4 ms·

Richard Hamming's thoughts (from You and Your Research) deserve to be quoted in full (below). Probably they are less applicable the less research or speculativ

Richard Hamming's thoughts (from You and Your Research) deserve to be quoted in full (below). Probably they are less applicable the less research or speculative work you do. Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office! What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this.

Oculus 12y ago
I recently happened upon an interview of Elon Musk on his work ethics: http://youtu.be/4Fl9LRgG3_A http://youtu.be/4Fl9LRgG3_A The main takeaway was work as hard as you can (i.e. 80 - 100 hour weeks). Even if you're doing the same thing as the competition (assuming they work 40 hours), you'll still accomplish in 4 months what they would in a year. Hard work, tenacity, and a little luck is what separates the smart from the brilliant.
- mattm 12y ago
  It doesn't work like that though. I'm sure most developers have had the situation of not being able to solve a problem at the end of the day but the next morning you end up solving it in 10 minutes. People need rest. Without rest and recovery, your decision making process gets worse and slower. The people I've worked for that were putting in 12 hour days always seemed to be the people that wasted the most time at work.
- ACow_Adonis 12y ago
  Yeah, except at least on that last point Musk is wrong (and i know saying that on HN is kinda like saying that jesus isn't the son of god in Rome). He's just repeating his own self congratulatory narrative. Human's are biological creatures. Just like when we run, when you go for 30 seconds vs 3 minutes vs 3 hours vs 3 days, the relationship of what happens is not a simple linear one of input. We tire, we lose concentration, we actually get worse if we go all out for long periods than if we act in controlled and conscious burn with good amounts of rest and down time. As another poster has said, what does happen is that the ones that put in the long hours, in my experience, are often the most incompetent, the magical thinkers, the ones most out of touch with how much they're doing, and the ones putting on the show. Of course, in this world, the ones that put on the show are the one's that often get the most rewards... Musk is though, spot on with the first two points though. Things other people value. Tenacity. Hard work, is of course needed, but baring some kind of ridiculous genetics which border on not existing, your productivity drops magnificently once you start going longer hours. That's primarily just for show...

Oculus 12y ago

I recently happened upon an interview of Elon Musk on his work ethics: http://youtu.be/4Fl9LRgG3_A http://youtu.be/4Fl9LRgG3_A The main takeaway was work as hard as you can (i.e. 80 - 100 hour weeks). Even if you're doing the same thing as the competition (assuming they work 40 hours), you'll still accomplish in 4 months what they would in a year. Hard work, tenacity, and a little luck is what separates the smart from the brilliant.

mattm 12y ago
It doesn't work like that though. I'm sure most developers have had the situation of not being able to solve a problem at the end of the day but the next morning you end up solving it in 10 minutes. People need rest. Without rest and recovery, your decision making process gets worse and slower. The people I've worked for that were putting in 12 hour days always seemed to be the people that wasted the most time at work.
ACow_Adonis 12y ago
Yeah, except at least on that last point Musk is wrong (and i know saying that on HN is kinda like saying that jesus isn't the son of god in Rome). He's just repeating his own self congratulatory narrative. Human's are biological creatures. Just like when we run, when you go for 30 seconds vs 3 minutes vs 3 hours vs 3 days, the relationship of what happens is not a simple linear one of input. We tire, we lose concentration, we actually get worse if we go all out for long periods than if we act in controlled and conscious burn with good amounts of rest and down time. As another poster has said, what does happen is that the ones that put in the long hours, in my experience, are often the most incompetent, the magical thinkers, the ones most out of touch with how much they're doing, and the ones putting on the show. Of course, in this world, the ones that put on the show are the one's that often get the most rewards... Musk is though, spot on with the first two points though. Things other people value. Tenacity. Hard work, is of course needed, but baring some kind of ridiculous genetics which border on not existing, your productivity drops magnificently once you start going longer hours. That's primarily just for show...