
Working all night is not 'a badge of pride' - hhs
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49891179
======
sundvor
Interesting. As a dev, anxiety can (edit: sometimes) cause stresses to build
up to the point where thinking can be hard. Which is exactly the wrong thing
for when you need to tackle complex problems. I've found it's easier to get
into the zone late at night when I _know_ no-one else is up and working, and I
can just let all that go.

It wrecks the next day though, and can easily turn into an evil cycle - even
more so now when having a family and there's no opportunity to sleep in to
catch up.

The last thing you want to do is commit code at 02:00. Better to leave it to
when you have a fresher head to review what you did beforehand, both for
quality and perception reasons.

2nd EDIT: Having to be always online on Slack with all the @mentions pinging
off constantly and/or just working in a busy and loud open office with
meetings every few hours can be detrimental to being able to build up that
mental model needed to see things clearly when tackling something new / that
I'd like to get done in a better way. I'm probably not a fantastic dev, and
showing my age, but I try to make up with persistence and enthusiasm for my
work / field..

~~~
josephg
Re: slack, I've started getting in the habit of setting my computer and phone
to "do not disturb" mode when I'm actually in the thick of things.
Notifications are poison for flow - and even if I don't look at my phone just
hearing it vibrate and knowing there's a message there is distracting. (On
macos you can suspend notifications system-wide in the drawer thing on the
right of the screen. Pull it out with a gesture and scroll up to find no not
disturb mode and night shift).

I think its not a reasonable expectation for productive programmers to be
always available for random questions and conversation. Make the messages and
notifications wait until you have downtime.

~~~
distances
I'm wondering why people install Slack on their phones at all. If you have
monitoring duty it may make sense, but for development? Typing on a keyboard
is a million times more convenient, and I've been fine by catching up with
chat at the office in the morning.

On the same note, I don't do mobile email either. Colleagues can call me if
the shit really hits the fan. Nobody ever does though, which I think speaks
for itself.

~~~
majewsky
The only thing that I use Slack on the phone for is reminders: When I have a
sudden thought about a work topic, e.g. in the shower, I go into Slack and
type "/remind me to do $THING tomorrow" so that it comes back up on my desk
next day at the office.

------
usecontainers
The top firms all recruit heavily from biz schools with the #1 criteria of
billing a crazy amount of hours. I'm not surprised they're trying to market
themselves as "less ridiculous" than the competition but don't really believe
it. We would work until 7 or 8, go eat dinner and drink on the company dime
(purposely with only other consulting team members) then go back to work, drag
ourselves to (most likely) a hotel room for a few hours of sleep (because they
prefer to keep you on the road) then back to work and repeat. Low utilization
was 2200-2400 hours annually with many (most?) billing substantially more.
It's hard to believe that a business built on taking a piece of every hour
worked would be serious about cutting back the number of hours.

They treat young workers like oranges, squeeze out all the juice and pitch the
rinds. The math says not everyone can make partner so don't worry about
keeping people happy, just load the funnel with new grads.

~~~
edejong
Borders to slavery in my books. It doesn’t even matter whether these are
productive hours, it’s just forced labor using social anxiety peer pressure
and FOMO to force people into doing your bidding.

Thought we had labor laws for that...

~~~
fastball
Peer pressure / FOMO != "force". Please do not conflate the two.

~~~
pdimitar
Nobody is conflating them but they are de facto identical in terms of results.
The physical forcing has been replaced by social pressure and guilt tripping
and they are just as effective into getting you to work more hours as were the
physical tortures of the times long past.

~~~
fastball
The major difference being you can just say "I will not succumb to social
pressure", where as you cannot say "I will not be forced physically". That's
why it's called "force".

------
orev
As a night owl, I have to think that at least some of those people are just
showing up in the morning because that’s what’s expected, and then spend most
of the early part of the day spinning their wheels until their brains kick in
later and can actually get something done.

~~~
m463
What is important, is to figure out your own personal rhythm and if it defies
convention, then f*ck convention.

