What Long Hours Really Mean

Thats a good argument and may be generalized by quoting George Edward Box "Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."

During my first startup, I worked 6 or 7 day weeks, 13+ hours a day. At Hyperink, in my first year, I (on my own accord) slept in the office over 30 days. During this entire stretch, I was perhaps more productive and happier than any other time I can remember. The main reason why? The teams and the comradery.

I wish this article at least had relevant studies + statistics on this subject as it is not representative of any of the 4 startup experiences I've been involved with. Actually, in diametric opposition to this author's stance, our teams' cultures were united and strenghtened around the concept of working hard (which, in our case, happened to at least partly equate to long hours).

I should be fair and admit, it may be the case that this article is more relevant to later stage companies -- I don't have a great amount of experience at 100+ employee companies.

From my experience, when one loves what one works on, one often works on said thing a lot. Some of the hardest working people I know work (addictively) towards projects they're not (necessarily) paid to work on. For instance, one of my teammates, Mischief, spends about 5 hours a day porting packages over to Plan9 and writing terminal emulators in go (why not).

Im not so enlightened that I can draw conclusions about people who _don't_ work long hours, but it seems intuitive that people who do work long hours fall into one of two binary classes: (1) they are forced to (in order to achieve some level of compensation) / fear layoff, (2) they like the product, team, or like working hard. That is, intrinsically one either wants to work hard or they don't want to.

You want people in the latter category, and you achieve this by being fair with equity, providing people opportunities to have an impact or work on what they love, by providing a supporting environment, and by having good hiring practices.

There will always be great people who love your team / vision / culture / management (un)structure and who physically cannot commit to 70 hour work weeks (family, etc). You and your team have to decide whether it makes sense for this person to be part of the team and be prepared to make adjustments to make it work.

What I wish this article was about:

* How teams can (and should learn to) effectively prioritize teammates' health

* Why pressure to work hard can be destructive

* How to programmatically or systematically eliminate or amortize stressful tech/scaling/hr/bd problems to avoid disasters.

[edit: fixing typos]

A driving commute makes you unhappy because it is exhausting, and you lose that time. It sounds like your commute is on transit, which isn't so bad... you can read, so that time is still yours. I'd love an hour transit commute. I like to read!

I've done almost 90. I don't recommend it!

Well said. Most of the points can be derived from the first one ("You are working for free"), much in the way that most of Mechanical Engineering can be derived from F=MA. Once you take that idea on board, the motivations behind companies, managers, clients, etc. creating a culture of "Heros That Work Long Hours" become rather transparent.

Adding "long hours don't actually mean you get more stuff done" into the mix is just a little ironic icing to the whole situation.