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

Is full-time work bad for our brains?

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 229 posts

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#151

Post by jwatte »

BjoernKW wrote: post #54
quantumhobbit wrote: post #5

Stretching 2 hours of work into an 8-9 hour day through meetings and sneaky Reddit/hn usage is certainly bad for our brains. But this is the norm as long as managers interpret productivity as butts in seats.

As much as I agree with that I'm still at a loss as to why butts in seats management is still so dominant today. It's almost as if everybody wakes up, reads Dilbert every morning thinking "Wow, that PHB guy certainly is a role model to aspire to." It's not as if these patterns can't be changed: The required technology has been available for more than a decade now. There are tried and tested approaches for organizing…

The managers are also looking for the easiest way through the day. Hence, butts in seat managing. Actually reviewing long term contribution and giving constructive (or even bad) news is hard work. Looking for butts in seats leaves more time for fantasy sports, or whatever.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#152

Post by amelius »

whack wrote: post #37
up_and_up wrote: post #7

This is why companies need to be "results driven" vs "face-time driven". "What did you deliver this week? This month? This quarter?", should be the only relevant question in the workplace, managers included.

> "What did you deliver this week? This month? This quarter?", should be the only relevant question in the workplace, managers included. Unfortunately, there's another camp that (with credible arguments) claims that task-estimates are almost always meaningless. If you buy into that camp, and if someone under-delivers, it doesn't tell you anything about whether or not they are performing poorly. They could simply be t…

Let me resolve the confusion with a simple question: when your company is contracted by another company, do they also require you to write down the amount of hours you and your colleagues worked?

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#153

Post by jwatte »

madaxe_again wrote: post #145
freshhawk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I've worked with "that guy" before as well. Like you said, it's a retreat to the status quo, and conservatism is a common response to feeling overwhelmed or like an imposter. I now recognize it as a very accurate warning sign, this person has moved from trying whatever they can to help the business succeed to trying whatever they can to cover their ass and put on the appearance that they did all they could.

In our case it's more like newtonian mechanics - for every force there is an equal and opposing force. I've always pushed for growth, for hiring, for bigger clients, for new avenues, for risk - and he has always challenged and pushed for the status quo, and to not spend, not invest, not grow, make sure every month is profitable. When we were small, my view was dominant, as I worked within and with the team, and we di…

Time to sell and leave. And if that is really the equity structure, make sure you re-negotiate that with the board before talking about leaving, as part of being a C officer.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#154

Post by jwatte »

madaxe_again wrote: post #145
freshhawk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I've worked with "that guy" before as well. Like you said, it's a retreat to the status quo, and conservatism is a common response to feeling overwhelmed or like an imposter. I now recognize it as a very accurate warning sign, this person has moved from trying whatever they can to help the business succeed to trying whatever they can to cover their ass and put on the appearance that they did all they could.

In our case it's more like newtonian mechanics - for every force there is an equal and opposing force. I've always pushed for growth, for hiring, for bigger clients, for new avenues, for risk - and he has always challenged and pushed for the status quo, and to not spend, not invest, not grow, make sure every month is profitable. When we were small, my view was dominant, as I worked within and with the team, and we di…

Time to sell and leave. And if that is really the equity structure, make sure you re-negotiate that with the board before talking about leaving, as part of being a C officer.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#156

Post by stevenwiles »

ashark wrote: post #119
tomdell wrote: post #89

Work is too ambiguous and complex of a concept to directly state that 25 hours a week is optimum over a certain age. It seems like this article is partially premised on research done on assembly line workers, who are, as far as I'm aware, actually working and doing physical labor for most of the time they're at work. I wonder how well this applies to mental labor? Beyond that, as some people have already commented, w…

Left to my own devices I'm pretty sure I'd work a variable number of hours a week, going as high as 80, and probably averaging in the neighborhood of 60. The tricky part for me is that breaking 25ish actually-productive hours a week isn't compatible with a steady 40ish hour a week job where I'm doing mostly the same thing every week. Ideally I'd spend 40hrs studying math one week, 80hrs developing a game next week, 3…

Same here, left to my own devices, I would probably work around 120 hours a week.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#157

Post by ethbro »

snowwrestler wrote: post #124
ethbro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that adding {floor} round-trip to any questions someone could have figured out by reading the first result on a search to be excellent for the productivity of all involved.

