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It's interesting to see this sort of perspective. I would like to see more of it. I'm not 52, but I'm in my late 30s and as an engineer who works at startups,

It's interesting to see this sort of perspective. I would like to see more of it. I'm not 52, but I'm in my late 30s and as an engineer who works at startups, I find myself unable/uninterested in doing the things I did in the past. For example, I find myself having to work smarter rather than just putting in more hours than everyone else (which is what I did in my 20s). It's also important to bring my perspective from 15+ years in the industry while at the same time coming into each job with a fresh set of eyes (he touches on this in the article). Just because I've seen a lot doesn't mean that there isn't still a lot to learn.

pcurve 9y ago
I'm in your same age bucket, and when I hear comments like "work smarter rather than just putting in more hours", I wonder if that's not just rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours because people in that age group generally have other life obligations, and eventually become overpaid and uncompetitive status. You can't always work smarter day in day out, and expect to beat someone who is both smarter and willing to put in more hours.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  > not wanting to work longer hours As others have pointed out, working longer hours is actually counterproductive. The 40 hour work week and paid vacations were not introduced out of kindness, they were introduced because employers found out that they actually improved overall productivity. However, particularly in highly cognitively demanding fields, even 40 hours is likely too much, actual productive work is more around 20-25h per week at best. If you try to do more, you will accomplish less. > eventually become overpaid and uncompetitive status. Yes. If you continue to do the same things in the same way, you will definitely be uncompetitive. As you grow and grow older, you should be accumulating at least knowledge and hopefully a little bit of wisdom. As the old joke goes: "One chalk mark $1; Knowing where to put it $49,999." Meaning you have to find ways to leverage your hopefully increasing abilities to shift into jobs/roles where you provide more value. Like bringing architectural oversight to teams/projects, mentoring, answering questions. If I can prevent a more junior developer from spending a day or two chasing down a blind alley by giving a couple of minutes of advice, that's pretty valuable. And scalable, because I can give a few minutes of advice to a whole bunch of developers over a given workday. Or if I manage to introduce an architecture that reduces code by say 50% while at the same time making the code simpler, I've just doubled the team's productivity, with likely more compounded savings in the future.
  - lenzm 9y ago
    The 40 hour work week was introduced because workers demanded it (in the US I'm not sure about other countries). The first strike in North America was workers demanding a shorter work day. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/1835_Philadelphia_general_strike https://www.wikiwand.com/en/1835_Philadelphia_general_strike
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      I feel like we're going to require a larger wrench to throw into today's machinery.
- mgbmtl 9y ago
  I know very few people who actually put in lots of hours and who do productive work. It's just that at first, you have to put in more time to find what you're good at. In many non-US cultures, overwork is a symptom of bad time management and incompetence.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    I agree that putting in more hours consistently toward an active project seldomly turns out well in the long term, but someone that can put in more hours doing side projects using technology/frameworks that they aren't currently using on their job that allows them to stay current/cutting edge that will make them more competitive. I knew plenty of younger developers who spent nights/weekends doing proofs of concepts they could show at work. It did make them look better more competitive than other people who just put in the hours. I spend a lot of time doing side projects just to stay competitive.
    - mgbmtl 9y ago
      Well, same here, after all I'm on HN during the weekend (half-working, planning a conf, while supervising my kid & friend).. There are all sorts of people, but if we're going to generalize, I think the general expectation should be to aim for efficiency and avoid spiralling in overwork. (and I wish I had better time management determination ;-)
    - thegayngler 9y ago
      When I started getting burned out at work, I made a rule for myself. The general rule is no work outside of work. For me that means I am allowed to write code but it can't be currently work related code. I've been much happier and productive at work since I made that rule.
  - mch82 9y ago
    Overwork is a symptom of bad time management even in US cultures, we just don't recognize it. The HN community would likely agree that most startups fail. Over work, building products that fail or will be cancelled, is a sad waste of human potential. Sometimes extra work is required, but more often it is energy wasted.
- mistersquid 9y ago
  > when I hear comments like "work smarter rather than just > putting in more hours", I wonder if that's not just > rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours > because people in that age group generally have other life > obligations, and eventually become overpaid and > uncompetitive status. When people advise to work smarter than harder, it's often a nod to the fact that longer hours generally produce negative results. [0] Working smarter generally means planning before writing code, thinking about how one's work will integrate into the larger system and how to make that code reliable, maintainable, and extensible. It also means picking your battles and directing effort where it will count. With experience coders learn that endlessly coding generates errors and shortsightedness. Sure, there is a small percentage of coders who can code error-free for much longer than most, but most coders will be most productive when keeping to a regular 40-hour work week. And even super coders are susceptible to burnout. [1] [0] http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons [1] http://www.alistapart.com/articles/burnout/ http://www.alistapart.com/articles/burnout/ EDIT: format link list.
