of the section in Freakonomics[1] about how drug gangs are
organised. Only the top guys actually rake in the money. The rank and file are
wannabes giving their time and taking all the risk with little reward, in the
hope that they'll get noticed. Ring any bells?

Funny and scary in equal measure.

*1 [http://freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/](http://freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/)

------
NDizzle
My long hours story. (in summary form)

Small company got acquired by a big 4 accounting firm. Lots of changes,
seemingly lots of room for growth. Some people left. I stepped up (no
promotion or raise) and took over for several departed people. Worked 12-14
hour days, 6 days a week, for 10 months. Received the highest performance
award, which is given to 0.25% of the 50k+ employees in the US. Got a 1.25%
raise because our unit was underperforming as a whole. Quit 4 months later.
(after taking 2 months off after my second daughter was born.)

------
mekarpeles
During my first startup, I worked 6 or 7 day weeks, 13+ hours a day. At
Hyperink, in my first year, I (on my own accord) slept in the office over 30
days. During this entire stretch, I was perhaps more productive and happier
than any other time I can remember. The main reason why? The teams and the
comradery.

I wish this article at least had relevant studies + statistics on this subject
as it is not representative of any of the 4 startup experiences I've been
involved with. Actually, in diametric opposition to this author's stance, our
teams' cultures were united and strenghtened around the concept of working
hard (which, in our case, happened to at least partly equate to long hours).

I should be fair and admit, it may be the case that this article is more
relevant to later stage companies -- I don't have a great amount of experience
at 100+ employee companies.

From my experience, when one loves what one works on, one often works on said
thing a lot. Some of the hardest working people I know work (addictively)
towards projects they're not (necessarily) paid to work on. For instance, one
of my teammates, Mischief, spends about 5 hours a day porting packages over to
Plan9 and writing terminal emulators in go (why not).

Im not so enlightened that I can draw conclusions about people who _don't_
work long hours, but it seems intuitive that people who do work long hours
fall into one of two binary classes: (1) they are forced to (in order to
achieve some level of compensation) / fear layoff, (2) they like the product,
team, or like working hard. That is, intrinsically one either wants to work
hard or they don't want to.

You want people in the latter category, and you achieve this by being fair
with equity, providing people opportunities to have an impact or work on what
they love, by providing a supporting environment, and by having good hiring
practices.

There will always be great people who love your team / vision / culture /
management (un)structure and who physically cannot commit to 70 hour work
weeks (family, etc). You and your team have to decide whether it makes sense
for this person to be part of the team and be prepared to make adjustments to
make it work.

What I wish this article was about:

* How teams can (and should learn to) effectively prioritize teammates' health

* Why pressure to work hard can be destructive

* How to programmatically or systematically eliminate or amortize stressful tech/scaling/hr/bd problems to avoid disasters.

[edit: fixing typos]

~~~
fractallyte
The CxOs of these companies make it a priority to build team spirit for
precisely this reason: the sense of camaraderie will compel employees to work
_hard_. All for the team, you know.

The military does this with its soldiers too. It's a system finely honed
through centuries, and enables campaigns that truly rational players would
abandon in an instant.

And, in another twisted example, viewers of the TV show 'Lost' were
manipulated into caring for the characters, so that by the ridiculous end
foisted on them, the entire thing had become 'about the characters'.

The life-lesson from this: _be cynical._

------
richieb
Next time you are on an airliner think what kind of "work ethic" you'd like
your pilot to have. One who puts in 80 hours a week, or a "lazy" one who only
works 30 hours per week.

(Note that FAA actually limits how many hours a week an airline pilot can fly.
I think the number is close to 30).

~~~
robg
Truck drivers have their hours federally mandated too.

Surgeons? Nope.

------
ch215
From my experience, I can only agree. Aged 24, I was given responsibly for a
near 150-year-old weekly newspaper which is read by more than 30,000 people a
week. Needless to say, I ended up working a quite ridiculous amount of unpaid
overtime.

Keep asking myself why I put in all the extra hours. Journalism's about as
competitive an industry as exists but I didn't have self-advancement in mind.
It wasn't because it was almost expected even if unwritten. Nor was it because
of procrastination.

The explanation that jumps to mind's two-fold.

First, circumstance and necessity. The industry's not so much shrinking as
shrivelling. By the time I left in July, I had two full-time staff to produce
a newspaper which more oft than not numbered more than 100 tabloid pages. To
give those numbers some context, there were many fewer pages and many more
editorial staff when the paper was founded in the 1800s. Jobs simply needed
doing and I was a willing horse.