I find I probably get an order of magnitude more work done from 8-10 pm
compared to 8-10 am, all other things being equal.

Other folks have different drums they march to.

One book I recommend is "the war of art".

The small one-page section called "what I do" is illustrative. He's a writer
and describes his daily routine. He starts typing away in earnest about 10:30,
and probably 4 hours later he starts making typos, which he realizes is the
point of diminishing returns and calls it a day.

~~~
orev
That’s easy to say, but unless you’re self employed, that’s an entirely
impossible approach to take. Companies expect you to be in the office at a
certain time, and that’s not an unreasonable request as most people need to
work in teams when everyone else is also available.

The ability and flexibility to work like this is very much a Silicon-Valley-
only thing, and you can’t have a meaningful conversation assuming everyone can
do that.

------
milchek
It's interesting to note how the general opinion of sleep is starting to shift
away from the stereotypical ideal we had decades ago of the "powerful CEO that
only sleeps 4-5 hours a night."

We know a lot more about sleep than we used to, and we now know how harmful
lack of sleep is to the brain and body.

I highly recommend the book, "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker (who is a
professor of neuroscience and psychology and the director of the Center for
Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley), which goes
into the myriad reasons why we require plentiful sleep.

The book discusses numerous studies conducted over the years that highlight
how lack of sleep (in both quantity and quality) affect our mental faculties,
our behaviour, and the increased health risks, such as the greater risk of
heart disease and dementia, from lack of sleep.

Surprisingly, I encounter a lot of other developers and engineers that don't
really concern themselves too much with sleep, and some that, as the article
states, still do wear their poor sleep patterns as 'badge of pride.' I wonder
if it's because engineers generally fall more into the 'night owl' chronotype
category? Is there any kind of study that looks into chronotype by occupation
to see how our genetics align with our job preferences?

As a 'night owl' myself, I know how punishing it can be if you're used to
working late, and then having to wake up early to commute and get into an
office at the same time as everyone else, and it was one of the reasons I
moved away from agency work and started working remotely.

I wonder if one day we'll go so far as to stagger start times for people with
different chronotypes (night owls and morning larks)? Or if we'll make
adjustments to school start times for students in their teenage years, which
is when longer sleep associated with a shift in circadian rhythm kicks in.

~~~
pdimitar
> _It 's interesting to note how the general opinion of sleep is starting to
> shift away from the stereotypical ideal we had decades ago of the "powerful
> CEO that only sleeps 4-5 hours a night."_

This is very American and overall "hustler" filter bubble. A lot of my
acquaintances in Europe giggled when discussing Americans and various try-hard
CEOs they know and mocked them for accelerating their own deaths by killing
their most important body recover mechanism and filling the extra hours with
busy work that didn't contribute to any bottom line.

I don't mean to be demeaning. I am just pointing out that in the circles I
frequented my entire programming life (~18 years) it's a very common wisdom
_not_ to screw with your sleep.

Hustling is a useful philosophy if (a) you are that kind of person -- namely
living under the motto of "I want to progress, even if by a little bit, every
day" and (b) if you are motivated by real gains and not just by nebulous
promises that you _might_ see a 5% salary increase if you stay 5-10 years with
your employer.

\---

Let's face it. Most workers hustle because they have been successfully guilt-
tripped into it.

Truth is, we can derive a lot of wisdom from the ancient hunter-gatherers:
they worked a lot during certain periods but were mostly just enjoying life
60% to 80% of their waking time.

There were various studies published in the last year on the typical "work"
schedule of the hunter-gatherers but sadly now I can't find them. If you are
curious, look for them. The bottom line was: the ancient people worked on
average ~15h a week.

------
jacquesm
You really don't want to work for a company that demands 'all nighters' or
deadmarches. At the same time, if you're doing something you like, whether it
is coding or making music and you like the atmosphere of the night then I
don't see any reason why you shouldn't. I can work just fine during the day
and yet, there are a couple of those all-nighters that started with me being
inspired about something and continuing to work to see where it lead. One or
two of those ended up defining my career.

