This country rapidly needs to regain its sanity when it comes to work/life balance. While some of us employed in tech may have the luxury of giving the middle finger to stigma, many employees in other sectors are not able to do so.
What do you do when a 11-12 hour workday is expected upon penalty of being marginalized and eventually let go? In particular, what do you do when you don't have extremely in-demand skills, and cannot readily take the gamble on being back in the market for a new job? This is a situation many of our peers are in, and it deserves attention - if for no other reason than it 1) applies to many tech jobs already and 2) will only become more of an issue if/when the current tech job market contracts.
If this unfortunate workaholic-glamorization trend continues, we are setting ourselves up for very unpleasant professional careers down the line.
Sometimes it's not even the employer, it's the employees who see working extra hours as a badge of honor. Everyone stays longer than they need to so if you decide you want a work-life balance, you are the odd one out and made to feel guilty.
I honestly don't get it. I am almost skipping to my car after my day job so I can go home and work on my personal projects. Why would anyone want to stick around later to make someone else more money?
What do you do when a 11-12 hour workday is expected upon penalty of being marginalized and eventually let go?
You take advantage of the fact that it's all but impossible for humans to sustain their productivity while working those kinds of hours for any length of time.
With all due respect to whoever said it first, furious activity is no substitute for keeping yourself in working order. Or something like that.
Why would you work an 11-12 hour work day? If I had a job like that I would quit, even with no real marketable skills. I'd rather take ye olde 9-5 job even if it meant a substantial drop in income.
Totally. Right on the money. And the irony is that most people do work better during the day usually having 1 peak in the morning and one in the afternoon. I used to work long hours and spend hours past midnight on problems I could have solved in half an hour after rest. This is something that should stop.
I'm kind of suspicious whenever I hear the phrase "work/life balance". It strikes me as something that seeks to reinforce the industrial-revolution-era idea that my (week)days should be broken into thirds: working (not fun but pays bills), playing (fun but costs money), and sleeping.
Sure, that's definitely better than working 12 hour days, but is that really the goal? It seems that most of the fun-loving and happy people I know, regardless of their financial situation, don't operate in such a world.
A good friend and startup founder (who you might think would tend towards free-market/libertarianism, since he works very hard and surely wants to be compensated for it) asks me: we can feed and clothe and house everyone, so why don't we? Why isn't work optional? People who work hard to make a dent in the universe will anyway, and people who just mess around don't really get much done at work anyway, so why keep up the charade? How many great ideas (or works of art) are stuck in somebody's brain simply because they don't know how to make that idea pay the rent?
I'm a programmer -- or at least, of all the things I've done in my life, that's the one I've been paid the most money for. But personally, I hate that it's always indoors and sedentary. It's unfortunate that society places so much value on an activity that is arguably bad for my physical and mental health. So why are virtually all programming jobs (ostensibly) full-time, i.e., 40 hours? A programmer's salary is great, but why can't I work 20 hours as a programmer, and 20 hours as a tree-planter, or teaching rock climbing to high school kids, for maybe 55% of a programmer's salary? Out of all the possible ways of dividing up my time, spending all daylight hours indoors writing code is perhaps the worst I can imagine.
I know I don't have all the answers, but I think that after a decade of work, I'm starting to know what questions to ask. If I find myself asking about "work/life balance", I've already lost, because it means I'm admitting that the "work" is something I know I won't love doing. Certainly some people have no problem breaking their day up like this, but I can't, and I suspect I'm not alone.
People who work hard to make a dent in the universe will anyway, and people who just mess around don't really get much done at work anyway, so why keep up the charade?
This is typical libertarian claptrap, from the Skilled White Male litany. The only thing of value appears to be making a dent with your special skills, and no consideration is given to the huge numbers of unskilled jobs required to keep 'the universe' running.
The point is that society supports far more shitty retail jobs than universe-denting programming jobs. Those shitty jobs need to be done, and it's hard to excel in them. What kind of dent can a convenience store clerk make? They're still necessary though - and for people in those jobs, work is not particularly fun.
In terms of your hand-wringing about full-time programming work, there are all sorts of ways you can work part-time in programming and part-time in something else. That you can't see this shows you haven't really thought about the problem seriously.
