5 ms·

I think some of the people who are making claims of really long hours are using amphetamines or other performance enhancing drugs.

whoopsthereis 7y ago
Or loads of caffeine to the point it is questionable?
- derision 7y ago
  I would argue one cup of coffee a day every single day is questionable. We shouldn't be drugging ourselves just to reach some arbitrary deadlines
  - late2part 7y ago
    How about LSD, Mushrooms, Ayahuasca, MDMA? Should we be using those to expand perceptions?
  - nwienert 7y ago
    You’re getting downvoted but I strongly believe coffee is a huge net negative on productivity especially in the long run. It has two scary effects: one is it seems to sacrifice some creativity for some raw output (along with a sort of scattered and less human feel to communication). Two is that it degrades sleep quality. Which probably means a lack of memory formation at the margin over long time periods. These are just hunches but people on caffeine just have an attitude that’s a little off putting once you notice it. I’d love to see some big studies that focus on the long term and subtler psych effects.
    - pm90 7y ago
      Hmm, I like coffee very much but I don't really use it to get shit done as much as to open my mind to creative thinking. Perhaps I'm using it differently than most people do? Without coffee, I will feel sluggish and sleepy all morning. With coffee, I feel alert and inquisitive. I have a rule against drinking coffee after noon, so it doesn't affect my sleep patterns. Discovering coffee in college was really what allowed me to read things for long hours. I like the fact that it activates inquisitiveness a lot more than that it enables productivity. This is a purely subjective experience, I admit.
      - nwienert 7y ago
        The reason you feel sluggish and sleepy is because of coffee (your addiction to it), along with perhaps a variety of other imbalances in your diet, sleep or exercise. For most of my adult life I drank coffee, with occasional breaks. When I quit a couple years ago I had what felt like burnout for nearly two months. It took up to 6 months after until I really felt fine within a few minutes of waking up. And now my sleep is far easier and better. Caffeine has a 12 hour half life. That’s incredibly long. Your body is absolutely addicted to it after just a few weeks. Everyone is different. I am more sensitive to caffeine than most. But it’s absolutely not the case that you need coffee to have energy in the morning. Coffee is a bandaid that temporarily fixes a problem by causing imbalance elsewhere. Decaf is wonderful though! All the pleasant taste and routine. Also I find it funny I’m being downvoted given I’m not making scientific claims but rather hypothesis and anecdote. Too many caffeine addicts that don’t want it to be true! Final note. Focus is easy to come by if you have two things: a good environment (quiet, natural) and an interesting problem. I think the reason why everyone is addicted to coffee in tech is similar to why hard laborers get addicted to painkillers: it gets you through the shitty parts of your job. It’s why college kids get addicted to coffee and adderall as well. You’re being forced to do something that’s far outside your interest, and often in a bad environment. Well that, and it’s fun to do a drug that has a “come up” like caffeine. Final final note: caffeine has a very specific effect on your thinking. It’s not a debatable point it’s just true. Look at the spider web experiment. It’s makes you excited certainly, it gives you a rush, but it’s almost like a mania much like other stimulants. The weird thing is it almost doesn’t hurt so much in business because so many people do it, so your clients are often also on the same drug as you.
  - tmpz22 7y ago
    I think caffeine is often used for motivation during mundane tasks. Imagine working on a tedious engineering assignment like writing unit tests for a CRUD app. Over a few years it becomes a necessary lever, and at that point it is pretty close to an addiction. Amount of caffeine consumed by a team may be an interesting proxy for how motivated employees are at a company (a small amount indicates high motivation, a medium amount indicates low motivation, and a high amount indicates either a severe lack of motivation or a high level of motivation).
penagwin 7y ago
I'm diagnosed with ADD and have a prescription for Ritalin/Concerta. I'm a full time programmer, and I think my sustainable "real work and focus" time is max 6 hours. Today looks more like 4. A higher dose does not increase that time, at least for me. I'm curious how those without add/adhd are affected.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  I've heard from many people that if you're legitimately on the drug the experience is totally different than if you're taking it without a brain chemistry that needs it i.e. as a study drug. I wonder if that means that people who have ADHD could possibly have different or fewer side-effects than people without, if the two groups respond so differently. Are there any large scale studies about the long term health implications of using Adderall or Vivance without having ADHD?
  - hnuser123456 7y ago
    Any of that data is going to be mixed in with any studies on people who were (presumably) correctly diagnosed with attention disorders, because in the US, the "medication" is prescribed at triple the rate of the prevalence of the disorders: 15% vs 5%. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-pharma-s-manufactured-epidemic-the-misdiagnosis-of-adhd/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-pharma-s-manu... Additionally: being someone who was misdiagnosed, and made to feel sick for 8 years resulting in very poor appetite, increased anxiety and intrusive thoughts, and stunted physical and social growth.
  - austinheap 7y ago
    Doctors will also tell you this: if you feel ADHD drugs then you’re not ADHD.
  - vonseel 7y ago
    I’m on Adderall for ~12 years but I disagree. Although I agree with the previous commenter, I don’t think it extends my “normal” productive max. Sure, occasionally I can feel productive for an extended stretch, but usually I feel wiped out after 4-6 hours of any real effort. I just had an hour long phone call and that alone was tiring..
Proziam 7y ago
I can only speak for myself, but I don't even consume much caffeine anymore and still maintain 80+ hours. Between managing people, building products, meeting with clients, documentation, and more I always have something I can do that doesn't require my maximum performance at the moment. In fact, I'd go as far as to say my personal lifestyle and habits (eating healthy, maintaining daily exercise, blah blah) are massive contributors to my having sustained this consistent output since 2012.
originalbryan2 7y ago
In my 20s I worked 80-90 hours for ... 4-6 months. It was day job, then side hustle software that I was very excited about. Now in my late 30s with kids, yeesh. Honestly it's impossible to get 40 hours in some weeks. Edit: no drug use
- x2f10 7y ago
  Is it impossible even with effort or you no longer feel the effort is required and/or necessary?
  - originalbryan2 7y ago
    Some months, with effort, domestic responsibility and my personal health make it impossible. But my whole family has been sick a lot this fall. Edit: I still feel tremendous pressure to work more/longer.

