10 ms·

I see lines like this sometimes, and I never speak up. So here goes. You work 16 hour days and it's just fine? You are saying that in your post. It's right ther

I see lines like this sometimes, and I never speak up. So here goes. You work 16 hour days and it's just fine? You are saying that in your post. It's right there. 80-90 hours. You expect someone reading your post to believe you work 16 hour days, it's fine; you're a rock star who loses no productivity by the 79th hour on Friday evening?

roel_v 11y ago
Even if you're just 10% productive that last hour, that's still more work than someone who clocked out at 79 hours. Not saying that everybody should work 80 hours, just that this whole 'working more than 50 hours is less productive than working 40' is one of those extraordinary claims that require extraordinary evidence. Because looking at the empirical evidence, it's the companies where people work long, hard hours are the successful ones, and not just in software... Try walking into a Cravath partner meeting, or John Hopkin's neurosurgery ward, and propose people go home after 40 because it would make them 'better' - you'd get laughed out of the room, is where I'd put my money.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  This is my point. Finance, Medicine, Legal - hell even people building pipelines or working long haul logistics etc... all have the same situations. I think there is value in companies that are 9-5, but those are not $BN high impact companies. The only major organizations with those hours are select government agencies.
- pjc50 11y ago
  companies where people work long, hard hours are the successful ones Can we try a little harder than evidence-free correlation/causation here? A quick look at the world's largest companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r... reveals that the secret of being in the top 10 for success is to be in oil&gas, or to be Walmart. Most Walmart employees are paid by the hour and subject to varying schedules outside their control. The highest tech company is Apple at 17. Speaking of hourly pay, that is undoubtably a big reason why salaried staff are overworked: the extra hours are free to the company. It would be interesting to see how long "long hours" culture would last if every single staff hour over 40 hours a week had to be paid for. (Once we got past all the insistence that employees falsify timesheets, of course)
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    Have you ever worked an oil job? They are INSANE in terms of hours/labor. I'm from Houston and grew up in and around oil jobs. Amazon is utopia land compared with working at EXXON.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      I have to say that, being a programmer, I have never worked an oil job. The closest I've gotten is watching the flares over Grangemouth refinery. I hear that rig jobs tend to be X weeks on/Y weeks off? Are you subject to "hours worked" safety regulations like drivers?
      - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
        Yes, line jobs and field jobs are supposed to comply with OSHA standards for working conditions and hours. However there is a lot that happens out there that isn't up to standard and as a result there are accidents that are preventable. See this humorous video for an example: https://youtu.be/p_-2Apzy5mc?t=3m23s https://youtu.be/p_-2Apzy5mc?t=3m23s I'm not even talking about field jobs though. Analysts, developers and white collar workers inside Exxon are generally expected to put in massive hours.
    - endzone 11y ago
      that's simply not true. i've worked in BIGOIL (not exxon) and working 7-4 was pretty much the rule.
      - jofer 11y ago
        It varies a lot by segment of the industry and the individual team/part of the company you're in. I'm a geologist and I've worked for three of the majors. I've seen good work conditions and I've seen terrible. (This is all office-based work, too. Things are a _lot_ rougher in the field.) Essentially all geologists are in the "upstream" side of things (i.e. finding oil/gas and getting it out of the ground). Upstream has three segments (exploration, development, and production), and the work-culture depends a lot on which one of those you're in. At least in my experience, in exploration things are very schedule-driven. You work crazy hours all the time to meet arbitrary deadlines. Supposedly, we work a 9/80 schedule and get every other Friday