> "Overwork doesn't burn people out per se, but it's doing that without knowing the things that replenish you."
If you're working 130 hours a week, and sleeping a healthy 56 hours a week, that leaves you with negative 18 hours a week for replenishing yourself. Not even including showering, eating, etc.
I'm sorry, but merely having dinner with your family on Tuesday nights is not what it takes to replenish yourself. If that's the only thing I get to ask for, it sounds like a hellish place to work.
I need hours of replenishment daily... you know, like an actual work-life balance.
I think people are reaacting to the 130 hour note a bit too much. I doubt that was a common occurence, just an outlier week put in there for effect.
If what you do for work is your passion (ie: hobby, interest, etc), then you naturally get energy back from the effort you put in. Especially if you see meaningful results back. In such a situation, Mayer's recommendations makes sense.
Working for someone else's passion, idea, etc as talent/expertise doesn't translate the same. The problem with articles like this is that some manager/entreprenure/"idea guy" is going to read this and make it the rule around the office, even for the people it most certainly doesn't apply to.
I agree with you but some people are just not like everyone else.
Mayer is the exception to the rule. My sister, who is taking a year off to work at Google before going to law school, is of the same type so I emailed her this story.
The best that I can do is to tell that life is much more than being a lawyer. That won't make a difference though.
For me, "replenishing" activities come in larger hour chunks, but less often than daily. I point this out to reinforce the pp and tfa, knowing your limits and what you need is vital.
So is a regular or even constant monitor of it. Lives and people change, so what worked for me last year, is not really the same as what is working for me now. If you are in a high time demand situation, it is prudent to keep up with yourself on this, so you can change when needed, and work with your employer to help ensure the best satisfaction for all.
When Mayer suspects an employee might burn out, she asks them to find their rhythm. They've come back with, "I need to be home for Tuesday night dinners," or "I need to be on time for my daughter's soccer games."
really bothers me. If employee burnout is a regular thing inside your organization, that's a serious issue that needs solving. But to have to ask permission to spend time with your family is ridiculous.
If you're working 130 hours a week, something is seriously, seriously wrong.
That you would only be "granted" to have time for your family if you're on the brink of burn-out is ... horrible. I'm pretty sure that's not the general guideline about how Google operates, not sure if there's some editing and/or language barrier here.
This really bothered me too. Maybe they just didn't phrase it well, but the sentence "Grant your employees one must-have freedom" is horrible. If you're considering freedoms something that have to be granted to you by your employer, or worse, if you're an employer who thinks that way, there's already something terribly, terribly wrong.
I get the feeling that the article was more written with the mind of the early days of Google- where one employee working 130 hour weeks could save the company tens/hundreds of thousands, and she wanted it to work that well.
Google most definitely doesn't require those insane hours out of people today- hell, quite the opposite. Requesting to spend time with your family does seem ridiculous, but the thing is, if you're in a small startup that is trying to get somewhere fast? You knew what you were getting into, no one forced you into the job, and maybe you should have chosen something that allowed more family time without having to ask. That doesn't make the job bad or 'seriously wrong', it's just a different life situation.
Similarly, there are a lot of people who want to work that hard, for something they believe in or are passionate about, but they find themselves incapable. That's what the article is really for.
> If employee burnout is a regular thing inside your organization, that's a serious issue that needs solving.
Congratulations, you have discovered the entire point of the article.
> But to have to ask permission to spend time with your family is ridiculous.
I didn't see any "ask permission" going on. I saw a manager who realized this is something she has to discover from her employees, and then made sure they received it.
In case anyone is wondering whether this reflects Google's current working culture, let me comment that in my experience it absolutely does not.
In the office I work in, it is virtually empty at 8:00 AM and mostly empty by 7:00 PM. Most people seem to show up around 9:00 AM and leave around 6:00. On Fridays, the office mostly stops working around 5:00 PM.
There is a cadre of people, typically those without families, who stay a bit later but it often seems like they stay just long enough to eat the free dinner and then head home. Those people often also show up around or after 10:00 AM.
There is variation from project to project and office to office, but the work life balance seems very healthy in the offices I've seen. I have kids and a long commute, so it's important that I don't work late and I've never felt the slightest pressure to work more hours.
