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Comment by s1rech | Hacker News Reader

First of all, I very much doubt that she actually worked 130 hours per week with any regularity. That comes to 18.5 hours per day, including sundays. Even assuming that she could survive with 3 hours of sleep per day (yeah, sure), it leaves almost no time to eat, commute, or god, even going to the bathroom.

And why in the world is she giving advice on burnout?

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Not to sound condescending, but use a little common sense here. Even people that work 40 hours a week aren't on task 100% of the time.

In a given day I'll take a couple coffee breaks, maybe go outside for a couple breaths of fresh air, and use the restroom at least twice, in addition to my lunch hour.

That said - those 40 hours that I am in the office aren't hours I am free to use however I please, so it is customary to say that you work 40 hours a week, not 35.8 hours per week, etc.

It's not hard to conceive of a situation where it just works out to be easier to be in the office every waking hour, particularly working on startups. This doesn't mean you don't stop to watch a funny youtube clip or set up a good music playlist- it just means its time fenced off from any other major commitments.

You know, frequently such a person is the type to make others think they're contributing merely by being at the office for such a long time.

"Marissa must be getting things done. She works here 130 hours a week!"

Yet if you look, they probably aren't actually working the entire time they're in the office.

I can't speak for Marissa, but I certainly did pull one or two 130-hour weeks "back in the day". They _were_ productive. I did pay a huge price for them, both in terms of reduced productivity for weeks afterwards, and in terms of health. (I always get a horrible cold after exhausting myself that much)

There are two things to keep in mind:

1) These weeks were rare. I'd expect they were rare for Marissa too. You can't do that anywhere close to regularly. And you don't. Those are heroic efforts to meet a particular deadline.

2) That was "back in the day". Late 20's, early 30's. As you get older, those efforts are much harder. (Damn it, all the old people I knew needed next to no sleep. Can I please finally be old enough for that? ;)

I've worked long hours too. Being a hero is counterproductive in so many ways. If a deadline requires that level of exhaustion, you're doing it wrong.

There _are_ deadlines that are worth it. Putting in the extra hours so the decision demo to the VC guys is smoother? Uh, yes. Same goes for e.g. working on reducing network traffic before a spike will hit, if that reduction will save you a million or two.

In all cases, make sure the payout is commensurate with your effort - i.e. unless you own equity or there is a large bonus attached to that, IMHO you should tell the powers that be to go pound sand.

And putting in those hours because your manager didn't listen to your estimates in the first place? Hell no.

Yeah, definitely agree. I was more referring to employee positions without significant equity, which you touched on in the rest of your post.

I don't doubt that they were productive. It's just that such long hours are frequently a way to cover up lack of productivity rather than increasing your productivity.

I agree that this is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but probably not too far off. My brother who was a key part of mp3.com in the late 90s, was more or less working constantly for a couple of years. I lived with him for part of that time. He always got home later than me, left earlier, and rarely sat down to eat. He'd be up at all hours of the night working or checking servers, etc. He was wildly passionate about his work and was driven to make the company successful.

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