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How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

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Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#101

Post by cheez »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #33
cheez wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate?

Survivor bias. We don't get to hear of the failures. Not in the news, at least. So, even if 130 is likely to destroy anyone, a very rare breed of people who have a crazy amount of energy may pull it off. Or maybe working 130 hours a week is too much even for them, but they survive anyway because they were such geniuses to begin with (not very rational geniuses, but still). If we had more hard data from large, non-bia…

Sorry, I had meant I wanted the GP to elaborate on why he or she failed :)

I know all about survivorship bias so I yearn for stories of failure.

Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#102

Post by rudiger »

crazygringo wrote: post #15

> "Overwork doesn't burn people out per se, but it's doing that without knowing the things that replenish you." If you're working 130 hours a week, and sleeping a healthy 56 hours a week, that leaves you with negative 18 hours a week for replenishing yourself. Not even including showering, eating, etc. I'm sorry, but merely having dinner with your family on Tuesday nights is not what it takes to replenish yourself. I…

If you're working 130 hours a week (18+ hours a day, 7 days a week), there's no way you're sleeping 8 hours a night.

You're probably getting no more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night, if that. And you're probably pulling an all-nighter or two every week.

Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#103

Post by Kynlyn »

If you have to ask permission to attend your daughter's soccer game or have dinner with your kids then that is a fucked up place to work; regardless of how much salary or stock options they throw at you.

If your boss brags about working insane hours then brace yourself for a shitty environment.

Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#104

Post by michaelt »

crusso wrote: post #71
yock wrote: post #17

This reads like a allegory for Hell. How to love working 18 hours a day could almost be the title of a satire novel on the failings of modern office life. The fact that she lived it and looks back on it fondly doesn't, in my mind, reflect positively on her or her employer.

I just don't understand the hostility toward someone who has worked ridiculously hard and has achieved a demonstrable level of success. She did it, she talks about it, she's happy with the choices she made. Why so judgmental? Working hard at things increases your likelihood of success. Is that notion in question here at HN? True, there is a diminishing point of returns for everyone where working hard doesn't yield mo…

The article is poorly written. Points 1 and 2 are about knowing yourself and your own rhythm, making one think the article is about caring for one's own mental health while working long hours. Point 3, however, is about long hours being performed by one's employees.

That third point makes it sounds like the article is not about a person who has themselves worked ridiculously hard, but about someone who has cracked the whip over people working ridiculously hard, giving advice to others who want to do the same thing. Understandably, people are a lot less sympathetic to this!

Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#105

Post by lfborjas »

crusso wrote: post #78
lfborjas wrote: post #36

Articles like this remind me of Bertrand Russell's [In praise of idleness]( http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html ): "I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work."

I love Bertrand Russell. Such brilliant quotes. I especially love his thoughts on religion. Unfortunately, he was no futurist. His view of the manual laborer doing all the work vs the bosses telling the worker what to do was hopelessly mired in the past and plagued with his thinking that the industrial revolution's growing pains were permanent or even worsening. Given that Peter Drucker was around and writing at the…

Interesting, does this essay convey to you that the manual labourer is doomed and Russell's being a pessimist? I got quite the contrary from it (advocating some sort of socialist state), on par with wilde's [the soul of man under socialism](http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-m...)

Or are you referring to other writings by Russell? I have to confess that besides this essay and "proposed roads to freedom" I've read little of his own stances.

Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#106

Post by jlarocco »

crusso wrote: post #71
yock wrote: post #17

This reads like a allegory for Hell. How to love working 18 hours a day could almost be the title of a satire novel on the failings of modern office life. The fact that she lived it and looks back on it fondly doesn't, in my mind, reflect positively on her or her employer.

I just don't understand the hostility toward someone who has worked ridiculously hard and has achieved a demonstrable level of success. She did it, she talks about it, she's happy with the choices she made. Why so judgmental? Working hard at things increases your likelihood of success. Is that notion in question here at HN? True, there is a diminishing point of returns for everyone where working hard doesn't yield mo…

My problem with it is that she's managing people and (apparently) expecting them to work similar hours like it's a perfectly normal thing to work 130 hours a week.