Indeed. I worked for Marissa on a project and didn't really feel crushed at all. I actually think she was one of the better managers I've had in SV. But then again I worked at Yahoo.
I've been pretty highly entertained by the complete and utter inability of the other commenters to recognize her examples as edge cases.
Mayer's explanation should really be read like this:
Employee X has been working 130 hour weeks for the past month. He's looking more than a little worse for wear; he's probably going to burn out soon. Let's sit him down for a chat and make sure he's doing okay. Oh, he's been missing his daughter's soccer games to manage a critical deploy, and those soccer games are super important to him. Alright, let's deal with that. Mandate that someone else take over, de-prioritize the deploy, rework the process so that deploys happen on a different day or a different time... whatever it takes. He might still be working 130 a week, and that's not great, but he gets the critical thing he just can't miss.
>> "You can't have everything you want," Mayer cautions. "But you can have the things that really matter to you. That empowers you to work really hard for a long period of time on something that you're passionate about."
If by "everything you want" you mean "all the activities you'd like to schedule outside of business hours," then, um... yes I can. Step 1 is called "clear expectations." Step 2 is quitting when pressured to do too much. It has worked great for me.
I'm not passionate enough about any work to pull the kinds of hours she describes. Heck, even if I were -- even if the project were "build software to save your own life" -- I'd be writing some crappy code after 60+ hours.
First of all, I very much doubt that she actually worked 130 hours per week with any regularity. That comes to 18.5 hours per day, including sundays. Even assuming that she could survive with 3 hours of sleep per day (yeah, sure), it leaves almost no time to eat, commute, or god, even going to the bathroom.
And why in the world is she giving advice on burnout?
Not to sound condescending, but use a little common sense here. Even people that work 40 hours a week aren't on task 100% of the time.
In a given day I'll take a couple coffee breaks, maybe go outside for a couple breaths of fresh air, and use the restroom at least twice, in addition to my lunch hour.
That said - those 40 hours that I am in the office aren't hours I am free to use however I please, so it is customary to say that you work 40 hours a week, not 35.8 hours per week, etc.
It's not hard to conceive of a situation where it just works out to be easier to be in the office every waking hour, particularly working on startups. This doesn't mean you don't stop to watch a funny youtube clip or set up a good music playlist- it just means its time fenced off from any other major commitments.
I agree that this is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but probably not too far off. My brother who was a key part of mp3.com in the late 90s, was more or less working constantly for a couple of years. I lived with him for part of that time. He always got home later than me, left earlier, and rarely sat down to eat. He'd be up at all hours of the night working or checking servers, etc. He was wildly passionate about his work and was driven to make the company successful.
Maybe it's because I'm not at a company like Google, but all articles like this seem to do two things:
1) Make everyone who doesn't put in 130 hours a week at work feel like they're not Working Hard Enough
2) Legitimize unpaid overtime/ worker exploitation
It seems that the quantity of "time spent at work" is emphasized over the quality of actual work done. I'd be curious what her work quality was over 130 hours, especially once she was in week 5-6 of working that much.
I'm pretty sure most people understand that the only people who are going to even come close to what she's talking about here are A. founders, and B. early employees with significant equity stakes. IOW, people who stand to benefit to an extreme degree, if the company succeeds. In that case, it might actually make sense to work those kind of crazy hours, since the possible payoff means financial independence and the chance to live out some of one's dreams.
Now a company that's routinely asking non-founder employees with no equity to work more than ~40 hours a week on a regular basis... yeah, that's just not necessary.
This reads like a allegory for Hell. How to love working 18 hours a day could almost be the title of a satire novel on the failings of modern office life. The fact that she lived it and looks back on it fondly doesn't, in my mind, reflect positively on her or her employer.
I just don't understand the hostility toward someone who has worked ridiculously hard and has achieved a demonstrable level of success. She did it, she talks about it, she's happy with the choices she made.
Why so judgmental?
Working hard at things increases your likelihood of success. Is that notion in question here at HN? True, there is a diminishing point of returns for everyone where working hard doesn't yield more returns or even produces overall negative returns... but how can you categorically decry her and her choice to push her own limits?
I worked crazy hours before I got married and have a lot of financial and experiential success to show for it. I did it then out of choice. I don't do it now out of choice. Was I doing something inherently wrong when I was younger and working so hard?
