[HN Gopher] A connection between after-hours work and decreased ...
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A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
Author : krigath
Score : 176 points
Date : 2023-12-09 08:29 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slack.com)
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Wrong link/title
| spondyl wrote:
| I don't even know that The Economist wrote about this, as implied
| by the wrong link, but the source seems to be this:
|
| https://slack.com/blog/news/the-surprising-connection-betwee...
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Thank you for the link, this one makes more sense.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| I work in AI research in the Bay Area where hustle culture is
| strong. OpenAI and hot startups have normalised working long
| hours and taking few vacations.
|
| Hustle is great if you have a well defined, measurable objective.
| With such an aim it is easy to keep track of your progress over
| time and maximize your work.
|
| But when you want to do research, design great composible
| systems, be creative, write good code, it is better to do it
| casually. With such endeavors the goal is not well defined or
| measurable. Pressure to be productive or have demonstrable
| results often leads to myopic thinking, local minima,
| unsustainable designs, technical debt and spaghetti code.
|
| I haven't quite been able to capture why there exist these two
| modes. The moment I try to talk about the creative type of work
| my colleagues look at me like I'm making excuses or that I'm a
| slacker.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| > Hustle is great if you have a well defined, measurable
| objective
|
| Hustle is great if you are going to make 8 figures if the
| startup you work at ipos. Your roi doesn't really change at big
| companies. might even be negative in the cases where they
| freeze raises (msft and others).
| admissionsguy wrote:
| It's not inherently about salary but about perceiving the
| work as something important you really, really want to
| accomplish. Money is only one of the possible motivators.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| I agree, its not really about salaries. Thats why people
| arent really motivated by the small promo structure or
| being rated TT/Exceeds Expectations at big companies. It's
| more about not being a wagie/generational wealth when the
| payoff happen that causes the change in behavior.
| fhd2 wrote:
| This is well understood in my peer group at least, and as a
| fractional CTO, I quite routinely find agreement with CEOs and
| the like on this as well. If you work hard, chances are you're
| not working smart enough.
|
| I think that mode where you need to work hard and not smart is
| quite similar to creating technical debt: Sometimes you need to
| do it, usually to meet some timeline you have no control over,
| and it's best done consciously.
|
| Personally, I work with multiple companies and kinda found my
| holy grail in that: When I find myself doing questionable work
| in one place, I can always switch gears to something else and
| get back to it with some distance and fresh ideas. As an
| employee expected to work 40+ hours per week for a single
| company, that was a lot more difficult.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I wonder if being a fractional CTO self selects for knowing
| people who understand this? The kind of person who thinks you
| can go 110% all the time probably thinks you can't work at
| more than one place because you owe your employer all your
| effort.
| fhd2 wrote:
| I think there's some truth to that. I also talk to people
| sceptical of the model (I'm in Germany, so scepticism is
| generally not in short supply), but by and large I'm most
| likely to meet and interact with people who believe the
| model works. Surely a bit of a bubble.
| godelski wrote:
| > But when you want to do research, design great composible
| systems, be creative, write good code, it is better to do it
| casually.
|
| As a fellow ML researcher, I actually have a good answer to
| this. It's a creative task, not a labor task. Creative tasks
| require your brain to be exceptionally flexible and to view
| things from unique perspectives. Research is literally creating
| something that no one has thought of before so you clearly have
| to do things no one did before. Plus, the truth is that if
| you're a researcher, do you ever really "stop"? Because I'll
| even be sitting down playing videogames and sometimes thats
| when ideas come to be. Other times when I'm out for a walk.
| Sometimes it's also when I'm deep in the codebase tearing stuff
| apart because it's already 5 levels of spagetti figuring out
| exactly what each line does and thinking a lot about it and its
| connection to the rest of the program (seriously, we could do a
| lot more testing if we'd rewrite code from the ground up. Not
| doing this is like thinking your first attempt at anything is
| good. Idk about you, but my first attempts are absolute shit
| and I've learned a lot by the next go around). But all those
| things are connected together. Because science is very much an
| art. My best ideas always come from after time I've taken off
| which is usually long overdue (as in I can barely name 2
| realistic vacations in the last 5 years), but exactly like you
| say, it feels like I can't take the time.
|
| > The moment I try to talk about the creative type of work my
| colleagues look at me like I'm making excuses or that I'm a
| slacker.
|
| Just me and the teams I've worked on/with or are these people
| also typically low productivity and not the most creative? The
| type of people that treat science as something you can just
| hammer away at like there's a clear algorithm to solving any
| problem. I know it's wrong, but that shit gives me mad imposter
| syndrome.
|
| Like our literally job is about optimization. You think we'd be
| able to at least optimize a work day, or maybe a month?
