9 ms·

90 Hours a Week and Loving It

64 points by domrdy 5y ago

theossuary 5y ago
I wonder if any of them saw any additional compensation for the time they spent and the sacrifices they made? Also, right now I'm struggling to hit 40 hours a week, I wonder if I'll ever feel up to working those crazy hours again.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  They got a really nice sweatshirt…
  - daemonhunter 5y ago
    Meanwhile company rakes it in.
- diskzero 5y ago
  Some did, some didn't. Some got stock, some got bonuses. Almost everyone gained a reputation that benefited them greatly in endeavors post-Apple. Some fared very poorly. Burrell Smith has certainly dealt with a a lot of issues. It would be difficult for me to believe working in that environment was helpful in any way.
iaw 5y ago
I'm glad the fetishization of longer hours to reach arbitrary deadlines is no longer as popular as it once was and beginning to receive pushback.
- daemonhunter 5y ago
  Milestones are treated as property lines.
- jmspring 5y ago
  I don't know about the last couple of years, but listen to some startup pitches for hiring events (like on YC used to host) and phrases like "work hard, play hard", "we are a family", etc. creep in and basically push the same thing. I often refer to one startup I was at as the worst experience (the manager was horrible - including griping at me for being off grid for my then wife's bday weekend), but most interesting (the technology was all over the map and there was a feeling of "how the hell is this actually working"). Never again.
  - p2t2p 5y ago
    > we are a family That is one is the most annoying.
    - neaden 5y ago
      A family that will kick you out if it makes them more money.
      - mmcdermott 5y ago
        A Ferengi family, then?
    - marricks 5y ago
      It's actually true if you interpret it as an abusive family. Boundaries aren't respected, always put company's interest above yours, if there's a culture problem (say harassment) it's actually the victim's problem, etc.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      relevant bit from Tolstoy "...every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"
    - raffraffraff 5y ago
      Oh god I forgot how much that bullshit irritated me... One team (your job is whatever we say it is) You are an owner (we gave you fuck-all stock and lied that we're all gonna be millionaires when this IPOs) Radical candour (prepare to be dressed down publicly, because all the best leaders do that: Besos, Jobs, Trump) It's even better when they get the first letter from each of these little snippets of company philosophy and turn them into a word that then gets printed on swag baseball caps and t-shirts, and is roared by the cocaine fuelled CEO at the end of every weekly allhands.
- sien 5y ago
  It still goes on. The book 'One Device' about the iPhone has interviews with the original team who built it. They discuss how a number of them had marriages broken and whatnot from the pressure to build the iPhone. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32603496-the-one-device https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32603496-the-one-device
  - raffraffraff 5y ago
    Having a husband/wife who phones you up and says, "get home now, it's late" is a great thing. It might feel annoying at the time because you're "so close to getting this done!", but its a bad habit, and in those situations the work is rarely ever done. Quarter to quarter there's always gonna be a deadline. My wife always expected a high standard from me, ie: "I didn't marry an empty chair", and she was 100% correct.
- nicbou 5y ago
  There's still a fetishization of the hustle culture, but it seems a lot less popular than it used to be. Perhaps it's just because I'm getting older, and my friends are in more mature careers now.
bm3719 5y ago
I've done 84/wk for the better part of a year. With commuting it was well over 90. Didn't bother me too bad at the time, but took a toll on my health and pretty much everything else in life. I wouldn't recommend it just for the health reasons if nothing else, but those other things that just didn't get done were important too. I'll also say that jobs are ephemeral, and there's really not much benefit to going all-in like that on any of them. Apart from larger amounts of cash in a shorter amount of time (and much higher tax burden), I have nothing to show now for that kind of dedication to my employer's cause. It's not like you'll learn more, you'll just work more and the job becomes your life.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  I'm not sure how anyone does 84 hours a week of one thing. I mean 42 hours of programming plus 42 hours of physical work I could understand. Even then it's got to be tough. There must be something in the brain chemistry of people who can pull it off.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    I've met a couple of people who worked like that and they seemed to be deluded about their own contribution. They were putting in the hours but they weren't productive.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > It's not like you'll learn more, you'll just work more and the job becomes your life. I wouldn't do what you did but if you were doing any kind of intelectually demanding work it would be astonishing if you didn't learn more than people working 40 hours a week do. Double the hours is unlikely to lead to double the learning but 1.2x? 1.5x? Perhaps as an upper bound 1.7x?
