I can only draw from anecdotes, but those align with your suspicion: where overtime was mandatory (where management was largely about maximizing suffering ^1, as if suffering has any value by itself), everyone simply compensated by doing less real work per work hour. It does seem like many people have a fixed quantity of productive output, and the decision is simply about how much to spread it out.
This isn't true for all people. I've had weeks where I've worked 100+ hours productively because I was working on my own projects and initiatives, for my own company and enrichment, and had hit a stride. But I would never brag about that effort, because the effort itself is meaningless. Only the results of the effort mattered, and of those I am very proud. Too many brag about the effort regardless of what is often a lack of results.
Well said; the problem is that worked hours is a useless metric of productivity. Even the horribly poor metric "lines of code written" is much better—at least I know that you have been producing work, not social media posts.
I think you've nailed it. I'd be really shocked to find someone working 9am-9pm straight, no lunch or dinner break 5 days a week. I used to do shift work (IT) 7am-7pm 3 days a week, which, to me, was burn out level. I used to feel over worked even though every weekend was a 4 day weekend. Can't imagine adding 2 more days.
I like a 60 hour work week. There are several projects or even different "jobs" in that 60 hours. I like getting a lot done because I like the money it gets me.
I like the momentum of those 50 - 60 hour weeks. More importantly, makes it easier for those weeks I want to do a 20 hour or a 0 hours work week.
Some weeks 60+ hours can be very productive - but it's important to recognise when you're not being productive and take a proper break - I still find that a challenge.
I should add that the right way to count these hours is including both the "productive" work, and associated activities such as learning new tools or "working" on pet projects, i.e. things you do for fun/passion but are also a career investment. Considering also that these "extras" are often easy to accommodate without big sacrifices—reading a book in your long bus/train commute, hacking in your laptop while watching the kids, listening to tech podcasts in the gym, etc.—a 60h week may be perfectly normal if it includes everything... and even 70-80h not too bad if that number includes ALL your computing, up to reading HN ;)
I had a boss tell me at an end of year meeting that another employee had worked 1000 more hours that year than I had. I looked my boss in the eye and said "then he's doing something wrong". Consistent 60 hour weeks is a failure of management and of the employee to better manage their time. Especially if you are salaried.
This week I was told another employee has been "working weekends for months" to get the project done, passive aggressively implying I hadn't done the same.
The problem with this is the guy is addicted to working weekends. He's been doing it for years and it makes everyone else look like "slackers", despite his obvious burnout.
I think this hints at the crux of the problem. I have no problem with others working long hours, and will even put in a stint here and there when I feel it's warranted.
The problem I see is that it slowly becomes the new norm and benchmark, regardless of whether long hours are productive. These new expectations then get encoded in cultures that devalue those who either choose to spend time on other things or who are simply more efficient.
Do we just need to find better measures of output and figure out what fair compensation for average output is?
It doesn't matter, really. If you are at the stage when you have talks like that with your boss, it's clear that you're ready for a change. Be it changing the way your work is managed or changing companies altogether.
I work in the IT business - there are plenty of times when weekend work is the only way to get something done (don't get me started on broken architecture that precludes rolling weekday rollouts). I just take the time away from some other day. And I'm not averse to overtime either, in exceptional circumstances. But for me, salaried means that I do my job as efficiently as possible, and if there's nothing to do, I don't work.
I am doing do a degree and paying the bills by freelancing. So 50-60hr/wk, combined education and work, is something regular.
It is possible to sustain it, if you are an introvert like me. It's just important not to do the same thing all the time. My degree is focused on low level programming and hardware, and I mainly do AngularJS development for living. So this kind of switch definitely helps.
Other thing which is important, at least personally, is that when you take a break, you must do something that counts. Browsing internet just drains more energy, personally. But I find playing an action packed video game (if you can't bother to go outside - or if you live in North England like I do) quite recharging. [0]
Please don't suggest that introversion has anything whatsoever to do with what you've described. Introversion/extroversion has little or nothing to do with overworking oneself.
I think he may be implying that it is easier to handle the lower levels of social interaction (with friends/family) that come along with working a lot of hours if you're more introverted.
Exactly. My socially needs are rather low, so going for dinner with friends a couple times a week and having random small talk between the lectures are enough for me :)
I work 40 hours a week at maximum - most weeks I work about 34 to 38 hours. You 80 hours a week guys, what the hell are you doing with your time? Are you divorced? No family? No friends?
Is 'disrupting' an industry really that important to you?
Who says that's the "art of working" though? Why not "make as much money as possible while enjoying what you do" or "enjoy what you work on while making as much money as possible" or just "make as much money as possible no matter what" or "just enjoy my work as much as possible no matter how much money I make"?
I think the "art of working" is deciding what kind of work you want to do, how big a part of your life you want it to be, and then doing that.
Some of us do. I was semi retired at 40. At 47 I'm working again, at roughly 60 hours a week, because I love what I am doing and the money is stupidly great. I'll stop again right around 50 to 52, assuming the work keeps paying this well and I keep having fun.
I always find these types of discussions interesting. It's never about things like work ethic, efficiency, or even skill, it seems to devolve in to what everyone thinks is the ideal work schedule for someone else. I have friends that think I am crazy for working like I am now. I don't really care, I am happy, the clients are happy, and my bank account is most certainly happy. But I would never tell someone else they should work as much as I do, or that they should only work 30 hours, or some other random number of hours.
