I love these stories also but I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job. I assume you don't work a full time job, otherwise it seems unhealthy.
I put a lot of time into my side projects but that is mostly the whole saturday and sunday, but even then I obviously don't feel so well rested on monday.
The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life.
I remember going to conferences,especially the really small ones, the professors and students would spend all day listening to extremely draining lectures; this one particular conference started at 8.30 am, went till 1 pm, you get a few hours break, and then it goes till 9 pm.
I'd go back to my room in the noon time to take a nap, and in the evening maybe go to the bar for a small bit to get a drink and go back to the room to get ready for the next day, but the majority of professors would spend most of the midday break meeting each other, and also continue socializing in the bar fairly late into night, and they'll still come back the next day as if this is a regular day.
I had a talk with my professor on how they're doing it and his response was just "you just have to train yourself to do it and get used to it." Probably one of the main reasons why I chose not to continue down that path!
> It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life.
I would take this with a pinch of salt. Socializing by the pool after the talks isn't hard work. Also, most people only listen to some of the talks. It's not uncommon to see the room half empty the last days of the conference. There are also various social events and so on...
While it's true that some professors/researchers are hard-working and driven, it's not the case for all of them, and it varies throughout their career. Their job is also typically not very stressful.
Same thing for software engineers. Some people do meaningful work for a few hours a day, and slack the rest of the time and still have good performance reviews.
Among the professionals who work a lot, I can think of doctors. My family doctor works very long hours, and he's certainly not slacking.
> Also, most people only listen to some of the talks
Which is why I explicitly mentioned small conferences. The one I was talking about has 90 attendees total, only one session at a time in the same room, and in snowmass Colorado so if you're outside the conference hotel we can literally see you from up to half a mile away. Almost no one skips a single session in these conferences, especially the professors. For the most part they're paying attention as well, no one's on their laptops or dozing off.
Again, I spent a decade in academia, and if you're in fields such as biology and in some top institution, it's very rare that professors up to doing something meaningful have anything less than 60 hour weeks at any point in their career. This is more or less what me and my roommates actively discussed most of the time all through a decade, so I'm not just talking about anecdotal evidence. From what I understand, academia in other fields especially tech related can be less stressful than this. Being a oroefssor in a competitive field is really back breaking - You have to juggle a large number of roles and are constantly responsible for the lives of numerous people and lack many of the protections one would normally expect from any regular job in some ways.
Keep in mind that some academics truly love this stuff too. They’re enjoying socializing and keeping up on the field and it quickly changes the “work” dynamic when you’re not writing as much code anymore. I think you’re both correct though.
I would agree that doctors and lawyers have the most hard working hours. No room for error as the doctor, and just mounds of tedious paperwork as a lawyer.
> The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others.
Is that really the reality? As far as I can tell, the reality is quite the opposite -- that sustainable levels of work across all knowledge work industries drop off a cliff past 8 hours a day, and for deep work 4 hours a day. Working on a side project after work possible for short sprints at a time, but somewhat impossible if you have an engaging day job where you are making good forward progress on your career.
On the other hand, if your day job is well paid but rather dull (quite common in tech), working on a side project is a nice way to retain creative and intellectual fulfillment, agency, and ownership in some capacity in one's life -- it can be an artistic outlet and worthwhile in itself. Beyond that, it can be nice transition to a startup. But I think this idea that some people "can just do more per day" makes the fallacy of thinking progress happens a day at a time. When it comes to side projects or new companies in incubation, that's not always the case. Explaining it away with an argument that is biologically untenable seems questionable to me.
It's the reality, I witnessed it and experienced it when coding my own business.
Sure, you may not do your finest work, but you can get a lot done.
If you're happy trading off your health for a shot at success, it's something that's on the table.
It gets harder when you start having a family or if you have other obligations.
You make a great point that just doing tasks is not necessarily going to make or break a company, there are tons of other factors.
> You make a great point that just doing tasks is not necessarily going to make or break a company, there are tons of other factors.
Exactly. Doing tasks is literally table stakes -- it's the equivalent of showing up. For any company that banks on its differentiation, making big moves that cement the company require more thought, more depth, more risk. These kinds of simplistic platitudes amount to hierarchical animisms; they have little to do with the very specific things that make up a real high performance organizational culture.
I've personally seen it again and again with numerous people that they really can keep up a level of productivity most people only dream of for more than just 8 hours a day, consistently for most of their lives. As much as you want to believe that all humans are equal, we really are not. Either you don't want to see that reality, or you've deliberately or accidentally never ventured out enough to encounter them.