"I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work."
I love Bertrand Russell. Such brilliant quotes. I especially love his thoughts on religion.
Unfortunately, he was no futurist. His view of the manual laborer doing all the work vs the bosses telling the worker what to do was hopelessly mired in the past and plagued with his thinking that the industrial revolution's growing pains were permanent or even worsening.
Given that Peter Drucker was around and writing at the same time, it's not like the idea that we were heading somewhere better as a society was unknowable.
This passage in the link you provided stood out to me:
The small surplus above bare necessaries was not left to those who produced it,
but was appropriated by warriors and priests. In times of famine there was no
surplus; the warriors and priests, however, still secured as much as at other
times, with the result that many of the workers died of hunger.
These days, our warrior/priest caste is actually the government and the elite corporatists that collude with it. Economy goes up, government spending goes up. Economy goes down, government spending goes up... strange that.
I don't think burnout directly correlates to working too hard or too much. I think it is more a matter of working hard without a sense of accomplishment. Endless toil without material or psychic rewards for a job well done is what would lead me to burnout.
I have worked with people who claimed to work over 100 hours per week. Upon closer investigation it generally turned out that they did a lot of personal business from the office "because they were so busy." Or, they used "I'm too busy" as an excuse to ignore their spouse or children or to escape a painful situation at home.
Like the others, I don't buy 130 hours on a sustainable basis. Try to work 60 or 80 hours in a week and see how difficult that is before claiming 100 or 130.
Clearly exaggeration on her part about her hours. No one works 130 hours a week consistently, it is just physically not possible. This article is about everything wrong with corporate work environments.
1) Productivity is equivalent to time spent in the office.
2) Pressure your employees to work more than they should - No one should ever have to "ask" to get a weekday night off to have dinner with their family.
3) Managing resentment? If you are spending your time trying to manage your resentment to your job, you probably aren't being productive because you dislike the job. Nothing spells out bad productivity like disliking what you are doing.
Silly bullshit. First of all, by definition you have to grant all must-have freedoms. If that's not a deal-breaker than they're not must-haves.. but the idea that family dinner is a gift from your employer is ridiculous.
The people at Google have and are continuing to attempt significant "outlier" levels of financial and software technological success.
Should they expect to work a 9-5 schedule?
If achieving success at a level that might require that you to sacrifice a bunch of your family life is your thing, then I guess that Google might be a place for you. If it isn't, then you don't really have to work there.
So much vitriol in this thread toward a person who made the choice to work hard and be a part of a company that expects its people to produce. It's not like there are Google slave camps where they put you on an island, take away your passport, and won't let you leave.
Im sure the private residence at the 4 seasons in SF and the tens if not hundreds of millions she is worth had plenty to do with her not burning out as well.
Further, as others noted - that is ~18 hours per day "working" - and if by "working" we really mean, thinking about her work.
This means that she could just as easily be "working" when being chauffeured from house to work, or on the plane or eating dinner.
Its not like she needed to be welded to a screen pumping out code at her desk 18h per day... she has a much different output, mostly her thought and attention, than many others.
Hell no she wasn't. Not as Google employee #20. The implication in the article is that she was actually working in front of a screen. And while thinking is definitely "working", I don't do much thinking without at least a desk.
I think that its great that it worked for Marissa Mayer. But, the culture of working over 40 hours is troubling. It really puts into perspective what you should value. I value my free time too much to take that choice.
Since folks seem to not recall prior articles about marissa mayer, I believe it's clearly mentioned elsewhere that she's one of those people who via medical accident/ virtue only need a substantially reduced amount of sleep compared with most people. The journalist for this article is clearly an idiot for neglecting that important contextual info.
I don't buy that she worked 130 hours a week. Perhaps one week ever. But I'm still not sure if I buy that. Anything short of documentary proof wouldn't lead me to believe it.
We do have data that people overestimated how much they work. I'm sure she worked long hours. I'm sure she was in the office a lot to. But 130 hours?
And 130 hours of actual good work? We also have data on how the quality of work drops off as quantity begins to add up.
I think it comes down to how you define work. If it is "clocked in on a time card sitting at a desk" 130 hours a week is not realistic long term (it is 18.5 hours per day 7 days a week) -- I agree.
