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

A contrarian take on working long hours

allisonpickens.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 127 posts

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#81

Post by TameAntelope »

laserlight wrote: post #80
TameAntelope wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pomodoro is four 25 minute sessions with a 5 minute break between each session. One "pomodoro" takes 2 hours to complete.

That makes 32x25x4 = 3200 minutes (53h 20m), which is a significant amount of time for focused work.

You're telling me!

On top of that I was doing the various agile meetings too, it was a lot.

Normally I do 3-5 pomodoros a day; one early in the morning, one to three during the day, then one late at night after the wife has gone to bed. I don't really take days off, so that ends up working out to a pretty decent clip, all things considered.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#82

Post by majewsky »

TameAntelope wrote: post #75
listenallyall wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty obvious that you work at a very small company with little or no layers of management, and most likely, without any other typical constraints that most workers deal with -- like fixed hours, an inconvenient office or commute, lots of unproductive meetings, limited amount of annual PTO, lack of knowledge/understanding whether anything you do has actual impact at the company, etc. Putting in 70-80 hours…

Not sure why you think I believe it to be heroic, I just think I shouldn't be shamed for spending my time how I want to. You'll note how the shame is being attempted in this very comment thread. It makes me sad. :(

I think "shame" is a needlessly inciteful description. The main issue is that, in a company with multiple employees, your behavior is not happening in isolation. When one person is working 80 hours a week, it is very common for management to see everyone who chooses to structure their time differently (e.g. because they have kids or elderly relatives to care for) as a slacker.

If it turns out that management is not thinking this way in your company, then great! But I think most people commenting skeptically here are familiar with situations where one over-achiever in the team sets an impossibly high standard for everyone else and thus unwittingly causes them harm.

This is also why it is usually not considered a problem when a person pursuing their individual passion project puts in crazy hours. If you work for yourself, you're not setting standards for anyone else.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#83

Post by bluefirebrand »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #68
bluefirebrand wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine when working for yourself, you clearly stand to gain by putting in longer hours from time to time. I recently resigned from a job where it was becoming clear the business wanted to set unrealistic deadlines and just expected devs to work extra to meet them. This company didn't offer shares or even have a bonus structure in place. It is not ok to expect your employees to work extra to meet your (frankly un…

>That's fine when working for yourself, you clearly stand to gain by putting in longer hours from time to time. I'm not so sure, I suspect all the reasons it's bad for an employee are equally true for a founder.

Yes, probably. But at least in the founder's case, they stand to materially gain in a big way if they succeed, so the tradeoff may be worth it someday

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#84

Post by AstralStorm »

watwut wrote: post #78
onion2k wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly true of some devs, but I've also seen devs who don't have that problem. Some people genuinely can write good code all night long for months on end. That's why the points I outlined aren't about the individual dev. The impact on other people is still bad even if the dev is great. All of my reasoning about why I don't want 'heroes' come down to preferring a strong team of good devs over a good team beh…

> Some people genuinely can write good code all night long for months on end. Yes. What they can't is do it all night long and all day long for months on end. There are people whose hourly output is twice as múch as normal. I would even say that hourly output variation is much higher then "how many hours per week you are effective" in terms of output. And none of the "people angry because they have to test too much"…

Yup, from experience, you can pull this off for maybe a week or two before you start causing problems or negative output, or get actual health issues. And that's if you're young, older people tend to fall off sooner.

The clincher is that you're never getting paid for the extra effort commensurate to it.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#85

Post by AstralStorm »

HWR_14 wrote: post #32
TameAntelope wrote: post #13

I'll give you an actual contrarian take on working long hours: I like it, and I'm really tired of people commenting on what hours I keep. I enjoy my work. It's what I'd be doing in my spare time if I didn't need or have this job. I've thought about this, and I think I'd stick around at my role even if I hit a windfall, because I want to see this through to the end, one way or another. Sometimes, in order to do the ki…

The simple solution - work two jobs. I don't care if you work 80 hours a week. I don't think it's healthy or sustainable, but maybe it is for you. And I certainly don't think your fatigued work it's as beneficial as putting in a good 40 hours. But feel free. There is no reason it has to be the same job. Make two sets of 9-5ers happy. Meanwhile, if you set a standard that makes people expect your coworkers to work 60…

Heck, putting in a best 20 hours is often better than standard 40h of which a lot is stalled or peak focus is out.

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#86

Post by Terry_Roll »

onion2k wrote: post #70
Terry_Roll wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - It makes other people resentful of the fact they have to work longer hours, or change their schedules, to keep up with features or testing. That leads to more staff churn. It shouldnt do though, your team should be able to work any number of hours and still be productive because things like illness, pregnancy, deaths, holidays occur and they are not always expected or planned. > - It's harder to have discussions…

Seems like a rehash of point 1 and that shouldnt matter. I'll clarify then. Point 1 is that people get annoyed having to work with someone who puts in more time because it makes their work harder. Point 3 is that if people see that someone got a raise or a promotion because they put more hours in, then they will think they won't get a raise or a promotion unless they put more hours in. They will see working longer ho…

I see where you are coming from which is you want a team, which is understandable but that doesnt work for the individual whose happy grinding out code in the middle of night aka the lone wolves, but then would they be working in a team in the first place?

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#88

Post by laserlight »

TameAntelope wrote: post #81
laserlight wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes 32x25x4 = 3200 minutes (53h 20m), which is a significant amount of time for focused work.

You're telling me! On top of that I was doing the various agile meetings too, it was a lot. Normally I do 3-5 pomodoros a day; one early in the morning, one to three during the day, then one late at night after the wife has gone to bed. I don't really take days off, so that ends up working out to a pretty decent clip, all things considered.

That's an incredible pace, especially not taking any days off. When I do so, I lose my sense of time. I feel like, I've been working forever. I have to switch to a different task for at least a day to recover.

Do you have to maintain a certain sleep schedule or do you happen to naturally find it easy to work at this pace? How could I train myself to work as intensely?

Re: A contrarian take on working long hours

#89

Post by banannaise »

version_five wrote: post #2

I think this is a pretty mainstream view, not sure it would be considered contrarian at this point. Not to say it means that everyone has moved on from a culture of long hours. But I'd say quality over quantity is a pretty easy sell nowadays, the harder question is how to get to quality. Long hours seem more like the thing to do when you don't know what else to do.

It's mainstream, but specifically among laborers. Managers, and particularly executives, still seem to overwhelmingly disagree. And guess who sets the rules?
Post reply on HN