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John Carmack on shorter work weeks (2016)
- elromulous 3y agoI'm not sure that John Carmack, someone who's known for his legendary coding ability and work ethic, is going to be representative of most engineers / programmers out there. The term 10x gets thrown around a lot to the point of banality, Carmack is actually one of those 10x humans.
- TehShrike 3y agoI think the split on these conversations isn't usually between extremely effective people and not-very-effective people, it's usually between people who aspire to be more effective/get more done, and people who think that par is fine.
- parineum 3y ago> it's usually between people who aspire to be more effective/get more done, and people who think that par is fine. _at work_ Most (all probably) people aspire to be more in whatever their passion is.
- TehShrike 3y agoThe discussion in the original post is responding to "Why working fewer hours would make us more productive". We're talking about how to be more productive in general.
- strikelaserclaw 3y agoits easy to work 12 hours a day when the thing you do is what gives you pleasure.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoWhich is entirely his point
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoWhich is incredibly quaint and myopic. The advanced world he lives in literally doesn't exist if people only work on passion projects.
- elromulous 3y agoExactly. And at Carmack's status, he can afford to only work on things that give him pleasure.
- Zetice 3y ago*was one of those 10x humans. He's kind of gone off the deep end now, though given this comment he may have always been a little out of touch with reality. He was a hero of mine, but now isn't (and IMO that's fine).
- ctrlp 3y agoIn what sense has he "gone off the deep end"? Why was he once a hero of yours but no longer?
- Zetice 3y ago1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35991322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35991322 2) His general admiration of Elon Musk and positive opinion of a man who flagrantly and regularly violates the very societal norms that have provided him with the opportunities he built his life around.[0] 3) His inability to navigate Facebook/Meta to effect the change he felt was necessary [1] 4) "My core thesis is that the federal government delivers very poor value for the resources it consumes, and that society as a whole would be better off with a government that was less ambitious." (I should have known about this but didn't until relatively recently) [2] 5) The comment he made as the topic of this submission; he's completely out of touch with reality for anyone who isn't him, but doesn't seem to care at all or even really understand what other people might want. John Carmack's way of thinking is useful for people who want to directly create things themselves, and who don't trust or can't figure out how to motivate or incentivize people to amplify their work. When I was like that, John Carmack was my hero. Now I realize that to be the most effective version of myself, I need to have relationships with others who make me even better than I could possibly be alone. For that, John Carmack is not a good person to look up to, as he doesn't seem to be capable of growing his reach beyond himself. So he's not my hero, he's someone I look at and now see all of the flaws that may have already been there, but weren't relevant for the time I valued him as an inspiration. [0] https://mleverything.substack.com/p/elon-musk-john-carmack-and-gatekeeping https://mleverything.substack.com/p/elon-musk-john-carmack-a... [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/john-carmack-leaves-meta-after-a-decade-fighting-to-make-vr-a-reality/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/john-carmack-leaves-m... [2] https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1895320834035758&id=100006735798590 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1895320834...
- varjag 3y agoThese discussions inevitably split the crowd into nine to fivers and enthusiasts.
- camdat 3y agoAm I expected to expend my enthusiasm for programming on my employer? I find it insulting that I must be a "nine to fiver" if I advocate for labor. My passion isn't building what my boss wants, it's building what _I_ want.
- gloryjulio 3y agoI would only work more if that means more money (overtime pay, promotion etc). Otherwise that's a no
- varjag 3y agoThere are plenty in the industry get the opportunity to work on what they like working on.
- camdat 3y agoYou're not saying anything here. Sure there are people like that, but the nature of capitalism means that people _must_ work to survive. This requirement precludes finding work you enjoy, and thus those that have the opportunity to work on something they like are in the minority. Put another way, would you quit your job immediately if you're asked to work on something you don't want to do? If not, are you a "nine to fiver"?
- thriftwy 3y agoI can imagine why a person would want to spend more than 40 hours working per week for a limited period of time, but I can't imagine why you would want to stay in that state for a prolonged period of time. Even if I can be more productive working 9 hour days, so what? I did not get born for being productive. Long workdays also point at bad planning, lack of proper task delegation or plain old overload. Overload is also bad in the sense that it implies a big backlog, and when you have big backlog, important things get not done.
- fasterik 3y agoFundamentally it's about meaning. People like Carmack find it meaningful to do ambitious projects and push their abilities to the limit. Some goals require more time investment than 40 hours per week. Obviously not everyone finds that lifestyle appealing, and that's fine. But I don't think it's hard to understand why somebody would spend a lot of time on the thing they truly enjoy doing.
- thriftwy 3y agoI understand that, but you should probably do your ambitious thing and retire by 40 then. If it takes a whole life, delegation and modest pace are paramount.
- fasterik 3y agoCarmack recently started a new company at age 52 with the goal of creating artificial general intelligence. Whether or not that is a realistic goal, I don't think a modest pace is going to maximize his probability of success.
- thriftwy 3y agoHe's not the only one human being on the planet Earth, there's eight billions of us. Somebody else will do it a few months later if he goes to rest and enjoys small things.
- micromacrofoot 3y agoJohn Carmack is very passionate about what he does and you'd likely have a hard time convincing him not to do it. Case in point is that he's still working despite likely being rich enough not to. Most people are working jobs they wouldn't necessarily be doing at all if they had some other means of paying the bills. This is who people are talking about when 4 day work weeks come up.
- nonethewiser 3y agoBut do you think you would accomplish more by working 4 days instead of 5?
- chasd00 3y agomaybe a better question to ask is can you accomplish the same by working less? If so then working less would be fine.
- nonethewiser 3y agoIf you complete X amount of work in 5 days, then switch to 4 days and still complete X amount of work, then it seems like you can actually complete X + X/5 in 5 days instead of X. I'm not arguing how much you should or shouldn't work. I'm just pushing back against the non-sense that people actually accomplish more by working less.
- sseagull 3y agoThought experiment: someone is forced to work 23 hours a day with 1 hour for sleep, 7 days a week. They will likely be fairly productive the first day, but eventually their productivity per day will be zero as they are too tired to function. Over, say, a month, their productivity will be, lets say, 40 hours (wild guess, maybe 20 hours one day, then a scattering the rest of the month). Now how about who someone works 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. They are likely productive those 4 hours, and able to sustain that the entire month. So they get 80 hours of productive work done, even though they 'worked less'. Now those are extremes, but literally working less in this case results in higher productivity in the long run. Now where that point is depends on very many variables (including individual biology, social responsibilities, and type of work). But such a point does exist where working more hours results in less productivity.
- jayd16 3y agoIronically he invalidates his whole point in the second sentence by admitting that there is indeed such a thing as overwork. The rest is an argument that underwork is a thing, which no one denies. So its really just a debate on ideal hours and the post fails to make an argument there.
- froggertoaster 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoPlease don't cross into personal attack on HN and please don't post unsubstantive/flamebait comments. You can make your substantive points without any of that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- froggertoaster 3y agoSorry Dan, you're right. I'll avoid that in the future.