Hell, if you really are a 'denter' and have skills that are in demand, you have a good chance of simply going up to your boss and saying that you only want to work part-time now. Frequently they'll still want to keep you on for your dentable skills.
> why can't I work 20 hours as a programmer, and 20 hours as a tree-planter, or teaching rock climbing to high school kids, for maybe 55% of a programmer's salary?
I have often wondered about this myself. I think I could be equally productive as a programmer on 20 hours a week, since I spend a lot of time on the web and generally doing things that we programmers do when we need to give our minds a break. I really don't think anybody can actually do 40 hours of programming a week.
I'm going to lazily posit the law has something to do with it. I had my own business for a while, but never really made enough money at it (I'm a lousy entrepreneur). Even if I weren't making more money for about the same time investment, I might have fled from business ownership simply because I didn't like having nightmares that I did the taxes wrong—and I never had an employee. It's probably as hard and as expensive tax-wise to hire someone for 20 hours a week as 40 and probably a lot harder for more than 40.
Another possibility is that it's just what happens in our society.
These answers don't feel all that satisfying to me.
> A programmer's salary is great, but why can't I work 20 hours as a programmer, and 20 hours as a tree-planter, or teaching rock climbing to high school kids, for maybe 55% of a programmer's salary?
My company does this. Work half-time, get paid 50% of full-time programmer's salary + health insurance.
My anecdotal impression is that "productivity" is much higher than 50% of a full-time person, but everyone feels less busy, less stressed and more relaxed. Ends up being a great deal for both employer and employee I think.
Anyway, if you're a Rails dev in the Bay Area drop me a line, we're hiring.
> A programmer's salary is great, but why can't I work 20 hours as a programmer, and 20 hours as a tree-planter, or teaching rock climbing to high school kids, for maybe 55% of a programmer's salary?
You can. You need to become a contractor and only accept 20 hours of work a week.
I know that the guy that teaches yoga and step at my gym is a programmer as his "day job". That's one way to stay healthy.
Become a consultant. You get wide freedom in how you spend nonbillable hours.
There exist many people working 1,000 hours a year or less. We all know this. At some point we started believing they must not be successful members of the professional class. That is observably false.
All of the labor laws have been set up around the model of people with life-long careers working at a factory (or equivalent). That is no longer the norm, and the impedance mismatch between outdated laws and the modern workplace has become greater and greater.
Why is 40 hours the norm? Why is working a single job all the time the norm? Why are all of your health insurance and retirement options tied to your current employer? In every case it's due to an accident of history.
What's funny - to me - is that I'm sitting here asking myself "why is this even a story?" I do not work more than 8 hours a day, when working any sort of $DAYJOB. I just don't... there's no good reason to, and I'm not going to do it. My time belongs to me (or, more appropriately, to my startup) and the opportunity cost of spending extra hours at "the office" is just way too high.
Now, if I were working for someone else's startup, or working on my startup full-time, and had significant equity and working long hours had a direct correlation between my chances of becoming independently wealthy, then sure. In fact, I already work 60 or 70 (or more) hours a week, since I'm spending almost all of my night and weekend hours on Fogbeam Labs as it is.
But, yeah... unless there's a compelling reason to work long days at a job that is basically "just a salary", I refuse to do it. I don't really give a shit what my coworkers, boss, or anyone else thinks about it.
It is news to where I work. When I interviewed I was told 40 to 45 hours a week. I get here and was doing 40 hours and then told they need "more hours out of us" and "it would be different if there wasn't a backup of work" (which as far as I could tell there wasn't any, just one of the devs constantly changing stuff).
There are 3 devs (including me) and the other two keep putting in much more than 40 hours whereas I strive for just 40. When I first started I tried for more but then I realized that it didn't matter. There was no incentive for me. It actually made me hate the job more and more.
I believe strongly in a sustainable pace. Software development isn't like brick-laying - you can't work more hours, past the breaking point, and expect to get marginal returns. Sure, you'll get some sloppiness and "bugs" in bricklaying, but likely nothing that can fundamentally ruin the project.
Software developers working too much lead to negative returns as they add more bugs than they fix (or add features). And sleep-deprived coding has lead to more architectural "bite us in the ass" problems than any slightly faster feature output.