If you define work as "your mind focusing on solving problems or thinking about the big decisions that need to be made" it is absolutely possible to do that for an extended period of time.
I regularly sleep 4-6 hours per night and wake up without an alarm clock (there is a bunch of information about this out there now, example article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 ). When I'm awake my mind is constantly thinking about the projects I'm involved in and how I can contribute to the team driving a better outcome.
I don't put in 130 hours every week but I'm putting in over 80 -- not because I have to but because I enjoy it. I'm typically only at my desk or in meetings at a corporate office 30-40 hours a week. Part of the "freedom" it talks about is letting people work from where they're most productive in a manner they choose -- not forcing them into a "one size fits all" approach -- measure productivity by outcomes not by methods.
I have a "work productivity device" (laptop, tablet, or smartphone) open consuming information or producing output related to my role easily 80 hours a week (12-15 hours a day M-F and 5-20 hours on the weekends).
I did actually worked for about 100 hours a week and more, for a few months in 1998, and I spent a couple of quiet weeks in hospital as a result. This sort of stupid bullshit about hard work really gets me angry.
[+] [-] crazygringo|13 years ago|reply
If you're working 130 hours a week, and sleeping a healthy 56 hours a week, that leaves you with negative 18 hours a week for replenishing yourself. Not even including showering, eating, etc.
I'm sorry, but merely having dinner with your family on Tuesday nights is not what it takes to replenish yourself. If that's the only thing I get to ask for, it sounds like a hellish place to work.
I need hours of replenishment daily... you know, like an actual work-life balance.
[+] [-] blindhippo|13 years ago|reply
Working for someone else's passion, idea, etc as talent/expertise doesn't translate the same. The problem with articles like this is that some manager/entreprenure/"idea guy" is going to read this and make it the rule around the office, even for the people it most certainly doesn't apply to.
[+] [-] technoslut|13 years ago|reply
Mayer is the exception to the rule. My sister, who is taking a year off to work at Google before going to law school, is of the same type so I emailed her this story.
The best that I can do is to tell that life is much more than being a lawyer. That won't make a difference though.
[+] [-] sophacles|13 years ago|reply
So is a regular or even constant monitor of it. Lives and people change, so what worked for me last year, is not really the same as what is working for me now. If you are in a high time demand situation, it is prudent to keep up with yourself on this, so you can change when needed, and work with your employer to help ensure the best satisfaction for all.
[+] [-] rudiger|13 years ago|reply
You're probably getting no more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night, if that. And you're probably pulling an all-nighter or two every week.
[+] [-] leftnode|13 years ago|reply
When Mayer suspects an employee might burn out, she asks them to find their rhythm. They've come back with, "I need to be home for Tuesday night dinners," or "I need to be on time for my daughter's soccer games."
really bothers me. If employee burnout is a regular thing inside your organization, that's a serious issue that needs solving. But to have to ask permission to spend time with your family is ridiculous.
If you're working 130 hours a week, something is seriously, seriously wrong.
[+] [-] unwind|13 years ago|reply
That you would only be "granted" to have time for your family if you're on the brink of burn-out is ... horrible. I'm pretty sure that's not the general guideline about how Google operates, not sure if there's some editing and/or language barrier here.
[+] [-] imgabe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quaunaut|13 years ago|reply
I get the feeling that the article was more written with the mind of the early days of Google- where one employee working 130 hour weeks could save the company tens/hundreds of thousands, and she wanted it to work that well.
Google most definitely doesn't require those insane hours out of people today- hell, quite the opposite. Requesting to spend time with your family does seem ridiculous, but the thing is, if you're in a small startup that is trying to get somewhere fast? You knew what you were getting into, no one forced you into the job, and maybe you should have chosen something that allowed more family time without having to ask. That doesn't make the job bad or 'seriously wrong', it's just a different life situation.
Similarly, there are a lot of people who want to work that hard, for something they believe in or are passionate about, but they find themselves incapable. That's what the article is really for.
[+] [-] saraid216|13 years ago|reply
Congratulations, you have discovered the entire point of the article.
> But to have to ask permission to spend time with your family is ridiculous.
