I get the feeling that the article was more written with the mind of the early days of Google- where one employee working 130 hour weeks could save the company tens/hundreds of thousands, and she wanted it to work that well.
Google most definitely doesn't require those insane hours out of people today- hell, quite the opposite. Requesting to spend time with your family does seem ridiculous, but the thing is, if you're in a small startup that is trying to get somewhere fast? You knew what you were getting into, no one forced you into the job, and maybe you should have chosen something that allowed more family time without having to ask. That doesn't make the job bad or 'seriously wrong', it's just a different life situation.
Similarly, there are a lot of people who want to work that hard, for something they believe in or are passionate about, but they find themselves incapable. That's what the article is really for.
Well, I think that's the problem with the article--is the advice geared toward start-up employees, or current Googlers? I agree that in a start-up, you should likely expect longer weeks (even all-nighters), and maybe you do need to ask to have dinner with your family[1]. But at an established company? Seems like a cultural issue.
[1] FWIW, I still think this is insane, and would never want to do it.
I think she is merely recounting a story from the early days of Google and relating it to the larger problem of employee burnout. I know quite a few current Googlers and as far as I understand nothing so ridiculous happens there now. Of course the problem is incredibly relevant to Startups: I would never enjoy myself in such a restrictive situation unless I was working on my idea but again different people have different tolerance levels...
I don't disagree, and I'm trying to criticize Mayer here--I think the "article" is a bit poorly written, and I imagine some mid-manager somewhere reading it and thinking "oh, I can make my devs works 100 hours a week, as long as I let them eat dinner with their kids once a week."
I think you're right, I certainly don't see much of that kind of thing around here now (there probably are some engineers pulling long hours, but they're the exceptions and it's not generally expected). Could be partly related to the location, although I haven't seen evidence of people doing 80+ hour weeks in other offices yet either.
And that's okay. It isn't for everyone. Me? I managed to do 60 hours in a 3 day week last week, my first week at a new job. I loved it, and am proud of the work I did in that time. I plan on doing 60-70 hours a week consistently if I can, just because I enjoy it.
One thing that's critical here is to internalize the wisdom in "more speed, less haste." Know yourself, and find your productivity sweet spot.
For example, I am most productive when I am doing approx 6 hrs of heavy coding a day. More than that and productivity slowly drops. Less, and I could be doing more. That leaves time for meetings, management activity, etc. Most of the time I can out-produce at least three other developers together at 6 hrs/day, and I don't care how much time they put in.
That allows really 10-12 hours of work a day max, which means really no more than 90 hours of work a week assuming doing some work every day.
I get the feeling that the article was more written with the mind of the early days of Google- where one employee working 130 hour weeks could save the company tens/hundreds of thousands, and she wanted it to work that well.
Google most definitely doesn't require those insane hours out of people today- hell, quite the opposite. Requesting to spend time with your family does seem ridiculous, but the thing is, if you're in a small startup that is trying to get somewhere fast? You knew what you were getting into, no one forced you into the job, and maybe you should have chosen something that allowed more family time without having to ask. That doesn't make the job bad or 'seriously wrong', it's just a different life situation.
Similarly, there are a lot of people who want to work that hard, for something they believe in or are passionate about, but they find themselves incapable. That's what the article is really for.