I write code 100 hours/week, here's why I probably won't stop | Hacker News Reader

I write code 100 hours/week, here's why I probably won't stop

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58 pointsboyter63 comments

It's great if it's working for you. I've been in that mode in the past. I was greatly productive and was able to grow businesses and do amazing things doing 80-100 hour weeks. Building highly complex systems alone in very short amounts of time.

It also gave me incredible sense of achievement. What I can say is I'm getting older now and I can say that my body ain't the same as I was when I was in my 20s.

Enjoy it while it lasts!

If I may ask, what changes when you're older? Is it mostly the mental stamina? Or is it the body asking you to spend time resting? A combination?

Your responsibilities across the rest of your life grow but the amount of time in a given day doesn’t change. If family is important then you’ll have little ones constantly vying for your attention and the ability to just “get in the zone” for 2-12 hours goes out the window.

Very much this. My toddler will walk into my office right as I’m getting into flow, but I don’t care, because I’ll never have this time with them again, so I pick them up and walk away from the computer, off to play together and to get done whatever I meant to later.

Hopefully there will be time to come back to younger sprints when they’re older, but if not, being a parent is making peace with that. Can’t have it all.

I do have a kid now, but the mental stamina is 80% of the problem. I just can't drive late into the night coding anymore, unless I've set myself up for success with coffee + being super in the zone.

I think many people in their 20s don't understand what a mental edge they have over ancient people like me (32) if they really test the limit of their mental strength.

This fact should be disseminated. I was always aware that I was going to become less sharp and more tired, but it was surprising how fast it all came down crashing. It's definitely not linear decay.

The heuristic coefficients grow. You accrete a ratio of all those 100 week crunch memories to the treasure attained, personal value, lasting purpose and meaning of them.

How many death marches can you look back on N years later and think "that paid off, I'm happier now because of it."

your self reward mechanism changes, as well as the problems youre solving in your 20s are generally new problems to you.

Once you have been coding for 10+, 20+ years you'll come to realise that there is a repeating set of problems you're solving. I haven't seen a truely new problem in a long time. Granted the predominate code I write is for corporate web apps.

But starting out in my 20s everything was new and fun. The reward for solving a thing, or shipping a feature felt great. Now its just one of many features I have shipped that are all more or less the same.

Also another big factor I think is I am significantly more productive now than when I was in my 20s. I would have had to work 80+ hours back then to keep up with myself now

I'm not GP, but for me it's not about physical exhaustion, but a mental fatigue. I still can get in the zone and spearhead something for 8-10 hours non-stop, but afterwards I'm feeling super lazy, like not wanting to think about anything, e.g. doing something purely mechanical.

For me it was the realization that my employer didn’t really care if I worked 40 or 80 hours a week but my family sure did.

This is probably the most important thing.

Plus the whole idea that money earned is a function of hours worked itself is wrong. It sure is some times, but most of the times it isn't.

You also burnout, age quickly, catch diseases like hypertension and diabetes when you go through repeated stress and over work. You miss out on exercise and good diet. Most of it has impact on your well being.

On the other hand money making seems to depend on a myriad factors like luck, office politics and not just working hours alone. So optimising for one parameter just doesn't make sense logically either.

Well I was salaried and frankly working much beyond 40 was always more about me trying to find the clever or perfect code, when all my employer really expected was just for the damn thing to work. What happened under the hood was less important than what I made it to be.

When I realized striving for that perfection had zero positives beyond my own perception and tons of negatives, it was easy to find a better work/life balance.

>>when all my employer really expected was just for the damn thing to work.

Working for glory never really makes sense in any field of work. This mostly due to Ozymandias factor. But for most people the Ozymandias age is a pretty small number. I don't even remember names of several colleagues I've worked with early life, so to expect any kind of recognition or even that some one cares about your work is just plain delusion.

Most people struggle to remember what they had to dinner two days back. I'd like to imagine managers don't remember whose getting the word done, as long as it is getting done.

Beyond all this most products/projects/service(s) have a short life, and are EOL not very far from their creation. So it just doesn't make sense to do permanent damage to your life for short lived easily forgotten stuff.

