Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is Logging Long Hours a Recipe For Burnout or the Only Way To Get Ahead? (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Over the weekend, I came across this story on Bloomberg that illustrates a common dilemma that many of us face ourselves: are we sure we're working enough? From the article: "Earlier this month, venture capitalist Keith Rabois set off a Silicon Valley firestorm about what it takes to succeed. When another tech investor wrote on Twitter that working on the weekends and burning out isn't cool -- and doesn't work -- Rabois fired back. "Totally false," he said. Rabois cited icons like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Belichick as proof that dogged dedication (usually measured by long hours) was the only way to reach the top of your field. Lots of people objected to this assessment, for reasons ranging from VC privilege to its gendered implications." I was wondering where Slashdot readers find themselves in this debate.
Burning out is certainly a way to not get ahead. And eventually lose your job, and your career, and then everything else.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Why can't it be both?
If I'm working long hours, it will be for myself thanks. Keep in mind that Zuck works long hours because he won the lottery and the project he works long hours on is actually something of his own. If a company wants to hire me then they can either appreciate me for the good work I do during my eight hour day or I will take my skills elsewhere.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's a different thing to slave for a company you own, and may one day reap the benefits of and to work your ass off just so the bossman can buy another supercar.
Too many hours and you don't produce quality of work. Studies have shown extra vacation and time away from the office INCREASE productivity.
Even if the above were not true. "Getting ahead" is not worth missing out on time with friends, family, and ..."me time". Happiness will always trump "getting ahead".
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's not fair to use Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg as an example to work long hours. They also own their own businesses of which they own shares of. Business owners generally have more incentive and motivation, as it is their pet project in a sense. The average developer, working on a boring project fixing bugs, doing minor feature work, dealing with normal office annoyances, will likely get burned out doing overtime for long periods. For an interesting project with a lot of new code to architect and write, it is easy for me to work extra hours. Long death marches of bug fixes towards the end of a project sucks.
Working enough is far less important than working intelligently, unless your boss is an idiot, in which case you have to be intelligent enough to recognize you have to work "enough" even if you otherwise wouldn't need to.
Real lawyers write in C++
Really, "VC privilege" and "gender implications"? Come on. Worker productivity isn't a new field of study, there's a lot of empirical evidence (in both directions, really) that address this question. I _think_ that the literature tends to show that while burnout is a very real thing and absolutely devastating to long term productivity, occasional "crunch mode" periods can actually be very productive. Whatever the actual answer is, though, it's super depressing that people fall back on ad-hom attacks (which is essentially what all identity-based args are) vs referencing the huge body of research that exists.
You run too fast, you fall over, crack your head open. Spend a few weeks recovering and are now far behind.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Why is "success" defined as being the top in your field? Why is "reaching the top" something to be pursued?
If that's what you want, and that's what you enjoy, do it. The people I've seen get to these positions work a lot. I haven't really seen people that get to "the top" that don't. As long as you actually LIKE this, then go for it.
But here's the thing. But most people don't live to work. They work to live. It's obviously not that simple, and work can be it's own reward at times, but the people who speak out against working weekends are those that seek some sort of balance in their lives with work, and don't see it as some sort of big achievement in life. Burnout is exactly this, and realizing you squandered your time for an illusion.
Life is a balance. Few of us are doing exactly what we want. That's OK, and sort of expected. But there's this sort of Big Lie that if you "get ahead" you'll wake up some day having "made it", and you'll reach nirvana, or some wonderful state, or have some kind of great reward for all that hard work. It's bullshit. If you're not actually enjoying your life and focusing on "getting ahead" as an end rather than the activity itself, then you're just lying to yourself.
When the work is something like sales or marketing, long hours may be effective, since you can reach more clients or brainstorm ideas. The work isn't necessarily mentally exhausting. I can see how a VC would want long hours because getting to market first is a great way to edge out competition. But for engineering work, where correctness or deep comprehension of a problem is key, long hours will slow you down. I've seen it happen. A team will pull an all nighter, desperately rushing to solve a difficult problem or a mysterious bug only to still be stuck with it in the morning. Programming is in the realm of the mind and a good solution is rarely large quantities of code. If you need to write verbose and lengthy functions, you might be doing it wrong. Sure, you can type faster or copy and paste, but you will miss something that will take you hours to find. I find that I can solve difficult problems by relaxing and keeping the idea in my mind. Take a walk, a nap or daydream. The answer will pop into your head. It's number 37 in the 97 things. http://programmer.97things.ore...
