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I find it interesting that he admits that earlier he thought that 70hrs/wk was the required way to move forward, then worked 40 on twilio and found it was bette
by dv_dt 5y ago
I find it interesting that he admits that earlier he thought that 70hrs/wk was the required way to move forward, then worked 40 on twilio and found it was better to equivalent productivity - but then seemingly suffers from a possible identical blind spot when he also puts out that 35hrs would of course be too few hours.
- travisjungroth 5y agoIf you haven't gone too far, you haven't gone far enough.
- graderjs 5y agoHow very 'mathematical analysis' of you.
- x0x0 5y agoAre we reading the same article? I'm pretty sure this dude didn't build Twilio... and he never says he only worked 40. He actually says he worked more than 40?
- dv_dt 5y agoYes I miswrote twilio when I meant zulip.
- wdaher 5y ago:) My point was intended to be: look, it’s going to be hard work, and I suspect there is not really a way around that. You're right that that is distinct from “hours worked”, and sure, maybe 35 is the magic number for someone. 0 hours is too few hours, and 70 is too many— so clearly there is a line there somewhere. I suspect that that line varies from person to person and even week to week, hence the point about “either be working or don’t be working”.
- dv_dt 5y agoI do agree that’s the best takeaway from the article. The long hours do creep up on you. I can’t tell you how many deep debugging issues were only solved in the first few minutes of the next day only after going home. Similarly I've been in and seen hard working teams make chains of silly bad decisions that had to be corrected with even more work later. So I guess keep in mind the corollary is that it’s a marathon not a sprint. And maybe so it’s less of a trope: there is “too long” on both a low level everyday as well as a larger scale - come up for air and breathe and get your bearings and perspective.