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lucumr.pocoo.org

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Re: 996

#541

Post by whstl »

abustamam wrote: post #423
whstl wrote: post #177

996 is just theater for investors. Saw this happening even at YC companies. There was always that stupid expectation of overworking, staying until 9. The reality is that people twiddle thumbs. And the disorganization and micromanagement power plays are enough to negate any additional worked hour. This ranges from pure disorganization in terms of what to build to having 3 hour meetings with the whole fucking company w…

I go to the office once a week. We get stuff done. But we spend a lot of time just shooting the shit. Ironically (or not), our boss is the biggest shit-shooter. And we work 8 hour days. I have no idea what we would do if we had to work 12 hour days. There literally isn't enough work to do. Probably just shoot more shit.

A lot of development work is busywork or just plain inefficient work.

Only teams able to shoot the shit have slack for actual emergencies or actual required improvements.

Re: 996

#542

Post by Yizahi »

smugma wrote: post #538
godelski wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But US and China lead. Americans work way more hours than Europeans do Okay, by your logic we should also see: Mexico, Vietnam, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Russia, and Israel to be ahead because they all work more hours. I think we can all agree that there's more to this problem than hours. Now the question is if it is just money. Probably not considering that list, but hey, that money doesn't hurt either. No on…

Israel probably is “ahead” by most startup evaluation metrics, both in HW and SW.

I hope you realize that this just completes proof that there is no significant correlation?

Also, as a person who worked with a lot of Israeli engineers, from juniors to senior architects, I can only say haha, try catching any of them in office after 4pm, or at most 5pm :) . They surely don't work 996, they work the same hours like western EU, just start early and finish early.

Re: 996

#543

Post by abustamam »

whstl wrote: post #541
abustamam wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go to the office once a week. We get stuff done. But we spend a lot of time just shooting the shit. Ironically (or not), our boss is the biggest shit-shooter. And we work 8 hour days. I have no idea what we would do if we had to work 12 hour days. There literally isn't enough work to do. Probably just shoot more shit.

A lot of development work is busywork or just plain inefficient work. Only teams able to shoot the shit have slack for actual emergencies or actual required improvements.

Agreed. I can't find it, but I remember seeing an article/blog post shared on HN about the importance of slack. Impossible to search for it given the name of a popular communication software :)

But essentially it was about a secretary who wasn't booked wall-to-wall with meetings and tasks. She had some meetings but otherwise just able to do whatever she needed to do.

Then, when an emergency happened and she was needed right away to cancel a meeting or make a last minute adjustment, she was able to hop right onto it.

When a team is slammed with P1 tasks all day/week long, and every task is P1, then when an actual urgent matter happens then the team is unable to respond in an efficient manner.

Re: 996

#544

Post by abustamam »

whstl wrote: post #540
abustamam wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a seminar a lot of years back. The grifter on stage was hawking a product on how to invest in venture capital or something. The pitch was "got no money? Use other people's money! Pay $300 to learn how" I don't know how true it is, as I am not about to take this grifters sales pitch at face value, but given that the grifter exhibited a lot of traits that I see in some of these rich investor people, I suspect…

> "got no money? Use other people's money! Pay $300 to learn how" Commendable that a grifter is actually following their own advice!

Haha! I once heard a saying that went, "the only way to get rich quick is to sell ways to get rich quick."

This was when I was deep in MLM land, which fortunately I have exited. But it seems like some VCs and grifters have the same mindset.

Re: 996

#545

Post by scubbo »

komali2 wrote: post #535
scubbo wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pulling a salary from someone else's bank account for a couple years We have a difference of understanding of what "startup" and "failure" mean. I'm not just saying "most startups don't have an exit event" - I'm saying "most startups make negligible money (either through revenue or investment), so the founders are taking a loss the whole time they're working". If that's not correct, then a) I need to update my ment…

Ah well we must just know different folks. Every startup I've been aware of in my personal life was a weekend project amongst people who kept their day job, until they could get into yc or something, and then get to a seed round. The only self funded quit your day job startup I know of in my personal life is the restaurant I opened and closed within a span of a year. Learned my lesson!