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| > Like our literally job is about optimization. You think
| we'd be able to at least optimize a work day, or maybe a
| month?
|
| There is _lots_ written about this. Whole careers built on
| advice about it. It seems what works for some people does not
| work for others. My outline won 't help you if you're in the
| valley but I'll write it out anyway, some people live
| elsewhere.
|
| 1/ Wake up early. Like daybreak early.
|
| 2/ Do not look at email, slack etc. No admin stuff at this
| point.
|
| 3/ Leisurely breakfast letting your mind wander. Historically
| cooked by wife, ymmv there.
|
| 4/ Spend the morning walking, thinking, writing things down.
| Especially write ideas down before lunch.
|
| 5/ It's midday. Optionally eat things. Open email.
|
| 6/ Entire afternoon is spent doing whatever "work" one found
| in the email. Put out the fires. Do the code reviews. Write
| whatever simple stuff seems to be required.
|
| 7/ It's evening. Try to forget the fires. Exercise helps.
|
| 8/ Spend the evening on research or socialising. Aim is to
| have interesting context for dreams.
|
| 9/ Sleep time.
|
| That is relatively new to me - couple of months or so - and
| working _really_ well. Note the complete lack of family
| activities - either that overlaps the afternoon fires or the
| morning creativity, or both. Opportunity cost is rough. No
| creative work for you if there 's a toddler or an
| unsupportive partner present.
|
| This morning-creative afternoon-productive split works really
| well if most of your colleagues are five hours west of you.
| They wake up in time to light things on fire. If they're five
| hours east, maybe swap the two blocks of time over. If
| they're in the same timezone and expect to talk to you all
| day, no creative work for you. Opportunity cost again.
| liquidpele wrote:
| > I work in AI research in the Bay Area where hustle culture is
| strong.
|
| Is it? My experience was that it was just all about optics
| there - 12 hours of "work" but 8 of it is coffee breaks, long
| lunches, nebulous and unnecessary arch design fitting in tech
| that makes no sense to have there but that people just wanted
| to play with...
| baz00 wrote:
| This aligns with my findings over the years. The more over
| invested I am in something the quicker productivity grinds to a
| halt. Mostly because I enthusiastically cornered myself and end
| up creating more problems than I'm solving.
|
| Apathetic lazy me scoots on past workaholic me fairly easily on
| because it's afraid of making itself busy later by accident.
| david-gpu wrote:
| The years when I was at my most productive, in terms of
| outputting the most value for my employer (products, patents,
| etc), I was doing about three hours of "focus work" a day on
| average. I simply didn't have the energy to do more than that.
| The rest of my working hours were spent in low-productivity
| meetings, low intensity emailing, etc. My performance reviews
| were consistently top-notch and I was getting promoted at the
| maximum rate allowed by our organization.
|
| My least productive years happened when I was working far longer
| hours, stressed out and miserable in a company with a "hustle
| culture" and very poor internal communication/documentation
| habits in my opinion.
|
| My opinion is that you should prioritize your own wellbeing and
| if you feel that the company culture (or your manager) is
| preventing you from working in the way that you find most
| enjoyable, go find a different job.
|
| Don't be pressured into working longer than you want or in ways
| that you don't like, thinking that it will help your career. Your
| quality of life is more important and you may actually be more
| productive doing things your way.
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| Fully agree. On my last job interview, I sat in front of the
| committee (about 7 to-be colleagues) and the director. I said:
|
| > I will only work maximum 30 hours a week. The reason is that
| I am not productive after 6 hours. It simply does not make
| sense for you to pay me after 2PM, because I will not do
| anything productive from 2 to 4PM and you are wasting money.
|
| Everyone smiled. Except the director.
|
| I still got the position, but the director is still hoping I
| will at some time upgrade to 100%. I said I will consider again
| after 2 years, but I doubt my perception will have changed by
| that time.
| gjulianm wrote:
| To be honest, I don't know if I would have said that. I think
| that employees in "creative" positions (e.g., you're not
| serving customers at a bar and need to keep the shop open and
| working) are paid based on the output they produce. Whether
| that output is produced in 2, 6 or 8 hours is not really
| their problem. Looking at it this way, they would have
| happily paid you 100% of your salary for the same output
| you're now giving them with a 20% discount.
| liquidpele wrote:
| Don't worry, he didn't actually say that either. Just
| another "and everyone clapped" internet story.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Working smart vs working hard. Also - optics.
|
| Notice how even if you are an early bird and in the office by
| 9, you are a lazy slacker when you leave at 5? Then someone
| rolls in at 11 and leaves at 7 - same number of hours. HARD
| WORKER.
|
| People are shallow, visual, and have no attention spans
| (especially now). You need to be aware of the optics and play
| them.
|
| No, you are not gaming the system - you are getting to the even
| point of a stupid, unfair one.
|
| Also - you need to just plain not take jobs in companies with
| hustle cultures if you can avoid it. If everyone on the team is
| 22, it's probably going to be hell, because they are still to
| learn the lesson the hard way.
|
| Call it reverse agism or whatever, but it's a joy to work with
| professionals who have seen dysfunctional workplaces and who
| have lives.
| memling wrote:
| > Notice how even if you are an early bird and in the office
| by 9, you are a lazy slacker when you leave at 5? Then
| someone rolls in at 11 and leaves at 7 - same number of
| hours. HARD WORKER.
