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Comment by tardigr8 | Hacker News Reader

Working 80 hours a week is unhealthy and a bad idea. I don’t think there is any solid argument against that.

Until recently I was a dev manager for about 20 devs (not all direct). I did work 80 hours a week, still do. I know I am unhealthy. I don’t like doing things that are not technical. I get uncomfortable and bored quickly.

My work gives me complex tech problems constantly. So I feel better working. But I attribute this to an unhealthy grip on life that stemmed from somewhere.

All my devs wanted to also work 80 hours a week. I had to keep on top of their own hours to tell them to go home and find a girlfriend.

DONT work crazy hours because someone else in your sphere is doing it. Only do it if you can honestly say you are unhealthily obsessed with it and can’t actually have a normal life.

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> I did work 80 hours a week, still do

> All my devs wanted to also work 80 hours a week.

> DONT work crazy hours because someone else in your sphere is doing it.

Do as I say, not as I do. The culture of being always on, and working these insane hours comes from management allowing it or leading by it. It's utterly meaningless for you tell your reports to not work crazy hours only to show them that you need to do it.

Being a manager puts a power dynamic at play; it's one thing if a team member is working silly hours but if your boss is, it sets the expectation that you can too. By working you are setting the precedent for your team

I agree. And I tried it too. In the end I couldn’t find anything else to do in my downtime. So I went home at 5 and worked from there. Got up early and worked before coming in. I work from home now so the above is moot now.

80 hours a week is the equivalent of 8am to 10pm six days a week. That sounds completely unrealistic. Either the work is trivial, you're destroying your health, or you're over estimating the time you're actually spending.

I would not call it trivial, but I found that, as a manager, you often have to be a psychologist and spend very large amounts of your time listening to the more personal issues of your colleagues. When I was manager over 400 people (there were managers between me and them but I was ‘the top level’), I spent 80+ hours a week doing my work; 60+ was easily absorbed by motivating people and listening to their stories about imminent divorces, dying parents, spouses or kids, and so on. Then 20 or so hours to do my actual work. It is not for me… I do not want such a position again.

I did 80+ hours as well when I was just writing code and managing servers; about 40/60 respectively. It was more than 80 hours and I missed things, but I was young and made up for it. I would not want to do that again either.

TBH I know people who really only code and have no other life. Seven, rather than six days a week.

I am not entirely sure what is wrong with them. Only one case can be attributed to money. The rest looks like a weird psychological addiction.

“Weird psychological addiction” that’s where I would place it too.

Sometimes it's easier to code all day long than how easy it feels to improve your life. Especially if one excels at work and lacks a social network in life.

100% agree.

If you are good at coding, then you code for a day and create something you are proud of. +1 to self worth.

You send it for code review or deploy and you get positive feedback. +2 to self worth.

A junior dev in house or browsing your open source project loves your code and asks for advice. +3 to self worth.

Compared to.

Go out to a social event for lunch, struggle through the social interactions.

Maybe drink a bit too much because you are stressed.

Get caught in a difficult spot when you tell someone they are wrong (which they were, but you were being rude).

Hang around for the whole afternoon / evening because you told yourself you have to make this work and get a life.

End your day without any self worth reward and struggle the next day due to the alcohol or paranoia of reliving the previous day.

This is the life of a few socially awkward (and usually high iq) people I have had the pleasure of meeting. And myself.

I think it is healthy to take the second option, get a life, learn to make relationships.

But it’s the hard option. Sitting at the IDE and being good at what you are good at, is much easier.

> End your day without any self worth reward and struggle the next day due to the alcohol or paranoia of reliving the previous day.

There are definitely ways to mitigate this way of thinking, one being understanding the "spot light effect" the "phenomenon where people tend to overestimate how much others notice aspects of one's appearance or behavior."

Also to do more structured based social activities.

If it’s so painful to hang out then you could do something else. Go for a run/bike/hike, woodworking, gardening, gym, learn a new skill, etc. heck so drugs and play video games. It’s good to have something other than work in your life or one day you’ll have a crisis when things go poorly with work

it doesnt matter if the work is trivial, youre still working. if im dealing with slack pings at 9pm, thats work, even if they just need a thumbs up.

> six days a week.

Anecdotally when I was doing that much work, it was 7 days a week. When I woke in the morning my phone was full of emails slack pings and build issues, and it was closer to midnight when it stopped than 10pm. There is no down time whatsoever in an environment like that, everyone is constantly stressed and overworked and it just makes it worse

Why do it though? You’re ruining your life and halving your normalized hourly rate. There are plenty of companies where 40 hours of effective work is a top performer and things aren’t breaking every week

> You’re ruining your life and halving your normalized hourly rate.

Agreed.

> Why do it though?

It was a boiling frog situation. When I joined, things were good. 35-40 hour weeks, interesting work, great coworkers. The team grew, and all of a sudden I was a knowledge holder in areas. It started with an occasional message from a co worker who had a deadline, and then the deadlines were every 2 weeks, and it wasn't just one coworker, it was multiple coworkers. Then it was other people working late nights and me replying on saturday mornings to their issues because I wasn't really working, it was just a slack message. Then it was me fixing issues on a sunday morning because it was the only time my mailbox wasn't bursting. Around that point I realised what was happening, so I scaled things back to working hours, and started getting negative feedback and comments about "not trying as hard as others" from other managers (not my manager though). My annual review came back as negative because other teams were reliant on me being available, so i went back to being always on for about a year before I got another offer and left on good terms.

It genuinely took me about a year afterwards to realise how bad things had gotten (everyone checks their work email precautionarily at 11pm on a saturday night so they can sleep without worrying, right? That's normal.) I'm much better off now.

Thanks for sharing. I am probably in the same boat. I feel miserable when not working. I managed to improve my situation though

- 100 km running minimum per month. I take this seriously. - Writing notes about work in a notebook. Not publishing but that's the only way I can stay away from other work and not feel bored. - Spending more time on two hobbies: hardware/circuits and cooking.

Things are improving!

Do you feel time running gives you more opportunity for new ideas ?

I used to take 15min jog cuts, it made me have just a few more thoughts ready when I was back at my desk.

To an extent, if you function this way, its not even unhealthy. People give me strange look when I work because I love going fast (in smooth precise way). To them it's abuse, to me it's joy (granted I can stay in my own limits). To me their slow and bored ways are unhealthy. I start twitching.

Yes I am the same. Work sets me goals that I obsess about. I like playing golf, but I can’t obsess about getting my handicap down. I also can’t obsess about a hobby project. I can about a product that I know has a user base. Then the brain goes fast, dopamine kicks in and I can keep going for long hours.

I think for a very short period that it can work, such as a critical deadline. We’ve all been there, adrenaline flowing, target hit, etc. but if that is normalized then no it will kill you in the end.

80h seems really a lot, I guess you don't have a family. Do you sleep? Do you commute? Do you eat, have a shower?

Kudos on the self insight there buddy. Not everyone bothers to self reflect about why they do the things they do. But they should.

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