20 ms·
I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month
- asynchronous 4y agoAnddddd that’s enough Hacker News for today. Bravo to the author, got me to stop procrastinating on this site lol
- dinobones 4y agoSo... This is what the adderall shortage has come to?
- unity1001 4y agoHe could have contacted his hood's local adderall mafia - like in the series Silicon Valley...
- germanNitro 4y agohaha amazing there's gotta be an easier way to say productive
- sberens 4y agoIn terms of productivity per dollar probably, but in terms of absolute productivity I doubt it.
- waynesonfire 4y agoMaybe delegating to them instead of paying them to watch you.
- lostlogin 4y agoDepends if you’re optimising society or optimising an individual.
- greenrd 4y agoYou can't delegate software engineering to a rando off Craigslist, especially if you're an employee. (If you're a contractor and your contract allows you to do that it's just irresponsible, if not, it's a fireable offense.)
- waynesonfire 4y agoi can delegate a bunch of other things, have you heard of executive assistants?
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- ruborcalor 4y agoHow do you think this compares to coworking?
- sberens 4y agoI feel it's hard to achieve consistency with coworking; I never had enough overlap with a friend's schedule to make a meaningful impact on my productivity. I actually made a tool (before the experiment) to try to coordinate coworking between a group of people, but it never took off.
- phphphphp 4y agoPick any WeWork in a populated city and you'll find people there 24/7 and at least a few of them as will be kooky enough to engage in this performative nonsense (I say that mostly without judgement). Or pick any office building, really, because they'll have 24/7 security who do nothing but sit and watch movies or listen to podcasts. There's an entire world of people bored out of their damn minds in boring office buildings all night, and you wouldn't need to do things like schedule.
- Apocryphon 4y agoOr just work in a public or university library if a cafe is too noisy or disruptive.
- protoman3000 4y agoI’m startled about what to say. Did you try Buddhism?
- eddsh1994 4y agoWhat do you mean about buddhism?
- popotamonga 4y agoI already have people in slack asking hows it going or is it done yet the whole time. incentive enough
- waynesonfire 4y agoAnd standups
- twelve40 4y agoso especially for you he emphasizes throughout this is for his personal projects, even if it's fiction
- Xeoncross 4y agoThis is fascinating, bravo for trying different things and sharing about it! Now I'm wondering if there can be a human or AI that can sit on calls for me so I can be working during the meetings where I'm just there in case higher ups have a question.
- colechristensen 4y agoI tend to do the dishes and laundry on those kinds of calls.
- DaviNunes 4y agoThis reminds me of "This Guy Hired Someone To Slap Him In The Face Every Time He Got On Facebook" https://www.businessinsider.com/this-guy-hired-someone-to-slap-him-in-the-face-every-time-he-got-on-facebook-2012-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/this-guy-hired-someone-to-sl...
- strgrd 4y agoThis comment reminds me of reddit, where people feel like reading a headline warrants a comment without actually reading the article
- busyant 4y agoUniversal Summarizer was making the rounds on HN recently (https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum) and when I clicked on the link here (I hired 5 people), I decided I didn't want to read so much text. So, in keeping with Simon Berens' theme of increasing productivity (or at the very least, increasing the throughput of my procrastination), here is a summary: https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum?url=https://simonberens.me/blog/i-hired-5-people https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum?url=https://simonberens.me/blog...
- jnwatson 4y agoThat’s a fantastic summary.
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- suddenclarity 4y agoSomehow this is a decent example to highlight the weaknesses of summaries. For example, all context about the challenges, the missing assistant and how he massaged the data is excluded. It sort of says the same thing but still misses everything.
- layer8 4y agoIt’s missing all the weirdness of the original.
- strgrd 4y agoThis is unhinged
- mjfisher 4y agoThis is a really interesting experiment, and the author did a great job of breaking it down and quantifying it. I do wonder how much a measure of "productive time vs unproductive time" corresponds to actual outcomes though; it's very different than knowing you've spent that time on the right things.
- sberens 4y agoI agree I don't know if I spent time on the best thing, but in general I think the things I classified as productive (writing, coding, fitness, etc...) are much better than the unproductive things (social media, youtube, hn, etc...).
- da39a3ee 4y agoI hope this is satire. If it is not, then the author is a disgusting narcissist with no understanding of people or of human dignity. It's very depressing that HN readers are genuinely responding with approval and encouragement.
- netsharc 4y agoThere's a lot of negative comments here too. Funnily enough (from the article): > When I woke up, I put the finishing touches on a blog post I had started earlier in the week and published it. It hit the #1 spot on Hacker News; I couldn’t stop myself from constantly refreshing the post as it got more upvotes while chuckling at the classic Hacker News hate comments.
- danesparza 4y agoI'm sorry it's depressing. I think that just makes you older and wiser (and probably indicates you have different blind spots in your life compared to these commenters)
- resource0x 4y agoI looked into some other blog posts of the author - this is not satire. Something is seriously wrong with the guy. His parents have to convince him to seek medical attention.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoMisguided sure, but disgusting? Nothing he did was disgusting. There's nothing undignified about being paid $20/hr to watch someone work, people do far worse for far less everyday.
