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Comment by aje403 | Hacker News Reader

Stress (and honestly, a little insanity) from constant 80 hour weeks of coding lead to me splitting with what felt like the love of my life (at the time) and also lead to me leaving my first job (lost my cool with execs a few times), which paid very well and I had a few devs reporting to me, 2 years out of school.

I really love working 80+ hours, I love hacking shit together as much as the next person here, and I'd like my own company someday so I will likely be working those hours again.

However, I am aware of the damage it will cause to any balance existing in my life and that's a decision I (and anybody else who does so) have (has) to make.

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Do yourself and the rest of us a favor.

The Winter Olympics are starting in a week. Pay attention to the interviews with the athletes and the behind the scenes footage. These are some of the best athletes in the world, and they spend a great deal of their time doing exercises that barely look like the sport they compete in.

If you want to be great at something, you have to work very hard but some of that work has to be doing something else.

Take ten or twenty or thirty of those hours and do something else. Write a video game, blog, learn linear algebra, maybe again. Get some cardio. Meet new people and learn how to talk to them. Read some philosophy and ethics.

Any and all of these will further your goal.

+1 from "the rest of the us". The people that wear their long work week on their sleeve as a badge of honor are, at best, very naive, and at worst, self-destructive.

In reference to the movie "Election", don't be a Tracy Flick in the workplace.

Some of my most trying encounters have been dealing with prolific people with bad ideas or sketchy ethics. People who think writing a pile of the wrong code will make things better.

Running as fast as you can in the wrong direction helps nobody. It’s the difference between being efficient and being effective. You need to step back and think about what you’re doing frequently.

"self destructive" is not even the worst. The worst is when they harm the lives of people around them.

People who are behaving in unsustainable ways and have employees reporting to them tend to be pretty awful managers. I've worked in teams run by such managers - it's a shitshow. When employees are routinely crying in the bathroom because of a single person, it's certainly not just "self" destructive anymore.

I’m very well aware of all of that - I read math books in my spare time, had a very interesting social life when I had the time for it, and had a very beautiful and amazing woman in my life at the time.

I had a few months shipping a project where work alone, before studying in spare time, hit about 80. I was not at a great company but was bumped up very high compared to the rest of the new grads and put at the helm of an important project for the company... it was a great career opportunity and I had to get a lot done. Working 80 hours is a bragging right only for a fool. I would do it again in a heartbeat if I owned the company, had a big slice in it, or something like that. However, aside from all of that, looking at my thoughts and actions and all that- staring at a computer screen figuring out logical patterns for 16 hours/day in a cubicle without any meetings is kinda fun- but it’s its own certain kind of madness. Would not put myself into that exact situation again.

80 hours?! I can't believe anyone can work that much, to me 40 hours is the limit. I won't work one hour more than that if it isn't necessary.

If I would code for just 60 hours/week I would only last less than two weeks. My spine and back would probably give up on me before that. Other than that I would be the worst father, friend and husband ever since my brain would be totally messed up between working hours, and in the long run during them as well.

Not to mention my productivity would be dipping to like 30% after a week or so with that pace. Today I have 5-7 highly productive hours out of 8 working remote. Sometimes less, sometimes more. But if I lose my balance and start working an extra hour each day I usually start dipping in productivity and sleep as the days go by.

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