Fire the workaholics (2008)
37signals.com
37signals.com
I'm this way in my own business and I was like this at the job I had before I left to start it.
Honestly, with all of the slack ass clock punchers out there that can't write a lick of code, the idea of canning someone for working too hard seems pretty silly.
And FWIW, I found time in the last couple years to get my pilot's certificate.
Some people work 14+ hour days regularly because they are excited about the work. There is nothing wrong with this. Working 14+ hour days because you feel like you must do so to "keep up" is bad. In general working well past the point where you are productive is bad.
Some people want to slack off and punch the clock, and do not give a crap about their work. This is bad. Some recognize when they've done all of the productive work they can today, and seek to use the remaining time to balance out their life. There is nothing wrong with that, either.
Basically it comes down to reasons and effective self-evaluation. If you're working 14+ hours while being useful and engaged, great for you. If you're doing it as some badge of honor and hacking together crap because you're tired, you really aren't helping.
Know yourself, and your limits. Use them as tools to do the best you can. The only people you should fire here are the ones who refuse to do this.
If I can't regularly do what I need to do in 9 hours day, for virtually anything, then I'm doing something wrong.
Working to live, vs. living to work.
It's more complex than that for me. I really like Calcanis's point that work is life for him. "Work to live" makes it sound like you would be happier if you could just have a trust fund, which is true for almost nobody.
I don't know if I want to take it to Calcanis's level where his work is his Alpha and his Omega, but my work is a big, big part of my life right now, and the other things (friends, dating, a home life, hobbies, etc) are less important to me. In the future surely that will change/flip. Certainly I've had different priorities in the past.
But the other thing is I kind of treat my "hobbies" as work. I just moved to a new city, and a lot of the "non-work" fun people are doing is partying, drinking, eating, playing outside, etc. Those are things I love, but lately what I really want to do is gardening, beer brewing, building structures, and yes... even coding for fun.
And one of those activities--gardening--became the foundation of my business. So now, even that is considered "working" in a very real sense.
So for me, this work/play line is very blurry. And the question of whether it's ok to want to spend most of your time in the "work" world is open for me. As is the question of whether it's reasonable for people like me (and Calcanis) to want to work only with other people who feel the same way.
Personally, I'd never want to work in a company full of "me's". I'm totally screwed up in a bunch of important ways, and I want people who do the opposite to balance me out.
I guess that's where I disagree with both DHH and Calcanis. I'll throw my own absurd overgeneralization in to the ring: fire the people who are just like you.
If you have a job doing something you love, I am not about to look down on you for working extra hours. After all, you'd probably be doing it whether you were being paid or not. It doesn't feel like work at all. That is where I draw the distinction.
If you are doing something that you normally would not be doing, something you don't enjoy, and taking pride in the fact that you are putting in these extra hours for free, working for someone else, increasing their wealth... the employer has you exactly where they want you. The perfect employee.
Working for yourself, now that's an entirely different matter. Work as hard and as long as you want. You're only answering to you.
Basically, it's something that allows you to maximise leisure and minimise work.
On the other hand, many people do find fulfillment through work. In that sense, trust fund beneficiaries may have a tougher road to follow. Another thing that can defeat happiness set points is continual goal setting and achievement, once again something that the idle rich don't need to do.
(When I say living to work, take it as implied that I mean taking good enough care of yourself to prevent physical or mental health problems from tanking your work quality)
At the mean time, some days I'd prefer to have dinner with my girlfriend after work. On weekends I'd occasionally prefer a get away outside of Silicon Valley. Exercise is an absolute must. I also have interest outside of computing: reading (history, philosophy), photography. Pursuing them only helps re-invigorate my passion for computing: occasionally ideas would come to me when I'm reading an unrelated book, working out at the gym or taking photographs.