- rogers12 4y agoI see a few comments responding with sputtering outrage. Could you explain why you experience such a reaction?
- barry-cotter 4y agoHe’s violating social scripts. That’s it. You’re not going to get any arguments without obvious counter examples that these people would let pass by without comment.
- darth_avocado 4y agoI like how he concluded that $88 per extra productive hour is worth it and more people should consider it. Here’s other ways you could introduce productivity: 1. Hire house cleaners @400/month for a large house to come in twice a month. 2. Get a grammarly or similar subscription @60/month to write documents faster 3. Personal trainer 2 days a week for $60/session 4. A dietitian for weekly sessions @100/session (you could also do virtual sessions with people abroad for a lot cheaper if you want) 5. $200/session for a monthly career coach The list goes on and any of these would help you more than just the additional productivity. Interesting experiment though.
- fho 4y agoJust what you listed comes out to USD 1540 a month ... which (here in Germany) is more than half of what an average software developer earns [1]. [1] https://platri.de/informatiker-gehalt/ https://platri.de/informatiker-gehalt/
- darth_avocado 4y agoRight I wasn’t suggesting you do all of the above. Plus in Germany, those costs are lower.
- Johnny555 4y agoStill a bargain compared to paying someone $20/hour for 16 hours/day 30 days a month, which would be $9600/month
- eddsh1994 4y ago> Personal trainer 2 days a week for $60/session Can't wait to leave Palo Alto where a personal trainer is way closer to $200 than $60 per hour. $120 a week for a PT is great.
- jstx1 4y agoThis is one of the reasons why I'm more productive when I work from an office and not from home.
- searchableguy 4y agoHave you tried an entirely remote version of this? I imagine someone could build an effective AI with face to watch over you to increase productivity/$ spent but it wouldn't have a physical presence.
- sberens 4y agoI have not, but I'm looking at doing it down the line! One thing that I would miss is the homecooked meals; I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed them.
- jsmeaton 4y agoAny plans to start dedicating more time to cooking for yourself? You seem to think that working out is productive time would you consider eating well and spending time cooking to be productive?
- trynewideas 4y agoFor context on the reference, Focusmate is $7/month. Just FWIW.
- vuckin 4y agoThis is incredibly bizarre, to the point where I wonder if this isn't just a creative writing exercise. Why does he feel the need to be 'productive' for 16 hours a day? Why did he think the best way to deal with this was to hire a group of babysitters? Why was he being so weird to his assistants? It just doesn't add up. The whole thing is so damn strange. Maybe this is an experiment on the readers of his article, to see how we will react to something on the borders of credibility.
- sberens 4y agoRelated the being productive 16 hours a day, I enjoyed this blog post by Dan Luu: https://danluu.com/productivity-velocity/ https://danluu.com/productivity-velocity/
- anonymoushn 4y agoAchieving a lot per time spent working seems unrelated to achieving a lot of time spent working per day. Are you sure your comments are written by a human rather than a LLM?
- greenrd 4y agoThat's a really rather rude and uncalled-for response. Did you get out of the wrong side of the bed or something?
- 4gotunameagain 4y agoI hope that it is a parody of what the modern western manboy™ has become, otherwise it is a bitter window to the state of affairs of the west.
- Apocryphon 4y agoI’d say it’s also the perfect marriage between the gig economy and techbro hyper-optimized productivity.
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- windowshopping 4y agoThe bit about Rachel is truly the classic Craigslist experience. Anyone who's dealt with strangers through Craigslist would find this a very familiar type of strangeness.
- 12345hn6789 4y agoI honestly cannot believe this. The porn part, the make me a smoothie request, dating dinners. This guy seriously paid people to sit behind him and didn't even think about them stealing his $1000 monitors until after the fact? He didn't try blocking any non productive sites? No productivity software? No pomadoro technique-esq focus methods? This guy should have paid $88/hour for therapy if we are being honest here
- sberens 4y agoTherapy would take away productive time :) I did actually use my own custom built productivity tools to block websites[0], and I used ActivityWatch[1] to track my time. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webblock/jeahkphmdfbddenabgndnooheiciocka https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webblock/jeahkphmd... [1] https://activitywatch.net/ https://activitywatch.net/
- sam1r 4y agoDid you ever consider building your own custom tools? Or based on the ones custom you described aforementioned, which features or tools do you wish you had on top of it? Just curious, and I respect the setup thus far.
- sberens 4y agoYeah I built that chrome extension I linked (WebBlock). ActivityWatch is great for single device tracking, but I wish there was a tool for multi-device tracking and also away-from-device tracking (tracking gym, sleep, etc...) that integrated all of the data into one place and made it easily accessible. My use case is pretty niche though :/
- fragmede 4y agoHave you considered a Fitbit or similar device?
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- usefulcat 4y ago> I have an endlessly growing list of projects I want to make, books I want to read, and skills I want to learn, so productivity means a lot to me! If it really meant a lot, it wouldn't be a challenge to actually do it. It sounds like the real problem is a lack of interest in the particular books, skills, etc.
