221–230 of 451 posts
One of my past employers wouldn't pay me what I felt and showed was fair market value for my skills and what I do for them. So I counter offered to work 4 days a week for the same salary. A year of 3 day weekends did more for my life and relationships than a raise ever could have.
"I was born very, very lazy and I don't always practice very long, but I must say, in my defense, that it is not so good, in a musical way, to overpractice. When you do, the music seems to come out of your pocket. If you play with a feeling of 'Oh, I know this,' you play without that little drop of fresh blood that is necessary—and the audience feels it." Of his own practice methods, he said, "At every concert I leave a lot to the moment. I must have the unexpected, the unforeseen. I want to risk, to dare. I want to be surprised by what comes out. I want to enjoy it more than the audience. That way the music can bloom anew."
Not all work benefits from risk, the drop of blood, the unexpected, that are all baked into the right amount of effort, but a great deal of valuable and innovative work does.
Tangential: I loved the "When programming is your hobby" part of this blog post. Finally someone accepting, and not dissing, people who actually like to code . The advice is spot-on, too: coding > 40h / week is fine, but why give up your freedom of choosing what to work on, when to work on it, and when to take time off, without any compensation?
The use of "study" suggests to me that the job posting is not as slavish as it sounds. "Late into the evening" could mean 6pm.
I recently read an MIT career guide that recommended aiming for a 60 hour week - 40 hours for your current employer, and 20 hours for your career.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. It's one of those case we want something to be true, but really, it isn't (always, anyway). Sure, some people are absurdly productive on 25 hours a week. Good for them! Keep at it! Others though, not so much. In programming, you also get better by doing it more. So even if it's not "for work", if you have side projects, you will (generally) be better than those who don't, from pure practice. The super high salar…
Your 60+ hours per week guy probably doesn't have much of a life outside software engineering. He'd be working between 8,5-12h/day, depending on how many workdays he puts in. At that level of time investment, he doesn't have time for a romantic relationship. Almost no one would be crazy to accept so little attention, but even if they would it would be a weak & shallow relationship. They probably don't have time for f…
If someone works 12 hour days, and then implements the, and it hurts me to even type it out, "lifestyle hacks" to further squeeze the sponge of productive hours, the sacrifice they make to their own personal lives is a big toll. 12 hour days, plus commute, plus 8 hours of sleep leaves little time for socializing, hobbies and let alone exercise.
But the bigger tragedy is, on a team where there might be competition (eg., a bonus), the guy pissing his life into his work is going to get the accolades and bonuses, or at least it looks that way, which takes a morale toll on the other members of the group. It leads to a race to the bottom.
This might be okay when you're junior, first starting out, or a partner, or someone with significant equity (read: in a few years they won't need to work), but for everyone else, there is a very high risk of a toxic work situation.
To the person above who said that we're highly paid and so forth and expected to perform - well we're not paid because we're expected to perform highly, we're paid because laws supply and demand at present benefit us. If a situation should arise where the balance of the scales reverts, I assure you you'd still be completing your beloved 12 hour days with a much smaller salary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor. Not all hours are created equally. I do my best work with hyperfocus. I don't just mean more work, but far higher quality work that's at the edge of my intellectual capabilities. This is the work that's most rewarding and gives results that I'm proud of. But I can't get significant time "in the zone" on a 40-hour week. All the normal but necessary distractions take…
I think you'll find that pushing back on the four hours of usual distractions per day will be more productive than working long hours. Personally, I find the usual distractions more tiring than coding, based on years of experience. I estimate at least 2 hours of work lost per hour of meeting, once you add in meeting prep, calendar wrangling, walking, after and before meeting back chatter, realizing you have 30 minute…
Pretty much this. When you are explaing long hours by on the job ineffectively, then you need to deal with on the job ineffectivity - especially if you are in any kind of leadership position. Otherwise you end up rewarding innefective workers and punish workers with better organizational skill.
General feeling that it is ok to work ineffectively because we stay late anyway was one of the things I resented the most in previous job. And people who caused interruptions and wasted everybody time were seen as "hard workers" because they stayed late.
I often think about Arthur Rubenstein, the phenom mid-century pianist, for whom a lot has been written about his mission in early life to "practice as little as possible." There's a lot of hyped up romanticism in these quotes and anyone who plays at his level has spent a lifetime playing piano, period. Regardless, his guidance about spontaneity, creativity, and the relationship to practicing too much, which I equate…
I think that the middle way is key. I've met people who think work for the sake of work is valuable. Others who wouldn't touch hard work with a barge pole. If you cherish success, both are required.
Having met virtuoso pianists, I'd say the context which Rubinstein talks from is open to misinterpretation:
Reaching the level of mastery where one can sightread any of the Beethoven concerti or a Liszt etude requires a lifetime of years/decades of dedicated practice, but it is true that once you're at that level, you can find diminishing returns on hard work which encroach upon your creativity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, except what this actually means is, "You don't have any interests outside of work and you do not have kids that may take you away from work and you don't have a SO/spouse to tell you that you're being taken advantage of." It's not really about your interests, it's about you being naive.
It's all very nice disparaging people for having found a passion, but when I read Masters of Doom , I didn't pity John Carmack and John Romero and their gang for programming all week, then 'borrowing' work computers to program and play D&D all weekend. I admired them. They found a thing they loved to do with people they loved to do it with. Other people have to do many things to be happy, but they found it all there!…
Cool post! What happens when every company is doing this ritual? I'm starting to notice a very bad trend. Just like how LA has record numbers of homeless people, it also has a high vacancy rate. Similarly, despite plenty of "open positions", candidates are being denied left right and center, even as they do their best to signal that they will do anything for the job.
> What happens when every company is doing this ritual? Just look at Japan to see what a 12+ hour / day work culture looks like. Their population and their economy are both slowly going down the shitter thanks to it, depression is widespread, etc.