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Humans are naturally unreliable. Everyone has a breaking point. If you need reliability, build it into your systems. I agree with you this far: reliability in s

Humans are naturally unreliable. Everyone has a breaking point. If you need reliability, build it into your systems. I agree with you this far: reliability in systems is very valuable. That's a design problem, which requires (a form of) creativity. The difference between the "weak" person who shatters at a 60 hour-per-week effort (over 12 weeks) and the "strong" one who can stretch to 85 is unimportant, because if you're smart, you don't push people to the rightward side of the decline curve unless it absolutely can't be avoided. Reliance on differences is human reliability is like having a 50% faster processer but implementing an O(n^3) algorithm when an O(n) exists. It made sense in a few pre-technological professional contexts, but no more in the typical white-collar world. You want the creative people who'll automate away the need for human reliability, which is limited even in the most stable people.

gnaritas 14y ago
That is all true, but it doesn't change what I said. And I don't consider a person weak if 60 hour weeks exhaust them, this is called "normal." If your employer pushes more than 40 on a regular basis, find a better job, that one sucks.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Whether a 40- or 60-hour load is a normal person's limit is beside the point. My point is that the white-collar office regime measures people based on their decline curves rather than their performance under good conditions, and that may have worked at one time, but now it selects for the wrong traits and, additionally, makes typical institutional work inhospitable for people like the OP's wife. Obviously, there are exceptions. You want an uber-reliable person for U.S. President. For a software engineer, you care about overall ability and performance, not worst-case.
  - mtrimpe 14y ago
    I knew some truly great programmers who wrote great code most of the year, but occasionally were suddenly absent for a week because the police picked them up dancing naked in a garden. Even though there are many companies who would immediately fire that person; they are missing out on a lot of potential by doing do.
    - javajosh 14y ago
      If more people danced naked in a garden the world would be a better place.
      - andrewflnr 14y ago
        It depends on whose garden it is.
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        As long as they don't listen to talking snakes, I agree.
  - jakejake 14y ago
    I think the average employer favors reliability because it's not acceptable for an employee to ever freak out co-workers or clients or just disappear - even if 99% of the time they are fine. There are people who have odd personalities, but that is not the same as a person who has psychotic episodes. I have been around the latter and it tends to make people very uncomfortable, which is just not acceptable for certain jobs unfortunately. There is a gray area as well where some people are socially awkward or just enjoy being "weird." But it's not the same thing. As for jobs like programming where some degree of eccentricity is acceptable - I think it depends on how amazing that person is. If you're a genius you probably will find opportunities that will accept a decent amount of erratic behavior. If you are a below-average programmer, your employers are not likely to be as accommodating.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      I can't speak for psychotic episodes, because I don't know anything about those diseases, but I think that employers are at fault for this. These packed, open-plan work environments are awful and create a lot of mental health problems. Being fairly neurotic myself, I'd be a bit unsettled if someone was having a psychotic episode at a desk 5 feet from me... but there really shouldn't be a desk 5 feet from me. I wouldn't want even a well-treated schizophrenic flying a plane, but for most jobs, I think it's possible to make an arrangement where the person's health problems don't pose a safety risk or freak other people out. Regarding "99% of the time they are fine", how many people don't have 2-3 sick days per year? If nothing else, that rules out everyone with kids. I suppose it depends what they are doing during that other 1% and how easily they can manage it, and when it comes to psychosis (with which I have no experience or expertise) I am way out of my depth on that one.
      - jakejake 14y ago
        I admit I'm not a fan of those office setups either. But I don't really know what they would do. Most of the time that setup is due to space constraints. Kinda my point - some people would not do well in that situation. They should find an employer with a different setup or work-from-home arrangement.
  - nostrademons 14y ago
    The reason for this is that when you have other people depending on you and you don't follow through on what they're counting on you to do, you waste their time too and make their work product useless. That's why corporations are so skeptical of unreliable people: they can be negatively productive on a team. One alternative to this is to work on solo projects - there are many people with mild mental illnesses that can find some degree of success in artistic pursuits, academia, or small businesses. But you're explicitly talking about corporations, and there's a reason why organizations can't tolerate unreliable people. I say this as someone who is much closer to the creativity end of the spectrum than the reliability end. I worked very, very hard to build up the sort of mental toughness and team awareness that lets people count on me to follow through on my commitments, because I knew that if I didn't develop those skills, I'd be marginalizing myself to working on unimportant projects. I'm still quite eccentric when it comes to work habits (I'll often waltz into work at 1:30 PM and have very irregular hours, and I hate it when anyone tells me what to do), but I make an effort to check e-mail and IM from my phone, even when not officially working, and take care of anything necessary to unblock somebody else before I work on my pet projects.
    - DenisM 14y ago
      You don't have to design a work process such that failure of one deliverable jeopardizes the work down stream. Alternative is to make an asynchronous process - for each spent you only schedule to build things which don't depend on incomplete work. If there is something you need before you start on a particular work item, you schedule that prerequisite you need as a work item in itself, and then only schedule the downstream work when all prerequisites are complete. You can't make all jobs like this, but that's hardly the point - lots of jobs can be like that, and they aren't only by choice.
      - nostrademons 14y ago
        Yeah, and such "off the critical path" work is very often where creative-but-unstable people end up. My current project is like that; I've done high-priority team work before, but I asked to be put on something off the critical path both so I could take more professional risks and so I could deal with some personal stuff. My point is that if you can only do work off the critical path, you're marginalizing yourself because such work is by definition "on the margins". And if you ever discover something huge that's worthy of investment, they'll have to take it away from you and give it to somebody reliable to lead so that people can work under him. (Many startup founders find themselves in this position; they'll come up with a brilliant breakthrough and then VCs will kick them out and hire an outside CEO because they're fucking up the company. Hell, that's basically what happened to Steve Jobs at Apple the first time around.)

