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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."

#131

Post by dan_manges »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #125
rhizome wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

We have a dev team of 12 working with an open floor plan, pair programming. We get a lot done. There is no single right way to operate.

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

#132

Post by mattm1 »

felipemnoa wrote: post #115
killerswan wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No long hours are not necessary. The study written about in this thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900301 - is about how the best violin players only practice for 4 hours per day but the good players actually practice more.

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

#133

Post by mattm1 »

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…

I'm in Japan now and Japan is still like this. Actually, a lot of SE Asia is like this - Korea, HK. When I talk to people about this they even admit it. They realise they are goofing off a lot of the day because they know they have to stay late so there is little incentive to be productive.

I believe that people can only work productively for a set amount per day and keeping people at work after that doesn't lead to any more work being done.

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

#134

Post by jhdavids8 »

One of the worst articles I've ever seen posted on HN. I'm not going to even read through the comments, but I hope most are simply stating that this is complete BS. Otherwise, you're arguing simply for the sake of arguing. Not everything should be argued, not everything should be over-analyzed. Working long hours is often a choice; you do it to get ahead, you do it to improve your product, you do it for any number of reasons (and yes, maybe you do it because something is broken). Any argument to the contrary supporting this stupid argument is simply BS.

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

#135

Post by jhdavids8 »

"This one time, at one job I had, I was able to work 9-5 Monday-Friday. The company I worked for was successful. Therefore, ANY job that requires extra hours is the sign of a broken process."

Why would anyone hire a dude like this with such poor reasoning skills?

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

#137

Post by felipemnoa »

mattm1 wrote: post #132
felipemnoa wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No long hours are not necessary. The study written about in this thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900301 - is about how the best violin players only practice for 4 hours per day but the good players actually practice more.

Here is a very nice counter point to your study.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertai...

The link claims that one of the best violinists in the world would practice 7 hours a day. The complete opposite of what you are citing.

From the link:

>>Such dedication is also apparent in musicians. Maxim Vengerov, 34, is one of the world’s greatest violinists. He was born in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and, after being given a miniature fiddle at the age of four, displayed outstanding aptitude.

His talent was matched by an immense work ethic. He practised seven hours a day, giving his first recital at the age of five and winning his first international prize at 15. Vengerov said: “My mother would get home at 8pm, cook dinner and then teach me the violin until four in the morning. As a four-year-old boy it was torture. But I became a violinist within two years.”

Also, different professions probably have different definitions of long hours. Four hours practicing on the violin must be pretty exhausting since it is a physical exercise. Therefore you must also take that into account. Four hours playing the violin and four hours programming are not the same thing. Four hours for a violin player is already long hours. Four hours for a programmer sitting in front of a computer is nothing. Specially if you are debugging code, you could easily spend more than 24 hours debugging a problem, I doubt a violinist could do the same.

Another example is marathon runners. Running two hours everyday is already long hours. You cannot equate two hours running a marathon with two hours of programming right.

So my point still stands, you have to put in long hours. The definition of long hours changes by profession.

An easier way to see it is that you have to put in more hours than what your average peer puts in. Of course, you also have to do it smart.

-Edit This is a tangent but I just thought of this and seems important enough to share. Even though the runner and the violinists are practicing they are not really being productive because they are not producing anything that the world can use. A programmer in the same amount of time is being productive because he is actually generating things that can be used by the world.

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

#138

Post by kamaal »

mattm1 wrote: post #133
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…

I'm in Japan now and Japan is still like this. Actually, a lot of SE Asia is like this - Korea, HK. When I talk to people about this they even admit it. They realise they are goofing off a lot of the day because they know they have to stay late so there is little incentive to be productive. I believe that people can only work productively for a set amount per day and keeping people at work after that doesn't lead to…

In general what you are saying is true, but its not the general public your must fear in the competition.

Its always the exceptional guy who is going to win the prize any day. And that is why people always run into exceptionally productive people and don't find it easy to compete with them. Multiply this with the drive and energy which keeps them productive over time and suddenly things get very difficult.

For most people 5 hours of productive work will see them by, but you should not expect that to be sufficient to be the best or to be sufficient enough to beat the best. For that you will have to do something extra.

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

#139

Post by killerswan »

felipemnoa wrote: post #115
killerswan wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is not what I said. I think you will agree that working on the right things is more important than just volume of work.

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

#140

Post by kamaal »

mattm1 wrote: post #130
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."

Edison Vs Tesla debates often end up going no where, this is because the debates take the nature of debate between two school of thoughts. One which believes that learning the body of knowledge and using proper academic approach to research is the right way to success(Tesla), other approach is to take a interesting problem without having no background and prior knowledge of what you are going into, but as you go deeper you begin learn and do things by experimenting on the way(Edison).

Edison approach takes time, a lot of work and thereby you need to find ways of being more productive. Both methods have their plus'es and minus'es.

But.. If you find some body very hardworking, going over the counter to put effort in his work to achieve something and he ends up being more successfully than everybody else. That shouldn't look surprising. And that precisely what happened with Edison and Tesla.

Although Edison lost the war of currents, but comparing their lives as a whole Edison ended up achieving far more than Tesla.

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