The exempt employees working for 50% more hours than they are compensated for really miss the boat. If you want to work 80 hours a week, god bless you. Just don't make it a charitable contribution.
I had to work a 90 hour week a few weeks ago to address a operational crisis. That netted me a bunch of overtime and a week off.
Exactly. The thing is, people who make say $120k/year but work 80h weeks, are at exactly the same level of compensation / status / respect as people who work 40h but make $60k/year.
This applies to salaried or consulting professionals of course; if you're working your ass off to build your own business and maybe hit big rewards in the future, it's a sensible choice. Otherwise, you're just busting your health and personal life for somebody else's benefit. Which is only acceptable if you have no choice (really need the money, and don't have the market value to earn the same in a job with more normal dedication).
They're the same per hour, but the absolute amount of money is still different. If you value 40 extra hours less than 60k, and you can somehow stay productive, there's no reason not to take the job that pays more money.
There are plenty of jobs that ask for 40 hours and pay 120k, and they don't have that much more status. (I'm not saying they're common, but they're not that rare either.) If you're talking 300k+ for that 80/week, then it might be worth it at that point, if you can get the job.
Who the hell works 80 hours a week to make a measly $120k? You should be making 300k+ for that kind of productivity. Otherwise, you are only cheating yourself. There are tons of 120-160k jobs at 40 hours/week
> Who the hell works 80 hours a week to make a measly $120k? You should be making 300k+ for that kind of productivity. Otherwise, you are only cheating yourself. There are tons of 120-160k jobs at 40 hours/week
Many video game developers work 80+hr weeks for well under 100k.
The (perceived?) prestige of being a video game developer makes up the difference.
Only if working more hours means making more money. In my experience that simply isn't true. Your output at 80 hours isn't double. After a couple of weeks of that it's probably actually worse.
Shhh ... Stop that you're poking holes with all your "reality." We have this facade that we would like very much for you stop uncovering ... Now repeat after me: we are disrupters. We are "bettering the world." We are "empowering our species." We are "transforming human organisms into something amazing." Or, fill with whatever oddly worded scifi-esque hyperbole you can think of. And remember, we're doing this with fancy CSS and crud, oh and lots of JavaScript projects that re-implement stuff we could do 40 years ago. :)
OK, I don't want to be overly cynical here ... but come on, if you read some of the stuff in our echo chamber ... just don't take yourself so seriously. I mean I know there ideologues are only in startups so they can one day build some utopia in which there is no such thing as money ... but come on. :)
The problem comes from the culture; certain cultures identify success as the core value of a person, so people tend to identify their identity with the product of their work.
It's more than some "important"; work is how people [with this attitude] values theirselves.
Keep in mind that if you grow up pushed to be the best at school and then at work, there's nothing really meaningful in life outside those areas.
That's where the false dichotomy "being great vs. family comes". Essentially, it's perceived as having something that makes one happy at the perceived cost of "being a nobody".
At the extreme of this attitude the is Japan, where work is taking over the sexual life (there was an article some time ago in HN).
So, err, what other metric than work output (be it products, ideas, bright kids or whatever else you might think of) are you using as the ‘core value’ of a person?
Well, I actually thought of an extensive answer, then I realized that the question itself has a problem - I ask you, what's the purpose of measuring a person?
Note: I use the term "measuring" since you've specifically introduced "metric".
I'm 26, single, and have no pets. I have a family and friends, but I'm very transparent about my work habits and priorities as a full-stack engineer.
Being so young, I see myself as training to be the person I want to be in the future. The best programmers in the world worked at it relentlessly. Sure, there are variances in the amount that they all worked, and some did it with much less work than others. But if I want to be the best in the world, or at least attain my personal upper bound, I have to work hard at it and I have to work consistently at it.
John Resig didn't wake up one day and write jQuery. Steve Wozniak didn't just throw together the Apple I. Linus didn't just decide to write the Linux kernel one afternoon. They all put to work the investments they made in themselves.
I don't do it because I want money, success, or fame. I do it because I deeply want to make a meaningful impact on the world. I want it so bad that when I think about it my palms sweat and my chest gets heavy. When you look at the future of humanity as a whole, we need to either improve or die. And to improve, we need improvers. I want to be an improver and I don't want to rest until I am.
To be clear, I love what I do and I don't really consider it work. Solving hard problems with creative techniques is one of my favorite things to do. I really enjoy learning new things, and being able to pull them into my work is really satisfying. Being able to build something that I imagine, push it out to people, and see them get excited about it is surreal. I don't want to be doing anything else. I don't want to stop working.
But I understand the research. I understand that the work I put in will be more productive and beneficial to me if I have a balance in all areas of my life--which means that I need to be social, have hobbies, and live a healthy lifestyle.
So I've aligned my life such that those interactions still help me reach my upper bound. My friends are smarter than I am and many are in technical fields so getting a beer with them involves talking about a hard problem we solved. My hobbies include writing StackOverflow posts, trying out new frameworks, and reading books like Thinking, Fast and Slow, RabbitMQ in Action, and Secrets of the Javascript Ninja. I truly enjoy and am satisfied with these parts of my life, even though I'm never really leaving the mindset of work.
