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

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

#121

Post by felipemnoa »

jrockway wrote: post #80
Androsynth wrote: post #51

My biggest problem with long hours (aside from the long hours themselves), is that like most programmers, I'm not constantly productive for 10 hours a day. It frustrates me that I have to sit in my desk for long periods where I'm unproductive before my muse hits and then I enter hugely productive periods (which often take place outside of normal business hours). I don't think some m-f, 9-5 union type situation is the…

Work somewhere else? It's 3pm and I'm just now ready to head in to the office.

Used to do this all the time at my old job. There were so many distractions during the day that I would just come in late and code all by myself. It was awesome.

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

#122

Post by hugh3 »

ctdonath wrote: post #58

One comment mentioned "Fizz-Buzz" which I hadn't heard of. Interesting tidbit. http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-dev...

That confused me. Am I overlooking something that makes the problem non-trivial?

On further reading I'm pretty sure I'm not, but perhaps the very triviality of the problem confuses people enough that they have difficulty with it. ("Is there some weird edge case I'm not considering?")

The other big question with FizzBuzz is whether it's worth making your code more complicated in order to make it slightly shorter. That is, do you start off with a "if i % 15 == 0" or not? My inclination is yes, because I'd rather have ten lines that obviously work than eight lines that might not.

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

#123

Post by webwright »

bendotc wrote: post #109
webwright wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a straw man. You don't have to choose between working harder or smarter. And I never said anything about happiness. Say we fork the universe now and one version of you works 25 hour weeks henceforth, which the other works 50 hours per week henceforth. Who retires with more money and more impact on the world? Both version of you are equally smart. The well-rested you might make SLIGHTLY smarter decisio…

I have no doubt that determination and enthusiasm are positively correlated with both success and with working long hours. However, as a rational skeptic, I've yet to see evidence that working long hours has a causal relationship to success. However, there is evidence to suggest an inverse relationship may exist. Furthermore, hazing is effective in building solidarity, and people are generally more likely to retroact…

Who said anything about causal?

"However, there is evidence to suggest an inverse relationship may exist."

So you'd bet that if I shadowed 1,000 self-made millionaires while they were building their businesses, and then shadowed a random sampling of (employed) Americans, the millionaires would work LESS than average? Really?

FWIW, I do agree that specialized knowledge work doesn't benefit from tons of hours... As someone pointed out in another comment, entrepreneurial success generally requires a wide variety of different tasks.

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

#124

Post by hugh3 »

orlick wrote: post #11
mburney wrote: post #5

I'm curious how efficient most coders are even in an 8 hour work day. I find that I can only log about 4 - 5 hours a day (on average) of solid coding time (or marketing/business work). This is because I limit myself to an 8 hour work day, but of course there are breaks and inevitable down time.

Our startup team of 10 has kept pretty strict time logs for the past 3 years. We have an official policy of 40 hour work weeks, but yeah, no developers are able to have that much productive time. Usually we see about 25-30 hours of solid development time, 5 hours of meeting/admin time, and 5 hours of lunches/coffee/break time.

If you can honestly spend 75% of your office time doing actual development, and divide the rest evenly between breaks and meetings, I'd like to see how.

I've recently got into pomodoro timing. I set the timer for 45 minutes, focus totally on work, then take a fifteenish-minute break. I can't do it all day though.

I know the classic pomodoro technique is supposed to be 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off, but a five minute break is too short for me (I like to get out of the building) and the rhythm of the half-hours just goes by too quickly. 45 minute serious-work periods work much better for me.

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

#125

Post by SoftwareMaven »

rhizome wrote: post #39
mburney wrote: post #5

I'm curious how efficient most coders are even in an 8 hour work day. I find that I can only log about 4 - 5 hours a day (on average) of solid coding time (or marketing/business work). This is because I limit myself to an 8 hour work day, but of course there are breaks and inevitable down time.

I was just thankfully let go from a startup that expected extra hours on top of running an open-plan office and coworkers who lived by the "who can interrupt the loudest?!" method of project management. 4-5 hour stretches were never once achieved during normal business hours in the 2.5 months I was there. A 2 hour stretch was a gift, but more often than not the quietude would be broken by one of a small group (3-4) l…

Open floor plans are evil for developers. Whoever started that trend needs to be strung up by their nose hair. There is no better way to ensure no work gets done than putting 10 people in an environment that every two person conversation interrupts (and I believe that "15 minutes to get back into the zone" is a bunch of crap).