That's why I have a cap at ~40 hrs/week. Don't work any more or I'll get mad.
And I believe in the "Results Only Work Environment" (http://www.gorowe.com) - there is no clock; folks "working late" or "coming in early" have nowhere to hide. Only the people working at a sustainable pace and consistently delivering high-quality, working software are rewarded.
you can't work more hours, past the breaking point, and expect to get marginal returns
I find it a little depressing how difficult it can be to convince folk of this though - both employers and employees.
Once team I was brought in to help was working silly hours, and I could very quickly see that it was having a terribly effect on productivity. You could just look at the stories that were being worked on at 9pm on a Friday night and guarantee that you'd be seeing them again the next week with a bug report attached.
I managed to persuade everybody to start working more sensible hours. We collected stone cold facts from the history of the number of bug reports and complaints + stories done that this was more productive on every scale. And yet..... push back from management (who were very invested in the "startup's work 60 hours a week" mindset) and some of the developers (who had become locked into "hero developer" mode).
Even ignoring the ethical argument (not saying that you should) it's just more productive to work that way.
I strongly advocate pace as well; I don't think it's THAT dependent however on hours/week. I prefer working longer hours when my pace is high and working less when I'm feeling not very effective.
I know companies that throw everyone out of the office at 6pm sharp. No working from home allowed either. They seem to be doing just fine. Sometimes you have to force people to work reasonable hours or they'll just burn themselves out in a year or two.
Nicely put. Results matter, not hours. Most people have still not grasped this. And coding late, or even into the next day is kinda like driving without sleep: dangerous, illegal (in many states), and likely to lead to the shittiest code one ever writes.
i used to be the one who would ask, "where is everyone we're a startup and it's only 7:30pm?" I used to freak out if I saw a line of code that was stupidly duplicated or just plain wrong.
It's been 3 startups, and 2 kids later that I realize just how wrong I was... so far no great success - but moderate success, many lessons learned and certainly people i've pushed away for truly silly reasons like perceived hours spent behind the desk or strange lines of code written... reality is I now spend fewer hours behind the desk although admittedly probably still far too many to be sane... and definitely used to (and still do) write crazy lines of code... I think it's a matter of perspective, age, prospects and who knows probably other factors that'll influence our feelings about how many hours we need to put in... after all, is it one critical bug fixed or 100s of lines of new code written which matters more - is a mater of perspective, that one bug fixed could make the difference between winning the big client or losing'em... I think "hours spent behind the desk" is a silly measure of ones productivity... a well rested mind after all makes far better decisions - that's not to say we should be lazy, but that we need balance - plan and simple.
"But, let's forget about having family or being married for a minute. 5:30 as an on average time for going home should be acceptable for everyone -- single or not single ... family or no family -- assuming you don't come into the office everyday at 11 a.m."
Frankly, though, a lot of us do come into the office at 11 a.m. (or sometimes even later), and are happy with working later hours in exchange.
At which point the article becomes more about working your 8 hour day and leaving. I doubt your happy to work until 11pm or midnight for the privilege of showing up at 11am.
Can you clarify who is "us"? Facebook employees? Or programmers working in American tech companies in general?
I live in Japan. In 99% of Japanese companies, and even most of the foreign ones, there's no such thing as flexible working hours. I'm curious to know how common it is in the US.
For an orthogonal perspective, see grellas (writing on another article):
Work-life balance is very important as well, a point the author emphasizes. He seems to have made that choice later in life (as did I) and I commend him for it. But, while I can exhort others too to strive for such balance, I will not begrudge them the choice to work exceedingly hard (especially as they are first developing in their careers) to achieve other "unbalanced" goals. People do accomplish insanely great things by working insanely hard. If they choose to do this in their work as employees, that is their privilege and, as long as they are highly-skilled and highly compensated, I say more power to them if they do it without the benefit of protective labor laws.
I do this, and occasionally I catch flak for it. I put in 8 hours, and that 8 hours happens to be fantastic -- regardless of how busy I look, what I work on, or who I work with. The problem is that casual observers don't see that. They only see the present.
Thankfully, my efforts were noticed despite my lack of unpaid overtime. I've been promoted twice in the past three years, added to special panels and events, and even been given assignments that just rock.
