The 80-hour Myth (Your best work is in bursts, surrounded by periods of dullness and inactivity) | Hacker News Reader

The 80-hour Myth (Your best work is in bursts, surrounded by periods of dullness and inactivity)

startupboy.com

37 pointstomh12 comments

In all the startups I've worked at, there actually was one uber-hacker who worked 80 hours a week. There were also a lot of guys who spent 75 hours a week in meetings and farting around on the internet, and 5 hours doing useful work. I've been both of those guys at different startups.

The myth comes from back in the days when there was a lot of code to be written. Certain projects, like games, have TONS of code. Even the sharpest programmer can only type so fast, and even the fastest compiler can only compile so fast. The only way for projects like that to come to fruition in any reasonable amount of time is for people to work long hours.

The nature of software startups has changed. With web apps, the code base is relatively small and simple. There usually isn't a compile cycle. What happens now, is you spend all your time on systems administration issues. Shit breaks, you need to respond to it immediately. I sort of miss the days where programming 70 hours a week was an option. Now I'm lucky to get in 20 hours of programming in between the 100 hours backlog of systems administration that needs to get done.

> With web apps, the code base is relatively small and simple

Well said, this is having enormous impacts in the economy of web 2.0 too. Not just small, but also simple as you said. This means that almost every decent programmer can write it, so most startups have success just for a matter of feeling, community, user interface and user experience in general.

I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing: from one side it is not very meritocratic as to be very smart with the code and design of complex systems is not the sole road to the success.

On the other hand this is probably the first stage in the history where small groups of people that sometimes lack a strong programming background (in favor of other kind of background) are writing software used by a lot of users, this can be an interesting human experiment.

Just a possibly stupid question: is it possible that the web 2.0 is subtracting hackers from more long-term important work because everybody is busy writing simple web apps instead of the next google or alike?

Systems Admin TELL ME ABOUT IT sigh I spend so much time configuring and restarting my VPS it's...too...painful...to..do... and I find myself missing coding so much more after hours upon hours of system admin work.

Get a better VPS, then.

There are some programmers who were just born to code. They can put in monster hours everyday as long as they believe that what they are doing is cool. I was lucky to work with one such individual at a previous job. He was just phenomenally productive and he was working way more than 80 hrs a week. He could write device drivers in days and entire file systems in weeks. If you are lucky you might get to observe someone like that. In some ways writing code to people who are good at it is almost an exhilarating and enjoyable experience. It is easy to get into the Flow and then you just loose track of time. Programming is not really a bursty activity. If you are unable to find the flow and immerse yourself in your code for hours at a stretch find another career.

> If you are unable to find the flow and immerse yourself in your code for hours at a stretch find another career.

That's like suggesting a writer should find another career because they have writers block. Why not just find a new project and/or working conditions? You even said qualified your report on monster coders with "...as long as they believe that what they are doing is cool".

My experience is that great programmers are especially sensitive to what they're doing. If they can't get genuinely and deeply excited about a project you will never see them shine. I've seen some decent programmers who can churn out decent code like clockwork. As if they work in a factory pressing sheet metal. They can be pushed to work 80 hours easily, although a great programmer could probably achieve the same results in 8 minutes most of the time.

Sorry I was not clear about it but if you are a good programmer in today's market there is no reason for you to be working on something that you do not enjoy working on. To quote PG for once . "If it is possible to make yourself into a great hacker, the way to do it may be to make the following deal with yourself: you never have to work on boring projects (unless your family will starve otherwise), and in return, you'll never allow yourself to do a half-assed job. All the great hackers I know seem to have made that deal, though perhaps none of them had any choice in the matter."

I'm glad somebody has said this. I work in bursts myself and it's refreshing to hear that it's common.

Coincidentally this also makes me feel better for time spent on news.yc and programming.reddit.

I feel identified, and that is why I hate too much to work on traditional 9-18h (or whatever) working days and tight schedules. It's not unusual when I spend 6 h. on a 2 h. programming task only because I can't get into the flow, and then I finish a 4 h task in one.

Ah, I really need to startup ;)

You do better at programming when you enjoy the task, and working on your own ideas helps that tremendously. So yeah, go start your startup.

I agree with the "productivity comes in spurts" sentiment. I typically have about 2-4 hours of real productive brain chemistry per day--where my mind is conducive to creating something, or solving something. This usually comes in the morning for me. The rest of the day, I spend reading/exchanging info with other people--which all ends up getting assimilated into my work somehow, after a good sleep.

Great article.

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