
The Hardest Working People on the Planet - kareemm
http://jonbischke.com/2009/12/30/hardest-working-people-on-the-planet/
======
nostrademons
One of the biggest surprises for me when I went to work for a big corp was
that people didn't actually work harder in startups than in large
corporations. Perhaps there's a bit of sample bias; people at Google tend to
work harder than at other big companies, at least according to my Noogler
classmates who used to work at Adobe and Intuit. But I know people at Yahoo
and IBM that work even harder than I do at Google, and I work about as hard at
Google as when I was working with a YC startup. And yet they at IBM accomplish
far less than we do at Google, and we at Google (on a person-for-person basis)
accomplish far less than the average successful YC startup.

I've been trying to put my finger on why that is, and I think it all comes
down to misallocation of resources. Over time, work becomes focused inwards at
a large corporation, dedicated to supporting the inner world of the
corporation instead of the outer world of the market. Without market
discipline, decisions get made that seem logical to the decision-maker but are
actually very pessimal from an efficiency standpoint. Some team might create
an API that's a continual tax on its users, but without the ability to bypass
it and use or write an alternative, there's no way around it. Or some VP may
make a decision that seems sensible at a time, but mortgages future
development, and without the ability for that initial project to fail and get
completely reverted, you'll never arrive at the optimal solution.

Working hard is generally a necessary but not sufficient condition for
success, and it's nowhere near a straight-line correlation. Far more important
is to pay attention to _what_ you're working on, and make sure that it's
actually important. You can't succeed with zero hard work, but you can get
much farther with a little smarts and little hard work than with a lot of hard
work.

~~~
zspade

           It is exceedingly easy to work hard at a big corporation. The goals set out are generally clear, and if you finish early there are always plenty of other projects. I'll liken it to an all you can eat buffet, you can always take more once you've finished what's on your plate.
    
           The difference in working at a startup is that you must create those tasks that need doing. You can't grab them from an already pre-existing forumla. Simply put, you've got to plan and cook your dinner, and if you're still hungry, you've got to plan and cook more.

~~~
nostrademons
I'm not sure this distinction holds either. At Google, I'm given a fairly
vaguely-specified task ("Provide this benefit for users") and then told to do
what it takes to make it happen. It's not unlike launching a product in a
startup, because, well, it is launching a product. I've heard this is pretty
much Google's _definition_ of a senior software engineer - one who can take a
vaguely specified user requirement and then make it happen.

There's a fair amount of gruntwork at a startup that's pretty obvious too, eg.
when I was doing mine, I had to do all the server admin. This falls out
naturally from actually having servers that need to stay up. I'd say that
probably 80% of startup work is gruntwork, which isn't all that different from
a job description in a big company.

------
arethuza
Maybe it's where and when I grew up, but no job that largely involves sitting
in front of a computer and occasionally talking with (or at) people really
strikes me as "hard work" (even if you add copious quanitities of long-haul
travel).

The farmers and fishermen I knew growing up worked _incredibly_ hard but I
honestly don't remember a _single_ one of them telling anyone about how hard
they work. However, having worked on farms and (briefly) on a North Sea
trawler when I was a student I can honestly say nothing you can do inside in
the nice and warm can possibly come close - remember that the guys running
farms and fishing trawlers are running businesses as well, usually on pretty
damned low margins or unpredictable cashflow.

Edit: Not sure which "personalities" I'd have on a "working hard" list - but
it would probably include this chap:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranulph_Fiennes>

~~~
WA
I absolutely agree with you. This is no hard work at all. Hard work is doing
physical labor for 16 hours a day so that you can't think anymore of what the
words "hard work" even mean. Everything else is just eyewashing to feel a
little better.

The "hard work" is a mantra repeated over and over and over especially by
entrepreneurs to a point that I really get sick of it. Entrepreneurs love that
phrase and love the idea to think about themselves of being hard-working.

Truth is, you don't need to be hard-working to be successful. Not at all. If
you "work hard" (in the wishy-washy terms of how entrepreneurs use that
phrase), you're doing it wrong.

Edit: I want to add that we all should be glad that none of us really has to
work hard to get decent money in the bank account. We should appreciate every
day that our lives are so comfortable and that we have so much money that we
aren't required to do the really hard work like our ancestors had to do. As
long as everybody has the self-delusion of being hard-working, we can't
appreciate the comfort we have and pay some true respect to the people who
can't have the same wealth and comfort.

~~~
ghurlman
I disagree - I did plenty of the 16-hour days of picking things up and putting
them down before moving onto the white collar developer world, and I'll tell
you -- there are plenty of days where this work is a lot harder.

Harder on the body? On my back? No. More stressful? Harder on my mind, my
life, and relationships? YES. Not every day, but we all know about _those_
days.