One day I want to write those books, not just read them, and I want those books to meaningfully impact the world. So I train, and that means I'm an 80 hours a week guy.
I admire your passion and dedication to having a positive impact on the world.
My challenge to you is this: What gives you confidence that the impact you'll have on the world will in fact be positive?
Engineering certainly gives us the ability to impact the world. Increasingly and since the first industrial revolution power goes to the greatest engineers. But are the skills that give us the ability to change the world really sufficient to decide what change is best? For that, I believe we need wisdom and understanding far outside our field of expertise, and in the evening and on the weekend we should be reading not just Javascript Ninja but also books on history, philosophy, political theory, literature, and psychology - if we want to optimize the chance that our impact will truly be positive.
To be fair to the poster you're replying to, he did mention reading Thinking Fast & Slow which is by the nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. That's no web programming manual.
> To be fair to the poster you're replying to, he did mention reading Thinking Fast & Slow which is by the nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman.
When I read this, I realized something was wrong. Psychology isn't a science, and scientific Nobel prizes are awarded for scientific breakthroughs. So I looked it up and discovered that the psychologist Kahneman won the Economics Nobel, which makes more sense (economics isn't very scientific, but it's certainly more scientific than psychology).
A quick search reveals that a psychologist has never won a science Nobel for psychological work. As in the above example, the notable work of some psychologists is recognized by awarding a Nobel in a more scientific field, to avoid polluting the Nobel's reputation and opening the door to awards in any number of other pseudoscientific fields.
You make a valuable distinction; Kahneman did not win the Nobel for psychology, and in fact there is no such thing.
But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples.
> But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology.
It certainly doesn't call into question the definition of science -- that's well-established by a consensus among scientists. The consensus is secure enough that science is now written into law, for example laws meant to prevent Creationism from being taught as science in science classrooms. Here is an excerpt from one such law now on the books (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) (there are many):
1. It is guided by natural law;
2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;
3. It is testable against the empirical world;
4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and
5. It is falsifiable.
Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. Therefore, based on society's accepted definition of science, psychology is not a science.
This isn't remotely controversial, in fact society is moving away from psychology toward neuroscience as we speak. The director of the NIMH recently ruled that the DSM (psychology's "bible") can no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. In his explanation (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) the director said:
"While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."
"Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." [emphasis added]
> In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples.
Yes, but these are descriptions, not testable, falsifiable explanations. Science requires explanations, explanations that can be empirically tested and possibly falsified. But because this is a discussion of science, let's prove this point with a thought experiment -- let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, just like a psychologist.
Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes o...
> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world")
That's not what falsifiable means.
> I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works.
Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works. That statement, taken literally, is provably false, as sooner or later somebody will die even if you're shaking a dried gourd over his body. But lets say that you meant the cure improves the condition of those that suffer from common cold, or that simply we want to find out before anybody dies.
Well, we can do doubly-blind A/B testing and measure several things, like the presence of the associated symptoms, its progression, the average duration and so on. And nowadays, any treatment must beat the placebo effect in order for it to be considered valid.
But lets say that we couldn't determine if this particular cure is valid or not. It would still be falsifiable, because it's related to things that we'll be able to measure in the future, if we can't already - like the autoimmune system's response to this treatment.
>> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world")
> That's not what falsifiable means.
You truncated the original, cut out an essential word, then argued against the edited version. Here's what I said:
> Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. [emphasis added]
In point of fact, empirical, falsifiable evidence is the only legitimate basis for theories that should be discarded if reality disagrees, and on which the notion of falsifiability depends -- that's how it's defined.
The meaning of falsifiability is that a reality test decides whether a given idea has merit, not philosophical weight or rhetorical argument. And if the reality test fails, a scientist discards the failed idea. A pseudoscientist may elect to discard reality instead.
> Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works.
Yes, and on that basis I can claim that my idea is falsifiable. But until I take the daring step of trying to explain what I have described, I haven't crossed the threshold of science.
That's why I use this example -- it has empirical evidence, it is falsifiable, it is replicable by dispassionate third parties. It has everything that psychology recognizes as science, except the crucial element of theory, of explanation. Because psychology is satisfied to describe without making an effort to explain, so am I.
OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science. The remainder of the discussion is quite tedious, and shows that the OP has a very confused notion of mind body separation (hint, by and large they are not, whether you're a dualist an epihenominist or something else - I tend to something else but wouldn't feel confident to write my viewpoint down).
What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology. This could be OP's second point of confusion. Essentially the only time real experiemnts as opposed to quasi-experiments are possible in science is where a known physical quantity is already well understood (e.g. moles of Hydrogen, quanta of photons, metres of distance, joules of energy etc). Where complete control over a known physical quantity is not practical, the only possible experimental design is in fact a quasi experimental design. However, to claim that quasi experiments are not valid is to deny a large amount of scientific knowledge, and flies in the face of deductive logic.
Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring. The discipline of psychology was the original field that enabled the types of statistical analysis that underpin much of the modern economy. Psychology provided the intellecutal basis of using single case studies (e.g patients with a rare or unique illness) to further scientific understanding. In psychology this resulted in much of our understanding of the functions of different parts of the brain prior to the development of neuroimaging.
Finally, lots of concepts in computer science originate in psychology - heuristic being the one that comes to mind at the moment. My entire development methodology is based on the idea that human short term memory is fixed to 7±2 items (based on data from quasi-experimental studies). Thus when I am writing code my primary purpose is to only have to attend to 5 things at a time, at most, as this is the lower bound of the reliability of my short term memory.
> OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science.
Pretend to be a scientist and post your evidence. Here's mine -- the director of the NIMH has recently ruled (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) that the DSM (psychology's "bible") may no longer be used as the basis of scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. The director went on to say:
"The goal of this new manual, as with all previous editions, is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology. While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."
"Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." [emphasis added]
There is often an embarrassing degree of self-reference in discussions where psychologists try to claim that psychology is a science. The defenders invariably see no need to produce evidence for their claim, as though evidence is irrelevant in a discussion of science. And for a typical psychologist, saying psychology is a science is expected to end a conversation, whereas for a scientist, that claim can only begin a conversation in which evidence rules.
> Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring.
Only if science isn't defined as it is in the law -- which it is. Science-defining laws are on the books to keep Creationism out of public school classrooms, and while crafting those laws with the assistance of expert witnesses, guess which non-negotiable criterion always appears in the final ruling? Falsifiability.
2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;
3. It is testable against the empirical world;
4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and
5. It is falsifiable.
I bring up this law to make perfectly clear that falsifiability, empirical evidence, and the other standard requirements for science, are only red herrings to people who think they can define science any way they please. For a scientist, obviously this kind of argument is unnecessary -- they already understand what science requires.
> What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology.
Wait, what? Because one cannot design reliable experiments in psychology, therefore psychology is scientific? On what basis -- that real science is too difficult?
Yawn. There are very few scientific laws compared to the body of scientific knowledge. Most scientific concepts are relegated to theory rather than law as they are are amenable only to inductive proof. The only scientific ideas that have the status of law are those that are amenable to deductive proof.
You are very long winded, and you present as if you think your understanding is better than it actually is.
You have failed to address any of my arguments, standard arguments that clearly define what science is and is not. And you have decided that ad hominem is a better approach, even though a logical error. Given your inability to defend your position, this isn't too surprising.
Your "evidence" seems to be of the variety that there is a very restricted set of conditions where an epistimology can be considered scientifically based. This is prima facie not the case as scientific knowledge is far wider than your claim allows.
>This is prima facie not the case as scientific knowledge is far wider than your claim allows.
Only if you change the definition of "scientific knowledge" to something much more vague that is not the definition agreed upon by scientists. If you loosen it up to where it seems you are targeting, it lands well into pseudo-science or just religion. By expanding it to include theories that aren't falsifiable, it's nothing more than a circle-jerk because unfalsifiable theories indicate that they provide no information gain to the scientific community and are ultimately worthless.
> Only if you change the definition of "scientific knowledge" to something much more vague that is not the definition agreed upon by scientists.
Oh dear. I've got news for you. While currently not practicing, I have been paid to do scientific work in the past. That makes me a scientist. And according to my professional opinion, your entire frame of reference is wrong.
For fun replace 'psychology' with 'quantum physics'. Is it also not science?
1. Contradicts some natural laws
2. Is not explained by the natural world except in reference to itself (often due to changes beyond a certain scale)
3. Not necessarily testable against the empirical world (yet)
4. Always up for debate (so good there) as is psychology.
5. Falsifiable or not depending on your stance, in a similar way to psychology, in that there is a lack of complete understanding. The swan example in the wiki article could not be applied for instance because all of the facts and observations are not available (again... yet.)
As for Kahneman (and many other psychologists), if you believe that he starts with the conclusion and refuses to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation, you may have skipped some very important parts of Thinking Fast and Slow. The book in question goes over many examples where the outcomes do not fit what is expected and lead to discovery.
Not arguing exclusively against what you are saying, just pointing out that there are fields that utilize the scientific method, which by their very nature are not entirely beholden to the current 'laws of science' often because their laws have not been fully laid down or explored yet.
Medical science moved past simply treating based on symptoms due to a great deal of work. Who's to say psychology can not do the same? There is still much to learn.
> For fun replace 'psychology' with 'quantum physics'. Is it also not science?
There are fundamental differences. In quantum theory one can craft a theory that makes empirically falsifiable predictions about phenomena not yet observed, even in advance by decades, like the Higgs boson.
The theory is the Standard Model, and it predicted the Higgs boson decades ago. Much time passed because we just didn't have a way to observe reality in the right energy domain. Now we do.
There is nothing remotely like this in psychology.
> Contradicts some natural laws
Not really. The quantum and relativistic worlds are non-overlapping, but both have copious observational evidence, which means we need to look for a theory that explains both of them in a unified way. That search is underway. One candidate is string theory, very controversial because no single string theory candidate is the obvious "final theory".
> Is not explained by the natural world except in reference to itself
This is a non sequitur because it's true for any theory -- at some scale it becomes self-referential. Cosmology, a theory about everything, is self-referential at the level of the entire universe.
> Not necessarily testable against the empirical world
No. Quantum theory is constantly empirically tested and is the best-confirmed theory in existence, both in terms of description and prediction. In fact, the computer you're sitting at represents a confirmation of quantum theory.
There is no other scientific theory that has so much agreement between an abstract theoretical construct and careful observation. During the debates that led to modern quantum theory, Einstein and his group (the critics) posed any number of seemingly absurd objections to quantum ("... and that would be a perfectly absurd outcome"), but each of the objections turned out to be true -- entanglement, superposition of states and others.