- Apocryphon 4y agoI think there’s something to that. It could be that there’s no immediate interest, i.e. everything is tantalizing but roughly equally so, so they cancel each other out and all simply exist as vague desires rather than actual goals.
- philosopher1234 4y agoThis sounds like a complex way of maintaining an identity as interested in things that are not actually interesting.
- Apocryphon 4y agoNot sufficiently interesting, at least.
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- matthewfcarlson 4y agoI somewhat identify with this. I have dozens of things I want to do and if I get started on something, I can happily work on it until 2-3 in the morning, even though I usually go to bed at 11. It’s the getting started on something that takes so much effort.
- jmckib 4y agoI have the same problem. For me what helps is having a schedule, you do your thing at a certain time automatically every day, which seems to lower the activation energy. For one-off tasks it helps to set myself a reminder that I intend to do whatever it is at a certain time. But I still struggle with this for sure. I could always use more advice myself.
- nivenkos 4y agoAlternate title: Wealthy gringo discovers domestic servants.
- Keyframe 4y agoAlso reads a bit like American Psycho 2.0 (or 3.0 NFT edition)
- thrownaway89865 4y ago>Also reads a bit like American Psycho My thoughts exactly. I read this part using Patrick Bateman's voice in my head: >"The rest of the experiment continued in a similar fashion (albeit less hectic), with me doing yoga and working out in the morning, working my job, working on my company, reading books, doing my UI/UX course, writing blog posts, working on some side projects, all interspersed with ping pong and breakdancing classes."
- Keyframe 4y agoExactly. Blog posts (wtf is that all about, writing blog posts as a task/job?) and reading reactions on HN reminds me of business card scenario.
- thdespou 4y agoI think you will find this relevant https://youtu.be/uHt01D6rOLI https://youtu.be/uHt01D6rOLI
- Apocryphon 4y agoI could’ve sworn I read a similar article to this years ago, except it was only one person hired to keep the author on track. This one! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4661940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4661940
- hownottowrite 4y agoI’m not sure what’s more shameful: the fact that this might have happened or that it is on the front page of HN.
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- birdyrooster 4y agoWe have morbid variety of intrigue
- trh0awayman 4y agoThis and things like FocusMate seem symptomatic of much larger, more serious latent problems. It reminds of the younger generations having to put YouTube on to eat a meal. I can't quite put my finger on the connection, but paying a person sit behind you and ask how you're doing, and make you a smoothie... it feels like you're hiring someone to be your mother. This entire experiment left me feeling unclean.
- drivers99 4y ago> ADHD body doubling is a productivity strategy used by individuals with ADHD to finish possibly annoying jobs while having another person beside them. This person is the body double. The body double's duty is to keep the individual with ADHD focused on the task at hand to reduce potential distractions. — add.org google extract Sounds like a legitimate strategy.
- mtgentry 4y agoMy thought as well. People with ADHD will appreciate the experiment. Productivity tools may help some people, but there’s something about having people in the room that greatly amplifies productivity for me.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y agoThe loss of "public life" in NA is a fairly well documented phenomenon. Putnam's Bowling Alone was a famous warning shot that we never quite reacted to. For a whole host of reasons, many people nowadays, and especially many young people, are lonely in a way and scale that is hard to imagine 50 or 60 years ago. Btw this doesn't just include young people. People needing youtube on to eat is just another variation on needing the TV on. I know and have read about some elderly people that keep the weather channel or 24hr news on all day out of sheer loneliness. Across the board people are just lonely in numbers that lead it could be called an epidemic by many health and mental health organizations. This experiment left me feeling unclean for a different reason: this person essentially just hired a retinue of servants.
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- nvarsj 4y agoThis has got to be satire, right?
- isoprophlex 4y agoChop wood. Carry water. Just do the work, or don't. This is some bullshit.
- Apocryphon 4y agoThere’s something to be said that manual labor is probably less anxiety-inducing or at least less easy to shirk than abstract work.
- k__ 4y agoI love procrastinate my "abstract work" with "manual labour". Somehow it's more obvious that it will yield results (at all) and soon.
- nickjj 4y agoI think in a lot of cases manual labor is extremely ironed out because the workflow is defined before the work is done. - Pick up shovel - Move dirt from pile A to pile B There's not much else to think about, you do it and you know you're doing the right thing so there's no opportunities to second guess yourself into not doing it. Compare that to a vague action of "build xyz app". There's a million things to think about and you can easily talk yourself out of it because maybe you're doing what you think is the wrong thing (note: the "what you think" is a really important phrase here). But if you break that down to "open up code editor" and "design user registration page" that at least starts to get less vague. Eventually you get into precise actionable tasks like "create user model with an email, password and username" which you can start progressing on without much distraction.