|
| So I generally agree with your post, but is this what
| constitutes early riser these days? I get having kids and
| missing the key 7-9am time slot, but is an 11am start time a
| Usual Thing?
| liquidpele wrote:
| 11 or 12 EST is common for west coasters obviously... then
| if their boss is east coast and an idiot they value them
| being there "late"
| darkerside wrote:
| Why does that make them an idiot? To see value in
| overlapping work hours?
| jondwillis wrote:
| Perhaps more coverage (by PST workers) in the later hours
| of the day (in EST.) "The sun never sets on the org's
| productivity empire"
| liquidpele wrote:
| I'm saying if they favor the person who happens to be on
| later due to time zones, when everyone works the same
| hours.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| People regularly walk in from the street just in time for
| that 10:30 standup.
|
| Then it's 11, then they get ready for the day, then it's
| lunch time. Then it's lunch coma. Then by 3PM they start
| gaining speed. By that time, I am already exhausted.
| ako wrote:
| If I get in at 11 it usually means I've already done
| stuff at home, probably between 8 and 10. Getting in late
| doesn't mean that they're starting late.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| It doesn't matter if you are working from home or from
| the office. If I am in the office before 9, many will not
| know how long I've been there.
|
| VP of engineering who is not on top of the commit
| activity only sees me there 10 to 5, but they see the
| dude staying late with them.
| Liquix wrote:
| To be fair some people have naturally different "peak
| hours" and sleep schedules. I naturally fall asleep
| around 1-2AM and wake up at 10. Going to bed earlier
| involves tossing and turning for hours annoying the SO.
| Staying up for 36 hours to "reset" works for a couple
| nights before the schedule drifts back to its natural
| state.
|
| I practice sleep hygiene and have tried cutting out
| caffeine. Conversely, there's no amount of caffeine
| capable of facilitating deep work before 10:30-11AM, just
| end up frantically clicking around articles and wishing
| for sleep.
|
| Maybe these people aren't trying to game the optics, they
| just are naturally at their most productive from 11-7.
| IMHO it's awesome that your company allows that kind of
| flexibility (and that the morning startup is at 10:30!)
| jondwillis wrote:
| Is "peak hours" a studied phenomenon? I have always
| assumed it is lifestyle habits and circadian
| rhythm/inertia. My experience with jet lag makes me think
| it is the latter.
| stephendause wrote:
| Yes. I highly recommend the book When by Daniel Pink:
| https://www.danpink.com/books/when/
| renegade-otter wrote:
| The racing mind. Welcome to my world. I assume you do not
| take medical Speed like Adderall?
|
| The thing that saved me were these $35 acupressure mats.
| 20-30 minutes and I am out.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=acupressure+mat+spoonk
| citrin_ru wrote:
| People are different. I'm not a morning person and
| struggling through the first half of the day. Right after
| a lunch is when my most productive hours start.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Was thinking the same, early bird here (Western Europe)
| would be someone who's in the office by 6 or 7 AM
| saalweachter wrote:
| Incidentally, I was wondering what having our 0-hour at 6am
| (equinox sunrise) instead of midnight would do to our
| average wake-up schedule.
|
| Waking at 6, 7, 8, 10, seems pretty arbitrary, but waking
| up at 0-hour feels more significant to me.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Yeah 9am is not early at all and way more into running late
| territory. Early risers to me means focused and productive
| at 730AM local time.
|
| I'm usually ready to go full speed by 8AM, I wfh and kids
| are out the door to school by 7:35-7:40Am.
|
| /in the US and work in consulting
| wildrhythms wrote:
| In every tech workplace I've been, 9am start time is the
| early risers, and 10:30-11am is when people actually 'are
| online'. Maybe it's different in the consulting space.
| mnahkies wrote:
| I often treasure the ~7:30-9:30 chunk of my day when WFH
| because of this tendency. It's basically guaranteed focus
| time and always feels a pity to lose it commuting on the
| days I go to the office
| tetha wrote:
| Yeah I'm weirded out by that as well. On our platform
| engineering team, the "early rising" crew is usually up and
| working at 7 - 7:30. Some guy needed the afternoon hours
| for personal reasons and started working at like 6:30 for
| two or three months.
|
| Personally I like to start working around 8, so I can
| triage the monitoring while the brain runs through the last
| boot processes and unit activations so I can use those (for
| me) very productive hours between 9 and 12.
| a_cardboard_box wrote:
| > No, you are not gaming the system - you are getting to the
| even point of a stupid, unfair one.
|
| You are also reinforcing the stupid unfair system. The game
| is created by playing it.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Not really. Sometimes the option not to play is not there.
| It's like romantic dating - you can complain all you want
| about how women do not see the "real" you, but if you don't
| take part in the dumb ritual and the vanity of it all, you
| will always lose to someone who _plays the game_.
|
| That part I said about us being shallow and easily giving
| into the optics? This is not going to change, as trying to
| change deeply basic human nature is a fool's errand.
