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A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

jeffarchibald.ca

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Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#311

Post by dclara »

einhverfr wrote: post #308
dclara wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You reminded me in some cases I did, but I don't feel well about that. But I've already spent too much time on one item, if I didn't quit, it would delay the rest of the tasks. Most of the time, I have to do extra hours of work to get it completed. Otherwise, it's hard get chance to revisit again unless it's a critical feature or bug. Another strategy is, just like what you mentioned, once we are stuck at somewhere f…

I have found that if I never get the opportunity, chances are it wasn't important anyway. For a lot of things that seem to be moth-balled, they have an amazing way of coming up later. For example, a month after I gave up on rewriting the financial logic for LedgerSMB, I got a project that required a small subset of rewritten code there. So I went ahead, took the short cuts required for that, wrote an implementation a…

Yes, budgeting for days instead of budgeting for months. When we well manage the task list, usually a feature implementation takes 1-3 days, a project may take 3-4 weeks to reach a milestone. So no feature can take more than a week to finish. Priority is the key.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#313

Post by singingfish »

lutusp wrote: post #303
singingfish wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I outlined that your entire frame of reference is wrong, yet you persist with long winded and mostly irelevant time wasting.

> No, I outlined that your entire frame of reference is wrong ... I posed evidence, you posted opinion. If you understood science, you would know the difference.

Your "evidence" seems to be of the variety that there is a very restricted set of conditions where an epistimology can be considered scientifically based. This is prima facie not the case as scientific knowledge is far wider than your claim allows.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#314

Post by capisce »

nnq wrote: post #134

...will we ever get to a point of normality and sanity where: 1. guy A who want to work just 30hrs a week can say that this is how much he wants to work and get paid a fair hourly rate (same as guy B if he's just as good) 2. guy B who wants to work 70+hrs a week can say that this is how much he wants to work and get the same fair hourly rate (same as guy A if he's just as good, a reasonable 25% more for hours worked…

Or better yet, pay for results, not hours - if only results were always easily measurable. If A and B have the same base productivity assuming they work the same amount of hours, B's productivity per hour might be less if he works 70+ hours and A works 30 hours. So it might not be fair that they're then still paid the same per hour.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#315

Post by capisce »

nonce42 wrote: post #141

Going the opposite direction, I'm working 80% (32 hour weeks) by choice and it's awesome. I have so much more time for other interests and family and it's much less stressful. Of course I only get paid 80%, but that works for me. I'm doing this at a major computer company and my management is supportive. Nonetheless, it took months of discussion and needed to get approved by the VP. And it's probably hurting my "care…

Are you 20 % less productive than those that work 40 hours a week?

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#316

Post by TacticalCoder »

FireBeyond wrote: post #310
TacticalCoder wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed... And most of the friends around me who made it big also played it hard. When Broadcom was nowhere several employees number xxx (with xxx less than 300) were, while in crunch-mode, sleeping in their trucks , on the parking lot, to deliver chip plans on time. Stock options have been good for them the day Broadcom was worth $12bn. I've got a few friends who started a 3D-rendering business for TV ads, short movi…

> "Wealth. Lots of wealth. Yet money wasn't the drive. The drive is simply the desire to achieve great things" ... "make an exit, ...)." "Money. Lots of money. But it's not about the money. Making great things, like selling a company for money. But it's not about the money." Who are you/they trying to convince? Nothing wrong with wanting money. But let's be honest, as all your examples are about the money: * friends…

The drive is passion. In our startup world, money happens to often be a by-product of success.

I have nothing against charities (on the contrary): it just happens that the successful entrepreneurs I do know in person haven't created charities but businesses doing things which bring money.

An example: I have friends who wrote computer games on the Atari ST / Amiga / PC (they were from the "demoscene"). The "goal" when creating a cool game was not to "make money" but to make a cool game, that people would like and play and that would get great reviews (back then in printed magazines). Getting published by a known game company and selling tens of thousands of copies was the icing on the cake.