- CuriousCosmic 4y agoThis isn't really helpful. I have ADHD and it's been a major limiting factor in my life. I have things I want or need to do and I'll easily spend 3-4x as long as the tasks actually end up taking just trying to do them. Unless my brain happens to be "in the mood for work", the only way I can get things done is by being in a structured "you must do X now" kind of environment. Doubly so since shifting gears from something you are focused on to something new is essentially impossible. It is shitty and stressful being forced to run 100% towards artificially imposed deadlines that I'm always just barely late for but unless I do that, I will never make progress regardless of how much I actually want to do the work. And this really hurts me for burnout as I constantly feel like a failure for not meeting deadlines that I knowingly set to be nearly impossible. So I'm stuck in a balance between not being able to do work because I'm not running against an impossible clock or feeling like a failure for not beating said impossible clock. Even worse is the reality that if I start to recognise that the constraints I've placed are artificial or have consequences I control, any help they provide falls apart. So it's a constant struggle to find new, increasingly ratcheted constraints for myself so I can continue to do the things I enjoy or even basic day to day personal or work related tasks. Because of this, I 100% get the author. I couldn't see myself doing what they did but the thought process makes complete sense to me. I'm practically doing the same thing but using friends, coworkers, or technology to do it, even if they aren't necessarily in the same room as me.
- tronicdude 4y agoBased king
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoAbsolutely. He identified a problem and figure out solution. The True Hacker among us. How can us, mere mortals, even come close to such unorthodox out of the box thinking?
- tyfighter 4y agoThis is much more mental illness than productivity.
- tiagod 4y agoWell fuck. This is definitely the weirdest thing I've read this year. I doubt something will dethrone it before the end of the year.
- isoprophlex 4y agoI miss updates on n-gate.com They'd have a field day with this.
- arein3 4y agoI check the website from time to time. Hope it will start posting again.
- vl 4y agoFirst rule of n-gate you can’t talk about it on HN. Now we both broke the rule. But honestly, his last updates stopped being fun. It became just too repetitive.
- webgoat 4y agoIt became the Uber for hackernews hateposting
- piazz 4y agosincerely hoping this is satire
- siva7 4y agonah sorry that one is real
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- ianmcgowan 4y agoIt reads like the script for the Krazam "The Hustle" video: https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U, but over several weeks instead of one day.
- rey0927 4y agoritalin is cheaper and more effective
- 888666 4y agoThis is very interesting, but this doesn't seem like a good thing to me. We don't need to be productive all the time. As he mentions, he had little time to introspect; I much prefer having downtime where I can stop and think for a while or run into something new and interesting within highly curated social media. If this truly made him happy, then good for him, but I would put more effort into being comfortable with being "unproductive" as long as my needs are being sufficiently met.
- nickphx 4y agoIn my ~20 years of mashing buttons, I've found the primary driver of 'productivity' has been my interest in the problem/project/task. The skinner box comment gave me a hearty chuckle.
- kodisha 4y agoIs there a saas/browser plugin where you enter a name and then it alerts you if this name shows up in any hiring emails/slack conversation/twitter browsing? Asking for a friend ;)
- steele 4y agoBefore I clicked I had expected a satirical humor piece about helicopter management and interruption work culture. What a sad realization as I read through it... that it was both serious, and somehow worse than what I expected this to lampoon at the same time.
- anonymous344 4y agoThis must be lies and made up story. i mean the guy is not even making real work
- darcys22 4y agoI think the traditional way of doing this is just to make a team you work with. Working solo with a fake “manager” is probably less productive then hiring a team member and sitting in the same room while they work for you
- greenrd 4y agoNo, that doesn't work. It has to be a person whose job is specifically to watch you. A coworker or a subordinate - that's not their job. And frankly that would be inappropriate for them to do that, especially if they were a subordinate.
- dasil003 4y agoThe obliviousness to the human element and power dynamics here is shocking. It would be one thing for an eccentric billionaire to do something like this; it would feel sort of par for the course and understandable that they don't really have to answer to anyone there's no downside in letting it all hang out. But a 21-year-old Meta engineer with big ambitions? It's sort of mind-boggling.
- wuiheerfoj 4y agoI‘m sure the assistants were happy to earn some easy, casual money - far more demeaning or difficult jobs pay a lot worse. One assistant expressed interest in the experiment and honestly I’d have been open to helping a friend do this for science
- philosopher1234 4y agoYou spent this entire comment shutting down self reflection. Bit weird.
- greenrd 4y agoThe bar for what is considered "problematic power dynamics" among the woke and/or left seems to be getting lower and lower. Recently I've seen the claim that a meetup organiser shouldn't flirt with meetup attendees, because reasons... power differentials I guess? The idea that a fully-grown woman should be capable of noticing a power differential and making her own decision as to whether to enter into a relationship, with that in mind, didn't seem to have occurred to the poster. But this really takes the cake. Someone is paid to sit at a desk with their laptop and do virtually nothing for >= 5 hours and cook at a basic level for <= 3, and that's problematic according to you? Dude that's like the easiest job in the world, if you can cook (I can't, but that's besides the point). And she can use her laptop so it's not even like she's going to be bored to death (and if she is, she should quit, simple, problem solved). If he was the one "watching porn" then yeah, but it was one of his assistants! Or maybe she was joking. I also note that there was not even a hint of flirting or "problematic" sexual/romantic behaviour from him in this account, so any problems in that arena would mostly likely originate from your own imagination.
- gms7777 4y agoThe not-completely-bonkers version of this is called "body doubling". Especially for people with ADHD and other executive function disorders, just being in someone else's presence can be hugely beneficial for productivity. There are several body doubling apps out there that virtually pair you with people while you're working.