  - bm3719 5y ago
    I will say I was 100% dialed into the job. I could answer just about any question related to what I was working on and I knew the languages/platforms/domain better than anything I've worked with since. That could be a positive if something out of your control doesn't take it away from you and leave you hanging. However, the law of diminishing returns definitely applied and my energy reserves were depleted within a few months, never having a chance to recharge. I recall towards the end I would catch myself sometimes just staring at the monitor for an hour or more, doing nothing. I also think this was a one-time shot for me—I lost something I can't get back and wouldn't have it in me to do this again. In some video games you can deplete stamina, but permanent debuffs can drain max stamina. I like to think of it as the first happening, then eventually the latter.
quickthrower2 5y ago
Finance team meeting: We could give them more share options... well... hmm.... nah. T-shirt!
- daemonhunter 5y ago
  Water bottles, hats, shirts. Team: "What are we accelerating to meet?" PM: "Just because, do I need to talk to your manager?" Team: ... PM: goes home at normal hours
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    My eyes were opened to the "real world" when I worked with a project manager who made the company a lot of money and was paid a lot. He didn't deliver any software. It was purely about finding out all the ways the customer had tripped on the contract.
  - kamaal 5y ago
    >>nah. T-shirt! >>Water bottles, hats, shirts. Or worse. 'Recognition'. A piece of paper on which they write your name, call it a certificate and give it to you when the team claps for you. Fast forward 5 years, most of your colleagues from back, who moved on, don't even remember your name. There is no dearth of people who go great extents working insane hours for things like 'appreciation emails' and 'recognition certificates'.
    - daemonhunter 5y ago
      Yep. My favorite was the standard rotation for employee of the quarter or whatever.
yodsanklai 5y ago
There's nothing wrong to work long hours if it's a choice and not a necessity. I've had colleagues who worked a lot simply because they loved their job. The only issue I have with them is that they raise the bar in the team and other people may have to keep up.
- ilammy 5y ago
  > if it's a choice and not a necessity You described the problem yourself: given enough people making a particular choice, it becomes necessity for others. See two-income trap, for example. So basically, it's okay for you as long as you're not a minority. Of course, it's better to be healthy and wealthy than to be sick and poor.
  - zsmi 5y ago
    Why is it a trap? If someone wants to work twice as much for twice the pay, more power to them. And I am very sure there are people at my work who make more than me, regardless of how many hours I put in.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Not work twice as much put in twice as many hours. No one wastes as much time at work as someone who works 12/14+ hours a day.
      - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
        Some people really are effective 12 hrs a day 7 days a week. I've seen it. It's rare, but not super rare.
        asdff 5y ago
        Now imagine just how much more effective they would be with sane working hours
cam0 5y ago
It takes a special mindset to work that hard / that many hours at any company of which you aren't a majority owner.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  A slavish one.
H8crilA 5y ago
But why decrease your salary by more than 50%? I mean the effective per-hour salary. Hey boss, you're paying me $100/hour, but I'll work twice as much! Now you'll only be paying me $50/hour, and the best part is that I'm loving it!
- fzzzy 5y ago
  because they love it
- peakaboo 5y ago
  And this is why companies want passionate people. They work more for the same salary. And because they have that passion and love their job, they don't ask for more money, because it jeopardises the job they love. This is why people in healthcare work long hours too, because they care about patients. And it's why salaries stay low, because of this passion.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
javchz 5y ago
Andy Hertzfeld it's probably for UI /UX what Dennis Ritchie was to programming, he is a genius mad respect for him... but, even for that time, that hustle culture sounds too similar to a compulsive gambler justifying himself because of a winning streak.
- csilverman 5y ago
  I think Bill Atkinson is more deserving of that comparison than Andy, and Andy Hertzfeld has been one of my heroes since I was a teenager. Hertzfeld is a brilliant engineer, but he had less to do with UI/X issues. Atkinson came up with the menubar, drag-and-drop, and a host of other GUI fundamentals that are seen as self-evident nowadays. Definitely agree about the culture, though. The Mac group loved what they were doing, but that was not a healthy or sustainable way of working.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
philmcp 5y ago
Hours may correlate somewhat with output, but it's diminishing returns. We should optimise for productivity + life outside of work instead I'm glad the "I work XX hours per week" bench is slowly dying out - fools gold.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  Some people like working, either they like the work, prefer it to alternative uses of their time, or like earning more money. Taking it as a point of pride or boast is no better or worse than people boasting about their hobbies or children or anything else (that is to say it can range from interesting to obnoxious depending on the setting). I think we should stop caring about how others spend their time.
