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What Long Hours Really Mean

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Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#151

Post by dllthomas »

shadowfiend wrote: post #140
dustingetz wrote: post #139

"LONG HOURS ≠ MORE PRODUCTIVITY OR BETTER WORK." this is false and debunked in mythical man month. It follows from "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" that we need to add hours, not people. Or we can break our contract if we'd rather to that. "We respect ourselves and our people enough to honor their time and their personal lives so we cannot agree to your deadline." This also misses the point…

The Mythical Man Month points out that adding manpower doesn't accelerate a project. In no way does that mean that adding hours does. They are completely unrelated ideas. Adding manpower doesn't accelerate a project because more people doesn't immediately mean more productivity. Adding hours can only accelerate a project if more hours means more productivity. There are multiple studies that show this is false after a…

In some ranges, it's clearly the case that adding hours adds productivity. You are correct that we don't know it does this at the margin.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#152

Post by chrisgd »

dev_jim wrote: post #125

"Working for free" after 40 hours never resonated with me. It comes out of hard fought labor battles, but an assembly line is difficult to relate to when I'm eating free snacks in my comfy Aeron chair and working on things that generally interest me. I think the biggest issue here is misaligned expectations between boss and worker. Personally, I've always gone into a job understanding what it was going to take to be…

But as well as your comp expectations, your comp is also adjusted accordingly through a bonus program. I am not sure the advice provided applies to those with a bonus and equity incentive.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#153

Post by Double_Cast »

vdaniuk wrote: post #52
nileshtrivedi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed his sarcasm. He feels that objective truth exists. :) BTW, I have found Yudkowsky's "The Simple Truth" an effective argument against those claim that objective truth doesn't exist. If you walk in the way of a speeding train, you will die irrespective of your beliefs. Beliefs don't alter the reality. http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/

Thats a good argument and may be generalized by quoting George Edward Box "Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."

I occasionally reread Isaac Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong. While Yudkowsky's The Simple Truth is more rigorous, I find the brevity of Asimov's essay more refreshing. Another perennial favorite of mine is George Orwell's Politics and the English Language.

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#154

Post by throwaway092834 »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #141
throwaway092834 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your overall perspective. I'd like to add that the statement "If you’re salaried, you’re working for free" is inaccurate in two very important dimensions: 1) Equity stake. The 40 hour workweek was invented for laborers, not owners. Would the author admonish a business owner to only work 8 hours a week? At what level of ownership stake does it become acceptable to work more than 8 hours? 2) Compensation i…

Working any number unpaid hours is working for free, no matter how you spin it.* 1) Business owners aren't laborers. They work, and they may draw a salary for tax purposes, but they cannot be placed in the same bin as "employee," which is what "laborer" means in this context. As a matter of opinion on your aside, I'd argue that the "level of ownership" required would be one sufficient to imbue the equity holder with…

In regards to #1 I understand your point. I am suggesting that a large portion of software developers in startups do have significant responsibility, authority and share of profits. Even at a large company: Consider a scenario of a Principal/Architect earning $150k salary and $150k in equity grants and working on a flagship product. Even at an extremely large company it appears to me, based on my own experience, that a meaningful connection exists between effort and reward.

In regards to #2, I don't think you can wave away this point. A raise is, in fact, compensation.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#155

Post by throwaway092834 »

consultant23522 wrote: post #143
throwaway092834 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your overall perspective. I'd like to add that the statement "If you’re salaried, you’re working for free" is inaccurate in two very important dimensions: 1) Equity stake. The 40 hour workweek was invented for laborers, not owners. Would the author admonish a business owner to only work 8 hours a week? At what level of ownership stake does it become acceptable to work more than 8 hours? 2) Compensation i…

I had the opposite experience. Working long hours never got me a raise or promotion. Successful projects got me raises and promotions, but I generally don't need to work even 40 hours to make that happen. Once I lifted my head up out of the code and started taking a more business approach to my work rather than engineering approach, that's when my value and income skyrocketed. The guys I know that rack up those 50+ h…

Of course working smarter is more important than working longer. I think that goes without saying.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#156

Post by robg »

I'm a neuroscientist by training. I'm really surprised that we don't talk today about the brain among knowledge workers like we do muscles with professional athletes. We all know that less sleep, worse nutrition, and long hours affect how we perform. Yet, we still expect to work 60 to 80 weeks and be at our best? It makes no sense and some day we'll look back and wonder what this generation was thinking.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#157

Post by quinnchr »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #43
quinnchr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think their is such a thing as objective truth in this world you must be some sort of postmodern miracle.

