Hacker News Reader

Comment by it_citizen | Hacker News Reader

> Marissa Mayer was a former CEO at Yahoo and Vice President at Google (where she was employee number 20). Her days at Google were extremely long, clocking over 130 hours a week. She said “it was a lot of hard work,” and that she pulled “an all-nighter every week.” Although she had to deal with this for her first five years at Google, she was careful to avoid burnout by “finding her rhythm”.

First: That's 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. Is it even true? Second: I don't think I want to take advice from that person on how to avoid burnout.

View on HN

If you were an executive you'd count the time you spent reading this article and writing this comment as work.

Watch some old Mythbusters clips on YouTube? That's sort of engineering, so that's work.

Get drunk with some peers? Work as well.

Went to the gym? That's work, your role is in front of people so you have to be fit. Shopping for new clothes and picking up dry cleaning also counts.

That meeting you attended while commuting in your car that you barely listened to? You guessed it, work.

With podcasts the modern executive can work even while taking a nap.

I'm with you on that. I call bullshit on the 130 hour weeks, for who knows how long. 18 hours a day?!?

I've know people that have done 100 hour weeks, and they were a mess. Only did it a couple of times before they stopped.

Sounds like someone wants to create a mythical story about themselves. Also, from the article. Step 3 just oozes "I'm dominante and I'm the boss, but I will throw you a bone. I mean, c'mon, this stuff just sounds made up:

"Step 3. Grant employees one must-have freedom. When Mayer suspects an employee might burn out, she asks them to find their rhythm. They've come back with, "I need to be home for Tuesday night dinners," or "I need to be on time for my daughter's soccer games." She grants those needs — no exceptions. "You can't have everything you want," Mayer cautions. "But you can have the things that really matter to you. That empowers you to work really hard for a long period of time on something that you're passionate about."

Agreed. That kind of attitude would honestly be kind of pathetic and sad if it didn't also impact other peoples lives. Anyone who thinks they're "granting" time to anyone isn't someone I want to listen to.

Why would anyone take business advice from the person that tanked one (or two if you include Tumblr) of the most well-known brands.

I always assume these things involve picking a peak period, rounding up, rolling in surrounding time (train commute while going through emails, reviewing reports on the couch, etc) and then allowing people to think that was a consistent average. e.g., it was more like 124 hours one week and the rest was 80-100ish. A workload stat doesn't survive in an article unless it's outrageously high or four-hour-work-week low, and even the latter is a redefinition and fabrication too.

I can get by on 5 hours/night sleep and have passages in any given year spending the bulk of a day at the computer, eating at the desk, etc. I enjoy the occasional all-nighter and find them memorable. So I think 18 hours/day of some sort of work isn't difficult for someone if they cope with less than average sleep, treat work as a hobby, have financial incentives or deadlines, etc. For months on end and always at peak productivity, probably not.

Agree, I would love to shadow someone who claims they regularly (and productively) work 90-100+ hr weeks of focused, mentally-taxing labor aka System 2 thinking. Otherwise all of us easily "work" 100-112/wk if we simply limit our downtime and count any sort of order/structure-producing tasks as work.

Finance bros like to whine about their hours but I struggle with the notion that updating an Excel model and/or plowing through market research is mentally taxing beyond the volume of reps. The best tales I've really heard of sustained & taxing performance comes from the the SOF branches of the military, medicine, or game development.

I've only ever met one genuine short sleeper so far who thrived on 3-4/night and was not a caffeine-riddled jack-in-the-box - he had superior physical performance as a gym trainer and there was plenty of evidence he worked the long hours, but his job was not as mentally demanding.

> 18 hours a day, 7 days a week

pure BS from a BS-artist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com