Success at Work, Failure at Home • Hacker News Board

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#31

Post by xal » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:11 PM UTC

npc wrote: post #12

johnrob wrote: post #10

Key question: did Ironport succeed in spite of his family sacrifice, or because of it? It's not fair to recommend spending more time with the family without addressing what the consequences would have been.

No matter what, you're always going to be at a disadvantage to someone who is willing to sacrifice more than you, whether that be health or family or anything else. I liked the article but it completely danced around the obvious conclusion which is, "maintaining a healthy relationship with your family is going to cost you time and energy which is going to at least somewhat lessen your chances of success and you have…

That's nonsense. There are 5 creative hours in the day if you are generous. Some companies are build so poorly that it takes staff 12 hours of being present to access those but that's the failing of these businesses and they will likely die.

There are two solutions to the issue, avoid the issue and hire people crazy enough to put up with the hours or actually build a great company without the flaw. First one is way easier and seems to be working in places like NYC and Silicon Valley, it's really a pity.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#32

Post by tikhonj » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:11 PM UTC

I think this is an example of a problem I see with a lot of hard-working cultures like startups. You're always optimizing your productivity locally.

It's easy to just say "oh, I'll work harder now" because, simply, you'll get more done than you would otherwise. Today will be more productive. Most importantly, the increased productivity is viscerally obvious.

But working too much, making sacrifices at home, having problems with your family, not having enough breaks--all that saps your productivity on a global state. Sure, at any given day, you will accomplish more by working 12 hours than 8. But, over time, you will start accomplishing less per hour, largely without noticing it. And while working longer will still optimize locally, you will actually become significantly less productive overall!

This is not a character flaw or anything like that. It's just a result of the fact that local improvements are so much easier to see and understand than global trends. So to counter it, you have to think ahead of time and ideally keep some metrics to measure this explicitly. (Of course, I'm not sure what such metrics would be--measuring productivity is extremely tricky.)

There's a particular study that gets linked that found working a single 60-hour week is an immediate improvement, but working consistent 60-hour weeks is actually strictly worse than mostly sticking to 40. But it's so easy to trick yourself into thinking that you have to work those 60 hours because you need to finish more now. It's definitely something you should watch out for.

EDIT: http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-less... is the article I was thinking about.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#33

Post by dougk16 » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:16 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #27

> And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail? This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn’t so much as take out the trash or change a light bulb. Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if you…

I'm not a child expert, but I doubt children can really start to rationalize "dad's not around but at least he's providing" until well into their teens. And at that point the damage from having an absent father is probably done.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#34

Post by seivan » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:19 PM UTC

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #17

So what I'm reading here is why CEOs shouldn't go to the office on weekends and check their mail at dinner. What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either. Those guys have families and their negligible equity certainly doesn't justify 80-hour weeks. It sounds to me like the author would rather have gone home on weekends while the engineers staye…

Got the same impression.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#35

Post by crusso » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:24 PM UTC

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #17

So what I'm reading here is why CEOs shouldn't go to the office on weekends and check their mail at dinner. What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either. Those guys have families and their negligible equity certainly doesn't justify 80-hour weeks. It sounds to me like the author would rather have gone home on weekends while the engineers staye…

I just had the impression that he wished he could have had his cake and eaten it too.

He made the familial sacrifices. He had the business success. Now looking back he wished that he would have magically had that success without putting in all the time. Does not compute.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#36

Post by rdl » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:24 PM UTC

I pretty much am thankful a few times a week that I've never had children. It looks like most of his difficulties at home were due to child rearing tasks; it would otherwise be easy to spend money on things like the yard and housecleaning and laundry, and if spending time with your wife isn't enjoyable in itself, you are doing it wrong.

I guess I should be glad at least some people have children, though.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#37

Post by yitchelle » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:31 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #27

> And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail? This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn’t so much as take out the trash or change a light bulb. Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if you…

Really depends on the kid's age. Younger kids (less than 10yrs) are not able to grasp the concept of money or earning money, so explaining that dad is out making money for a roof over their head and putting food on the table is not going to cut it. At that age, they just want close interaction with their dad.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#38

Post by MWil » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:35 PM UTC

dougk16 wrote: post #33

nailer wrote: post #27

> And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail? This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn’t so much as take out the trash or change a light bulb. Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if you…

I'm not a child expert, but I doubt children can really start to rationalize "dad's not around but at least he's providing" until well into their teens. And at that point the damage from having an absent father is probably done.

I'm not a child expert either but it doesn't sound like it would be too hard to at least start having those conversations once they even realize you are at work and aren't just hiding behind the front door for 8 hours (9 years to them)

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#39

Post by sriramk » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:37 PM UTC

crusso wrote: post #35

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #17

So what I'm reading here is why CEOs shouldn't go to the office on weekends and check their mail at dinner. What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either. Those guys have families and their negligible equity certainly doesn't justify 80-hour weeks. It sounds to me like the author would rather have gone home on weekends while the engineers staye…

I just had the impression that he wished he could have had his cake and eaten it too. He made the familial sacrifices. He had the business success. Now looking back he wished that he would have magically had that success without putting in all the time. Does not compute.

I suspect he thinks he should have figured out a way to do both and not make it into an explicit trade-off. In fact, I think the entire post is about how "having+eating the cake" is possible if you put some effort into it.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#40

Post by MWil » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:38 PM UTC

yitchelle wrote: post #37

nailer wrote: post #27

> And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail? This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn’t so much as take out the trash or change a light bulb. Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if you…

Really depends on the kid's age. Younger kids (less than 10yrs) are not able to grasp the concept of money or earning money, so explaining that dad is out making money for a roof over their head and putting food on the table is not going to cut it. At that age, they just want close interaction with their dad.

I'm happy to be proven wrong and of course this is only anecdotally but I was watching sci-fi movies at age 10 and I could grasp, at least on the surface, the underlying technology and it's purpose. When we say "kids dont understand money" I'm thinking they should start to get it at about 7 and certainly have a basic grasp by 10.