In general in software Engineering (I can say with some confidence since I made the transition between) people get the idea that they're actually very smart when they are just _okay_. The easy six figure salaries which IMO are often the most undeserved (compared to other careers except entertainment) is probably to blame.
This sounds like the kind of overly simplified individualistic narrative I used to believe when I was 14. My heroes to me then looked so indestructible. I wanted more than anything to be like them -- a captain of the industry, prolific and indestructible. The problem with this narrative is that it didn't hold up to real world scrutiny as I entered the workforce and interacted with high-performers and became one of them.
> people get the idea that they're actually very smart when they are just _okay_
I think that this is a very intellectually lazy idea. I've found that the people who most believe this idea are those who are objectively "just _okay_" themselves because they don't understand/have ever experienced how effective organizations and people deploy and harness role evolution. You remember that old chestnut about how some people with 10 years of experience just have "1 year of experience, 10 times?" The two often go hand in hand in my experience.
After all, the most effective way to be lazy about your own professional growth is to believe that it's impossible to improve. And for that to be believable for yourself...you have to make sure other people believe it's the case for them, too. The problem with this kind of fiction is that eventually the fourth wall cracks as people see parts of their network leave for greener pastures where this growth is promised and then actually followed through on. I know because I've sold candidates on this exact thing during interviews.
All I'll say is that it's not a particularly hard sell to say "people that think of the world in such individualistic terms are condemning themselves to mediocrity -- we're building something way better than that, come join us." Think about why that is. Our ability to execute talent arbitrage was based on our competitors having the same mental model as yours. It was an arbitrage that worked very well.
I suspect this is works for them because they’re steeped in the field already. So the number of new ideas per hour is way lower for the professors than it’d be for newcomers. And the professors can probably comfortably tune out when they want without getting lost because they have enough background.
Learning new things requires physical changes in your brain. Fewer new ideas = less cognitive effort = more energy remaining at the end of the day.
Unfortunately for some of us, passions fade. I still love coding, but it's not the kind of thing I'm likely to enjoy spending 16 hours a day doing anymore.
I've been there, done that, seen it all (server, web, mobile, firmware, games). It's routine now, but not something I can lose myself into like I used to be able to. I get bored far faster.
I've been writing code for 15 years and I definitely experienced what you mention - but changing the topic made me find my passion back.
Sure, sometimes I was depressed, sometimes I had enough and wanted to follow some other passion outside of coding, sometimes my eyes wanted to give up - but if I'm healthy and the problem is interesting, I can still get stuck to the creative process.
My dad has been a developer for 40+ years and he stills get excited about random, incredibly complicated projects (that don't even pay that well) or new technologies.
Maybe you just need to find something else you enjoy coding.
It's interesting. I'm still in a state where I enjoy it most of the time and I could certainly spend an entire day coding... But I'm running super low on good ideas. Ideas used to pop into mind all the time, now it's like once a year and I quickly abandon it.
When I first began programming it was like my mind was a nuclear reactor. I LOVED it. New ideas were popping into my head all the time, and solutions to problems were quick.
I'll never forget when I was in the first few months, and learned about POLYMORPHISM. At the time, it utterly blew my mind, and I found so many sweet use cases for it and felt like a GOD of programming.
Fast forward 10 years and yea, it gives me a chuckle to remember those days. I miss how excited my mind was, and how eager to code I was. Now, I'm critical of code, less open to learning new things, and new ideas are few and far between.
It sucks but as far as I can tell, that's just life. We aren't programmed to constantly lose ourselves in any one thing. If we did, our ancestors may not have survived. Our primitive brain found great utility in "moving on" to the next thing, the next opportunity, etc.
I have 20 years+ experience. It doesn't have to be like this.
I know exactly what happened. Changing languages and domains every few years can wear you out. If you were lucky enough to pick one language that madw it 20 years you can spend your time deep diving different domains. Bonus if the language becomes unpopular with developers but still need with business. Bonus points for picking a fun language you like.
I would certainly agree that your best shot at maintaining your passion would be to stick with 1 or 2 languages and get really good at them. Constantly context switching does wear on a person.
With that said, there are some caveats...
1) Businesses need to find that language useful and important. In other words, there must be opportunities to make money using that language.
2) The language must support great depth of work. For instance, learning Objective-C or Swift could become dry over the years as you master the iOS SDK. There's a lot there to cover, for sure, but I imagine after 10 years you might arrive at the same endpoint: Somewhat deflated, certainly less passionate.