Writing an "intro" or a "demo" (free for everyone) or a game that's going to be a "product" sold for money ain't the point. The point is about creativity, invention, exploration: it's all driven by the passion for our trade.

There are, today, hard-workers working on startups which are going to be acquired by big companies who do still find the time to work on open-source projects when they get home. These people simply love what they do.

The book I took the most pleasure in writing was one I knew wasn't going to sell well (it was about anonymity on the Internet [not in english], written... More than 15 years ago: when the subject wasn't fashionable at all). Yet I wrote it with passion, without counting my hours and even asking my publishers for more pages than what it was supposed to have. And I made next to nothing in royalties on that book. It's still the one I'm the most proud of.

If you love what you do you won't see the hours fly by and money isn't the drive.

I used the "made money" argument to drive the point that many of the hardworkers I know have been very successful.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#317

Post by rickhanlonii »

lutusp wrote: post #302
rickhanlonii wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. Therefore, based on society's accepted definition of science, psychology is not a science. Psychology is defined as the scientific study of mental functions and behavior--not the mind. Therefore, since scienti…

> Psychology is defined as the scientific study of mental functions and behavior--not the mind. Let's look up the definition of psychology and see if it corresponds to your claim: Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology Quote: "Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors." No denial that the mind is the focus of psychological research --…

> Where is your evidence that mind studies can produce empirical evidence or theories?

In the citation section of the book. Until you refute this evidence, the claim "scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior" stands.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#318

Post by marvin »

capisce wrote: post #315
nonce42 wrote: post #141

Going the opposite direction, I'm working 80% (32 hour weeks) by choice and it's awesome. I have so much more time for other interests and family and it's much less stressful. Of course I only get paid 80%, but that works for me. I'm doing this at a major computer company and my management is supportive. Nonetheless, it took months of discussion and needed to get approved by the VP. And it's probably hurting my "care…

Are you 20 % less productive than those that work 40 hours a week?

I am currently writing my Masters thesis four days a week, working approximately five hours a day the days I am working. (I had complications from mononucleosis which temporarily screwed up my health, Post-Viral Fatigue Syndrome or somesuch).

I get almost as much work done as the other Masters students in my department. In practice, I only work about 50% of a regular workweek but I'd estimate that I get about 80% of the results by being focused during the hours that I am actually there.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#319

Post by hueving »

singingfish wrote: post #313
lutusp wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, I outlined that your entire frame of reference is wrong ... I posed evidence, you posted opinion. If you understood science, you would know the difference.

Your "evidence" seems to be of the variety that there is a very restricted set of conditions where an epistimology can be considered scientifically based. This is prima facie not the case as scientific knowledge is far wider than your claim allows.

>This is prima facie not the case as scientific knowledge is far wider than your claim allows.

Only if you change the definition of "scientific knowledge" to something much more vague that is not the definition agreed upon by scientists. If you loosen it up to where it seems you are targeting, it lands well into pseudo-science or just religion. By expanding it to include theories that aren't falsifiable, it's nothing more than a circle-jerk because unfalsifiable theories indicate that they provide no information gain to the scientific community and are ultimately worthless.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#320

Post by singingfish »

hueving wrote: post #319
singingfish wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "evidence" seems to be of the variety that there is a very restricted set of conditions where an epistimology can be considered scientifically based. This is prima facie not the case as scientific knowledge is far wider than your claim allows.

>This is prima facie not the case as scientific knowledge is far wider than your claim allows. Only if you change the definition of "scientific knowledge" to something much more vague that is not the definition agreed upon by scientists. If you loosen it up to where it seems you are targeting, it lands well into pseudo-science or just religion. By expanding it to include theories that aren't falsifiable, it's nothing…

> Only if you change the definition of "scientific knowledge" to something much more vague that is not the definition agreed upon by scientists.

Oh dear. I've got news for you. While currently not practicing, I have been paid to do scientific work in the past. That makes me a scientist. And according to my professional opinion, your entire frame of reference is wrong.

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