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Comment by Apreche | Hacker News Reader

John Carmack is someone who has, for the most part, had control of what he was working on. During his work hours, he is working on what he wants to work on.

Yes, in that scenario, the right number of hours to maximize productivity and balance with the other things in life is going to be calculated differently.

But for most people, we are working for an employer. We have nearly no control over what our work will entail. We do not give a single flying rat's behind about that work. We do that work solely because capitalism requires us to do some work, and so we do for survival. In this scenario, the correct number of hours to spend working is as few hours we we can get away with while still drawing a salary.

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Yeah, listening to Carmack talk about working life is like listening to CEOs talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Good for them, but not really applicable to 99% of people.

Putting more effort into work doesn't guarantee better results but it certainly could improve the situation for more than 1% of people and to imply otherwise is just as out of touch as a CEO saying "anyone can do it".

Read the history of ID software. He quite literally pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.

Not while working for someone else he didn't. The vast majority of people have no choice and there's no guarantee that hard work will pay off. Hell, more often than not, it just means more will be expected of you in the future and when bonus time comes your boss will complain about constrained budgets.

Actually, he did. lol

Why would you not put your maximum into it? do you not see a path to excel and grow?

When you're in a typical salaried position, it's unlikely that you'll be able to extract more money out of your work proportional to the additional effort you put in.

So the question becomes: what else do you get out of it?

Sometimes that can be learning -- maybe go read stuff that's accessible to you but outside of your typical work area -- but in many jobs that's not really possible.

> So the question becomes: what else do you get out of it?

You nothing. But John, John gets it as share owner. He wants employees to work longer hours because he gets any benefit of it but the employees pay with their health and personal life the price. Externalization is called.

Maybe I'm a jaded 44yo at this point, but why would you put your maximum into it unless it's your own business or you have a guaranteed payout for that effort? Not everyone works at a startup, nor are all startups successful.

Look at the big tech layoffs earlier this year - they were letting both the cruft and top tier talent go. Is it easy to say you are truly safe where you are at?

No one will remember or care about your title, your salary, or the effort you put into wherever you work. Your next employer will have no insight into any of that at all outside of your interviews; they'll measure your worth on the job unless you are a world class snowflake.

I'm not saying don't continue to learn and excel! But there's more to life than your day job. Spoken as someone who discovered way too late a proper life/work balance.

Is it worth putting maximum effort into your job if it causes depression and burnout (making you less effective at your job), makes you sick because of stress (making you less effective at your job), ruins your marriage (making you less effective at your job), and gives you less time to educate your kids (making the next generation less effective at their jobs)?

Human effort is burstable, sort of, but for most people it's taxing to burst up to maximum effort. Apparently this isn't true for Carmack, but I have doubts.

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