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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

It would be interesting to do an experiment, and see if they would have gotten product out as fast, perhaps with higher quality, by just working 80 hour work weeks instead of 120+.

I have to believe, at some point, those extra hours started to reduce efficiency to the point at which there was a negative return on investment.

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Some 15 years ago, when I was a software developer, most of the "problem resolution" situations happened outside the office when we were not thinking exclusively on the problem itself. In some occasions, in the end of a very busy day, we would leave the office an hour earlier to give us more "off-time" to let the ideas flow in. I think that pushing those over 100 hours a week worked in the beginning of industrialization where, really, more hours meant more products shipped. In our times, times of creativity, logging hours is irrelevant to productivity in general.

I know that in the short term it works. We also know that jwz has no desire to code professionally again.

Think how much they could have accomplished if they just worked 40 hour weeks!

Conventional wisdom in 1995: "How does a predator avoid becoming prey? How does a company with 75% of its market increase share against well-funded rivals? It's simple: nobody ever stops working."

Workplace fashion in 2012: "Think how much they could have accomplished if they just worked 40 hour weeks!"

What do you think they'll think in 17 years?

We will live in a Utopia where no one has to work.

Hey, I can dream can't I?

IME, the 1995 era thinking is still alive and well and not even just in little niches. Certainly we've made progress in that at least now there is a debate as to whether 40 hour weeks are better than 80 or 120 hour weeks, but I wouldn't go so far as to suggest it is conventional wisdom.

Yep. For one thing, their top programmer might have been able to do something besides fix other people's bleary-eyed bugs.

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