- birdyrooster 4y agoWorking Discord channels have worked well for me. When you share your screen and you are in a room with other people working it adds some level of motivation.
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- siva7 4y agoWhenever the writers for "Silicon Valley" seek inspiration, i'm sure they're filling entire seasons straight from HN
- SunghoYahng 4y agoWhat a great idea. I've been grappling with low productivity for 20 years, trying various solutions without success. I would love to emulate your approach, but don't have the means at present. Regardless, I'm eager to observe the outcome of your experiment, with hopes of replicating it in the future. Don't pay attention to detractors, as tackling productivity is a critical concern and worthy of pursuing with determination. Individuals who don't support or comprehend your experiment likely lack the same productivity challenges or are just mediocre.
- urbandw311er 4y agoI think the people who don’t support his experiment can probably justify their reasons for themselves without you insulting them.
- SunghoYahng 4y ago[flagged]
- joxel 4y agoDude you literally called people who disagree mediocre and respond to people saying you’re a dick with an email like reply. Do you think you’re a good person?
- mensetmanusman 4y agoMake the same Craigslist add but with $2/hr as a salary and increase it until you get applicants.
- throw14082020 4y agoI really enjoyed this article because it was funny. The critical comments make it even funnier. Thanks for writing, sberens! Now I wonder if I should get an assistant too: come in at 11AM for 2 hours: make lunch, do some cleaning and perhaps some tedious phone calls every day. And maybe a mini stand up.
- wakefulsales 4y ago[flagged]
- birdyrooster 4y agoPeople in general don’t do that much research on candidates or friends. OP will be fine, also you are the only one making this about romance. What are you basing this on? For being so concerned for OP you seem to want to drag them a bit more than I would anticipate.
- matthewfcarlson 4y agoWhat?
- dan-robertson 4y agoSomewhat related: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best but quite a different idea to this one.
- zachwill 4y agoInteresting read! Crazy that it was basically 3x increase/decrease in productive hours. Wouldn't try this myself, but found it interesting nonetheless @sberens.
- RektBoy 4y agoAs I saw his schedule with girls names I knew this will be a fun shii. I can imagine not mentioned interviews part, some guy shows up, sorry we're not a good fit, yeah right hahaha.
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoI like how this guy posted this twice in the same week.
- boxingdog 4y ago[dead]
- dqpb 4y agoWow, what a creepy dude.
- Mustache 4y agoI'm not sure why there so many negative comments. I work from home for myself and I can say not having a boss to report to makes it easier to get bogged down in non productive tasks. When I used to go to an office and had a manager there was always that external pressure to get things done. I have to constantly remind myself to be productive and not spend time on time wasting websites so I can see how just knowing someone is watching would make you more productive. I remember a few years ago there was a website where you could be on a webcam with someone else while you both worked, sort of a productivity buddy type thing. Kudo's to the author for trying something new and sharing it with everyone. I think that's brave especially with all the keyboard critics in the world.
- tomdekan 4y agoI agree. The amount of negativity on this post is bizarre. If you don’t like something informative that someone has written, ignore it. I really enjoyed the post and found it useful.
- boneitis 4y agoYes, I also find the overall cold reception unfortunate. I'm enthusiastic about the topic and appreciated TFA, and I felt like most the people ripping on it here were just a couple steps away from turning their (IMO) unconstructive criticisms to constructive ones. And yes, as it has been pointed out: a lot of the parameters had him practically crossing over into hiring servants, and I felt like it deeply undermined some aspects of the experiment, although I guess the main goal was just to strictly see increased work output as a fun experiment. I would have found the experiment more interesting if the warm bodies were hired a little more strictly for accountability purposes in helping the author stay on task not only for work but also with tending to the basic Maslow tasks, especially in the area of home-cooked meals (or just sticking with ordering out/delivery if that is what they usually do). I've only recently acquired the space and wherewithal to be able to do this for myself, and it is a HUGE timesink.
- dj_mc_merlin 4y agoMost people would agree that having somebody keeping you accountable in the same room does tend to increase productivity in the short term. Long term, not being micromanaged has a positive mental impact. Regardless, I think most people are rather reading between the lines, since there's some weirdness to hiring (from Craigslist) a "productivity manager" who watches you, does house chores and cooks for you. This is basically a servant with another title, and not acknowledging it makes it seem like the author is missing some common wisdom. There's other details like his assistant being caught watching porn, to which the author reacts in an.. even more awkward way than expected? It reads a lot like satire.
- RektBoy 4y agoShouldn't this guy be fired from Meta, I mean he's revealing code to the third party, basically leaking stuff.
- operatingthetan 4y agoRight, this is the actual problem here that Meta is likely to take action against him for: breaking NDAs and posting about it on the internet.
- praxulus 4y agoMy wife is my productivity assistant. It works great. Since COVID started we've had our desks next to each other, and even though she's not constantly checking on me, I know she can see if I'm just wasting time. On days where she's not working, or if one of us moves to another room to take a call, my productivity falls off a cliff.
- greenrd 4y agoYou have to want this though. Otherwise you're just going to be saying "you're not my boss" and "stop nagging me" repeatedly, and that's not going to be good for your relationship. I've been there.
