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Comment by TheBoff | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who thinks wanting your employees to work at your company "12-16 hours a day" is surely not a mark of a good company. If I worked 16 hours a day, I know I'd not be having enough sleep to do useful work. I think I'd rather work with well balanced human beings, rather than obsessive, robotic workaholics...

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I noticed that too. If employees feel the need to work a minimum of twelve hours a day, it's an indication of management problems that are much worse than someone skipping their one-on-one meetings. And if the CEO can say with a straight face "It’s important to me that the people who spend 12 to 16 hours/day here, which is most of their waking life, have a good life", that says a lot about what it was really like to work for his company. (Opsware no longer exists as such; it was bought by HP in 2007. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opsware])

Nope that was the first thing that struck me as odd about the post.

Same here. Overall the piece left me with impression that Ben is a horrible boss and manager and his company is not a good place to work.

He never said it (working 12~16 hours) was expected of his employees, but it is most probable that this is part of the startup culture "thing". I work for a big tech company, but being the second in command, I've worked with my boss to establish a culture that even though it has a lot of the startup usual hardcore-ness, is also full of benefits. Here I am, working on a Saturday at 6:30 pm... I've done pretty much a 66 hour work week this week. I've done so because I care enough about the company and our products to want (this here being the keyword) to finish a series of tasks (some of which are improvements I've myself tasked my person with, not bug tickets or feature requests) I deem needed for the continuous improvement of the software. I've also had weeks where I spent around 20 hours (2 days) helping out IT to solve some tricky architecture + linux challenges the company was having (my role as a application UX and frontend wizard, doesn't mean I'm not also the "I love to create algorithms for our backend" and "local linux mastermind" roles) - and then left on a trip to camp until the next week.

This time I took off was not discounted from my pay, frowned upon, or taken out of official vacation time. It was just the company telling me that they appreciate all the effort I put in and that they respect my decision making regarding how I spend my time on the company clock, be it working unpaid overtime, or taking a few days to decompress. For me that is the real good company startup culture. The company gives me the freedom to stay late and to leave early, gives me the tools I need to be productive and doesn't force me into preset managerial roles that don't really do anything to increase productivity or facilitate increased code throughput, and gives me the trust that I'm going to achieve what my responsibilities require however I see fit.

Am I a workaholic? Not a chance. I once worked almost 50 hours straight, not because I "want to work", but because I had a challenge I wanted to solve. I solved it and I went home to sleep and took a personal day (once again not unpaid or taken out of any "special time") after that. I'm not the usual geek slash programmer. I enjoy going to the gym and having one too many beers with my friends. I enjoy bar hopping and pickup up girls at clubs. I also enjoy coding, and if I weren't spending 4 to 6 extra hours at work writing code, I'd be doing it at home.

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