And second, pride. Not pride in long hours but pride in a job well done. I was
a martyr to the readers' cause and I was going to put out the best paper in my
power.

However, three years later and long burned out, it was part a wider culture
which culminated in me leaving the company. I've drawn similar conclusions to
the author when he says work long hours--but only on your own terms.

------
vonseel
In my first development job, I worked very long hours — perhaps because I
didn't have great mentors, often worked remotely, and found myself doing tons
of learning/education just to get by. This was OK for a while; I had to pay my
dues and learn how to do the job, but I do not think it is sustainable, after
the first year I burned out and was ready to move on.

Now, I prefer long, uninterrupted workdays, but I do not like to work much
more than 40 hours per week. The traditional 5 day per week model is not
perfect, though. I prefer 4 longer days (10-12 hours), and 3 days off.

------
jmvoodoo
This entire piece is written from the perspective of someone who sees their
job as only a way to make money. That person might look at me and say
something along the lines of "look at him, wasting his life away spending time
at work." To me, though, he is the one wasting his life spending even a few
hours a day to do something he would not do for free. If you don't absolutely
love your job, quit. And if you absolutely love your job, why the hell
wouldn't you want to stay a few more minutes?

~~~
DigitalSea
Quite clearly you love your job more than you love your friends and family if
you're happy staying back because you love your job as opposed to going home
to your husband or wife, or catching up with your best friend who you haven't
seen in 3 months because you've been too busy working.

Overtime is expected in the design and development industry. It's when
companies factor in overtime into their estimates in order to quote lower than
other agencies competing for the same work because they know that the
employees will pick up the slack to get it done, that's when it's not alright.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my job and where I work, but if overtime
is an expected thing every single project, that's taking advantage of your own
employees and a sure-fire way to churn through workers like butter and
eventually get yourself a reputation in the industry for being a bad place to
work. People talk and reputation matters in the design and development
industry more than people realise, it's everything.

I have a family and friends, you might be okay with working overtime, but what
about your wife, is she okay with it? What if you have children at home
wanting to see their father? You might be okay with it now, but you'll regret
it when you're older and realise you missed out on your children growing up.

~~~
shubb
You mention family a bunch, and I think that's important.

If you are 20 and single, and staying late in the office means pizza and a bit
of XBox with your team later on, it is genuinely much nicer than going back to
your empty little apartment and microwaving an instant meal.

If you have a family, then regardless of how much you like XBox, if you are a
decent person you will run out the door at 5.

I'm young and irresponsible. When I glance round the office at 8pm, and see a
guys I know have baby children working free over time like every other night,
I want to shake them.

------
dustingetz
"LONG HOURS ≠ MORE PRODUCTIVITY OR BETTER WORK."

this is false and debunked in mythical man month. It follows from "adding
manpower to a late software project makes it later" that we need to add hours,
not people. Or we can break our contract if we'd rather to that.

"We respect ourselves and our people enough to honor their time and their
personal lives so we cannot agree to your deadline."

This also misses the point - projects start on time and end late. at the time
the deadline was agreed to, we happily accepted payment.

~~~
shadowfiend
The Mythical Man Month points out that adding manpower doesn't accelerate a
project. In no way does that mean that adding hours does. They are completely
unrelated ideas.

Adding manpower doesn't accelerate a project because more people doesn't
immediately mean more productivity. Adding hours can only accelerate a project
if more hours means more productivity. There are multiple studies that show
this is false after a short period (a week or two), and that you rapidly go in
the opposite direction. The mythical man month's points are irrelevant to
this.

You're starting off with the base idea that there is something you can _add_
can make a late software project more on time. Reality _seems_ to indicate
that often, a late software project will simply be late, unless you cut scope
or corners mercilessly. Unless, in essence, you _remove_ something.