- markus_zhang 4y agoI'm actually seriously thinking about a similar service: Basically I pick an online course (say Berkely 61B 18spring) and a deadline (say 90 days), and I need to hire someone to make me study. It is not that I do not have the intellect to complete them, the thing is once I get bored I give up. Maybe I'm not that interested but I still need to complete it. Probably can't do that right now as my toddler wakes a few times every night so the whole family is barely dragging. I'll probably wait until he reaches 5/6 and more independent.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- trenning 4y agoThis reads like a Mike Judge pitch. And some of the comments in here read like this guys burner accounts trying to make it sound like any part of this made sense. I really hope it’s all real because it makes the comedy of it all so much better.
- pcthrowaway 4y agoHe says it tripled his productivity, then later says he got an extra 57 hours of work done for the month...
- scotty79 4y agoI'm quite surpised how many people here are strongly shocked by what for me looks just like self-organized ghetto co-working plus a bit of domestic service. There's also obsession with productivity but I think many of us have been there at some point. I don't think there's anything wrong with that guy, the whole thing is framed as an experiment and I don't think it brought any harm to anybody. Btw ... Is 'ghetto' racist? What would be a better word insted?
- tryauuum 4y agoI'm also shocked by the amount of people shocked. Guy chose the most straightforward action for his goals, good for him
- greenrd 4y ago> Is 'ghetto' racist? What would be a better word insted? It is not a word we use in this context in the UK, I think, because ghetto for us doesn't mean what it means in the US, it means Jewish ghetto in WW2, i.e. it's a word we only come across in history classes. But what does it mean? What are you trying to convey by using that word?
- dougdonohoe 4y agoThis is idiotic.
- l0rn 4y agoSounds hella neurotic. Probably very interesting guy, but just as insufferable. I think I know someone with a very similar personality.
- m3kw9 4y agonot a bad idea, or you could try to figure it out why you are procrastinating and try to do that. That’d give lasting results but you may or may not find out and use weeks and months as you also procrastinate on finding out why.
- greenrd 4y agoSome of us procrastinate because we have ADHD. I hear there is a cure to ADHD procrastination, it's called quitting your job and becoming an enterpreneur, but that's a little extreme and may result in a huge loss in income and job security for someone who's currently working at Meta.
- syndacks 4y agoThis is why San Francisco sucks.
- eatkd 4y agoThis is one of the best blogs I have seen on HN ever
- JuniorBalleg 4y agoComing soon: "I hired 50 people to do damage control and write flattering comments about me on HN"
- Nihilartikel 4y agoAh, to be young...
- chris222 4y agoOne word comes to mind: cringe. Please go live on a farm or something and do real work.
- tomdekan 4y agoThe amount of negativity on this post is bizarre. If you don’t like something informative that someone has tried and written about, why bother complaining about it? In contrast, I enjoyed the post and found it useful.
- simonebrunozzi 4y ago> When I woke up, I put the finishing touches on a blog post I had started earlier in the week and published it. It hit the #1 spot on Hacker News; I couldn’t stop myself from constantly refreshing the post as it got more upvotes while chuckling at the classic Hacker News hate comments. I only escaped the Skinner box when Sophia came in and I explicitly told her I wasn’t to be allowed on Hacker News. Ah, the feeling! Nothing like it.
- HL33tibCe7 4y agoI read this entire article in the voice of Patrick Bateman
- sjducb 4y agoWhenever I'm in an office I pick the computer with the most visible screens, so everyone can see what I'm doing. It has the same affect, but it's much cheaper.
- fencepost 4y agoSo hiring someone to be around you and enforce productivity - kind of like hiring a personal trainer and working out while they watch. I'm pretty positive a lot of the folks around me in a late-night Starbucks in the Before Times (always packed but now closed, no drive-through) were doing exactly the same thing. There were a bunch of regulars working on side projects, they all knew each other, and if someone was screwing around they'd probably get a question "How's the project going?" Second, you could probably do this for less by arranging a "study buddies" setup with college, grad or medical students but you'd also have to commit to keeping them productive as well.
- Kibae 4y agoOne thing I've done to increase my productivity after reading a comment from a Hacker News post [1] is recording my work sessions on OBS. The benefits for me are two-fold: 1) It keeps me accountable while working and 2) I can rewatch my work sessions and recall my thought process from a future me perspective. It's amazing how much you forget about a day, but by watching the recordings after the fact, you recall the micro lessons you learned during your work sessions and you have the opportunity to encode these lessons into your long-term memory. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277#32215958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277#32215958
- megablast 4y agoOBS - why do people use acronyms that most people have no idea about?
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- Benjamin_Dobell 4y agoBecause that's the name of the software. Google will return it as the first result. It is technically an acronym, Open Broadcast Software, but all the marketing material refers to it as OBS.
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- lbotos 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBS_Studio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBS_Studio Released in 2012, pretty popular software.
