Employee #1: Tumblr | Hacker News Reader

Employee #1: Tumblr

themacro.com

109 pointscraigcannon51 comments

Nobody at Tumblr was gonna turn to me and be like, “Dude, you’re working too many hours, chill, take time, sleep.” No one ever turned to me and said that, ever.

That's just sad. I wish more people did say this - everyone loses when a colleague burns out.

Oh, there are managers who learned their managing lesson that they should show care for the employees and will tell them this very sentence.

... And at the same they remind you about the deadline twice a day, ask you for an estimate thrice a day, and tell you should speed up because you won't be allowed to miss the deadline.

This is worse than just putting pressure on someone. This kind of contradictory orders, of double binds, drives you crazy. Not only are you now afraid of failing the deadline, but you are also afraid of failing the 'hours check', for you know pretty well that they are incompatible.

It also shows that the first advice was just fake, they don't give a damn about it, they just read somewhere that a good manager should say that so they say that, but they have no intent to build up the conditions so that it can happen.

I have had this and it drives you insane. For some reason it caused me to start thinking of my holidays as yet another task I had to do, but didn't have time for - and instead of being a relaxing thing to look forward to became stressful "issue" I didn't want to handle

> That's just sad. I wish more people did say this - everyone loses when a colleague burns out.

If some (single, without family) colleague does this, I usually assume he/she just likes his job very much (I worked a lot more, unpaid at home, when I did not have children, and enjoyed it). It's not always externally visible that this causes problems for the colleague, and it's a bit patronizing to assume that the guy/gal has a problem with it.

Either you have a toxic environment, in which case everyone suffers the same, or you have a non-toxic environment where it's more or less up to you how much you work. If it's the latter, please don't put responsibility on your colleagues for your work load. If it's the former, due to the fact that it is an employer's market (despite what some shills try to tell you), you only have the option to leave.

A couple of companies ago I was the lead developer working mostly with people who were early on in their careers, single, and wanting to put in a lot of time. Even then I always advised them that programming and solving problems is fun, but they should find side projects or something and not spend all that extra effort on work projects. Even if they start doing it because of passion it can ruin things at work because it gives the managers a very poor sense of scale and estimation (because it's hard enough to estimate when you don't have to think about how interesting a given developer will find a problem as part of calculating velocity), it sets expectations on them that they really don't want to have (people start to count on your long hours even if you suddenly have something else going on in your life) and finally fresh ideas and new perspectives are the lifeblood of a team, so having people doing their own thing outside of work and bringing in those things is way more valuable than getting that one project done a little early.

I run a smallish team (6 including me) at a startupish company (as in it's quite small with growth ambitions, but the nature of the industry means it's never going to be worth much more than $40m even in the best case.

I say this sort of thing - not that often because people have taken it on board. As far as I'm concerned it's just best practice. Sustained crunch style working doesn't make you go any faster - bugs, burn out, turn over they'll all kill any short term gains you might get. If someone is being pressured into running a team into the ground, they have a professional duty to push back against that - it's in the best interests of all concerned.

I also feel that it makes it much easier to ask people to work longer if some emergency does come up that can't wait (bug in production or something like that - we get this maybe 3-4 times a year and it generally means a couple of late days getting it sorted).

I'm not sure why anyone thinks "this time the death march might work!"

Well that's the thing about salaried jobs: if they're not watching you fairly closely, how would they know how many hours you're working?

Companies shouldn't hire employees they don't trust. They may choose to watch out for bad behaviour (i.e. not answering emails when expected), however employees should never need to be watched at the level you're suggesting.

I interpreted that comment as a question of how can we know that someone is working too much (and therefore should be concerned) if we don't know how much they're actually working.

Ah yes, that is a lot harder to detect. I think in that case minimum required vacations are a great way to make sure your employees take some time off.

Oh of course. Companies should only hire perfect people.

Of course not, but you should at least trust the people you hire!