- dang 3y agoAppreciated!
- ahmedalsudani 3y agoFrom the HN guidelines: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html You are constructing a strawman. Go read his comment again. He differentiates between knowledge work and physical work.
- jayd16 3y agoI don't think Carmack would deny that overwork exists for knowledge workers. He admits that anyone can have a peak and not be at it. I don't think Carmack would deny that a knowledge worker can be overworked and increase their bug output, for example. I do not believe anything I've said is against a strawman.
- cma 3y agoCarmack since the 2000s mostly always worked multiple jobs at less than 40hr. Working 30 hours on software at Id and 30 hours at his rocket thing is about like a half-time employee who does a hobby wood working job on the side. At Meta he eventually became part time CTO less than 40 hours and worked on his AI stuff on the side until fully moving to it. There is some difference in that he was probably doing lots of programming at all the different jobs, rather than an unrelated hobby (maybe not that different than the woodworking analogy though, he began talking about lathing rocket parts a lot), but 40 hours at one place tended to be too boring to him through large parts of his career more than he lets on in that comment, though the AI stuff came later. There's also a big difference in working on assigned tasks you maybe disagree with vs deciding which tasks are needed, having power of delegation, etc.
- matwood 3y agoHe's also a high level grappler. There are a lot of software people at my BJJ gym. I find it uses many of the same skills as programming. I know it's not a popular sentiment, but I've always just merged work and non-work. Found jobs I enjoyed and eventually became part owner in a company. In 20 some odds years of working, I've never hated a job like I read people here seem to, so maybe I did something right.
- nonethewiser 3y agoJohn Carmack is just right on this. Its non-sensical to claim more work gets done in 32 hours compared to 40. You dont have to be pro overtime to recognize this obvious truth. Sure, there are diminishing returns. And being tired can make a negative impact. But the “actually a 4 day, 8 hour work week is more productive“ claims is completely self serving bullshit. Just imagine working 4x 8 hour days. Now ask yourself if you can output anything except negative work on that Friday.
- christophilus 3y agoI’ve found that 5 x 6 is roughly as productive for me as 5 x 8. 4x8 would be a drop, no doubt. I’ve got approximately 6 good hours per day, and then I’m just not bothering. When I’m really in the flow, I can pull 10 hour days, but that’s fairly rare. Also, the long term impact on my happiness and well-being can take a while to measure.
- nonethewiser 3y agoI agree that the limiting factor is more about hours per day. Than days per week. So when working 8 hours instead of 6, there are 2 additional hours where you accomplish nothing? What are you doing? Also consider that even if you aren’t accomplishing anything it doesnt mean you’re getting less work done. Like I said I recognize there are diminishing returns. But it doesnt make sense to claim you’re actually getting less done.
- spiderice 3y agoYou’re making some incorrect assumptions. Why do you find it impossible that you can be more productive with 5x6 than 5x8 because you’re more well rested? If you do 10 work units per hour at 5x6, and you do 6 work units per hour at 5x8 because you're worn out, then 5x6 is more productive. Your mistake is thinking that the first 6 hours of 5x6 and 5x8 are equally productive. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it isn’t. But to claim that it definitely is and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t have common sense is just silly. Edit: to further clarify, are you claiming that 5x10 is definitely more productive than 5x8? What about 5x16? What about 5x24. Or 7x24? Your confidence that you’re definitely right that 5x8 is better than 5x6 makes me wonder where you know the ideal line is and how you know that.
- Apreche 3y agoJohn Carmack is someone who has, for the most part, had control of what he was working on. During his work hours, he is working on what he wants to work on. Yes, in that scenario, the right number of hours to maximize productivity and balance with the other things in life is going to be calculated differently. But for most people, we are working for an employer. We have nearly no control over what our work will entail. We do not give a single flying rat's behind about that work. We do that work solely because capitalism requires us to do some work, and so we do for survival. In this scenario, the correct number of hours to spend working is as few hours we we can get away with while still drawing a salary.
- IshKebab 3y agoYeah, listening to Carmack talk about working life is like listening to CEOs talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Good for them, but not really applicable to 99% of people.
- kapp_in_life 3y agoPutting more effort into work doesn't guarantee better results but it certainly could improve the situation for more than 1% of people and to imply otherwise is just as out of touch as a CEO saying "anyone can do it".
- brigadier132 3y agoRead the history of ID software. He quite literally pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.
- deelowe 3y agoNot while working for someone else he didn't. The vast majority of people have no choice and there's no guarantee that hard work will pay off. Hell, more often than not, it just means more will be expected of you in the future and when bonus time comes your boss will complain about constrained budgets.
- jacobmarble 3y agoI love work. Sometimes I work 50 hours for my full-time employer, and sometimes I work 30 hours for them, and 30 hours for my own side project. Not everyone loves work as much. Having the choice to work more or less is good. We should be compensated for whatever value we provide, measured in a way that agrees between employee and employer (or between market and person/business). So what's the problem?
- frakt0x90 3y agoThe measurement of value.
- dcsommer 3y agoIt's threatening to equality (wealth disparity) and also social/cultural values (aka work vs. family/neighborhood/community/etc.). These are all important equities, as is enabling high performers to work well. It is apparently difficult to find the right cultural balance that enables maximum achievement and all the rest, too. I disagree with any top-down pressures to "solve" this tension.
- calderwoodra 3y agoThe cultural point is one I hadn't considered before. IIUC, you're saying that if my goal is to work 60 hours a week (for any reason), having 40 hours as the cultural minimum is better than 32.
- systemvoltage 3y agoThere are lots of people that contribute less to society than they consume, and they are morally OK with that.
- threeseed 3y agoBased on what though. You could argue that many developers are a net-negative for society given that the industry wastes a lot of time building X idea in Y language for every combination of Y.
- rat9988 3y agoHonestly I find John's argumentary less interesting than either glyphi's answer he got or the article he is originally replying to.
- rgbrenner 3y agoIf you only have seven good hours a day in you, does that mean the rest of the day that you spend with your family, reading, exercising at the gym, or whatever other virtuous activity you would be spending your time on, are all done poorly? No I want to hear what Carmack's wife and kids think. There's definitely a trade off... that he doesn't acknowledge that indicates to me that his own priorities entirely involve work.
- Rapzid 3y agoAre you countering by saying 7 hours of work per day is too much to be able to spend quality time with your family after?
- rgbrenner 3y agoAll time involves trade offs. None of it's free.
- Filligree 3y agoWell, yes, it often is.
- Rapzid 3y agoYeah, I mean every job and person is different. But as a blanket claim I think it's bogus and John's article seems to be pushing back against that in favor of a more nuanced perspective.
- Filligree 3y agoIt's Carmack, though. He's so far out of the ordinary, I can't take any of his claims in this regards seriously. He's the outlier, and it's difficult from that position to write about what the average worker might be like.