What constitutes "hard work" is different for everyone. I think the linked
blog entry is mixing "hard work" with "lots of work", which is simply not the
same.

~~~
nostrademons
I like to think of "risk" and "work" as being orthogonal dimensions. Risk is
uncertainty, when you don't know how what you're doing will turn out. Work is
putting in the hours, being able to concentrate on a goal for long stretches
of time.

We get paid for doing things that other people don't want to do. It turns out
that most people would rather work hard than take on additional risk; they at
least know what to do when they work hard, and what they'll get for it. That
means that taking on risk can be very professionally lucrative, but the
problem is then you have to deal with uncertainty constantly.

------
toadi
Bad title... What about people working in African mines where they work long
hours performing heavy physical labor under dangerous conditions. Even risking
their health. Just to survive and give food to their families.

There are dozens of these answers where this kind of 'slave' labor is still
going on.

So stop tooting the horn of those hard working entrepreneurs (I'm one of
them). And please try not to offend other people with these kinds of titles
and articles.

~~~
smiler
Exactly. People who have to walk miles a day just for fresh water. They
deserve our respect

~~~
zackattack
Let's all give ourselves a pat on the back for respecting those people.

~~~
toadi
Smurk reply just to shrug off the fact you are only looking to your own
bellybutton.

~~~
zackattack
You don't know me at all; how can you make that claim? I don't think that's at
all true about me. I spend a lot of effort involved in improving the emotional
welfare of other people.

Moreover, I think it's ridiculous to commend and "respect" villagers for
having to endure unnecessary hardships; it's as if the commender attains a
stance of moral superiority for valuing "what really matters". It's not clear
to me that:

1) Living rurally is actually net worse for a human being

2) If living rurally is indeed net worse for a human being, that commending
and respecting them is a good thing - perhaps such a situation should be held
in contempt in order to promote a more radical advance in technology

3) I think effort and willpower deserve respect -- merely having to endure
hardship, while unfortunate, is not necessarily worthy of my respect.

P.S. As a friendly FYI, "Smurk" is not a word.

------
forensic
This isn't inspiring, this is neurotic.

Mental illness is no way to live.

And for every captain of industry who worked 24/7, there are plenty who relax,
enjoy life, and still manage to move mountains.

~~~
bilban
Depends what you enjoy. Some people would rather work than relax. I've had
colleagues that hang about at work for a little longer to avoid the drudgery
of home life - or rather the hand over to the next shift.

That said - I do agree with you that a lot of these people are neurotic. Not
all work is equal - some of it in my opinion is a waste of time - and it just
keeps people off the streets.

------
davidw
> Let’s do the math. If you worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week,
> you’d still be two hours short of 100 hours.

... and you'd never see your children.

~~~
retube
Yeah. This glorification of absurd hours is not a good thing I think. A
balanced life is important. Perhaps a few people can handle these kinds of
hours their whole life but most can't. It leads to burn out, stress,
depression, breaks up marriages and alienates children, all of which have a
very negative long term impact on society as a whole.

~~~
ctdonath
I'm often struck by how many great/successful people destroyed their own
families to get there.

------
davcro

      Y'all don't know my struggle 
      Y'all can't match my hustle
      You can't catch my hustle
      You can't fathom my love dude
      Lock yourself in a room doin' five beats a day for three summers
      That's a different world like Kree Summers
      I deserve to do these numbers
    
      - Kanye West, Spaceship

------
duiker101
I loved this article, truly inspirational, specially the last one, and there
is only one possible explanation for all these(and all the other hard working
people in the world):

Passion.

If there is something that you love, whatever it is, from your work to your
family, you would do almost anything. Thanks for sharing.

------
DanielStraight
I don't think the author misses any of the points that have been brought up as
critiques of the article. He says in the second paragraph that "hard work is
completely irrelevant is you’re not working smart and being productive." Also,
"hard work is also counter-productive if you’re sacrificing your health to an
extreme degree and if the increase in quantity of hours worked is leading to a
decrease in your creativity."

I think the best summary of the article is a quote from the quote of Seth
Godin: "[Hard work] begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not
deal with."

This article is not about physical labor or spinning your wheels without
making progress. It's not about burning yourself out. It's about doing the
shit that other people don't want to do. It's what Paul Graham was getting at
when he wrote, "If you have two choices, choose the harder." It's what Thomas
Edison was getting at when he said, "Genius is one percent inspiration,
ninety-nine percent perspiration."

There are people who sit around on HN or Reddit all day not doing anything
productive. Actually focusing on work for long periods of time is hard. There
are anecdotal statistics that the average 40-hour-a-week worker works 1.5
hours a day. Hard work means working all 8.