Ok but that still leaves all the questions that can't be answered with the first result of a search.

Absolutely, I'm not saying that the best use of my time for my clients isn't asking me questions... sometimes. There's a set of stuff that I can answer in 2 minutes that might take someone an hour poring through code to figure out.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#158

Post by lobotryas »

stronglikedan wrote: post #123
drawnwren wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any good resources for diet things? I'm interested in this.

Unfortunately, I don't. I tried many different diets, but they either didn't work, or weren't sustainable. I settled on two rules, lost 50+ lbs, and have been able to sustain it for a few years now. My rules are (1) don't overeat, and (2) don't eat processed foods. It took a few months before I figured out what my portions were, since I don't feel full until about 15-20 minutes after I am. By the time I knew how much…

How did you figure out your personal portion sizes? Just approximation (ex: felt too full after 3 eggs, but just right after 2)?

I read plenty of literature on estimating the dietary recommended portion sizes in food, but nothing on how much food I personally should eat in a sitting.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#159

Post by madaxe_again »

jwatte wrote: post #153
madaxe_again wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In our case it's more like newtonian mechanics - for every force there is an equal and opposing force. I've always pushed for growth, for hiring, for bigger clients, for new avenues, for risk - and he has always challenged and pushed for the status quo, and to not spend, not invest, not grow, make sure every month is profitable. When we were small, my view was dominant, as I worked within and with the team, and we di…

Time to sell and leave. And if that is really the equity structure, make sure you re-negotiate that with the board before talking about leaving, as part of being a C officer.

Can't sell except for the aforementioned £60. Not £60k, £60 - the nominal value of the shares. The only way I can leave and keep my equity is if I die. If I attempt to have that conversation in a board meeting they'll know what's up and will probably fire me - in which case no severance, not even the £60. There's a third party hnw investor who came in a few years ago who's gone from arms length to "where the fuck are you?!", and he sees me as a troublemaker as I do all the talking in board meetings (cofounder is taciturn), and set goals for hiring and growth that never happen as they're strangled in the crib. By staying silent he's kept himself pristine.

So, tough decisions ahead. Do I write off a decade of my life and enter a tough job market with no savings to tide me over (nothing like having your entire value in equity, and a paltry salary (£30k - pay ourselves less than staff, don't do dividends, keep value in company - see above pointless pile of cash)), or do I continue, which will probably see me lose what little sanity I have left.

Of course, there is an option as mentioned which keeps my family financially secure, but despite everything I don't particularly want to kill myself. It feels like a cop-out.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#160

Post by Hydraulix989 »

reedlaw wrote: post #149
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is common for high-achieving US high schools to do similar hours too. My alarm was set to 6:15 AM (I optimized it so I could sleep in as late as possible -- perfected the art of getting ready in 15 minutes because I was in such a zombified state of sleep deprivation every morning), got to school at 7 AM trying my best to concentrate for the next 8 hours on fast-paced AP honors coursework. School ended at 3 PM, and…

That's a lot more extracurricular activity and exercise than average Chinese students get. And forget about computer games. Many students are not allowed to use a cellphone on weekdays. Once they go off to college, however, they experience the first taste of freedom and some become addicted to computer games as attested by the abundance of internet cafes near college campuses.

Yes, exercise was a means to an end. College adcoms want well-rounded students, not narrowly-focused math drones. Applying to top colleges with good academic AND athletic credentials is very important.

I did not have a cellphone in high school. iPhone 1 was released during my senior year. A few of my classmates who were much more well-off than I was had Razr phones, LG keyboard phones, and the like -- all paid for by their parents.

But man, without computer games, I would have lost my mind.

Post reply on HN