- avidphantasm 3y agoWhat his comment is missing is that in families where both parents work outside of the home doing a job they are passionate about and would like to spend more time doing, they almost always are not able to work as much as they would like to, either on their actual work, or on side projects. I would love to only have to work 32 hours per week at my current salary and have one day per week to myself when the kiddo is in school. Sometimes I would use this to do "work" (maybe working on things I don't have time to get to in my day-to-day, learning new skills, having and working on side-projects), other times I would use the time to work on the house, do yard work, and other times I might go for a hike, or just sleep. Consistently having time to do activities like these would make me a better worker when I am at work, and a better parent and spouse when I am at home.
- olivierlacan 3y agoPlease do not take advice on cognitive science, personal health, finance or relationships from renowned experts who have found immense success in entirely different fields of knowledge. John Carmack is a very intelligent person who can teach you a lot about many extremely complex engineering-related matters. Applying his advice on health and work-life balance without a full understanding of the many variables that skew his perspective and his own daily life is probably a bad idea. Expertise is not automatically domain-transferable. Anyone claiming otherwise is suffering from hubris, or star-struck.
- riedel 3y agoTo be honest he is very much commenting about his roam of experience and not as research article but as a personal comment on HN. This should be allowed and should not be discredited as such (as this comment is a comment on the OP and not on someone saying that this comment should be generalized). Being in such an environment with some other obsessed researchers around me and the European court ruling that requires work documentation to be enforced just published. I understand the direction of the comment although I think it can only be applied to very limited situations. The argument seems to be like: do not regulate or discredit drugs because there is some people successfully self optimise with them knowingly taking certain risks...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dcchambers 3y ago> Even when you are clearly not at your peak, there is always plenty to do that doesn’t require your best, and it would actually be a waste to spend your best time on it. Wow, that's a great quote.
- allenu 3y agoIt really is. I'm finding that there are some menial programming tasks where I really can just turn off my brain and listen to podcasts while I work and almost let my muscle memory take over. There are also tasks that require my full undivided attention where having anything on in the background breaks my flow and just lengthens the task. When my brain power is low, it's often from working on these particular tasks and when it helps to switch over to one of the menial tasks. I also do find, as he says, that it's good time to take on some experimental/exploratory tasks that may use more creativity and less logical thinking. Seeing when you're depleted in one area but not in another is incredibly powerful and is a great productivity booster. (Of course, there are definitely times where I just cannot muster any energy and those are times where it helps to just step away from the keyboard.)
- mkoubaa 3y agoI use my "low energy" time for the more menial tasks, and during those times often my subconscious surfaces useful ideas. This has been so successful for me over the years that I still haven't bothered to learn regular expressions.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nitwit005 3y ago> This particular article does touch on a goal that isn’t usually explicitly stated: it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from working longer hours. Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world for that goal. The conclusion that an article discussing productivity research is secret conspiracy against people who want to work a lot of hours, is a bit mind boggling. He never suggests he's tried working fewer hours. Have to wonder if the guy is just one of those people incapable of taking a break.
- solarmist 3y agoPretty sure that’s the case. He has one deep interest at a time and literally everything else is a distraction from that. He is a “live to work” person who’s never had to “work to live” since his first couple years when the learning of it was enough to sustain his forward movement. Sure he has crap work he needs to do, but it’s all in service of what he already cares about. So no cognitive dissonance.
- norir 3y agoI saw this quote on some other thread recently on HN that is relevant: General Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord, the present chief of the German Army, has a method of selecting officers...: “I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.” Carmack clearly falls into the clever and industrious bracket and his perspective is skewed by his own disposition.
- anotherhue 3y ago> Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord 1878–1943
- elijaht 3y agoSeems like napoleon said it too: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/27/dumb-and-gets-things-done/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/27/dumb-and-gets-thin...
- facet1ous 3y ago> Whatever the grand strategy for success is, it gets broken down into lots of smaller tasks. When you hit a wall on one task, you could say “that’s it, I’m done for the day” and head home, or you could switch over to something else that has a different rhythm and get more accomplished. Even when you are clearly not at your peak, there is always plenty to do that doesn’t require your best, and it would actually be a waste to spend your best time on it. You can also “go to the gym” for your work by studying, exploring, and experimenting, spending more hours in service to the goal. Absolutely true. > I think most people excited by these articles are confusing not being aligned with their job’s goals with questions of effectiveness. If you don’t want to work, and don’t really care about your work, less hours for the same pay sounds great! If you personally care about what you are doing, you don’t stop at 40 hours a week because you think it is optimal for the work, but rather because you are balancing it against something else that you find equally important. Which is fine. And this is really the key to the whole shorter work week argument. I agree with John; if you are running your own company or initiative in an area you are passionate about, the 40 hour week question probably doesn't even dawn on you. Why would you want to work less to achieve a goal you are ambitious to reach? If anything you are working more because you enjoy it and want to see more progress more quickly. But most people working a typical job (even in tech) are not in a position to care deeply about their work and its outcomes - why that's the case is a separate discussion and probably differs person-to-person. A good amount of those people might even be working on things during those 40 hours that are a poor use of their individual time due to bad management, bureaucracy, inability to work on things they want to, etc. These people are not able to work 40+ hours things that feel or are as important as other things in their life such as side projects, family, exercise, etc. And so the 5 day, 40 hour workweek feels incompatible with their life.
- sangnoir 3y ago> But most people working a typical job (even in tech) are not in a position to care deeply about their work and its outcomes Perhaps most people - after looking at their paystub - are acutely aware that their employer doesn't deeply care about them. In my experience, there is a direct link between how much effort I put in going above and beyond in my work and how much higher (or lower) than average my salary was - with an inverse experience multiplier. I put in lot's of unrewarded effort fresh out of school. I didn't know any better, and probably used work to fill up down-time
- esotericimpl 3y ago[dead]
- simon_000666 3y ago“ my point is purely about the effective output of an individual. If we were fighting an existential threat, say an asteroid that would hit the earth in a year, would you really tell everyone involved in the project that they should go home after 35 hours a week, because they are harming the project if they work longer?” — doesn’t this depend on the outcome of your work to fight an existential threat? If you fail then going home after 35hrs was exactly the right thing to do (as you’ve optimized for making the most of your remaining time on earth) if your successful then however many hours you spent was worth it. Surely this entire argument is pointless unless you know the result of the time you spend?
- strken 3y agoHe tells you literally and exactly what he means: his "point is purely about the effective output of an individual". Emphasis is mine on effective output. His opponents argue that there's a peak in productivity, such that if workers wanted the greatest chance at stopping the asteroid, they should choose to only work 35 hours a week. He argues that this peak either does not exist, or is way more than 35 hours.
- bombcar 3y agoIt makes more sense when you think of salaried vs hourly. Because hourly people are so obviously useful on long hours that companies will pay 50% more to have them there.
- Madmallard 3y agoWhen I'm really motivated on something I will work well in excess of 40 hours, perhaps double that, in a week on it and get drastically more done than I would ever have done limited myself to fewer hours.