I didn't see any "ask permission" going on. I saw a manager who realized this is something she has to discover from her employees, and then made sure they received it.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] munificent|13 years ago|reply
In the office I work in, it is virtually empty at 8:00 AM and mostly empty by 7:00 PM. Most people seem to show up around 9:00 AM and leave around 6:00. On Fridays, the office mostly stops working around 5:00 PM.
There is a cadre of people, typically those without families, who stay a bit later but it often seems like they stay just long enough to eat the free dinner and then head home. Those people often also show up around or after 10:00 AM.
There is variation from project to project and office to office, but the work life balance seems very healthy in the offices I've seen. I have kids and a long commute, so it's important that I don't work late and I've never felt the slightest pressure to work more hours.
[+] [-] joshu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gouranga|13 years ago|reply
Then again, they realise that we generate about 650k a year in real hard cash per head which is pretty good :) That's how a company should look.
we have to buy our own lunch though and spend our spare time doing some reading and self tuition.
[+] [-] saraid216|13 years ago|reply
Mayer's explanation should really be read like this:
Employee X has been working 130 hour weeks for the past month. He's looking more than a little worse for wear; he's probably going to burn out soon. Let's sit him down for a chat and make sure he's doing okay. Oh, he's been missing his daughter's soccer games to manage a critical deploy, and those soccer games are super important to him. Alright, let's deal with that. Mandate that someone else take over, de-prioritize the deploy, rework the process so that deploys happen on a different day or a different time... whatever it takes. He might still be working 130 a week, and that's not great, but he gets the critical thing he just can't miss.
[+] [-] nathan_long|13 years ago|reply
If by "everything you want" you mean "all the activities you'd like to schedule outside of business hours," then, um... yes I can. Step 1 is called "clear expectations." Step 2 is quitting when pressured to do too much. It has worked great for me.
I'm not passionate enough about any work to pull the kinds of hours she describes. Heck, even if I were -- even if the project were "build software to save your own life" -- I'd be writing some crappy code after 60+ hours.
[+] [-] s1rech|13 years ago|reply
And why in the world is she giving advice on burnout?
[+] [-] gxs|13 years ago|reply
In a given day I'll take a couple coffee breaks, maybe go outside for a couple breaths of fresh air, and use the restroom at least twice, in addition to my lunch hour.
That said - those 40 hours that I am in the office aren't hours I am free to use however I please, so it is customary to say that you work 40 hours a week, not 35.8 hours per week, etc.
It's not hard to conceive of a situation where it just works out to be easier to be in the office every waking hour, particularly working on startups. This doesn't mean you don't stop to watch a funny youtube clip or set up a good music playlist- it just means its time fenced off from any other major commitments.
[+] [-] j_baker|13 years ago|reply
"Marissa must be getting things done. She works here 130 hours a week!"
Yet if you look, they probably aren't actually working the entire time they're in the office.
[+] [-] jonstjohn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrMcFacekick|13 years ago|reply
It seems that the quantity of "time spent at work" is emphasized over the quality of actual work done. I'd be curious what her work quality was over 130 hours, especially once she was in week 5-6 of working that much.
[+] [-] mindcrime|13 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure most people understand that the only people who are going to even come close to what she's talking about here are A. founders, and B. early employees with significant equity stakes. IOW, people who stand to benefit to an extreme degree, if the company succeeds. In that case, it might actually make sense to work those kind of crazy hours, since the possible payoff means financial independence and the chance to live out some of one's dreams.
Now a company that's routinely asking non-founder employees with no equity to work more than ~40 hours a week on a regular basis... yeah, that's just not necessary.
[+] [-] yock|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crusso|13 years ago|reply
Why so judgmental?
Working hard at things increases your likelihood of success. Is that notion in question here at HN? True, there is a diminishing point of returns for everyone where working hard doesn't yield more returns or even produces overall negative returns... but how can you categorically decry her and her choice to push her own limits?
I worked crazy hours before I got married and have a lot of financial and experiential success to show for it. I did it then out of choice. I don't do it now out of choice. Was I doing something inherently wrong when I was younger and working so hard?
[+] [-] lfborjas|13 years ago|reply
"I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work."
[+] [-] crusso|13 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, he was no futurist. His view of the manual laborer doing all the work vs the bosses telling the worker what to do was hopelessly mired in the past and plagued with his thinking that the industrial revolution's growing pains were permanent or even worsening.
