Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

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I admire these guys for their values. I wish more companies were like this.

I also understand that teaching how the sausage is made is a big part of their marketing strategy. That creates a little bit of a conflict where it's easier not to show the warts than it is to talk about how awesome things are. Companies that market in this fashion do the rest of the world a great service. They show us how things could be. We need to understand and acknowledge that conflict to keep a balanced view.

The only thing I found missing from the nice essay full of pleasing things to read was this: we do this to ourselves. It's not some evil corporate manager-types, although things can look like that. You can get just as stressed out because your stack is whack as you can because your schedule is whack. The schedule is this "external" thing you can yell at. The stack just wheedles away at you, minute-by-minute.

I've also seen a lot of successful teams slowly turn the screws -- on themselves. Ego takes a lot of forms. A little success can make you want a lot more.

I really, really like the calm competence view of creating technology. The best folks I've worked with were smart, friendly, easy-going, and calm. The worst ones were smart, self-centered, authoritarian, and chaotic. Oddly enough, people who aren't-so-smart fall equally in both camps. I've seen some really good teams where nobody looked like they knew a lot. They just made it work and had fun doing it. I've also seen teams that should be building the next Mars base that weren't able to pick the toppings for their next pizza order.

I wish more companies were like this.

I suspect a great many companies are like this. I have never worked anywhere that any of that particular hit-list was expected. There's a bubble in which all this is "normal", but that bubble is small.

I had a team a year ago in SV where I had to walk-off the gig for a couple of days.

They were putting in 60+ hours a week, sleeping at work.

I tried to counsel the CEO and CIO, both of whom had been quite successful previously and were determined to "win at all costs" this time around.

They both resisted the procedure.

So I left. I told them that once they came back to being sane again, I'd be happy to come back and help them not do that again, but I wasn't going to hang out and assist them in this insanity.

My guess is that it depends on whether you count by companies or developers. By companies it's probably quite prevalent. By developers? Not so much. But these are the kinds of things companies don't admit to themselves or others. On the flip side of this, there's a ton of apathy in this business as well. Neither extreme is healthy.

Did you hear from that team lately in regards of how they're doing? Do they still put in 60+ hours a week or did they switch to a more balanced work life?

If company expects 60+ hours per week, and not just in some rare bursts, they will almost never come to senses and scale back to some normal work/life balance. You just need to leave.

And if there's rare bursts, then someone made a mistake.

A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

Work steady hours, and the "output" becomes predictable (this is what agile methodologies are also about - predictability), which allows for better planning. Working 60+ hours means the output becomes very unpredictable. I mean people will crack and either leave or become overworked at that point, and now there's an even bigger problem.

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