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So at 23 this person feels he has enough anecdotal experience to trump 100+ years of research. Let's see...he states he has no life outside of work, that he fo

So at 23 this person feels he has enough anecdotal experience to trump 100+ years of research. Let's see...he states he has no life outside of work, that he forced himself to pull those hours even when there wasn't work enough to demand it, that he was working those hours without remuneration of any kind, and while conflating 'working' with 'learning', leading me to question if he was really being productive, rather than just playing around with new languages and technologies, 'causing him to credit what he would have done in his free time to 'working'.

AshFurrow 13y ago
I was just about to comment the same thing. Ridiculous.
Dirlewanger 13y ago
In 6 months: 'LawnStarter: Where I went wrong'
yummyfajitas 13y ago
Please cite the 100+ years of research. I've looked into it, and found very little. All I've found is a few results like the average construction worker can only productively work 60 hour weeks for about 6 weeks in a row before fatigue sets in. For example: http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Calculating_Loss_of_Productivity_Due_to_OT_Using_Charts_-_Nov_2001.pdf http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Ca... (Hourly productivity is lower during the 60 hour weeks, but weekly product is higher.) I have never seen a result that says no one can work 60+ hours regularly. I've never seen a result that even applied to knowledge workers - the entire literature is about construction and manufacturing. So if you want to make a strong claim that "100+ years of research" proves something, please cite the research. If it's so voluminous, it shouldn't be hard. (Incidentally, just remembered Claudia Goldin's paper on gender gaps. She cites a bunch of literature showing that in some occupations, productivity is actually superlinear in the number of hours worked, not sublinear like construction. http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.php?pdfid=1103 http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.ph... )
- mattmanser 13y ago
  You keep popping up on these threads making wild claims like this. You're like an evolution denier, you keep pushing this weird agenda, but I just don't understand why. People keep giving you the research and yet somehow you don't read it and then claim there is none. It is simple to find research about manual work showing 40 hours per week is optimal. It is simple to find research showing that for knowledge workers the optimal is even less. Last time you you were trying to claim 40-60 hours was an 'optimal' working time for manual labour and linked research yourself which showed that it wasn't. Why is the concept so antithetical to your world view that you can't accepted it? There is a huge body of research proving directly the opposite of what you claim, that working long hours leads to an ever increasing drop in overall productivity and leads to more and more mistakes (even deaths). From the 1800s to today, many companies and institutions have researched this and 40 hours keeps being the result. And even less for knowledge workers! Here's an example of people giving yummy primary research before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7089557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7089557
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    I've read the research. It doesn't back up the claims made by the OP. Last time you you were trying to claim 40-60 hours was an 'optimal' working time for manual labour and linked research yourself which showed that it wasn't. The research linked to shows that weekly product (which is not the same as hourly productivity) can be maximized by anything from 40-60 hours, depending on the nature of the work and the duration of the project. For example, look at Figure 16 which has numbers: 100% productivity x 40 hours = 40 90% productivity x 50 hours = 45 83% productivity x 60 hours = 49.8 69% productivity x 70 hours = 48.3 Output is maximized by 60 hour weeks. Figure 6 shows similar results, based on eyeballing the 5 and 6 day weeks (10 hours/day each) as being about 83% productivity. (Data is in a bar chart, numbers not listed.) http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Calculating_Loss_of_Productivity_Due_to_OT_Using_Charts_-_Nov_2001.pdf http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Ca... In any case, any paper discussing averages (i.e., every source I've ever found) simply does not address the question of whether the author of the piece can productively work 60 hour weeks. That's like saying "the mean American wage is $50k/year or so, therefore it's impossible for a software engineer to earn $100k".
mdmarra 13y ago
The HN crowd baffles me sometimes. It seems to move between "This person is too old. They are disconnected from today's generation," and "This person is too young. They don't have the experience to share meaningful anecdotes." At what age would this person's comments hold water? 25? 28? 30?
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  You don't have to be a certain age for your comments to matter - it's specific to the scenario you're commenting on. Someone with 30+ years in the workforce has much more knowledge to comment on it that someone with only a few years.
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  When someone is making statements about a global truth, such as the ability to be productive, experience is paramount. We all know you can pull off 80 hour weeks for a little bit before bad stuff happens, etc. It takes a bit of experience to learn what happens after a couple years of that. When someone is talking about fashions or the popularity of new technologies etc, then being too old is going to make your opinion less useful as it's going to be harder for you to unlearn what you've already learned. This is generally far less of a problem and I really haven't seen much "This person is too old" on HN, but you do see it a lot on reddit as reddit attracts a very young crowd.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  I think in this case it's actually relevant to mention age, because I'm more and more inclined to believe that while 60+ hours can be a good thing to do in your twenties, especially if your digital life is your social life, but that it rarely ever is a smart thing to do after you're thirty. Young coders don't have that much experience yet and will often have to rely on their brawn rather than their wit which could perhaps make the 60+ hours thing a solid strategic choice. As I've grown older I've found that I can deliver much more value with much less effort by being well rested and taking a step back to see what's actually the important thing to do. Whether I'm doing so because I've become wiser or because I've become less effective in those long hours is a different question altogether of course.
- 13y ago
raverbashing 13y ago
"that he forced himself to pull those hours even when there wasn't work enough to demand it, that he was working those hours without remuneration of any kind..." I think that's the definition of workaholic

AshFurrow 13y ago

I was just about to comment the same thing. Ridiculous.