There are some quantities predicted by quantum theory that have been confirmed in experiment to ten decimal places -- an outcome unmatched by any other scientific theory.
Title: "The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science"
Quote: "Experimental tests of QED measure small shifts, but to an absurd number of decimal places. The most impressive of these is the “anomalous magnetic moment of the electron,” expressed is terms of a number g whose best measured value is: g/2 = 1.001 159 652 180 73 (28) ... Depending on how you want to count it, that’s either 11 or 14 digits of precision ..."
> Falsifiable or not depending on your stance
Definitely falsifiable. There was much discussion before confirmation of the Higgs that its absence would constitute a falsification of much of the Standard Model, which is technically accurate and was a matter of much speculation before the results were in.
Quantum theory is eminently falsifiable in the classic sense, persistently resists falsification, and is the cornerstone of much of modern technology.
> As for Kahneman (and many other psychologists), if you believe that he starts with the conclusion and refuses to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation ...
Wait, I never said that and I don't hold that view. What I said was that Kahnemann's work describes, it doesn't explain. It is in the area of explanation that psychology fails. To explain (and to put it simply), psychologists would have to seek out root causes of behaviors, but that would require the mind to be a physical organ, open to empirical observation. This is why society is moving away from psychology toward neuroscience -- the chance to offer an empirical, falsifiable explanation.
(What follows should clearly demonstrate the differe...
My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world. At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false.
When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future. Mental illnesses are very much real and because of that it is entirely possible to measure the effectiveness of a psychological treatment.
The problem with many psychological treatments is the same problem we have with nutrition - doing studies is excruciatingly hard because the validity of a test is compromised if the patients aren't kept under observation 24/7, because patients have a tendency to lie or to forget, so short of keeping them locked in a cage for the next 10 years, we lack the capability of keeping them under observation and this is necessary to eliminate variables that could have an impact on the result. Doubly-blind tests are also excruciatingly hard sometimes - for example, in regards to nutrition, the only way one could conduct such a test would be to control the patients' basic senses. And in the future, we may be able to directly measure the body's reaction to a treatment, which would eliminate the need for A/B testing entirely.
Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.
Quote: "The concern with falsifiability gained attention by way of philosopher of science Karl Popper's scientific epistemology "falsificationism". Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience. This is often epitomized in Wolfgang Pauli famously saying, of an argument that fails to be scientific because it cannot be falsified by experiment, "it is not only not right, it is not even wrong!"" [emphasis added]
> At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false.
No, falsifiability in science means that an empirical test -- a test against reality -- proves a claim to be false. In science, falsifiability is not about philosophy or rhetoric, it is about empirical tests.
> When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future.
In psychology, defined as study of the mind, none of those are falsifiable in a scientific sense, because the mind is not a source of empirical evidence.
> The problem with many psychological treatments ... [etc.]
Your paragraph explains why psychology is not and cannot be scientific.
> Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.
On the contrary, that is exactly what it means. No objective empirical evidence on which similarly equipped observers can agree, ergo no falsifiability, ergo no science.
In any case, falsifiability is only one missing property in psychology. Another is psychology's tendency to be satisfied to describe what it should be explaining. Are testable, empirical explanations required for science, or are descriptions adequate? To find out, read my description of a phony cure for the common cold posted above. It shows that explanations are a requirement for science, and to avoid all sorts of quackery.
>> Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity,
> That is a false statement, your mind is quite physical!
Citation needed. No responsible practitioner in the field of psychology argues that the mind is a biological organ or an empirical part of physical reality.
> and indeed you call upon neuroscience in your very next line!
Now I see what I'm up against. Neuroscience studies the brain and nervous system, not the mind.
> No responsible practitioner in the field of psychology argues that the mind is a biological organ or an empirical part of physical reality
Huh? What psychologists do you go to, ones only attached to churches?
I'm not going to bother arguing against mind body dualism[0], I have better things to do with my time! I am however confused, you bring up criticisms of a field not acting scientifically, but it appears you are then arguing in favor of pseudoscience of the worst sort, unless I have misconstrued your position.
> I'm not going to bother arguing against mind body dualism ...
Good idea, you aren't qualified. Meanwhile, the mind is not a physical organ and it cannot be relied on to produce empirical evidence or falsifiable theories. This is a burden on psychology, it has been since the beginning of the field, and it explains why psychology has been determined not to be a science by scientists:
Quote: " Psychology isn't science. Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability."
The above explains why psychology is being replaced by neuroscience, the study of the nervous system. This change means we can gather actual data and shape real theories.
Your position is still not 100% clear, although it appears that you are arguing that something called "the mind" exists outside the physical realm. Without resorting to religious nonsense that hardly seems like a tenable position.
Psychology's job has been one of categorization. It is fancy pattern recognition that some poor fools thought had actual meaning behind it. Now it turns out it also managed to realize that if you poke and prod someone in a certain way that occasionally a positive change can take place. Of course I'd argue that change has a real, physical, and measurable impact, just that we lack the tools to completely measure it in a non-destructive fashion! Thus, as you mentioned, actual scientists are coming along and fixing things up properly, but it is going to take some time.
> The above explains why psychology is being replaced by neuroscience, the study of the nervous system. This change means we can gather actual data and shape real theories.
Well yeah, we agree on that part. I am just confused as to your seeming insistence as to the existence of something non-physical. I can grok taking that position if one is a religious nutter, but your website[0] makes you out to be an individual who is well grounded in reality.
[0]Upon further research you appear to have been someone's whose software I used while growing up.
> Your position is still not 100% clear, although it appears that you are arguing that something called "the mind" exists outside the physical realm.
Wait, hold on, I didn't invent the mind, psychologists did. I'm simply pointing out that the subject of psychological work doesn't have a physical existence.
I'm certainly not arguing that the mind "exists outside the physical realm". I'm arguing that psychology needs to reconcile their insistence that psychology is a science, with the nonphysical, non-empirical subject of their investigations.
> I am just confused as to your seeming insistence as to the existence of something non-physical.
Wait, hold on. I'm not arguing that the mind exists on a non-physical plane, that's psychology's claim -- I'm objecting to it, as do most scientists.
Quote: "Psychology isn't science. Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability."
> Now it turns out it also managed to realize that if you poke and prod someone in a certain way that occasionally a positive change can take place.
Yes, but without an explanation, that outcome can't rise to the level of science. Science requires explanations, mere descriptions won't do. If I say, "The night sky is filled with little points of light", that's a description, not very useful. But if I say, "Those points of light are actually distant thermonuclear furnaces like our own sun," that's an explanation, it's testable and falsifiable, and I've crossed the threshold of science.
> Wait, hold on. I'm not arguing that the mind exists on a non-physical plane, that's psychology's claim -- I'm objecting to it, as do most scientists.
Ah OK, I was obviously confused.
All the psychologists I have known have admitted that they are just an inaccurate subset of neurology, none of them would follow the concept of "mind", I tend not to bother dealing with people who go for mind/body dualism!
Any psychologist who is an atheist and a skeptic pretty much has to come to the same conclusions. Meh.
>Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. Therefore, based on society's accepted definition of science, psychology is not a science.
Psychology is defined as the scientific study of mental functions and behavior--not the mind. Therefore, since scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior, Psychology is a science.
And as I said before, in Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman outlines many of these studies, and the citation section of his book serves as an atlas of counter-examples to your position.
I've refuted the central point of your argument, and therefore have no logical obligation to address the rest of your points. If you intend to argue, you must necessarily refute my claim by proving the studies I cite in my argument either are not scientific or do not concern mental functions or behavior.
It's a long list so if I were you I would get up early, eat my Wheaties, and instead of trying to prove me wrong, think about how ridiculous you carried yourself in this thread.
Quote: "Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors."
No denial that the mind is the focus of psychological research -- not surprising, since the word "mental" fully acknowledges the role of the mind. This means psychology relies on the mind for its content. And the mind cannot produce empirical evidence.
Quote: "Criticisms of psychological research often come from perceptions that it is a "soft" science. Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn's 1962 critique[68] implied psychology overall was in a pre-paradigm state, lacking the agreement on overarching theory found in mature sciences such as chemistry and physics."
"Because some areas of psychology rely on research methods such as surveys and questionnaires, critics have asserted that psychology is not an objective science. Other concepts that psychologists are interested in, such as personality, thinking, and emotion, cannot be directly measured[69] and are often inferred from subjective self-reports, which may be problematic."
Gee, that sounds familiar.
> Therefore, since scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior, Psychology is a science.
Not without the empirical evidence that the mind cannot produce, or an effort to shape empirical, testable, falsifiable theories. But don't take my word for it -- because this is a discussion of science, let's try a thought experiment -- let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, just like a psychologist.
Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no?
> And as I said before, in Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman outlines many of these studies, and the citation section of his book serves as an atlas of counter-examples to your position.
False. These are descriptions, not explanations, and they do not shape an "overarching theory", for the lack of which every commentator has criticized psychology for decades. Science requires explanations. I should tell you that this is not a new argument -- it's been put forth any number of times in the history of psychology, most recently by the director of the NIMH in his recent ruling that the DSM may no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...).
> I've refuted the central point of your argument ...
You have done nothing of the kind. You do realize, don't you, that scientific discussions must be accompanied by evidence, yes? Where is your evidence that mind studie...
> Where is your evidence that mind studies can produce empirical evidence or theories?
In the citation section of the book. Until you refute this evidence, the claim "scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior" stands.
Hi, I'm Adam, 27, married with a two year old and one more on the way. I commend your efforts and wish you luck. Some small percentage of people who start out down the path you're on make it to the end as true technical experts.
All I will do is put in a word that most people who start down that track don't finish, but they still get a chance to change the world. Their chance comes through the coworkers they mentor, the spouses whose less-profitable careers their high-paying programming jobs support, and the children who they raise with, hopefully, some psychological balance.
Remember that this path is just as hard, requires as much thinking and practice, and is mastered by just as few people. For now, if you don't think that's what you're called to, great. But there's nothing to be embarrassed about if you find out later that it is.
And if you get to that realization, approach the rest of life with the same zeal you poured into becoming a technical expert, plus perhaps a bit of new-found humility. Practice constantly, seek help from books and from people who have thought about the problem extensively (religious leaders, therapists, or trusted friends), and remember that you're in training as an excellent person to be.
(Edit: I guess I should also say, I'm not sure the options are exclusive. I've read the books you mention, I've spoken at JSConf, and I've built some really incredible things, all while never regularly working more than a normal workweek.)
Do you really think that you're telling him something he doesn't already know?
Some people are served well by humility, others aren't. Just because humility and practicality works for you (and me, I might add) doesn't mean that it's the approach for everyone.
I just want people to see that there are many paths to a fulfilling, excellent life. In this community, we have so many models of two of those paths--making FU money, or achieving technical mastery--and so few public models of other options, like the patient parent, the spouse to an emotionally-troubled partner, the upstanding community member, etc.
I understand that some people people who attempt one of these goals will fail through lack of effort, intelligence, or luck. But I want to help people not devote their lives to one of these goals just because they don't see the other options or know themselves well enough to see that they're working hard in the wrong direction. I don't judge or disagree with anyone's informed choice, but you can't be informed if you only see two models of success and not other roads to a happy life.
I just thought I'd post a public reminder, and hope a few people find it useful.
(Edited: pretty sure it was clear what I meant, alexeisadeski3, but made it even clearer.)
We need far more discussion of this type in this forum, especially because the "FU money" and "technical master" roles are rare and difficult to achieve. These can be ideal scenarios for people, but we need to discuss that not achieving this feats does not equal failure.
>I do mind people who devote their lives to one of these goals because they don't see the other options or know themselves well enough to see that they're working hard in the wrong direction.
Seems a bit presumptuous to judge how others choose to live their lives...
He's not judging, he's lamenting. Lamenting what he sees to be choices made as a result of a lack of information, which is something we do all the time when it comes to technological decisions. It's not a critique of the choice, but a critique of the context in which it was made.
I pity these poor fools, who thought Exchange was their only option...
I had that exact same attitude when I was 26 and single and had no pets. "I'm going to get awesome at embedded C++ programming, work my ass off in my 20s so I write world-changing software in my 30s and I can retire in my 40s." No pain, no gain, live at work, 80 hour days, all night caffeine and coding sessions. F-yea! I'm a varsity software jock training for the Career Olympics!
Almost 2 decades later, a family to take care of, a little fatter, a little less healthy, a lot more tired, I look back and what difference did it make? There are a bunch of gadgets out there with my software in it. Am I retired? No. Did I change the world? No. Did I invent the next Linux? No. At least for the companies I worked for, my tireless efforts made the shareholders a bit more money, but that's about it.
Look at it by the numbers. Suppose 1 out of every 10,000 jobs out there offer you the opportunity to reach whatever your goals are (ultra-wealth, change the world, create something awesome, whatever your goal is). I think 1 out of 10,000 is EXTREMELY generous given all those "opportunities" out there to build yet-another CRUD web app or yet another B2B IT portal or yet another crappy plastic consumer product. The career lifespan of a software engineer is (again generously) 40 years. If you're an extreme job hopper you can probably try something new once a year. So you have 40 at-bats.
So,
P(home run) = 0.0001
N = 40
P = 1 - (1-P(hr))^N = 1 - (1-0.0001)^40 ~0.4%
So the likelihood of you lucking into that one life-changing opportunity throughout your entire career as an engineer is minuscule. Unless you really think you can both identify the next Facebook before it happens and land a job there while they're tiny. A lot of people think they can do that. A lot of people also think they can pick stocks, predict horse races, or read tea leaves.
I'm not writing this to discourage you, but do understand that the extreme hours you are putting in now are a bet against enormous odds. Don't end up a jaded burnt out 40 year old engineer.
There are several other numbers out there, but it's all in the 75%-90% range. So 10% chance to become a millionaire, thus free to do everything you want and I will learn so much in the meantime? I take it.
I don't believe you are an 80 hour a week man. Unless you count reading HN, browsing the web, reading email, eating lunch, commuting to work, getting ready for work etc. NO ONE does 80 hours of legitimate work a week. It's a myth.
I agree. 80hours ~ 12 hours 7 days a week w/ 30 min break for lunch. I work all day all the time, but it often equates to 8 hours a day, not 12. Even if you work 7-8s that is less than 60 hours.
There are 168 hours a week. Say you sleep for 8 hours per day. That takes up 56 hours, leaving 112 hours. If you legitimately work for 80 hours, that leaves 32 hours of downtime a week, or roughly 4.5 hours per day. That's only 270 minutes (it's closer to 4.6 hours, but that is only 276 minutes).
270 minutes a day. What can you accomplish in that time? Is there enough left over to stay sane?
Of course, there are plenty of variables to play around with. Sleep 6, and that's an extra 14 hours a week. Now you have plenty of downtime. Over the long run, is stealing these two hours away from your sleep beneficial? Maybe for some. Are you in that category. Are you sure? Really?
> So I train, and that means I'm an 80 hours a week guy.
Doesn't follow. I consider myself to be on a similar path, perhaps with a touch less passion than yourself. I wish for my future work to be meaningful and beneficial for many, but I don't necessarily ache to "make a meaningful impact on the world." That can be done almost trivially by being kind and helpful to those around you. It doesn't have to be some epoch creating achievement.
I study. I read similar books to you. My end goal is to be really good at what I do, but I don't need to spend 80 hours a week doing it. Are you going to get there faster? I'm not so sure.