3) The language must resonate with you. Everybody has a language or a programming style they enjoy. Personally, I love classic, imperative, low level stuff. C, C++, even Java. Not really a big fan - despite years of professional work - of declarative UI, or functional programming.
I'm curious since you have 20 years - what language / ___domain have you been focussed on? How did it work for you?
I got into php in the very beginning. Kept learning everything else but found the limitations a fun challenge and being able to rapidly produce something kind of works with my matra of wanting to do a bit of everything.
I started with C/C++ so php was natural fit.
A good question would be if starting out today what language would I pick?
I'm tempted to pick php but I would probably go for react. The market is huge career-wise, the language is fun to develop in and the community is strong.
> The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life.
> but the majority of professors would spend most of the midday break meeting each other
Spending 60-80 hours in meetings is not "work". Attending lectures is not "work". Work requires either mental or physical effort to which all humans have limits. People in academia like to think they work hard by quoting useless hours like this. But that's like people billing their bosses for the 2 hours they spend in traffic. From my time in academia, my impression is that most grad students have 1 to 2 hours of productive work per day. They will tell you that they spend 10 hours at the office however.
This is such an ignorant comment. 1) actually paying attention to an advanced academic lecture requires serious mental effort, so by your definition it is work. It is also not useless, unless purely academic work is useless to you 2) I don’t know what kind of experience in academia you have (my guess is not much) but grad school can be very intense in terms of work. Sure you can slack off, but if you want to do well you’ll likely work very hard.
1) If you missed my quotes around "work" it is because some people describe certain tasks as work equivalent to other tasks. The effort of digesting vs. producing material is about 2 orders of magnitudes for me. I took 60 hours of lectures (time spent in class) during one of my semesters of undergrad. 12 hours of lecture everyday. That is completely sustainable because all you have to do is listen. Reading papers is the same, it's a low effort activity. Something you can do for 12 hours a day. Yes, "advanced academic lecture" is more draining than Harry Potter but less draining than driving a vehicle.
2) Working hard (or long hours in the case of academia) vs. working intelligently are orthogonal. I can't really address the entirety of graduate school because history is going to be much different than engineering. Applied much different than theory. I'll repeat my claim, if you actually take the useful bits of a grad student's day, it often compresses to 1-2 hours. Yes, reading is important. Yes, there are often other teaching commitments that are usually treated like second class citizens. I'm not debating the time spent in an office. Merely, that the "60-80" hour myth really needs to stop.
You seem to confuse the life of a grad student and the life of a tenure track professor trying to keep their lab running. They're not the same, not even close. Unless you are/were one, or were married to one, or have actual data proving that academic professors spend the majority of their times in useless meetings, your argument holds no water. Comparing reading papers for undergrad courses or some masters experience in some compsci lab is just naive at the level where you are not even aware of a different plane of existence.
The biggest proponent of "you only need to work 9-5 and can still be a successful professor", Cal Newport, himself walked back those statements somewhat after he started going tenure track.
I'll give one corollary though, which is that there are some very successful professors who actually don't work that hard. I am friends with one; they're just simply not human. I remember reading from the same textbook with him and he finished the pages 3x faster than me. So the only way you get away with regular life in academia is to have a super human brain. The rest of us have to compensate by putting in the extra hours. It's not healthy, at least not for me, which is why I chose to leave. But many do it. And continue to do so. It's arguable if their lives are worse or they don't mind it, but it's not arguable that they are just morons who don't understand time management.
I disagree with your idea that, because something can be done for 12 hours, it should not count as “work”. You also say reading is important, and yet seem to omit it when asserting that a grad student’s day of work can be compressed into 1-2 hours of useful work. I think the problem with what you’re saying is that it relies on a very abstract notion of “useful work”. I certainly can bust my ass for 12 hours at a problem and not accomplish anything, thus having done no “useful work” that day. If you ask me, I still sure as hell worked 12 hours that day, not 0. So the 60-80 hours workweek is a thing no matter how much “useful bits” there was in my week, and I believe it is still very accurate to call it so and to say that grad students are working hard. The 60-80 hours workweek is not a myth, unless we use your own weird definition of what counts as a work hour. No one means that when they're talking about how many hours they work.
I also don’t believe for a second that a mere mortal can pay attention to lectures or read papers for 12 hours. Personally after 5 hours of lectures I can’t pay attention anymore, and it’s a similar for paper reading. Most people I know are like that, and frankly I don’t believe you can actually attend 60 hours of lectures a week in university given the scheduling constraints.
