Jack Dorsey does 8 hours at Twitter, 8 hours at Square daily
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In other words Jack is free to do whatever he likes, but it is not a good example for most of us. I'll cite a very short poetry by a Sicilian poet called Salvatore Quasimodo:
"Everyone stands alone on the heart of the earth / transfixed by a ray of sunshine / and it is suddenly night"
Frankly, Jack has very little time outside of his work, but I wouldn't say that he doesn't have a life. His work is his life and they are closely intertwined. This is great, since it means he's quite passionate about both product sets and the quality of his companies' net output really shines, IMO.
The danger of this obsessive behavior though is that it can begin to warp ones perspective on others' work/life balance. Jack works like a dog because he's excited about what he does, so it seems to baffle him when those around him aren't equally excited and committed to their work as well.
In the case of Square, they've been very quick to fire anyone who isn't putting 80+% percent of their life into Square -- often with little warning or reason.
Dogma is dangerous.
In the case of Square, they've been very quick to fire anyone who isn't putting 80+% percent of their life into Square -- often with little warning or reason.
What does this mean practically - that employees are expected to put 134 hours a week into working at Square? Or does sleep time not count against them, meaning they are expected to work only 89.6 hours a week? How many hours of sleep each night does Square recommend their employees get?
I would expect to work 70 - 80+ weeks there if you're really into it (and checking in / working at home in the evenings and mornings).
If you are exempt (Salaried) - you basically work when your manager tells you to. I've been at (several) companies where we had 3-4 month death marches with _everyone_ working late and on weekends in the office to push the ball over the line.
I guess what he's getting at is that the US is a pretty terrible place to work and live, gilded though the cage may often be, and it is hard to disagree.
This is probably the point of confusion. In most of Europe, at any rate, salaried employees are subject to the working time directive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive
I can choose to work over that amount, and time worked over those 40 hours is time-in-lieu, which I can take off pretty much whenever I want (although I have to get approval if I want to take more than one day off at a time - but if it's just a day, or half a day then I just shoot them an email that morning)... My company are a bit more flexible on taking that time off than a lot of places, but apart from that, the conditions are similar to a lot of other places...
If people at Square don't like the environment, they are free to find another job. Similarly, if Dorsey doesn't like an employee's output for any reason, or "the cut of his jib" for that matter, he pays him up to the day and fires him. If it can't be shown to be due to discrimination (race, gender etc), and there was no employment contract, that's that.
Without this culture, starting a company would be nearly impossible. You can see evidence of this in the number of innovative startups out of more heavily regulated countries vs. the US.
[edit: I would add that there is a perverse incentive here: I believe US startups under-hire women and people of color _precisely_ because it is not that difficult to make a case for discrimination in promotion, compensation, and treatment of employees here. Hiring white, upper-middle-class males greatly reduces that risk. I think it's an unfortunate unintended consequence of the desire to redress discrimination.]
Quite a few startups come from the UK, Ireland and Germany; in all three countries the alleged behavior by Square would be highly illegal.
(yes there are some counter examples, I know, but I'm talking about magnitudes, not frolicking in the margin)
If anything, the 80-hour/wk and ready firing of employees thing was traditionally seen as a more "mom-and-pop business" type culture, associated with lower-status industries like the family-owned restaurant, not with technology.
Equity, unless you're very lucky or diligent, often doesn't equate to much. I think, too often, folks tend to place too much emphasis on equity. The terms and value of which are not often immediately obvious to the recipient and can get diluted over time. Twitter's on what... round G now?
Ultimately, starting a startup is a big uphill slog. At the end of the day, everyone needs to put in some level of herculean effort from time to time if it's going to work.
The trick is figuring out how to effectively value the things that each contributor is best at. If you're working in an organization that primarily values software engineers, it can be hard to get recognition as a visual designer.
In an organization that primarily (and sometimes only) values and recognizes software engineers that make things you can see or touch, it can even be hard to make it as a systems plumber or kernel hacker.
Sorry to say, but considering the amount of work we do daily. Its difficult to separate work from life.
Work and life aren't two different things. Work is life, and life to a great extent is some kind of a work.
To make your life awesome, you have to do awesome work.
The big headline is about working 16 hours days, but that headline grabber will distract from the most useful nugget of information: how he does it.
The really cool thing about this article is theme-blocking his days. Has anyone tried that? If so, how has it worked?