  - philmcp 5y ago
    Ye, how people spend their time should definitely be up to them The problem arises, however, when overworking (or bragging about overworking) becomes part of the culture within a company e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56452494 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56452494
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      I didn't say anything about "overworking", and lots of problems (are alleged to) arise from lots of things, it doesn't always mean you can or should try to control them. That said, > "The sleep deprivation, the treatment by senior bankers, the mental and physical stress… I've been through foster care and this is arguably worse," one respondent said in the survey, which has been seen by the BBC. Seems like a lot more than just a culture of work going on there. Working long hours and bragging about overtime is not uncommon in a lot of blue collar work too (maybe moreso). People can earn really good money working a lot of overtime, and it's great they can choose to do that. If a lot of people have the same mindset or it turns a bit competitive, there is nothing inherently wrong with that either. It is not at all the same thing as people being threatened by management or bullied by coworkers for refusing unreasonable working conditions.
Valkhyr 5y ago
I'm extremely glad I don't work 90h/week, nor have I ever had to (my contract says 40h/week and that's usually how much I work - if I do overtime (rare) I usually get to adjust for that on a different day). However, I'm not very invested in my work, and I genuinely wish I could work in a team with such esprit de corps and shared sense of purpose as the original Mac team. I wonder if the two can only ever be had as a package deal. I.e. if you are so invested in your work (probably a good thing, all else being equal), does it inevitably end up expanding beyond 40h/week (probably a bad thing, all else being equal)?
- santa_boy 5y ago
  On your last question, I think it does end-up expanding. I currently avg. 90hrs a week at 1/3 the pay than my last one that scored better X times on many metrics. However, although quite draining from many aspects, I enjoy it more and am kinda more happier.
tartoran 5y ago
Joshua Fluke [0] has a channel on youtube and he is talking about all these overwork inefficiencies and tricks companies pull to squeeze as much as possible from their employees. His channel has grown over time and he’s getting a lot of negative attention from exploitative CEO and he’s not shy about calling them out. [0] https://m.youtube.com/c/JoshuaFluke1 https://m.youtube.com/c/JoshuaFluke1
omgitsabird 5y ago
I used to overwork pretty badly. This was mainly because I like what I do for a living. However, I am in a position now where I can work 80 hours one week and disappear for a while to balance it out. I try to make the most of the "flexible work schedule" and "unlimited time off" without shortchanging my employer, and I am grateful that they trust their employees enough to allow me to do so.
issa 5y ago
I've always been involved in things that require intense periods of work (recording an album, directing a movie, writing my own startup's software) and I really enjoy it. I cannot imagine doing that much work for someone else though. When you are working for yourself on something you are passionate about, it truly does not feel like work at all. The old saying is true.
juliend2 5y ago
People used to work longer than 40h/week before the industrial revolution[1]. But as a programmer, even 40h/week is unrealistic. I only get somewhere between 2-5 hours of real work done per day (as a freelance dev). Depending of where I am in the week. Mondays are great because I'm well-rested, but by Friday, I'm less able to put long hours. Anyone has an idea why it's expected that programmers work similar shifts as less creative/deep jobs? [1] https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-40-hour-workweek/ https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-40-hour-workweek/ Edit: I avoid doing pretty much any kind of work on Sundays. And Saturdays are a mix of work and play.
- asdff 5y ago
  Before the industrial revolution people would only work for like 6 hours a day or so. Romans would start at dawn and end around noon before the heat of the day. A lot of workers would be seasonal, and there also weren't many jobs that even took place at night or could reasonably be done under candlelight to begin with. Artificial light and a factory that can run 24 hours 365 days a year changed that. It wasn't until after the industrial revolution that we got labor laws that enshrined the 40 hour work week in many places, because it was at this point in human history that capital finally had the technology to make labor work for 24 hours of the day and instantly exploited this.
  - juliend2 5y ago
    You're right. It was by the industrial revolution that people started working longer hours, and because of that industrial revolution, we had to adjust to a more humane 40h / week. I can't edit my post now, but thanks for the correction.
Borrible 5y ago
Back then, they loved to give their souls to a new machine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