- antisthenes 3y agoCarmack is an exceptional individual, but when it comes to personal productivity, I truly believe it is a unique thing, where everyone must find something that works for them. Kind of like taste in music - find what you like, and don't be that asshole that judges others for their taste.
- globalreset 3y agoFor majority of people work is a mean to the end. If they know they'll have to spend more time working, they'll fluff it with more not-actually-work to compensate. That's all there is to it. An extreme natural workaholic will have a hard time understanding it.
- f38zf5vdt 3y ago> This particular article does touch on a goal that isn’t usually explicitly stated: it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from working longer hours. Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world for that goal. Am I the only person appalled by Carmack's apparent privilege here? In an era when a CEO is routinely making 300x the wage of an average worker, and sometimes thousands of times more, giving people the option to work less for the same amount of wage seems like one of the few ways we can force the ultra-rich to give back? No one is forcing people to work 7 hours and they could easily work more if they wanted to, but reducing the minimum amount of toil required seems to be a net benefit to everyone who is not insanely wealthy.
- adverbly 3y agoThe fact that John Carmack thinks he needs to respond to articles targeted at the general population is a little bit surprising to me. Is it not obvious to John that he is at least 4-5 standard deviations from the mean here? I would be more than happy to listen to John talk about what works for him and strategies that he finds effective. But hearing him try and critique articles targeted at the average person or average developer or even average 10x developer... like... Does he not understand how different other people's lives are than his? It reminds me of when you hear politicians try and talk about the struggles of regular people. It is so cringe.
- Aeolun 3y agoI think he just very rarely has a moment when he’s just really done. Which is probably because he’s mostly worked on things that he wanted to be working on. I find this mindset easy to replicate when working on my personal projects. Effectiveness may drop a bit after 1am for obvious reasons, but otherwise any hour is much like another. The problem comes when trying to get yourself to do something that you don’t really want to do, or when you need to deal with the umpteenth time someone broke the same system due to the same mistake or the third discussion in a day where people miss the obvious solution. You can only have so much of that in a day before you mentally check out.
- fhd2 3y agoI believe working on something you really want to do is even just one variable. There's also stuff like: 1. Do you have enough ownership to at least sit at the table when it's decided what exactly you work on and how you do it? Can you affect strategy, goals, priorities, timelines and design? 2. Do you reap at least part of the reward (financial, appreciation, status)? Does it feel fair compared to what others get out of it based on their contribution? 3. Does the actual day to day work involve sufficient things that energise you, and few enough things that drain you? Do you have the power to delegate the latter to at least some degree? I've never met an employee who can answer all of these with yes, but they're crucial for getting things done in a truly motivated and successful fashion, at least for me. Employers don't typically give up more power/rewards than they feel they have to, though. Ever since I went independent, I have a lot of this. That power over my own work and fortune is a phenomenal motivator, and I really enjoy work these days. I know I can work less if I feel like it, it's my decision. I can only imagine how much _more_ of this Carmack has, being rich, successful and highly respected from a young age. I don't know him, but I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and say he must honestly have no idea what it's like to not have that.
- jiggawatts 3y agoAs a data point: he’s currently divorced. Working your ass off makes you more productive, yes, but it comes at a cost. Personal time, family time, etc…
- Insanity 3y agoBad data point, plenty of people get divorced whom work regular hours. You’re also making assumptions about the cause of a divorce we frankly know nothing about..
- ollien 3y agoI didn't read it like that at all, more that he doesn't have a major commitment that a lot of people do.
- DevKoala 3y agoHe addresses it on the post: > Given two equally talented people, the one that pursues a goal obsessively, for well over 40 hours a week, is going to achieve more. They might be less happy and healthy, but I’m not even sure about that. What worked for me and my current partner is being upfront about my career goals and the lengths I was willing to go to achieve them. I’ve now been in a strong relationship for 7+ years which is twice whatever I lasted with other partners who found me sometimes reserving a weekend to work/research a deal killer.
- Dudester230602 3y agoIsn't it common for a spouse to like "6 figures" but not what it takes.
- geraldwhen 3y agoYou can make lots of money working 30-35 hour weeks. Perhaps those working 60 hours a week just aren’t as clever, or haven’t found a valuable enough niche.
- systemvoltage 3y agoI think the biggest secret to success/happiness in today's zeitgeist of anti-work ideology is to do just the opposite – work your ass off to the absolute limit. Your brain isn't as weak as the society tells you. Entire state of life becomes awesome and fulfilling. People reward you, they appreciate you, you help them improve their lives, and there is no better feeling of gratitute than be helped by someone that works hard. Ignore society, especially Hackernews mentality. It's not healthy to read this forum where 99% of the comments are anti-work. In a meta way, HN is a great place for me to find what not to do.
- ck425 3y agoDo you really think "anti-work" is the prevailing ideology in Western society? I'd argue the current popularity of "anti-work" sentiment is a backlash to the dominant "work is everything" ideology we've had the last couple of decades.
- systemvoltage 3y agoToday's zeitgeist has taught youngsters to never reach their potential and be perpetually inward looking. The exponential rise of "mental health" industrial complex and "safe spaces" in last 7-10 years is mostly has religious undercurrents and less on anything objective. It makes people misrable and pessimistic. May be the idea is to get them hooked on goverment services? I don't know. I can't steelman it. I don't have any data to prove, but just speaking from the heart and what I see. There is definitely a need to address extreme issues and occurrences, but there is no way to separate wheat from the chaff and the entire movement has taken on weird self-fulfilling ideology. Worker rights movements today feel less like the worker rights movements pre-2010. The absolute pinnacle of this is r/anti-work. And lots of it on HN unfortunately. If you're here looking for optimism, there is none to be found. Cynicism everywhere.
- thebigwinning 3y agoYes. I know very few people who hold "work is everything" or even work more than 40 hours.
- 3y ago
- OptCohTomo 3y agoHere's what Richard Hamming has to say on the subject: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html "Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest." The payoff of working more is not linear.
- jypepin 3y agothe question is, when you "work" more, are you actually "working" more. I'm not advocating for either side, but I believe a few places that have moved to a shorter work week haven't seen lower productivity. Might be a sign that most people actually can't do ~40hrs of work per week.
- galleywest200 3y agoI agree with you. Lots of positions ask you to stay "at work" when in reality all you are doing is watching your inbox for another email or something even less important.
- icedchai 3y agoWork-from-home has really changed this. I don't even need to pretend to work, just need to keep that Slack dot green and appear "responsive."
- the-smug-one 3y ago>just need to keep that Slack dot green and appear "responsive." You need to do that? Dang, that sucks. Still "butts in chairs" attitude.
- koube 3y agoI think if you take someone like me, and really most people, and have them sit in the office for an extra hour per day, you probably won't see much benefit. But I definitely feel like there are some people who grind work all day, putting in ridiculous hours, and they do amazingly work, beyond what 1.5 or even 2 people can do. Especially when you consider career progression over time, maybe the people who are hustling will have ranked up a couple times over an 8 hour/day person, and is contributing at a much higher level. I think you make a good point that it's more complicated than "just stay longer", but I do also agree with GP that there is some kind of compounding interest when it comes to how many hours work. Don't know how it works though.