Many times there's a direct link: I'd write my own photo gallery software and host the pictures myself, build creative ways to backup my images, research ways to do interesting image manipulation from Linux (photo manipulation libraries, etc...) etc... Pursuing photography as a hobby while on a budget as a college student meant I had to do "casual programming" quite frequently to get what I want done (now, however, I've shelled out for Aperture).
It's important to understand that performance requires maintenance, good ideas come form outside. At the mean time, there's nothing wrong with working long hours if you want to do so: it's only healthy and pleasant if you actually have a passion for what you do (as long as you don't go to the extreme of forgoing maintenance and ignoring other sources of inspiration).
Sensible people get paid for playing --
that is the art of life.
-- Alan WattsI think you're taking the article too literally. It seemed to me that he was taking the (decidedly silly) polar opposite position to emphasize the extremity of Jason's suggestion, and that there are perfectly legitimate reasons not to follow it, to the extent that the exact opposite could be argued. I don't think he actually expects anyone to fire someone for working overtime, just recognize that expecting overtime has negative effects.
I often work passionately 16 or even 18 hours a day, but that's like for a couple of weeks (or maybe a month) in a year, when we are about to launch something exciting, rest of the year I usually work 5-6 hours a day, sometimes even less, an hour or a couple of hours a day, spending the rest of the time catching up on technology, making art and some music. That said, I get more work done than almost a 100 other people combined.
If I were to work for a fixed number of hours a day every day of the year, I would probably be doing some boring chore of a work, and would likely 'burn out' due the boredom.
I didn't write my side of it as linkbait, and I don't think the DHH did either.
the truth is we are both right.... you can do a lifestyle business or you can go all in. my style is all in and as fast as possible.
other folks like slow and steady.
sometimes life deals you cards that dictate your approach (i.e. yo have a kids, your dad gets cancer and the Panda update cuts half your traffic... all in the same year).
it's true that some folks work 100 hours a week and get less done than folks who work 40.
it's true that there are folks who work 100 hours and get 2x as much done as someone who works 50.
the fact is, you have to do what is right for you and your goals. me? i love to build shit... and i do it hard and fast with a lot of mistakes and passion.
the video: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2219-jason-calacanis-vs-david...
> Truth be told, I’ve never asked anyone to work harder
> than I do, and I work seven days a week.
But than again spending 7 days a week on a problem and business model known not to work is not exactly working smart..ie Mahalo..
But if I've got someone deciding which specific problems are most worthy of concern, I want someone who is going home at night and on the weekends and living life. Working on one thing for most of your waking hours makes it really difficult to understand how that thing is useful outside of your domain.
When I was in my early twenties, I lived in NYC and London. My motto was the typical, "word hard, play hard." I worked 12+ hour days fairly regularly. The work was interesting, the people were cool, and I was learning a lot. I remember leaving work one morning as people were coming in; their day was starting as my day was ending.
On the weekends (and sometimes weekdays), my friends and I would go bar-hopping, catch a movie, attend a festival, etc. While in London, we'd also take weekend excursions to another city or country. I also remember sky diving & bungee jumping trips.
Now that I'm in my thirties, I don't work as many hours, though my work output hasn't decreased. Instead, I like to think that I work smarter now, not harder. I still really enjoy my work - and oftentimes don't even feel like I'm "working." But if I spend too much time on something, instead of slogging through it, I'll stop and look for a more efficient solution. I've learned that time is too valuable for brute force.
On the surface, it may not seem like I'm working as much. I work anywhere from 8-12 hours a day now, but in aggregate, I get much more done. And none of those hours really feels like work.
I attribute this to having passion for what I do, and learning how to work smart.
Can you give concrete examples of how you work smarter now, compared to your twenties?
Right out of college, I tended to prefer building things on my own, rather than using existing patterns or frameworks. I did this partly because I wanted to learn the "fundamentals", and partly because I was arrogant (or stupid, some probably said).
One day, a senior developer gave me a book on design patterns. I was floored. I started applying them and found the quality (and maintainability, reusability, etc) of my code increase tremendously.