It's not an exact science, but there are plenty of artifacts one would tend to leave around when working extra hours - late night emails, chat messages at odd hours, code commits or comments, whatever.

Don't let it become a pattern. Outside of being unhealthy for the individual involved, it can be quite detrimental for the team. Managers especially can set unhealthy expectations without any conscious intent on their part.

Isn't the point of being salaried is you're being results-based instead of hourly based?

Granted, there's an implicit agreement to do "40 hours" (or whatever the norm is), but that they're paying you for what you produce, not for how many hours you're in the seat.

Yes, the point is that if nobody is watching you, it's up to you to set your own limits on work hours. You can't expect someone else to do it.

What a cool guy! He just took a shot in the dark and it worked out great!

I shuddered a little when he said he loves doing support. I'm glad there are people like that.

I really liked his attitude about compensation. Make as much as the last job so his wife doesn't complain. He's obviously driven by passion, not greed. I'll bet he's really pleasant to work with.

This happens quite often with internet companies, passionate users reaching out and becoming support reps. There's something about really good products or brands that simply make people want to get involved.

> What a cool guy! He just took a shot in the dark and it worked out great!

I did the same with an automatic rifle and it didn't :)

I hope that guy continued working because he wanted to, not because he had to.

I really like these, keep them coming!

"of Europe, nothing is open Sunday and nothing is open late at night" Hehe, try to visit eastern Europe and you'll get your wishes -- that is Europe too you know? ;-)

slightly off topic - Marc mentions he flies from Geneva to Amsterdam on Monday and vice versa on Friday and Craig's reaction to that seem to be of amazement. I am not from the continent obviously so I looked up the flight times and saw the total flight time was.. only 1.5 hours! Is that not normal and considered too long in Europe?

I ask because in Australia, that's roughly the same flight time from Sydney <-> Melbourne and a gazillion people take that route on a daily basis [1] plus it is considered a pretty short flight (try flying to Perth or Brisbane). At one point of my consulting career, I found myself flying to Sydney from Melbourne constantly every week for 6 months and at times, I just make it a day trip and take the first flight out in the wee hours in the morning and come back later in the evening. Mention it to anyone in Australia and no one will bat an eye!

[1] As of 2015, it is noted as the 4th busiest route in the world - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_...

That's about 3.5 metric tons of CO2 over six months.[1] They should at least bat an eye.

[1] http://www.icao.int/ENVIRONMENTAL-PROTECTION/CARBONOFFSET/Pa...

The plane was going to fly regardless, he actually improved its load factor by flying on it.

False assumption. Planes fly in response to aggregate passenger demand. Changing commuting habits for the sake of the environment would lead to fewer flights.

This is not true. Planes fly for many reasons. Load Factor is just one of them. Maintaining slots at airports is another. Moving cargo is a third. Staging aircraft for other, more profitable routes as well.

I know it's counter intuitive, but once a route is established, flying on it reduces the co2 per passenger.

Don't take it from me, take it from the carbon offset people:

http://www.co2offsetresearch.org/aviation/Occupancy.html

Nope. You are simply ignoring the role of passenger demand in creating more flights. Additionally, CO2 per passenger is not the only consideration for sustainability; the goal is minimizing total CO2 output, i.e. total number of passengers.

Once you've told this to each of the 250 guys who do the same, er...

If we're going to be insufferably pedantic here, the plane burned more fuel because he was on it, because it had to fly at a marginally higher angle of attack because of the extra weight.

Nope.

http://www.co2offsetresearch.org/aviation/Occupancy.html

"uses the following example to illustrate this: with an occupancy rate of 51%, the fuel burned per passenger-km is 0.176 lb. In comparison, a load factor of 100% corresponds to fuel burned per passenger-km of only 0.112 lb (RCEP, 2003)."

.176 is not double .112, it's only 57% more, so it seems that doubling occupancy results in a 27% increase in total fuel usage ( (2 * .112) / .176).

That's much better than a linear increase, but it's hardly zero. Am I doing the math correctly? (Ignoring the 50% vs. 51% difference).