- mcbrit 3y agoMost people, and let me qualify them as serious people, have real problems figuring out how to accept higher training volume without injury in sport or tech or business or whatever. It's great that John is this monster endurance tech athlete with amazing results, but in the same way that the dude that ran a 50k or 100k last weekend might not be the best person to emulate for you, John probably doesn't align with what makes sense for 99.9% of the world's tech population. Shorter work weeks make sense for almost everyone working in tech. I'd put in more 9s, non-ironically, but it's a bad look. Since the post is tagged 2016, I think it is also more likely than not that John would agree with this now; it's very possible that he'd also agree with it then, but I didn't go beyond the linked comment.
- sseagull 3y agoI do wonder how much of this is genetic. I know people who just need less sleep than I do (which I believe is genetic), and they can be more productive than me no matter how hard I try. I just need more time to rest than they do. After a few hours (5ish) of deep work, I can't think straight, and start overthinking problems. I could probably train myself to go longer, but likely not that much longer. So I wonder if there is a genetic basis to that. (Although even if there is, I doubt people like John Carmack would understand)
- gumballindie 3y agoThere isnt much about genes. John Carmack is fortunate enough to do what he likes and what he likes seems to generate revenue. When you do something you enjoy and are in control of your own fate believe me you can work longer hours without noticing. Even the slightest adjustment to your liking can increase your productivity. Thats why people working from home, in a nice environment are more productive than those in a forced environment. Even cattle produce more milk when they are in an environment they like.
- deprecative 3y agoCarmack also has no meaningful idea as to how software is actually developed. He was exceptionally fortunate to have found success enough for life in the early 90s. He never had to deal with the real world. I don't know why anyone not in his same privileged as hell position would listen to him on nearly anything he has to say. And I say none of this to put the guy down. He's just not in the position nearly every one of us is.
- hourago 3y ago> This particular article does touch on a goal that isn’t usually explicitly stated: it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from working longer hours. Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world for that goal. Individual freedom seems to be in the mouth of all millionaires that can afford that freedom. Most people has to work to live and their freedom of choice ends there. And it is already forbidden in most countries to "work as many hours as you want" because is the only way to avoid a race to the bottom were everybody, except the rich, suffer. This is a clear example of bias and that the fact that a guy is talented in one thing does not make him be able to understand a different one.
- JohnFen 3y ago> it is already forbidden in most countries to "work as many hours as you want" because is the only way to avoid a race to the bottom were everybody, except the rich, suffer. Remember that Carmack is in the US, where this is not forbidden.
- deburo 3y agoworking over 40h is only « forbidden » where i live because paying 1.5x/h is not acceptable from the employer’s pov. it’s annoying from the worker’s pov since you’re necessarily capped at 40h if your employer doesn’t want to pay that rate. i don’t understand your race to the bottom argument.
- SturgeonsLaw 3y ago> i don’t understand your race to the bottom argument. Look at work culture in the United States or parts of Asia, where the goal is to extract as much production out of the workers as possible and if it grinds them to dust, that's their own personal failing and you will just swap out the faulty cog for a fresh one. It gets absurd when you look at Japan's performative long hours. It's not even financially beneficial by that point.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> i don’t understand your race to the bottom argument. Being able to voluntarily work more than 40h/week also means being able to be voluntold to work more than 40h/week.
- madrox 3y agoAs someone who worked 10-14 hour days in their 20s, I know for a fact it made me more effective and I achieved more. I also scaled way back in my 30s to have more of a life. I don't regret either decision. What Carmack says maps to my own experiences. People making ad hominem attacks at Carmack for why he's wrong are just that may be in for a rude awakening in life. What I think is really at odds in the comments is this: people want to work less and feel like it's ok, but don't feel like it's appropriate to come out and say that.
- bombcar 3y ago10-12 hour days can be great for getting shit done especially if it takes time to get going. But that can also be combined with 3 or 4 day work weeks (and not necessarily repeated long weekends, day on day off day on can be good too for some people).
- Schnitz 3y agoI agree with you 100%. Carmack also says he ensures he gets enough sleep. As long as you get 7-8h a day and take care of yourself reasonably well with food and the occasional run you can work more than 40h/week focused and be very productive in those extra hours. What surprises me most about Carmack is that for him the “why am I working so much? for what? I want a life” moment never came but maybe that’s because he’s been his own boss for almost his whole life working on passion projects. He openly said for both Armadillo and Occulus/Facebook that he started doing less when the passion fades or the corporate BS became too much.
- gls2ro 3y agoDoes this work if you want to have a family and say one child and have a healthy life? I dont see the hours there: - say you sleep 8h - 1h = taking care of your body (shower, toilet, washing hands) for entire day - 2h eating and eating prep - 1h lost in random tasks (a curier delivery, feeling an emotion, ...) you then have 12 hours to handle work and family and sport :D how less time to put for family per day? 1 hour and the family survives as as family over say 5 years of doing that? please note that I did not added shopping, paying bills, ... talking with friends...
- chris222 3y agoIsn’t his opinion basically irrelevant since he is someone like Musk that has zero concept of WLB.
- jhp123 3y ago> If you only have seven good hours a day in you, does that mean the rest of the day that you spend with your family, reading, exercising at the gym, or whatever other virtuous activity you would be spending your time on, are all done poorly? If I do focused mental work for even seven hours I'm completely wiped. I absolutely can't read a normal book at that point. Clicking the next meme on reddit is about all I can manage. And yeah, my wife and kids aren't getting a lot from me on those days. I'm surprised that Carmack seems to find this absurd. Am I super atypical? Or is he? I'm actually curious: after let's say 5 hours of in-person interviews, do most people come home and fire up the CAD software to work on rockets or whatever, like Carmack, or do they hang out on the couch vegetating and feeling like they have a minor hangover or head cold, like me?
- avocabros 3y agoThere are plenty of people who do side projects outside of work, train for marathons, etc. That doesn't mean you're atypical - most people don't run marathons, for instance - but I don't think Carmack is this wild, totally out-of-band 1 in a million in terms of energy/motivation
- goostavos 3y agoIn-person interviews are kind've a weird thing to just throw in there. I'd describe them as very, very different than the focused mental work that happens during the normal course of a day job. Interviews are high stress, emotionally draining, and, honestly, frequently rather degrading due to being talked down to. It's like having the fight or flight part of your brain firing on max for 5 hours. I agree that the only thing I really want to do at the end of such days is turn off. That is wildly different from my day to day. After work, I'm still hyped to go to the gym, do some woodworking, program more, study. The world is an exciting place. I've also found that if I succumb to the reddit infinite-scroll, a sense of numbness washes over me that takes awhile to shake free. I scroll like I'm seeking a high and nothing is doing it. Contrast that with, say, reading a book after work. Such a thing has never left me feeling the same empty feeling.