There is this stigma around working 40 hours a week, and only 40 hours, that I will never understand. If you don't need more 40 (or even less) to do your job, what does it matter? The employer is getting what they asked for, and often times more, and you're getting a paycheck. Its called ROWE: results oriented work environment. Just a shame it hasn't caught on in the US.
Did no one read the part of her interview where she said she started work (sending emails so people would notice) at 5.30 am? And then would send emails from home at like 9pm? Ie. she was working way more than 12 hours a day, she just happened to leave the office at 5.30 when other bosses might be scheduling meetings.
The 'story' is completely not what it's being made out to be.
I've worked those longer hours on one startup, 10-11 hour days for several weeks putting out fires. Never once did I get paid more or even a congrats for the work. It was expected and quite frankly, I enjoyed it as a new hire. It helped me get up to speed, built up some comradeship with the other devs/mgrs there, and I had nothing better to do at home. But as the fires died down and I became well-known for my work ethic, WHEN IT WAS NEEDED, I pulled back to 8 hour days on average. So as in many things in life, it's ok in moderation to work longer hours, but I try not to make a habit of it.
Nowadays, I'm at a large enterprisey business and I may work 7 hours during off times. But there was a point (oddly enough right when I started) where I was putting in 10 hour days for a couple weeks. Now that I have kids, I really do want to get home before they go to bed. Also helps that I have a 7 minute commute.
One of the joys of being a contractor is the complete lack of shame at leaving at 5pm, and being happy when asked to work later (aka get more money).
As a salaried worker I was easily pulled into working late hours as it was the status quo. In essence when you are salaried, you are owned, and will be frequently asked to work late, work weekends, and work from home at night. As a contractor, you will still get asked, but only when the reward for the company is worth the cost. As a salaried worker, the only cost for the extra time is your happiness, which isn't worth as much to them as you think.
The best jobs are ones where there is no expectation of hours though. This is where you have a significant stake in the outcome, such as an early employee or as an independent project. Where you are no longer getting paid for your time, but only for results.
My commute is no less than 1hr, so if I'm to be home for dinner with my family I need to leave at 5 (5:30 tops). My boss is very understanding of that... in the sense that he agreed to let me come in at 7am so I could leave at 5. Did I mention my 1hr commute? You do the math. I'm gone 12hrs a day. And I still feel like I need to sneak out as everyone else is likely to be there until 6 or 7. I hate that this seems "normal" and that I feel guilty for leaving at 5. I do enjoy the couple hours of quiet time in the morning though.
I used to work at a developer job where it was taboo to leave before 5:30 (even if you came in at 8:30). Management often scheduled meetings (that lasted at least an hour, sometimes more) at 5:30 on a Friday. If you wanted a personal life there, you had to fight for it. And I did - I left the job :)
When I was working for a company, I would get it an 8:15 and left at 17:00 on the dot. When asked if I could stay to do something which I felt could wait until the morning, I would say no and leave. I didn't get fired, instead I had a life. Working is not everything, there are much more important things in life.
Completely unrelated, but why do stories having anything to do with Pete Cashmore always include a photo of him looking seductively into the camera? This one seems to be in some cool night club. As if knowing that the author happens to be a rare attractive tech reporter adds some credibility to his stories.
I do agree with the tenets of the story though. Working until 5pm should be plenty long to call it a productive day if you don't spend your time yanking off at the water cooler or gossiping with coworkers or even worse sitting in pointless meetings.
I felt so adamantly about this at one point that I wrote a series of op-eds to the New York Times trying to make the case that the single greatest way to alleviate our dependence on foreign oil, lower pollution, mitigate the need for mass-transit, and increase productivity was to give tax incentives to employers who allow employees to work from home 1-2 days per week. Seems surprising to me that more focus hasn't been put on this recently. Anyhow, the stories were never run and now I'm really off topic.
It might be OK in the company policy, but where it counts is co-worker and manager opinion. I personally have found that coming into work at 7am and working til 4pm just doesn't fly with other co-workers. They get the opinion that I didn't have to work as much as everyone else. Productivity can be hard to judge, so it's easy to revert back to time in the office.
I believe there was a study at Google that had similar results as what I experienced as well.