| jader201 wrote:
| _> The rest of my [5] working hours were spent in low-
| productivity meetings, low intensity emailing, etc._
|
| That would feel very unproductive, to me. 3 hours of productive
| work is certainly better than 0, but I think I'd have a hard
| time ending the day with that much of my day consumed with
| unproductive meetings and email.
|
| Granted, a lot of my day is spent on our internal chat tool
| (Slack equivalent), so I suppose that's mostly equivalent to
| meetings/email. But I would consider that time mostly
| productive, and certainly don't feel like it consumes 5 hours
| of my 8-hour day.
|
| But I do agree with the last two paragraphs (and the general
| sentiment that a culture of overtime is never good), and to
| your point, if what you describe feels productive to you,
| that's what's important.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> That would feel very unproductive, to me. 3 hours of
| productive work is certainly better than 0, but I think I'd
| have a hard time ending the day with that much of my day
| consumed with unproductive meetings and email._
|
| I hated every minute outside of the three hours of actual
| work I did every day, but I did it because I felt I had to
| maintain the appearance of being productive.
|
| The simple reality is that after those three hours of
| intensive work I didn't have any mental juice left to do
| useful stuff. At that point in my career I would have given
| more if I had it, but I just didn't have the mental stamina
| for that level of focused work.
|
| What I wondered during those years is: if I'm "slacking" most
| of the day, how can I be a top contributor? But I was, and
| not because I was particularly smart or good at selling
| myself. I suspect the answer is simply that most people don't
| actually work all that many hours a day either, either
| intentionally or because in order to go through the whole
| 8-hour workday they pace themselves accordingly.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| A strategy I've used since covid is to go into the office in
| the morning for my focus work. My mind works best then and I
| can also satisfy our current requirements for being at the
| office some of the time. Then I go home at noon, or 1 if I had
| some momentum on something. Then the afternoon is spent in the
| mindless teams/zoom/etc meetings and emailing. It's a pretty
| productive arrangement for me. Though it does break down when
| people insist on morning meetings. Then I get nothing done.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| When I started my new job a month ago I told the founder that
| generally I've worked 25-30 hour weeks. My references were good
| enough that he said "Well if that's what it took to make your
| references that happy go right ahead and continue working those
| hours".
|
| Reasonable people understand that hours != output.
| sideshowb wrote:
| How is productivity measured in their study though? As it's
| survey based I presume self reported?
|
| I worry that expectations may have a confounding effect: those
| required to work long hours may feel less productive relative to
| the higher expectations of their work culture?
|
| I could well believe they actually _are_ less productive as well,
| on some objective scale, but not sure a survey could prove this.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is a very good article. The core is that "productivity" is
| extremely hard to measure for most white-collar jobs, or indeed
| anything that isn't piecework or an assembly line. Even if you
| can assign a number to annual or monthly productivity
| (salespeople have monthly targets), you can't assign it to
| individual minutes of the day.
|
| So people end up producing the _appearance of productivity_
| instead. Often at the expense of actual, unmeasured productivity.
| mjirv wrote:
| > Three out of every four desk workers report working in the 3 to
| 6pm timeframe, but of those, only one in four consider these
| hours highly productive.
|
| It's nice to see some data on this. A lot of people talk about a
| 4-day workweek, but personally I think a 6-hour work day would be
| better.
|
| At least in white-collar jobs, I think most people could fit the
| same amount of productivity into fewer (focused) hours.
|
| Plus a day that's roughly 9-3 instead of 9-5 would have the
| benefit of being aligned with school schedules (at least here in
| the US) and make things easier for working parents.
| ben_w wrote:
| To add to your example, UK school hours are (or were when I was
| going to them) 09:00-15:30.
|
| I'm not 100% sure the hours here in Germany (sadly lacking the
| need to know), but I think many are 08:00-13:30.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _make things easier for working parents._
|
| During the (now semi-aborted) back-to-office push at my
| employer, several of us pointed out that a 9-5 in the office is
| _impossible_ for those of us with children and a commute.
|
| - 8:00am - earliest free drop-off time at school.
|
| - 8:12 or 8:20 - next bus or train to the city. I can
| _probably_ make that from the school, if I fully sprint for at
| least half that journey. (Taking a car is riskier; traffic
| around the school or the station, or bad parking, means that
| driving is wildly more variable.)
|
| - 9:45 - earliest possible time I can roll into the office.
|
| - 5:00 - I slam my laptop shut, having already put on my coat,
| and sprint to the subway and/or bike share to head to the train
| station.
|
| - 5:16 - the earliest possible train I can make, assuming that
| all of Midtown stops for me.
|
| - 6:31 - the earliest possible arrival back home, 31 minutes
| past aftercare's closing time.
|
| The only way this would be doable is by hiring childcare for
| both mornings and afternoons, every day of the week, to the
| tune of ~$50 extra per day, minimum. That's on top of the cost
| of the commute.
| JambalayaJim wrote:
| In this case it just makes sense to have RTO at reduced
| hours. Make the standard work day something like 10-4.
