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Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

alexstechthoughts.com

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Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#71

Post by jmsbrwr »

kemiller wrote: post #63
edw519 wrote: post #19

For developers building something, the following are often true: Tweeting != Work TalkingAboutWork != Work Blogging != Work DoingSomethingInYourIDE does not necessarily = Work DoingSomethingInGithub does not necessarily = Work ThinkingButAppearingToBeDoingNothing may = Work Meetings != Work CodeReview may = Work Testing usually = Work DeliveringBuiltSoftware(AndItsPrerequisites) = Work HackerNews definitely != Work

This is a popular idea, but developers can also fall into the trap of thinking they can code their way through every problem. Tweeting and blogging especially may in fact be extremely important, if done well and purposefully. Same with (some) meetings, depending on who you're meeting. You can build the best damn software in the world, but it won't matter if no one knows.

The opposite could be said as well. You could tell everyone on the planet about your awesome software, but it won't matter if you never build it.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#72

Post by chasing »

yangez wrote: post #5

> I have a friend who brags that he busts his * 60 hours a week driving a Coca-Cola delivery truck. Congratulations, I work 35 and make twice as much as he does. This is a straw man. The point is that if you worked 50 vs 35 hours at the same job, you'd simply get more done - even considering diminishing returns. There's a reason many hugely successful people are notorious workaholics - see Elon Musk, Oprah, Marissa M…

Also, let me point out:

Of all of the people in this country who overwork themselves, the percentage who became billionaire titans-of-industry is, for all intents and purposes, zero.

Millions (or tens-of-millions) of Americans overwork. There's one Bill Gates.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#73

Post by antitrust »

yangez wrote: post #13
ryguytilidie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where does that end? We decide the 8 hour work week isn't productive enough, even though worker productivity has skyrocketed, so we go to 10, then we decide 10 hour days are for socialist pussies and go to 12 hour days, then eventually we are calling people lazy for sleeping and ridiculing them for not dragging concrete blocks for a .0000001% holding Elon Musk's Mars Miner corporation. I mean at some point life h…

I'm not saying everyone has to work long hours. I'm just saying that the few people who do will have an obvious advantage. It's up to each person to figure out if that's what they want.

Yes, but that advantage is based on appearance and not results.

That's contract to every hacker ethic I know.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#74

Post by enraged_camel »

rfnslyr wrote: post #3

When I worked at a large corporation, I nearly automated all of my work and I was called lazy. I'd do about an hour work a day, customize an existing script to process new data, then read for the remaining 6 hours. Co-workers called me a lazy nerd and proceeded to copy paste words into excel for 8 hours. Now I get to wake up at 12, smoke a joint, have a beer, take a shower, go for a walk with my dog, and then work on…

Fetishizing hard work is a purely American phenomenon. Like many other parts of American culture, it has to do with the country's Puritan roots.

Back in England, the Puritans were entirely city people. Even those who lived on the countryside were not farmers. So when they came to America, they had to work extra hard to learn farming and adopt that lifestyle, which was made even more difficult by the fact that the soil in the Massachusetts area was hard, rocky and not very fertile.

What is interesting however was that they refused to pick up the farming habits, tools and techniques developed by the settlers who had arrived earlier. Puritans would often complain about the inexplicable justice of "heathen" Americans who were seemingly lazy and were laying around all day, doing maybe a little bit of work here and a little bit there, while still managing to bring in bountiful harvests. Meanwhile, Puritans were breaking their backs from sunrise to sunset working the land and had little to show for it. This behavior came to be known as the "Puritan work-ethic" but in reality it had nothing to do with ethic and everything to do with necessity combined with pure ignorance (i.e. refusing to use more efficient farming techniques).

The history is actually very interesting and has many parallels to your story. You, too, were using superior techniques (i.e. automation) while your coworkers, out of ignorance, shunned it and instead stubbornly continued to do their work manually.

(Another thing that is fascinating was that Puritans were responsible for the banning of many celebrations and holidays, presumably because they themselves had no time to celebrate or take days off from their inefficient work.)

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#75

Post by rbehrends »

yangez wrote: post #5

> I have a friend who brags that he busts his * 60 hours a week driving a Coca-Cola delivery truck. Congratulations, I work 35 and make twice as much as he does. This is a straw man. The point is that if you worked 50 vs 35 hours at the same job, you'd simply get more done - even considering diminishing returns. There's a reason many hugely successful people are notorious workaholics - see Elon Musk, Oprah, Marissa M…

> The point is that if you worked 50 vs 35 hours at the same job, you'd simply get more done - > even considering diminishing returns.