Look at Fall 2015 where I had 10 courses worth 32 units not counting the project course where the credits are awarded the following semester. call it 35 units. Roughly, a 3 credit course consists of 3 hours of lecture and a 1.5 hour tutorial. The courses I took that have more than 3 credits typically have a lab component that adds an extra hour.
You are correct that I didn't "attend" every single hour of those. But it just further proves my point that just because you're sitting in a room designated in your time table, it doesn't mean that you are inherently working. Instead of going to those classes, I used my time effectively and studied (not necessarily in the classroom) for a normal 8 hour day. When I say useful work, I don't necessarily mean that something is produced. Like you say, sometimes you need to find dead ends before finding the correct path. That's useful. Yes, you can work for 12 hours in one day. It's just not sustainable. A 80 hour work week implies one of two things:
1) You aren't working as much as you think. Go to the gym. Hang out with friends. Enjoy life.
2) You are about to burnout. Stop. Go to the gym. Hang out with friends. Enjoy life.
If you want to keep perpetuating that you need to be in your building for 60-80 hours to be a good grad student, you are directly contributing to the mental health issues seen among grad students.
Well you read me wrong! I absolutely agree with you that working insane hours is, well, insane. It only personally happens to me in short bursts. I’m only stating that many grad students work crazy hours. You’re right in questioning the productivity of those hours, and also questioning how healthy this culture is and it’s certainly not my goal to spread the idea that, to be a good grad student, you must drive yourself insane. Just because it’s not the right approach doesn’t mean that those students do not work those crazy hours. It is a myth that it’s necessary/a good idea to work this much to succeed, it is not a myth that a lot of grad student do 60 hours of work a week.
> but I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job
Hacker News repeatedly rediscovers that there is no point in putting in more than the bare minimum at typical jobs over and over again. Some people pour the gained time into leetcode and succeed. Some pour it into stuff they're excited about. Some into their families. Some pour it into being at the right place at the right time. Hardly anyone has ever succeeded by pouring it into their jobs.
I think if you’ve decided that there is something wrong with the employer/employee relationship where hundreds spend their professional life working at someone else’s company, pushing ahead that person’s vision, and fulfilling that person’s goals, then you shouldn’t turn around and play an integral role in the same game you once despised, all because it’s much easier to succeed in business if you have a bunch of people devoting their working lives to your vision.
I don’t know how to escape that model at a wider scale, exactly, but if I were worth millions of dollars, I think I’d have the economic luxury to invest some time to figure out how.
Well, I guess then they have the luxury to do that. I work in a critical position at a major bank and I already have to give 100% at my job. I have side projects as well though which is how my whole weekend gets used up. I guess that is not the norm...
I'm just kidding, but surely you see how from another perspective, that sounds farcical. Like I get it, you care about the work that you do. I'm not saying you won't be rich. I'm not saying people don't think you're doing a good job. I'm saying, in a positivist measure, like, "If you vanished tomorrow, would anything happen to a major bank?" The answer is, unless you're Jerome Powell or the guy who hires the clients' kids and covers it up (1) (2), no.
> I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job.
Fulltime jobs usually aren't fulltime in that they take all of your available thinking capacity, nor do they quench a person's curiosity or interest. More often, fulltime jobs (especially in tech) are ~40% work, 60% absolute garbage timewasting. Sitting through meetings that don't need to happen, to satisfy an insecurity or requirement that someone above has, without actually solving any real problems or creating any change.
Some people do exactly as much is required at their actual job (so a generous 40% of their available capacity) and then spend their nights, weekends and freetime pouring themselves into other things. Startups, personal projects, hobbies, families, etc.
Fulltime jobs are almost never rewarding or exciting. A startup may start exciting/fulfilling, but eventually corporate garbage sets in and you're on the same treadmill of meetings to talk about prospective work/how much work there is, fitting actual fulfillment of tasks in between.
A friend of mine (who's nearly 50) put in over 2000 hours into playing Destiny one year. That's about the same as a full time job. He has a wife and two kids, and a very full time job.
Doing that much work on a side gig is totally possible if you want to do it and have the right disposition.
Okay, but how healthy is it really? Maybe I am projecting my issues onto other people but I often get less sleep when I invest a lot of time into my side projects as well as my job.