~~~
dustingetz
"From a business point of view, long hours by programmers are a key to
profitability. ..."

wrote Phil Greenspun[1], here's the rest of the quote:

"... Suppose that a programmer needs to spend 25 hours per week keeping
current with new technology, getting coordinated with other programmers,
contributing to documentation and thought leadership pieces, and comprehending
the structures of the systems being extended. Under this assumption, a
programmer who works 55 hours per week will produce twice as much code as one
who works 40 hours per week. In The Mythical Man-Month, the only great book
ever written on software engineering, Fred Brooks concludes that no software
product should be designed by more than two people. He argues that a program
designed by more than two people might be more complete but it will never be
easy to understand because it will not be as consistent as something designed
by fewer people. This means that if you want to follow the best practices of
the industry in terms of design and architecture, the only way to improve
speed to market is to have the same people working longer hours. Finally there
is the common sense notion that the smaller the team the less management
overhead. A product is going to get out the door much faster if it is built by
4 people working 70-hour weeks (180 productive programmer-hours per week,
after subtracting for 25 hours of coordination and structure comprehension
time) than if by 12 people working 40-hour weeks (the same net of 180 hours
per week). The 12-person team will inevitably require additional managers and
all-day meetings to stay coordinated."[1]

[1] [http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/managing-
softwar...](http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/managing-software-
engineers) (halfway down the page on this)

~~~
shadowfiend
This is a mathematical analysis built on _unstated_ assumptions of how long
the brain can focus on something in the long term. By this line of reasoning,
4 people working 168-hour weeks would be maximally productive, but they
wouldn't be sleeping, so obviously the purely mathematical argument falls down
on its face.

My point is, knowing that turning dial A up doesn't help doesn't mean that
turning dial B up does. It just means turning dial A up doesn't. Sometimes the
reality is that turning neither dial up is the only option, and you have to
plan around that fact.

In reality, there's decent evidence out there to support the statement that
turning dial B up can be just as counterproductive as turning dial A up unless
it's done very judiciously.

------
robg
I'm a neuroscientist by training. I'm really surprised that we don't talk
today about the brain among knowledge workers like we do muscles with
professional athletes. We all know that less sleep, worse nutrition, and long
hours affect how we perform. Yet, we still expect to work 60 to 80 weeks and
be at our best? It makes no sense and some day we'll look back and wonder what
this generation was thinking.

------
the_watcher
"Working for free" after 40 hours isn't necessarily accurate if you are on
salary, at least if your company is run reasonably well. At my job, I'm paid a
salary based on my performance and the quality of my deliverables. If I finish
those in less than 40 hours, I am free to go home (although I generally stay
and get some work done on projects that are less time sensitive), but if I
have to stay late to finish them, I may end up working more than 40 hours.
Nowhere in my agreement to come work here was 40 hours a week specified. If it
became the norm that I worked 60 hours a week to complete my deliverables (and
I wasn't sandbagging), I would ask for a raise to reflect that.

However, I agree that many companies are not great at this. While my company
is not perfect, their handling of this issue is one of the many things they do
extremely well.

------
gruseom
This is an emotional topic, the discussion of which is nearly always evidence-
free. How could one study it objectively?

~~~
Wingman4l7
You can debate until you're blue in the face the claims about poisonous
workplace culture, broken management, unreasonable / unsustainable
expectations, or other intangible things unmentioned in this piece _(like
people working extra because they 're angling for a promotion, or trying to
learn a new job skill that will be valuable in the future)_ \-- but the math
doesn't lie.

If you are salaried and you work overtime, you are working for free. If you're
on an hourly wage and you don't get any sort of overtime pay, you're working
for free.

~~~
throwaway9848
Yeah, and if you're in a startup and you have a significant equity position
then you are not working for free, you are directly monetarily motivated.

Also, people act to maximize their utility, not necessarily compensation. The
act of working hard and hitting deadlines is a form of compensation in itself.

Finally, lots of people work a lazy 8 hours (with lots of time spent on the
phone, Facebook, personal email) and need the extra hours to accomplish 8
hours worth of real work.

~~~
brianmcconnell
Ah! The equity position as fake compensation. Unfortunately for the worker
beeze, said "equity" usually turns out to be worthless in a exit, except in
unicorn situations (Facebook, etc). The founders, early investors and insider
shareholders are all first in line, so mostly likely, you end up with shit, or
maybe some options that might be worth something in a few years, if the
company hasn't tanked by then.