She's giving advice like "Grant employees one must-have freedom." Really? One whole freedom away from work?

And making statements like, "You can't have everything you want. But you can have the things that really matter to you. That empowers you to work really hard for a long period of time on something that you're passionate about." Gee, bummer, I was hoping to read a book or something, but I'm already getting to eat dinner, so I guess I can skip it.

I think it's utterly foolish for somebody to work 130 hours a week. I can't think of any good reason anybody should ever have to do that. But, if that's what they want, I'm okay with it because at the end of the day it's not any of my business. But trying to force others to do it is really not cool.

Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#107

Post by greggman »

gouranga wrote: post #68
munificent wrote: post #60

In case anyone is wondering whether this reflects Google's current working culture, let me comment that in my experience it absolutely does not. In the office I work in, it is virtually empty at 8:00 AM and mostly empty by 7:00 PM. Most people seem to show up around 9:00 AM and leave around 6:00. On Fridays, the office mostly stops working around 5:00 PM. There is a cadre of people, typically those without families,…

Still sounds crazy. We cruise in between 9 and 10, bail between 4 and 5 and take an hour lunch. Also we tend to work from home 2-3 days a week. Then again, they realise that we generate about 650k a year in real hard cash per head which is pretty good :) That's how a company should look. we have to buy our own lunch though and spend our spare time doing some reading and self tuition.

So do we, I know lots of fellow google devs that work from home a couple of days a week. Some of us also work on the shuttle during our commute so we can count that as work and therefore get home earlier and spend more time with friends and family than those with similar commute times but no company shuttles.

Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#108

Post by orangecat »

trapped123 wrote: post #77

I really hate these types of employees. First of all they raise employer's expectations that all the other workers will be willing to put in free hours for them. Second by working for 130 hours they are basically taking away jobs from 2 other people who could be gainfully employed if these types of employees worked a normal schedule. Obviously the counterpoint is that these guys really loved their work so much that t…

Second by working for 130 hours they are basically taking away jobs from 2 other people who could be gainfully employed if these types of employees worked a normal schedule.

One could say the same about technology in general, and some foolish people have.

But in that case isn't it better that they do some charity work, help more needy people rather than helping fill the coffers of mega corporations.

I'm pretty sure Marissa Mayer has donated far more to charity than most of us ever will.

Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#109

Post by codexon »

crusso wrote: post #71
yock wrote: post #17

This reads like a allegory for Hell. How to love working 18 hours a day could almost be the title of a satire novel on the failings of modern office life. The fact that she lived it and looks back on it fondly doesn't, in my mind, reflect positively on her or her employer.

I just don't understand the hostility toward someone who has worked ridiculously hard and has achieved a demonstrable level of success. She did it, she talks about it, she's happy with the choices she made. Why so judgmental? Working hard at things increases your likelihood of success. Is that notion in question here at HN? True, there is a diminishing point of returns for everyone where working hard doesn't yield mo…

Not everyone here is a founder.

Most people on HN are employees and don't want 130 hour weeks to become the norm.

Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

#110

Post by crusso »

heretohelp wrote: post #94
crusso wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Bertrand Russell. Such brilliant quotes. I especially love his thoughts on religion. Unfortunately, he was no futurist. His view of the manual laborer doing all the work vs the bosses telling the worker what to do was hopelessly mired in the past and plagued with his thinking that the industrial revolution's growing pains were permanent or even worsening. Given that Peter Drucker was around and writing at the…

Funny you mention that you love Bertrand Russell since he was a massive fan of idleness and against the cult of overwork.

Your mistake would be in assuming that I would commit the fallacy of ad hominem, I guess.

Religion was pretty well-trodden ground in his time and his thoughts on it were really insightful. The future of the knowledge-based economic world didn't seem to be his forte. Regardless, the guy put some thought into his writings that's worth respecting and he certainly knew how to craft a phrase that would be quotable for centuries to come.

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