Al Bundy remembers, four touchdowns one game, Polk High. And you know, Im okay with that. I could care less whether anyone else remembers or even notices. To me what's important is I do.

I’m far more productive now than I was at 20. But let’s say there is a human equivalent to tech debt and as you get older, those bad habits and shortcuts have cumulative effects.

In addition to mental stamina and things like wife and kids taking lots of time, which others mentioned and I heartily agree with, there's also a gain of confidence.

When I was young, if some management type had told me we were going to miss a deadline I would've pulled all nighters, worked weekends, whatever it took to help bring the deliverable in in time. Nowadays (at least before I stopped working) I would just say something like "Okay, let me know when we have an updated schedule." Before, when my manager had said we need to work weekends, I'd be there. Now, I'd just say that I'm not doing that.

The confidence comes from experience, knowing that I could get a different job, being financially secure, and a self confidence that I didn't possess in my youth.

Since becoming a student of Buddhism and other related philosophies, I have more or less lost any desire to strive for particular outcomes. I was a workaholic much of my life.

Here is a sermon that I like. It might seem contradictory at times, as it uses terminology specific to Buddhist and Taoist philosophy:

https://youtu.be/e_DzXYI7xRU

A combination of a few things, mental stamina, body need proper resting. As I got older, family becomes more important, wife, kids also need time. Also honestly you realize working more doesn't always make you more / nor does it make you happier. It's important to spend time doing things other than work. You just get wiser about spending your time.

I worked nearly 100 hrs per week at the beginning of my twenties. Between an undergraduate engineering program, business school minors, a busy college life, running a boutique software agency for small-to-medium sized businesses, and creating & building startups of my own, it took its toll.

A couple years later, I was completely burnt without knowing it. I only realized it after talking with others about the not-so-admirable things I had been feeling, something many like myself hesitate to do when trying to grow into the leaders we aspire to be. It was at that point that my situation became clear.

I ended up taking almost two years away from any form of work in order to bring balance back to not only my mind, but my life as well. Suffice it to say this process was not as simple as it sounds.

I implore anyone caught in the “just keep going with everything despite the stress, you’re almost there” mentality to consider what is driving you and if it is healthy for you in the long run. Being healthy and happy, with loved ones abound, is tremendously underrated by types like myself.

If that's working for this person, and they're happy, more power to them.

I note only <50 of those hours are for their "day job". The issue I have is not with people doing what they want with their time - it's with companies setting unreasonable expectations for employees and forcing them to work hours that are unfair.

I feel a certain amount of defensiveness in this post. Probably this person's been misunderstood a lot as working >100 hours/week because they have to. That's just a different situation.

Absolutely not sustainable, and a recipe for massive regret both in the near term and later in life. In the near term this person will burn out. Later in life they will regret not having a family and a life when they were young and healthy. And for what? To write code that 5 years from now will just rot unused in some Git repo.

This level of effort is only justified in one case (and maybe not even then): if you have significant traction building your own company. If you're working for someone else, your imperative ought to be to extract maximum pay for minimal work, to the extent that is long-term sustainable.

Burnout takes years to recover from. Some people don't recover at all and leave the industry entirely. I've been through burnout myself due to similar stupidity when I was younger, and I strongly regret not pacing myself - the effects linger to this day, a full decade later. I am now unable to "code for fun" for example. Worse, I was married at the time (still am), and neglected my wife and kid to build my "career". Not worth it at all.

>>Later in life they will regret not having a family and a life when they were young and healthy. And for what? To write code that 5 years from now will just rot unused in some Git repo.

Not starting a family(something that you will benefit from all life) to work on code that you will EOL in 2 years seems to be a bad deal to even think about.

You do you. It's your life. I hate how people judge others' priorities.

>If you have children or a significant other, think how much time you spend with them. Do you get burnt out from it?

Side note, but, I see you've never had children ;-). I love my kid but take it from me, having a toddler is really tough. Guess how much coding I've done outside my actual job in the last 2 years?

My advice to anyone coding 100 hrs a week is pay attention and take care of your hands and wrists. Carpal tunnel is no fun.

