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I love Joel for promoting the idea that working more than 40 hours a week is unproductive, but it does seem contrary to the startup mentality. Would startups b
by mdemare 19y ago
I love Joel for promoting the idea that working more than 40 hours a week is unproductive, but it does seem contrary to the startup mentality.
Would startups be better off if their founders only worked 40 hours a week? I don't think so - working crazy hours is a competitive advantage of startups.
Of course, motivation is the big difference, but that's a whole different argument than Joel is making.
- jgrahamc 19y agoMy experience is that you should _plan_ as if you have 40 hours a week per developer because you are going to be wrong and end up needing more time than you expect. The work after 40 hours is just keeping you on schedule. John.
- brianr 19y agoThat seems a bit counterproductive to me--if you know it's going to take more than 40 hours, then why not at least try to make an estimate? If you think that your weeks' work is going to take between 50-70 hours, then budget 70 hours and be glad (or get ahead!) if you finish early. That said, I can't imagine any startup getting far by working 40 hours a week. 80-100 is probably a minimum for a founder... it has to be your focus, not just your 'day job'.
- olavk 19y agoI wonder if anyone have actually done the experiment? When you are doing a startup, you want to work as much as possible, however it might very well be that you would be just as productive if you worked just 40 hours.
- ph0rque 19y agoI'd be very interested in seeing such a study. I think the answer lies in not just how hard you work, but how smart you work; i.e. monitoring your productivity and adjusting various factors (length of time, time of day, etc.) to maximize productivity.
- breck 19y agoIf you're doing a startup, your life will be the startup. It won't seem like work. But if you hire employees, their life will not be the startup. And it will still be more "work-like" to them than it is to you. So keep them to 40 hours.
- hello_moto 19y agoJoel's experience working for Microsoft shaped his mind. It has been MS trademark to start slow but building a _SURE_ thing with good architecture (security is a different story). How old is MS Office now? Compare that with Silicon Valley startup mentality: code like crazy, take shortcuts, release early, flipped your company and let the new hires figured out the mess. (Or you could opt for re-writes like the Reddit people have been doing since their inception).
- michaelneale 19y agoAlso startups are short bursts relatively speaking, coding binges etc. He is talking about something sustainable for a career (of sorts).
- testapplication 19y agoDo you know anything about the early history of Microsoft?
- brlewis 19y agoI think spending more than 40 hours per week programming is unproductive, because of the mental exertion, but there's a lot more to launching a successful startup than programming. Once you've expanded to the point where you have people who only program, Joel's advice is probably good: "encourage your staff to work a sane 40 hours per week" except for occasional bursts.
- bootload 19y ago"... but it does seem contrary to the startup mentality. ..." Joel is a pretty smart businessman and a lot of the articles are written within the management of an established software company frame of mind. Remember that: - FogCreek is not a startup - FogBugz has a long ship cycle - products developed are mature - code base is being used over a long time frame - good software takes 10 years anyway ~ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html Quite the antithesis of what you might associate with Startups discussed here.