------
hpaavola
Get shit done, don't work hard. Hard work mean nothing, especially if it
described as not having free time.

~~~
wladimir
It doesn't mean 'nothing'. Hard work is sometimes needed. But I do agree with
you that it's usually more important to work smart than to work hard. Pick
your battles carefully and such... Mindlessly working hard without a good idea
doesn't get you anywhere.

------
roel_v
"From my perspective, humans are learning machines, as evidenced by the
totality of human output."

While I think I agree with you, this argument is not very strong imo - it
takes only a very small amount of people ('outliers' or 'abnormals' if you
want) to think of new things that are then implemented by all the others. And
this even includes much 'research' that is being done today - you only need 1
guy to drive a lab of 50 who do the things this one guy has imagined. And yet
those 50 are also called 'researchers', and are already considered at the
'extreme' end of the curve of people able to self-mobilize.

------
dreamdu5t
Work smarter not harder.

~~~
blrs
Yeah, this (article) seems to be totally at odds with the hacker ethic,
expressed variously as:

Jon Bentley in Programming Pearls: Column 2.5 "Aha! Algorithms" "Good hackers
are a little bit lazy: they sit back and wait for an insight rather than
rushing forward with their first idea. That must, of course, be balanced with
initiative to code at the proper time. The real skill, though, is knowing the
proper time. That judgment comes only with the experience of solving problems
and reflecting on their solutions."

Larry Wall in "Three virtues of a programmer"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_program...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_programmer)
"1. Laziness - The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall
energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people
will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so
many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer."

John D Cook in "Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their
productivity?" [http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/12/23/why-programmers-
are...](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/12/23/why-programmers-are-not-paid-
in-proportion-to-their-productivity/) "Programmers are most effective when
they avoid writing code. They may realize the problem they’re being asked to
solve doesn’t need to be solved, that the client doesn’t actually want what
they’re asking for. They may know where to find reusable or re-editable code
that solves their problem. They may cheat. But just when they are being their
most productive, nobody says "Wow! You were just 100x more productive than if
you’d done this the hard way. You deserve a raise." At best they say "Good
idea!" and go on. It may take a while to realize that someone routinely comes
up with such time-saving insights. Or to put it negatively, it may take a long
time to realize that others are programming with sound and fury but producing
nothing."

~~~
o1iver
None of these quotes prove your point that the article is "at odds with the
hacker ethic". They just prove that you should think (which is also hard work)
about what to do instead of just doing whatever comes to you first. Why is
that not hard work?

"They may know where to find reusable or re-editable code that solves their
problem.": and how do they know that? Probably because they work hard at
keeping up with the newest technological developments in different fields...

------
Delmania
As I read this, I am reminded of a thought that occurred to me this weekend:
work is what you have to do, passion is what you want to do. Also, I don't
think I would claim that anyone who is working 100 hours a week is living.
Work to live, not live to work.

------
BasDirks
This was posted as a comment by Ryan Willis, but is probably worth watching:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k74r1aoMc0>

------
joubert
I would add Madonna, Oprah, Obama, and doctors to that list.

~~~
ctdonath
Reminds me of how many greats expired when they stopped their "thing". Stanley
Kubric died within a week of finishing post-production on Eyes Wide Shut.
Charles Schultz ended Peanuts after exactly 50 years, and expired a week
later.

This alongside others who quit, sometimes repeatedly, only to return. Anthony
Hopkins has sworn off acting several times. Berkley Breathed can't quit Opus
after ending 3+ comic strip series.

The article used the slang term "anorak" to describe Eminem - someone who is
utterly focused on one activity. Attempts to engage them in any other activity
(save perhaps basic family functions) fail. Eminem has rapped about often
shunning the indulgences of rockstardom in favor of locking himself in a
bathroom stall or dank stairwell just to scribble lyrics in a ratty notebook.

They're great because it's all they do and all they can do, and greatness is a
natural consequence. Take it away, and they either fight to resume it or
expire in emptiness.

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
Why must they expire?

It is strange to think that a man, like any other man, so becomes singular in
life and work in that work is his life and life is his work, to the point that
such a massive passion grows for what they do that nothing else has any
meaning.

That probably is simply because of a turn in life they made. If they are smart
enough to be basically performing functioning humans, then the end of it would
be a shock to the system, but which can be overcomed. So why must they expire?

------
krat0sprakhar
Thanks a lot for posting this wonderful article. Very very inspiring.

------
georgieporgie
_The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do, you just spent 24 hours
straight working on a project and you thought it was a couple hours._

I always lose interest when I read something like that. The last time I
experienced this flow state was in college (or just after), when I was still
coding entirely within a domain that I knew. Once I got into the real world,
things got hard, domains changed with every assignment, and flow state became
impossible.

~~~
forensic
True and a bit tragic.

I think a lot of nerds grow up, and get careers in technology, hoping they can
spend their lives in that flow state.

But it's just almost never practical. Probably one of the only ways to do it
now is open-source stuff, or by becoming an extreme specialist and working in
a big corporation that shields you and accommodates you. In both cases you're
probably taking a pay cut.

~~~
wladimir
The pay cut isn't that much of a problem, compared to many other jobs being a
software engineer is lucrative in any case.

I've found that you can train yourself to get 'into that flow state' even with
things that sometimes get a little bit less interesting. It does take a lot of
willpower and self-convincing that it's worth it.

