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Success at Work, Failure at Home

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Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#41

Post by levlandau »

tikhonj wrote: post #32

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 p…

i agree with the spirit of this but the flaw in this reasoning is an assumption that all hours are equal. Working consistent 80 hour weeks is the reason we got the Mac as well as Facebook. The extreme outcome possible due to one locally focused push could far outweigh any other strategy and could also be the maximum of the global state.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#42

Post by crusso »

LambdaAlmighty wrote: post #6
elnate wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chances are the world will keep on spinning without your product. Happiness should be your primary goal.

Why do you assume working on his project doesn't bring him happiness? Also, though I'm sure you are well-meaning, advising strangers how they ought to live their life makes you sound like a prick.

advising strangers how they ought to live their life makes

Sorry, my irony meter just exploded.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#43

Post by thrownaway2424 »

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.

Really? My 4-year-old gets anxious when I take the day off or even if it is a national holiday. She says I'm supposed to be at work so the family doesn't get hungry. Saturday and Sunday are family days she tells me.

I'm not sure about children being born with the expectation of fatherly company. Historically it wasn't universal. Some native Americans had separate housing for men and for women and children. In other ancient societies men would leave en masse on hunting expeditions for whole seasons. Of course those civilizations were much more communal than ours and contained many more children.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#44

Post by mturmon »

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…

Many fathers who are disconnected like that at home regret it later. Sometimes because they have a distant relationship with their kids, sometimes because their relationship with their wife suffers.

It does not matter if there was a reason that it happened ("pay the rent"). It just means a life went the wrong direction. And it can't be fixed after it happens.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#45

Post by ricardobeat »

Myrmornis wrote: post #30

I dare say I'll get voted down for not being constructive, but I find the self-help entrepreneurship work-life balance stuff on here really self-involved and kind of tasteless.

While I agree with the emotion, there is meaningful discussion to be had. As a sidenote I believe you'd do better to express your opinion without rebuking HN's readership as a whole, under the risk of making your comment just as tasteless.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#46

Post by crusso »

sriramk wrote: post #39
crusso wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if you put some effort into it

That's circular, though. How could he put yet more effort into something besides his business success when he said that he was pouring everything he had into it?

I would have respected his viewpoint a lot more if he had just said, "I didn't need to make all that money. My family should have been more important and I should have chosen them over the next shipping date at least 6 out of 10 times. If it had meant missing delivery dates and loss of some contracts, then so be it."

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#47

Post by yulaow »

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…

Each time I read madness as 60h/w, 70h/w or the wtf 80h/w I am really happy to live and work on EU. I think I would fall in depression really fast if I had to sacrifice (because over a certain limit, to me, it is only sacrifice) so much of my time and passion. Also in my opinion, ever over a certain limit (For me is 50h/w), the productivity of an engineer just vanish. I prefer work to live against live to work.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#48

Post by wpietri »

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…

Yeah, that was the same reaction I had.

I also long ago stopped believing that 80-hour engineering weeks are much more productive than 40-hour weeks. For one week? Sure. Two? Maybe. Months? Nope! Definitely not better, probably worse.

(Why is a long answer, but for one take, this is good: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-pres... But even if none of that human-factors stuff were true, I'd still believe that because the cost of error. A tired programmer can easily be negatively productive, because small errors tonight turn into land-mine bugs that later blow up hours or days of time. 80-hour weeks value apparent productivity over actual productivity.)

All of those people should have gone home. Sense of urgency + stupid behavior + big payout is not actually proof that the stupid behavior led to the big payout. For every success like his, I can find a dozen stories of death marches that led to absolutely nothing worthwhile.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#49

Post by wpietri »

levlandau wrote: post #41
tikhonj wrote: post #32

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 p…

i agree with the spirit of this but the flaw in this reasoning is an assumption that all hours are equal. Working consistent 80 hour weeks is the reason we got the Mac as well as Facebook. The extreme outcome possible due to one locally focused push could far outweigh any other strategy and could also be the maximum of the global state.

And what's your proof that without 80-hour weeks we wouldn't have got the Mac or Facebook?

All of those people were also wearing underwear, so if correlation is all the proof we need around here, then I've got me a new business book to write: Steve's Secret: What Every Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Has In Common

I can even try to get data on whether boxers or briefs lead to better marketplace success, and gin up some fake controversy. It'll be the next NYT best-seller. Eric Ries, watch out!

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#50

Post by 001sky »

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…

What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either.

Exactly. The culture should be 'everybody else' works 80 hours a week and dealts with a nasty commute? But the CEO, lives a couple blocks away and blocks out time here and there to play with his kids...? Ok, There is certainly nothing wrong with this advice for CEOs, but the question goes begging as to wether or not such a "game theoretic" outcome is stable if the strategy is pursued by a broader set of employees. One clue, of course, is in the original story...where work/life balance is a "value" to the company...and the c-level execs are all washing their cars and feeding them pizza...while the engineering team they slave away...on the weekends in the cubicle farm...missing kids ball-games and family meals...etc. WTF. That's one heck of an 'omission' from the problems that face the CEO. And in one sense it is also incredibly narcissistic (literal sense), to be "fixing" your own problems but not those of your team at work. It's so bizzarre I'm not sure I didn't mis-understand something? It seems a glaring error in the essay not to reconcile this part of the plotline. I do give him credit for having at least woven part of it into the story, however.

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