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Many truly incredible things were built at some cost in human lives. I recently watched a documentary which said large tunneling projects expected to lose one m

by jzwinck 11y ago

Many truly incredible things were built at some cost in human lives. I recently watched a documentary which said large tunneling projects expected to lose one man per X miles dug, a few decades ago. I'm not saying you should be willing to die for your work. But historically someone always seems to be. Not least of all in the space business.

scrollaway 11y ago
The truly incredible things tend to be created/discovered by the most passionate. This means you'll have selection bias on the people who have a tendency to "work themselves to death" for the cause they're passionate about. It does not mean that you have to work yourself to death to arrive there.
agumonkey 11y ago
This makes Steve Jobs 'tyrannic' glow a little pale all of a sudden.
- gaze 11y ago
  It's disgusting. I think it's given people in high places excuses TO be assholes.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    I'm not for it, but ultimately nature wins, if someones thinks taking incommensurate amount of pain for a goal no one will change his/her mind.
jahaja 11y ago
Are you really completely oblivious to the working conditions of workers at those times? I think the workers were as passionate about their work as the capitalist was for worker welfare and safety expenses. Sorry but this comment and some child comments are truly shocking for me in their historical ignorance.
saiya-jin 11y ago
I presume this topic is less about dying for your work, rather about screwing up your relationships, marriage, ending childhood of your kids with divorce and similar. Reality of an engineering employee even for such a company is, success means bringing tiny increase ineffectiveness, weight reduction etc. into super complex system. No truly world changing discoveries. If you are alone, do whatever you want with your life. But once you go for family, working 70-hour weeks is plain stupid, selfish or just extremely bad deal. No work is worth making decisions that you will regret for the rest of your life.
- gaze 11y ago
  I agree. I think I'd just add that I really believe that the climate of fear that seems to exist in these super high pressure companies creates the wrong incentives. Would we be okay with a bridge building company being a super high stress environment? I think it's somehow more obvious why this is a bad idea. The problem then is that you're fundamentally making a time-quality tradeoff. If you're okay with this, you're saying you're willing to risk the lives of the people you're sending into space a little more to get ahead in the race. I suppose this will always be true, but where do you wanna be on the curve? I've had many different kinds of managers. I've had the type that encouraged me to slow down and think carefully about what I'm doing at every step, and I've had the kind that keeps a watchful eye and is always asking "Why isn't this done yet?" Under the latter I started grinding my teeth at night and started engineering things in a fairly brittle way... but my rote productivity was higher than it had ever been. Managerial styles are all engineering decisions just as any other are.

by jzwinck 11y ago

scrollaway 11y ago

The truly incredible things tend to be created/discovered by the most passionate. This means you'll have selection bias on the people who have a tendency to "work themselves to death" for the cause they're passionate about. It does not mean that you have to work yourself to death to arrive there.

agumonkey 11y ago

This makes Steve Jobs 'tyrannic' glow a little pale all of a sudden.

gaze 11y ago
It's disgusting. I think it's given people in high places excuses TO be assholes.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I'm not for it, but ultimately nature wins, if someones thinks taking incommensurate amount of pain for a goal no one will change his/her mind.

jahaja 11y ago

Are you really completely oblivious to the working conditions of workers at those times? I think the workers were as passionate about their work as the capitalist was for worker welfare and safety expenses. Sorry but this comment and some child comments are truly shocking for me in their historical ignorance.

saiya-jin 11y ago

I presume this topic is less about dying for your work, rather about screwing up your relationships, marriage, ending childhood of your kids with divorce and similar. Reality of an engineering employee even for such a company is, success means bringing tiny increase ineffectiveness, weight reduction etc. into super complex system. No truly world changing discoveries. If you are alone, do whatever you want with your life. But once you go for family, working 70-hour weeks is plain stupid, selfish or just extremely bad deal. No work is worth making decisions that you will regret for the rest of your life.

gaze 11y ago
I agree. I think I'd just add that I really believe that the climate of fear that seems to exist in these super high pressure companies creates the wrong incentives. Would we be okay with a bridge building company being a super high stress environment? I think it's somehow more obvious why this is a bad idea. The problem then is that you're fundamentally making a time-quality tradeoff. If you're okay with this, you're saying you're willing to risk the lives of the people you're sending into space a little more to get ahead in the race. I suppose this will always be true, but where do you wanna be on the curve? I've had many different kinds of managers. I've had the type that encouraged me to slow down and think carefully about what I'm doing at every step, and I've had the kind that keeps a watchful eye and is always asking "Why isn't this done yet?" Under the latter I started grinding my teeth at night and started engineering things in a fairly brittle way... but my rote productivity was higher than it had ever been. Managerial styles are all engineering decisions just as any other are.