4 ms·

I was with the author up until I saw the "..for a 25% lower salary" part. At my startup, I'm paying people a regular (8-hour) salary for working a 6-hour day.

I was with the author up until I saw the "..for a 25% lower salary" part. At my startup, I'm paying people a regular (8-hour) salary for working a 6-hour day. The company gets value out of mental focus, not in having an ass in a chair-- so, if people are more focused and motivated with an extra two hours available for other activities (family, friends, what have you) then it is a net gain for the company.

dcurtis 18y ago
Do you have any data to back this up? I know 37signals yells about their workday all the time, but I haven't seen any real analysis of productivity between 8 and 6 hour days. The problem I've seen is that most of the 2 hours of wasted time happen randomly throughout the day; it's not concentrated at the end. So when you simply cut the day off 2 hours earlier, how much real work are you cutting out? Also, if it's a startup, don't you expect people to work until things are finished? Why create a specific time range per day?
- michael_dorfman 18y ago
  No data, just anecdotes and my own sense of experience. Note that I'm not arguing that there is 2 hours wasted in an average day-- rather, I'm arguing that a) mental clarity trumps hours on the job, and b) more time for personal pursuits will lead to more mental clarity at work. As for the latter question, I expect people to get things done-- but in terms of deciding which things we expect to get done by which date, we need to take some "expected hours per day" into account.
ph0rque 18y ago
The 25% lower salary would be a weed-out factor for those who value a large paycheck over more free time. Also, for the career-minded, the projects would make up that 25% (or more, if a successful startup grows out of a given project).
- sofal 18y ago
  You'd have to provide some great incentives to balance the 25% lower salary. Free time is nice, but it's also free. If I value free time over a large paycheck to the extent that I'd be willing to give up that much salary, I'm basically just looking for a part time job. It sounds like the only difference is that you're allowed to use company resources for a side project. Is that enough? I'm uncomfortable with the idea that not paying employees what they're worth will have a net benefit. You should pay your employees well in whatever ways you can reasonably do it (money, benefits, stake in the company, perks, even softer things like respect, trust, etc.) Compensating them with free time doesn't make any sense. They have just as much time as you do, and it's theirs to spend.
Tamerlin 18y ago
Wow, someone who actually wants to succeed with a startup, eh? The startup = sweatshop mentality really needs to end if we're to see a higher success rate among startups. In every case that I've seen people working insanely long hours trying to get some piece of code working, it's turned out to be bad code. Sweatshops provide the illusion of increasing the development pace, but the reality is the opposite. What you're doing in those situations isn't rushing to market, it's repeating the mistakes that lead to the term Microserf. Most projects fail miserably. Microsoft's software succeed in spite of it's quality (that is, the lack thereof), not because of it. Personally, if I were running company, I'd end up firing the people working the insane hours; I wouldn't want to be paying their technical debt down the road. And incidentally, Joel Spolsky has mentioned this as well. People working insane hours do bad work. They rack up technical debt that the company will end up paying, usually indefinitely.

dcurtis 18y ago

Do you have any data to back this up? I know 37signals yells about their workday all the time, but I haven't seen any real analysis of productivity between 8 and 6 hour days. The problem I've seen is that most of the 2 hours of wasted time happen randomly throughout the day; it's not concentrated at the end. So when you simply cut the day off 2 hours earlier, how much real work are you cutting out? Also, if it's a startup, don't you expect people to work until things are finished? Why create a specific time range per day?

michael_dorfman 18y ago
No data, just anecdotes and my own sense of experience. Note that I'm not arguing that there is 2 hours wasted in an average day-- rather, I'm arguing that a) mental clarity trumps hours on the job, and b) more time for personal pursuits will lead to more mental clarity at work. As for the latter question, I expect people to get things done-- but in terms of deciding which things we expect to get done by which date, we need to take some "expected hours per day" into account.

ph0rque 18y ago

The 25% lower salary would be a weed-out factor for those who value a large paycheck over more free time. Also, for the career-minded, the projects would make up that 25% (or more, if a successful startup grows out of a given project).

sofal 18y ago
You'd have to provide some great incentives to balance the 25% lower salary. Free time is nice, but it's also free. If I value free time over a large paycheck to the extent that I'd be willing to give up that much salary, I'm basically just looking for a part time job. It sounds like the only difference is that you're allowed to use company resources for a side project. Is that enough? I'm uncomfortable with the idea that not paying employees what they're worth will have a net benefit. You should pay your employees well in whatever ways you can reasonably do it (money, benefits, stake in the company, perks, even softer things like respect, trust, etc.) Compensating them with free time doesn't make any sense. They have just as much time as you do, and it's theirs to spend.

Tamerlin 18y ago

Wow, someone who actually wants to succeed with a startup, eh? The startup = sweatshop mentality really needs to end if we're to see a higher success rate among startups. In every case that I've seen people working insanely long hours trying to get some piece of code working, it's turned out to be bad code. Sweatshops provide the illusion of increasing the development pace, but the reality is the opposite. What you're doing in those situations isn't rushing to market, it's repeating the mistakes that lead to the term Microserf. Most projects fail miserably. Microsoft's software succeed in spite of it's quality (that is, the lack thereof), not because of it. Personally, if I were running company, I'd end up firing the people working the insane hours; I wouldn't want to be paying their technical debt down the road. And incidentally, Joel Spolsky has mentioned this as well. People working insane hours do bad work. They rack up technical debt that the company will end up paying, usually indefinitely.