------
jostmey
I am proud when I complete a long-term project. All nighters are detrimental
to that. Anyone truly committed to a long-term project inevitably comes to the
same conclusion

------
liquidise
Wow, this article rings all too close to home for me. I had written a post a
couple of weeks ago called Badge of Honor[1] that was aimed at a similar
topic. My question in the piece: why don't more people in the tech sector ask
hard questions of leadership when long hours are pushed/required?

1: [https://blog.benroux.me/badge-of-honor/](https://blog.benroux.me/badge-of-
honor/)

------
meddlepal
Everyone should do the work all night at their office once in their career to
realize how utterly pointless it is then never do it again.

Bonus points if you do it for some tiger strike super important big project
that gets cancelled three months later when the C-suite finds a new partner du
jour.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I did a 36-hour coding marathon to hit a deadline in my 20's. By 24 hours into
it, I was writing garbage (actually by 12 hours into it I was writing garbage,
but it didn't become painfully obvious until later). I kept going because I
thought I could muscle through and get it done. My boss came in to find me
asleep on the office sofa.

At the end, it was "done" but so bugridden that we couldn't deploy. I had to
go sleep for a whole day to get back to normal, and then it took me another
two days to fix everything.

It would have been so much better if I'd just worked about 10 hours, gone home
to get some relaxation and sleep, and then come in and worked another 10
hours. By hour 12 I was damaging the code base, and by hour 30 I was just
making more work for everyone.

In subsequent roles managing devs, I learned from this and sent my devs home
after they'd done 10 hours. And defended them against sales/senior managers
who tried insisting that they stay and get it done. I learned that if you
absolutely insist that crunch time can't happen, and the rest of the company
knows it, then miraculously it stops being a thing. Deadlines become more
realistic if everyone knows that pulling an all-nighter to get it done is not
going to happen.

~~~
pdimitar
I admire people like you who are able to dig their feet into the ground and
defend the sensible position.

We need more people like you in management: namely to be willing to take
bullets but not budge when they know they would otherwise damage their staff.

Please, never change.

------
kabdib
Huh. Today is my 40th year of writing software as a professional (getting paid
for it, I mean -- I was writing code long before my first real job).

Anyway, in all that time I've done (...counts...) four all-nighters. I did
plenty of nights until 2 or 3 in the morning, but I've only seen a sunrise at
work four times. This includes stints at Atari, Apple, a number of Silly
Valley startups, Microsoft, and my current gig.

Each one of those all-nighters pretty much killed me for a day or two. In
retrospect I do not regret them, they were necessary to the team and for me to
keep my word about completing a critical component on time. I'd probably do
the same again.

~~~
n4r9
Despite the name being fairly clear I think people have different conceptions
of what an all-nighter is. I interpreted the following quote from the article
as saying that they went home very late into the night and then came back to
the office the next day.

> "I remember doing my first 'all-nighter'," she says. "I came back into the
> office the next day with a swagger."

------
anta40
I'm a firm believer in work-life balance. If I spent almost every day in the
office till night, very highly there's something wrong with my self
management.

------
quickthrower2
> And she thinks the prospect of working those anti-social hours puts off
> potential employees, especially women and those with caring duties or young
> children.

Correct. They are perceived as sweat shops, selling the dream of making
partner. Earning double what any other graduate program is paying (at least
when I looked years ago) helps, although the hourly rate is probably the same.

------
bcrosby95
My twins cured me of my late nights. They wake up at 6am every day. It's easy
to make yourself think you're productive with just 6 hours of sleep a night.
Not so much with just 3-4.

------
zoomablemind
This practice comes through as a clear lack of prioritization most often on
the mid-management's part. Or indeed, anxiety of the team members.