64 points by domrdy 5y ago

I wonder if any of them saw any additional compensation for the time they spent and the sacrifices they made? Also, right now I'm struggling to hit 40 hours a week, I wonder if I'll ever feel up to working those crazy hours again.

sokoloff 5y ago
They got a really nice sweatshirt…
- daemonhunter 5y ago
  Meanwhile company rakes it in.
diskzero 5y ago
Some did, some didn't. Some got stock, some got bonuses. Almost everyone gained a reputation that benefited them greatly in endeavors post-Apple. Some fared very poorly. Burrell Smith has certainly dealt with a a lot of issues. It would be difficult for me to believe working in that environment was helpful in any way.

iaw 5y ago

I'm glad the fetishization of longer hours to reach arbitrary deadlines is no longer as popular as it once was and beginning to receive pushback.

daemonhunter 5y ago
Milestones are treated as property lines.
jmspring 5y ago
I don't know about the last couple of years, but listen to some startup pitches for hiring events (like on YC used to host) and phrases like "work hard, play hard", "we are a family", etc. creep in and basically push the same thing. I often refer to one startup I was at as the worst experience (the manager was horrible - including griping at me for being off grid for my then wife's bday weekend), but most interesting (the technology was all over the map and there was a feeling of "how the hell is this actually working"). Never again.
- p2t2p 5y ago
  > we are a family That is one is the most annoying.
  - neaden 5y ago
    A family that will kick you out if it makes them more money.
    - mmcdermott 5y ago
      A Ferengi family, then?
  - marricks 5y ago
    It's actually true if you interpret it as an abusive family. Boundaries aren't respected, always put company's interest above yours, if there's a culture problem (say harassment) it's actually the victim's problem, etc.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    relevant bit from Tolstoy "...every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"
  - raffraffraff 5y ago
    Oh god I forgot how much that bullshit irritated me... One team (your job is whatever we say it is) You are an owner (we gave you fuck-all stock and lied that we're all gonna be millionaires when this IPOs) Radical candour (prepare to be dressed down publicly, because all the best leaders do that: Besos, Jobs, Trump) It's even better when they get the first letter from each of these little snippets of company philosophy and turn them into a word that then gets printed on swag baseball caps and t-shirts, and is roared by the cocaine fuelled CEO at the end of every weekly allhands.
sien 5y ago
It still goes on. The book 'One Device' about the iPhone has interviews with the original team who built it. They discuss how a number of them had marriages broken and whatnot from the pressure to build the iPhone. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32603496-the-one-device https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32603496-the-one-device
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  Having a husband/wife who phones you up and says, "get home now, it's late" is a great thing. It might feel annoying at the time because you're "so close to getting this done!", but its a bad habit, and in those situations the work is rarely ever done. Quarter to quarter there's always gonna be a deadline. My wife always expected a high standard from me, ie: "I didn't marry an empty chair", and she was 100% correct.
nicbou 5y ago
There's still a fetishization of the hustle culture, but it seems a lot less popular than it used to be. Perhaps it's just because I'm getting older, and my friends are in more mature careers now.

bm3719 5y ago

I've done 84/wk for the better part of a year. With commuting it was well over 90. Didn't bother me too bad at the time, but took a toll on my health and pretty much everything else in life. I wouldn't recommend it just for the health reasons if nothing else, but those other things that just didn't get done were important too. I'll also say that jobs are ephemeral, and there's really not much benefit to going all-in like that on any of them. Apart from larger amounts of cash in a shorter amount of time (and much higher tax burden), I have nothing to show now for that kind of dedication to my employer's cause. It's not like you'll learn more, you'll just work more and the job becomes your life.

quickthrower2 5y ago
I'm not sure how anyone does 84 hours a week of one thing. I mean 42 hours of programming plus 42 hours of physical work I could understand. Even then it's got to be tough. There must be something in the brain chemistry of people who can pull it off.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I've met a couple of people who worked like that and they seemed to be deluded about their own contribution. They were putting in the hours but they weren't productive.
barry-cotter 5y ago
> It's not like you'll learn more, you'll just work more and the job becomes your life. I wouldn't do what you did but if you were doing any kind of intelectually demanding work it would be astonishing if you didn't learn more than people working 40 hours a week do. Double the hours is unlikely to lead to double the learning but 1.2x? 1.5x? Perhaps as an upper bound 1.7x?
- bm3719 5y ago
  I will say I was 100% dialed into the job. I could answer just about any question related to what I was working on and I knew the languages/platforms/domain better than anything I've worked with since. That could be a positive if something out of your control doesn't take it away from you and leave you hanging. However, the law of diminishing returns definitely applied and my energy reserves were depleted within a few months, never having a chance to recharge. I recall towards the end I would catch myself sometimes just staring at the monitor for an hour or more, doing nothing. I also think this was a one-time shot for me—I lost something I can't get back and wouldn't have it in me to do this again. In some video games you can deplete stamina, but permanent debuffs can drain max stamina. I like to think of it as the first happening, then eventually the latter.