Over time, others have given me more tips on improving my efficiency. From something as simple as learning keyboard shortcuts and customizing an IDE's UI, to unit testing and handy shell scripts, I found myself saving a lot of time.
Of course, you may be doing all of these things already, in which case, you may already have a pretty optimized work technique already.
On a managerial level:
I'm a believer that if you put the right team together, 1+1=3. So my value has shifted from being an individual software developer to someone who can put together teams of developers insanely smarter than I am, then remove all the roadblocks out of their way so they can build great things. I still write some code, but while my value as a developer has dropped tremendously, my value in managing a team of developers means our overall output is greater than the sum of our parts.
In other words, I increased my "value" by becoming a manager. Of course, that kind of a role change is not for everyone, but that's what I did.
Another example is one of prioritization. Sometimes it's only realistically possible to do X units of work a day (let's say 10 units), and sometimes a person is asked to do Y units of work a day (let's say 30). That means 20 units aren't going to get done; it's just not possible. Trying to squeeze in more would result in a lack of quality (due to lack of sleep, exhaustion, etc). So what can one do? Do the most important 10 units first. It sounds pretty obvious, but in the heat of the moment, I sometimes found myself wanting to do the 10 easiest units first, not the 10 most important. Proper prioritization made a big increase in the quality of my output as well.
Careful with that. The purpose of design patterns is to give a name to something you already do, not to find new things that do that aren't needed (cough Spring Framework, J2EE). I am sure you aren't doing that, just wanted to make sure the messaging is more clear.
The Design Patterns Book didn't initially help me when I started programming. However, after working on several substantial Java, C++ and Perl projects I've picked it up and again and was able to identify what I've done and what the standard libraries I use do: "oh, java.util.HashSet is an adaptor bridge from from a hashtable data structure to the Set interface" or "boost::graph uses visitors to implement multiple dispatch based on different edge/vertex types". Now, I'll often make sure to use standard design patterns for my APIs when possible (e.g., Iterator interface, rather than accepting an anonymous classes/function objects if all I want to do let them lazily stream data one at a time).
You're absolutely right. Thanks for catching that!
With computers, I believe that almost all of my "working smarter" can be attributed to the sweat-equity I placed in working long hard hours when I was a young tot -- I didn't know any better, and I loved tinkering on a computer into the wee hours of the night.
I don't remember the exact wording of the adage right now, but it generally rings true for me: "You remember a third of what you hear, half of what you read, and all of what you do." So if I hadn't put in all of that sweat equity & hard work (and mistakes!) in the first place, I wouldn't have gotten to this point today.
(And I hope I'm not giving the impression that I think I've got it all figured out - I don't. Relative to where my mind was a decade ago though, I think I'm in a better place.)
I don't have this problem (assuming a reasonable management team). In fact, I can usually outdo the workaholics in less time. They always forget that not working is oftentimes the most productive thing you can do. I can't count the number of times I've spun my wheels on a problem for hours, went home and rested, and came back to realize just how stupidly easy the problem is.
Working long does not equal working hard.
Comments from 3 years ago, courtesy of the awesome fast shiny new HN search box:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131691
PS: I was sure I commented on this, possibly on 37signals' site itself, but I can't find the comments anywhere... oh well.
1) I work 80-100 hours a week, and enjoy it. For the past 7 years. No burnout yet. I find time to exercise and unwind. 2) If you are just throwing hours at the problem, you are not passionate about the problem. Workaholics are (most often) passionate about their work. 3) Those people who feel bad that someone else is working more than them need to get over themselves. 4) Workaholics often "put in their time" in an attempt to retire early. Not a bad judgment call, IMHO. 5) Even workaholics know how to unwind, and do. You can work 80 hours a week and still have days off (168 hours in a week, 112 waking hours).
But sometimes I feel what he writes needs to have a disclaimer at the top that says, "This is what worked for me in my very unique business. It may be disastrous in yours."
Basically, I view Jason as a conversation starter, not someone whose advice I'm necessarily going to follow. And having talked to him a few times at cons I've gotten the feeling that's really what he wants.
