61–70 of 172 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the company I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the biggest proponents of long hours were a couple of (hourly, natch) contractors who were practicing the most aggravating form of Mortgage-Driven Development I've ever witnessed firsthand. Then salaried people were hounded to work extra hours to keep up with their sh-- code.
This story is better if you read it as the contractors actually made you write the project in sh.
Reason #1 is that working long hours often becomes an excuse to not prioritize properly. Working under realistic constraints forces you to really decide whether some feature is worth it, or if spending 40 hours on Feature A is better than spending 40 hours in Features B, C, and D combined. Too often the answer at companies is, "Well, A, B, C, and D are all really important, so just work harder and do everything." That's a very seductive trap to fall into, but it's absolutely the wrong escape valve. At least in my view a failure to focus and prioritize properly is far more often a cause of failure for startups than "we didn't work hard enough."
Reason #2 is that you want to avoid burning people out if you expect to be around for the long haul. Our company just turned 10, and we still have a surprising number of long-tenured engineers, which I'd attribute in large part to the work environment and the relative sanity of the work/life balance people can have. If you expect people to work 60+ hours a week every week, they're not going to stick around for 10 years; they're going to get burned out and bored and they'll feel like the only way to get a break is to quit.
You can quibble with the second reason, but I think that even in a situation where you feel like you have to get a ton done and working 40 hours a week isn't an option, it's very important not to use "we'll just work harder" as an excuse to avoid making the hard decisions around priorities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's very succinct, witty, and more or less diametrically opposed to the point of the OP on StackOverflow. Did you read it? :-) He's making the point that regular long hours are always a sign of bad management. I'd tend to agree. Any business can be run in balance with a reasonable lifestyle. If you're working overtime very often on your own business, it's either because you're incompetent, or lazy, or greedy, or f…
"If you're working overtime very often on your own business, it's either because you're incompetent, or lazy, or greedy, or failing (see 'incompetent')." Of all of the successful people I've met (measured in cash, influence, etc), I can't think of ANY who weren't pretty seriously married to their work. I guess many of those people fall into the "greedy" camp and are doing it for the money. But I think most of them do…
I'm not convinced that regular long hours lead to a more competitive business. Particularly when it comes to running a business (as opposed to being a contractor or freelancer, which is a completely different proposition), spending 1 hour sitting outside and having a great idea that saves you a day of work is much more valuable than spending 16 hours getting it done the stupid way.
Generally, I haven't seen a great correlation between working long hours and working smart - but I have seen a good correlation between working smart and being successful.
Another anecdotal bit of evidence: generally, most of the successful workaholics I've met tend to be in the corporate world, where they often don't have the choice of working smart.
Long hours are not always because of a broken process, or death march deadlines. Many times when I have worked long hours, it was because I was really into the problem I was trying to solve, and didn't want to quit.
Same here. Any time you are working a difficult problem, especially one that is difficult because of its complexity, you have to keep a lot of context in your head. In that situation, keep going as long as you can and are still making progress. This is the same problem, but in a more extreme context, as the "getting back on track" problem caused by interruptions that was discussed in Peopleware , and frequently since…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's very succinct, witty, and more or less diametrically opposed to the point of the OP on StackOverflow. Did you read it? :-) He's making the point that regular long hours are always a sign of bad management. I'd tend to agree. Any business can be run in balance with a reasonable lifestyle. If you're working overtime very often on your own business, it's either because you're incompetent, or lazy, or greedy, or f…
Don't you think it's a bit unfair to call everyone who works long hours incompetent? I've seen point two that edw519 made a few times. If there's not enough work to pay for another employee, but just enough to pay for your kids college tuition if you make a lot of overtime, what should you do? Growing your business can take years before you can relax a little.
It's nice that LinkedIn has a great process: regression testing and the like, but what if you work in an environment where you can't afford to test every single little thing, and where business models, let alone requirements change constantly (ie. a startup)? What if a competitor just launched a feature that will put you out of business if you don't implement the same thing in 48 hours? What if there is a mission-cri…
As for Wall Street, they do many amazing things sure but I'd hope that the WS culture is not the one we're all aspiring towards.
That being said, its symptomatic. I've been places where the hours were modest and lots got done, and places where the hours were insane and nothing got done.
So the title (and the point the OP makes) don't really hold up. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that if you can't get done what you need to get done during nominal work hourse, then one possibility is that your process is broken. Of course that isn't as impactful :-)
What do long hours often represent? Enterprise: Incompetent management, lazy co-workers, and spoiled users. Small Business: Tough competition and limited resources. Startup: Taking advantage of opportunites that may not pass this way again.
That's very succinct, witty, and more or less diametrically opposed to the point of the OP on StackOverflow. Did you read it? :-) He's making the point that regular long hours are always a sign of bad management. I'd tend to agree. Any business can be run in balance with a reasonable lifestyle. If you're working overtime very often on your own business, it's either because you're incompetent, or lazy, or greedy, or f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if a competitor just launched a feature that will put you out of business if you don't implement the same thing in 48 hours? Even if we stretched the 48 hours to 48 days, I am pretty sure this has never happened.
Facebook suddenly rushing out stuff as Google+ launches. Reddit having to work crazy to take up the exodus from Digg. That bookmark service that did great out of the del.ici.ous fiasco (sorry I honestly can't remember your name!). Perpetuum having a mass of new players because of the Eve monocle incident. I'm sure others can think of times when one business has had to react rapidly to either manoeuvres or failures of…