quickthrower2 5y ago

Finance team meeting: We could give them more share options... well... hmm.... nah. T-shirt!

daemonhunter 5y ago
Water bottles, hats, shirts. Team: "What are we accelerating to meet?" PM: "Just because, do I need to talk to your manager?" Team: ... PM: goes home at normal hours
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  My eyes were opened to the "real world" when I worked with a project manager who made the company a lot of money and was paid a lot. He didn't deliver any software. It was purely about finding out all the ways the customer had tripped on the contract.
- kamaal 5y ago
  >>nah. T-shirt! >>Water bottles, hats, shirts. Or worse. 'Recognition'. A piece of paper on which they write your name, call it a certificate and give it to you when the team claps for you. Fast forward 5 years, most of your colleagues from back, who moved on, don't even remember your name. There is no dearth of people who go great extents working insane hours for things like 'appreciation emails' and 'recognition certificates'.
  - daemonhunter 5y ago
    Yep. My favorite was the standard rotation for employee of the quarter or whatever.

yodsanklai 5y ago

There's nothing wrong to work long hours if it's a choice and not a necessity. I've had colleagues who worked a lot simply because they loved their job. The only issue I have with them is that they raise the bar in the team and other people may have to keep up.

ilammy 5y ago
> if it's a choice and not a necessity You described the problem yourself: given enough people making a particular choice, it becomes necessity for others. See two-income trap, for example. So basically, it's okay for you as long as you're not a minority. Of course, it's better to be healthy and wealthy than to be sick and poor.
- zsmi 5y ago
  Why is it a trap? If someone wants to work twice as much for twice the pay, more power to them. And I am very sure there are people at my work who make more than me, regardless of how many hours I put in.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Not work twice as much put in twice as many hours. No one wastes as much time at work as someone who works 12/14+ hours a day.
    - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
      Some people really are effective 12 hrs a day 7 days a week. I've seen it. It's rare, but not super rare.
      - asdff 5y ago
        Now imagine just how much more effective they would be with sane working hours

cam0 5y ago

It takes a special mindset to work that hard / that many hours at any company of which you aren't a majority owner.

bobthechef 5y ago
A slavish one.

H8crilA 5y ago

But why decrease your salary by more than 50%? I mean the effective per-hour salary. Hey boss, you're paying me $100/hour, but I'll work twice as much! Now you'll only be paying me $50/hour, and the best part is that I'm loving it!

fzzzy 5y ago
because they love it
peakaboo 5y ago
And this is why companies want passionate people. They work more for the same salary. And because they have that passion and love their job, they don't ask for more money, because it jeopardises the job they love. This is why people in healthcare work long hours too, because they care about patients. And it's why salaries stay low, because of this passion.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

javchz 5y ago

Andy Hertzfeld it's probably for UI /UX what Dennis Ritchie was to programming, he is a genius mad respect for him... but, even for that time, that hustle culture sounds too similar to a compulsive gambler justifying himself because of a winning streak.

csilverman 5y ago
I think Bill Atkinson is more deserving of that comparison than Andy, and Andy Hertzfeld has been one of my heroes since I was a teenager. Hertzfeld is a brilliant engineer, but he had less to do with UI/X issues. Atkinson came up with the menubar, drag-and-drop, and a host of other GUI fundamentals that are seen as self-evident nowadays. Definitely agree about the culture, though. The Mac group loved what they were doing, but that was not a healthy or sustainable way of working.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

philmcp 5y ago

Hours may correlate somewhat with output, but it's diminishing returns. We should optimise for productivity + life outside of work instead I'm glad the "I work XX hours per week" bench is slowly dying out - fools gold.

