6 ms·

Dr Schmidt’s smart creatives work all the hours that God sends, and then some. They are, to use his term, “overworked in a good way”. The concept of work-life b

by swombat 12y ago

Dr Schmidt’s smart creatives work all the hours that God sends, and then some. They are, to use his term, “overworked in a good way”. The concept of work-life balance can, he thinks, “be insulting to smart, dedicated employees”, for whom work is an important part of life, not something to be separated. The best corporate cultures, he thinks, “invite and enable people to be overworked in a good way, with too many interesting things to do both at work and at home”. A very good philosophy, that I also discussed here: http://danieltenner.com/2014/11/19/work-and-life-balance-and-imbalance/ http://danieltenner.com/2014/11/19/work-and-life-balance-and... I had not read Eric Schmidt's book at that point, though. The author continues, however: But it also highlights the extent to which our world is bifurcating into parallel universes. No it's not. It's evolving into a new universe. There's no reason why everyone, yes, everyone, can't be in that new universe where they work on what they're passionate about. And when we figure out how to fix our screwed up economic systems to enable that (one possible solution is the Basic Income idea), we will derive, as a species, productivity benefits that we can't even begin to comprehend right now. At this point in time, the majority of humanity toils for subsistence. A sizeable minority work to pay for their lifestyle (aka the work-life balance level), and they are a bajillion times more productive than the subsistence workers. A tiny slice of us are now able to work with passion, on what we want to do. Like artists working on a song or a painting or a book, they do not draw a clear line between work and play. They're always working and always playing. With this they achieve a level of enjoyment of life and of productivity that the work-life balance crowd cannot touch. Let's all work together to get everyone into this last category. It's easy to point to the fact that we're not there yet. Harder to make tangible progress towards this goal.

