In Silicon Valley, Working 9 to 5 Is for Losers

Dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15143804

Jeez Louise. If that's your life, have fun and consider a sea change.

Remember in the gold rush the people that got reasonably and consistently rich were the ones selling pic axes and buckets.

No doubt we talk about it that way.

Not every company is like that. LinkedIn was famously 40-hour weeks in the early days. I just started at a company that's pretty aggressively work-life balanced. We're no doubt a startup (VC funding, high growth, the whole 9 yards), but we just don't believe that 80 hour weeks translates to the best work. You are first and foremost your own caretaker, and it's probably bad if you're in the office 8-6 and working at home.

Culture matters, and it's different at every company. Don't let what's said on Twitter fool you into thinking it's the same everywhere.

I agree with that premise. I prefer to come in at 10 and go home at 3. People who take more than 4 or 5 hours to get a week's work done are definitely "losers" and surely incompetent.

Oh wait, the article is saying that "9-5 is for the weak" and recommending longer hours? Intellectual focus of creative work can't be maintained long term for that many hours a day. People that do that are working ineffectively, or "losers" to use the parlance of the article author and his title.

Is it just me or do journalists/papers/editors based in NYC really like to bash on Silicon Valley? Are they feeling like SV is stealing the (good and bad) attention that used to belong to Wall Street? Roles have changed about who is causing world-changing transactions and calling the shots about the future of US-centric mankind (economy downturns/crashes and recoveries while it was Wall Street, vs technological reliance and mindspace with SV)?

And in finance, medicine, and law…

I've discovered 10 hours/day is the most you can handle without being counterproductive - that is creating more problems than you're solving. You can do half a day on Saturday - but really, you need the downtime to avoid counter-productivity. That means you get about 55 hours per week max and even that's not sustainable week after week after week after week. You need downtime to avoid counter-productivity.

Relevant: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-s...