I sell my skills for money. It is all I have, my skilled time. I exchange that time for money. If my pay ends at 5.30, so does my time. No employer has ever given me free money, so Im not about to give them my time for free.
The day the free cash is handed out is the day I dish out some free time.
there are bonuses and promotions. Or another words 'discretionary' compensation. Your formula above does not work in unless you work for a 0 discretionary compensation place.
Promotion paths are also important -- a position or title that is externally recognized as 'achievement'. Is akin to a 'vetting/classification' that was done for your talents. VCs look at that as well as anybody else.
So to summarise,discretionary compensation and promosition creates competitive environment. That drives the stress, long hours,and success or failure within a corporate career path.
[+] [-] doktrin|14 years ago|reply
What do you do when a 11-12 hour workday is expected upon penalty of being marginalized and eventually let go? In particular, what do you do when you don't have extremely in-demand skills, and cannot readily take the gamble on being back in the market for a new job? This is a situation many of our peers are in, and it deserves attention - if for no other reason than it 1) applies to many tech jobs already and 2) will only become more of an issue if/when the current tech job market contracts.
If this unfortunate workaholic-glamorization trend continues, we are setting ourselves up for very unpleasant professional careers down the line.
[+] [-] itg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclowd9901|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bunderbunder|14 years ago|reply
You take advantage of the fact that it's all but impossible for humans to sustain their productivity while working those kinds of hours for any length of time.
With all due respect to whoever said it first, furious activity is no substitute for keeping yourself in working order. Or something like that.
[+] [-] bearmf|14 years ago|reply
Working 11-12 hours is definitely not common. Of the few people I know who do it, all do it voluntarily.
[+] [-] MattRogish|14 years ago|reply
Quit and work somewhere sane :)
[+] [-] tsotha|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucian303|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ken|14 years ago|reply
Sure, that's definitely better than working 12 hour days, but is that really the goal? It seems that most of the fun-loving and happy people I know, regardless of their financial situation, don't operate in such a world.
A good friend and startup founder (who you might think would tend towards free-market/libertarianism, since he works very hard and surely wants to be compensated for it) asks me: we can feed and clothe and house everyone, so why don't we? Why isn't work optional? People who work hard to make a dent in the universe will anyway, and people who just mess around don't really get much done at work anyway, so why keep up the charade? How many great ideas (or works of art) are stuck in somebody's brain simply because they don't know how to make that idea pay the rent?
I'm a programmer -- or at least, of all the things I've done in my life, that's the one I've been paid the most money for. But personally, I hate that it's always indoors and sedentary. It's unfortunate that society places so much value on an activity that is arguably bad for my physical and mental health. So why are virtually all programming jobs (ostensibly) full-time, i.e., 40 hours? A programmer's salary is great, but why can't I work 20 hours as a programmer, and 20 hours as a tree-planter, or teaching rock climbing to high school kids, for maybe 55% of a programmer's salary? Out of all the possible ways of dividing up my time, spending all daylight hours indoors writing code is perhaps the worst I can imagine.
I know I don't have all the answers, but I think that after a decade of work, I'm starting to know what questions to ask. If I find myself asking about "work/life balance", I've already lost, because it means I'm admitting that the "work" is something I know I won't love doing. Certainly some people have no problem breaking their day up like this, but I can't, and I suspect I'm not alone.
[+] [-] vacri|14 years ago|reply
This is typical libertarian claptrap, from the Skilled White Male litany. The only thing of value appears to be making a dent with your special skills, and no consideration is given to the huge numbers of unskilled jobs required to keep 'the universe' running.
The point is that society supports far more shitty retail jobs than universe-denting programming jobs. Those shitty jobs need to be done, and it's hard to excel in them. What kind of dent can a convenience store clerk make? They're still necessary though - and for people in those jobs, work is not particularly fun.
In terms of your hand-wringing about full-time programming work, there are all sorts of ways you can work part-time in programming and part-time in something else. That you can't see this shows you haven't really thought about the problem seriously.
Hell, if you really are a 'denter' and have skills that are in demand, you have a good chance of simply going up to your boss and saying that you only want to work part-time now. Frequently they'll still want to keep you on for your dentable skills.