I think you missed his sarcasm. He feels that objective truth exists. :) BTW, I have found Yudkowsky's "The Simple Truth" an effective argument against those claim that objective truth doesn't exist. If you walk in the way of a speeding train, you will die irrespective of your beliefs. Beliefs don't alter the reality. http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/

Hmmm... yes let's disregard the last century of philosophical thought and the postmodernism movement as a whole because the dude who write's Harry Potter fan fic wrote a cute story.

How would you convince a Solipsist that there is an objective truth?

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#158

Post by quinnchr »

telephonetemp wrote: post #40
quinnchr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think their is such a thing as objective truth in this world you must be some sort of postmodern miracle.

There is mathematics and physics, at least. A lot of arguing can be, and has been, had here but it's largely arguing about definitions; you cannot deny that they allow you to obtain the "truth" in the sense that that truth can be used to predict and affect what happens in the real world as far as your senses can best tell you. There's no arguing away fire or public key encryption.

Yes all of those things exist and can make predictions about "reality," but that doesn't mean reality exists outside of my own experience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy)

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#159

Post by SubuSS »

Most of these articles that deride long work hours don't account for the following:

1. When you are the smartest in the room, you can get away with 40 hours because what you produce in 40 hours will be orders of magnitude ahead of what a normal guy produces in 80 hours. Trouble comes when you start being part of super smart teams (mine has about 9 engineers sharing around 150 years of systems/db building expertise amongst them). Here 40 hours gets you only to the 'achieved level'. For some people this is not good enough, especially if they come from a continuous string of 'excelled levels'.

2. I am not paid to do 40 hours of work. I am paid to get things done. Some things are automatable (which we do) but a lot of things require NLP and is hard to automate. These we do manually. They add up.

3. It is VERY hard to hire good senior engineers. My company (Amazon) pays a ton of money, has offices in great cities but still we find hiring hard. This means you won't be offloading a bunch of those anytime soon and to be competitive, you have to do this.

4. Many of us do this not out of coercion, but because we want to. I personally have a set of goals, own a bunch of stuff that I really want to get done. 8 hours is not enough.

5. As you grow senior, you spend a ton of time co-ordinating work. This means unless you dedicate time before and after regular office hours, you personally aren't going to get coding done. And somethings require your personal coding/debugging effort - no way around it.

Family setup is personal: At least in my case, thankfully my wife chose to be a home maker and a full time mom. This frees up a lot of my responsibilities and allows me to focus harder on my job for the betterment of the family as a unit. YMMV.

EDIT: I always plug my team, so will do it again here. We are hiring. If you want to work with world class engineers in a great & growing service (AWS DynamoDB) - PM me. I chose this for the learning and no regrets till date.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#160

Post by Patrick_Devine »

consultant23522 wrote: post #143
throwaway092834 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your overall perspective. I'd like to add that the statement "If you’re salaried, you’re working for free" is inaccurate in two very important dimensions: 1) Equity stake. The 40 hour workweek was invented for laborers, not owners. Would the author admonish a business owner to only work 8 hours a week? At what level of ownership stake does it become acceptable to work more than 8 hours? 2) Compensation i…

I had the opposite experience. Working long hours never got me a raise or promotion. Successful projects got me raises and promotions, but I generally don't need to work even 40 hours to make that happen. Once I lifted my head up out of the code and started taking a more business approach to my work rather than engineering approach, that's when my value and income skyrocketed. The guys I know that rack up those 50+ h…

This is why hitching yourself to the wrong boss can be extremely detrimental to your career. A good boss would compensate and promote any 50+ hour rockstar performer for making him look good. As the organization gets bigger, the manager with the most senior people often wins, regardless of competency. If a boss is not giving out raises and fighting for promotions, he is going to have to play out more political capital in order to get anything done, or to cover his ass when shit doesn't get done.
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