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Comment by henning | Hacker News Reader

If anything the ad could discourage some because, not knowing any better, it may have looked like Bezos was one of those people who thinks you can make a late project finish sooner by working sweatshop hours (3x more hours to finish in 1/3 the time).

Everyone asks for "communication skills" and everyone says they're the best and that their shit doesn't stink, too.

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Its important to remember that market for Internet skills was completely different back in 1994. Working sweatshop hours, and jumping to unknown VC-backed companies for a shot at an IPO was just part of the game.

I will also note that the ad is promoting explicit high-level programming skills and states that "[F]amiliarity with web servers and HTML would be helpful but is not necessary." This would have cut-off a lot of people who were riding the "web development" bandwagon (rudimentary HTML, perhaps some CGI scripting) and gotten the attention of lot of skilled people looking to catch a quick IPO.

I actually would have responded just for the "you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible" part.

Note that it doesn't say work 3x longer. I measure time in hours not days, so finishing something 3x faster doesn't mean 120hour weeks, it means finishing something in 13 hours instead of 40.

What determines the meaning of that phrase is not how you measure time; it's how the employer measures time. And what ultimately matters to them is days. Hours only matter (and that, to some employers) inasmuch they affect your present or future productivity, measured in functionality/day.

An employer can certainly measure time in days, and sometimes demand/expect people to put in extra hours in order to make a deadline.

But working extra hours doesn't make one more productive than average and no employer should measure productivity that way. If person A works 80 hours per week and gets as much done as person B that works 40 hours per week no employer will claim that A is as productive as B.

On a side note, given that I do contract work currently you can be certain that both me and my employer measure time in hours not days.

in '94 my friends were learning assembly language, and c. had my father been an electrical engineer rather than a chemical and plastics engineer, i might have caught the bandwagon. instead i was learning CAD, and winning Math and Junior Engineering competitions. by 96 i was learning java with only the value of getting me away from my homework. looking back, i did not tell my teachers off enough in high school. (they actually tried to hold be back because the school was going to run out of math courses, and they wanted me to take spanish over engineering graphics. i should have taken programming independently too. oh well hind sight is 20/20 and will do none of us any good unless we can some how make use of a time machine)

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