gnaritas 14y ago

That is all true, but it doesn't change what I said. And I don't consider a person weak if 60 hour weeks exhaust them, this is called "normal." If your employer pushes more than 40 on a regular basis, find a better job, that one sucks.

michaelochurch 14y ago
Whether a 40- or 60-hour load is a normal person's limit is beside the point. My point is that the white-collar office regime measures people based on their decline curves rather than their performance under good conditions, and that may have worked at one time, but now it selects for the wrong traits and, additionally, makes typical institutional work inhospitable for people like the OP's wife. Obviously, there are exceptions. You want an uber-reliable person for U.S. President. For a software engineer, you care about overall ability and performance, not worst-case.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  I knew some truly great programmers who wrote great code most of the year, but occasionally were suddenly absent for a week because the police picked them up dancing naked in a garden. Even though there are many companies who would immediately fire that person; they are missing out on a lot of potential by doing do.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    If more people danced naked in a garden the world would be a better place.
    - andrewflnr 14y ago
      It depends on whose garden it is.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      As long as they don't listen to talking snakes, I agree.
- jakejake 14y ago
  I think the average employer favors reliability because it's not acceptable for an employee to ever freak out co-workers or clients or just disappear - even if 99% of the time they are fine. There are people who have odd personalities, but that is not the same as a person who has psychotic episodes. I have been around the latter and it tends to make people very uncomfortable, which is just not acceptable for certain jobs unfortunately. There is a gray area as well where some people are socially awkward or just enjoy being "weird." But it's not the same thing. As for jobs like programming where some degree of eccentricity is acceptable - I think it depends on how amazing that person is. If you're a genius you probably will find opportunities that will accept a decent amount of erratic behavior. If you are a below-average programmer, your employers are not likely to be as accommodating.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    I can't speak for psychotic episodes, because I don't know anything about those diseases, but I think that employers are at fault for this. These packed, open-plan work environments are awful and create a lot of mental health problems. Being fairly neurotic myself, I'd be a bit unsettled if someone was having a psychotic episode at a desk 5 feet from me... but there really shouldn't be a desk 5 feet from me. I wouldn't want even a well-treated schizophrenic flying a plane, but for most jobs, I think it's possible to make an arrangement where the person's health problems don't pose a safety risk or freak other people out. Regarding "99% of the time they are fine", how many people don't have 2-3 sick days per year? If nothing else, that rules out everyone with kids. I suppose it depends what they are doing during that other 1% and how easily they can manage it, and when it comes to psychosis (with which I have no experience or expertise) I am way out of my depth on that one.
    - jakejake 14y ago
      I admit I'm not a fan of those office setups either. But I don't really know what they would do. Most of the time that setup is due to space constraints. Kinda my point - some people would not do well in that situation. They should find an employer with a different setup or work-from-home arrangement.
- nostrademons 14y ago
  The reason for this is that when you have other people depending on you and you don't follow through on what they're counting on you to do, you waste their time too and make their work product useless. That's why corporations are so skeptical of unreliable people: they can be negatively productive on a team. One alternative to this is to work on solo projects - there are many people with mild mental illnesses that can find some degree of success in artistic pursuits, academia, or small businesses. But you're explicitly talking about corporations, and there's a reason why organizations can't tolerate unreliable people. I say this as someone who is much closer to the creativity end of the spectrum than the reliability end. I worked very, very hard to build up the sort of mental toughness and team awareness that lets people count on me to follow through on my commitments, because I knew that if I didn't develop those skills, I'd be marginalizing myself to working on unimportant projects. I'm still quite eccentric when it comes to work habits (I'll often waltz into work at 1:30 PM and have very irregular hours, and I hate it when anyone tells me what to do), but I make an effort to check e-mail and IM from my phone, even when not officially working, and take care of anything necessary to unblock somebody else before I work on my pet projects.
  - DenisM 14y ago
    You don't have to design a work process such that failure of one deliverable jeopardizes the work down stream. Alternative is to make an asynchronous process - for each spent you only schedule to build things which don't depend on incomplete work. If there is something you need before you start on a particular work item, you schedule that prerequisite you need as a work item in itself, and then only schedule the downstream work when all prerequisites are complete. You can't make all jobs like this, but that's hardly the point - lots of jobs can be like that, and they aren't only by choice.
    - nostrademons 14y ago
      Yeah, and such "off the critical path" work is very often where creative-but-unstable people end up. My current project is like that; I've done high-priority team work before, but I asked to be put on something off the critical path both so I could take more professional risks and so I could deal with some personal stuff. My point is that if you can only do work off the critical path, you're marginalizing yourself because such work is by definition "on the margins". And if you ever discover something huge that's worthy of investment, they'll have to take it away from you and give it to somebody reliable to lead so that people can work under him. (Many startup founders find themselves in this position; they'll come up with a brilliant breakthrough and then VCs will kick them out and hire an outside CEO because they're fucking up the company. Hell, that's basically what happened to Steve Jobs at Apple the first time around.)