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Comment by bcrescimanno | Hacker News Reader

Just this week, I've been collecting feedback from my team. Some of the most powerful I received was, "Since you took over, I feel like I've gotten more done with so much less stress and extra hours. Until you came in, I didn't believe that we could really have work-life-balance and be MORE productive and now I know we can."

Having been in companies where my approach has been called everything from "lazy" to outright "damaging," this feedback was both rewarding and validating.

Edit: For those who are in jobs where you're putting in those long hours, I can tell you there are managers out there who believe in the message here. I have three of them working for me right now and I constantly reinforce the philosophy of working sustainably. Don't settle for less than a manager who respects you the person--not just you the engineer!

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Totally agree. We're running a team with engineers working 20 hours a week. That seems like about the amount of "productive engineering time" that most people have in them in a week, regardless of how many hours they actually spend working.

It's a bit of an experiment, but I have to say that I'm really happy with what it's doing for us. Our engineers are still quite productive. Their work life balance is good, so we can avoid burnout (though this will take a long time to actually prove). And, finally, it gives us a _huge_ competitive advantage when it comes to hiring top quality engineers.

Would you mind letting us know where this is?

Sure. We're a small consulting company called Apsis Labs (http://apsis.io/). We started in Seattle, although our hiring has been entirely remote across the US and Canada.

Cue the sudden influx of resume submissions.

I'm not him but it seems his company (apsis.io) deals with Rails, React, Unity3d, and AWS. The company (Apsis) been around since 2014 so they're probably a successful small startup with some runway.

Neat. Checked out your web site and really like your philosophy! I'm a solo consultant going into my tenth consecutive year. I too have found that >20 hours definitely throws off the balance. It's still a work in progress, but that 20 hour mark is about what consider my level of useful (high impact) hours.

I understand what you do for employees of your firm, but how do you apply your philosophy to yourself (and the other principals)? Client work is one thing, but there's plenty of non-client work too. Particularly in a small firm!

I'm also a solo consultant (really just a contractor), and I've been working 20 hour weeks for the last month or so. I'm finding that I actually don't feel productive enough, mainly because I'm working for a small unlaunched startup, and they are really itching to launch. I mean, I'm still feeling productive for those 4 hours, but when I'm in "the zone", I can focus for much longer. When I'm work on a personal startup or side project, I often spend all day on it, maybe with a few breaks for food.

I'm holding fast to my 4 hour days, but I'm starting to feel like it's not ideal to be the sole part-time developer on a project that needs to launch soon.

But I suppose this could probably be mitigated if they hired another 1 or 2 developers.

I used to be a consultant and went through periods of Uber productivity for 30 to 40 hours a week. When I was in this phase I let my productivity and creativity drive my total weekly effort. Being in the flow feels good and leads to better solutions. But it is not sustainable week after week. Now 30 years later, at 62 years old, I just can't sustain more than 20 hours per week of coding, software design or pre project planning for complex projects. I now find productivity and pleasure doing some of the administrative work managing my team and reporting up. Actually have a new boss and he is asking for lots of data and more. Right now his questions seem valid so it is not a burden. If he learns and grows great. If his information needs don't die down in a few months this may be a burden.

Edit: typos. Need coffee.

You make me smile, nearly 10 years as solo consultant too. For the past 5 years my "week of work" is 25 billed hours and for extremely hard problems (reworking old complex Fortran thermodynamics code) this goes down to 15h/week. Above that, I cannot sustain the rhythm more than two weeks.

The non-client work is done on an "energy and motivation" basis, so I accept that some weeks are good but I can do nothing two weeks in a row.

Ha, "energy and motivation" basis sounds about right for non-client work. I'm finding that getting smarter about what work I can outsource (e.g. bookkeeping to bookkeepers, tax preparation to CPA/accountant) is helping me out tremendously. It's very tempting to keep doing things because "I know I can do that", but forcing myself to let go of non-core/non-strategic areas is hugely empowering and helps with the balance issues and optimizes energy / context switching.

To be honest myself and my co-founder work closer to 35-45 hours a week. We also do about 20 hours of technical work a week, and the rest covers the business overhead (accounting, client relations, business development, project management, etc).