Monday->Engineering maintenance for records. Lots of email blasts and such, site maintenance.
Tuesday - Release day, also radio promo meetings. Executive meeting
Wednesday - Marketing meeting. This was when results of the last week's sales were finalized so also reconciling retail with stats and such.
Thursday - typically a big launch day for us.
Friday - clean up, product dev work, department stuff. It was a 0 launch day.
I still think Square is superior, though.
That being said, what we are seeing here is basically "story telling" and "legend building" in action. The same happened when Jeff Immelt took over GE and The story was "Look at that guy! The hardest working GE employee, putting in 100 hours a week. What a leader!" (you can Google it).
While I believe that Jack didn't craft a master plan for this, somebody is certainly putting some effort into building a coherent story that helps Jack but ultimately also Twitter and Square and therefore its investors.
And once again: it get's us talking as well, so I would say: Mission Accomplished.
Like making money.
Why don't they offer a customized twitter feeds of all the GOP presidential candidates and sell ads off of that feed?
For example...
I have had a strong suspicion that the upper management at Twitter are not really on top of it, they appear lazy, and content with just going along for the ride, instead of steering the what appears to be rudderless ship.
It makes me a little sick to see some people idolize this.
(You can also try to modify it via caffeine or other drugs. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but apparently many of the people historically known for their superhuman workhours were heavy amphetamine users--- Winston Churchill, Ayn Rand, Paul Erdős.)
Possibly a bad example; in most developed countries the medical professions have amongst the highest rates of depression, suicide and divorce.
We get it. I get it. You get it. Everyone gets it. I think plenty of the commenters here do a damn fine job of trivializing other readers' intelligence.
I'm also certain that Jack Dorsey doesn't work 16-hour days for the attention. We didn't know this up until now, and Twitter and Square have been running just fine. That's what matters, and if Dorsey feels like putting in that much time is necessary, so be it. If he burns out, he'll burn out; if he doesn't, good for him.
I just don't buy those kind of ideologies if you really believe your idea will change the world. If you want a lifestyle business that provides for you and your next of kin, more power to you.
And if that's the route you take, please stop trying to convenience everyone your path to enlightenment is the right way. For awhile, I found that whole movement to be quasi-religious and therefore quite annoying.
When you love what you do, it's not work and therefore there's no reason to want to avoid it. And that's why they win. </rant>
The fact is, all -- ALL -- the research on work effectiveness & work-related health shows that this kind of work schedule is terrible. Not only do you stop working effectively after a few hours (you only get the illusion of still being sharp), it's terrible for your body.
Citation please? It's my understanding that losing even 1 hour of sleep a night will add up over time and cause all sorts of cognitive problems.
Regardless of whether or not it's sustainable, I simply do not want that type of lifestyle. If I'm not as "successful" because of that, so be it.
What kind of lifestyle do you want?
When given the chance, most entrepreneurs will work 16 hours on their company. If you only had 8 hours, you may be more likely to do a better job at managing your time/tasks.
A balanced one. I already spend a vast majority of my waking hours focused on "work". I also have my kids, my wife and other leisure activities that I find make my life worth living.
Given these pieces of life, which most entrepreneurs have - most entrepreneurs will not want to work 16 hours a day on their companies.
I'd agree, his lifestyle seems as out of balance as someone who does no work at all.
I could understand it (and put in a lot of hours myself) driving to get that first home run, but less so afterwards. I'd struggle to sit idle and travelling non-stop isn't the holiday everyone thinks it is, but my dream lifestyle definitely wouldn't involve 16 hour days once I had the means to pursue all my interests to a desired extent.
Being a manager and accutely aware of legal ramifications of hours worked (boring I know), does anyone have any insight into whether there is something in the US akin to the European Worktime Directive? Over here (UK, but the E.U as a whole) the average working week is 40 hours by law, and the worker must opt in to be eligble to work upto a maximum of 70 hours per week. As well as this 70 hour maximum, 11 hours must be taken between end of work one day and start of work the next, and an entire 24 hour period of non-work must be taken once every 7 days, or alternativley a period of 48 hours of non-work must be taken in a 14 day period.
Any comments?
http://www.dol.gov/compliance/topics/wages-overtime-pay.htm
Overtime doesn't apply to a number of class of workers (including executive, administration, professional, outside sales, and computer related workers).
And I believe you could read "professional" as "anyone with a college degree working a white-collar job".