A Kinesis keyboard and an ergonomic position can take care of that. Also, some people typing motions are not conductive to carpal tunnel (e.g., those that do not adhere to standard keying position).

Lifting weights is great for preventing this

Is there real research on this or is it in proven in the sense of it-has-worked-for-you-so-far?

Interested in this too, both anecdotal studies. I lifted weights, found it helped with energy and posture, but nothing specific to finger joint pains. Wrists are a bit helped (barbell rows/deadlifts/overhead). Maybe grip-specific exercises/stretches fare better for a lot of keyboard/mouse/trackpad usage.

Risky. I did it. I definitely cannot do it anymore. It's reasonably likely that it would literally kill me.

I don't know for sure that it caused my later serious health problems, but I do know that the incurable chronic illness that knocked me completely out of the workforce for a couple of years is statistically more likely to occur in (1) people who exercise unusually hard for an extended period and (2) people who work unusually long hours for an extended period.

I did both.

I went to work at Apple in 1988. Within a year I was working on stuff I was extremely interested in, and motivated to work hard on. I started putting in quite long hours.

In 1991 or so I joined the Newton team and was even more motivated.

Meanwhile, I also owned and taught in a martial arts studio where we learned complicated formal sequences, sparred every day with hard contact, and maintained a grueling conditioning schedule. Until I joined the Newton team I was in the studio teaching or assisting five hours a day, six days a week. I cut back a little when I joined Newton.

For two years my daily schedule was up between 5 and 6 AM and into the office for coding. Off to the studio at 5PM most weeknights, back at the office after 10. Home to bed sometime between midnight and three. Up at 7AM Saturday for the studio, and off after 1PM. On Sunday I rose at about 9 and took my family to brunch, then went home to sleep the rest of the day.

I liked it at the time. I was very strongly motivated both by the Apple work and the martial arts activity. What I learned in the long run is that hellish work is not less hellish merely because you enjoy it. The enjoyment simply conceals from you what you're doing to yourself.

I don't expect my reports to persuade anyone. The same thing would not have persuaded me. I could even be wrong: you could be the rare superhuman ultraworker, able to thrive in circumstances that would grind most people to paste.

On the other hand, I thought that was me, and it didn't turn out to be true. In the clear light of hindsight I don't know why I was ever foolish enough to think it was. Garden-variety motivated reasoning, most likely.

This will sound a bit harsh, but I would seriously question if games are worth this kind of time sacrifice. They're an incredibly saturated market, and Unity / Unreal dominate the engine space so will be difficult to compete without brilliant marketing, business skills, partnerships, etc. And it doesn't sound like there's much time in the schedule away from coding for developing those kinds of skills.

I'd question how much benefit games are doing society too (or at least whether it needs more of them) and whether your passion and focus could be put to better use?

Full disclosure, I spent a lot of time myself on a game that didn't get much traction - I'm proud of it and it taught me a lot, but I do think, even if successful, I could have done something more beneficial with that time (it took a lot longer than I expected).

Like someone else mentioned, there's a high chance, just due to market realities and the crowdedness of the space, that this code ends up forgotten in a github repo somewhere, even if it's technically brilliant. Be sure to get people involved early and ensure that it's getting some traction, and that the market exists (financially or attention-wise) - and give yourself some go / no-go decision points along the way so you don't sink too much of your life into something perhaps nobody wants. The book "The Personal MBA" has some good heuristics for navigating that kind of stuff.

I think what you say is generally spot-on and I am conscious of the hard brick wall I am up against in these respects.

Good for you, kiddo. Let’s talk when you hit your 40s and tell me how it all went.

I'm in my 40s now, been coding mostly 80-100 hours a week since I was in my early teens, and I've not noticed much difference so far.

At one point in my late 30s I let myself go for a bit; too many brunches, too many happy hours. I started feeling a bit more sluggish and told friends I was feeling older. I'd put on a bit of weight. I went on a diet for a bit and lost the weight, and suddenly, magically, I felt all my energy and focus return as well. My legs, no longer burdened under the added weight again found the energy to eagerly sprint up 6 flights of stairs and I've all but stopped using the elevator in my building, not intentionally as any kind of "health chore" but merely out of impatience to wait for the elevator.

