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Comment by DevKoala | Hacker News Reader

> Ariana Huffington joins Uber's board around the same time and releases her book on the importance of sleep right around this time, and piles of free copies are available in the office. Yes, sleep is important. So why am I at the office past midnight? Right: the deadline that can not be moved.

This feels too familiar. “You have unlimited vacation, just take a week off, but we are not moving that deadline.”

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I was at Uber during this time. Her book was stacked on tables all around the main headquarters offices, free to take.

Took a looooong time for them to disappear and I'm still not convinced more than a handful of people cared.

People didn't really like her internally. She was good friends with Travis apparently and that's about as far as the relationship to the company seemed to go.

There was once a time where employees could request a ride with her directly from the app but to be honest the prospect sounded horrifying.

> There was once a time where employees could request a ride with her directly from the app

You'd share an Uber with her? Or would she be driving the Uber? Sounds fascinating either way.

You'd share an Uber with her, yeah. I guess it only lasted a few minutes.

There was another time I think in Denver (might not be remembering correctly) where an event allowed users to hail a helicopter for a ride. Rumor had it that the event was so busy that the helicopter was cheaper than Uber Select at certain points.

To be fair this happens because there are those who are willing to hurt themselves in order to get ahead in their career. We've all had coworkers that send late emails at 2am in the morning or don't use up their vacation days because they want to appear as hard working and as loyal to the company. Many of these people have no real skill and sacrificing their free time is the only real edge they have. This is fairly common and observable at your standard big enterprise software corp. Not trying to shift the blame from companies but it does take two to tango.

This perspective ignores the power dynamics. The tangoing duo are not equal partners, the company has the power to exert pressure on the employee to burn themselves out, and in fact did in this story.

Shouldn’t management be able to identify that their team is comprised of these otherwise incompetent individuals? I see those 2am emails as a symptom rather than a catalyst.

The managers do it too. I've seen it all the way up to the VP level. There is just too much bloat in these large companies.

Xoogler here. Back at Google, there was an explicit policy that "heroic" efforts result in at most a bump of one level on the internal assessment scale - there was an idea that you should be doing productive work without having to overwork yourself, and too much "willing to work constantly" from reports was a danger sign for the manager's performance review. (Granted, this also could be super stressful for borderline employees, who are essentially told that even if they work hard, we'll still fire you.)

It make sense for a startup to heavily reward employees capable of "heroic" efforts because the company might not be there next week if the MVP doesn't ship.

But for a company like Google, nowhere near an existential threat, it makes sense to prioritize long term players capable of delivering for years.

Can you name some companies that have died from a week's worth of developer shortfalls?

Should probably restrict this to companies that had revenue and paid its employees.

If the sleep actually really matters and if long hours do damage long term productivity the way studies suggest, then the frequent heroic effort is irrational and detrimental to productivity. There is no way around it.

There is no way around it for borderline employees too. Assuming these studies are correct, what the heroic effort for borderline employee do is signaling desperation and emotional investment.

Depends on your view on cycling through resources. Who cares if someone who no longer works here is burnt out? Ergo, you have to tie that into the understanding that good employees are hard to find, and rotating them comes at a cost that's greater than not burning them out.

Even then you'll still get "just this once" people who understrand the problem but can't help themselves.

It just goes in the long list of things companies say but clearly don't mean.

"Make sure you do the mandatory training called Safety First. On an unrelated note, we're pulling back on remote working and you're expected to be at your desk 3 days a week. Don't forget to wear your mask at all times."

You have free lunch, catering onsite chef or order from practically any takeaway. Right: just don't think you're getting a lunch for anything other than eating

One of my old bosses literally put an LED countdown clock on the wall for our next major version release date.

He simultaneously refused to pushback features and kept adding new features well in to beta phase.

That product shipped buggy and no fucks were given on our side.

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