Sure there're tight deadlines, and now-or-never cases, but when this becomes a
feature, let alone a badge, in that move up or move out culture, it's a sign
that the company became obsessed with an image it projects out over the
quality of what it offers to the client.

Do they proudly stamp over such a report 'Red-eye: Compiled in the wee hours
by our tireless professionals'? Better be, so a client could double check any
findings, perhaps discount it just like the airlines do.

------
gnicholas
When I worked as a corporate lawyer, I remember some associates would send
emails late at night in order to give the impression that they were working
through until that time.

~~~
whoisjuan
I hope they were using something like Boomerang to program those emails to be
automatically sent at that time because if they actually did it manually they
are idiots.

~~~
gnicholas
We were running Outlook for Windows XP at the time (2007), so I don't think
there were any Boomerang-type tools (and even if there were, IT wouldn't have
allowed them to be installed). But it wasn't a big deal for them to send
manually — they just stopped working at 8, went home and did stuff, then sent
the email at midnight before going to bed.

To be clear, I never did this, since the partners I worked for didn't value
burning the candle at both ends.

------
wolco
I'm getting tired just thinking about this.

Working all night once is a badge of honor but doing it repeatly is a badge of
early death.

------
WesternStar
Feeling not quite good enough -> working at night -> not making progress ->
Depression. Got me fired from a FAANG and sent me into a year long depression
and recovery. As to whether I deserved to be there who knows. I sure as shit
didn't do myself any favors.

------
broth
I’ve observed a trend in my life where destructive context switching during
work hours leads to working after hours at home where peace and quiet
facilitates productivity. I just want to get my work done and done well. I
take pride in my work. No badge needed.

------
Moru
I might live a privileged life but I have never been at a job where it was OK
to work overtime. When you did your hours, you were expected to go home to
your family. You don't get paid overtime and after work you should rest so you
can work the next day. If you are a parent you are expected to use your parent
leave fully, otherwise people look funny at you.

~~~
pdimitar
I noticed it very much depends on which country you lived in. Here in Europe
all-nighters are generally frowned upon although greedy leaders who try and
guilt-trip their people into working themselves to death exist everywhere. But
around here people are generally less receptive to such manipulation.

------
crehn
As a developer, frequently working overnight is a sign of terrible management
and/or an inefficient worker. Nothing to be proud of.

~~~
tensor
As someone who prefers working night to morning, calling night owls
"inefficient" due to their preference is toxic behaviour. If that is my
preference who are you to judge?

~~~
crehn
As you might deduce from context, overnight here means overtime.

------
Railsify
It's 1AM now, I'm going to be up all night working, making good progress so
far.

------
whalesalad
Major media outlets are really digging deep for the “duh” content these days.

~~~
pdimitar
Sadly what you and me find painfully obvious is a mind-blowing revelation for
many younger workers.

I wish there was a way to educate the young without greedy bosses taking 5
years of their total life expectancy by forcing them into all-nighters. :(

------
adamnemecek
At the same time some organizations have terrible scheduling that they leave
you little other options. I'm glad I do t have to deal with them.

------
dlphn___xyz
this is only a problem at big firms where your performance is tied to your
billable hours.

------
m4r35n357
Why is this not obvious to everybody?

~~~
pdimitar
Many business owners and middle managers are really good at manipulation. I
observed it happening in front of me, many times. And many people respond as
they are expected by the higher-ups, especially when guilt-tripping is
involved (which is very often).

Sad but true.

------
esoterica
A work environment so demanding that people keep leaving the company to seek
better work/life balance is a feature, not a bug. Accounting is really not
that hard, and neither are consulting, or banking, or law, or any of the other
100 hour week industries. If basically everyone can do their job competently
then how do you decide who to promote to partner? The answer is to work all
the juniors to the bone until most of them burn out and quit. Problem solved.

~~~
dunstad
If having partners necessitates causing burnout in young people, maaaybe it's
not a great way to structure things.

~~~
pdimitar
Exactly correct but is happening all the time nevertheless.

