The worst part about an article like this is someone will take this seriously and believe this is the path towards "success".
How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
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Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
#42Forget employees - this is important reading for the self-employed or work-from-homers... how do you prevent burnout when you're grinding on your own projects, or freelance work?
It might be pretty standard advice, but important to remind oneself - I'm very rarely strict with myself about taking time off or finding my 'rhythm' activities as she calls them.
Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
#43>> "You can't have everything you want," Mayer cautions. "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."
If by "everything you want" you mean "all the activities you'd like to schedule outside of business hours," then, um... yes I can. Step 1 is called "clear expectations." Step 2 is quitting when pressured to do too much. It has worked great for me.
I'm not passionate enough about any work to pull the kinds of hours she describes. Heck, even if I were -- even if the project were "build software to save your own life" -- I'd be writing some crappy code after 60+ hours.
Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I think that's the problem with the article--is the advice geared toward start-up employees, or current Googlers? I agree that in a start-up, you should likely expect longer weeks (even all-nighters), and maybe you do need to ask to have dinner with your family[1]. But at an established company? Seems like a cultural issue. [1] FWIW, I still think this is insane, and would never want to do it.
I think she is merely recounting a story from the early days of Google and relating it to the larger problem of employee burnout. I know quite a few current Googlers and as far as I understand nothing so ridiculous happens there now. Of course the problem is incredibly relevant to Startups: I would never enjoy myself in such a restrictive situation unless I was working on my idea but again different people have diffe…
I think you're right, I certainly don't see much of that kind of thing around here now (there probably are some engineers pulling long hours, but they're the exceptions and it's not generally expected). Could be partly related to the location, although I haven't seen evidence of people doing 80+ hour weeks in other offices yet either.
Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
#45The worst part about an article like this is someone will take this seriously and believe this is the path towards "success".
If you measure success as being in senior management in a big company, it often is
Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
#46First of all, I very much doubt that she actually worked 130 hours per week with any regularity. That comes to 18.5 hours per day, including sundays. Even assuming that she could survive with 3 hours of sleep per day (yeah, sure), it leaves almost no time to eat, commute, or god, even going to the bathroom. And why in the world is she giving advice on burnout?
I agree that this is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but probably not too far off. My brother who was a key part of mp3.com in the late 90s, was more or less working constantly for a couple of years. I lived with him for part of that time. He always got home later than me, left earlier, and rarely sat down to eat. He'd be up at all hours of the night working or checking servers, etc. He was wildly passionate about his work and was driven to make the company successful.
Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
#47Since folks seem to not recall prior articles about marissa mayer, I believe it's clearly mentioned elsewhere that she's one of those people who via medical accident/ virtue only need a substantially reduced amount of sleep compared with most people. The journalist for this article is clearly an idiot for neglecting that important contextual info.
That Is all.
Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
#48If a person can work 3x normal (40 x 3 = 120 hours, which is almost the 130 hours she claims to have worked in the past) and generate 10-1000x the value of most people, it might be a worthy tradeoff for some time. In the long run, however, it can be hard to sustain that kind of pace.
There is evidence that for a wide range of jobs working 3x normal produces .5x to 1.5x as much output.
Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
#49These days, she relaxes by diving into a Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool of money.
Re: How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout
#50The paragraph When Mayer suspects an employee might burn out, she asks them to find their rhythm. They've come back with, "I need to be home for Tuesday night dinners," or "I need to be on time for my daughter's soccer games." really bothers me. If employee burnout is a regular thing inside your organization, that's a serious issue that needs solving. But to have to ask permission to spend time with your family is ri…
Agreed, it reads like pure insanity. That you would only be "granted" to have time for your family if you're on the brink of burn-out is ... horrible. I'm pretty sure that's not the general guideline about how Google operates, not sure if there's some editing and/or language barrier here.
I don't think there is any such barrier. I've read multiple articles from multiple publications about the same Marissa Mayer, and they all have the same anecdotes and themes. If it's so consistent across multiple publications, you have to think she really does say all these things. Whether she walks the talk is another question, but she's probably a freak of nature who is really able to do so.