whoopsthereis 7y ago

Or loads of caffeine to the point it is questionable?

derision 7y ago
I would argue one cup of coffee a day every single day is questionable. We shouldn't be drugging ourselves just to reach some arbitrary deadlines
- late2part 7y ago
  How about LSD, Mushrooms, Ayahuasca, MDMA? Should we be using those to expand perceptions?
- nwienert 7y ago
  You’re getting downvoted but I strongly believe coffee is a huge net negative on productivity especially in the long run. It has two scary effects: one is it seems to sacrifice some creativity for some raw output (along with a sort of scattered and less human feel to communication). Two is that it degrades sleep quality. Which probably means a lack of memory formation at the margin over long time periods. These are just hunches but people on caffeine just have an attitude that’s a little off putting once you notice it. I’d love to see some big studies that focus on the long term and subtler psych effects.
  - pm90 7y ago
    Hmm, I like coffee very much but I don't really use it to get shit done as much as to open my mind to creative thinking. Perhaps I'm using it differently than most people do? Without coffee, I will feel sluggish and sleepy all morning. With coffee, I feel alert and inquisitive. I have a rule against drinking coffee after noon, so it doesn't affect my sleep patterns. Discovering coffee in college was really what allowed me to read things for long hours. I like the fact that it activates inquisitiveness a lot more than that it enables productivity. This is a purely subjective experience, I admit.
    - nwienert 7y ago
      The reason you feel sluggish and sleepy is because of coffee (your addiction to it), along with perhaps a variety of other imbalances in your diet, sleep or exercise. For most of my adult life I drank coffee, with occasional breaks. When I quit a couple years ago I had what felt like burnout for nearly two months. It took up to 6 months after until I really felt fine within a few minutes of waking up. And now my sleep is far easier and better. Caffeine has a 12 hour half life. That’s incredibly long. Your body is absolutely addicted to it after just a few weeks. Everyone is different. I am more sensitive to caffeine than most. But it’s absolutely not the case that you need coffee to have energy in the morning. Coffee is a bandaid that temporarily fixes a problem by causing imbalance elsewhere. Decaf is wonderful though! All the pleasant taste and routine. Also I find it funny I’m being downvoted given I’m not making scientific claims but rather hypothesis and anecdote. Too many caffeine addicts that don’t want it to be true! Final note. Focus is easy to come by if you have two things: a good environment (quiet, natural) and an interesting problem. I think the reason why everyone is addicted to coffee in tech is similar to why hard laborers get addicted to painkillers: it gets you through the shitty parts of your job. It’s why college kids get addicted to coffee and adderall as well. You’re being forced to do something that’s far outside your interest, and often in a bad environment. Well that, and it’s fun to do a drug that has a “come up” like caffeine. Final final note: caffeine has a very specific effect on your thinking. It’s not a debatable point it’s just true. Look at the spider web experiment. It’s makes you excited certainly, it gives you a rush, but it’s almost like a mania much like other stimulants. The weird thing is it almost doesn’t hurt so much in business because so many people do it, so your clients are often also on the same drug as you.
- tmpz22 7y ago
  I think caffeine is often used for motivation during mundane tasks. Imagine working on a tedious engineering assignment like writing unit tests for a CRUD app. Over a few years it becomes a necessary lever, and at that point it is pretty close to an addiction. Amount of caffeine consumed by a team may be an interesting proxy for how motivated employees are at a company (a small amount indicates high motivation, a medium amount indicates low motivation, and a high amount indicates either a severe lack of motivation or a high level of motivation).

