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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

In which case it's their job to push back on "above". They are particularly well suited to writing up a business case which says in a thousand words of manager-eese (and with lots of dollar figures) that "we need more people to finish your projects on time". Simply pushing back on you with "I have to work within the constraints set from above" is the manager being lazy.

Note, this is a subtly different response from "We will have to do more with less", which is manager-eese for "I've been shut down by my managers". That said, in either case you should probably be ready to jump ship (though in the second case, your manager will probably be willing to give you a good reference).

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Your posts are fairly thematic in the sense that you are always willing to do less or need more resources to accomplish the task.

More manpower, more money/pay or more time off isn't the definitive answer to problems.

At the end of the day, an employee who is as rigid as you present yourself to be is the kind you hope jumps ship ASAP. It seems like you are the austist type who would complain that they wont be getting a greater variety of snacks in the break room because managers said "We will have to do with less" after being shut down by their managers.

> More manpower, more money/pay or more time off isn't the definitive answer to problems.

Personal attacks aside, how would you solve the problem, in a way which won't result in churn or reduced performance?

Now, I do have to admit that for certain companies (such as EA or the Financial sector), this technique works fine. They will hire a developer who is "passionate" for the work (writing video games) or for the money ($250,000+ a year), work them for 80 hours a week for a year, and when they leave just replace them with another "passionate" developer who is waiting in the wings.

Honestly, I think you both have some good points.

Any manager who consistently pushes their team to work 50+ hours a week is probably not doing their job correctly.

On the other hand, in a startup particularly there are always certain cases where everyone has to work 80+ hours a week for a while (ex. this is the closing date of the acquisition; for every day you delay integration, we are losing thousands of dollars in revenue.)

Good startup management is threading the needle between the two.

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