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Are 12-16 Hour Workdays Productive?

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-wouldn't-say-I've-been-missing-it-bob dept.

theodp writes " It's important to me,' former Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz recalls saying as he threatened a manager for termination because one of his subordinates failed to conduct 1:1 meetings, 'that the people who spend 12 to 16 hours/day here, which is most of their waking life, have a good life. It's why I come to work.' Ben seems to be cut from the same management cloth as new Yahoo CEO Marissa 'I-Don't-Really-Believe-In-Burnout' Mayer, who boasted how she solved the work-life balance problems of mother-of-three 'Katie,' who was required to attend nightly 1 a.m. video conference calls with her Google Finance team in Bangalore, by no longer making Katie also stay for late meetings on her Google day shift on those occasions where it'd make her miss her kids' soccer games and recitals." Jason Fried, C.E.O. of 37signals, wrote a piece for The New York Times recently singing the praises of working a 4-day week part of the year.

3 of 615 comments (clear)

  1. just stating the obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Missing "work?" No, I've been missing a lot of meetings.

    (For managerial, talking is working. For technical staff, meetings are precisely the opposite of work.)

    1. Re:just stating the obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nothing wrong with frequent meetings, what's wrong is frequent meetings full of pointless waffle.

      10 mins tops, come prepared, raise issues, update people, assign stuff and outta there. No mucking about with 2 people discussing things that they should already have sorted and are irrelevant to the other 5 people at the table.

      I had a boss who had us in weekly 2 hour meetings at which he refused to ever decide anything. I started sending a junior in my place.

  2. Re:If you have to ask... by 1s44c · · Score: 5, Informative

    (mock rage mode on) Why is it that the punks in the Non-USA countries always get to work the "normal" hours and those in the USA have to be the ones getting up in the middle of the night to call the "foreigners" during their day? huh? HUH?

    Strange, I noticed the exact opposite.

    I've seen people working in the US calling at all hours like they don't actually understand there is a time difference.