"Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process." • Hacker News Board

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#111

Post by killerswan » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 1:32 AM UTC

felipemnoa wrote: post #108

What a bunch of B.S. In fact I cannot believe it is even here in Hacker News. "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process." This is a such a horrible generalization. Successful people always work hard/long hours to make something succeed. Imagine telling your kids that to be successful you should work just 40 hours and no more. They will be easily steamed rolled by other kids that are willi…

Accomplishment is nice, but there's a lot more to it than simply working hours. A consistent thing: long hours without consideration of whether you could do even better with a change in process are always a mistake.

If you're doing the work in a situation where adding staff or changing commitments really will not help you, by all means, continue to work, and find whatever tricks you need to stay focused in that time.

Edison had a whole company helping him do his work, and I bet the best of piano players have a cleaning lady, a chauffeur, and a specialist in tuning pianos all helping them to spend more time mentally preparing (including via sleep) and with hands on keys.

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#112

Post by robryan » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 1:36 AM UTC

lwat wrote: post #107

One of our most successful clients (grew from nothing to 200+ employees in 5 years) has always had a very strict 6pm closing time. Everyone must be out of the building at 6pm and there's no 'working from home' or 'work on the weekend' allowed.

I'm sure this cut people off in the zone when 6pm hit from time to time. As others have said here I think that the best is a happy medium, no enforced long hours but no enforced breaks either.

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#113

Post by Duff » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 1:36 AM UTC

chrisbennet wrote: post #95

Duff wrote: post #23

The amusing thing to me is that the question was closed as offtopic. Stackexchange is slowly turning into a Usenet/Wikipedia hybrid.

Um, that's what is supposed to be. It is not a chat room. It's a place to get answers (or give them). "All questions on Stack Exchange are expected to be objective and have concrete answers; we’re not a place for conversation, opinions, or socializing. We also expect questions to represent real problems, not just imponderables, hypotheticals, or requests for opinions."

The top voted, open question on that particular SE site is "What should a developer know before building a public web site?"

I'm a huge fan of SE, I just find the random prickyness of shutting stuff down without editing annoying.

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#114

Post by barnaby » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 1:40 AM UTC

jowiar wrote: post #83

The broken process may not be company-specific. We are in an industry that is driven not just by getting things to market, but by getting things to market faster than the other guy. As we all know, software does not really scale too well to adding people to the problem. Thus, being to market faster is often achieved by coaxing more work out of the same number of people, this results in long hours. Thought experiment:…

That's a good thought experiment. I imagine we would very suddenly see an explosion of automation solutions for making engineers accomplish more with less time. We would also see an almost perfect eradication of most time-sinks in software development.

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#115

Post by felipemnoa » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 1:46 AM UTC

killerswan wrote: post #111

felipemnoa wrote: post #108

What a bunch of B.S. In fact I cannot believe it is even here in Hacker News. "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process." This is a such a horrible generalization. Successful people always work hard/long hours to make something succeed. Imagine telling your kids that to be successful you should work just 40 hours and no more. They will be easily steamed rolled by other kids that are willi…

Accomplishment is nice, but there's a lot more to it than simply working hours. A consistent thing: long hours without consideration of whether you could do even better with a change in process are always a mistake . If you're doing the work in a situation where adding staff or changing commitments really will not help you, by all means, continue to work, and find whatever tricks you need to stay focused in that time…

If yo want to work 9 to 5 that is fine. Is your choice. But I think is unfair to claim that working 9 to 5 will increase your chances of success. Now, whether you don't care for that is another matter. Fine with me if you are happy. Working long hours in a sweat shop is bad obviously. Working long hours practicing in athletics, music, academics is necessary. If you don't do it somebody else will. Assuming you want to reach the top else why even discuss it.

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#116

Post by tensor » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 1:47 AM UTC

keithnoizu wrote: post #90

swombat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a myth of the startup world (a persistent, but mostly incorrect myth). I know successful people with both balanced and unbalanced lives... and the former are definitely happier. 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), spen…

I agree. On the more competitive business part, on average a developer only has about 3-4 peak hours of productivity during any given day. The time when your programming in the "zone" and get huge amounts of work done in minimal periods of time. The remaining time tends to be filler time, minor code cleanup, changes, being stuck on problems you would never encounter when still fresh/awake. etc. When you increase work…

Starting a business involves a lot more than just coding. Responding to employee emails, getting quotes for various bits of infrastructure, setting up the legal side of things, the banking side of things, all takes up a huge amount of time. It's not difficult however.