No thanks, unless I can take your company stock and flip it the same day, I'll
take cash.

~~~
throwaway9848
That's not always true.

------
Nimi
Something always troubled me: Why are long hours the equilibrium? If everyone
is fighting to hire engineers, why not proudly declare "We're working 40 hours
a week here, and still pay market rates"? Every engineer in town would
consider working for you. Or not?

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alexkus
Long hours often die out when the compensation (i.e. share options) dries up.

I started off working 80+ hours a week, as did many of the others, and loved
it. We all did pretty nicely out of it thanks to share options.

But 10 years later, post acquisition(s), and most people who are still here
have families and more life outside work. I work part time so I have a day
with my daughter and I officially work 33 hours a week, in a "long" week I
maybe work 35 hours and I rarely ever take my laptop home. It's all helped me
to be a lot more focused in the relatively short time I am at work.

I guess a lot of it is about experience and, as the saying goes, "Good
judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

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kamaal
I think the article is missing a very important point. Forced long hours are
disastrous. But there are plenty of projects where people automatically put in
long hours because the experience is rewarding. Either the money is good, or
the project is interesting, or there is tons to learn. That varies from person
to person.

This is yet another thing that I see with regards to procrastination. It
automatically seems to vanish every time I work on some interesting projects,
or if good money is involved. If you are unconsciously procrastinating for no
good reason, may its a good sign that you find that project no longer
rewarding. And its time to move onto something else.

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Mikeb85
Long hours mean facetime - the illusion of working as hard or harder than your
peers. I've worked in industries where this is the norm - it's terrible.

Especially if you actually are more productive than others, because then
you're in a situation where you know you're working more hours than you need
to, being unproductive, yet you know that the more work you finish, the more
will be put onto your plate and the less likely you'll ever be able to have a
decent work-life balance. So you wind up sandbagging it, put in the facetime
for the hell of it, and look for a new job...

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mattlutze
While I take issue ith the "deserves" comment floating around the top of the
page, in general the article is spot-on. For the most part, extended periods
of high volumes of work indicate a project is either under-staffed or poorly
managed.

Sprints and pushes now and again are exceptions -- there is nothing inherently
wrong with needing to put in a long week or two, even a month or two,
irregularly in order to get a feature out that just needs to be built. But
extended continual work definitely does sap the creativity and stress every
relationship a person has outside of the office.

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kenster07
I don't mind working long hours so long as I am actually gaining useful
knowledge which I can leverage later to get many times those hours back.

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um304
I work long hours and I know it adds 0$/hour into my account. My motivation is
to build a product that I can proudly add in my portfolio and it may help me
tap bigger opportunities in future. I consider it as investment, and I am
fully aware that, like other investments, it may turn out to be zero. But then
every effort worth-doing in life is a gamble and nothing comes with
assurities.

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diminoten
No, this is what long hours mean to someone who doesn't want to work long
hours but does out of some obligation or feeling that they should or have to.

I've said it before, but these kinds of articles/blog posts always read as a
justification on the part of the author for not working more.

------
tslathrow
Seeing as I grew up on 80+ hour workweeks, I can promise you this is false for
a certain group of people.

I spent two years in banking - normally we had 18+ hour workdays... definitely
gave me stamina later on.

Tier 1 bonus bucket at a bulge bracket one year, Tier 2 the other year.

You pretty much always end up getting paid for hard work.

~~~
pedalpete
This is not correct, you don't 'pretty much always end up getting paid for
hard work'.

I've worked in a few startups, as well as had my own where I was working 6-7
days a week 15+hours on most week days, and it didn't result in a big pay day.
I've had lots of stock in bankrupt companies and experience to show for it.

However, I will say that it is possible you'll gain lots of experience, and I
wouldn't give up my long hours in my youth for anything else. It was great
experience and I loved being in the thick of it.

As I've gotten older, I've started to appreciate more of a balance.

~~~
hkarthik
He specifically said it was false for a certain group of people (those in
banking).

People in banking/finance have a very skewed sense of reality when it comes to
work and fair compensation. You generally have to take their anecdotal advice
with a grain of salt if that's all they've ever done.

No line of work can consistently deliver the kinds of returns that finance
can. Hence its very easy to justify the longer hours in that industry since
they turn into very real dollars. For the rest of us, putting a dollar value
on our output is much harder to quantify.

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heuan
This work hours issue is quite contentious. I don't want to stifle discussion
but right now I wish there was a standard "gwen" response at the top of the
thread with well researched papers on the subject.

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joelrunyon
On a side note:

Your blog looks fantastic. Clean & simple without looking like it's trying too
hard. Nicely done.

------
elwell
This: "There’s little difference in my productivity in a 80 or 40 hour work
week."

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kenster07
Find a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life.

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thenerdfiles
There are many personal reasons people have for working long hours.

Factor in:

1\. Love of what you do

2\. Computer addiction (which is not in the DSM (yet))

3\. Avoiding other forms of stress not work-related

[EDIT:] Hello, Japan!

