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

The Frustration with Productivity Culture

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 110 posts

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#51

Post by d3nj4l »

dasil003 wrote: post #47
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ive switched markets/verticals from gov to private to startups in search of this balance. Am I understanding correctly that you switched to startups to find better work/life balance? I have to say I'm surprised by that. Usually startups have the highest demands and the fewest people to get things done. Can you expand on your experience?

There are a lot more variety of startups than there are big companies. If you're thinking of late-stage VC-driven companies who work hard to maintain the label of "startup" to perpetrate the mythology of rocket-ship riches that their ivy league hiring funnel relies on, then yeah, it's gonna be stressful. On the other hand, if you're willing to take less money for the ability to work with tighter constraints, less res…

> especially if your talent level is validated by a big tech name brand on your resume

This is unironically the best way to find a good WLB while working on interesting problems. I switched from a startup with great WLB to a big tech with worse WLB because I recognised that the brand name on my resume will open me up for more interesting work with better WLB later on. It sucks for me now, but I'm hoping it'll pay off soon enough.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#52

Post by zaptheimpaler »

Ugh. Talking about the same thing over and over and over again for decades, with 5000 different books and gurus and TED talks about it does not yield ANY insight whatsoever. In fact more and more information = more noise making it even harder to find the few things that do work.

Its a tragedy how the model fails utterly at building frameworks to think about things, instead just popping out endless cliches or tips. There's a reason anything you learn in college is structured and professors work hard at defining course plans - it builds up a framework, piece by piece, making sure you understand each piece before moving on to the next. The framework lets you reason about X in many contexts. The framework for productivity is not all that complicated.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#53

Post by mattharney »

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

This is such a thoughtful encapsulation here. Thank you Barrin92

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#54

Post by aj7 »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #43
aj7 wrote: post #29

It is absurd to tie productivity to workers. An example suffices. A technician running a pair of horizontal machining centers accomplishes the finish machining of eighty automobile engine blocks in an eight hour shift. Now, he’s replaced by a robot and automatic gauging. There are two fundamental problems. In the technician reference frame, his productivity has suddenly and discontinuously fallen to zero, as he sits…

Economic rationalism, globalism, etc have always justified that by saying the net productivity in society has increased, so the technician can be taken care of (or at worst, is collateral damage in service of the greater good). The problem is they don't account for other damage caused by that. People get a sense of purpose from work, many would actually rather work than get a welfare check. Communities are built arou…

It’s more than that. Because of advances in technology and science, “productivity” will always increase.

But to whom go the spoils?

And when will we take responsibility for the losers?

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#55

Post by ehnto »

tcoff91 wrote: post #18
uselesscynicism wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of less stressful work environments in technology that will pay someone a decent salary and will be much less demanding. There are?! Could you list some examples? I would take a pay cut for fewer responsibilities if I could stay in tech and if it didn't pay like thirty grand, which is what you will make in support. How do I transition from a high stress high pay software engineer to a medium pay lo…

Go work for some bigco that is coasting on a great market position of a SaaS project and you can definitely find software jobs where you can work about 30hrs a week, make around 130-180k a year, and chill hard. Only problem is that after a while you'll get really complacent and your skills may suffer. If there are layoffs and you have to find another job, you might be in trouble.

You shouldn't worry about falling out of the technology rat race. Everyone's stack is different, you would be lucky to time learning a technology with a particular job opportunity that is using it. You may as well just research it the weekend before the interview and be upfront about your ability to learn it.

You can't know every technology and in 5 years you will probably be applying for jobs with tech that doesn't even exist yet.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#56

Post by danjac »

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

Of extended family and friends, the ones with the most personal wealth by retirement got there not by being more creative, or inventive, or productive, or by studying and acquiring skills and knowledge, or starting and growing a business, but by inheriting, buying, renting and flipping properties at the right time.

I don't know much about macroeconomics or economics in general, but it seems that's how you climb in the Western world these days. "Working hard" and increasing your productivity - that's for chumps.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#57

Post by thow-58d4e8b »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #39
weq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kings and queeens have turned into the captailists and relgious zealots who espouse ideals of productivity and growth in order to secure your obedience and trap you in debt and gives you no choice but to continue on or give up everything. By chasing the money you commit yourself playing within the confines of this system. I instead chase my passion and ive found an employeer who is happy to make those same tradeo…

> Ive switched markets/verticals from gov to private to startups in search of this balance. Am I understanding correctly that you switched to startups to find better work/life balance? I have to say I'm surprised by that. Usually startups have the highest demands and the fewest people to get things done. Can you expand on your experience?

It's a different kind of stress, and some people prefer one over another.

I experienced both a megacorp and one-man-army setups, and I find fighting bureaucratic inertia, office politics, endless stream of status updates, ever-changing organization chart and product rebrands - all way more tiring than shipping out features at frantic pace.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#58

Post by Jensson »

The frustration is mostly that people want to keep and eat their cookie. They want to get selected by productive teams and work with productive teammates, but they don't want to face the pressure associated with being a productive teammate themselves. Ultimately the pressure comes from yourself, you don't have to be better than the team you are willing to work with. If you want to work on a world class team then you now put world class expectations on yourself, if you are fine working on menial tasks then you don't have any issues at all not being productive.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#59

Post by RandomLensman »

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

New efficiency is easy, new effectiveness is not. So everyone focuses on the former with a lot of cookie cutter type recipes (management, their consultants, ...).

And Efficiency progress is so nicely measurable while it happens. Effectiveness you only see once you have it and not in a new organisation design.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#60

Post by fergie »

Was alarmed to see an otherwise good article descend into a defense of Agile.

"Agile project-management methodologies didn’t alleviate the need for programmers to strive to be better coders, but they did prevent the developers from having to excessively worry about what they should be coding and whether they had done enough"

I think there are many coders here who would strongly disagree, and maybe even identify Agile as the ultimate manifestation of productivity culture.

Post reply on HN