littletimmy 12y ago
The problem with what you're saying is that the people who "do not draw a clear line between work and play" are not nearly as romantically satisfied with their work as you claim. Do you not see how this "passion for work" argument is often employed to make employees work the maximum they can? If you apply to work at Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey, or Google, the message is clear: it is not enough that you sell your time to us, you must sell your soul as well! You have to be "passionate" about investment banking, consulting, or software engineering to get a job at these places. Consequently, young grads who are looking for jobs now have to make a genuine effort to work ungodly hours in an effort to demonstrate their "passion" to these firms. Now maybe that is because some of them are genuinely interested in their work (although how you get a "passion" for excel modelling I do not know), but it is more likely that it is something these new workers feel they must do in order to be successful. What is the outcome? Elite companies can make talented young people work insane hours without compensating them for the extra profit that they create. The notion that Eric Schmidt is saying his workers should work round the clock out of sheer concern for their fulfilment is absolutely laughable. Btw, this form of thinking is quite uniquely American. Perhaps it springs from the puritan ideal of deriving meaning in your life from work. For the rest of the developed world (Western Europe, for example) the notion of working harder and harder because you have to be as "passionate" as everyone else sounds ridiculous. There is more to life than work. Truly. You are on earth. You can read fiction in your spare time, also hike, and perhaps volunteer to socialize feral cats for adoption. TL;DR: Please stop with your propaganda that it is a noble thing to find this mythical level of enjoyment with working to increase shareholder value. Leisure time is cool.
- swombat 12y ago
  Let me clarify: I totally do not think that this state of mind is a reality at banks - and probably not at many tech companies either. I truly abhor the fake "passion" demonstrations required in the typical corporate environment. They are one of the reasons why I hated my time there. It is a tragedy, a travesty of the good things humans can achieve through their work. However, this concept is a reality in my life, and I am observing it in people other than me as well, at work. In no cases does it involve people "working round the clock" - though sometimes it does involve people thinking about work-related topics even when they're not at work. And it also involves them thinking about non-work things while at work. From time to time, people might choose to work late, but there's no external pressure to do so. This philosophy is best explained in a book called "The Seven-day weekend" by Ricardo Semler of Semco fame. Note the emphasis of letting life take over and blur the lines from that "direction", rather than just trying to fool people into working longer hours, which is indeed a disgusting approach to business. PS: I'm European. This notion of work being an evil biblical curse to be avoided is just as backwards as the american-style attempts to convince people to work all the time and "show passion". PPS: That said, thank you for highlighting a way that my arguments in this matter can be misunderstood.
cmsj 12y ago
Good luck finding enough people who will be passionate about cleaning your office, or collecting your trash, or driving your Uber, or processing your DMV application, or building your new house, or stripping your old laptop for recycling, or making your Starbucks, or exterminating your pests, or cleaning your blocked sewer, or picking your fruit, etc etc. It sounds lovely to say we can all be passion workers, and of course there will be people who are passionate about the above jobs, but not all of them, not by a long shot. Of course automation will help here, to some degree, but its potential is overstated in the absence of general purpose AI. We're a very very long way from technology solving the need of many to perform any available job to support their existence, and even if we could get there, there are many people for whom their passion is not something that can generate economic returns. Tl:dr, I believe your comment is fanciful :)
- swombat 12y ago
  Good luck finding enough people who will be passionate about cleaning your office, or collecting your trash, or driving your Uber, or processing your DMV application, or building your new house, or stripping your old laptop for recycling, or making your Starbucks, or exterminating your pests, or cleaning your blocked sewer, or picking your fruit, etc etc. It sounds lovely to say we can all be passion workers, and of course there will be people who are passionate about the above jobs, but not all of them, not by a long shot. There are definitely jobs that are hard to find enjoyment in... then again, it all depends on your perspective. Even cleaning someone's shit-stained bed can be a work of passion for someone who cares about what they're doing there. Or it can be a curse, a horrid job to escape from. It all depends on your perspective. I'm not saying everyone should magically find a sense of purpose in those jobs. I'm saying that when no one needs to work one of these jobs for money (i.e. we get away from subsistence work as a major mode of operation), the only people who will do those jobs are those who want to. And yes, automation will play a big part in reducing the more unpleasant aspects of such jobs, I'd imagine. We don't need to wait for AGI, either - the Artificial Narrow Intelligences we've built everywhere already do take care of many menial jobs - soon including driving cars, etc.
  - cmsj 12y ago
arrrg 12y ago
The net result is that employees are exploited to an absurd degree, without proper compensation. That's just how it is, it's a disgusting ideological tool for oppression.
- swombat 12y ago
  In the wrong hands, all our best ideas become disgusting ideological tools for oppression. How many people have been murdered for truth, freedom, beauty, etc? Doesn't make the ideals any less appealing, or indeed any less worthwhile. You just have to use them for the right purposes - for example, not "to maximise shareholder value" - a depressingly lame and dehumanising goal for any organisation.
nperson 12y ago
> [...] A tiny slice of us are now able to work with passion, on what we want to do. Like artists working on a song or a painting or a book, they do not draw a clear line between work and play. They're always working and always playing. [...] Yes and this lifestyle is simply unhealthy. Life should be your top priority, not work. Even artists sometimes need a break and care about different things then art itself.
- swombat 12y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9089660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9089660
  - nperson 12y ago
    No sorry, this is not a misunderstanding. I don't agree with your statement. Redefining life as work doesn't change that either.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>At this point in time, the majority of humanity toils for subsistence. A sizeable minority work to pay for their lifestyle (aka the work-life balance level), and they are a bajillion times more productive than the subsistence workers. A tiny slice of us are now able to work with passion, on what we want to do. Like artists working on a song or a painting or a book, they do not draw a clear line between work and play. They're always working and always playing. With this they achieve a level of enjoyment of life and of productivity that the work-life balance crowd cannot touch. I disagree. I have some big-picture Passions and Projects. More than one, actually. There is more to be done in the fields I want to work in than I could ever do, in my entire life. Nonetheless, sometimes I am tired of working and want to "go the fuck home" and just do something else. I have family and friends whom I care for and with whom I want to spend time. I have other hobbies and activities outside work. I have places to go, things to do, people to see outside work. I'm not balancing work against daytime television, I'm balancing it against all the other brilliant, wonderful things in my life. I'm also balancing it against the immense willingness of employers in almost all sectors to exploit the hell out of me should I actually become that invested in my work, and against the simple fact that I have to work on what an employer wants (ultimately, what a market wants) to earn a salary, since funding cuts and such have made a life "pursuing my passions" in research academia economically nonviable for all but 2% of trained researchers. So yeah: let me work well and with reasonable, but not passionate, enthusiasm, and then give me my salary and my benefits and let me go home. It's the only human way to run things when there are this many conflicting demands, pressures, and interests creating the situation.
- swombat 12y ago
  You don't disagree, we just have a misunderstanding of terms :-) To me, going on holiday, learning the guitar, writing fiction, sleeping, etc. are all also part of my work/purpose, which is multi-faceted and not contained in a single job description (not that I have one of those). There's a saying that "sleep is when you work with your eyes closed". How many brilliant work-related answers and solutions have you come up with while sleeping or in the shower? Obvious conclusion: your ability to sleep, take showers, and do other things that "recharge" your mind is not something separate to your work, it is crucially important so that you can actually do good creative work, rather than just bashing out mediocre widget after mediocre widget. And pretty much everyone on HN does what Schmidt calls "smart creative" work. And there definitely needs to be a two-sided trade-off between organisation and employee in this: if the person is expected to be effectively "working" (i.e. considering work-related topics in the back of their mind) at all times, then the organisation needs to recognise that and not impose ridiculous restrictions like fixed working hours and workplaces. As Ricardo Semler puts it, we've all mastered the art of checking our work email on a Saturday evening, but few of us have mastered the art of going to watch a movie on Tuesday afternoon. Please note that no company will, imho, be able to develop such a culture without it turning into a manipulative scam unless the people who are trying to create this culture actually genuinely care about people, rather than just pretending to care. I've covered that idea in this article: http://danieltenner.com/2014/07/31/you-cant-hide-from-yourself/ http://danieltenner.com/2014/07/31/you-cant-hide-from-yourse...
gaius 12y ago
The flip side of that is Schmidt's no-hiring-from-my-friends scam for which he deserves jail time IMHO.

by swombat 12y ago

littletimmy 12y ago

The problem with what you're saying is that the people who "do not draw a clear line between work and play" are not nearly as romantically satisfied with their work as you claim. Do you not see how this "passion for work" argument is often employed to make employees work the maximum they can? If you apply to work at Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey, or Google, the message is clear: it is not enough that you sell your time to us, you must sell your soul as well! You have to be "passionate" about investment banking, consulting, or software engineering to get a job at these places. Consequently, young grads who are looking for jobs now have to make a genuine effort to work ungodly hours in an effort to demonstrate their "passion" to these firms. Now maybe that is because some of them are genuinely interested in their work (although how you get a "passion" for excel modelling I do not know), but it is more likely that it is something these new workers feel they must do in order to be successful. What is the outcome? Elite companies can make talented young people work insane hours without compensating them for the extra profit that they create. The notion that Eric Schmidt is saying his workers should work round the clock out of sheer concern for their fulfilment is absolutely laughable. Btw, this form of thinking is quite uniquely American. Perhaps it springs from the puritan ideal of deriving meaning in your life from work. For the rest of the developed world (Western Europe, for example) the notion of working harder and harder because you have to be as "passionate" as everyone else sounds ridiculous. There is more to life than work. Truly. You are on earth. You can read fiction in your spare time, also hike, and perhaps volunteer to socialize feral cats for adoption. TL;DR: Please stop with your propaganda that it is a noble thing to find this mythical level of enjoyment with working to increase shareholder value. Leisure time is cool.

swombat 12y ago
Let me clarify: I totally do not think that this state of mind is a reality at banks - and probably not at many tech companies either. I truly abhor the fake "passion" demonstrations required in the typical corporate environment. They are one of the reasons why I hated my time there. It is a tragedy, a travesty of the good things humans can achieve through their work. However, this concept is a reality in my life, and I am observing it in people other than me as well, at work. In no cases does it involve people "working round the clock" - though sometimes it does involve people thinking about work-related topics even when they're not at work. And it also involves them thinking about non-work things while at work. From time to time, people might choose to work late, but there's no external pressure to do so. This philosophy is best explained in a book called "The Seven-day weekend" by Ricardo Semler of Semco fame. Note the emphasis of letting life take over and blur the lines from that "direction", rather than just trying to fool people into working longer hours, which is indeed a disgusting approach to business. PS: I'm European. This notion of work being an evil biblical curse to be avoided is just as backwards as the american-style attempts to convince people to work all the time and "show passion". PPS: That said, thank you for highlighting a way that my arguments in this matter can be misunderstood.

cmsj 12y ago

Good luck finding enough people who will be passionate about cleaning your office, or collecting your trash, or driving your Uber, or processing your DMV application, or building your new house, or stripping your old laptop for recycling, or making your Starbucks, or exterminating your pests, or cleaning your blocked sewer, or picking your fruit, etc etc. It sounds lovely to say we can all be passion workers, and of course there will be people who are passionate about the above jobs, but not all of them, not by a long shot. Of course automation will help here, to some degree, but its potential is overstated in the absence of general purpose AI. We're a very very long way from technology solving the need of many to perform any available job to support their existence, and even if we could get there, there are many people for whom their passion is not something that can generate economic returns. Tl:dr, I believe your comment is fanciful :)

swombat 12y ago
Good luck finding enough people who will be passionate about cleaning your office, or collecting your trash, or driving your Uber, or processing your DMV application, or building your new house, or stripping your old laptop for recycling, or making your Starbucks, or exterminating your pests, or cleaning your blocked sewer, or picking your fruit, etc etc. It sounds lovely to say we can all be passion workers, and of course there will be people who are passionate about the above jobs, but not all of them, not by a long shot. There are definitely jobs that are hard to find enjoyment in... then again, it all depends on your perspective. Even cleaning someone's shit-stained bed can be a work of passion for someone who cares about what they're doing there. Or it can be a curse, a horrid job to escape from. It all depends on your perspective. I'm not saying everyone should magically find a sense of purpose in those jobs. I'm saying that when no one needs to work one of these jobs for money (i.e. we get away from subsistence work as a major mode of operation), the only people who will do those jobs are those who want to. And yes, automation will play a big part in reducing the more unpleasant aspects of such jobs, I'd imagine. We don't need to wait for AGI, either - the Artificial Narrow Intelligences we've built everywhere already do take care of many menial jobs - soon including driving cars, etc.
- cmsj 12y ago

arrrg 12y ago

The net result is that employees are exploited to an absurd degree, without proper compensation. That's just how it is, it's a disgusting ideological tool for oppression.

swombat 12y ago
In the wrong hands, all our best ideas become disgusting ideological tools for oppression. How many people have been murdered for truth, freedom, beauty, etc? Doesn't make the ideals any less appealing, or indeed any less worthwhile. You just have to use them for the right purposes - for example, not "to maximise shareholder value" - a depressingly lame and dehumanising goal for any organisation.

nperson 12y ago

> [...] A tiny slice of us are now able to work with passion, on what we want to do. Like artists working on a song or a painting or a book, they do not draw a clear line between work and play. They're always working and always playing. [...] Yes and this lifestyle is simply unhealthy. Life should be your top priority, not work. Even artists sometimes need a break and care about different things then art itself.

swombat 12y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9089660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9089660
- nperson 12y ago
  No sorry, this is not a misunderstanding. I don't agree with your statement. Redefining life as work doesn't change that either.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

>At this point in time, the majority of humanity toils for subsistence. A sizeable minority work to pay for their lifestyle (aka the work-life balance level), and they are a bajillion times more productive than the subsistence workers. A tiny slice of us are now able to work with passion, on what we want to do. Like artists working on a song or a painting or a book, they do not draw a clear line between work and play. They're always working and always playing. With this they achieve a level of enjoyment of life and of productivity that the work-life balance crowd cannot touch. I disagree. I have some big-picture Passions and Projects. More than one, actually. There is more to be done in the fields I want to work in than I could ever do, in my entire life. Nonetheless, sometimes I am tired of working and want to "go the fuck home" and just do something else. I have family and friends whom I care for and with whom I want to spend time. I have other hobbies and activities outside work. I have places to go, things to do, people to see outside work. I'm not balancing work against daytime television, I'm balancing it against all the other brilliant, wonderful things in my life. I'm also balancing it against the immense willingness of employers in almost all sectors to exploit the hell out of me should I actually become that invested in my work, and against the simple fact that I have to work on what an employer wants (ultimately, what a market wants) to earn a salary, since funding cuts and such have made a life "pursuing my passions" in research academia economically nonviable for all but 2% of trained researchers. So yeah: let me work well and with reasonable, but not passionate, enthusiasm, and then give me my salary and my benefits and let me go home. It's the only human way to run things when there are this many conflicting demands, pressures, and interests creating the situation.

swombat 12y ago
You don't disagree, we just have a misunderstanding of terms :-) To me, going on holiday, learning the guitar, writing fiction, sleeping, etc. are all also part of my work/purpose, which is multi-faceted and not contained in a single job description (not that I have one of those). There's a saying that "sleep is when you work with your eyes closed". How many brilliant work-related answers and solutions have you come up with while sleeping or in the shower? Obvious conclusion: your ability to sleep, take showers, and do other things that "recharge" your mind is not something separate to your work, it is crucially important so that you can actually do good creative work, rather than just bashing out mediocre widget after mediocre widget. And pretty much everyone on HN does what Schmidt calls "smart creative" work. And there definitely needs to be a two-sided trade-off between organisation and employee in this: if the person is expected to be effectively "working" (i.e. considering work-related topics in the back of their mind) at all times, then the organisation needs to recognise that and not impose ridiculous restrictions like fixed working hours and workplaces. As Ricardo Semler puts it, we've all mastered the art of checking our work email on a Saturday evening, but few of us have mastered the art of going to watch a movie on Tuesday afternoon. Please note that no company will, imho, be able to develop such a culture without it turning into a manipulative scam unless the people who are trying to create this culture actually genuinely care about people, rather than just pretending to care. I've covered that idea in this article: http://danieltenner.com/2014/07/31/you-cant-hide-from-yourself/ http://danieltenner.com/2014/07/31/you-cant-hide-from-yourse...

gaius 12y ago

The flip side of that is Schmidt's no-hiring-from-my-friends scam for which he deserves jail time IMHO.