|
| I never understood why people throw the baby out with the
| bathwater on things like this.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I think in our case it was driven by the company's new
| owners not being based in our area, and not understanding
| that our commute and living situations are vastly different
| from theirs.
| ambrose2 wrote:
| When I was a kid, I would get dropped off early for "before
| school programs at school" and stay at "after school
| programs" at school and get picked up late because both of my
| parents worked full time. Do they not have those anymore
| (which sound like less money than "hiring childcare")?
| helij wrote:
| Many times the slots are all taken. Then there's the cost.
| These things cost money. Add commute spending and many
| people can't really afford both commute for them and
| morning and afternoon clubs for their kids.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| They do. But they both cost money. My child is already
| enrolled in the after-school program, from 2:30 until 6:00.
| ambrose2 wrote:
| How much do those cost these days compared to say, day
| care programs (per hour)?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'm not sure. We pay a yearly rate, and it's
| significantly cheaper than it would be to pay per hour.
|
| In any case, we already pay for the aftercare regardless
| of whether we're commuting to work that day or not;
| that's a cost that's already budgeted for.
| cozzyd wrote:
| well, sure if you live so far away that you spend 3 hours a
| day commuting... I would just work on the train and arrive
| late /leave early.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Sure, unless the mandated RTO plan explicitly states that
| you should be in the office from 9-5.
|
| If I had to regularly spend 3 hours a day commuting, I
| would quit and find a job that doesn't do that shit to me.
| lijok wrote:
| Working continuous overtime is one of the worst diseases you can
| inflict upon your company.
|
| 1. By making changes outside of work hours (comitting code as a
| software dev), you're upsetting your teammates understanding of
| the state of the project. Ever had on-call push a 200+ LOC change
| after hours to hot-fix a bug, then had to have a two hour meeting
| next morning to figure out what changed and how to re-do the fix
| properly? When you make changes outside of hours, you put your
| teammates into that position every time.
|
| 2. You upset your teams and your companies understanding of their
| capacity. Because you are not beholdent to work overtime by the
| contract, if you decide to take a break from overtime for
| whatever reason, projects will start slipping with no perceptible
| root-cause. This is a really bad spot to put your team into.
|
| 3. You're likely to become the "rockstar". This isn't necessarily
| a bad thing, but can be damaging to companies that do not now how
| to work with them - see https://neilonsoftware.com/difficult-
| people-on-software-proj....
|
| 4. You will eventually start burning out, there's no question
| about it. Burn out doesn't affect just you, it affects the
| company. Once you start burning out, all sorts of interpersonal
| and quality problems will develop that will jeapordize a
| (hopefully) otherwise healthy team.
|
| 5. You will ocassionally ping your teammates outside of work
| hours, some of whom, due to various reasons, will feel a need to
| respond, or "hop on for a quick check". Yes, the teammates are in
| control of their actions, no, that does not excuse you from
| regularly pinging them outside of work hours. This is especially
| nefarious if there is a power imbalance, such as a more senior
| engineer (or a rockstar) pinging a more junior engineer.
|
| If you're finding that you need to continuously work overtime to
| meet deadlines, speak with your manager, this is a problem for
| them to solve, not you.
| ipnon wrote:
| In my experience having a "rockstar" or hero programmer on your
| team is the surest indication of a management failure, either
| in velocity, priority, or hiring.
| 2devnull wrote:
| I disagree with some of this. I think if you work with
| international teams, half of the time of day stuff is in play
| no matter what. But in general I sort of agree that we should
| all try to work slower/work fewer hours, for the good of
| society. But we shouldn't harass those who have more time and
| interest in the work they're doing and want to work more, or
| those who might need more breaks or work most optimally at a
| slower pace. We should care about workers collectively _and_
| individually, I think.
| lijok wrote:
| Fully agree.
|
| If you have international teams, they shouldn't be working on
| the same project, if it can be avoided. Having teams with
| different working hours work the same project sabotages
| communications.
| ghaff wrote:
| At large companies, it's unavoidable to a certain degree.
| In my case, it's mostly East Coast to Europe though which
| is pretty manageable. Asia to US is definitely tough.
| You're either going to have people on late-night calls or
| getting up in the middle of the night. It works for the odd
| sync but is tough on a regular basis.
| certifiablysane wrote:
| I have to disagree vigorously based on my current
| experience. My team, working on a single project/product,
| is globally distributed. There are team members in APAC
| (New Zealand), Europe, and America, and (IMO) we do very
| well at communicating and producing solid results.
|
| It does take specific effort, mainly expressed in written
| communications in tickets/issues and other more ephemeral
| channels (Slack in our case). You have to think carefully
| about what information must be shared and how to do so. You
| can't just drop a random comment and hope for a good
| interpretation. There needs to be a "call to action": a
| question, a request for specific activity/response, or a
| suggestion (or several) for possible next steps. There also
| needs to be trust built between team members, which takes
| time and similar effort.