- LogicWolfe 4y agoI had to look it up too. In this case it’s Open Broadcaster Software, but they seem to treat OBS more as a name than an acronym so the usage seems appropriate. https://obsproject.com/ https://obsproject.com/
- eddsh1994 4y agoOf course the writer lists Effective Altruism as an interest. Could save lives with malaria vaccines but instead spends $5k of hiring babysitters.
- throwaway378037 4y agoWhat
- nervysnail 4y agoMild Patrick Bateman.
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- moconnor 4y agoINFO: did you make them sit on that hard wooden chair for eight hours and watch you recline in your aeron? But seriously: are your graphs showing 21 productive hours a week? That’s like four a day? What _are_ you doing the rest of the time? As someone else said: therapy would be an incredible productivity investment. Sharpen the saw. Babysitters are a hack for the symptoms, it’s long term more efficient to attack the cause.
- thdespou 4y agoI think his employer at Meta would be furious right now for letting this guy jerk off for 4 hours every day when he was supposed to be going fast and be breaking things.
- pnt12 4y agoFacebook doesn't go fast and break things anymore - that's a decade old logo, it's outdated.
- pnt12 4y ago4 hours looks OK to me, even good if we are critical about productive VS non productive time. Answering questions in slack, checking emails, going to meetings, waiting for ci/cd: all chew up your productive time.
- greenrd 4y agoI can see therapy working well for someone who has unprocessed trauma or depression, but I have ADHD, and my ADHD specialist has told me that the medicine part is for the symptoms, and the future therapy part of the treatment is for unlearning coping mechanisms that I may have developed to work around my ADHD symptoms, that I would no longer need due to the medicine doing its job. I'm not sure what they would be exactly, but I don't see how they would be holding back my productivity that much. P.S. most people don't have unprocessed trauma or depression to a clinically significant extent. If you think they do, you are living in a bubble (of melodramatic people perhaps? of therapists?)
- owjofwjeofm 4y agoCan someone directly explain the understanding he is lacking of what is wrong with this / what makes it off-putting, such as not understanding "the human element", "power dynamics" or "people or human dignity" Obviously many people in these comments sections don't seem to understand whats wrong with this, and there is such a thing as aspergers and the like. Maybe discussion can help people come to an understanding. Is it that he is essentially valuing their time less than his and therefore not viewing them as equals? could someone who feels more strongly try to put their finger on whats so off-putting?
- barry-cotter 4y agoSure. There are people like the author, who respect the autonomy of other people and believe that if there are two people who come to a mutually agreeable arrangement on the exchange of goods and services that’s ok. Then there are some other people who have an aesthetic revulsion for people who violate social scripts. So if you hire a maid, secretary, therapist or other kind of service staff that’s ok, but if you do something that doesn’t follow a standard script these people feel a sense of revulsion.
- pcthrowaway 4y agoI don't think that's what people are "objecting" to about this (well, not even objecting in many cases, just... flabbergasted). The author appears to do very little work, while he pays someone to sit there and be his surrogate mother, so that he can be a bit more productive. It seems somewhat attention-seeking (I personally believe it's honest, though it does invoke Poe's Law). That's fine too, people seek attention on HN, but they usually offer something insightful in return. This is more the equivalent of the Tiktok user who posted her "day in the life of an employee at (Meta? Airbnb?)" that involved very little work. Also fine, work isn't the point of life. But when you're showing off a flamboyantly eccentric "productivity hack" that got you to work 80 hours in a month instead of 25, so you could spend more time starting blog posts, breakdancing, doing yoga, going to the gym, "unironically starting a company (it's in stealth, sorry!)", doing online courses (at least this is at least somewhat related to the job they are presumably actually paid to do)... many people reading are going to be amused at the very least. It seems like they have time management issues that make this "experiment" only potentially useful to people who also struggles to get anything actually done due to battling severe ADHD while balancing working at a very casual pace, and shooting off in 10 different directions at once all the time. They would very likely benefit from some combination of a reality check, therapy, counselling, or medication. This blog post is remarkable because it demonstrates a hyper-exaggerated jumbalaya of first-world-problems, out of touch, unchecked privilege, and the "hacker" mentality, with a side of attention-seeking. It's like Lucille Bluth's character from arrested development[1] and Bill Gates trying to guess the price of groceries[2] conceived a baby with Krazam's "Hustle culture"[3] and delivered it right into this unbelievably glorious blog post I know, I'm being uncharitable, and I feel a little bad about it. I can even relate to the author with a lot of their struggles, interests, and activities. Best of luck to him. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad_higXixRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad_higXixRA [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
- swyx 4y agothis has to be parody right? > Tuesday morning—under Sophia’s supervision—I unironically decided to start a company (it’s in stealth, sorry!), wrote a random blog post, and did more work for my job. In the evening session with Hannah I picked up where I left off for my job and then went breakdancing. When I came back to my apartment, the internet was out so I read two chapters of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them until the internet came back on, after which I completed a lesson in the UI/UX course I’d enrolled in. if so i applaud the author on achieving heights of tech satire not seen since HBO's Silicon Valley
- karmakurtisaani 4y agoThis part immediately reminded me of The Hustle by Krazam.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoTold my 11-yo daughter what I was laughing about: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard”
- amelius 4y agoPerhaps work-from-home isn't such a great idea after all.
