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How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

nytimes.com

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Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#71

Post by sheepmullet »

vkou wrote: post #61
georgewsinger wrote: post #35

"You shouldn't work long hours" is consensus advice masquerading as contrarian advice. You can see this for two reasons: (i) count the number of people in threads like this who advise against working long hours; (ii) go to Amazon.com and count the number of books that advocate (often using empirical evidence) against working long hours. The same is true for "you shouldn't multitask". Everyone thinks they're clever fo…

> The question then is: under what conditions is the consensus opinion wrong? Why do notable outliers (i.e., people like Elon Musk) do the opposite of consensus and perform so well (Elon in particular not only consistently works 80+ hour weeks, but seems to multitask quite a bit)? From all outwards appearances, Elon Musk may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His public behaviour is becoming increasingly irratio…

> From all outwards appearances, Elon Musk may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown

A couple of stupid comments don’t indicate you are on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

If that was true the vast majority of us would permanently be on the verge of a breakdown.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#72

Post by ryandrake »

ghaff wrote: post #58
runj__ wrote: post #48

I had a big fight with the other co-founders of a company regarding work hours a while back. Most programmers hit something like up to four "good" hours per workday, the biggest problem is capturing those hours while they're at work. A separate problem is hitting those hours while they have access to their manager or colleagues that can help them overcome small but time consuming problems. I'd like to think that prog…

I don't think of myself as having trouble with work/personal separation. I like my vacations, try to enjoy work trips, and don't feel obliged to work into the night. That said, I tend to scan my email when on vacation or if I'm watching TV at night and, if there's something I can deal with in a few minutes or at least flag as "I'll get back to you next week," why not?

Why not? Because you’re on vacation! That’s a good enough reason for me.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#73

Post by cascom »

Having worked in one of these businesses - I would have been classified as a “faker” - but that is the wrong way to interpret it, if you are: inefficient, can’t prioritize/identify what’s really important, can’t make yourself available with a cheery attitude after hours/weekends, and can’t manage expectations, these jobs are killer

If you can, it’s very plausible to work a 55ish hour week (excluding the occasional hell weeks) with the same if not better work product and great client and employer satisfaction

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#74

Post by ghaff »

ryandrake wrote: post #72
ghaff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think of myself as having trouble with work/personal separation. I like my vacations, try to enjoy work trips, and don't feel obliged to work into the night. That said, I tend to scan my email when on vacation or if I'm watching TV at night and, if there's something I can deal with in a few minutes or at least flag as "I'll get back to you next week," why not?

Why not? Because you’re on vacation! That’s a good enough reason for me.

I don't feel an obligation. But if I can make someone else's life easier with minimal investment on my part. Why not?

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#75

Post by runj__ »

ghaff wrote: post #58
runj__ wrote: post #48

I had a big fight with the other co-founders of a company regarding work hours a while back. Most programmers hit something like up to four "good" hours per workday, the biggest problem is capturing those hours while they're at work. A separate problem is hitting those hours while they have access to their manager or colleagues that can help them overcome small but time consuming problems. I'd like to think that prog…

I don't think of myself as having trouble with work/personal separation. I like my vacations, try to enjoy work trips, and don't feel obliged to work into the night. That said, I tend to scan my email when on vacation or if I'm watching TV at night and, if there's something I can deal with in a few minutes or at least flag as "I'll get back to you next week," why not?

Even just forwarding an email or direct messaging "hey, [edge case person who seems reliable in not bothering people in cases where it's not warranted] is having trouble with this service." is usually enough.

I get that time outside work belong to the employee but people who can be even the slightest bit flexible with that have an inherent extra value.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#76

Post by chris_mc »

JamesBarney wrote: post #66
cma wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if they are engaged or not and how taxing it is. People can play MMOs or MOBAs way past 40hr/week and they don't all have a huge performance dropoff. They are probably more prone to RSI and stuff at more hours though. I wouldn't be surprised to see a productive 100hr week in some kind of MMO player.

I think the OP is talking about knowledge workers specifically. If you're a security guard, I think it's obvious you could do your job for 100 hrs with very little drop off in performance.

Don't think that's true, watchstanding positions are amongst the most mind numbing jobs that actually require your full attention. I stood watch in the Navy as officer of the deck in port, and I can truly say that 6 hour shift was torture for the mind, much worse than coding 6 hours.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#77

Post by Letmesleep69 »

kaikau wrote: post #59
cma wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if they are engaged or not and how taxing it is. People can play MMOs or MOBAs way past 40hr/week and they don't all have a huge performance dropoff. They are probably more prone to RSI and stuff at more hours though. I wouldn't be surprised to see a productive 100hr week in some kind of MMO player.

I wake up and work until I go to sleep. Every day. 8 hours of sleep, either in one chunk or in two (biphasic). I feel better with biphasic. So that leaves 13 hours each day after subtracting eating time, housekeeping, bathroom "tasks", reddit/HN, and falling asleep transition time. 91 hours per week. Been living like this for years without burnout, although I think at 100-130 hours one is asking for trouble.

Can I ask why? I did similar hours for a while but I couldn't date or see friends or exercise and even sit done and read a book for long. If I was forced to do that often I would have quit. Its not like its hard to get another job as a developer. When working 80 hours or more you're basically doing the work of two developers and the company should really just hire another IMO.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#78

Post by runj__ »

sheepmullet wrote: post #69
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we even have well-documented cases of these outliers? Are any unbiased outsiders allowed to watch what e.g. Musk does in his 80-hour week? How do we know it's not 40 hours of hard work interleaved with 40 hours of "working" meals, travelling and other low-productivity time?

> other low-productivity time? How would you even measure low productivity time for someone like Musk who has incredible leverage? For example I was chatting with a friebd about his companies product and it sounds awesome. Yet for me this was a “low value” conversation as I know I couldnt get my workplace to purchase it. Musk on the other hand can delegate the evaluation and if it’s a good fit his company will buy it…

Musk spending time with his children could be seen as training future C*Os (I'm not saying this is what he claims to do). Someone reading an business magazine is business development. Someone reading up on video game development is educating themselves in the database query issue they're currently investigating at their workplace.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#79

Post by Aeolun »

chris_mc wrote: post #76
JamesBarney wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP is talking about knowledge workers specifically. If you're a security guard, I think it's obvious you could do your job for 100 hrs with very little drop off in performance.

Don't think that's true, watchstanding positions are amongst the most mind numbing jobs that actually require your full attention. I stood watch in the Navy as officer of the deck in port, and I can truly say that 6 hour shift was torture for the mind, much worse than coding 6 hours.

To a point I guess, but I imagine the drop off in performance from 2 hours to 8 hours of standing watch is much larger than the one from 8 to 20 hours.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#80

Post by Aeolun »

Denzel wrote: post #62
blhack wrote: post #37

Can some of you chime in with your experience here re: consulting and hours. None of the consultants I know of would estimate a time requirement (other than something incredibly loose) for any kind of job bigger than a few hours. The MO seems to be some version of: "You give me [the consulting firm] a maximum per week that you can afford on this, and we will have a weekly stand up where we talk about what was complet…

Here's the deal, you need to use both: (1) a bottom-up Agile, and (2) a top-down estimation approach. You need to do them at different times and for different reasons. The top-down estimation at the start of a project needs to be done to the lowest level of detail necessary to get a Go/No-Go decision made. You can't realistically start an Agile-managed project without understanding where $10k is in the ballpark of $1…

Of course, if your high level estimate is 10M, any 10k estimate detail is bullshit. It would likely be more accurate to give a range from 5M to 20M.
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