Personally, this experience has convinced me that most of what people describe as "aging", at least in middle age, has more to do with people's diet and lifestyle finally catching up with them.

My schedule was roughly similar a bit ago when I was ~20/21; I did my work and then spent the rest of the day working on random side projects.

Now at 25, it would take some major financial incentive to do so. I would rather do literally anything else that doesn't involve a computer screen.

I am healthier and happier now that I do things other than code, and I'm thankful that I found other hobbies early on. I'm sorta "burnt out" in that regard, although I still like programming for work.

More power to them. Hopefully they've weighed the risks of permanent repetitive stress injury. But perhaps some are just more physically adapted to this kind of lifestyle.

I’m wildly more effective at my current 18 hrs/week than I ever was at 100. Part of that is experience and maturity. Part of that is the nature of diminishing returns.

Right? Isn't it cool coming in and doing more in 18 hours than some people do in weeks?

It's sort of interesting trying to analyze why we couldn't when we were 23 or so. For me, I may have been talented, but I certainly wasn't effective. The reason was almost entirely because I didn't think carefully about the tasks I took on. "Get it done" was the mindset, not "Should I do this?"

For me it was all about discipline and time/task management. These things could’ve been taught to me at a young age and my young success would’ve been dramatically multiplied and compounded over the years. Unfortunately I didn’t have a mentor, let alone one who could’ve communicated these things in a way I would’ve understood.

Pruning away useless tasks (at all levels of abstraction) is part of it for sure. That can be generalized into effective prioritization. Mind blowing that absolutely none of these most important meta-tasks were never presented let along taught to me.

How do you feel in the other 68 hours when you are not coding?

What do your friends and family say about it?

I'm @slimsag's brother (1 of 4 siblings), if my opinion counts.

This might sound really bizarre, but computers are a way of life in our family. We always had computers around us while growing up. At one point in time, we ran a small PC repair business out of our home. At another point in time, we even three 48U server racks in our living room which was hosting the infrastructure for our dad's new business/startup (hardware all being maintained by our oldest brother). We were told not to walk in front of the 48U racks because our parents were afraid they might fall over and crush us. :)

I would only be concerned to hear if Stephen was _not_ spending his free time programming something. That has been his hobby and passion since we were much, much, younger.

As for how I _personally_ feel about 100hours/week programming: it's definitely not something I could do. I work a typical 8-9 hours/day doing minor software development, and I feel a bit mentally drained afterwards. With that said, programming is not really my hobby. After my typical work day, I spend another 4-5 hours reverse engineering software because that is what I find fun.

I'm glad that Stephen found a career doing what he loves, and is able to continue doing it as a hobby outside of his working hours.

As an aside, I also asked our Mom your question (just for the fun of it). She wasn't quite sure what I was asking exactly, but said: "He's self-taught, self-made, and I'm proud as hell of him". Hahaha.

Overall, If he's happy, we're happy for him. I'm not sure what other opinion we could even have?

Hahaha, thanks.

Also you are aware this statement is incredibly funny?

> programming is not really my hobby [...] after my typical work day, I spend another 4-5 hours reverse engineering software because that is what I find fun

Really shows how ingrained this way of life is in our family.

Programming is like making a jigsaw puzzle entirely though, you have to decide what printed photo to use, puzzle dimensions, how many pieces, what cuts, etc. Too much mental energy.

Reverse engineering is just like solving a jigsaw puzzle, except I'm just staring at disassembly &/ decompiler views and renaming things to figure out how they fit together.

> I run 6 miles many days of the week to keep healthy. I do it while writing code, using a standing desk treadmill.

This is the part that I don't get. The author finds fulfillment in working on technical problems. Fine. Maybe at some point in their life that may change, but they seem confident about it working for them now. But every hard technical problem can benefit from time away from the screen to think through stuff right? Running is perfect for that.

I can barely read if I'm running at all hard on a treadmill. I certainly can't write code. And even as someone who enjoys coding, that seems like a really suboptimal experience.

I doubt he's really running - probably walking at a reasonably brisk pace.

That's correct.

Sometimes it's walking at a brisk pace for ~2h while writing code. Other times it's actually running for ~1h with a problem I need to think through.