- jhp123 3y ago
- dullcrisp 3y agoI don't understand his argument here. He seems to be arguing against the idea that it's actually impossible to get anything productive done after you've worked a certain number of hours rather than the idea that a company or workforce can be more effective if they work fewer hours. I can work for 100 hours in a week and get strictly more done than I did in the first 40, and yet I wouldn't be surprised if a company that required 100-hour weeks from its employees became more effective when they reduced their work week to 40 hours.
- smitty1e 3y agoHow do I possibly have more karma than Carmack? Likely due to frittering away more time on here than he, rather than doing "useful" things.
- crtified 3y agoMany of Johns points are sound, as expected, but the entire discussion lacks an overarching context, namely: "what is your goal?". That diverse, foundational variable defines all that comes after. Deciding not to do something is consequential too, because Opportunity Cost exists whether you like it or not.
- skeaker 3y agoHuman experience varies way, way too much for there to be a definite answer to this. There are billions of people, and a 100% chance that some people work better with longer hours. Some people love work more than having a family and will happily go without one or get divorced to stay longer at the office. Some people wind up committing suicide because of how oppressive their work is. Some people just naturally have more energy, some less. At the end of the day, research on the general population can really only give us a good baseline default. It won't be perfect for everyone, but actual, tangible research has shown that on average, less hours at work makes things more productive. That should be our default. When (not if) an individual who isn't compatible with the default comes along, we should just make them not work on the default.
- summerlight 3y agoThe main idea of shorter work weeks is giving back some degree of the control of employee's time rather than forbidding them from working longer hours? Of course, this is not going to work unless you have a good way to enforce this to employers due to power structure. John probably doesn't appreciate this since he owns a nearly full control of his time thanks to his financially independent status, which is a rare privilege across ordinary white collar workers.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y agoHe's missing the point. This isn't really about how productive you are after N hours. It's about how many hours are expected of you. It's a little disgusting that the only way workers can make a case that reduced demands be placed on them, is by arguing that this would support their employers' interests. The 40 hour workweek was not instituted solely for shareholders' benefit. It was instituted because that's what workers wanted, and they fought for what they wanted, the end. Their interests. There is work and there is play. If I am "accountable" -- if somebody can smack me for failing, if I need to do it to pay the rent or to fund a retirement -- then it's work. Work demands are pure liabilities. Every rational person seeks to reduce their liabilities. Once you've met those obligations, that doesn't mean you stop learning or stop accomplishing things. But now you can focus on the things that really seem to matter, that you are really interested in. This is why people want to reduce their work obligations. Sure, part of it is laziness. Part of the time will be frittered away on YouTube. But some of it will be spent on other, valuable, pursuits. When I was a kid, I taught myself to program, during summer vacation. Why? Because I didn't have homework. This is about reducing the amount of time during which you have to do what you're told. This is about human freedom. Whether productivity, narrowly conceived, goes up or down, does not matter, so long as enough still gets done. Without "enough", the demand will always be for "more, more, more".
- bitwize 3y agoCarmack got that 90s hacker grindset. Which I still had... in the 90s. These days it'll take a princely sum to get me to devote more than 40h/week to spinning JIRA tickets into gold. I've got a wife and non-human "kids" now, and they get the cream of my time/love/attention.
- etempleton 3y agoI think shorter work weeks are in demand because no one gets to unplug. Work comes at many knowledge workers near 24/7. Night? Weekend? Vacation? Doesn’t matter. Someone higher up the org chart can reach out to you and will expect you to respond. Under that constant bombardment the number of hours actually worked is always going to be greater than regular office hours indicate. To combat this reducing “working days” from 5 to 4 helps keep hours reasonable.
- gumballindie 3y ago> productivity at an assembly line job having a peak such that overworking grinds someone down to the point that they become a liability See, that’s the issue. Software jobs have become assembly line overworking grinds.
- tomxor 3y ago> it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from working longer hours. Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world for that goal. The film "2081" based on the short story "Harrison_Bergeron" depicts such a world, where everyone is forced to be equal, at all cost: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1282015/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1282015/
- bodge5000 3y agoThere's obviously many factors at play here, a lot of people have mentioned different brain chemistry, interest in the work your doing (which of course also isn't a binary choice, you can enjoy your job but enjoy your personal projects more), etc.. But I think one thing that doesn't get talked about enough is, if I were to try to put it into a word, finality. I can work for 4-6 hours and be completely wiped. Equally, in the past I've done ludum dares for 24, I seem to remember once even getting close to 48 hours straight, and at the end I'm full of beans (or more so than you'd expect). Again, obviously interest plays a part here but what is much bigger in my opinion is that I know that at the end of that 48 hours, my work is done. I'm "free". If I were to do 48 hours straight at my office job, I'd still be back in the next day, and the day after, and so on. If the work has no end, what is the motivation to power through it?
- LimitedInfo 3y agoI think your last sentence is the reason for the obsession with starting your own venture. Then there is a theoretical "end."
- fijiaarone 3y agoJohn Carmack probably hasn’t worked a full day in this century. In the 1990s he was one of the most productive people doing what he loved best. And luckily, after only a few years, never had to have a “job”. For everyone else, there are marginal returns and higher productivity for shorter working hours — even the burger flipper is more productive in a 4 hour shift than an 8 hour shift.
- ineedasername 3y agoI don’t think it’s one size fits all. Carmack mentions some people just have 7 good hours in them a day. But you can’t just think in terms of day by day, even for the same person: Sometimes I have 60 good hours a week in me, some days more or less than average to get there. I’m obsessed with an idea, driven to complete it. And sometime I’ve barely got a solid 15 hours in me for the week, maybe for multiple weeks at a time. No simple answer for what leads me there, but the rest of my time is spent working on the absolutely more urgent things that can’t wait and then just trying to fill the other hours with things that aren’t completely useless, learning about current tech trends, trying to find something “shiny” to strike my interest that has at least minimal relevance to my field, etc. I’m sure that averaged out my workplaces have received the value they paid for in my salary, but there’s peaks and valleys. And sometimes that even includes having a “screw it” day where nothing critical has to get done and I need a mental breather, time to clear my head from the day to day. But that’s just me. Everyone will be different. Trying to make a universal paradigm of optimized productivity is a waste of effort. The best you might get are some general guidelines and enlightened flexibility.
- dryark 3y agoI don't disagree that more work can get done if you work more. What is being discussed is not "shorter work weeks" but "shorter work days", as many people who do shorter work weeks still work 40 hours a week but do it in less days. It seems that Carmack may actually be in support of that. Working shorter days is not about maximizing the quantity of work but the quality. It is done when it is undesirable to have any work done that is below a certain quality, or just to increase worker happiness. Many people do their highest quality work after having sufficient rest, and then continue to do well building up context till they are burned out for the day. It very much depends on the person though as some people gain more relevant short term memory context the longer they have been awake, and are able to create ingenious code in late hours more so than in their morning. Basically, what it seems Carmack is arguing here is that he wants to get all the possible work out of all employees. Feel free to correct me John if that is not what you mean. I personally don't find it necessary to extract all possible work from employees, as I respect their free time and personal life. I value happiness of my workers over how much work they get done. Happy workers create better results imo.