off. No one is allowed to take those... It's 7-5 six days a week, and more when it's crunch time. Taking "vacation" means working from home or only coming in for half a day. We're required to code our vacation every year, but I've regularly seen people forced to work through 100% of their vacation time. Development (oilfield development, not software) is typically a bit more paced. Most of the work will be on a very regular schedule, except for when you're responsible for a well that's being drilled. If you're sitting a well, you're on-call 24/7 for a few weeks. You will have lots of 10pm, 2am, and 6am conference calls and then go in and work a full day. However, you'll typically be told to not show up at the office for a week or so afterwards (that's always informal -- the majors all have strict no comp time rules). The other segment of upstream is production. I've never worked production, so I can't comment there. I'm currently in R&D (software development, actually), and it's much more relaxed. We have our own personal hell in terms of the amount of paperwork and meetings that are required to do _anything_, but the hours are more reasonable. At any rate, the big companies are all effectively 20-50 semi-independent small companies, in my experience. The work culture between those small companies will vary wildly.
- georgefrick 11y ago
  I never said any of that. I called him out on working 80 hours; he apparently does. Good for him. That doesn't mean you should make assumptions beyond that. I'm already at 40 hours this week. So I'll hit ~60 before I go home Friday night. Second, why would I care about being laughed out of a room at those places? It's sounds like you are trying to put shame/value on not wanting to join in on the 80 hour fun. I challenge you or anyone, to actually talk about the value this provides to the employee. Go ahead and argue for 80 hours without mentioning 'successful companies'.
- joncrocks 11y ago
  This is true as long as there aren't activities where you can have negative productivity. e.g. In software, in my 80th hour, I could quite easily write some code that was bad, that takes longer than an hour to work out is bad. Code that wouldn't have been written wrong if I had been thinking clearly. Hence is net negative in terms of productivity. (not saying that the point at which productivity goes negative at the 80h mark however.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
You are assuming a 5-6 day work week. It's closer to 12-14 hours a day everyday. I am also not writing code - which I think people just assume is the case. My role as founder is super varied, so in any given day I will do a meeting or two with investors, calls with the CTO, hangout meetings, design sessions, "brainstorming" or whatever you want to call a creative process, recruiting, reading industry news, reviewing financial statements, calls with customers, customer support emails, building presentations etc... I spread this out from about 830 AM to 1 AM with most of the work from 830AM - 5PM Break for dinner and family time from 5 - 830/9 then do some of the lighter work again from 9PM - 1 AM. That works for me and my family. I have worked in much more stressful environments and can tell you for a fact that there is no dip in productivity - if anything, working less makes me antsy.
- georgefrick 11y ago
  So when did you meet your wife? During a dinner break? When do you handle maintenance items? (cleaning, washing, lawn care, taxes). Should I assume this is all done by someone else? It's not realistic to bring a founder argument into the realm of a normal worker; who may or may not have a family yet, and isn't paid in the realm of affording to retain services. Maybe I'm missing something; the hours just don't add up. Do you fit all family activity into that 5:00 - 8:30 block? Son's baseball means no dinner that night? I realize I sound like a smart ass; but it's more of an accounting/detail oriented twitch. The math isn't working in my head and I'd like to understand. Edit: I do respect your work ethic, again I know I sound like a smart ass; but I'm just trying to understand. I couldn't physically work those hours and handle all of my responsibilities.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    You're not being a smart ass. Either he is a robot or his numbers simply don't add up.
    - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      My wife does say that I'm basically a robot.