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

#126

Post by bendotc »

webwright wrote: post #123
bendotc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no doubt that determination and enthusiasm are positively correlated with both success and with working long hours. However, as a rational skeptic, I've yet to see evidence that working long hours has a causal relationship to success. However, there is evidence to suggest an inverse relationship may exist. Furthermore, hazing is effective in building solidarity, and people are generally more likely to retroact…

Who said anything about causal? "However, there is evidence to suggest an inverse relationship may exist." So you'd bet that if I shadowed 1,000 self-made millionaires while they were building their businesses, and then shadowed a random sampling of (employed) Americans, the millionaires would work LESS than average? Really? FWIW, I do agree that specialized knowledge work doesn't benefit from tons of hours... As som…

"So you'd bet that if I shadowed 1,000 self-made millionaires while they were building their businesses, and then shadowed a random sampling of (employed) Americans, the millionaires would work LESS than average? Really?"

No, I never said anything of the like. In fact, I said that the qualities more likely to make you successful are also likely to predict working long hours. What I would say is that if you could make two copies of the world, one where entrepreneurs work reasonable hours and one where they work extensive hours, they would generally have better outcomes with the former.

In essence, it seems that working in crunch mode for extended periods of time is a bad habit of highly motivated people.

"Entrepreneurial success generally requires a wide variety of different tasks."

Obviously, there are all sorts of businesses and all sorts of entrepreneurs, but I'm not sure that the data available suggests that working with varied tasks alleviates problems of fatigue. Additionally, the penalties of multitasking are generally well documented. If the tasks just need to be completed and are straight-forward, or if you're in a short lead-up to a deadline, certainly there are times when it makes sense to work extended hours.

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

#127

Post by kamaal »

felipemnoa wrote: post #118
rjd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Very correct,

But as a matter for fact we need to define the term 'Happiness', a lot of people measure happiness by how much minimum they can achieve(Which makes them happy) with how much minimum effort they put. For example, if you put in 5 productive hours of work a day and end up achieving a, what you describe as a happy life, you would consider that success.

But a lot of people tend to measure success in a different way. For example, Even though during atleast two days in a week I might have opportunity to go back early. I purposefully use the free time to check if I can do some extra work which will give an edge to my career. Generally its something like this, I check if I can add some feature that has a direct impact on revenue or some bug that I can fix or something I can read upon which will help me take more informed decisions later.

I was not a very brilliant kid in the school, nor in college nor during my engineering. In fact I was almost on border, but I would always make it. How? By multiplying effort over time. Most of my friends back in school when I meet them today, find it astonishing that I have made it so big in the industry, while even many high scoring folks haven't.

At work my philosophy is very simple, Seize every work opportunity as it comes. Ensure you multiply effort with time. Thereby, completely hedging for my low IQ by sheer work alone. Indeed as they say opportunity multiplies as you seize it. I also see a lot of high scoring people straight out of college who don't do it big in the industry. Because intelligent people expect, brilliance will make up for everything. But the fact is, Intelligence only acts as a catalyst in the path to success. The bulk of everything else is sheer hard work.

Apart from this its important to understand things like management. Especially time management. Its important to plan, review and track your life time, decade, yearly , monthly and weekly goals. Measuring your productivity is important. Reviewing it constantly, and course correction is the key.

The great thing is today you can achieve anything by sheer work. This gives me great hope for the future.

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

#128

Post by voidfiles »

webwright wrote: post #46
swombat wrote: post #30

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 think there is a difference between working long hours and being 'married' to your work. People who are passionate about work will end up spending more time on their craft then those who are not, but they aren't always working. For example I read HN, and feel that it makes me better at work, but it's not work. I spend time outside of work doing things that are work like, but not my job because I really like what I do. No matter how much I like what I do, I can work long hours on any of it without getting burnt out, and if I do that for long periods of time I can feel the psychological drain.

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

#129

Post by gte910h »

gaustin wrote: post #42
gte910h wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I get crap using those numbers on estimates. I still don't redo math because people dislike them though.

Same here. But somehow the numbers always get recalculated when they pass through my supervisor's hands.

That stinks of lying. I'd make sure that guy does not pass it off as YOUR estimate, but his.

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

#130

Post by mattm1 »

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…

Edison was famous for bragging that he only needed 2-3 hours sleep a night. Then when Tesla came to work with him he once remarked to a reporter "Yes, he only sleeps 2-3 hours a night but he naps for 5-6 hours during the day."
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