I find swombat's generalization incredibly insulting and naive. I've heard from many successful business founders that they often have no choice but to work long hours at the start. I know swombat is talking about regular long hours, but what is his definition of regular? There are always exceptions to the rule.

I don't have a lot of respect for people who make overly-general statements in absolutes. I have even less respect for those who feel the need to back up their statement by characterizing anyone who disagrees as incompetent, greedy, or otherwise.

I agree that in an established business, you shouldn't need to work 10 hours a day everyday. I'm very much for people having a balanced life, and for treating employees fairly. However, depending on the situation, there may be periods where you do need to work long hours. There are no golden rules in life that you can follow and be guaranteed success, no matter how smart you are. Everyone makes mistakes, and a failure doesn't mean you are incompetent.

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#117

Post by robryan » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 1:49 AM UTC

chrisbennet wrote: post #95

Duff wrote: post #23

The amusing thing to me is that the question was closed as offtopic. Stackexchange is slowly turning into a Usenet/Wikipedia hybrid.

Um, that's what is supposed to be. It is not a chat room. It's a place to get answers (or give them). "All questions on Stack Exchange are expected to be objective and have concrete answers; we’re not a place for conversation, opinions, or socializing. We also expect questions to represent real problems, not just imponderables, hypotheticals, or requests for opinions."

I think they miss out on an opportunity there, just tag them differently or put them in a different section or something. The question and answer stuff is great for searching but when you have put together such a knowledgeable community it seems like a waste not to allow them to engage on topics like this.

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#118

Post by felipemnoa » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 1:53 AM UTC

rjd wrote: post #110

felipemnoa wrote: post #108

What a bunch of B.S. In fact I cannot believe it is even here in Hacker News. "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process." This is a such a horrible generalization. Successful people always work hard/long hours to make something succeed. Imagine telling your kids that to be successful you should work just 40 hours and no more. They will be easily steamed rolled by other kids that are willi…

So you take a few edge cases and make them the example for the main stream? I doubt you should ever use Edison or Einstein to ever refer to the average person. Let alone put yourself in the same camp, you'll probably do yourself mental harm via exhaustion. Fine if you have abnormal drive and intelligence go for it. But chances are you are an average person and need to obey the rules of what makes average people happy…

>>So you take a few edge cases and make them the example for the main stream?

I could show you many more but why?

>>But chances are you are an average person and need to obey the rules of what makes average people happy

Yes, do what makes you happy and yes I am an average person but that doesn't mean that I cannot tell you that the sky is blue even if I were blind (I think you know what I mean). What I disliked is the blanket statement. In very competitive fields if you want to be top dog you have to work long hours and even that may not be enough. Of course, if you work on a sweatshop working long hours really makes no difference. Top dog against who? Lets just not make blanket statements.

Some people are happy working 40 hours others are happy working 80 hours. And if you are in a competitive field 40 hours will not do the job. Happiness is besides the point. If that doesn't make you happy don't do it. I'm not telling anybody to work 80 hours to be happy. I'm telling you not to try to convince other people that they should not work 80 hours a week because you don't like to work 80 hours a week.

I'm saying that if you want to stay ahead of your peers, say, athletics, academics, you better train more, study harder than the other guy. Is almost a self evident truth so I don't understand what we are arguing about. If I'm wrong please enlighten me.

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#119

Post by robryan » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 1:54 AM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #47

rokhayakebe wrote: post #17

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…

That bookmark service that did great out of the del.ici.ous fiasco (sorry I honestly can't remember your name!).

trunk.ly? They certainly weren't the only ones but were in the right place at the right time to attract a heap of users and as a consequence did some crazy weeks to bring forward a heap of planned features to keep the newly attracted users.

Re: "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

#120

Post by robryan » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 2:00 AM UTC

Hisoka wrote: post #7

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…

A pretty good example of what you are talking about is AirBnB, sure they may have had some of the security features in the pipeline but the pressure was really on them to at least get something out the represented a step in the right direction shortly after what happened. I'm pretty sure they must have had people pull some big hours to put together such a comprehensive security features overhaul so quickly.