roel_v 11y ago

Even if you're just 10% productive that last hour, that's still more work than someone who clocked out at 79 hours. Not saying that everybody should work 80 hours, just that this whole 'working more than 50 hours is less productive than working 40' is one of those extraordinary claims that require extraordinary evidence. Because looking at the empirical evidence, it's the companies where people work long, hard hours are the successful ones, and not just in software... Try walking into a Cravath partner meeting, or John Hopkin's neurosurgery ward, and propose people go home after 40 because it would make them 'better' - you'd get laughed out of the room, is where I'd put my money.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago
This is my point. Finance, Medicine, Legal - hell even people building pipelines or working long haul logistics etc... all have the same situations. I think there is value in companies that are 9-5, but those are not $BN high impact companies. The only major organizations with those hours are select government agencies.
pjc50 11y ago
companies where people work long, hard hours are the successful ones Can we try a little harder than evidence-free correlation/causation here? A quick look at the world's largest companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r... reveals that the secret of being in the top 10 for success is to be in oil&gas, or to be Walmart. Most Walmart employees are paid by the hour and subject to varying schedules outside their control. The highest tech company is Apple at 17. Speaking of hourly pay, that is undoubtably a big reason why salaried staff are overworked: the extra hours are free to the company. It would be interesting to see how long "long hours" culture would last if every single staff hour over 40 hours a week had to be paid for. (Once we got past all the insistence that employees falsify timesheets, of course)
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  Have you ever worked an oil job? They are INSANE in terms of hours/labor. I'm from Houston and grew up in and around oil jobs. Amazon is utopia land compared with working at EXXON.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    I have to say that, being a programmer, I have never worked an oil job. The closest I've gotten is watching the flares over Grangemouth refinery. I hear that rig jobs tend to be X weeks on/Y weeks off? Are you subject to "hours worked" safety regulations like drivers?
    - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      Yes, line jobs and field jobs are supposed to comply with OSHA standards for working conditions and hours. However there is a lot that happens out there that isn't up to standard and as a result there are accidents that are preventable. See this humorous video for an example: https://youtu.be/p_-2Apzy5mc?t=3m23s https://youtu.be/p_-2Apzy5mc?t=3m23s I'm not even talking about field jobs though. Analysts, developers and white collar workers inside Exxon are generally expected to put in massive hours.
  - endzone 11y ago
    that's simply not true. i've worked in BIGOIL (not exxon) and working 7-4 was pretty much the rule.
    - jofer 11y ago
      It varies a lot by segment of the industry and the individual team/part of the company you're in. I'm a geologist and I've worked for three of the majors. I've seen good work conditions and I've seen terrible. (This is all office-based work, too. Things are a _lot_ rougher in the field.) Essentially all geologists are in the "upstream" side of things (i.e. finding oil/gas and getting it out of the ground). Upstream has three segments (exploration, development, and production), and the work-culture depends a lot on which one of those you're in. At least in my experience, in exploration things are very schedule-driven. You work crazy hours all the time to meet arbitrary deadlines. Supposedly, we work a 9/80 schedule and get every other Friday off. No one is allowed to take those... It's 7-5 six days a week, and more when it's crunch time. Taking "vacation" means working from home or only coming in for half a day. We're required to code our vacation every year, but I've regularly seen people forced to work through 100% of their vacation time. Development (oilfield development, not software) is typically a bit more paced. Most of the work will be on a very regular schedule, except for when you're responsible for a well that's being drilled. If you're sitting a well, you're on-call 24/7 for a few weeks. You will have lots of 10pm, 2am, and 6am conference calls and then go in and work a full day. However, you'll typically be told to not show up at the office for a week or so afterwards (that's always informal -- the majors all have strict no comp time rules). The other segment of upstream is production. I've never worked production, so I can't comment there. I'm currently in R&D (software development, actually), and it's much more relaxed. We have our own personal hell in terms of the amount of paperwork and meetings that are required to do _anything_, but the hours are more reasonable. At any rate, the big companies are all effectively 20-50 semi-independent small companies, in my experience. The work culture between those small companies will vary wildly.
georgefrick 11y ago
I never said any of that. I called him out on working 80 hours; he apparently does. Good for him. That doesn't mean you should make assumptions beyond that. I'm already at 40 hours this week. So I'll hit ~60 before I go home Friday night. Second, why would I care about being laughed out of a room at those places? It's sounds like you are trying to put shame/value on not wanting to join in on the 80 hour fun. I challenge you or anyone, to actually talk about the value this provides to the employee. Go ahead and argue for 80 hours without mentioning 'successful companies'.
joncrocks 11y ago
This is true as long as there aren't activities where you can have negative productivity. e.g. In software, in my 80th hour, I could quite easily write some code that was bad, that takes longer than an hour to work out is bad. Code that wouldn't have been written wrong if I had been thinking clearly. Hence is net negative in terms of productivity. (not saying that the point at which productivity goes negative at the 80h mark however.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

You are assuming a 5-6 day work week. It's closer to 12-14 hours a day everyday. I am also not writing code - which I think people just assume is the case. My role as founder is super varied, so in any given day I will do a meeting or two with investors, calls with the CTO, hangout meetings, design sessions, "brainstorming" or whatever you want to call a creative process, recruiting, reading industry news, reviewing financial statements, calls with customers, customer support emails, building presentations etc... I spread this out from about 830 AM to 1 AM with most of the work from 830AM - 5PM Break for dinner and family time from 5 - 830/9 then do some of the lighter work again from 9PM - 1 AM. That works for me and my family. I have worked in much more stressful environments and can tell you for a fact that there is no dip in productivity - if anything, working less makes me antsy.

georgefrick 11y ago
So when did you meet your wife? During a dinner break? When do you handle maintenance items? (cleaning, washing, lawn care, taxes). Should I assume this is all done by someone else? It's not realistic to bring a founder argument into the realm of a normal worker; who may or may not have a family yet, and isn't paid in the realm of affording to retain services. Maybe I'm missing something; the hours just don't add up. Do you fit all family activity into that 5:00 - 8:30 block? Son's baseball means no dinner that night? I realize I sound like a smart ass; but it's more of an accounting/detail oriented twitch. The math isn't working in my head and I'd like to understand. Edit: I do respect your work ethic, again I know I sound like a smart ass; but I'm just trying to understand. I couldn't physically work those hours and handle all of my responsibilities.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  You're not being a smart ass. Either he is a robot or his numbers simply don't add up.
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    My wife does say that I'm basically a robot.