I've done "coding on the treadmill". It's difficult at first but you get used to it after a few weeks. Of course you can't run and type at the same time, but walking and typing is perfectly doable. It's actually pretty great - you can easily put in hours and hours of walking time every day without even noticing.

If you love coding and - as it appears from the post - are working on your personal projects, this seems like a reasonable schedule. I definitely wouldn't want to work that much for an employer - I've done that when I was around your age and younger, and it's pointless.

In the long run, you might want to set aside 3-4 hrs/week on some real physical activity though - walking is fine but you need upper body strength too.

In any case, once you have a partner and/or kids in your life, you'll find you won't be able to spend this much time on coding, so enjoy it while it lasts!

I can only speak for my own experience. I know this was unhealthy for me. I knew it was in a variety of ways before but I know it now in a form I hate. Taking the link title form—

I write code 20 hours/week, here’s why I probably won’t stop: I’m over a year into burnout and I’m still in constant physical pain. I’m very good at what I do, I have a lot of good ideas, working more than half time is debilitating. It’s been this bad long enough that I’m resigned to the possibility I did permanent damage to myself working so hard.

I burnt out pretty hard. I took a break from everything for a while, and it wasn't until I started sitting for 4+ hours straight again that I started feeling pain. When I lift regularly it goes away but not immediately, which leads me to believe the sitting is having long lasting effects very quickly. I can feel the effects of a long sit for a few days.

I very seldom sit for long at all, but I agree long times sitting makes it worse. Gratefully I’m up on my feet and out walking my pup regularly throughout the day.

But sitting isn’t the root of my burnout or its tenacity. I worked too hard, sustained too long, through too many mental health challenges, and through too much neglect of my cognitive needs. And now I’m feeling the decades of impact.

I’m glad that you’re finding relief. For anyone else who might benefit: yes, going and doing something physical with your body will probably help if you’re able.

Some people are wired like this. I remember listening to John Carmack on Joe Rogan’s podcast and he responded to one question about long hours with “Oh yes, definitely. You can’t just keep on working. For instance, I’ve noticed that my productivity drops off after about 13 hours a day”. LOL.

An inspiration but I can’t do that.

He’s in his 50s and I know he still reads and writes a lot of code. Very impressive to be sure but mimicking that is likely to have a similar effect to mimicking deadlifting what Hafthor does.

The only part that boggles my mind is the simultaneous running + coding.

Only 6 miles while coding? Sounds easy enough.

Doesn't sound too mind boggling to me.

> using a standing desk treadmill

According to his calendar he blocks off an hour to do so- that's 10 min/mile pace. That's not crazy fast but I can't imagine doing anything productive with a keyboard at that pace.

Even if it's not literally an hour- the definition of running is that both feet leave the ground at the same time. I do not think that makes typing possible, in general

Thanks for the kind thoughts here all - or at least for hearing me out.

I will say, I've been judged pretty harshly for this in the past[0] - with many saying it's some sort of signal of a mediocre developer. I wrote this article to address it head-on because it seems controversial.

Even with this article, most have just responded to the title without reading what I wrote[1][2], or have read it but misunderstood what the point was[3] because I didn't include what I worked on in those two years - so I'm really grateful to this community for actually hearing me out and having a more nuanced view.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/mqy7lg/my_game...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q9jaxd/i_write...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/q9ja...

[3] https://lobste.rs/s/ttd0l9/i_write_code_100_hours_week_here_...

Don’t you want a romantic partner?

This sounds like total bs.

I think I remember when I thought two years was a long time.

week after week? year after year? thats a lot of code. lay it on its side char by char and it will reach the moon and back.

This is the content I come here for. To find people even more insane and neurotic than myself!

i’ve been clocking around that for months. it’s brutal at the moment. but rewarding other times

How do I put this? We are all going to be forgotten, utterly, along with every last thing we do, within no more than three generations (one for most of us). That makes everything we do both utterly insignificant and unfathomably important at the same time. Please make sure whoever is reading this, particularly if you're in your 20s, that you do what makes sense for you, and those around you who are important to you, for your very, very short now.

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