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I'm going to say something controversial, so take it with a grain of salt. I believe it depends significantly on the age/experience of the leaders (I'm 44 years

by diego 12y ago

I'm going to say something controversial, so take it with a grain of salt. I believe it depends significantly on the age/experience of the leaders (I'm 44 years old). One thing that comes with experience is the realization that hours of startup work do not necessarily translate into results. At IndexTank I routinely averted multi-week efforts (saving lots of late night hacking) because I realized that their potential value to the company would have been marginal at best. It's true that there are times when a team needs to fix something ASAP, which may require 24-48 hours of near-constant work. However, this should not be the norm. In the long run, having a team where everyone works insane hours leads to burnout, turnover, and monoculture (i.e. mostly twentysomethings without family commitments). A leadership team who can figure out that 500 hours of X is as valuable as 2000 hours of Y can yield the same results without unnecessary suffering.

api 12y ago
I completely agree. I'm seeing an increasing amount of real evidence backing up skepticism over what I call the "cult of the 80 hour work week." http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/sleep-as-a-competitive-advantage/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/sleep-as-a-competitiv... I think it's quantity vs. quality. There are times when a huge overtime crunch is needed or when something is "on fire" and has to be dealt with right now, but the data is showing that overwork, lack of sleep, and too much focus on only one thing results in a loss of higher-order mental capacities such as creativity and long-term thinking. I've experienced this subjectively myself... doing the workaholic thing for more than month or two and literally being unable to remember what it was that I was really doing or why I was doing it. You basically degenerate into some kind of crank-out-the-next-thing automaton with no big picture thinking ability or vision. I've also seen second hand what occurs when this happens to a company's leadership, and I think a lot of avoidable failure spirals originate this way. If you're not being successful you need to pivot, and that takes creativity and an ability to stand outside the box of what you're currently doing. Those mental abilities are the first to go in an overwork scenario. Other negatives include depression, anxiety, and impulsive behavior. It was actually kind of scary. I had to give up the tech entrepreneur orbit for a while until I could re-center myself, and coming back to it now I consider it very important to avoid that trap. Personally I think the cult of workaholism is more about machismo than real performance. There's this weird ego thing in a number of industries including tech where people brag about how many hours they work, how little they sleep, etc. It's stupid.

by diego 12y ago

api 12y ago

I completely agree. I'm seeing an increasing amount of real evidence backing up skepticism over what I call the "cult of the 80 hour work week." http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/sleep-as-a-competitive-advantage/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/sleep-as-a-competitiv... I think it's quantity vs. quality. There are times when a huge overtime crunch is needed or when something is "on fire" and has to be dealt with right now, but the data is showing that overwork, lack of sleep, and too much focus on only one thing results in a loss of higher-order mental capacities such as creativity and long-term thinking. I've experienced this subjectively myself... doing the workaholic thing for more than month or two and literally being unable to remember what it was that I was really doing or why I was doing it. You basically degenerate into some kind of crank-out-the-next-thing automaton with no big picture thinking ability or vision. I've also seen second hand what occurs when this happens to a company's leadership, and I think a lot of avoidable failure spirals originate this way. If you're not being successful you need to pivot, and that takes creativity and an ability to stand outside the box of what you're currently doing. Those mental abilities are the first to go in an overwork scenario. Other negatives include depression, anxiety, and impulsive behavior. It was actually kind of scary. I had to give up the tech entrepreneur orbit for a while until I could re-center myself, and coming back to it now I consider it very important to avoid that trap. Personally I think the cult of workaholism is more about machismo than real performance. There's this weird ego thing in a number of industries including tech where people brag about how many hours they work, how little they sleep, etc. It's stupid.