- erenyeager 4y agoSo interesting and off putting at the same time, I’m wondering if there is a good word to describe this feeling. That he’s 21, earning so much money, doing all these things, is interesting but also I hope he has some good influences around him to keep him grounded.
- greenrd 4y ago> I hope he has some good influences around him to keep him grounded. That's what he paid all those assistants for.
- ihm 4y agoThis could be straight out of American Psycho: > Saturday morning Hannah texted me she couldn’t make it, so I slept in and skipped the gym. When I woke up, I put the finishing touches on a blog post I had started earlier in the week and published it. It hit the #1 spot on Hacker News; I couldn’t stop myself from constantly refreshing the post as it got more upvotes while chuckling at the classic Hacker News hate comments.
- nexoft 4y agoChill guys... I think this guy is being bullied because he is different, like many others. I hope he will hang tight.
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- SergeAx 4y agoFun fact: in his detailed descriptions of how was the day he mentions his job ("software engineer at Meta", according to About section) only twice. It seems like a tiny fraction compared to writing blog and working on own company. Is it normal practice in SF tech companies?
- eddsh1994 4y agoI think this has already won the annual prize for weirdest post ever. There's even a "Date Me" form on the site. Claims effective altruism while spending close to $10k to be productive at blogging/yoga.
- JuniorBalleg 4y agoWhat a weird, weird man. I didn't need it anyway but this certainly confirmed the Early Life section for me: >In the evening session with Hannah I picked up where I left off for my job and then went breakdancing. When I came back to my apartment, the internet was out so I read two chapters of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them until the internet came back on, after which I completed a lesson in the UI/UX course I’d enrolled in. What a weird, weird detail to include.
- AnnikaL 4y agoConfirmed the Early Life section? What do you mean? The blog post doesn't discuss the author's life before his current situation.
- JuniorBalleg 4y agohttps://knowyourmeme.com/memes/early-life-wikipedia-section https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/early-life-wikipedia-section
- radicalcentrist 4y agoOkay this part has me convinced this post is satire. The hackernewsiness is simply off the charts. As the kids would say, ain't no way.
- JuniorBalleg 4y agoFitting username, I suppose. If you imagine mine is "radicalrightist" then the above comment might be less surprising.
- xkcd1963 4y agoThis guy reinvented the concept of hiring a personal butler. EDIT: I think coming from a humble background helps to proud oneself to be able to do everything yourself. I guess the line of having (modern) slaves vs employing someone is complicated and intermingled with the amount of payment. I imagine, especially the first assistant, after knowing that OP earns a magnitude more than 20/h, and then goes on a date and expects me to stay since I'm on payroll, is rather unsettling.
- ionwake 4y agoI’m not sure why some of the HN commenters seem to be slightly in hysterics over this I love the out of the ordinary experiment I don’t care if the OP could be a narcissist he did a good write up and leveraged a social aspect to increase his productivity in unique way.
- ascotan 4y agoCreepy.
- mikiem 4y agoI'm a little surprised at the response here. I feel like there is an element of "Body Doubling" here... a strategy used by those with ADD/ADHD. I recently looked in to this when curious about my own observation that I work longer and with better focus when working in close proximity of someone else.
- noduerme 4y agoA cheaper version of this is: - Have deadlines - Make evening plans you can't get out of - Ask your S.O. to cook dinner tonight so you can keep working, and expect them to notice if you're playing videogames.
- sweetro17 4y agothis must be a leaked nathan for you script
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- reagle 4y agoSethi did something like this in 2012 and his minder could slap him if he got distracted. https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/npc7g21v#quadrupled-my-productivity https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/npc7g21v#quadrupled...
- imron 4y agoReminds me of this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
- wodenokoto 4y agoThe “having someone around to keep you accountable” is definitely the real reason why managers want employees back in offices. And it works. You obviously don’t have to go crazy like the author, but it has a real effect. Just sitting at the library as a student was way more effective than sitting at home.
- cdogl 4y agoThis reads like a transcript of the Krazam video “The Hustle” https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U
- jameshush 4y agoHe started with the wrong goal in mind. The goal shouldn't be to increase the number of personal productivity hours. The goal is to move a company vision forward. The leverage you get by spending half as much money on a single full-time virtual assistant to handle tasks for you alone would easily be double the "output" as what he did here. Hopefully, lesson learned on his end? :shrug: Also looks like he's into standup comedy. If you ever want a spot in Taipei hit me up Simon!
- gabrielhidasy 4y agoLooks like the goal was to procrastinate less on hobbies and personal stuff, hiring someone to do that stuff would not solve anything.
- black_13 4y ago[dead]
- eachro 4y agoI believe the author could achieve the same result by working out of one of Meta's office. Plenty of coworkers around to mimic the effect of screen watching.
- obruchez 4y agoI'm doing this almost for free, by going to a café or tea room, and working on my laptop with its display visible to everyone.
- darkwizard42 4y agoWhat on earth. Amazing really.
- amadeuspagel 4y agoStrange to see the reaction to this. Of course hiring people to watch you is weird. Human psychology is weird and trying to motivate yourself to do certain things and not other things at the computer is weird. It's a hack.