"less fuel per passenger", the claim made in your link, is not the same as "less fuel", the claim you're refuting.

He's probably not shocked by the distance, but rather the lifestyle of living in two places, one for work and one for your family.

No, it's not a crazy distance, but the time adds up by the time you've got to the airport, checked in, etc.

He's also away from his family all week.

Great if it's working out for him, but a little surprising to see it juxtaposed with working remote for Tumblr.

It's not entirely true that no one bats an eye lid, although you're absolutely correct that it's going on in the consultancies here.

If you're out of the consultancy firms/big corporates/big gov, it would be considered pretty weird/out there.

I recently finished on a project where my company was flying in multiple consultants from Sydney to Melbourne each week. It went on for months/years. I made what I consider a friendship with one of the consultants, and apparently they were putting them up in hotels here each week, while his family stayed in Sydney. The consultants would fly back each Friday, then come back Monday morning or Sunday night and do it all again.

Now to say no one bats an eyelid...well, from our side of things, us lower downs viewed it as an example of how much of a joke the consultancy arrangement was and how much we were overpaying them. It also also solidified in our mind how poorly the consultancies treated their staff, and how we would never work for them if given a choice.

But we weren't the ones controlling the purse strings. Such is life :)

This just makes me think of the time when I knew people making mad money commuting from Wellington to Melbourne to try and get a failing SAP implementation over the line. The order-of-magnitude cost blowout on that project was doubtless assisted by the folks making that round trip and running up central Melbourne hotel bills and dining.

The flight time might be 1.5 hours, but the overall commute will be at least 3 hours given that you need to arrive at the airport in advance, then add the commute to and from the airport.

People in the Bay Area spend that much time driving 15 miles to work.

...but do hopefully see their families, at least for a bit, when they get home.

Daily

You probably don't have to deal with customs for a domestic flight between Sydney and Melbourne. You can't just measure flight time.

Amsterdam and Geneva are both in the Schengen zone so you don't need to deal with customs or immigration there either.

But the security checks are a bitch though and there tend to be long queues especially during business flight hours. In general you want to be about 30-45 minutes at the airport before your flight.

Wow. In the US 30-45min is a dream.

I'm Swiss and I do think it's pretty crazy doing that even though the flight time itself is not that much. It's probably just not being used to people flying so often as it's not that common (at least it's the first time I hear a story like this). Also 1.5h is probably an understatement given that you also have to go through customs every time.

It is quite common, at least in the circles I work in. I had a couple of colleagues that would travel from Poland to the England on Monday morning and back to Poland on Friday evening. He told me that his airline ticket was about 80EUR per week and his accomodations needs are being met by the company.

For a country as large as Australia, I keep thinking that air travel would be an extremely popular travel mode, but I think the population is too small and scattered to support this.

Nah, most Australians live in a major city, and we don't have that many, and they are on average 1000km apart, so we do plenty of flying

I think you are right. When I was living in Melbourne, it just felt like the most folks lived/worked in the one city, and if there are any travel, it was the car. Also felt like the majority of air traffic was between Sydney and Melbourne. I guess times have changed since I lived there.

I am consulting for a company across Los Angeles and depending on the time of day, it can take 1.5 hours or more to get across, one-way. For a while, I got in the habit of getting up before the sun to make the commute before everyone else (35 minutes) but coming back it still took about an hour and a half.

Then I started using Uber -- now I get extra time to catch up on my emails and promote my business.

I live in South Africa, and a load of people fly Cape Town <> Johannesburg once a week (according to your link, it's the 10th busiest route in the world). It's about a 2 hour flight.

I don't think the amazement has as much to do with the distance as it does the idea of living and working in two different countries.

I did exactly this commute for 9 months in 2009. Saw the same people every week.

With traffic on either end and airport waiting it was about 5 hours each way between Sandton and home in CT southern suburbs (before Guatrain, it may be better now).

I couldn't handle the Monday morning red eye after a while and started leaving Sunday afternoons.

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