Not to the best of my knowledge. It is worth remembering that the 40 hour workweek was introduced by Henry Ford in 1926 not because he was a bleeding heart liberal, but in order to increase productivity. More hours don't necessarily equal more work done. [1]

For modern non-mechanical jobs, the maximum productivity threshold may be even lower. For some types of jobs, productivity can even decrease: after a certain point, programmers will write sloppier code with more defects; the additional LOCs don't help because you're now creating additional work to remove these defects.

That doesn't mean that there aren't exceptions; just like there are people who have a natural talent to identify prime numbers, there are people who can sustain a high level of productivity over a large number of hours worked.

I also note that corporate leaders operate under different constraints: for them, availability may matter more than personal productivity.

Unrelated to productivity is the health issue: Consistently working long hours is bad for your health in a number of ways [2,3].

[1] http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...

[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/04/04/long.work.hours.hea...

[3] http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/25/health/working-overtime-do...

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#76

Post by T_T »

"I have a friend who brags that he busts his * 60 hours a week driving a Coca-Cola delivery truck. Congratulations, I work 35 and make twice as much as he does."

Is success or contribution measured by your salary? This is only fair if we can all stop drinking beverages delivered to our offices.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#77

Post by eli_gottlieb »

tsunamifury wrote: post #34
swamp40 wrote: post #11

Well, there are certainly two camps with regard to this. If you don't feel like going over to Alex's campfire, holding hands and singing Kumbaya - let me invite you over to the other fire for an inspirational moment before getting back to work: "Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-l…

Work is not war. Not even close. Executives and wannabe clueless use war metaphors to try to rustle us up for what ends up being a trench digging operation that lasts 40+ years. I understand your naive enthusiasm but work is more of a marathon. Even doing the most glamorous part, founding a company, is an Iron Man race with many stages. Sprinting to the finish line with goofy motivational speeches when you are still…

Work is not war in any material sense, but it is war in almost every cultural sense. The cultural norms used by Anglo cultures to make sense of business, at the moment, are those of combat and war.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#78

Post by farmdawgnation »

edw519 wrote: post #19

For developers building something, the following are often true: Tweeting != Work TalkingAboutWork != Work Blogging != Work DoingSomethingInYourIDE does not necessarily = Work DoingSomethingInGithub does not necessarily = Work ThinkingButAppearingToBeDoingNothing may = Work Meetings != Work CodeReview may = Work Testing usually = Work DeliveringBuiltSoftware(AndItsPrerequisites) = Work HackerNews definitely != Work

I think the word "Work" above would be better replaced with "Productivity". It's work/life balance, not productivity/life balance. Every hour I can't do what I want at the drop of a pin because I'm in a place, fulfilling an obligation for my company, or something else along those lines - it's work. If the company puts things like meetings in my way of completing my job in the number of hours I allot to my full time employment, that's their problem, not mine.

Sure, there are exceptions. I'm young and single so I have the luxury of putting in a few hours at home in the evenings if I need to when meeting a deadline. But I don't subtract 5 minutes from my "time spent working" when I check Hacker News while my code is compiling. Am I being productive? No. Am I working? Yes.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#79

Post by ctdonath »

yangez wrote: post #5

> I have a friend who brags that he busts his * 60 hours a week driving a Coca-Cola delivery truck. Congratulations, I work 35 and make twice as much as he does. This is a straw man. The point is that if you worked 50 vs 35 hours at the same job, you'd simply get more done - even considering diminishing returns. There's a reason many hugely successful people are notorious workaholics - see Elon Musk, Oprah, Marissa M…

Straw man indeed. Driving a truck may be about the limit of his per-hour productivity, so putting in hours is how he increases his earnings. Working smarter may net quadruple the per-hour earnings; question then is whether one is content with living on twice the income of the trucker, or whether expending more hours to net even more income is desirable. The trucker is working at his capacity (both in time and productivity per time unit), so perhaps some bragging is in order; given the productivity potential of the author, is not working the 25-hour difference laudable or squandering opportunity for earning more? It's a choice of balancing earning vs non-earning activities, and given the resources & goals of each, both may be laudable.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#80

Post by kemiller »

jmsbrwr wrote: post #71
kemiller wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a popular idea, but developers can also fall into the trap of thinking they can code their way through every problem. Tweeting and blogging especially may in fact be extremely important, if done well and purposefully. Same with (some) meetings, depending on who you're meeting. You can build the best damn software in the world, but it won't matter if no one knows.

The opposite could be said as well. You could tell everyone on the planet about your awesome software, but it won't matter if you never build it.

Of course. You need both. But that's not the typical failing of a developer.
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