|
| But when this is unlocked to its fullest potential it
| becomes an absolute super-power. The problem you were
| facing when you finished the day? Fixed by your team-mates
| when you start the next day, some more progress
| (hopefully), and they hand back the _next_ problem to
| solve. Apparent velocity goes through the roof and
| personally I find it _incredibly_ satisfying.
|
| Mind you, this is all coming from an all remote/all async
| company. I can potentially see problems if you had two
| part-teams in separate time-zone separated offices with
| minimal overlap. Then you'd potentially run into the usual
| human tribalism and culture drift, and communications
| aren't necessarily going to solve that.
| from-nibly wrote:
| We shouldn't.harras people. But working extra is working to
| build a machine that HAS to be worked extra. You are
| solidifying the fact that work CAN'T get done in the normal
| hours. And then when the company goes to replace that person
| they will have to pay extra to get the same thing.
|
| Even if you forget the workers. It's not good for the
| company.
|
| If you want to be selfish, no judgement, sometimes you gotta
| do that, but don't be confused about the fact that externally
| it does harm.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _But we shouldn't harass those who have more time and
| interest in the work they're doing and want to work more_
|
| I mean, sure, we shouldn't harass anyone.
|
| But if they're working 12 hour days, and pinging me on Slack
| at 7pm, they're the ones harassing me. If they're producing 5
| times the lines of code that I am because they're
| workaholics, thus causing me to spend half my day playing
| catch-up to their unreasonable schedule, that's also not
| great.
| dchftcs wrote:
| There are ways where an employee that works 40 hours has less
| than half the impact than someone who works 60 hours. But plainly
| high quality code is not one of them. It works when you get a
| block of intense focus time and then go off to spend a lot of
| low-energy time in a breadth of business matters, including
| casually learning how to do your job better.
|
| In the first year or so it often doesn't make an obvious
| difference, because you just seem to produce as much hard output
| as the others, but you have a faster exponential growth curve.
| The combined quality and quantity of your work can outpace
| others. If you're both talented and lucky, at some level of depth
| and breath you may become the best, help the company corner a
| market, at which point the impact of your labor becomes
| superlinear to your efforts, which makes the difference even more
| obvious.
|
| The main problem is that this difference in impact is primarily
| captured by the employer in most places. Employers are either
| oblivious to the difference or short change the better employees
| because they only have to pay everyone market rates, as outsiders
| are often in an even worse position to distinguish the quality of
| the two types of employees. Maybe you became L7 by making much
| more than 2x as much impact as an L6, but you only get maybe a
| 30% pay bump.
| Game_Ender wrote:
| Part of the way I explain this is the amount of overhead in a
| company or position. Say you have 20 hours of coordination,
| planning and meetings/week, and 20 hours of direct work. If you
| work 50 hours you know increase how much development you are
| doing by 50% by only working 25% more hours. Now it the
| organization can do the same by cutting overhead and meetings
| but that is usually not up to one high performance contributor.
|
| Like you said the impact of a top contributor doing 50% more
| work can be really large, entire new systems can be built, key
| features launched. It can get you promoted, but you definitely
| won't get a 50% raise.
| ishtanbul wrote:
| Investment banker here. The culture of software/tech better
| valuing work life balance is alluring. Whats described in the
| article is pretty alien to me. I typically have 4-6 hours of
| meetings a day (client calls) and am also expected to do 6+ hours
| of document/email work a day on top of that. I have to do
| somewhere between 2-10 hrs of work every weekend. It is
| impossible to keep up, so i am always disappointing somebody and
| i just live with that. The compensation is excellent (I've earned
| up to 720k in a good year) but i feel like this job will kill me.
| I actually want to get into programming and robotics and actually
| build something. Im worried its too late to switch and ill get
| knocked down to a much lower salary as a jr dev at 35yrs old. Its
| hard to walk away from that paycheck. Ideas?
| daniel-s wrote:
| Learn Python, automate your work.
|
| Develop a relationship with someone that knows Python, have
| them automate your work.
|
| Alternatively, learn VBA if you live in Word.
|
| Alternative 2, just learn to be more proficient with the tools
| that you use.
|
| If there's something that I have discovered it is that many
| people's office jobs could be automated--or at least much more
| efficient--if they were developers.
|
| Any task that you do that involves any kind of data, developing
| reports that can be templated, Excel, could all probably be
| automated.
| zero-sharp wrote:
| How will python help him with meetings and emails? This
| doesn't sound like a technology problem. Not only that, but
| he's already working crazy hours. And you're suggesting that
| he spend more time on work?
|
| He's asking for ideas on how to make a career transition with
| the understanding that his salary will most likely get
| reduced by 90%.
| ishtanbul wrote:
| Im looking forward to the msft copilot integration in
| office that can answer my emails and write transcripts of
| calls with to-dos. It will save time, but i think it will
| just up the ante since the culture is what got us here. And
| the risk of deals failing means you have to work on many at
| a time and accept as much as 100% swings in comp year to
| year. I would love to learn python, i figure with chatgpt i
| can learn it quickly. I learned vba with it and built
| bigger, crazier financial models but i still work the same
| amount... even my boss who is 50 is doing the same hrs.
