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Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

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Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

#171

Post by paxys »

system16 wrote: post #136
dvt wrote: post #26

What's unfortunate is that on the other side of the coin, "rockstar CEOs" like Elon Musk claim they sleep 4 hours a night and work 90 hour weeks. I think Musk does this mostly for publicity/image reasons and not that it's actually true, but you've got plenty of wantapreneurs parroting this (imo) unhealthy lifestyle.

With the inordinate amount of time Musk spends on Twitter, I'm gonna go ahead and assume most of those 90 hours are not productive.

Considering the amount of publicity he gets from Twitter, they can definitely be considered productive.

Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

#172

Post by m0zg »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #67
bwb wrote: post #28

I don't believe anyone really does 80 hours. I just don't think it is possible and I don't think you can call sitting at a desk doing nothing "work". I've done 60 hours during intense periods just fine... but it was only effective because of the nature of the work I was doing at the time. And, I usually took a break down the road to compensate. In no way was it even 50% creative work. 4 to 6 creative hours seems righ…

Most of my work weeks clock in around 50-60 hours regularly. It's pretty simple how this happens. It's meetings all day and then once meetings are over it's email, documents, admin paperwork, training etc... Here's an example of just last Thursday which was busy but was at least not double booked and had some times I could stop and go to the bathroom, I also wasn't traveling this day which was good: 8-12 - US Senate…

Yeah, that kind of low intensity work I could do for longer (although I'd rather not). Try to maintain the level of concentration required for non-trivial programming for more than a few hours a day though - it doesn't really work. It's the difference between a leisurely bike ride (which you could do all day) and running five miles.

Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

#175

Post by eanzenberg »

pc86 wrote: post #71
droopyEyelids wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't exactly address the point. Human beings are only capable of sustained attention for limited periods of time, plus they have biological needs and must navigate a physical world. Now, if you're just talking about time on the clock, then sure- 168 hours is the limit per week. But we're talking about people doing productive, mentally demanding work. 80 hours might not be possible.

Medical residents routinely do close to 80 hours, and I would argue on average a small single digit number of those hours are unproductive. My SO is an OB resident and worked over 90 hours last week, and probably 75 of that was either in surgery, reading, studying, or giving a presentation of one form or another. About half of her weeks are above the 80 hour limit. It's definitely possible. Just because we don't want…

Hmm and it's no wonder that the 3rd leading cause of death is hospital error... hmm...

Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

#176

Post by howon92 »

nif2ee wrote: post #155
GVIrish wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that argument holds at all. The low hanging fruit from 10 years ago has been picked. But in a lot of ways we only see it as low hanging fruit in hindsight. Today there are new business opportunities that in 10 years will seem like they were low hanging fruit. There are new technologies today that will enable new businesses that wouldn't have been feasible before. Even then, there are only going to be bu…

I get your argument and I appreciate it. But the nature of those low hanging fruit are more complicated today. For example, you can't just recreate Twitter, Facebook, Reddit today in your home with a couple of friends with no solid experience. You similarly can't start most successful SaaS ideas that were started in 2010-2014. Most successful YouTubers started their channels around 2008-2011. This was a time when you…

Snapchat was founded in 2011 when people thought there couldn't be any other successful social media company. On the other hand, Salesforce, an epitome of SAAS, was founded in 1999. I believe there are always business opportunities and I'd argue there are more opportunities today because the space is more complicated and the cost of starting a company is much lower than before.

Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

#177

Post by AndrewKemendo »

wolco wrote: post #169
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact there's plenty of saying no and choosing what to let sit idle happening in my portfolio, so I concur that's just part of being a mature manager. In fact I could point to at least two places in my organization that are somewhat "idle" at the moment where I could actually put additional attention. However creating that bandwidth would break other things. FWIW, I'm the only one on my team working these kind of h…

As a leader do you feel you are setting an unhealthy example? Your actions are being noticed and replicated.

No for two reasons:

1. I make my work/life balance expectations for the team explicit and actively discourage engineers and product/project managers putting in more than 40 hours. More specifically, the goal dates we set for increment deliveries assume they will not be working over those hours. If there are surges needed, I will do my best to add capacity to the teams well ahead of time and have some "floating" engineers who don't need a lot of spin up time to help with that delivery.

2. The majority of the team, aside from my deputy and some leads, don't see a lot of the work I do because it's not relevant to their teams/portfolios. I have a good staff and have built good processes, that makes sure that core teams are shielded from other parts of the organization, or even me from levying requirements that would push them beyond their work schedules.

Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

#178

Post by AndrewKemendo »

wolco wrote: post #165
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to suggest he was slacking or something, unless you can show that the norm is to accomplish same job far faster. Perhaps it would be fair to say, it is easier/more natural to spend 12 hours in a day dealing with people that moving bags of coal or solving differential equations.

Those hour meetings act as a crutch that drain or energize us and falsely trick us into thinking we've done something productive. Those 12 hours could have been spent differently to acheive the same or better results if optimized time management matters but I don't believe they do matter in this case. This person is fueled by the meeting (he leaves the meeting stronger) and by shortening his day he would never fully…

One of the tricks to good leadership in my opinion, is running interference with my leadership or leadership from other parts of the organization, when they try and create new projects or otherwise divert resources to something that isn't a priority. It's a big part of my job to take these meetings so that the core teams delivering value don't get tasked or bogged down with them.

Meetings aren't going away, and in most cases these are requirements coming from outside of me or my team. Part of the trick of leadership is deciding what you can say a hard no to and not even engaging, what you need to do a soft no to by taking meetings (sometimes useless) in order to maintain good relationships, and then for things that are important but would cause new work, to do a lot of work at the leadership level ahead of new tasks impacting teams so that you can help them maintain their velocity.

Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

#179

Post by susijdjdjxa »

lr4444lr wrote: post #57
Aunche wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of surgeons have 80 hour workweeks. This is especially common is smaller hospitals in rural areas. It's not all surgery, but they're definitely not sitting at their desks and doing nothing. Before regulations, it was not uncommon for some doctors to work over 100 hours because they were in such high demand.

For how much of that time are they actually performing the specialized work or at least decision making that only they can do?

This sounds like moving the goalposts for the definition of work.

Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

#180

Post by username90 »

jcims wrote: post #163
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like putting themselves in boxes, and the one he used is generally accepted classification. I don't think it's something to be offended about. I think Tech community is quite elitist at times

No domain has a monopoly on original thought, so calling some of them 'creative' is just lazy and imprecise. I'm just pissing into the wind. Ultimately it doesn't really matter and I agree it's not worth getting offended about.

Some people get paid to have original thoughts while others get paid to not have original thoughts. To me that seems like a pretty clear line. It isn't about whether the people can be creative or not, but whether they are expected to be creative at work.
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