However, the exceptions given are valid. If you fully understand the problem and know exactly what you want (and it's your personal project) stay in the groove while it lasts.
Some still think of success in life as climbing some ladder. If you aren't going higher, then they think you're not succeeding.
My grandmother (when she was alive) would inevitably ask me if I got a promotion at work and would express disappointment when the answer was "no." What she didn't understand, though, was that me getting promoted would mean I'd be a manager, not a web developer. This would mean having to manage people (hiring, firing, making sure people do their work when they're supposed to, dealing with company politics) instead of working with code. I love working with code, but would HATE having to do the job of a manager. Why should I "climb the corporate ladder" if it means leaving a rung that I enjoy and moving into rungs that I hate?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This depends on your culture.
Here in the Netherlands, many consider putting in more hours (just for more hours) as inefficient and wasteful, while my colleagues in the US consider it necessary, not just to get ahead, but even to keep their job. To many Dutch colleagues the way they work in the US is considered inefficient and 'dinosaur era' where you are appreciated for the time spent, and not for the results produced or spending your time well. We like to spent more hours only as a temporary fix to a stable planning.
During an internship at MIT for a couple of months, I noticed similar behavior which was considered by the students to be absolutely necessary for good grades: put in lots of hours, even regular all-nighters. To me they spent a lot of that time on the wrong/unrelated/side issue things, and they could have gotten the same results in about half or 2/3 the time. They would pursue every single option/angle the prof would point out, even the clearly fruitless ones. They were afraid (as in not an option at all) to tell the prof that 'yes, that was a fine idea, but perhaps not related to the core of this project and perhaps better not taken up here and now'. Actually when I told the MIT professor such in one of his talks with me about my work, he was very surprised to be told 'no', although he immediately saw the correctness of it and actually thanked me for reeling in his 'wide academic interest' that would have derailed the project.
So, when the culture requires you to spend hours, and not question the task description you might not get job-ownership, but that is not what is requested, so no problem: spend the hours.
When the culture is to value efficiency, be smarter instead of making more hours, question the task description, ask yourself with every subtask 'how does this contribute to the goal, must this work be done, must it be done by me?, etc' and created job-ownership and control in the process.
In my experience, getting overworked or burned out happens most to those that have a strong sense of responsibility and ambition that is conflicting by lack of power and possibilities they encounter.
Therefore I would argue to go for the second method as much as your local culture allows: it empowers you more to steer your own work, setting your own goals with your own rewards, while allowing you to do so in less time, leaving more time available for 'unloading'. And if you like spending much more hours, you will see that in this environment, any hours spent extra will contribute noticeably to your own end goals, and you can maintain much more easily a healthy balance between work hard-play hard with far less risk of burn out (because of the control you have over it)
Not necessarily. If everything you are doing is simple, then you're obviously not challenging yourself. You shouldn't have a ton of highly difficult tasks to accomplish, but a good mix of simple and hard are necessary to keep your mind sharp. (Do the hard tasks to give your brain a workout and work on the simple tasks to give your brain a rest.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Edison was also building a device to speak with the dead when he was old. So he basically went mad.
Never met one. I've met a few that thought they could. All useless egomaniacs. Leave them to their 'not sleeping', microdosing, uberman's sleep schedule etc, let them fail on their own. Look at their lives...
Stupid people working hard, just make big messes. I've never met anyone who didn't need downtime or they turn stupid.
If you have sense, you leave some in the tank for daily happiness AND the day/week/month you do need 100% sustained effort.
Also never hire anybody who uses the term '110%', unless you're looking for a bullshitter (marketer).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
As I posted elsewhere, if you're employed for a 40 hour week, and still have the legs for an extra 20 hours, Spend those hours building your own company.
That way, you'll get what you're worth, build a client base, maybe employ others, and make a profit from all the work they do, plus the hours you put in. You will, in all probability, end up vastly further along the wealth curve in a decade than the person who pushes themselves to the limit working those extra 20 hours for a company that, to be honest, probably doesn't care that much.