|
| With ai is it even worth it to try to get started in
| software or robotics? I feel like i will not be able to get
| a job bc these systems are advancing so fast, they will
| take the jr jobs first.
|
| Value in my industry is really created from relationships
| (origination). The modeling and analysis work can probably
| be automated away with ai in a short time. I'm trying to
| bring the firm in that direction so that i can manage that.
| zero-sharp wrote:
| If we started having chatgpt respond to emails in my
| current job, I would bet that we'd lose all of our
| clients. I can't imagine automated communication in the
| context of personalized and nuanced interactions,
| especially when money is on the line. I'm sure somebody
| will tell me I'm wrong though...
| ishtanbul wrote:
| Yeah, i think about 50% of them require a ton of thought
| and context. But some do not. If it could draft and just
| let me approve, i could save hours. This is just jevons
| paradox though.
| ghaff wrote:
| As you say it's the culture of investment banking, Big
| Law, and some other subsets of certain industries. Those
| subsets pay extremely well but things like weekend work
| are just part of the package.
|
| I'm not at all convinced AI is going to radically change
| the culture of most industries in the relatively near
| term. There have been _enormous_ changes to the tooling
| for all kinds of tech over the past few decades and I don
| 't really see big changes to the work culture--other than
| the pay for software development at "tech" companies
| often increasing relative to other types of engineering.
| (It's not clear to me that sort of differential is
| sustainable.)
| cxr wrote:
| At $500k+ annually, you can hire a secretary.
|
| (It sounds like you're in a position where you feel like
| you're compensated well enough that you'd be open to
| taking half the pay if it meant you could maintain the
| same return on investment: i.e. put in only half the
| work.)
|
| By bringing up Copilot, it shows that you're already
| dabbling with adjacent ideas. Would love to know if/why
| you haven't considered this already and more about your
| work, including what parts, if any, make it a non-
| starter.
| rexreed wrote:
| The secret is automation that does things while you're
| doing other things. Parallel not series. I've even seen
| people secretly hire foreign virtual assistants to do their
| low value tasks for pennies while the employee focuses on
| the higher value tasks.
| zero-sharp wrote:
| So I'm assuming that your comment is in reference to me
| casting doubt on the usefulness of automation in
| meetings, emails, and other forms of communication.
|
| The point is that there's plenty of high level,
| technical, and nuanced communication that can only happen
| between experts. The expertise isn't documented anywhere
| (unless you count previous email exchanges), it's not
| somehow represented in a database, and often times
| decisions are highly specific to one particular
| situation. Asking a non expert to fulfill this role is
| difficult enough. I'm not convinced that this is a
| problem solved by technology.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure what I would use an admin for if
| you gave me one. A lot of what an executive admin does is
| dealing with the calendars of people who have far more
| demands on their time than they have time. And getting
| the status on various projects from people. Generally
| speaking, other than travel sometimes, I don't really
| have a lot of "Make it So!" tasks that I could delegate
| to an admin/assistant.
|
| There are things that I'm not good at that I'm better off
| not spending time hacking at to do a mediocre job--e.g.
| web stuff generally or design--but that's really
| something else.
| sinman wrote:
| I think solutions to this are more likely to come out of
| introspection of what you actually want in life, rather than a
| clever hack that gets you a high-paying programming job
| straight away.
|
| Some questions that might be interesting to ask yourself:
|
| - How much money do you actually need? - Are there things
| beyond money that stop you wanting to be a junior dev (status,
| networks and friendships, parts of your identity)? - Could you
| afford to take a year or more off work? If so, would a job
| where you have a junior dev salary be strictly better than
| that, financially? - Are there ways you could "actually build
| something" that would be satisfying to you, that don't require
| a career jump? For example, maybe there are roles or companies
| in your current industry that offer better work/life balance
| (at the cost of some salary) and would allow you time for
| hobbies. - You don't have to be a developer to work in tech.
| FAANG are _massive_ companies with all sorts of employees
| (lawyers, doctors, investors, finance people). Are there roles
| at the big tech companies that would fit into your existing
| skill set, where you wouldn 't take such a hit to salary? Would
| those satisfy you, or are you more concerned with changing your
| day-to-day work?
| liquidpele wrote:
| If you don't already know how to code, then it wouldn't be
| easy. Development isn't just another kind of job you can get
| trained for (unless you make very little and do things that
| would get outsourced). It's a skill that takes time and
| experience to grow into. That said, it's never "too late" for
| anything in life, if you find it interesting then try
| contributing to various github projects or even start your own.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think software development is probably relatively easier to
| slide into than deciding you really want to become a
| mechanical or chemical engineer. As you say, it's something
| you can potentially do a bit on the side.
|
| That said, per another comment, as long as the pay is
| ridiculously good--which odds are it won't actually be by
| starting over with a tech company--waiting it out and
| avoiding lifestyle inflation isn't the worst plan. One of my
| classmates in school retired from investment banking in his
| 40s and travels and teaches a bit on the side.