  - mtkd 9y ago
    a great old coder I've worked with for many years often says - I might not know the solution - but I know what it isn't - that knowledge/perspective mixed with younger coders who will do some heavy lifting is a very powerful configuration if you don't understand the benefits having some 40 or 50+ year old devs on a team brings - watch some Jim Weirich videos
  - mbell 9y ago
    > Working smarter generally means planning before writing code, thinking about how one's work will integrate into the larger system and how to make that code reliable, maintainable, and extensible. I have a largely different opinion on this, working smarter just means doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing. I realize that is vague and I think the reality is vague here. Investing the time to write 'reliable, maintainable, and extensible' code is the right thing to do when it's the right thing to do, it's the wrong thing to do when the it's the wrong thing to do. Being older shouldn't mean that you always write 'reliable, maintainable, and extensible' code, it should mean that you realize when it's warranted and when it is not. My experience is that this isn't the case, 'older' coders (and I safety quote older because I'm not convinced that age is the true differentiator) tend toward 'reliable, maintainable, and extensible' at all costs. That just isn't the right answer all the time. I'd venture a guess that some of the stigma that exists about 'old coders' is related to this.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  I'm a mid-30s senior engineer as well. The type of problems I solve now are completely different than the problems I solved in my early 20s. Back then I spent considerable time grinding out dozens of very similar things. These days I figure out how to handle a problem and then some person in India grinds out applying that solution all over the place. Grinding out cookie cutter code takes less effort. I could do that more, but I can't really use my brain more. It wears out too quickly.
- user5994461 9y ago
  >>> I wonder if that's not just rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours [...] No it's not. As someone who's had 10 jobs by the time I was 25. I can attest that. You can be 10 times more productive by picking a solution that achieves the same for 10 times less effort. And that's what you should do all the time. Whenever you take wrong decisions (let's call that "the design phase"), you have to compensate by doing 10 times the work down the line. That's where the experiences come in. Whatever you have in mind. Already seen it. Already done it. In practise, that means I could play ping pong 4 days a week and still be more productive than most people, because they will do work that require a week to be done, while I will do work that require only the last day, to achieve the same result. The downside is that it's getting boring and irritating to see other people trying to tackle the job in a way known to be wrong (which they can't realize because they don't have the experience).
  - pcurve 9y ago
    "In practise, that means I could play ping pong 4 days a week and still be more productive than most people, because they will do work that require a week to be done, while I will do work that require only the last day, to achieve the same result." Unless you are surrounded by sea of incompetent workers, I find it hard to believe that one can be 4 times more productive than most people, on consistent basis. Has enterprise software development become so narrow in amount & scope of assignment given to one person, that quantifying your productivity relative to others is actually possible?
    - MichaelGG 9y ago
      It's probably far, far worse than that. How do you count things like when someone suggests using a database/structure/system that is very poorly suited and spends 3 months or more before giving up versus someone that can figure out ahead of time it won't work? Or when someone suggests an approach that is error prone and continually introduces faults, yet had a slightly lower startup time? Or when a system is designed and needs 20x the hardware? Or requires literally 1000x the processing? While in some very constrained, straightforward coding challenges it might be hard to find orders of magnitude improvement, a lot of designing software has a huge range of solutions. It might be the case that a single org doesn't get to compare.
- elmerland 9y ago
  My 2-cents here I would say that working smarter directly related to developing your leadership skills. You can do a lot more by helping lead a group of technical people than you could ever do/code by yourself.
  - pcurve 9y ago
    Very true, but if you're in your late 30s, mentoring and leading other developers is mostly likely part of your job description. You are in a position to make broader multiplying impact than a junior developer with only 2-3 year under belt.
- rmason 9y ago
  I worked once for a boss that didn't believe coding beyond eight hours was productive. He said that after eight hours the number of bugs went way up. There's a cost to all those bugs that negates the extra hours and he claimed to have the proof of it. I learned a lot from him and never doubted him on this fact. Unfortunately I've also worked for younger bosses who have yet to make that connection.
- mcguire 9y ago
  On they other hand, you do get to laugh at the younger folks for making the same mistakes you did.
- mch82 9y ago
  There are twenty three people in the world for every one person in the US (as an example, since companies still tend to he nationally co-located). Working smarter matters unless it becomes possible to work 552 hour days. It matters a lot.
mythrwy 9y ago
I agree with your point but every time I hear "work smarter, not harder" I can't help but think of a very lazy guy I once knew who said that all the time. He not only didn't work harder he worked very non smart also. He used the phrase so often I can't help but associate it with his excuse making years later.

pcurve 9y ago

I'm in your same age bucket, and when I hear comments like "work smarter rather than just putting in more hours", I wonder if that's not just rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours because people in that age group generally have other life obligations, and eventually become overpaid and uncompetitive status. You can't always work smarter day in day out, and expect to beat someone who is both smarter and willing to put in more hours.

mpweiher 9y ago
> not wanting to work longer hours As others have pointed out, working longer hours is actually counterproductive. The 40 hour work week and paid vacations were not introduced out of kindness, they were introduced because employers found out that they actually improved overall productivity. However, particularly in highly cognitively demanding fields, even 40 hours is likely too much, actual productive work is more around 20-25h per week at best. If you try to do more, you will accomplish less. > eventually become overpaid and uncompetitive status. Yes. If you continue to do the same things in the same way, you will definitely be uncompetitive. As you grow and grow older, you should be accumulating at least knowledge and hopefully a little bit of wisdom. As the old joke goes: "One chalk mark $1; Knowing where to put it $49,999." Meaning you have to find ways to leverage your hopefully increasing abilities to shift into jobs/roles where you provide more value. Like bringing architectural oversight to teams/projects, mentoring, answering questions. If I can prevent a more junior developer from spending a day or two chasing down a blind alley by giving a couple of minutes of advice, that's pretty valuable. And scalable, because I can give a few minutes of advice to a whole bunch of developers over a given workday. Or if I manage to introduce an architecture that reduces code by say 50% while at the same time making the code simpler, I've just doubled the team's productivity, with likely more compounded savings in the future.
- lenzm 9y ago
  The 40 hour work week was introduced because workers demanded it (in the US I'm not sure about other countries). The first strike in North America was workers demanding a shorter work day. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/1835_Philadelphia_general_strike https://www.wikiwand.com/en/1835_Philadelphia_general_strike
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    I feel like we're going to require a larger wrench to throw into today's machinery.
mgbmtl 9y ago
I know very few people who actually put in lots of hours and who do productive work. It's just that at first, you have to put in more time to find what you're good at. In many non-US cultures, overwork is a symptom of bad time management and incompetence.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I agree that putting in more hours consistently toward an active project seldomly turns out well in the long term, but someone that can put in more hours doing side projects using technology/frameworks that they aren't currently using on their job that allows them to stay current/cutting edge that will make them more competitive. I knew plenty of younger developers who spent nights/weekends doing proofs of concepts they could show at work. It did make them look better more competitive than other people who just put in the hours. I spend a lot of time doing side projects just to stay competitive.
  - mgbmtl 9y ago
    Well, same here, after all I'm on HN during the weekend (half-working, planning a conf, while supervising my kid & friend).. There are all sorts of people, but if we're going to generalize, I think the general expectation should be to aim for efficiency and avoid spiralling in overwork. (and I wish I had better time management determination ;-)
  - thegayngler 9y ago
    When I started getting burned out at work, I made a rule for myself. The general rule is no work outside of work. For me that means I am allowed to write code but it can't be currently work related code. I've been much happier and productive at work since I made that rule.
- mch82 9y ago
  Overwork is a symptom of bad time management even in US cultures, we just don't recognize it. The HN community would likely agree that most startups fail. Over work, building products that fail or will be cancelled, is a sad waste of human potential. Sometimes extra work is required, but more often it is energy wasted.
mistersquid 9y ago
> when I hear comments like "work smarter rather than just > putting in more hours", I wonder if that's not just > rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours > because people in that age group generally have other life > obligations, and eventually become overpaid and > uncompetitive status. When people advise to work smarter than harder, it's often a nod to the fact that longer hours generally produce negative results. [0] Working smarter generally means planning before writing code, thinking about how one's work will integrate into the larger system and how to make that code reliable, maintainable, and extensible. It also means picking your battles and directing effort where it will count. With experience coders learn that endlessly coding generates errors and shortsightedness. Sure, there is a small percentage of coders who can code error-free for much longer than most, but most coders will be most productive when keeping to a regular 40-hour work week. And even super coders are susceptible to burnout. [1] [0] http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons [1] http://www.alistapart.com/articles/burnout/ http://www.alistapart.com/articles/burnout/ EDIT: format link list.
- mtkd 9y ago