Having said that, you're essentially correct...
Details are in a page linked from the parent (see Learned Professional Exemption):
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17d_profess...
At least, that's what I got out of the page.
> There is no limit on the number of hours employees 16 years or older may work in any workweek.
So, disregarding overtime, yes: you could technically work 168 hours a week with no legal ramifications.
I think here we rely more on a liquid labor market than on government regulation to encourage sane working conditions. Which definitely has its drawbacks, but has the upside of not indulging the "lump of labor" fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
In Ireland, you can't even opt into a 70 hour week; it's flat-out illegal (though there is a system where you can do 96 hours per 14 days, or something, without necessarily equal allocation).
(http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/WorkingHour...)
I believe the EU Working Time Directive mandates 48hr maximum working week. The UK was given an excemption to allow employees to 'opt out' of the law. Other EU countries do not have a legal opt out. Some countries (e.g. France) have a lower 'maximum hours per week'.
What I am in awe and admiration is that he is managing two companies and in this case two completely different ones by nature! A rule generally accepted in the startup land is that you don't work on multiple ideas, in order to stay focussed on building one thing well. While twitter is not a startup (any longer) and Square is probably a very big/late-phase startup (if we can qualify it as that), they both definitely need the caring and nurturing of a founder (IMO). Given that, it is remarkable he is able to do the context switch needed to run both the companies. I would love to know how effective his leadership is, in both these companies, given that he isn't there longer than a typical day in either of them.
I am so tempted to try doing more than one thing, but then since I am a coder, I guess its not easy to digress daily as he can.
Interesting. I have not heard this before. As it stands, I have always worked on multiple projects for as long as I can remember. My current main company started out as a side project, for example.
Is there a canonical reference or blog post that the startup community refers to, to elucidate the reasons for one-project focus?
The other source again from PG, that I can infer as not doing too many things/working on too many ideas is: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html Read the #18 (A Half-hearted attempt)
I am sure there are folks who have juggled more than one Idea and succeeded in all of them. Also, I think the relevance of these posts also probably make sense to someone starting out early (like say during building the product/company) and probably not for someone who already is working on established companies (like in Jack's case). IF you see Jack in fact moved out of twitter to completely focus on Square and only when it had hit the road running, did he embark back on twitter.
What use is he if he gets burned out in a year or two? Not much I would wager. Sure one might argue that this pattern of long working hours is crucial in the first few years of a company. The question if he does so much more in 16 hours than he could have done in say ten or twelve? I doubt you can remain very efficient 16 hours per day.
Many can, of course, handle such working conditions but it can hardly be considered healthy in the long run.
It's a pump-dump mentality internally you know...
If I was working 16-hour days every day, I'm almost certain I'd be less productive than if I was working 'normal' or even reduced-hour days.
Maybe he's just _that_ energetic, but my ability to get meaningful work done is not an endless fount. Downtime is important.
7am to 3pm = 8 hours 4pm to 12am = 8 hours
Building companies goes well beyond building apps.
This comes up frequently on HN and seems to polarize people. The more it polarizes people the more on the fence I seem to find myself. I have worked similar hours split between two companies for four years. At times it sucks and at times it's great. Everyone is different.
From what I have learned from others, exceptional results require exceptional work and passion. Working 16 hours days is how it works for Jack. Ben Hogan was reported to work with a similar ethic when he started his golf career and he's now known among many as the greatest ball striker ever.
To me that's admirable, to others it isn't. Both positions are acceptable.
The required mental focus and energy to get one thing "off the ground" - past bootstrapped startup phase - is considerably different from keeping something going - and even growing - once it's hit an operational level that twitter has. I won't profess to know both sides from direct experience, but can see that they're not in the same place they were operationally/financially as they were 4 years ago.
OT: I was probably downvoted by someone who considers Twitter and Facebook as "startups".
I work a job as a software engineer and do computer science engineering studies at the same time. Although I don't do nearly the hours Mr. Dorsey does, I'm still physically and mentally exhausted. And like Mr. Dorsey, I love what I do, but it's still very hard on me.
Imagine going from 1 high pressure 8 hours job to another with only a 2 block walk between them, maybe lunch. I don't know, it sounds like overload to me.
Unlike Dorsey, I have never attempted to maintain that schedule over the long haul, but over periods of time at least, it is not as difficult as it sounds.