I read through all the comments and it is amazing that nobody is mentioning the fact that the reason why this 2020 post is coming up now is because of this:
Scale recently laid off 200 full-time employees and terminated 500 contractor positions. The CEO, author of the post, went to work for Meta.
Odd that the article doesn't address the most obvious criticism: is the CEO just matching the cliche of trying to select for people that overwork for underpay?
Wanting to work hard is positively correlated with perseverance and work which inspires.
A absolute rookie mistake is thinking your exhaustion-level has a linear correlation with the quality of the results. I know people who get suspicious if they haven't exhausted themselves, how can they have done a good job if they are not drained?
The truth is that the level of your craft has probably the biggest impact. A beginner can tear themselves apart with stressfull allnighters while doing a job and deliver the result a seasoned pro would have delivered in an afternoon.
And if all your employees are doing is stressfull allnighters and damage control they have no time to learn how to do properly and fast. But I get it, the goal is to extract money from their labour, not be their friends or produce quality products.
I actually do care. I am also emotionally involved. Bad code makes me feel bad, I am ecstatic about good code.
I am deeply saddened when I see people making the same mistakes over and over again.
This attitude negatively impacted my career on more than one occasion.
I am now doing a relatively low-pay work for the public services. My job is cleaning the Augean stables of decades-old Java code, but I feel better than shitting crappy code for the unicorn that none needs in the industry that should not exist.
During my Ph.D., I worked very intensely with the help of a Pomodoro timer. After 4 to 5 hours of productive work (8-10 pomodoros), my brain just shut down, but I did a ton of work during that time.
Human body has its real limits. Respecting your body is essential for living a healthy life.
Then maybe build a cooperative, where all employees are effectively co-owning the company? Then you can expect everyone to care as much as you do. Otherwise it doesn't seem to be a fair thing to expect.
Readit News
I guess I just don't care.
Scale recently laid off 200 full-time employees and terminated 500 contractor positions. The CEO, author of the post, went to work for Meta.
https://scale.com/blog/scale-ai-announces-next-phase-of-comp...
On the other hand, I can easily imagine why nobody mentioned this fact befor you did: only few people read startup gossip.
Numbers disagree: 485 comments, 470 points.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268197
Funnily enough, hearing this question is a huge red flag for me. It signals they value work hours more than quality delivery.
We're in a weird place where we can actually read what these people think publicly.
Wanting to work hard is positively correlated with perseverance and work which inspires.
Hard working is good when it's good.
The truth is that the level of your craft has probably the biggest impact. A beginner can tear themselves apart with stressfull allnighters while doing a job and deliver the result a seasoned pro would have delivered in an afternoon.
And if all your employees are doing is stressfull allnighters and damage control they have no time to learn how to do properly and fast. But I get it, the goal is to extract money from their labour, not be their friends or produce quality products.
I am deeply saddened when I see people making the same mistakes over and over again.
This attitude negatively impacted my career on more than one occasion.
I am now doing a relatively low-pay work for the public services. My job is cleaning the Augean stables of decades-old Java code, but I feel better than shitting crappy code for the unicorn that none needs in the industry that should not exist.
"Four hours of creative work a day is about the limit for a mathematician." ~~ Henri Poincaré.
https://nesslabs.com/how-much-work-is-enough-work
Human body has its real limits. Respecting your body is essential for living a healthy life.