That doesn't need to be stated, it's a given. They never say our way is the only way to do things; they're just telling you what works for them.
It's interesting to see how often the word "passion" comes up with regards to worker productivity, especially when written from the company's perspective. The common refrain seems to be that "more time spent at work = sign of a more passionate employee". I have a hunch though that if all companies had to pay overtime rates for every hour an employee spent over 40 hours per week, you'd see fewer articles that equate "more time at work = more passion", and start seeing more more articles that equate "more time at work = bad time management skills".
As it is though, companies arguably have an incentive to focus on measuring the amount of time you spend at work, simply because the more time a salaried employee spends at work, the less it costs the employer on an hourly basis.
For instance, given 52 weeks per year minus 4 weeks vacation/holidays/sick-leave, a salaried employee has around 48 weeks per year to work, which translates into the following number of hours:
48 weeks * 40 hours/week = 1920 hours
48 weeks * 50 hours/week = 2400 hours
48 weeks * 60 hours/week = 2880 hours
40 hour work weeks: $85000 / 1920 hours = $44/hour
50 hour work weeks: $85000 / 2400 hours = $35/hour
60 hour work weeks: $85000 / 2880 hours = $29/hour
When companies hire contractors there is often a clause in the contract that limits the number of hours the contractor can bill. This isn't because companies are trying to limit how "passionate" a contractor can be. It's because, unlike a salaried employee, a contractor's hourly rate doesn't go down over 40 hours/week.
1) Indifference and over obsession are both blindness.
2) Effectiveness is mostly perception because reality is too costly to measure.
3) Take a mini sabbatical every now and then: http://➹.ws/sabbatical
Marie Antoinette: "Let them eat cake"
"Mr Millionare, small businesses are struggling to make ends meet despite 80hr work weeks."
DHH: "Let them relax by flying their private planes"
Might be dead tomorrow and would be thoroughly miffed if I'd worked through my life. I believe life is the reward and must be lived, not some religious fantasy.
[1]: In actuality, few people probably sleep 8 hours/night, and I didn't account for weekends, but I think my point is still roughly accurate.
Life is far too grand, far too complex, to be spent just coding.
Much wisdom here.
The workaholic personality type can be prone to overworking in order to compensate for other areas of life that aren't quite going their way. I've been that person, but I don't plan on returning to it. In these cases, its much more fruitful to fix the problem than it is to mask it. It just happens that working too much is socially-approved escapism.
It would be my life if I actively improved the human condition and directly provided for my family.
I'd be happy with (and I will eventually have!) a few hectares of acres of land to be honest as I could do the above with that.
Then I can get back to solving problems rather than filling timesheets which is after all the best way of helping people.
How cliched is the "I'm unhappy now, but at some future time when XYZ, then I'll be happy (but not until then!)"? That's pretty much what I meant.
(I am in the UK for reference).
I've worked in places where people with no lives (and more importantly no equity in the company) spent most of their waking lives in the office because it was there- they obviously didn't have a whole lot going on in their lives, maybe needed some kind of social acceptance or maybe a combination of the two.
I've also worked in places with a fantastic buzz [where I've had no equity in the company]' where I slept on the floor to get a job done.
I've also worked for a startup doing 100+ hour weeks end to end just to get ourselves started (not naming any company names).
The latter two I enjoyed and did of my own volition; the first I didn't. If DHH is talking about losers who are several orders of magnitude less productive than my counterparts then fair enough; but sleeping on the floor is the manifestation of obsession. If you wanna stop that, go ahead you Danish wanker.
They won't let you put in more than 40 hrs a week in those multi-billion dollar war planes. Working more than 40 hours a week is counter productive. It increases the likely-hood of bad judgement, cloudy thinking etc will creep into the work.
So the Robber-Baron Korp evil HR types who think they are being cool forcing people to work 40+ hours, are actually just hurting their bottom line.