[+] [-] fusiongyro|14 years ago|reply
I have often wondered about this myself. I think I could be equally productive as a programmer on 20 hours a week, since I spend a lot of time on the web and generally doing things that we programmers do when we need to give our minds a break. I really don't think anybody can actually do 40 hours of programming a week.
I'm going to lazily posit the law has something to do with it. I had my own business for a while, but never really made enough money at it (I'm a lousy entrepreneur). Even if I weren't making more money for about the same time investment, I might have fled from business ownership simply because I didn't like having nightmares that I did the taxes wrong—and I never had an employee. It's probably as hard and as expensive tax-wise to hire someone for 20 hours a week as 40 and probably a lot harder for more than 40.
Another possibility is that it's just what happens in our society.
These answers don't feel all that satisfying to me.
[+] [-] drags|14 years ago|reply
My company does this. Work half-time, get paid 50% of full-time programmer's salary + health insurance.
My anecdotal impression is that "productivity" is much higher than 50% of a full-time person, but everyone feels less busy, less stressed and more relaxed. Ends up being a great deal for both employer and employee I think.
Anyway, if you're a Rails dev in the Bay Area drop me a line, we're hiring.
[+] [-] jedberg|14 years ago|reply
You can. You need to become a contractor and only accept 20 hours of work a week.
I know that the guy that teaches yoga and step at my gym is a programmer as his "day job". That's one way to stay healthy.
[+] [-] patio11|14 years ago|reply
There exist many people working 1,000 hours a year or less. We all know this. At some point we started believing they must not be successful members of the professional class. That is observably false.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|14 years ago|reply
Why is 40 hours the norm? Why is working a single job all the time the norm? Why are all of your health insurance and retirement options tied to your current employer? In every case it's due to an accident of history.
[+] [-] mindcrime|14 years ago|reply
Now, if I were working for someone else's startup, or working on my startup full-time, and had significant equity and working long hours had a direct correlation between my chances of becoming independently wealthy, then sure. In fact, I already work 60 or 70 (or more) hours a week, since I'm spending almost all of my night and weekend hours on Fogbeam Labs as it is.
But, yeah... unless there's a compelling reason to work long days at a job that is basically "just a salary", I refuse to do it. I don't really give a shit what my coworkers, boss, or anyone else thinks about it.
[+] [-] reinhardt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jetti|14 years ago|reply
There are 3 devs (including me) and the other two keep putting in much more than 40 hours whereas I strive for just 40. When I first started I tried for more but then I realized that it didn't matter. There was no incentive for me. It actually made me hate the job more and more.
[+] [-] commanderkeen08|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucian303|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattRogish|14 years ago|reply
Software developers working too much lead to negative returns as they add more bugs than they fix (or add features). And sleep-deprived coding has lead to more architectural "bite us in the ass" problems than any slightly faster feature output.
That's why I have a cap at ~40 hrs/week. Don't work any more or I'll get mad.
And I believe in the "Results Only Work Environment" (http://www.gorowe.com) - there is no clock; folks "working late" or "coming in early" have nowhere to hide. Only the people working at a sustainable pace and consistently delivering high-quality, working software are rewarded.
And we're hiring: http://fundinggates.com/jobs
[+] [-] adrianhoward|14 years ago|reply
I find it a little depressing how difficult it can be to convince folk of this though - both employers and employees.
Once team I was brought in to help was working silly hours, and I could very quickly see that it was having a terribly effect on productivity. You could just look at the stories that were being worked on at 9pm on a Friday night and guarantee that you'd be seeing them again the next week with a bug report attached.
I managed to persuade everybody to start working more sensible hours. We collected stone cold facts from the history of the number of bug reports and complaints + stories done that this was more productive on every scale. And yet..... push back from management (who were very invested in the "startup's work 60 hours a week" mindset) and some of the developers (who had become locked into "hero developer" mode).
Even ignoring the ethical argument (not saying that you should) it's just more productive to work that way.
