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A contrarian take on working long hours

allisonpickens.substack.com

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Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#91

Post by onion2k »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #86
onion2k wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a rehash of point 1 and that shouldnt matter. I'll clarify then. Point 1 is that people get annoyed having to work with someone who puts in more time because it makes their work harder. Point 3 is that if people see that someone got a raise or a promotion because they put more hours in, then they will think they won't get a raise or a promotion unless they put more hours in. They will see working longer ho…

I see where you are coming from which is you want a team, which is understandable but that doesnt work for the individual whose happy grinding out code in the middle of night aka the lone wolves, but then would they be working in a team in the first place?

would they be working in a team in the first place?

If you're a dev who works alone, with no other devs, no product person, no QA, no support, and no users to collaborate with then you probably can just hack on your code for however long you want without bothering anyone.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#92

Post by galoisscobi »

mrwh wrote: post #50
galoisscobi wrote: post #10

I'm at a FAANG where people work really long hours (working on weekends/till 8 pm at night on weekdays are a normal occurrence) and we have some execs that really value butts-in-seats/gotta be in the office type mentality and are very excited for return to office. I struggled with the culture for a long time because I naturally don't feel inclined to be in a distraction riddled office or work long hours. I find the s…

Are you in the eng side or non-eng? My experience of FAANG life has been 40 hour weeks, with weekends worked on the rarest of rare occasions (none so far this year). But I'm aware that non-eng units have a more brutal time of it.

I’m on the eng side. Your experience is in line with what I experienced when I was working at an Alphabet/Google X company (working weekends was unheard of).

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#93

Post by Traster »

>Our celebrity role models work very hard: Jack Dorsey ran two companies simultaneously for a while. Elon Musk is worshiped by a massive audience, in part for his superhuman work ethic. Enough said.

Jack Dorsey notoriously got kicked out of Twitter by activist investors for his lack of commitment. Elon Musk is worshipped by a massive audience who he tells he works hard, whilst simultaneously spending a load of time on twitter. It's performative.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#94

Post by alecbz »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #52
dleslie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that you are aware that you are greatly empowering your employer by intricately interleaving your work and concept of life. If your social network, your personal support network, your community and self are tied to your work; then your employer has tremendous power over you.

You would have him subvert his motivation away the source of his contentment for something as abstract as benefiting the quality of the network of relationships? Quite literally arguing against the individual in support of a network: hivemind. It seems like you’re forgetting you’re talking to an individual.

I’m for people working a lot if they want to and it makes them happy, but humans are inherently social beings and community is incredibly important to our mental health. OP (of this thread) even says part of what they enjoy is working with others who similarly value their work.

It doesn’t make sense to wave away social needs as some trivial or “abstract” concern.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#95

Post by TameAntelope »

laserlight wrote: post #88
TameAntelope wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're telling me! On top of that I was doing the various agile meetings too, it was a lot. Normally I do 3-5 pomodoros a day; one early in the morning, one to three during the day, then one late at night after the wife has gone to bed. I don't really take days off, so that ends up working out to a pretty decent clip, all things considered.

That's an incredible pace, especially not taking any days off. When I do so, I lose my sense of time. I feel like, I've been working forever. I have to switch to a different task for at least a day to recover. Do you have to maintain a certain sleep schedule or do you happen to naturally find it easy to work at this pace? How could I train myself to work as intensely?

Last week was rough, but generally it's not bad to do 3 pomodoros every day and usually I'm rolling during the day so it's fine to slip in the 4th.

Same with the evenings, and then I'll get 5 in which is a very productive day. Normally it doesn't really require any less sleep or even that much less time spent doing other things, I think the trick is working every day.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#96

Post by HWR_14 »

djrobstep wrote: post #48
TameAntelope wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have equity, yes, and I'm not comfortable talking about my age but I will say my wife works harder than I do and we don't have any children.

You’re not comfortable talking about your age? Why not? Can you just give a broad range?

He's not comfortable divulging that. Let it go. I understood and expected he may not want to share either of the things he expected. Declining information about yourself online is reasonable and requires no further explain action.

I mainly was curious if he was young enough he was burning himself out and the burn out hadn't caught up to him.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#97

Post by DiggyJohnson »

leksak wrote: post #31
csydas wrote: post #20

I think that mostly I agree with the author, that there is a religious following of the long hours/never sleep work model. What has worked for me, as I am over worked and spend far too much time on meetings at all off hours, is flexible hours instead of rigid ones. My day blends a lot more, as I have periods of work and periods of "life". Instead of a rigid 8 hour block, work is just one of those chores I do, and I a…

I used to be one of the people that were ascribed the "talented" label. It opened a lot of doors, and I've had a career that initially was deemed as more successful than that of my peers. However, after burning out twice I've never recovered the ability of doing _anything cognitive_ other than physical exercise for extended durations of time. I no longer get called talented, and things are a lot more challenging ---…

Right there with you, nobody has ever put it in words in front of me before.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#98

Post by otoburb »

r00tanon wrote: post #72
TameAntelope wrote: post #13

I'll give you an actual contrarian take on working long hours: I like it, and I'm really tired of people commenting on what hours I keep. I enjoy my work. It's what I'd be doing in my spare time if I didn't need or have this job. I've thought about this, and I think I'd stick around at my role even if I hit a windfall, because I want to see this through to the end, one way or another. Sometimes, in order to do the ki…

Enjoy it while you can. Realize though that being "employee #1" and wearing all the hats while working with others that "share your values" means they probably think they themselves are "employee #1" and wearing all the hats, which obviously can't be the case in a well functioning team. I'd hate to see how that works in a large project - like SpaceX where teams have to build things. IOW, consider you may be better of…

>>I'd hate to see how that works in a large project - like SpaceX where teams have to build things.

I'm not sure using SpaceX is the best example here given that they were (still are?) notorious for their grueling work hours [1][2]. If anonymous social media posts and Glassdoor reviews are at least a rough proxy, it seems that the hours are still long but trending down from 80-100hrs per week to something "more sane" like 50-60hrs per week [3].

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/9a39av/a-spacex-employee-jus...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgbnwp/the-odd-empathy-of-el...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/AerospaceEngineering/comments/oho00...

[4] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SpaceX-long-hours-Reviews-...

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#99

Post by grok22 »

rconti wrote: post #15
TameAntelope wrote: post #13

I'll give you an actual contrarian take on working long hours: I like it, and I'm really tired of people commenting on what hours I keep. I enjoy my work. It's what I'd be doing in my spare time if I didn't need or have this job. I've thought about this, and I think I'd stick around at my role even if I hit a windfall, because I want to see this through to the end, one way or another. Sometimes, in order to do the ki…

I'm not necessarily on your side, but I expected the "contrarian" take in this blogpost to be "actually, I think long hours are great!", not "maybe long hours aren't great!"

Me too! I was thinking it was going to be a paean to the joys of working long and hard!
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