Our goal in the long term is to bring us down to 20 hours a week overall, also, but that's probably several years away. Still, we both feel that as co-founders at a small business keeping it well under 50 hours feels like a win.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about all the items in the business overhead. I've been creating extensive lists of what actually falls into this area, so that I can make sure I'm outsourcing / delegating (e.g. to freelancers) things that really don't need to be on my plate and are non-strategic. Do you have any non-technical employees, contractors, or advisors involved in your business? And, if so, are they are assisting in some of those business overhead areas?

I'm very curious about this, especially in the long run. Do you need to hire extra staff to work the "other" 20 hours that isn't worked, or do you find your staff are producing about as much in their 20 hours as they would in a 40 hour working week?

It really is on the manager and the top level. I've been at startups where 70hrs a week is the minimum "commitment" level because that's what the executives think will get them their product fastest. It doesn't translate to faster shipping - only a culture of no balance and turnover rates start to creep in.

> turnover rates start to creep in.

This is the biggest thing baffling me on this whole thing.

I mean, it is absolutely critical for a startup to get their product out ASAP, right? And everyone can probably agree that having a high turnover of engineers is absolutely devastating to that goal, since one leaver's knowledge is a hefty amount of the overall know-how in a small company, right?

So,shouldn't these startups be holding on to their good hires like a drowning man to something floating, instead of whipping them to yet another death march?

The answer, I think, is that the majority aren't engineering firms but are led by sales.

I've found that I can tell my team, sorry my brain isn't working anymore, there's no point in staying any later, and they understand.

Actually when I tried telling my manager that, he answered, why are you telling me this, I don't care what hours you work, as long as you get the job done.

Your manager sounds like he is focused on the appropriate metrics and is earning his keep.

But also sounds like he is not communicating neither the metrics nor the expectations well enough to the team

Do you try to stop people from working second jobs or too many side projects?

This is the big issue for me. I'd like to make 30 hour week standard - but I'd probably just spend 10-20 hours on side projects, still spending 40-50 hours a week total.

I'd prefer that obviously, but I can't say my employer would be better off.

You're essentially paying for your own training. That's awesome.

Never saw it from that point of view, but that is totally true.

Are you sure they wouldn't be? If you're a knowledge worker, your value is in your brain. If it makes you happier on the job, lowers turnover, and helps keep you refreshed ...side project away!

No. Sustainable pace is important; respecting people's right to be who they are is more important.

Here's my thing: if my management team and I are paying attention, we'll see people's performance suffering if they were to be overworking themselves outside of our work.

Hi,

Original poster here - would you (and any other manager reading this thread who feels this way) be interested in talking to me about how you manage for these goals? itamar@codewithoutrules.com.

Happy to chat--traveling this week. You can find my email address easily enough; feel free to email me. :)

how does the reward structure work in this case. Are workaholics paid more compared to people who prefer work-life balance?

I've never heard of software companies paying you more because you stayed late.

If anything, theae people working late are getting seriously ripped off.

Not only do they lose health, mental peace, the joy of life, and happiness -- they also end up effectively making less per hour.

> I've never heard of software companies paying you more because you stayed late.

I don't think they do directly; but, there are a lot of bad managers out there to value hard work and firefighting above all else. So it's very common to see the distribution of rewards slanting heavily towards the "24/7 available people."

An aside to your comment (but not a direct response to you since you're just relating a too common situation): Hard work is not the polar opposite of working efficiently.

No, it's not. But people aren't stupid (at least, if you hire well) and it's often-observed that the simple act of "being there" is rewarded.

An anecdote from my past: two simultaneous projects; I'm the lead engineer on one and another person, more senior than me, is the lead on the other. I work with my team and we deliver ahead of schedule and with features that the product managers had become accustomed to being told, "no, that's too hard" by the engineering teams. The other project fell far behind, had the whole team working in a war room 12-18 hours per day for weeks.

Guess which team got big bonuses and publicly recognized for their work?

I left a few months later.

Such a bliss when you make your colleagues functionning better. Kudos

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