throwawaylinux 5y ago
Some people like working, either they like the work, prefer it to alternative uses of their time, or like earning more money. Taking it as a point of pride or boast is no better or worse than people boasting about their hobbies or children or anything else (that is to say it can range from interesting to obnoxious depending on the setting). I think we should stop caring about how others spend their time.
- philmcp 5y ago
  Ye, how people spend their time should definitely be up to them The problem arises, however, when overworking (or bragging about overworking) becomes part of the culture within a company e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56452494 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56452494
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    I didn't say anything about "overworking", and lots of problems (are alleged to) arise from lots of things, it doesn't always mean you can or should try to control them. That said, > "The sleep deprivation, the treatment by senior bankers, the mental and physical stress… I've been through foster care and this is arguably worse," one respondent said in the survey, which has been seen by the BBC. Seems like a lot more than just a culture of work going on there. Working long hours and bragging about overtime is not uncommon in a lot of blue collar work too (maybe moreso). People can earn really good money working a lot of overtime, and it's great they can choose to do that. If a lot of people have the same mindset or it turns a bit competitive, there is nothing inherently wrong with that either. It is not at all the same thing as people being threatened by management or bullied by coworkers for refusing unreasonable working conditions.

Valkhyr 5y ago

I'm extremely glad I don't work 90h/week, nor have I ever had to (my contract says 40h/week and that's usually how much I work - if I do overtime (rare) I usually get to adjust for that on a different day). However, I'm not very invested in my work, and I genuinely wish I could work in a team with such esprit de corps and shared sense of purpose as the original Mac team. I wonder if the two can only ever be had as a package deal. I.e. if you are so invested in your work (probably a good thing, all else being equal), does it inevitably end up expanding beyond 40h/week (probably a bad thing, all else being equal)?

santa_boy 5y ago
On your last question, I think it does end-up expanding. I currently avg. 90hrs a week at 1/3 the pay than my last one that scored better X times on many metrics. However, although quite draining from many aspects, I enjoy it more and am kinda more happier.

tartoran 5y ago

Joshua Fluke [0] has a channel on youtube and he is talking about all these overwork inefficiencies and tricks companies pull to squeeze as much as possible from their employees. His channel has grown over time and he’s getting a lot of negative attention from exploitative CEO and he’s not shy about calling them out. [0] https://m.youtube.com/c/JoshuaFluke1 https://m.youtube.com/c/JoshuaFluke1

omgitsabird 5y ago

I used to overwork pretty badly. This was mainly because I like what I do for a living. However, I am in a position now where I can work 80 hours one week and disappear for a while to balance it out. I try to make the most of the "flexible work schedule" and "unlimited time off" without shortchanging my employer, and I am grateful that they trust their employees enough to allow me to do so.

issa 5y ago

I've always been involved in things that require intense periods of work (recording an album, directing a movie, writing my own startup's software) and I really enjoy it. I cannot imagine doing that much work for someone else though. When you are working for yourself on something you are passionate about, it truly does not feel like work at all. The old saying is true.

juliend2 5y ago

People used to work longer than 40h/week before the industrial revolution[1]. But as a programmer, even 40h/week is unrealistic. I only get somewhere between 2-5 hours of real work done per day (as a freelance dev). Depending of where I am in the week. Mondays are great because I'm well-rested, but by Friday, I'm less able to put long hours. Anyone has an idea why it's expected that programmers work similar shifts as less creative/deep jobs? [1] https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-40-hour-workweek/ https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-40-hour-workweek/ Edit: I avoid doing pretty much any kind of work on Sundays. And Saturdays are a mix of work and play.

asdff 5y ago
Before the industrial revolution people would only work for like 6 hours a day or so. Romans would start at dawn and end around noon before the heat of the day. A lot of workers would be seasonal, and there also weren't many jobs that even took place at night or could reasonably be done under candlelight to begin with. Artificial light and a factory that can run 24 hours 365 days a year changed that. It wasn't until after the industrial revolution that we got labor laws that enshrined the 40 hour work week in many places, because it was at this point in human history that capital finally had the technology to make labor work for 24 hours of the day and instantly exploited this.
- juliend2 5y ago
  You're right. It was by the industrial revolution that people started working longer hours, and because of that industrial revolution, we had to adjust to a more humane 40h / week. I can't edit my post now, but thanks for the correction.

Borrible 5y ago

Back then, they loved to give their souls to a new machine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine