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Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns. Proper scaling means delegation and systems. Grinding away isn’t just unproductive, it’

Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns. Proper scaling means delegation and systems. Grinding away isn’t just unproductive, it’s a sign of a poorly run company.

fuzzfactor 5y ago
>Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns. This can be so true. In the 24/7 operation it's important to recognize how this can occur and do whatever it takes to work around it. OTOH making progress with unique electronics (which is not going to last forever anyway) can be done in an ordinary company if the ordinary company work can be accomplished in 35 hours instead of 40, and the resulting surplus 5 hours devoted to the unique electronics. The equation says you have to actually work harder and more effectively for this to be true within the same 40 hours. Resulting in the perfect example of positive returns. Then if you put in 20 hours of overtime what have you got to show for it? Well you could get five times as much accomplished per week on the unique electronics if you were so motivated. The equation now says you have to actually work way harder and more effectively for this to be true and that 40 hours is out the window from the get go. Only you can decide whether that kind of accelerated progress is more positive or not, and compared to what. Probably your average job you could put in 80 hours and not even get nearly twice as much done as 40 hours, so why bother? >Proper scaling means delegation and systems. Ideally there would be backup gear and backup staff to insure 24 hour progress using only 40 hour weeks, but too many business operations are nonideal and build upon a relatively defective or incomplete foundation. >Grinding away isn’t just unproductive, it’s a sign of a poorly run company. I just can't let that bother me sometimes, most companies are not going to be that far above average if at all. Usually little or no progress is on the agenda for being deployed. If you're an innovator almost everything's always going to be underleveraged anyway since there's only so much resources to begin with. Plus progress takes time & effort, how much progress would you like to make?
- luffapi 5y ago
  Your equation is missing a critical factor: performance degrades as you work more hours. When it comes to technical work, you can actually cause quite a bit of damage working in a degraded state. Bugs, missed opportunities for creative solutions, technical debt…
  - fuzzfactor 5y ago
    >missed opportunities for creative solutions This is what really hurts me, when you put a lot of overtime into a project and you come across so many unforseen opportunities that you won't be able to investigate further. If I had the necessary staff for what I'm already doing I wouldn't be working after hours so much my damn self. Now I know I'm not alone in a random org having nominal amounts of technical debt before I got there, but if I don't work harder than average to function around it, it will end up bugging me an average amount and that's too much for me. One of these days I'm definitely going to take your advice and quit. If you're capable of 5x progress under such nonideal conditions imagine what you could do without such a dysfunctional org.
relativ575 5y ago
40 hours is a completely arbitrary number. It wasn't true a hundred year ago. It isn't true for everyone. It isn't true for the same person during different phases of their life. What is true is that overworking will only have diminishing return, however it is up to each individual to find their own threshold. Grinding away may not be productive, and may be a sign of a poorly run company, but sometime a company has to do it anyway if it's the matter of survival. A dead company can't become a well run one.
- luffapi 5y ago
  40 hours a week is too many for any intellectual or creative work. It’s also true that if you’re management, you should model healthy and productive working models and that includes not working more than 40 hours a week. > Grinding away may not be productive, and may be a sign of a poorly run company, but sometime a company has to do it anyway if it's the matter of survival. A dead company can't become a well run one. I’d highly recommend quitting if you ever find yourself in a company like this.
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
Here's a relevant 2016 thread with JohnCarmack discussing the 40 hour work week. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845832
- luffapi 5y ago
  The game industry has notoriously poor working conditions. It’s changed a bit since he said this but yeah, never work for someone who thinks like this. He’s wrong, it’s survivorship bias on his end.

Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns. Proper scaling means delegation and systems. Grinding away isn’t just unproductive, it’s a sign of a poorly run company.

fuzzfactor 5y ago

>Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns. This can be so true. In the 24/7 operation it's important to recognize how this can occur and do whatever it takes to work around it. OTOH making progress with unique electronics (which is not going to last forever anyway) can be done in an ordinary company if the ordinary company work can be accomplished in 35 hours instead of 40, and the resulting surplus 5 hours devoted to the unique electronics. The equation says you have to actually work harder and more effectively for this to be true within the same 40 hours. Resulting in the perfect example of positive returns. Then if you put in 20 hours of overtime what have you got to show for it? Well you could get five times as much accomplished per week on the unique electronics if you were so motivated. The equation now says you have to actually work way harder and more effectively for this to be true and that 40 hours is out the window from the get go. Only you can decide whether that kind of accelerated progress is more positive or not, and compared to what. Probably your average job you could put in 80 hours and not even get nearly twice as much done as 40 hours, so why bother? >Proper scaling means delegation and systems. Ideally there would be backup gear and backup staff to insure 24 hour progress using only 40 hour weeks, but too many business operations are nonideal and build upon a relatively defective or incomplete foundation. >Grinding away isn’t just unproductive, it’s a sign of a poorly run company. I just can't let that bother me sometimes, most companies are not going to be that far above average if at all. Usually little or no progress is on the agenda for being deployed. If you're an innovator almost everything's always going to be underleveraged anyway since there's only so much resources to begin with. Plus progress takes time & effort, how much progress would you like to make?

luffapi 5y ago
Your equation is missing a critical factor: performance degrades as you work more hours. When it comes to technical work, you can actually cause quite a bit of damage working in a degraded state. Bugs, missed opportunities for creative solutions, technical debt…
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  >missed opportunities for creative solutions This is what really hurts me, when you put a lot of overtime into a project and you come across so many unforseen opportunities that you won't be able to investigate further. If I had the necessary staff for what I'm already doing I wouldn't be working after hours so much my damn self. Now I know I'm not alone in a random org having nominal amounts of technical debt before I got there, but if I don't work harder than average to function around it, it will end up bugging me an average amount and that's too much for me. One of these days I'm definitely going to take your advice and quit. If you're capable of 5x progress under such nonideal conditions imagine what you could do without such a dysfunctional org.

relativ575 5y ago

40 hours is a completely arbitrary number. It wasn't true a hundred year ago. It isn't true for everyone. It isn't true for the same person during different phases of their life. What is true is that overworking will only have diminishing return, however it is up to each individual to find their own threshold. Grinding away may not be productive, and may be a sign of a poorly run company, but sometime a company has to do it anyway if it's the matter of survival. A dead company can't become a well run one.

luffapi 5y ago
40 hours a week is too many for any intellectual or creative work. It’s also true that if you’re management, you should model healthy and productive working models and that includes not working more than 40 hours a week. > Grinding away may not be productive, and may be a sign of a poorly run company, but sometime a company has to do it anyway if it's the matter of survival. A dead company can't become a well run one. I’d highly recommend quitting if you ever find yourself in a company like this.

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

Here's a relevant 2016 thread with JohnCarmack discussing the 40 hour work week. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845832

luffapi 5y ago
The game industry has notoriously poor working conditions. It’s changed a bit since he said this but yeah, never work for someone who thinks like this. He’s wrong, it’s survivorship bias on his end.