It's never that we _have_ to stay later, it's that we _want_ to.
I hear this from people, but I rarely buy it. I'm not saying that you didn't want to stay later, but say Tim wanted to just work 8 to 5 each day, would everyone say, "Hey that's cool. We feel bad that you can't stay later, but it's 100% fine that you work 8 hours per day"?
It just seems like places I've been, if a handful of sufficiently respected productive members of the team stay late consistently (for whatever reason) there becomes strong social pressure that everyone stay late.
I worked in several situations like this - it is toxic. Where overachievers dragged all of the others into slavery (I used to do that too, until I realized what I was doing).
Yes, this matches what I have heard from several of my friends who work there. The rosy picture painted in the article doesn't mention the extreme overwork that Apple employees have to go through, although most employees appear to be okay with that.
Having said that, it's no coincidence that Apple never made it even in the top 100 of US companies to work for, they really don't treat their employees very well from an objective standpoint and any former employee who's had a chance to leave and take a step back can easily see that.
The distortion field obviously applies to Apple employees as well.
For the millionth time: Fortune's "Top 100 Employers" list is not an objective ranking of every employer in the US. It relies primarily on unverified employer-provided data. Many companies, like Apple, realize that it's mostly a PR game and don't bother to participate.
My experience at Apple was that working ridiculous amounts of overtime was not at all required. Most of my coworkers didn't. On the other hand, generally you wouldn't get told NOT to work a lot if you wanted to, and that's the true weakness of the company culture. If you're a workaholic, you can definitely burn yourself out. If you're not a workaholic, you'll do just fine.
>It relies primarily on unverified employer-provided data.
Yea, I mean Walmart scored high on that bogus list once. It's hard to imagine a worse place to work than Walmart (Offices I mean, the stores are probably as crappy as any big box retailer).
At least in my (admittedly short) experience there, I can't say there was much social pressure to stay late. You had deadlines, you had to do what you had to get done, and it had to be done well. How long it took you to get there or at what times of day didn't matter very much, if at all.
Presumably he meant "impossible in a 40 hour work week," so that if you're killing yourself with an 80 hour week to meet deadlines, you're not a counterexample.
Of course, there's a prevalent opinion around here that working over 40 hours a week always decreases your productivity (and not just per hour), and the people who buy into that will likely find this definition of impossible to be silly (since as a corollary, every possible thing is achievable in 40 hour weeks).
I personally would argue that an 80 hour week isn't the same as two 40 hour weeks. It would probably be more like a 40 hour week and a 20 hour week. The end result? You get something done sooner, but you end up putting in a lot more time than you would if you just worked 40 hours a week. It's more efficient for the company because they're getting a product faster and only paying for 40 hours worth of work a week. But it's less efficient for the employee because they're putting in many more hours in total to do the same task but only getting paid as if they were working 40 hours a week.
In my experience, working long hours is only good in the short-term. Sometimes that is necessary. But it is almost never a good idea in the long-term.
I'm not going to dig up a link, but a number of people think your total productivity goes down (not just per-hour productivity, as I emphasized in my post). So if it's a strawman, it's a strawman with internet access and an HN account.
I think your personal experience matches mine - I'm more productive in my initial working hours (maybe discounting the first hour of getting in to it), and are less efficient in my later hours. But my total productivity goes up as I work more, at least up to around 80 hours/week. Whether or not that's good use of my time depends on how enjoyable the work is to me and what kind of non-work I'm coming home to that day.
I may also agree with your position on long hours being a bad idea "in the long-term", but I'd quibble with it the way it's worded. Periodically working long hours can be good for long term progress, but working long hours over an extended period of time leads to burn-out.
Neither do I. The problem is that you didn't present an alternate way of thinking about extra hours. You just posted a link to a product and a statement that it wasn't designed by people who don't work extra hours without much of a link between the two.
Comments
It's never that we _have_ to stay later, it's that we _want_ to.
I hear this from people, but I rarely buy it. I'm not saying that you didn't want to stay later, but say Tim wanted to just work 8 to 5 each day, would everyone say, "Hey that's cool. We feel bad that you can't stay later, but it's 100% fine that you work 8 hours per day"?