penagwin 7y ago

I'm diagnosed with ADD and have a prescription for Ritalin/Concerta. I'm a full time programmer, and I think my sustainable "real work and focus" time is max 6 hours. Today looks more like 4. A higher dose does not increase that time, at least for me. I'm curious how those without add/adhd are affected.

whatshisface 7y ago
I've heard from many people that if you're legitimately on the drug the experience is totally different than if you're taking it without a brain chemistry that needs it i.e. as a study drug. I wonder if that means that people who have ADHD could possibly have different or fewer side-effects than people without, if the two groups respond so differently. Are there any large scale studies about the long term health implications of using Adderall or Vivance without having ADHD?
- hnuser123456 7y ago
  Any of that data is going to be mixed in with any studies on people who were (presumably) correctly diagnosed with attention disorders, because in the US, the "medication" is prescribed at triple the rate of the prevalence of the disorders: 15% vs 5%. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-pharma-s-manufactured-epidemic-the-misdiagnosis-of-adhd/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-pharma-s-manu... Additionally: being someone who was misdiagnosed, and made to feel sick for 8 years resulting in very poor appetite, increased anxiety and intrusive thoughts, and stunted physical and social growth.
- austinheap 7y ago
  Doctors will also tell you this: if you feel ADHD drugs then you’re not ADHD.
- vonseel 7y ago
  I’m on Adderall for ~12 years but I disagree. Although I agree with the previous commenter, I don’t think it extends my “normal” productive max. Sure, occasionally I can feel productive for an extended stretch, but usually I feel wiped out after 4-6 hours of any real effort. I just had an hour long phone call and that alone was tiring..

Proziam 7y ago

I can only speak for myself, but I don't even consume much caffeine anymore and still maintain 80+ hours. Between managing people, building products, meeting with clients, documentation, and more I always have something I can do that doesn't require my maximum performance at the moment. In fact, I'd go as far as to say my personal lifestyle and habits (eating healthy, maintaining daily exercise, blah blah) are massive contributors to my having sustained this consistent output since 2012.

originalbryan2 7y ago

In my 20s I worked 80-90 hours for ... 4-6 months. It was day job, then side hustle software that I was very excited about. Now in my late 30s with kids, yeesh. Honestly it's impossible to get 40 hours in some weeks. Edit: no drug use

x2f10 7y ago
Is it impossible even with effort or you no longer feel the effort is required and/or necessary?
- originalbryan2 7y ago
  Some months, with effort, domestic responsibility and my personal health make it impossible. But my whole family has been sick a lot this fall. Edit: I still feel tremendous pressure to work more/longer.