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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."

#141

Post by [deleted] »

killerswan wrote: post #139
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#143

Post by [deleted] »

kamaal wrote: post #138
mattm1 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by swombat »

tensor wrote: post #116
keithnoizu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd argue that the reason why you need to work long hours in a new business is because generally, people who start new businesses are incompetent.

Say what you want about the drive and determination of a bunch of 19-year-olds going through YC, but what they are not is competent. In fact, almost anyone, no matter their age and experience, is utterly incompetent at running their own business when they first get started.

I think your problem is that you're taking "incompetent" as a personal insult (not sure why you're doing that..) when it's meant as a statement of fact. I was certainly utterly incompetent when I started my first two businesses - and in fact I am still somewhat incompetent, as exemplified by the fact that I do need to work evenings and weekends every once in a while.

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

#145

Post by nostrademons »

webwright wrote: post #103
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…

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…

It's my understanding that when people say "working hard" in these discussions, they aren't comparing 25 hrs/week vs. 50 hrs/week. They're usually comparing 50 hrs/week vs. 75 hrs/week.

If I forked my life into a version of me that worked 50 hour work weeks and one that worked 75 hour work weeks, the 50-hour me would win, hands down. The 75 hour work week me would outright miss most of the key strategic decisions that got me where I am. When I look at everything I've done that in hindsight has been a huge career boost - getting involved in the Harry Potter fandom, making friends on the C2 Wiki that got me a job in financial software, learning Lisp & functional programming, founding a startup, and getting a job at Google - they all happened in the downtime between work. Had I simply worked 75 hour work weeks since 2001, I would be a physics grad student right now, hating it, and making a pittance. I'd probably be a damned good physics grad student, but that doesn't help me very much.

Now, I also put in quite a few hours into developing skills and building a track record, and I don't think those opportunities would've opened up if I hadn't. But I wouldn't have thought to look for the opportunities if I did nothing but concentrate on work. You're a big fan of necessary but not sufficient conditions, right? The work is necessary, but so is the downtime.

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

#146

Post by swombat »

webwright wrote: post #103
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…

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…

> 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 decisions due to happiness/lack of fatigue perhaps... But surely you wouldn't contend that the success outcomes (professional impact and wealth, for the sake of argument) wouldn't be different.

It's hard to tell. Would I work better and smarter knowing that I only have a slim 5 hours a day to get stuff done? I think it may have more positive effects than you think - particularly if the rest of the time was doing things that will restore my energy (e.g. cultural activities, meeting people, sports, relaxing...)

Sure, YC encourages a kind of work-work-work attitude, and I'm not suggesting this necessarily will hurt you - in fact, because every YC founder is basically completely incompetent (at the beginning) and thrown into a maelstrom of challenges, it's not that surprising that there's a culture of working long hours to make up for lack of initial competence. But to suggest that somehow the eventual success comes because of the long hours (rather than because of the connections and wisdoms imparted by YC, as well as the fact that all or most YC founders are very smart) seems a bit confused to me...

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

#147

Post by swombat »

nostrademons wrote: post #100
webwright wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 can think of a few with ~$1B net worth that still find time to indulge their passions and still remain a regular human being. The people I know who are highly successful work hard, and they take their work seriously. But they don't let their work consume them. There is still time for hobbies, passions, and human relationships once all the code has been written. Continuous improvement, seeking out things you're doin…

That is something I've noticed too. Not a single one of the highly successful people I know is one-dimensional. They're all well-rounded human beings who spend time indulging whatever passions they have.

The only ones I know who are slightly less well-rounded but still successful, as I mentioned in another comment, are the corporate successful types - imho because they have less of a choice about how to manage their time.

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

#148

Post by corin_ »

felipemnoa wrote: post #137
mattm1 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Novosib…

Interestingly I never found playing the cello exhausting - well, very occasionally if I had been playing a lot (several days running of a couple of hours practise, many hours rehearsing, couple of hours performing). On the other side, singing could be very tiring (though again, all-day sessions, always standing up).

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

#149

Post by tensor »

swombat wrote: post #144
tensor wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd argue that the reason why you need to work long hours in a new business is because generally, people who start new businesses are incompetent. Say what you want about the drive and determination of a bunch of 19-year-olds going through YC, but what they are not is competent. In fact, almost anyone, no matter their age and experience, is utterly incompetent at running their own business when they first get started…

I assume when you say incompetent, you mean lacking in experience. That is correct, and often unavoidably so. Unfortunately, incompetent is typically used in a far more derogatory manner by most. Thus, I fear most people reading your post will take as a synonym for stupid.

But even with that clarified, I'll still disagree. The first 3-6 months of starting a business often involves a lot of busy work. This is not coding or otherwise requiring of immense thought, but it does take time. A great many business owners have said that it requires long hours to get a business up and running.

Of course, that does not apply to regular employees. Nor should it remain constant after you've started. Even so, heads of companies often do spend longer hours working than most. That's not to say their lives are unbalanced. Let me quote Bill Gates:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/30/news/newsmakers/gates_howiwo...

* It's a nice luxury to get some time to go write up my thoughts or follow up on meetings during the day. But sometimes that doesn't happen. So then it's great after the kids go to bed to be able to just sit at home and go through whatever e-mail I didn't get to. If the entire week is very busy, it's the weekend when I'll send the long, thoughtful pieces of e-mail. When people come in Monday morning, they'll see that I've been quite busy— they'll have a lot of e-mail.*

Working long hours is not always a sign of incompetence or lack of process. It still depends on the situation, and what you do in those hours. I do agree with a weaker statement, it shouldn't be that the majority of your employees always have to work long hours.

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

#150

Post by rjd »

kamaal wrote: post #127
felipemnoa wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 differ…

We're mixing things here a bit. Theres always merit in pushing and improving yourself, but the article was about putting in extra hours for other people, and the linked response was about over time being linked to bad process and decisions.

And hence in a sense chasing someone else's dream and not so much your own, and even worse putter a wager on the return of that extra effort.

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