4 ms·

Not just that, but every employee who wants to work nights and weekends puts pressures on those who don't to catch up or be cut. It's a race to the bottom that

Not just that, but every employee who wants to work nights and weekends puts pressures on those who don't to catch up or be cut. It's a race to the bottom that leads to people who do have things they need to do scheduling emails to go out late at night, changing the times on their commits, etc to look like they are as "committed" as the rest of the team. It's harmful and damaging and I'm not at all surprised that people here support it.

tylersmith 4y ago
If people are scheduling emails and faking commits to feign value then they should absolutely be cut.
- blooalien 4y ago
  > "If people are scheduling emails and faking commits to feign value then they should absolutely be cut." While you're 100% correct in that, I do believe the "parent" post is against people being put into situations where they begin to feel that such actions are their only remaining option if they ever want to have a life outside of work.
- fnimick 4y ago
  So when your new teammate decides to start working through the weekend and suddenly you need to do so as well in order to match them in the performance review, what's your response? And notice that I didn't say anything about the quality of work being delivered - when you need to be visibly pulling overtime with the exact same work output in order to compete, what do you do?
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    So I'm actually in that situation (I have young kids and can't realistically work more than 8 hours/day), and my actual response was: switch into management and have the young, enthusiastic employees work for me. I feel like this thread contains a lot of people upset that other people are better than them at a game that's not worth playing anyway. Promotion is an extremely artificial game setup so that neither companies nor employees have to play the actual game of capitalism. In a real market economy you deliver value by trading with others; if you feel that others are capturing more value than you, take the other side of the trade. When competition requires that you work 60 hour weeks to be considered good at a field, that's a sign that there are too many people in that field and you should get out of it and instead consider employing that field in your new job instead.
  - tylersmith 4y ago
    Either compete or go to a place that measures performance correctly.
tomcam 4y ago
Did Steph Curry or Kobe Bryant harm basketball because they plain worked harder than everyone else? Prince in the recording studio? Did they cause a race to the bottom?
- lostdog 4y ago
  Steph Curry injured his ankle in the 2010 preseason. He failed to recover properly, leading to surgeries and an ankle that keeps failing. We can speculate whether overwork is related to Prince's drug addiction and eventual death. So yeah, failing to rest properly does have bad consequences.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Point was race to the bottom, not "bad consequences"
    - lostdog 4y ago
      Ok, I'll fill in the blanks here. The race to the bottom happens because other coaches and players see Curry practicing and playing on a schedule that's unhealthy and feel that they need to do the same thing, so they also fail to recover from their injuries. So yes, overworking does create a race to the bottom. To pop up a level, your comparison is very bad. In Twitter's case, the "model" behavior is that engineers are working longer hours, and not whether they are producing better results. A better analogy would be a sports player who trained extra hard and extra long, but didn't improve their level of play, but still all other players were expected to work extra long hours anyways.
- ghostbrainalpha 4y ago
  Prince recorded his first album by himself and played all 21 instruments, so he's not the perfect example for this. Michael Jordan might be a great example though, he worked harder then anyone else, and ALSO raised the standard of how hard people needed to work on the team beyond the normal limits. They all did benefit from the Championships that followed, but it was certainly also a strain of the mental health of players like Dennis Rodman.

tylersmith 4y ago

If people are scheduling emails and faking commits to feign value then they should absolutely be cut.

blooalien 4y ago
> "If people are scheduling emails and faking commits to feign value then they should absolutely be cut." While you're 100% correct in that, I do believe the "parent" post is against people being put into situations where they begin to feel that such actions are their only remaining option if they ever want to have a life outside of work.
fnimick 4y ago
So when your new teammate decides to start working through the weekend and suddenly you need to do so as well in order to match them in the performance review, what's your response? And notice that I didn't say anything about the quality of work being delivered - when you need to be visibly pulling overtime with the exact same work output in order to compete, what do you do?
- nostrademons 4y ago
  So I'm actually in that situation (I have young kids and can't realistically work more than 8 hours/day), and my actual response was: switch into management and have the young, enthusiastic employees work for me. I feel like this thread contains a lot of people upset that other people are better than them at a game that's not worth playing anyway. Promotion is an extremely artificial game setup so that neither companies nor employees have to play the actual game of capitalism. In a real market economy you deliver value by trading with others; if you feel that others are capturing more value than you, take the other side of the trade. When competition requires that you work 60 hour weeks to be considered good at a field, that's a sign that there are too many people in that field and you should get out of it and instead consider employing that field in your new job instead.
- tylersmith 4y ago
  Either compete or go to a place that measures performance correctly.

tomcam 4y ago

Did Steph Curry or Kobe Bryant harm basketball because they plain worked harder than everyone else? Prince in the recording studio? Did they cause a race to the bottom?

lostdog 4y ago
Steph Curry injured his ankle in the 2010 preseason. He failed to recover properly, leading to surgeries and an ankle that keeps failing. We can speculate whether overwork is related to Prince's drug addiction and eventual death. So yeah, failing to rest properly does have bad consequences.
- tomcam 4y ago
  Point was race to the bottom, not "bad consequences"
  - lostdog 4y ago
    Ok, I'll fill in the blanks here. The race to the bottom happens because other coaches and players see Curry practicing and playing on a schedule that's unhealthy and feel that they need to do the same thing, so they also fail to recover from their injuries. So yes, overworking does create a race to the bottom. To pop up a level, your comparison is very bad. In Twitter's case, the "model" behavior is that engineers are working longer hours, and not whether they are producing better results. A better analogy would be a sports player who trained extra hard and extra long, but didn't improve their level of play, but still all other players were expected to work extra long hours anyways.
ghostbrainalpha 4y ago
Prince recorded his first album by himself and played all 21 instruments, so he's not the perfect example for this. Michael Jordan might be a great example though, he worked harder then anyone else, and ALSO raised the standard of how hard people needed to work on the team beyond the normal limits. They all did benefit from the Championships that followed, but it was certainly also a strain of the mental health of players like Dennis Rodman.