7 ms·
Jeff Bezos' advice: Don't aim for work-life balance; it's a circle
- webaholic 9y agoHow practical is it to achieve this "harmony" when you are up late at night everyday trying to earn "points" in the latest development cycle? Oh well...
- ryanlol 9y agoYou could work for a while and then flee to $cheaper_place?
- samstave 9y agoNot to be snide - but it's easy for the richest man on the planet to offer such platitudes while articles came out that his UK employees were pissing in bottles for fear of retribution for "circling" by the restroom for being less productive.
- guestaccountfam 9y agoBIG +1 what a joke
- anotheryou 9y agohow much truly free time does one have on a work day? Work, sleep, commute, eat, keep yourself fed, keep you and the house clean, maybe do some exercise and a bit of whatever out of the ordinary needs to be done (shopping for new shoes, fixing stuff in the house, doing the taxes). Leaves maybe 4h and it's fair to have to rest 1 of it with some no-brain activity. So 3h for family, romance, hobbies, learning non-job related stuff, politics, culture, reading, friends, side projects, building things, helping someone, etc...
- ronnier 9y agoThat's why I'm doing everything within my power to work towards getting financially free. It's not easy and it takes time, but I'm getting closer than I've ever been.
- anotheryou 9y agoI'll try to reduce work to 4 days a week soon (but I might wait for 12M at the company to pass and discus it along with a promised raise). It's something more immediate and realistic than hoping index funds will carry me one day (and it avoids some taxes... the 8 extra hours don't pay so well after taxes). Good luck to you though, I hope it all works out for us!
- SnowingXIV 9y agoSame boat. It's just hard to ask for more money and less hours at the same time. I'm trying to argue give me a smaller increase at reducing a day to be able to focus on hobby projects or just mental health. Unsure if it'll happen but fingers crossed!
- anotheryou 9y agoAre you in germany by and chance? Law is in this case on the workers side here. (but of course I hope not to have to reference the law at all...)
- SnowingXIV 9y agoI'm not but that sounds great!
- martin1975 9y agojust curious, what does your definition of financially free. entail? living off residual income or what?
- pavlov 9y agoLive the circle. Feed the circle. Be the circle. Whatever you do, don't be the low-energy guy in a meeting. Thanks for the "advice".
- jld 9y ago"Live the circle. Feed the circle. Be the circle." Gavin Belson?
- beeftime 9y ago"I love to come into the office with tremendous energy", says world's richest man as he devises even crueler ways to exploit his employees.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cylinder 9y agoIt’s easy for him because he distances himself from that aspect and only deals with what he wants. He hires managers to get their hands dirty for him. It’s just like how I buy my beef in a tidy packet at a glimmering supermarket and don’t have to consider the slaughterhouse at all.
- jryle70 9y agoWe hear all the time that money can't buy happiness, here in HN no less, and you are saying he has such a perfect life that he doesn't deserve to give any life advice? Who should we be listening to? Not sure if you spend time to read at all, but what he said is essentially you can't be happy at home if you are miserable at work, and vice versa. Which makes sense to me. Too obvious to be honest.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoThis is true. But he is directly responsible for the culture that makes many of his employees miserable at work.
- drenvuk 9y agoIt's interesting how puff pieces about a specific person usually seem to crop up all around the same time.
- justherefortart 9y agoWell you have to offset treating your employees like shit. Be a billionaire, then you don't have to worry about your work-life balance.
- chimtim 9y agoHave an expectation that the work-life balance is a circle i.e. it is zero
- martin1975 9y agoI heard Bezos is also selling the new 520 bridge...
- jfv 9y agoEasy for him to say. If you're at the bottom, you get little satisfaction or recognition for performing well, and are instead judged based on things like how much time you've spent in the office, how much code you've written, and how much your superiors like you. Don't listen to what the guy at the top is telling you to do with your life. Ever. But do nod and smile when he says it.
- ferdberfel 9y agoand wear your fourteen pieces of "flare"
- deft 9y agoExactly. Doesn't take much thought to realize that a guy with $100 billion dollars has no idea what the average life is like, and has no reason to be giving life advice.
- zug_zug 9y agoI agree with all of this, except for "nod and smile." If you don't work there, then I think it's best to hold leaders emotionally accountable for their effect on the world. If you do work there, then it's really up to you, but there's a middle ground where you don't legitimize the system but don't rock the boat. For example, you could just not nod, and not smile. And only pretend to clap after the next announcement. And if everybody does this, it adds up without anybody being a target.
- wufufufu 9y ago> For example, you could just not nod, and not smile. And only pretend to clap after the next announcement. And if everybody does this, it adds up without anybody being a target. This is hilarious and terrifying.
- tlb 9y ago"If you're at the bottom for long / You're doing something wrong." Definitely don't listen to the people at the bottom telling you how to run your life. Ideally, listen to people who started where you started, and rose to where you want to get. Bezos himself started fairly low. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_educ...
- bluedino 9y agoLet's go back to 1999 and ask him the same question. Heck, even at 2009 I'd like to see the changes between those two times.
- mnm1 9y agoI'm sure this applies to the typical Amazon worker sweating out sixteen hour days in non air conditioned warehouses for close to minimum wage and forgoing bathroom breaks because of draconian management that starts directly with Bezos. /s Bezos is completely out of touch with the reality of work for most workers, including most Amazon workers. Maybe for CEOs this advice might make sense, but it's bad advice for most other workers, including most Amazon workers. It's simply a plug trying to get workers to give up even more of their time in exchange for nothing so the company can get more out of them. Bezos is the last person on earth, literally, who should be giving workers advice. Few people are so out of touch with the lives of regular workers as Bezos is.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- scrumper 9y agoIn my experience those at the very top are horrified when they find out that their staff believe that the boss requires them to enslave themselves to the company. I believe that in many cases cultures of overwork are intrinsically generated, not imposed from on high. It could be fear of the boss, it could be a ruthless layer of middle management, it could be example-setting by perceived high fliers. Nothing is ever done about it because nobody wants to bother the execs with that sort of nebulous and sticky issue (especially one which sounds like whining). It often happens with very driven and brilliant leaders, the types who themselves frequently work very hard and very long hours. Doubtless there is some social primate leader emulation dynamic, something we are helpless to escape.
- castlecrasher2 9y agoI fully agree with this. I've vocally and silently disagreed with middle managers (never seen it from higher ups) pushing for employees to work longer hours and haven't had any issues. I've certainly had to communicate my boundaries but I've found that once you do, people respect them.
- alexandercrohde 9y agoWell, even if the CEO doesn't mastermind the overwork, I think a leader is responsible for everything that happens beneath them. They have full visibility (if they choose) and hired those middle-managers (or the people who hired them).
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoI suspect that the real problem is the incentives for those middle managers. The CEO often may set those without understanding the consequences for the people below the middle managers...
- scrumper 9y agoI think that, counterintuitively, that's a stronger argument at larger firms. There you have surveys and metrics and more room to focus on how the work gets done (rather than being in a mad scramble just to do it). Smaller companies, everyone is in execution mode and superhuman efforts often get rewarded simply because they generate a good result.
- tankerdude 9y agoBezos is a really smart guy but here, I beg to differ. I interviewed for a management role over at Amazon. I asked them what they thought of work life balance and how many hours are we talking about a week. 60 or so was the minimum, and that doesn't include lunches. 12+ hour days didn't seem like something you can sustain no matter how much energy you have. Sooner or later, you will get physically and mentally exhausted at work, even though you have lots of fun doing so before you get wiped out. I also informed them that if your engineers are working 70+ hours a week basically every week, then you don't have an engineering problem but a management problem. It's no longer a work-life balance, but purely a work-work balance, and that it was up to management to ensure that they don't burn their engineers out. I didn't get to the next round (thankfully). I didn't "fit their culture". So I thanked them and moved on. Better for them, better for me. I personally want people who are effective, and can put in a solid day of work. I still pull wisdom from, "Debugging the Development Process" back from 1994. I think it still holds true today for many aspects of software engineering. Or am I really an outdated curmudgeon?