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>> I never understood why they didn't just hire more people and instead preferred to work the talented people they attract half to death. I think that a small
by sgillen 6y ago
>> I never understood why they didn't just hire more people and instead preferred to work the talented people they attract half to death.
I think that a small number of talented people that will work themselves to death will be much more effective than a large group willing to work reasonable hours.
- n0nc3 6y agoIf you are doing anything more complicated than gluing a pair of APIs together, it is very likely that the marginal value of work past 60 hours is negative. Reaping what you coded during a 3am espresso binge is rarely a happy experience. But yeah, if all you are trying to do is build out Facebook before some other social network gets there maybe it makes sense to pull 100 hour weeks.
- Schiendelman 6y agoCut that number in half. Work over 30 hours might be negative.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoWhat's this based on?
- Schiendelman 6y agoBasically all the EU trials of optimal working weeks.
- Orou 6y agoOver what time frame? A year? Sure. But three years? Five? Ten? It's simply not sustainable for 95% of people. And it's unrealistic to hold everyone else to the standard of that 5% who are 1) naturally hyper-productive or 2) have little else going on in their lives. The cynic in me wonders if the attempt to turn overwork into a virtue is just to keep people busy enough that they don't stop to wonder what it's all for in the end. Somehow everyone seems to have forgotten that the economy should exist to serve people, not people serving the economy.
- sgillen 6y agoMaybe, some companies seem to adopt the strategy of “hire talented 22 year olds out of college, work them until they burn out in two-three years and move on, hire more”. Not claiming this is necessarily effective.
- wolco2 6y agoNow that you mention this I've seen this pattern happen and it repeats. Usually all we see is the end: a medium blog telling us why they left so and so company. They always give a reason that sounds like someone is still figuring out why they left their "dream job" without ever getting to the core. This happens more with big companies like "Stripe" than we like to believe. We sell ourselves in the comments section on how great "Stripe" is to work at while employees are being crushed with 60 hour weeks. It does show in the products. Great products like "Stripe" start out wonderful but in time slowly move away from that initial greatness into products that slowly get worse and the company lives on in a shadow of what they once were.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]