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I think this is an example of a problem I see with a lot of hard-working cultures like startups. You're always optimizing your productivity locally. It's easy

by tikhonj 13y ago

I think this is an example of a problem I see with a lot of hard-working cultures like startups. You're always optimizing your productivity locally. It's easy to just say "oh, I'll work harder now" because, simply, you'll get more done than you would otherwise. Today will be more productive. Most importantly, the increased productivity is viscerally obvious. But working too much, making sacrifices at home, having problems with your family, not having enough breaks--all that saps your productivity on a global state. Sure, at any given day, you will accomplish more by working 12 hours than 8. But, over time, you will start accomplishing less per hour, largely without noticing it. And while working longer will still optimize locally, you will actually become significantly less productive overall! This is not a character flaw or anything like that. It's just a result of the fact that local improvements are so much easier to see and understand than global trends. So to counter it, you have to think ahead of time and ideally keep some metrics to measure this explicitly. (Of course, I'm not sure what such metrics would be--measuring productivity is extremely tricky.) There's a particular study that gets linked that found working a single 60-hour week is an immediate improvement, but working consistent 60-hour weeks is actually strictly worse than mostly sticking to 40. But it's so easy to trick yourself into thinking that you have to work those 60 hours because you need to finish more now. It's definitely something you should watch out for. EDIT: http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-less... is the article I was thinking about.

levlandau 13y ago
i agree with the spirit of this but the flaw in this reasoning is an assumption that all hours are equal. Working consistent 80 hour weeks is the reason we got the Mac as well as Facebook. The extreme outcome possible due to one locally focused push could far outweigh any other strategy and could also be the maximum of the global state.
- wpietri 13y ago
  And what's your proof that without 80-hour weeks we wouldn't have got the Mac or Facebook? All of those people were also wearing underwear, so if correlation is all the proof we need around here, then I've got me a new business book to write: Steve's Secret: What Every Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Has In Common I can even try to get data on whether boxers or briefs lead to better marketplace success, and gin up some fake controversy. It'll be the next NYT best-seller. Eric Ries, watch out!
  - BadassFractal 13y ago
    Thank you for stating that, it's one of my biggest pet peeves as well. The startup culture is one of doing regression on the 0.001% of the companies who become unicorns, while completely ignoring the failures. I really want someone to start putting together stats of successful businesses that were built working at most 40 hours a week without wrecking homes, by people who knew how to use their time wisely. People who didn't fart around at the office, hanging out with the guys watching anime at night and doing whatever other freshman dorm-room behavior you constantly see the worst performers do at the coworking spaces.
- 001sky 13y ago
  The issue is one of serial vs parallel processing. You cannot treat all hours as equal when you or someone else is the bottleneck for your entire startup/project. In this case the local and the global optimization problem need to be solved together, or it just won't work. That being said, I think that not all local optimization problems are of this type, but some certainly are. And many of the nasty ones fall on founders and startups disporportionately.

by tikhonj 13y ago

levlandau 13y ago

i agree with the spirit of this but the flaw in this reasoning is an assumption that all hours are equal. Working consistent 80 hour weeks is the reason we got the Mac as well as Facebook. The extreme outcome possible due to one locally focused push could far outweigh any other strategy and could also be the maximum of the global state.

wpietri 13y ago
And what's your proof that without 80-hour weeks we wouldn't have got the Mac or Facebook? All of those people were also wearing underwear, so if correlation is all the proof we need around here, then I've got me a new business book to write: Steve's Secret: What Every Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Has In Common I can even try to get data on whether boxers or briefs lead to better marketplace success, and gin up some fake controversy. It'll be the next NYT best-seller. Eric Ries, watch out!
- BadassFractal 13y ago
  Thank you for stating that, it's one of my biggest pet peeves as well. The startup culture is one of doing regression on the 0.001% of the companies who become unicorns, while completely ignoring the failures. I really want someone to start putting together stats of successful businesses that were built working at most 40 hours a week without wrecking homes, by people who knew how to use their time wisely. People who didn't fart around at the office, hanging out with the guys watching anime at night and doing whatever other freshman dorm-room behavior you constantly see the worst performers do at the coworking spaces.
001sky 13y ago
The issue is one of serial vs parallel processing. You cannot treat all hours as equal when you or someone else is the bottleneck for your entire startup/project. In this case the local and the global optimization problem need to be solved together, or it just won't work. That being said, I think that not all local optimization problems are of this type, but some certainly are. And many of the nasty ones fall on founders and startups disporportionately.