Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 87 posts

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#11

Post by vixen99 »

irundebian wrote: post #10
ProxCoques wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. My father told me a story of when he was stuck in traffic with somebody who was then about the 10th richest person in the world. To make conversation, my father asked him what his plans for the coming year were. The guy listed all sorts of business goals. My father asked if he had anything personally that he was planning. The guy basically replied that those were his personal plans. He made no distinction be…

That's sad.

That's patronizing. How about 'I would find that sad if I was in his position'.

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#12

Post by javajosh »

irundebian wrote: post #10
ProxCoques wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. My father told me a story of when he was stuck in traffic with somebody who was then about the 10th richest person in the world. To make conversation, my father asked him what his plans for the coming year were. The guy listed all sorts of business goals. My father asked if he had anything personally that he was planning. The guy basically replied that those were his personal plans. He made no distinction be…

That's sad.

I don't believe in overwork, nor do I believe it is sad. There's a big difference working 70-hour weeks achieving the goals you've set for yourself, and working that much to avoid getting fired.

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#13

Post by deadbeef404 »

irundebian wrote: post #10
ProxCoques wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. My father told me a story of when he was stuck in traffic with somebody who was then about the 10th richest person in the world. To make conversation, my father asked him what his plans for the coming year were. The guy listed all sorts of business goals. My father asked if he had anything personally that he was planning. The guy basically replied that those were his personal plans. He made no distinction be…

That's sad.

Why?

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#14

Post by closed »

vixen99 wrote: post #11
irundebian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sad.

That's patronizing. How about 'I would find that sad if I was in his position'.

When I see you use "That's patronizing", I feel conflicted because it seems to be in the same evaluative style as "That's sad". I am not sure if it's constructive to use a style being criticized against a person.

(this is me practicing nonviolent communication or something :)

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#15

Post by 87ert3746 »

montrose wrote: post #7

Because I like to work. People who don't like to work often misunderstand this when looking at the stories of successful people. They think successful people force themselves to work hard in order to be successful. In fact successful people often like their work so much that there's nothing else they'd rather do. I doubt for example that there's anything Jeff Bezos would rather do than run Amazon. I bet it seems to h…

Bezos is also known for his appreciation of sleep

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#16

Post by grecy »

It's great to see an article about this. I think it's clear that as automation replaces a lot of jobs we're all going to work less (finally) and find meaning, purpose and happiness in other ways.

Certainly some people really love their work, and that's fantastic. Other people would rather work less, and that's great too.

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#17

Post by zrb05292 »

I have to work almost all the time. My day typically begins at 3am and ends around 7pm. The reason for this is that my own projects and goals are often contingent on the successful completion of projects by other teams, and organizationally we tend to hire C workers at best. So I spend a lot of time pushing other people and other teams. It doesn’t make me popular but it does make me effective.

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#18

Post by twelve40 »

montrose wrote: post #7

Because I like to work. People who don't like to work often misunderstand this when looking at the stories of successful people. They think successful people force themselves to work hard in order to be successful. In fact successful people often like their work so much that there's nothing else they'd rather do. I doubt for example that there's anything Jeff Bezos would rather do than run Amazon. I bet it seems to h…

The question in the title is purely rhetorical, the FA itself is making a deeper point that if you yourself choose to go nuts, it's a bit unwise to expect everyone else around/underneath you to do the same.

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#19

Post by StavrosK »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

You can have meaning or you can have happiness. You cannot have both -- at least not all of the time. This conflict can be seen clearly in a movie like "Office Space", where both the male and female leads are working for happiness (and survival) whereas the work environment expects them to be working for meaning. (How many pieces of flair are you wearing?) The trick to this discussion is that people on one side of th…

You're assuming everyone finds meaning in work. Some people find meaning in other things.
Post reply on HN