Genuinely astonishing - and I mean that literally, not pejoratively. Thanks for this perspective. I do know myself to be very risk-averse and pessimistic, and undoing that mindset is a personal project at the moment. Thanks for these anecdata, it's helpful to be reminded that real people can and do succeed there.

Re: 996

#546

Post by ivape »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #515
ivape wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most children are not educated in school anywhere in the world, historically and currently. How do you want to deal with those facts, because I don’t think you can compare great learning instruction to “no education at all”. I fully stand by that most people are not educated in school. Another way of putting is, the number TWO is greater than ZERO, but I’d prefer if we not compare ZERO to anything .

> Most children are not educated in school anywhere in the world, historically and currently. This is quite a bold claim. So I guess girls in Afghanistan are just as educated as those in Norway?

I'm talking very macro. Look, you can sit with an LLM today and go through a topic you once were educated on and see just how many gaps it fills in. So you yourself can see just how many holes there were in your own education. What do you think the case is for the average person living in the world? Do you really think they got a chance to clarify and explore their education? It's blatantly obvious that we've been giving people inadequate education for quite some time.

Re: 996

#547

Post by martin-t »

petralithic wrote: post #521
martin-t wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't understand what I wrote. Of course you need to sell your product but as a builder you can do it yourself. It's not your specialty so you likely will be worse at it than a dedicated person and will have less time for actual building. The key is that builders can exist without salesmen. But salesmen without builders have nothing to sell.

In civilizations, people used to primarily be farmers but as food production increased, this gave rise to the specialization or division of labor. In the nature of an evolutionary competition of companies, those that specialize into builders and sellers will do better than builders that try to do both, therefore the former paradigm will win out.

I am not against specialization.

I am against some specializations getting paid per unit of work regardless of the market value of their product while other specializations get paid a cut of the market value.

I am against positions of power which allow people who don't produce anything to decide how much other people who do actually produce something get paid.

Etc.

I am fundamentally against inequality.

Re: 996

#548

Post by martin-t »

WJW wrote: post #513
martin-t wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now the question is how to get the message out and change how it works. Because this can't be that hard to understand even for the average person.

Do you think this is some revolutionary insight you've stumbled upon? Most people already know this, and yet the system is still the way it is.

A lot of people don't care.

A lot of people who care are unable to do anything about it because representative democracy is too indirect.

And yes, I think a lot of people don't fundamentally understand this, otherwise things like co-ops would be more common.

Re: 996

#549

Post by MrNet32823 »

zarzavat wrote: post #506
bko wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you're right. I think every job should be available to every person regardless of the things required from the job, personal circumstance, skillset or anything else. If some job requires more than strictly 9-5 and cannot be done by a paraplegic, visually impaired, neurodivergent individual, the job should just cease to exist, lest we be called some kind of 'ist'.

It's an office job. There is no requirement. Working extreme hours is a betrayal of your fellow workers with families who are put in the impossible position of having to choose between competing against such people or spending time with their family. It's also a betrayal of your future self, because maybe you don't have a partner or a family now , but later if you do you will be in the same position as your coworkers…

This. Spot on. If you are putting in more hours than you have signed up for you are doing disservice to fellow collegues. And for what, just to make some one rich. If you must go do side projects, create company and be the entrepreneur.

Re: 996

#550

Post by MrNet32823 »

bko wrote: post #516
zarzavat wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an office job. There is no requirement. Working extreme hours is a betrayal of your fellow workers with families who are put in the impossible position of having to choose between competing against such people or spending time with their family. It's also a betrayal of your future self, because maybe you don't have a partner or a family now , but later if you do you will be in the same position as your coworkers…

> Working extreme hours is a betrayal of your fellow workers with families who are put in the impossible position of having to choose between competing against such people or spending time with their family. Wow, this is a cartoon level villain. You're working too hard making us look bad! Didn't know there were people that actually thought like this. Perversion of egalitarianism. Reduce everyone to the lowest common…

> You're working too hard making us look bad!

ofcourse it is. You are working for the time you are not getting paid for dude

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