I hate to say this, but I spend several hours daily on my side project too. My wife hated me for a while, now she seems to accept it. I can best describe it as an obsession. You have something u need to do, u cant rest or enjoy something else until it is done. When I shower I think of my project and when I take a walk, I think of my project too. Complete obsession to solve the problems; one problem after another problem.
All of that applies to me... Again, that definitely gives me the time to do so on weekends but during a work week it would just be unhealthy. I can't even fathom staring at a screen even longer and I already get teary eyed every day. But I am provably projecting my issues onto other people. Maybe they have less stress/pressure at their jobs.
I am getting out of it though, I am starting to study CS at university next year. So hopefully that will be a bit less stressful because I am well prepared.
I could do it if I didn’t have a family, I used to commute 2 hours each way so considering getting a part time job for the commute time I am now at home for - if it wouldn’t cause a divorce I’d get two jobs or work on a side project for that time.
You need to take time off though at weekends etc if you are doing it longer term.
(Note this isn’t a recommendation)
Also note that I don’t care for tv or gaming so don’t have those time black holes.
So I'm not wanting to get into what appears to be a growing argument. But I have a young family and an intense day job. I still managed to build SongBox.
I just love building things. I don't do social media, don't watch shitty tv. I just like to build.
It really depends on the age as well, at least for me. I also always had side projects, and I could totally pull 2 full shifts per day (job and side gigs) in my 20s, be healthy, well rested and functional... something that is completely unconceivable now in my late 30s :)
There's 24 hours in a day. Read Bezos or Musk's or anybody stories and they'll tell you they worked 20-23 hours a day.
It's fucking crazy with some people, but that's what it takes to get ahead of the competition.
Edit: Please note that I'm not advocating that anybody should do this, but just be aware that a lot of people are setting that level for themselves and in some cases for their subordinates.
Pulling an all nighter every once in a while, or even a couple consecutive days during crunch time is not the same as working 20 hours per day. So unless you've got a specific quote from either of them I call bullshit.
That said, Bill Gates definitely said he and some of his crew were working 16 hour days delivering their first DOS release.
Point is, you might work some intense stretches, and doing that shows your passion and might land give you an edge when you need it. But you don't need to go insane. If you work 8 hours day job, don't spend hours in commute, you can be perfectly healthy spending 2 hours of your night time each day working a side gig.
“There were times when, some weeks ... I haven’t counted exactly, but I would just sort of sleep for a few hours, work, sleep for a few hours, work, seven days a week. Some of those days must have been 120 hours or something nutty.”
Now, Musk said he is “down to 80 or 90” hours of work per week and “it’s pretty manageable.”
That's the quickest I could find. But yeah, I suppose 20-23h constantly long-term would not be doable. Point is though that many people can and do work even long-term the equavalent of 2 "full-time jobs".
Quite naive of you to believe Musk or Bezos worked 23 hour workdays. Even if that was remotely true, everything bears consequence. It might have "worked", but the downsides of this toxic work ethic are bound to present themselves, in the present or future.
Never mind working such hours does not guarantee success. Hell, it only about guarantees poor relations and health with any chance of success a very distant second.
So at best you're successful with shit relationships or fail with the same prospects? Dunno 'bout you, but I don't play no game I can't win!
Well it's presented them with billionaire fortunes. That's a fact.
I think it's fine for entrepreneurs like them to work however much they want, but it's not cool to put that on employees, especially if they don't have any ownership in the company.
I don't buy the theory about poor relationships and long hours. I could see it going either way, especially if one was single and would otherwise spend their time at home watching tv or whatever.
Maybe it’s time that society reduces full time work hours from 40 hours per week, to 24 hours per week.
6 hours per day, 4 days per week. 24 hours per week total.
Or 8 hours per day, and 3 days per week. Then you have a 4 day weekend.
Anything more, is regarded as overtime.
Then those that do want to get ahead, can work the remaining 16 hours on a separate job.
Software automation, mechanization, and robotics, have reduced the need for manual drudgery. And farms are highly mechanized to mass produce raw foodstuffs.
The corporations should be competing against themselves, to work for us, the citizens, that makes their profits possible. Instead of just competing to take a bigger piece of the pie, and to hoard it all for themselves.
It’s time that we as a society, begin to think differently.
I think what we need is another free day, preferrably on wednesday. I think that might improve everyones performance. Too bad that that can never happen on a large scale due to historical/religious reasons.
I put a lot of time into my side projects but that is mostly the whole saturday and sunday, but even then I obviously don't feel so well rested on monday.