- markus_zhang 3y agoCarmack is a programming machine. Although I appreciate his productivity I do believe he has some genetic mutations ordinary people do not have.
- cosmiccatnap 3y agoThis smells of someone who has bought into the industry wholesale and has been known to make very unreasonable deadlines throughout all of their projects. Go look at doom on Sega Saturn to see an example but there are two interpretations here 1. He is disconnected from the reality of the situation he is in where he has had total autonomy of something he loves his whole life and cannot understand the concerns of others who are the backbone of his success. 2. He is disingenuous and needs to be a voice to disuate politicians and corporations from implementing something that would negatively impact his bottom line personally. I'll leave it up to you to think about but either is quite sad for someone who is in a position of power to reduce the suffering of millions of people by just speaking out.
- keyle 3y agoThere two simple school of thoughts and if you think of it this way, it will all make sense 1. work is a sustenance, you do it for the money and want to do as little of it as possible since you don't enjoy it. It does not define you. 2. work is a passion, the money is a side effect, and you want to do as much of it as possible because you enjoy it. It defines you. The whole discussion on where you sit on the subject is based on which camp you see yourself in. The conclusion being, don't judge people for which side they're on. The cards just landed that way.
- duxup 3y ago> When you hit a wall on one task, you could say “that’s it, I’m done for the day” and head home, or you could switch over to something else that has a different rhythm and get more accomplished. That’s pretty much what I do. I hit the “enough” on a task because I ran out of brain cycles or just frustration and I go for a walk or pick another task. Maybe it is the advantage of working from home for a small company but people understand if you’re fried or need to do something else. They know I’ll get it done in the end. That freedom means I also will be inspired and rush to the computer late at night and have the energy to get something in / done too. Not because they ask me, but because I want to do it.
- CoryAlexMartin 3y agoProbably one of the most damaging ideas I ever bought into (some time in my late teens) was the idea that people are not generally capable of being productive for more than 35 hours per week, and sustaining it. It seemed true, because I always had trouble working a full work week, even on projects I cared about. At the tail end of my 20s, I started to realize that this isn't the case, at least for me. I've always found it hard to get work done because I'm low in industriousness, but that can be overcome with routine, minimizing distractions, and knowing when to switch to easier tasks. I don't really know what my limit is, but it's well over 40 hours. I wish I had listened to more people like John Carmack when I was younger, because maybe I wouldn't have wasted so much of my time over the past decade.
- markild 3y agoDamaging for what? I agree that it could be damaging for overall productivity, but I would argue that it's very good for other things. Eg. peoples ability to focus on other things in life, like family and friend. I find it strange that we would want to optimize everything for growth.
- CoryAlexMartin 3y agoI simply was working far less than I actually wanted to. Being good at my craft and producing good work is important and enriching to me. For people with my priorities, it's not good to always be told that we _shouldn't_ work that much. It's not good that John Carmack gets derided for talking about the benefits of working more. "Work less" is such an easy and convenient position to adopt, and it's thrown around in a way that I feel is careless. I'm not even speaking from the position of someone who wants to work 80 hours a week to the detriment of family and enriching hobbies: I value those things as well. I can work an above average amount if I take time away from social media and watching YouTube videos and Twitch streams, which are things I feel like I've done in excess.
- happyweasel 3y agoIf I get paid for working more than 8 hours, I would do it. If working for longer than 8 hours needs to be done, then change the contract, increase the pay. If I own a company, I would work for as long as it is needed. Else, it is just a contract. A company thinks you are replaceable anyway. Do not get fooled. They will replace you within 3-4 weeks. And you do not own anything of the extra work you are doing, it is the company that will take the credits and the profit.
- spoonjim 3y agoI don’t think Carmack’s wrong but he should also realize that he is a 7 standard deviation outlier so his brain might not be like others’. It’s also a question of ROI - it may be a lot easier to spend 12 hours a day programming if you’re literally among the 5 best programmers in the world, the same way practicing basketball is probably a lot more fun for LeBron James than it would be for me. “Oh, that was an enjoyable day! I just solved three open problems in computer graphics!” Rather than “Why is the button still not showing padding on the left?”
- gls2ro 3y agoI am curious about the practical side of things and who this is for. So I would like to ask you for a hypothetical allocation of time chunks per day for someone that wants/has a family and a healthy lifestyle (sports, eating healthy...)? Please include in there: sleeping, cooking, exercising, spending time with your partner and with your kid, paying bills, and making personal decisions. If the answer is any of these: - my partner is doing everything - other people are doing everything else except my work Then I invite you to think about for whom is this lifestyle then.
- v7engine 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj1q7arJATM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj1q7arJATM
- wizofaus 3y ago> you don’t stop at 40 hours a week because you think it is optimal for the work, but rather because you are balancing it against something else that you find equally important. ...or because we're social creatures and tend to stick to well-established norms, for all sort of reasons (mostly good, not always). 40-hour weeks are arguably a relatively recent norm at that. Whatever socially established norm we come up with as the number of hours one is typically expected to work in a full-time job, it's not likely to be the maximally-productive number for every worker, and those like Carmack almost certainly can and do achieve more working much longer hours. But there does seem to be good evidence that for larger samples of workers, reducing from a 40-hour week to 32 or similar doesn't have much of a measurable impact on output (which implies productivity per hour worked has actually gone up considerably). And, arguably more importantly, workers that have taken part in such programs generally report improvements in their health, sense of self-worth, "happiness" etc. On that basis I'm definitely in favour of revisiting the expectation that a full-time job is ~40 hours a week, and understanding what can be done to help corporations and employees transition to fewer hours. I actually think the harder problem is: should we extend the current concept of a weekend to be 3 days, or should we accept that the "3rd" rest day each week is different for everyone. I'm generally in the latter camp (*), for various reasons, but I could persuaded that a 3-day weekend, where a significant % of all workers across all industries (including, e.g. schools) all take the same 3 days off each week, has greater benefits. * strictly speaking I'm in the camp of moving to a 4.5 day week, whereby every worker is expected to negotiate a half-day they won't be available each week with their employer.
- bullen 3y agoThe trick is not how much you work but on what you work. 1 hour in the right direction is worth an infinity of time in the opposite direction. So letting your brain rest and melt the direction you should pick is leverage to infinity. That said, with due respect to his skills; Carmack is also an example of going in the wrong direction; from tick based network, spraycones and headshots, violent games, to energy wasting AI and rockets. His legacy will not age well unfortunately. Bring on the downvotes!
- SergeAx 3y agoThis: > If you don’t want to work, and don’t really care about your work, less hours for the same pay sounds great!
- gpvos 3y agoWhat a misguided comment. Carmack has a few good points, but seems not to get that having a job you like is a luxury few can attain. The goal is not to prevent sone from working and earning more, but making sure that all can earn enough to live while not overworking themselves.