It just seems like places I've been, if a handful of sufficiently respected productive members of the team stay late consistently (for whatever reason) there becomes strong social pressure that everyone stay late.
I worked in several situations like this - it is toxic. Where overachievers dragged all of the others into slavery (I used to do that too, until I realized what I was doing).
Yes, this matches what I have heard from several of my friends who work there. The rosy picture painted in the article doesn't mention the extreme overwork that Apple employees have to go through, although most employees appear to be okay with that.
Having said that, it's no coincidence that Apple never made it even in the top 100 of US companies to work for, they really don't treat their employees very well from an objective standpoint and any former employee who's had a chance to leave and take a step back can easily see that.
The distortion field obviously applies to Apple employees as well.
For the millionth time: Fortune's "Top 100 Employers" list is not an objective ranking of every employer in the US. It relies primarily on unverified employer-provided data. Many companies, like Apple, realize that it's mostly a PR game and don't bother to participate.
My experience at Apple was that working ridiculous amounts of overtime was not at all required. Most of my coworkers didn't. On the other hand, generally you wouldn't get told NOT to work a lot if you wanted to, and that's the true weakness of the company culture. If you're a workaholic, you can definitely burn yourself out. If you're not a workaholic, you'll do just fine.
>It relies primarily on unverified employer-provided data.
Yea, I mean Walmart scored high on that bogus list once. It's hard to imagine a worse place to work than Walmart (Offices I mean, the stores are probably as crappy as any big box retailer).
Or: As a company, we really value work/life balance. It's just a coincidence that promotions go to people who value the former over the latter.
At least in my (admittedly short) experience there, I can't say there was much social pressure to stay late. You had deadlines, you had to do what you had to get done, and it had to be done well. How long it took you to get there or at what times of day didn't matter very much, if at all.
Giving people impossible deadlines that they can only achieve by staying late is the same thing as just forcing them to stay late.
I never had impossible deadlines. I don't think anyone else around me did either.
Presumably he meant "impossible in a 40 hour work week," so that if you're killing yourself with an 80 hour week to meet deadlines, you're not a counterexample.
Of course, there's a prevalent opinion around here that working over 40 hours a week always decreases your productivity (and not just per hour), and the people who buy into that will likely find this definition of impossible to be silly (since as a corollary, every possible thing is achievable in 40 hour weeks).
I think that's a strawman.
I personally would argue that an 80 hour week isn't the same as two 40 hour weeks. It would probably be more like a 40 hour week and a 20 hour week. The end result? You get something done sooner, but you end up putting in a lot more time than you would if you just worked 40 hours a week. It's more efficient for the company because they're getting a product faster and only paying for 40 hours worth of work a week. But it's less efficient for the employee because they're putting in many more hours in total to do the same task but only getting paid as if they were working 40 hours a week.
In my experience, working long hours is only good in the short-term. Sometimes that is necessary. But it is almost never a good idea in the long-term.
I'm not going to dig up a link, but a number of people think your total productivity goes down (not just per-hour productivity, as I emphasized in my post). So if it's a strawman, it's a strawman with internet access and an HN account.
I think your personal experience matches mine - I'm more productive in my initial working hours (maybe discounting the first hour of getting in to it), and are less efficient in my later hours. But my total productivity goes up as I work more, at least up to around 80 hours/week. Whether or not that's good use of my time depends on how enjoyable the work is to me and what kind of non-work I'm coming home to that day.
I may also agree with your position on long hours being a bad idea "in the long-term", but I'd quibble with it the way it's worded. Periodically working long hours can be good for long term progress, but working long hours over an extended period of time leads to burn-out.
I dig the link for you:
http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php
http://www.apple.com/ipad/
Clearly not made by people that think this way. I doubt even higher up staff think this way. I.e. Jobs, Ive.
Why down modding? It isn't immediately apparent to me that presenting an alternate way of thinking about "extra hours "is worthy of down modding.
Neither do I. The problem is that you didn't present an alternate way of thinking about extra hours. You just posted a link to a product and a statement that it wasn't designed by people who don't work extra hours without much of a link between the two.