Given that Peter Drucker was around and writing at the same time, it's not like the idea that we were heading somewhere better as a society was unknowable.
This passage in the link you provided stood out to me:
These days, our warrior/priest caste is actually the government and the elite corporatists that collude with it. Economy goes up, government spending goes up. Economy goes down, government spending goes up... strange that.[+] [-] jeffbarr|13 years ago|reply
I have worked with people who claimed to work over 100 hours per week. Upon closer investigation it generally turned out that they did a lot of personal business from the office "because they were so busy." Or, they used "I'm too busy" as an excuse to ignore their spouse or children or to escape a painful situation at home.
Like the others, I don't buy 130 hours on a sustainable basis. Try to work 60 or 80 hours in a week and see how difficult that is before claiming 100 or 130.
[+] [-] pgrote|13 years ago|reply
Somehow, I think the fact she is who she is leave people with the perception that working that much is what it takes.
[+] [-] cheez|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onitica|13 years ago|reply
1) Productivity is equivalent to time spent in the office. 2) Pressure your employees to work more than they should - No one should ever have to "ask" to get a weekday night off to have dinner with their family. 3) Managing resentment? If you are spending your time trying to manage your resentment to your job, you probably aren't being productive because you dislike the job. Nothing spells out bad productivity like disliking what you are doing.
[+] [-] famousactress|13 years ago|reply
Silly bullshit. First of all, by definition you have to grant all must-have freedoms. If that's not a deal-breaker than they're not must-haves.. but the idea that family dinner is a gift from your employer is ridiculous.
[+] [-] crusso|13 years ago|reply
Should they expect to work a 9-5 schedule?
If achieving success at a level that might require that you to sacrifice a bunch of your family life is your thing, then I guess that Google might be a place for you. If it isn't, then you don't really have to work there.
So much vitriol in this thread toward a person who made the choice to work hard and be a part of a company that expects its people to produce. It's not like there are Google slave camps where they put you on an island, take away your passport, and won't let you leave.
[+] [-] graiz|13 years ago|reply
Further she thinks that there is causation between her crazy hours and the ultimate success of Google. Correlation is not causation.
[+] [-] samstave|13 years ago|reply
Further, as others noted - that is ~18 hours per day "working" - and if by "working" we really mean, thinking about her work.
This means that she could just as easily be "working" when being chauffeured from house to work, or on the plane or eating dinner.
Its not like she needed to be welded to a screen pumping out code at her desk 18h per day... she has a much different output, mostly her thought and attention, than many others.
[+] [-] altcognito|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zitterbewegung|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crusso|13 years ago|reply
Is it your perception that our culture is moving toward working more hours?
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS
The trend appears to be downward. Yay?
[+] [-] carterschonwald|13 years ago|reply
That Is all.
[+] [-] libria|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelhoglund|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelhoglund|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwthornton|13 years ago|reply
We do have data that people overestimated how much they work. I'm sure she worked long hours. I'm sure she was in the office a lot to. But 130 hours?
And 130 hours of actual good work? We also have data on how the quality of work drops off as quantity begins to add up.
[+] [-] bretpiatt|13 years ago|reply
If you define work as "your mind focusing on solving problems or thinking about the big decisions that need to be made" it is absolutely possible to do that for an extended period of time.
I regularly sleep 4-6 hours per night and wake up without an alarm clock (there is a bunch of information about this out there now, example article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 ). When I'm awake my mind is constantly thinking about the projects I'm involved in and how I can contribute to the team driving a better outcome.
I don't put in 130 hours every week but I'm putting in over 80 -- not because I have to but because I enjoy it. I'm typically only at my desk or in meetings at a corporate office 30-40 hours a week. Part of the "freedom" it talks about is letting people work from where they're most productive in a manner they choose -- not forcing them into a "one size fits all" approach -- measure productivity by outcomes not by methods.
I have a "work productivity device" (laptop, tablet, or smartphone) open consuming information or producing output related to my role easily 80 hours a week (12-15 hours a day M-F and 5-20 hours on the weekends).
[+] [-] wazoox|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yitchelle|13 years ago|reply
This business week article has some more supporting information about the Google folks asking permission to do family events... http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-12/how-to-avoid...