Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

brianknapp.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 200 posts

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#41

Post by simplydt »

TP4Cornholio wrote: post #25
simplydt wrote: post #8

I think it follows from Brian's point that only founders may ever put in that much work, maybe very early employees; as he said, the trick is to be painting your own house... Having said that, I completely agree that long hours are overrated and maybe unhealthy. Burnout will follow. Everyone has to recover. Such long stints can only be kept up for so long!

Is that true? I avoided ever joining startups because I assumed everyone worked 60 hours every week.

Having been based in various co working spaces where many startups work from I can definitely say most work regular work weeks!

As the other reply says, usually you find people doing longer hours in a few selected periods of a startups life. E.g. First MVP, first big client... crunch time!

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#42

Post by hnnsj »

drblast wrote: post #11

I seem to be alone in this, but I actually do about 25-30 hours of actual programming work each week. And that's sit-down-and-concentrate-and-build-shit work. I'm pretty ruthless about declining extraneous meetings and I keep my door closed most of the time. I think it's reasonable to have 25% of a 40-hour week be for meetings, helping other people, eating lunch, sitting in on interviews, and learning/trying out new…

You're not alone. I, and everyone at work except perhaps our CEO, get probably 30 hours of focused programming done, with the caveat that probably around 75% of that programming is done in pairs. Which still feels like very productive programming most of the time. We do this by using the pomodoro technique and TDD (although I'm sure there are lots of other ways, and that it's mostly a combination of company philosophy and a fitting business model and product).

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#43

Post by WalterSear »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #13
codr4life wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you work 80 hours per week when a couple of hours a day is enough to get by? Or even encourage that? There's plenty more important things in life than work and funny money, and plenty more important things in work than number of hours spent behind the keyboard.

Because you know that you go full throttle for 3-5 years and then you have the possibility to retire. I would sacrifice 5 years of my life in order to get financial freedom for the rest of it.

Except for every needle that will give you that is buried in a haystack of failed ventures and empty promises.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#45

Post by hnnsj »

Fully agree on the office hours aspect of it, but not necessarily on the "you can't get your best work done by someone else's specification" aspect. Either I'm missing some point, or this sounds rather egocentric to me. What is "good work"? Beautiful code? Difficult code? Or is it code that is actually of utility? I'd argue the third. If your code isn't doing anyone else any good (and hopefully enough people to make it a viable business and thus "work". And if your code is supposed to help anyone else, you have to build it to someone else's specifications, implicitly or explicitly.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#47

Post by lngnmn »

Still trying to apply manufacturing or construction work practices to IT in 2017.

The people of talent and intelligence, like poets and writers, work due to their own vision and inner values to make money as a by-product of their chosen occupation.

Coding factories would inevitable fail like any other kind of a manual labor sweatshops.

To make intelligent people do their best (intelligence implies that this is the only way they approach any task) is to motivate them for the cause. Any kind of naive manipulation, primitive deceptive practices and employee-morale bullshitting would surely fail with reasonable smart people.

There is an economic law - a forced labor is not productive and it produces a lowest quality crap the whole system could get away with. That's why communism failed.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#49

Post by gregn610 »

Agreed to a point, but there's also several hours a day of non-programming that just has to get done which never features in these SV conversations. Dealing with network guys to get the firewall exceptions you need, getting the DBA to actually do the indexes you asked for, endless ticket updates, meetings, more meetings, timesheets, checking the contractor's deliverables, production issues, interuptions etc. etc. Then add understaffing, UAC policies, sanfus and shifting requirements. So sure, 3 or 4 hours in the programming zone easily becomes a 55hr week.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#50

Post by imh »

a3n wrote: post #14
xyzzy4 wrote: post #7

To answer the actual question: 1. Pay your programmers per hour, and pay them very well. For example many people who are paid $200/hour would work 80 hours per week. 2. Provide free taxis or have easy public transportation to their homes. 3. Offer to pay for their children's daycare if they work extra hours. 4. Provide free food delivery from nearby restaurants.

Alternative answer: Ensure that the implication that "The IPO" and every individual's "exit" depends on those 80 hours is widely heard and vaguely understood. Hire people who believe that.

If you tie it to an exit, you're setting up for tension. "If we exit, you'll get one hundredth (or even far less!) of the payout that I will, but my payout may be immediate while you're transferred to the acquiring company. Still, I need you to work as hard as I do."
Post reply on HN