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Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#11

Post by constantinLG »

Good to see that i'm not the single one that struggles with such existence thoughts. Yes, i am a software engineer as well. I love challenges, and really love to read a lot (marketing, entrepreneurship, things that helps create a business). As a introduction about me, I wanted to earn a living from my projects since 17 (there are more than 10 years since then). I started working on personal projects, and unfortunately, i got the virus. The little successes has got an amazing satisfaction to me, that couldn't be replicated in any job i worked. And no antidote found by now :)

For the last 2 years, it got worse and worse. I quit once my job, got a new one into a bigger company, stayed 3 months, offered the chance to work into a startup(moderate engineering, moderate decisions), and after 7 months, i am struggling again with giving up. What still keeps me in here are my personal projects. I invest some money in few of my projects, because i somehow try to buy my ticket to quit the full time job and go into the entrepreneurship world by myself. Or at least, i want to buy a year of my work life, working for me, as a try-learn-experience.

All successful entrepreneurs teach us not to give up the full time job until we have a plan, savings, and our business already make some money working part time. I hardly follow this advice, but this is the way i'm trying to follow with my projects. Thanks to them, i didn't quit. The last 2 weeks were so unproductive for me at job, my mind is only at my projects, investments, and planning my escape to work for myself. My projects, my business...

So far by now, i can only advice you in what works for me: part time work on your business, consolidate your escape plan. To me, DNhub.com, GetCode.org and easyCustomMaps.com are my source of motivation to continuing what am i doing now..

Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#12

Post by edman »

I once was like most of your colleagues. I am an software engineer and I worked in startups for couple of years. In the end I worked my ass off for nothing. But I guess I can only blame myself. The problem was that I didn't have a clear vision of where I wanted to be in the future.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#13

Post by atomical »

ChrisGeniusly wrote: post #5

For me, I've been on all sides of this. Employee of a well funded company with lot's of benefits, great income and a Shit-Ton of rules, policies and procedures. I've been an entrepreneur starting my own company, building everything from a mere idea, raising capital, hiring teams, the whole experience. Currently I'm an employee and fairly large share holder in someone else's startup. The wages are not that great, but…

The term community might be more appropriate for what you describe.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#14

Post by elliptic »

Richard Hamming's thoughts (from You and Your Research) deserve to be quoted in full (below). Probably they are less applicable the less research or speculative work you do.

Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office!

What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#15

Post by Oculus »

elliptic wrote: post #14

Richard Hamming's thoughts (from You and Your Research) deserve to be quoted in full (below). Probably they are less applicable the less research or speculative work you do. Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tuke…

I recently happened upon an interview of Elon Musk on his work ethics: http://youtu.be/4Fl9LRgG3_A

The main takeaway was work as hard as you can (i.e. 80 - 100 hour weeks). Even if you're doing the same thing as the competition (assuming they work 40 hours), you'll still accomplish in 4 months what they would in a year. Hard work, tenacity, and a little luck is what separates the smart from the brilliant.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#16

Post by TheAndruu »

For pride in knowing you helped something grow from scratch, vs. the sluggishness of a big company plodding along.

There's a lot that goes into it. Personally, I like to get things done, and experience the sense of accomplishment in seeing visible results.

Life at a big company can mean monotony and difficulty in seeing where your part of the big machine actually makes a difference.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#17

Post by mattm »

Oculus wrote: post #15
elliptic wrote: post #14

Richard Hamming's thoughts (from You and Your Research) deserve to be quoted in full (below). Probably they are less applicable the less research or speculative work you do. Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tuke…

I recently happened upon an interview of Elon Musk on his work ethics: http://youtu.be/4Fl9LRgG3_A The main takeaway was work as hard as you can (i.e. 80 - 100 hour weeks). Even if you're doing the same thing as the competition (assuming they work 40 hours), you'll still accomplish in 4 months what they would in a year. Hard work, tenacity, and a little luck is what separates the smart from the brilliant.

It doesn't work like that though. I'm sure most developers have had the situation of not being able to solve a problem at the end of the day but the next morning you end up solving it in 10 minutes. People need rest. Without rest and recovery, your decision making process gets worse and slower.

The people I've worked for that were putting in 12 hour days always seemed to be the people that wasted the most time at work.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#18

Post by mattm »

serve_yay wrote: post #4

Very advanced forms of gullibility. Plus if you work all the time you don't have to worry about what to do with yourself. Should you go to a park, or hang out with a friend, or...? Nah, just get some more coffee and work some more.

I've also seen guys work long hours because they didn't get along well with their wives. It was an excuse not to go home.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#19

Post by ACow_Adonis »

Oculus wrote: post #15
elliptic wrote: post #14

Richard Hamming's thoughts (from You and Your Research) deserve to be quoted in full (below). Probably they are less applicable the less research or speculative work you do. Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tuke…

I recently happened upon an interview of Elon Musk on his work ethics: http://youtu.be/4Fl9LRgG3_A The main takeaway was work as hard as you can (i.e. 80 - 100 hour weeks). Even if you're doing the same thing as the competition (assuming they work 40 hours), you'll still accomplish in 4 months what they would in a year. Hard work, tenacity, and a little luck is what separates the smart from the brilliant.

Yeah, except at least on that last point Musk is wrong (and i know saying that on HN is kinda like saying that jesus isn't the son of god in Rome). He's just repeating his own self congratulatory narrative.

Human's are biological creatures. Just like when we run, when you go for 30 seconds vs 3 minutes vs 3 hours vs 3 days, the relationship of what happens is not a simple linear one of input. We tire, we lose concentration, we actually get worse if we go all out for long periods than if we act in controlled and conscious burn with good amounts of rest and down time.

As another poster has said, what does happen is that the ones that put in the long hours, in my experience, are often the most incompetent, the magical thinkers, the ones most out of touch with how much they're doing, and the ones putting on the show. Of course, in this world, the ones that put on the show are the one's that often get the most rewards...

Musk is though, spot on with the first two points though. Things other people value. Tenacity.

Hard work, is of course needed, but baring some kind of ridiculous genetics which border on not existing, your productivity drops magnificently once you start going longer hours. That's primarily just for show...

Re: Ask HN: Why do you guys work so much?

#20

Post by avinassh »

throwawayay wrote: post #9

> Most of my colleagues spend a lot of hours at the office--usually at least 12hr days. I have coworkers and friends that do exactly what you're describing, and I don't know why they'd tell you they do it, but I have my own theories about why it would be rational to work long hours for no additional pay. First, why working long hours seems effective: - Showing up at the office isn't really work. I think Woody Allen o…

I am curious, what does your app do? Can you give more details if you don't mind?
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