Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of good stuff in this post. You should read it for yourself before commenting here. (Word count is 2413 in case you're wondering.) I do want to call out one very questionable aspect:

> I’ve pulled many all-nighters in my career

> Sometimes I get asked about how I felt when I got laid off, and the truth is it was the best gift I’ve ever received.

> Going on a sabbatical afterward has been exactly what I needed to decompress and I’m finally feeling rested and relaxed.

In my long career, I've never pulled an all-nighter, and I don't think that we should ever allow capitalists to deprive us of the essentials, such as sleep. Musk doesn't give a damn about you or your sacrifices, and obviously he fired Crawford anyway, despite the all-nighters. Always put yourself, your physical and mental health, before your employer's profit. Crawford said, "I think of life as a game", but it's not really a game, which you'll eventually learn the hard way as you get older. You have only one life, and you need to pace yourself, protect yourself. What's the point of working so hard that you render yourself incapable of working anymore, burning yourself out and needing a long period where you cannot generate any income? I've seen this time and again, but it's actually counterproductive. Please don't pull those all-nighters, it only encourages the worst exploitation from management. Certainly don't be proud of your needless sacrifices.

> Certainly don't be proud of your needless sacrifices.

Who exactly are you to judge what she should or shouldn't be proud of ?

When she quotes :

> I’ve pulled many all-nighters in my career

She goes as far as adding a full explanation that you - conveniently - redacted:

> I’ve pulled many all-nighters in my career and also when I was a student for something that mattered to me. I don’t regret putting in long hours or being ambitious, and feel proud of how far I’ve come from where I started thanks in part to that type of work ethic.

To me this reads as someone who is perfectly happy with the decisions she took. You do not have to share same work ethics as she does and you don't have to make the same choices. But you have absolutely no right to take it away from her or to dictate what she can be proud of or happy with.

> Who exactly are you to judge what she should or shouldn't be proud of ?

It's not about what "she" specifically should be proud of. It's about all of us, employees and our relationship to management.

> She goes as far as adding a full explanation that you - conveniently - redacted

I literally said, "You should read it for yourself before commenting here. (Word count is 2413 in case you're wondering.)" So the comment about conveniently redacting seems a bit absurd.

> You do not have to share same work ethics as she does and you don't have to make the same choices.

Nobody who knows me has ever questioned my work ethic. But speaking of ethics, I feel that it's unethical for management to ask for, encourage, or condone this kind of needless personal sacrifice by employees. Management deadlines are nearly always totally arbitrary and only benefit management, not the employees.

I also noted that it's counterproductive, individually. You can't win a marathon by running a series of sprints.

> But you have absolutely no right to take it away from her or to dictate what she can be proud of or happy with.

You're making this way too personal. It's intended to be general advice, directed not toward Crawford, who isn't here (I don't think?) but rather to the readers of this comment. The problematic aspect of what Crawford said is the public glorification of needless sacrifice, not whether she specifically is (currently) personally happy or proud of it.

By the way, note that the infamous sleeping bag photo was infamous precisely because she posted it publicly for everyone, as some kind of model for work. And she was after all a manager, setting an example for others. It wasn't just a private photo she took for her album at home that she could look back on later and reminisce fondly about "the good old days".

She also specifically says that anything she asked her employees to do, she'd do herself, but if you read that backwards, the implication is that she is setting up a cultural expectation here: to achieve a tight deadline, if necessary, you should sleep in the office.

Which is not only an incredibly unhealthy expectation (for individuals who will burn themselves out for someone else's schedule and benefit; for team leaders who will destroy any sense of team cohesion and motivation in the long run; and for managers who would get more results from a slower but more consistent pace), but it also doesn't seem to have won her anything in this case - she got fired, and it doesn't sound like she was particularly listened to or respected by Musk, despite trying to provide genuine insight and wisdom.

It's not a questionable aspect to be honest. This is her experience and decision.

> I don't think that we should ever allow capitalists to deprive us of the essentials, such as sleep

Your strong claim is actually questionable.

I can already think of one realistic scenario where pulling an all-nighter is a sensible choice like: you are on an H1B visa and, if you are fired, you would be beyond fucked with your life, so you pull an all nighter.

> It's not a questionable aspect to be honest. This is her experience and decision.

I already addressed this point in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36887195

> I can already think of one realistic scenario where pulling an all-nighter is a sensible choice like: you are on an H1B visa and, if you are fired, you would be beyond fucked with your life, so you pull an all nighter.

Perhaps. But this point still stands: "Certainly don't be proud of your needless sacrifices."

I suspect that tech companies like to hire people on visas precisely because they can be abused like this.

Abuse is a strong word for a situation where you earn 30x more than what you would earn back home, and the work culture is actually better even with some all-nighters.

We must either move back to our home country or avoid doing all-nighters. We have no free will to make our own decision. We are to be labeled as an abused person forever.

That is totally a sensible morality

> Abuse is a strong word

You said yourself: "if you are fired, you would be beyond fucked with your life, so you pull an all nighter." If you don't think that's abuse, I don't know what else to say.

> We must either move back to our home country or avoid doing all-nighters. We have no free will to make our own decision. We are to be labeled as an abused person forever.

I really don't understand what you're saying here, especially about "free will". My impression is that you seem to be implying with your response that bosses demanding all-nighters is fine, but a mere critical comment from a stranger on Hacker News has equal authority and power, somehow even worse and immoral. But that would be quite overdramatic, so maybe I'm misunderstanding.

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