Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
1–10 of 246 posts
Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
#2Original thread on twitter: https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1210242184341000192?s=20
Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
#3"I've never worked through a night. The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night. Same with everybody else, whether we admit it or not"
So he didn't. What about his employees?
Not to imply that long hours are necessary. I think they're abhorrent. But they're also endemic. Some bosses do get away with working shorter hours while they flog their employees to work like crazy. On the other hand, workaholism at many companies tends to gets worse and worse as you gain responsibility, and some of the most insane hours are worked by those near the top.
Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
#4"I've never worked through a night. The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night. Same with everybody else, whether we admit it or not" So he didn't. What about his employees? Not to imply that long hours are necessary. I think they're abhorrent. But they're also endemic. Some bosses do get away with working shorter hours while the…
I can't speak on behalf of the entire company (or even a portion of it), but anecdotally, my colleague previously worked at Shopify and said the atmosphere and culture there was very laid back. Taken in conjunction with the Twitter thread the CEO wrote, that all seems to check out.
Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
#5"I've never worked through a night. The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night. Same with everybody else, whether we admit it or not" So he didn't. What about his employees? Not to imply that long hours are necessary. I think they're abhorrent. But they're also endemic. Some bosses do get away with working shorter hours while the…
If you read the Twitter thread [0], ostensibly they don't.
> For creative work, you can't cheat. My believe is that there are 5 creative hours in everyone's day. All I ask of people at Shopify is that 4 of those are channeled into the company.
Obviously Shopify has thousands of employees now, there's very real chance that Tobi's perception does not match the reality of the employees.
Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
#6I'm quite glad that working more hours isn't productive. It's good we have an inate defense against that race to the bottom. Makes the societal battle (imagine it being illegal to work more hours, deemed being unfair competition) a bit easier to win.
Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
#7I think we're all rooting for the narrative that it's possible to get ahead working 9-5. But it's hard for me to ignore the survivorship bias at play here. Yes, if your company has a market cap in the billions, you probably don't need to be grinding on the weekends anymore. If you've built a company with amazing programmers and predictable revenue (e.g., dhh/Jason Fried) you probably don't need to grind weekends.
But when you're at the front lines, striving to create something new, you'll be competing against very motivated entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs will often have more resources than you, and zero aversion to working weekends. In those circumstances, Tobi's lifestyle probably isn't going to cut it. When an entrepreneur is working to create that spark, it pays to be completely obsessed, sometimes for years.
Thankfully, very few of us are on the front lines struggling to launch something momentous. Tobi once was, but he was smart and surrounded by great people, and now he's in scaling mode, which seems like a much different beast. I'm grateful that he and other successful tech leaders don't force their teams to work as hard as they needed to in the early days.
Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
#8A few thoughts to add to the discussion, loosely related:
1) If I know exactly where to spend my time for the best rate of return, its likely that I'll have to spend relatively few hours achieving success.
2) For most people, the success they can achieve through just having a plain old job can be had for a mere 40 hours. Anything they want above what 40 hours can grant them should probably be done elsewhere (second job, side-hustle, etc) since the ROI will be very low for spending those additional hours at work.
3) The 80 hour week lifestyle is probably necessary for people who are still frantically doing what Felix Dennis calls "The Search", trying to build a company without the foggiest notion what people want.
Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
#9Original thread on twitter: https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1210242184341000192?s=20
I've unrolled the thread for easier reading https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1210242184341000192.html
Re: Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success
#10"I've never worked through a night. The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night. Same with everybody else, whether we admit it or not" So he didn't. What about his employees? Not to imply that long hours are necessary. I think they're abhorrent. But they're also endemic. Some bosses do get away with working shorter hours while the…
I worked there. It's clearly a more focused environment than other SV companies I've seen since. Tobi works hard and does the right thing. I think the challenge was actually the first rung of middle managers not being smart enough to understand the long term focus. That's part that's hard to scale. But the leaders walked the talk and empowered others to do so.