Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

alexstechthoughts.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 246 posts

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#111

Post by antitrust »

Arnor wrote: post #88
nether wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Oh my god, I'm dealing with this now. I made a Python program that automated a lot of our Excel work. It reduced…

It's time to leave that company. They don't deserve you.

Or time to talk with the boss' boss and remind him that time is money, and you can save him money. The incompetence of the people around you isn't your moral responsibility.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#112

Post by mcgwiz »

This post is annoying in that it conflates and oversimplifies far too much. On the point of humblebragging: I (and 95% of the internet population) agree, humblebragging should not be done (even though the author later goes on to humblebrag that he only works 35 hours per week... hypocritical much?).

But on the separate implied point that working 50+ hours a week is mutually exclusive with working smartly, I disagree. That is naive and simplistic. When you have a finite runway (which decreases in length whether you are or are not working) there's a very strong case to be made for sacrificing a degree of your free time in order to maximize the utility of that runway. Separately, one should carefully balance the multitude of competing development concerns to be working as smartly as possible, i.e. YAGNI, refactoring, testing and CI, tight customer feedback loop, etc.

Conflating smart work with the need to work long hours betrays the likelihood that the author has never even considered the reality of bootstrapped startups.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#113

Post by ripter »

enraged_camel wrote: post #74
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 soi…

I'm pretty sure asian cultures also fetishize hard work. At least that's the impression I get from my Chinese, Koren, and Japanese co-workers.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#114

Post by antitrust »

chasing wrote: post #48
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…

Elon Musk, Oprah, Marissa Meyer, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey -- these are people who have been wildly over-compensated for their time. (Not that they don't deserve what they get, but they make huge amounts of money.) They work because they want to, and if they didn't they could retire tomorrow and live like kings/queens for the rest of their lives. Odds are, you're not in this camp. And never will be. (And sometimes I wo…

> Elon Musk, Oprah, Marissa Meyer, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey

Not to be a cynic, but except in the case of Bill Gates, it's not clear these people were not cases of being in the right place at the right time more than any specific brilliance.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#115

Post by riveteye »

I strongly believe that work is not a job.*

Work is what you do in your life every day to create value for yourself and for the people you care about. Your work should make you happy and help you to feel fulfilled. Your work could take 5 hours a week or it could take 60 hours a week. It could make you a ton of money, it could be where you spend your money. Your work could be a volunteer gig at an animal shelter that you do around your 9-5 day job, it could be the all-night code sessions you do as a hobby, it could even be what you do every day as a high-functioning cog in your office cube. It's up to you to find your own glory.

(Sort of like http://blog.workisnotajob.com/) (*Sometimes there is value in helping society be society.)

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#116

Post by ripter »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #6

I just don't get it at all. Just this morning I quit a job partly because of the hilarious hours and how inflexible our executive team was about them. It's like there's some sort of shame in working a normal workday, eating dinner at a normal hour and having your own life. I really vow to never put my health and well being on the line for a job where if we hit the jackpot I might get like 50 k and every other time I…

When looking for a job, find out how many people in management have kids. They are likely to work normal hours and not expect you to work insane hours. At least that's been my experience.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#118

Post by wavesounds »

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…

Amen Brutha! My last job I had coworkers who would complain to me that they got bored over the week we had off for Christmas vacation. I'm so much happier now that I'm away from that culture and am working with people who love what they do and love doing other things as well.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#119

Post by jmngomes »

recursive wrote: post #51
jmduke wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly fascinated by that kind of work -- not that its interesting, but the fact that it exists is just strange to me. Right now I'm doing iOS development. I get to take my laptop to the park, or anywhere outside and it's goddamn amazing. Last night I worked all day on an isolated beach on an island right across from my city. Possibly the most fun I've had in months to be honest. Sounds like you're living the d…

From the viewpoint of someone who has seen the inside of BigCo, that sounds pretty naive. I'd guess most "software" jobs are not too far from spreadsheet automation.

After working in IT consulting, I second that. I often found myself wondering how most of what I did was a waste of my skills. I had learned a lot of cool stuff in college, like distributed systems, that was completely useless to what I did. The problem was, when I transitioned to management, all my proactivity and passion for strategy were also almost useless; you were expected to do as everyone else, or else. So I quit :)

Right now, working on my startup, I get ticked off for a lot of menial work that it involves, but despite being tired and broke, I'm way happier. And this simply because I'm using my skills to work on meaningful stuff.

The chinese have an interesting saying: "All you need to be happy is something to do, someone to love and something to hope for". I think this clearly states the need for balance.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#120

Post by ajross »

enraged_camel wrote: post #74
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 soi…

Actually I think that's entirely backwards. The celebration (calling it "fetishization" is a little loaded for my tastes) of leisure time across a whole workforce is a very recent phenomenon, and it's limited almost exclusively to post-war western Europe. Everyone else is still cheering for elbow grease.

Hard labor has been the norm in our society since before it was a society. For thousands of years, people who worked harder got more done and were less likely to, y'know, starve.

Post reply on HN