| dgellow wrote:
| Making that much money I would expect that you can take almost
| any career risk you could imagine. I understand that you're
| basically millionaire at 35 years old, you're basically set for
| life and can focus on doing things you find more interesting,
| such as learning about robotics without any monetary pressure.
| That's a pretty luxurious and safe situation! Maybe take some
| time off can help you realize how insanely far ahead you are
| from any other worker trying to save money.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Somehow that doesn't work. For most people retirement money
| (or "can take any career risk" money) goal post keeps
| changing. Often involuntarily.
| ghaff wrote:
| Lifestyle inflation is definitely a thing, especially with
| a partner and kids. You're not going back to living in a
| crappy apartment with non-related roommates if you have a
| choice. And you don't want to give up nice trips and meals
| out.
|
| Stepping off a well-paid career trajectory is also hard to
| do even if you're pretty sure you have enough savings to
| comfortably cover your annual living expenses. It can be
| hard to get back on if things don't go as planned. I've
| definitely known people who ended up pushing semi-
| retirement out a bit because work wasn't getting in the way
| of life _too_ much and why not stash some more money away
| while the stashing is good?
| kevinmershon wrote:
| With all that salary, keep the job and hire a team of
| outsourced workers to build the business of your dreams on the
| side.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| 700 on a good year is probably 400 after tax and misc
| breakage. Reasonable dev in cheap country is maybe 100 a year
| all in? Not obvious to me that any sort of "business of your
| dreams" can be built by two or three outsourced developers.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| The obvious play is to transition to quant dev at your current
| place. You'll already have a bunch of software engineers who do
| their best to guess what the bankers are talking about. Sell
| your supervision structure on the idea that you work more
| closely with them with an eye to transitioning. That may take
| some salesmanship.
|
| If you manage to cross over to quant dev you'll be able halfway
| to a sane working environment (it'll probably feel very relaxed
| to you) and at maybe half your current compensation, assuming
| you get somewhat lowballed while moving. Spend some time there.
|
| You're now a professional software developer. Optionally cross
| over into a less mental industry to move the work/life balance
| curve further.
|
| Hopefully you haven't burned everything you've made so far -
| investment banking is prone to a run of bad luck turning into
| unemployment, so if you're living paycheck to paycheck you've
| got an easy way to shed stress by not doing that any more.
|
| Good luck
| grvdrm wrote:
| I don't see software/tech valuing work/life balance better. It
| might just be that software/tech is more remote and more
| flexible. But tech can punish you just like investment banking.
|
| I was asked point blank by my tech CEO: "how much do you work"
| - first time in my career and that's having come from NYC
| finance. Don't believe the hype!
| robinhouston wrote:
| The reported results are more nuanced than the headline. Workers
| who feel pressured to work after hours estimate their own
| productivity as lower than workers who don't; but workers who
| choose to work after hours - rather than feeling pressured to do
| so - report slightly _higher_ productivity.
|
| It's tempting to conjecture that both effects - workers feeling
| pressured to work after hours, and feeling less productive - are
| caused by poor management, rather than one causing the other.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| My own experience completely agrees with the reported findings.
| But Slack is the #1 offender in terms of feeling "obligated to
| work after hours"
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Yet another ink blot study where everyone will look at the
| results and see what they want to see. Work however long you want
| JFC.
| notfed wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I think this comment would be highly upvoted if it included
| citations to contradictory studies, and maybe had a more
| constructive tone.
| conductr wrote:
| How much does "productivity" applications like Slack contribute
| to this problem?
| renegade-otter wrote:
| The irony of Slack writing about productivity is not lost on me.
|
| "The productivity pit: how Slack is ruining work":
| https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/1/18511575/productivity-sl...
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| This! If there's any technology that has enabled and normalized
| after-hours work it's got to be slack, perhaps even more so
| than email.
| jondwillis wrote:
| Pathetic behavior I have observed in myself in the past:
| unconsciously opening Slack at 8am/11pm after being let go
| from the job and not even being able to sign in.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| It has turned us into hamsters pushing the wheel. Open
| Slack, get a treat.
| theodpHN wrote:
| 1998 article with quotes from Jim Goodnight, CEO of analytics
| software company SAS: One big difference is that Goodnight and
| most of his staff work a 35-hour week. "We want people to go home
| and be with their families," he says. "This will make them more
| productive when they are at work. I would prefer that rather than
| have them non-productive for 12 months while they are getting
| over a divorce."
|
| https://www.afr.com/companies/fewer-rising-to-technologys-gr...
| notfed wrote:
| Person reports working extra hours. Person also reports feeling
| behind schedule.
|
| I mean, is it really surprising these two are correlated? I'm
| pretty sure the causation works as follows: they're working extra
| hours because, like, they felt behind.
|
| Some people who aren't behind may work extra hours anyway...for
| fun? But I'm guessing that's less people. Not to mention there's
| cognitive bias at play: these people might not even self-report
| that as "working extra hours".
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Do you know what is a great productivity boost? Muting all slack
| notifications.
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