  a great old coder I've worked with for many years often says - I might not know the solution - but I know what it isn't - that knowledge/perspective mixed with younger coders who will do some heavy lifting is a very powerful configuration if you don't understand the benefits having some 40 or 50+ year old devs on a team brings - watch some Jim Weirich videos
- mbell 9y ago
  > Working smarter generally means planning before writing code, thinking about how one's work will integrate into the larger system and how to make that code reliable, maintainable, and extensible. I have a largely different opinion on this, working smarter just means doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing. I realize that is vague and I think the reality is vague here. Investing the time to write 'reliable, maintainable, and extensible' code is the right thing to do when it's the right thing to do, it's the wrong thing to do when the it's the wrong thing to do. Being older shouldn't mean that you always write 'reliable, maintainable, and extensible' code, it should mean that you realize when it's warranted and when it is not. My experience is that this isn't the case, 'older' coders (and I safety quote older because I'm not convinced that age is the true differentiator) tend toward 'reliable, maintainable, and extensible' at all costs. That just isn't the right answer all the time. I'd venture a guess that some of the stigma that exists about 'old coders' is related to this.
Consultant32452 9y ago
I'm a mid-30s senior engineer as well. The type of problems I solve now are completely different than the problems I solved in my early 20s. Back then I spent considerable time grinding out dozens of very similar things. These days I figure out how to handle a problem and then some person in India grinds out applying that solution all over the place. Grinding out cookie cutter code takes less effort. I could do that more, but I can't really use my brain more. It wears out too quickly.
user5994461 9y ago
>>> I wonder if that's not just rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours [...] No it's not. As someone who's had 10 jobs by the time I was 25. I can attest that. You can be 10 times more productive by picking a solution that achieves the same for 10 times less effort. And that's what you should do all the time. Whenever you take wrong decisions (let's call that "the design phase"), you have to compensate by doing 10 times the work down the line. That's where the experiences come in. Whatever you have in mind. Already seen it. Already done it. In practise, that means I could play ping pong 4 days a week and still be more productive than most people, because they will do work that require a week to be done, while I will do work that require only the last day, to achieve the same result. The downside is that it's getting boring and irritating to see other people trying to tackle the job in a way known to be wrong (which they can't realize because they don't have the experience).
- pcurve 9y ago
  "In practise, that means I could play ping pong 4 days a week and still be more productive than most people, because they will do work that require a week to be done, while I will do work that require only the last day, to achieve the same result." Unless you are surrounded by sea of incompetent workers, I find it hard to believe that one can be 4 times more productive than most people, on consistent basis. Has enterprise software development become so narrow in amount & scope of assignment given to one person, that quantifying your productivity relative to others is actually possible?
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    It's probably far, far worse than that. How do you count things like when someone suggests using a database/structure/system that is very poorly suited and spends 3 months or more before giving up versus someone that can figure out ahead of time it won't work? Or when someone suggests an approach that is error prone and continually introduces faults, yet had a slightly lower startup time? Or when a system is designed and needs 20x the hardware? Or requires literally 1000x the processing? While in some very constrained, straightforward coding challenges it might be hard to find orders of magnitude improvement, a lot of designing software has a huge range of solutions. It might be the case that a single org doesn't get to compare.
elmerland 9y ago
My 2-cents here I would say that working smarter directly related to developing your leadership skills. You can do a lot more by helping lead a group of technical people than you could ever do/code by yourself.
- pcurve 9y ago
  Very true, but if you're in your late 30s, mentoring and leading other developers is mostly likely part of your job description. You are in a position to make broader multiplying impact than a junior developer with only 2-3 year under belt.
rmason 9y ago
I worked once for a boss that didn't believe coding beyond eight hours was productive. He said that after eight hours the number of bugs went way up. There's a cost to all those bugs that negates the extra hours and he claimed to have the proof of it. I learned a lot from him and never doubted him on this fact. Unfortunately I've also worked for younger bosses who have yet to make that connection.
mcguire 9y ago
On they other hand, you do get to laugh at the younger folks for making the same mistakes you did.
mch82 9y ago
There are twenty three people in the world for every one person in the US (as an example, since companies still tend to he nationally co-located). Working smarter matters unless it becomes possible to work 552 hour days. It matters a lot.

mythrwy 9y ago

I agree with your point but every time I hear "work smarter, not harder" I can't help but think of a very lazy guy I once knew who said that all the time. He not only didn't work harder he worked very non smart also. He used the phrase so often I can't help but associate it with his excuse making years later.