Dirlewanger 13y ago

In 6 months: 'LawnStarter: Where I went wrong'

yummyfajitas 13y ago

Please cite the 100+ years of research. I've looked into it, and found very little. All I've found is a few results like the average construction worker can only productively work 60 hour weeks for about 6 weeks in a row before fatigue sets in. For example: http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Calculating_Loss_of_Productivity_Due_to_OT_Using_Charts_-_Nov_2001.pdf http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Ca... (Hourly productivity is lower during the 60 hour weeks, but weekly product is higher.) I have never seen a result that says no one can work 60+ hours regularly. I've never seen a result that even applied to knowledge workers - the entire literature is about construction and manufacturing. So if you want to make a strong claim that "100+ years of research" proves something, please cite the research. If it's so voluminous, it shouldn't be hard. (Incidentally, just remembered Claudia Goldin's paper on gender gaps. She cites a bunch of literature showing that in some occupations, productivity is actually superlinear in the number of hours worked, not sublinear like construction. http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.php?pdfid=1103 http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.ph... )

mattmanser 13y ago
You keep popping up on these threads making wild claims like this. You're like an evolution denier, you keep pushing this weird agenda, but I just don't understand why. People keep giving you the research and yet somehow you don't read it and then claim there is none. It is simple to find research about manual work showing 40 hours per week is optimal. It is simple to find research showing that for knowledge workers the optimal is even less. Last time you you were trying to claim 40-60 hours was an 'optimal' working time for manual labour and linked research yourself which showed that it wasn't. Why is the concept so antithetical to your world view that you can't accepted it? There is a huge body of research proving directly the opposite of what you claim, that working long hours leads to an ever increasing drop in overall productivity and leads to more and more mistakes (even deaths). From the 1800s to today, many companies and institutions have researched this and 40 hours keeps being the result. And even less for knowledge workers! Here's an example of people giving yummy primary research before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7089557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7089557
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  I've read the research. It doesn't back up the claims made by the OP. Last time you you were trying to claim 40-60 hours was an 'optimal' working time for manual labour and linked research yourself which showed that it wasn't. The research linked to shows that weekly product (which is not the same as hourly productivity) can be maximized by anything from 40-60 hours, depending on the nature of the work and the duration of the project. For example, look at Figure 16 which has numbers: 100% productivity x 40 hours = 40 90% productivity x 50 hours = 45 83% productivity x 60 hours = 49.8 69% productivity x 70 hours = 48.3 Output is maximized by 60 hour weeks. Figure 6 shows similar results, based on eyeballing the 5 and 6 day weeks (10 hours/day each) as being about 83% productivity. (Data is in a bar chart, numbers not listed.) http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Calculating_Loss_of_Productivity_Due_to_OT_Using_Charts_-_Nov_2001.pdf http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Ca... In any case, any paper discussing averages (i.e., every source I've ever found) simply does not address the question of whether the author of the piece can productively work 60 hour weeks. That's like saying "the mean American wage is $50k/year or so, therefore it's impossible for a software engineer to earn $100k".

mdmarra 13y ago

The HN crowd baffles me sometimes. It seems to move between "This person is too old. They are disconnected from today's generation," and "This person is too young. They don't have the experience to share meaningful anecdotes." At what age would this person's comments hold water? 25? 28? 30?

k-mcgrady 13y ago
You don't have to be a certain age for your comments to matter - it's specific to the scenario you're commenting on. Someone with 30+ years in the workforce has much more knowledge to comment on it that someone with only a few years.
RyanZAG 13y ago
When someone is making statements about a global truth, such as the ability to be productive, experience is paramount. We all know you can pull off 80 hour weeks for a little bit before bad stuff happens, etc. It takes a bit of experience to learn what happens after a couple years of that. When someone is talking about fashions or the popularity of new technologies etc, then being too old is going to make your opinion less useful as it's going to be harder for you to unlearn what you've already learned. This is generally far less of a problem and I really haven't seen much "This person is too old" on HN, but you do see it a lot on reddit as reddit attracts a very young crowd.
mtrimpe 13y ago
I think in this case it's actually relevant to mention age, because I'm more and more inclined to believe that while 60+ hours can be a good thing to do in your twenties, especially if your digital life is your social life, but that it rarely ever is a smart thing to do after you're thirty. Young coders don't have that much experience yet and will often have to rely on their brawn rather than their wit which could perhaps make the 60+ hours thing a solid strategic choice. As I've grown older I've found that I can deliver much more value with much less effort by being well rested and taking a step back to see what's actually the important thing to do. Whether I'm doing so because I've become wiser or because I've become less effective in those long hours is a different question altogether of course.
13y ago

raverbashing 13y ago

"that he forced himself to pull those hours even when there wasn't work enough to demand it, that he was working those hours without remuneration of any kind..." I think that's the definition of workaholic