During my first startup, I worked 6 or 7 day weeks, 13+ hours a day. At Hyperink, in my first year, I (on my own accord) slept in the office over 30 days. During this entire stretch, I was perhaps more productive and happier than any other time I can remember. The main reason why? The teams and the comradery.
I wish this article at least had relevant studies + statistics on this subject as it is not representative of any of the 4 startup experiences I've been involved with. Actually, in diametric opposition to this author's stance, our teams' cultures were united and strenghtened around the concept of working hard (which, in our case, happened to at least partly equate to long hours).
I should be fair and admit, it may be the case that this article is more relevant to later stage companies -- I don't have a great amount of experience at 100+ employee companies.
From my experience, when one loves what one works on, one often works on said thing a lot. Some of the hardest working people I know work (addictively) towards projects they're not (necessarily) paid to work on. For instance, one of my teammates, Mischief, spends about 5 hours a day porting packages over to Plan9 and writing terminal emulators in go (why not).
Im not so enlightened that I can draw conclusions about people who _don't_ work long hours, but it seems intuitive that people who do work long hours fall into one of two binary classes: (1) they are forced to (in order to achieve some level of compensation) / fear layoff, (2) they like the product, team, or like working hard. That is, intrinsically one either wants to work hard or they don't want to.
You want people in the latter category, and you achieve this by being fair with equity, providing people opportunities to have an impact or work on what they love, by providing a supporting environment, and by having good hiring practices.
There will always be great people who love your team / vision / culture / management (un)structure and who physically cannot commit to 70 hour work weeks (family, etc). You and your team have to decide whether it makes sense for this person to be part of the team and be prepared to make adjustments to make it work.
What I wish this article was about:
* How teams can (and should learn to) effectively prioritize teammates' health
* Why pressure to work hard can be destructive
* How to programmatically or systematically eliminate or amortize stressful tech/scaling/hr/bd problems to avoid disasters.
The CxOs of these companies make it a priority to build team spirit for precisely this reason: the sense of camaraderie will compel employees to work hard. All for the team, you know.
The military does this with its soldiers too. It's a system finely honed through centuries, and enables campaigns that truly rational players would abandon in an instant.
And, in another twisted example, viewers of the TV show 'Lost' were manipulated into caring for the characters, so that by the ridiculous end foisted on them, the entire thing had become 'about the characters'.
>or instance, one of my teammates, Mischief, spends about 5 hours a day porting packages over to Plan9 and writing terminal emulators in go (why not).
Interesting that communities like this one define work as 'your day job'. See for you, it's okay that your teammate works the standard 8 hours on his computers, then goes home and spends another 5 doing more computer 'work'. Perhaps your distinction is that between 9 and 5, he's working for other people, not himself. What about somebody doing a startup? In that case, there should be nothing wrong with coding for 12 hours a day, since it's a personal project really.
Personally if I'm already spending half the day writing code, I will stay away from computers in the evening. There's much more to life.
I spent two months this past spring on a project where I put in similar time of my own accord as well. Had 2.5 days off in 7 weeks. Averaged 78.5 hours a week over the period. Slept 4-5 hours a night.
It was one of the most rewarding and happy periods of work I've had.
I know there are medical studies that suggest less than x hours of sleep a night is bad for your health. Or, working more than 45-ish hours in a week spikes cortisol levels.
I'd like see the results of these studies correlated with respondent's happiness and satisfaction.
You've got a good insight here:
> Why pressure to work hard can be destructive
I also wonder if the negative health effects are more strongly correlated to the stress of "having" to work those sorts of hours vice legitimately "wanting" to work them, sans stress.
I appreciate you offering up fair counter points. I think anyone who reads this article should take a look at your response to understand what "long hours" can mean in a good way. Definitely agree there's a lot more to discuss.
It's worth noting that the original article is content marketing for that company and they do not explicitly state that "culture consulting" is their business in the article. So it's fair to say they are using this as a mechanism to get more customers, and offering a fair point of view is secondary.
I wish this article at least had relevant studies + statistics on this subject as it is not representative of any of the 4 startup experiences I've been involved with. Actually, in diametric opposition to this author's stance, our teams' cultures were united and strenghtened around the concept of working hard (which, in our case, happened to at least partly equate to long hours).
I should be fair and admit, it may be the case that this article is more relevant to later stage companies -- I don't have a great amount of experience at 100+ employee companies.
From my experience, when one loves what one works on, one often works on said thing a lot. Some of the hardest working people I know work (addictively) towards projects they're not (necessarily) paid to work on. For instance, one of my teammates, Mischief, spends about 5 hours a day porting packages over to Plan9 and writing terminal emulators in go (why not).
Im not so enlightened that I can draw conclusions about people who _don't_ work long hours, but it seems intuitive that people who do work long hours fall into one of two binary classes: (1) they are forced to (in order to achieve some level of compensation) / fear layoff, (2) they like the product, team, or like working hard. That is, intrinsically one either wants to work hard or they don't want to.
You want people in the latter category, and you achieve this by being fair with equity, providing people opportunities to have an impact or work on what they love, by providing a supporting environment, and by having good hiring practices.
There will always be great people who love your team / vision / culture / management (un)structure and who physically cannot commit to 70 hour work weeks (family, etc). You and your team have to decide whether it makes sense for this person to be part of the team and be prepared to make adjustments to make it work.
What I wish this article was about:
* How teams can (and should learn to) effectively prioritize teammates' health
* Why pressure to work hard can be destructive
* How to programmatically or systematically eliminate or amortize stressful tech/scaling/hr/bd problems to avoid disasters.
[edit: fixing typos]