- Paul_S 3y ago"The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead." (Douglas Adams) If you want to achieve great things, take his advice. If you want to be happy consider the price he paid for it first.
- globular-toast 3y agoShorter work week doesn't mean you can't work more. People like Carmack (and me) would still fill up most of our lives with "work". But there's a big difference between doing it because you want to and doing it because you have to. I worked for a little while in a scientific institute. I worked as a programmer but I had to know a bit of the science to do my job. I quickly realised that I would never be truly successful in this field because I just wasn't as into it as others were. For many of the people there the science was their life. Similar to how computers was my life before I worked there. My work could never compete with their passion. The point of the shorter work week is to stop forcing people to do what they don't want to do for so long.
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- alkonaut 3y agoIt’s pretty simple: I can probably squeeze out any number of hours if I’m thrilled by the work. But few or no employers are going to manage to motivate me to do it because as Carmack says “my goals don’t align with my employer’s” or perhaps better put: my employer’s motivation doesn’t align with my motivation. So yes I’d be as effective with a 30 hour week as a 40 for most jobs. And I totally agree with Carmack: it’s *mostly* a motivational issue. But perhaps that’s a sign I we should just hire more people, pay them 75% to work 30 hour weeks.
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- ly3xqhl8g9 3y agoFor very few labor == leisure, for even fewer labor == leisure == life. If for someone labor != leisure, for whatever reason, then it's a category error [1] to follow this sort of advice. A much better question should be: why are there so few for which labor == leisure? Why do we attend and attune ourselves to a system in which labor == leisure is such a scarce set and setting? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake
- deafpolygon 3y agoThat aged like milk. But Carmack is also quite privileged in that he got to work on mostly stuff that he wanted to work on. I bet if we all had that (and knew what we wanted to work on, on top of that).. we would work more hours as a result.
- nathan_compton 3y agoI thin what Carmack is saying here makes sense if all you care about is productivity. But the two salient things to this discussion are, to me, first that the vast majority of people do not/can not work on something they genuinely care about (since work is allocated by capital, not personal preference or even democratic decision making) and, secondly, productivity has increased steadily for decades while compensation has remained flat. Given that second thing in particular, I think any ordinary worker, working for a wage, is stupid for not trying to claw back some of those gains, either via a shorter work week, more wages, more socialism, whatever. When I look at that diverging productivity/compensation curve I wonder how workers in this country were so comprehensively subdued.
- Kon5ole 3y agoCarmack is clearly talking about "work you care about" in his post. That's not necessarily the work you are paid to do by your employer, though it might be. Having the mindset that all your talents are equally available to "corporation you" as they are your employer is a key takeaway from Carmack (and others) I think. Even if you are paid to do things you don't care about, save energy for things you do care about and don't limit yourself by thinking of it as "just a hobby" if you really care about it. When Carmack had a 9-5 coding job he still made games any way he could. The effort he put into that "work" was what really mattered for his success. If he had the mindset that he should only work for the employer and only 9-5 we'd never have heard of him. We can't all be Carmack but many of us can do better than spending all our effort on something we don't really care about.
- repentless_a 3y agoI recently read that George Washington was often frustrated that his slaves would not work hard and needed to be constantly watched and threatened to be productive. This reminds me of that. If you have completely misaligned economic incentives you should expect misaligned performance from your employees. A founder or executive stands to reap so much more from their effort. Expecting someone to give up large amounts of their time in the prime of their life for mediocre pay on a project that they have little to no agency over is crazy. It amazes me how angry capitalists get when the employees act like capitalists.
- ChoGGi 3y agoWithout reading anything, I'm going to guess he supports regular hours or 4 day weeks. Until it's crunch time then you'll do 12 hours a day 7 days a week and like it. That could just be my bias towards video game companies...
- coldtea 3y ago>Okay, let's ignore all them pesky negatives of overworking, like killing a patient from time to time or messing with the wrong piece of data somewhere. Let's also ignore the issue of personal freedom vs. the hours mandated by your employer. Let's focus only on maximizing the total output you can generate. As I understand, this is your case. This guy's (bustervil) comment nails it. Carmack on the other hands writes from a position of multiple levels of privilege: the privilege of working on stuff he loves, the privilege of having struck gold early, the privilege of being greatly compensated for it, the privilege afforded by this accumulated wealth to be picky about where he works, the privilege of also being compensated in status for it, the privilege in him being able to set or impose the working conditions for himself, and, last but not least, the privilege of being an employeer (or in some cases, a top level employee managing others). He has also been into those kinds of privilege for over 30 years - almost his entire career. This is so far removed from the actual working conditions for hundreds of millions in the US, that it's no wonder it shows little understanding or empathy. It even misses the very basic fact that the post/studies talk about the average worker, not the very rare case of "Doing what I love, as someone having a say in what's to be done, and in a state of flow with direct improvement in my bottom line based on the success of the product". It's like asking for pyramid's master architect concern for the working hours and working conditions of those carrying the rocks on their backs (which can always be disposed and replaced anyway - whereas if someone like Carmack gets out of some gig, it makes the tech news, and might even affect the stock of the company).
- ttfkam 3y agoIsn't this the guy that wrote some amazing games but recent coworkers find him to be absolutely insufferable? That guy is supposed to speak for general working conditions?
- amai 3y agoCarmack seems to assume that he is not allowed to work overtime. But nobody advocating for shorter work weeks is saying that. You still can work as much as you want, but you don‘t have to. Shorter work weeks would give you more freedom, not less.
- the_overseer 3y agoI strongly suspect the reason he can work so much is that he only works on things he finds interesting and doesn't have to answer to anybody. He doesn't have to take calls and random meetings in the middle of the day. He doesn't have to work on boring parts of a project. In fact he is known to completely isolate himself from the project and not really communicate at all for long stretches of time. If you look into the Doom3 codebase you will see that the engine is written in C++ while the renderer is written in C. Carmack worked only on the renderer. He didn't even talk to the rest of the team to use the same programming language. They later retrofitted the C renderer to work with the rest of the C++ codebase. Think about it? In the situation where you pick the part of the project you work on, you choose the tools, you choose the programming language, the computer that you work on, your own hours, your own arbitrary deadlines which you can ignore without much consequence, you can ignore meetings with everybody else and have the meetings on your own terms if needed, would't you also be more productive, happy, and more motivated to work longer hours? Also, you take home millions and millions in profits as you are the owner of the business.
- Sawamara 3y agoWith all due respect: he seems to lack basic empathy and understanding for most office workers. When you have the viewpoint of the maverick freegunning CEO/main architect, and you have a direct stake at what you do, of course you can switch the tasks up to make everything fresh. After all, no one is going to control you in any way whatsoever. That does not go for anyone with a well-defined set of responsibilities,placed, say, in an "agile" environment. And besides, working above and beyond your means there just means you get more and more tasks in exchange, nothing else. Yaay?