[+] [-] radikalus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lwat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucian303|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taf2|14 years ago|reply
It's been 3 startups, and 2 kids later that I realize just how wrong I was... so far no great success - but moderate success, many lessons learned and certainly people i've pushed away for truly silly reasons like perceived hours spent behind the desk or strange lines of code written... reality is I now spend fewer hours behind the desk although admittedly probably still far too many to be sane... and definitely used to (and still do) write crazy lines of code... I think it's a matter of perspective, age, prospects and who knows probably other factors that'll influence our feelings about how many hours we need to put in... after all, is it one critical bug fixed or 100s of lines of new code written which matters more - is a mater of perspective, that one bug fixed could make the difference between winning the big client or losing'em... I think "hours spent behind the desk" is a silly measure of ones productivity... a well rested mind after all makes far better decisions - that's not to say we should be lazy, but that we need balance - plan and simple.
[+] [-] spoiledtechie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quanticle|14 years ago|reply
Frankly, though, a lot of us do come into the office at 11 a.m. (or sometimes even later), and are happy with working later hours in exchange.
[+] [-] mhurron|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nandemo|14 years ago|reply
I live in Japan. In 99% of Japanese companies, and even most of the foreign ones, there's no such thing as flexible working hours. I'm curious to know how common it is in the US.
[+] [-] timsally|14 years ago|reply
Work-life balance is very important as well, a point the author emphasizes. He seems to have made that choice later in life (as did I) and I commend him for it. But, while I can exhort others too to strive for such balance, I will not begrudge them the choice to work exceedingly hard (especially as they are first developing in their careers) to achieve other "unbalanced" goals. People do accomplish insanely great things by working insanely hard. If they choose to do this in their work as employees, that is their privilege and, as long as they are highly-skilled and highly compensated, I say more power to them if they do it without the benefit of protective labor laws.
Complete comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3642433.
[+] [-] pyre|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abyssknight|14 years ago|reply
Thankfully, my efforts were noticed despite my lack of unpaid overtime. I've been promoted twice in the past three years, added to special panels and events, and even been given assignments that just rock.
There is this stigma around working 40 hours a week, and only 40 hours, that I will never understand. If you don't need more 40 (or even less) to do your job, what does it matter? The employer is getting what they asked for, and often times more, and you're getting a paycheck. Its called ROWE: results oriented work environment. Just a shame it hasn't caught on in the US.
[+] [-] Tycho|14 years ago|reply
The 'story' is completely not what it's being made out to be.
[+] [-] stuff4ben|14 years ago|reply
Nowadays, I'm at a large enterprisey business and I may work 7 hours during off times. But there was a point (oddly enough right when I started) where I was putting in 10 hour days for a couple weeks. Now that I have kids, I really do want to get home before they go to bed. Also helps that I have a 7 minute commute.
[+] [-] RobertKohr|14 years ago|reply
As a salaried worker I was easily pulled into working late hours as it was the status quo. In essence when you are salaried, you are owned, and will be frequently asked to work late, work weekends, and work from home at night. As a contractor, you will still get asked, but only when the reward for the company is worth the cost. As a salaried worker, the only cost for the extra time is your happiness, which isn't worth as much to them as you think.
The best jobs are ones where there is no expectation of hours though. This is where you have a significant stake in the outcome, such as an early employee or as an independent project. Where you are no longer getting paid for your time, but only for results.
[+] [-] jack-r-abbit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lss456|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhurron|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Limes102|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkrich|14 years ago|reply
I do agree with the tenets of the story though. Working until 5pm should be plenty long to call it a productive day if you don't spend your time yanking off at the water cooler or gossiping with coworkers or even worse sitting in pointless meetings.
I felt so adamantly about this at one point that I wrote a series of op-eds to the New York Times trying to make the case that the single greatest way to alleviate our dependence on foreign oil, lower pollution, mitigate the need for mass-transit, and increase productivity was to give tax incentives to employers who allow employees to work from home 1-2 days per week. Seems surprising to me that more focus hasn't been put on this recently. Anyhow, the stories were never run and now I'm really off topic.
[+] [-] mikezupan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaysignorello|14 years ago|reply
I believe there was a study at Google that had similar results as what I experienced as well.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] alan_cx|14 years ago|reply
The day the free cash is handed out is the day I dish out some free time.
[+] [-] platform|14 years ago|reply
Promotion paths are also important -- a position or title that is externally recognized as 'achievement'. Is akin to a 'vetting/classification' that was done for your talents. VCs look at that as well as anybody else.
So to summarise,discretionary compensation and promosition creates competitive environment. That drives the stress, long hours,and success or failure within a corporate career path.