One thing that really stuck out to me about your comment:
> So I've aligned my life such that those interactions still help me reach my upper bound. My friends are smarter than I am and many are in technical fields so getting a beer with them involves talking about a hard problem we solved.
Do you never take a break? I go out with great friends that are entirely non-technical, and often never discuss a technical matter all weekend. I don't even think about how "smart" they are. I don't expect my friends to be smarter than I am. I hang out with smart people on occasion, but it's not a requirement.
[Edit: Just to be clear, what I am trying to get across in the above paragraph is my surprise that your choices targeting balance, your social interaction and hobbies, are calculated to derived benefit. Take it when you can, but what you're attempting sounds overbearing. Enjoy some downtime. Don't even think whether it is beneficial or not. What are you missing out on because it's seemingly not beneficial? I would argue: a lot.]
I spend hours reading great fiction with no technical information to be gained. My hobbies are completely divorced from what I want to get great at, and I strive to become good, not great, at them. Yet, I never feel like my true passion suffers.
I was the same, I had the same opinion, and I thought it's going to last forever.
Then my daughter was born, and while I had no real idea of why on Earth would a 3 months old baby who cannot really communicate in any meaningful way change anything -- I became a different person, so much happier than I used to be. :)
Having a kid changed my life as well. I'm 21, and my son turned 1 this month.
I'm so glad he came along when he did, because I was on my way down the dangerous road of workaholism; but now my priorities are crystal clear, and I refuse to work more than 40 hours/week on a regular basis.
While you should do what you think is best for you, but since you mentioned training, remember, top athletes don't train 80h a week. They need rest, and your body and mind need rest too.
And this is coming from someone that used to work as much as you when younger.
Please don't talk this the wrong way but your use of the phrase "full stack" makes it unlikely you are working on hard problems with creative techniques. You're building websites. And you are deluding yourself if you think it is sustainable or meaningful or worth it.
Sure, but there is only one community that uses that vocabulary. No-one doing computational chemistry or machine learning or weather forecasting or quantitative finance (or any of a hundred other kinds of programming) calls themselves a "full stack engineer" or a "javascript ninja". Only guys assembling websites out of pre-built components (aka frameworks) like Ikea furniture, for companies to use for marketing.
He didn't even call himself a "javaScript ninja". He read a book that has that phrase in the title. Also, why do you assume building websites is mutually exclusive with doing something meaningful? Pretty bold assertion.
yes, because everyone building websites are mouth-breathing neanderthals who know nothing other than how to assemble marketing websites from pre-built web components and frameworks that do nothing important.
> I don't do it because I want money, success, or fame. I do it because I deeply want to make a meaningful impact on the world.
> I don't want to stop working.
Rick, you need to be really careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.
You're headed straight for burnout. How do you expect your body to feel after you don't ever give it a break from this programming thing? This is exactly what happened to me.
By the looks of it, it isn't a matter of if, but when. If you bet your whole life on work, and then work starts biting you in the ass (which it will over a long enough timespan) then what will you do? What other areas will you be content in to carry you through?
The real benefit of balance is being able to shift your focus among various areas of your life to weather the storms of life.
A technical piece of advice: develop your taste for languages and constructing software beyond what Industry tells you.
Have you ever tried shorter work weeks of greater intensity (via deliberate, focused practice) while taking more time to recover, reset, and find inspiration?
Is it more effective to grind away relentlessly or could you spend that time more efficiently and eliminate unimportant tasks?
Are great ideas more likely to be obtained by long hours in front of a computer, or would it be better to spend some of that time away from the studio?
You are not doing cancer research, you are not saving lives as a doctor, you are not building hospitals in Africa. If you want to make a meaningful impact on the world, quit your job as a full-stack engineer and go do something more hands-on. Retain your skills and interest in this area on your 'downtime'. Then come back, hungrier than ever, more humble and more experienced of the world than ever. Life doesn't happen in front of a computer screen, it doesn't happen in printed books or on discussion threads.
I did something similar to you. But before I did the change I was burnt out and very depressed (I was at an extremely low point of my life). I don't regret it.
Believe me. Do some creative destruction. And come back in two-three years time.
I think most of them are inefficient workers. There's no reason, other than doing a critical surgery, to work on a single task for 15 hours in a single day. It's ridiculous.
I do agree with the author that there is an inordinate number of us who brag about the number, but this isn't something that is likely to just go away. Unless a new and objective measure of 'productivity' comes along people will still humblebrag about how long they work
Okay, fair enough call with the humblebrag -- many times people talking about how many hours they work are simply socially posturing: look at how much more important I am!
Also, it's bad for you. Bad for your health and bad for your performance.
Having said all of that, there's nothing wrong with 1) pouring yourself into something that's bigger than you, and 2) living a life that's dedicated to something aside from yourself, one which doesn't have traditional work-life boundaries.
That's probably only true in 1% of these cases, but I don't want to lose those folks while giving lectures to the other 99% about values and performance.
ADD: Rephrased, articles like this are also a form of social posturing, and please don't kill the next Thomas Edison with your well-meaning advice to ten thousand corporate drones.
There is definitely many sides to this whole argument of "x hour work week". For many, it makes sense to push their limits and clock up 60+ hours/wk while many are productive working just about 40 or less. And we can certainly discuss the pros and cons of both. But one of the fundamental things that I believe we should all think about is the ability to control what/how/when you do things. This includes work hours as well. As an example, I know many colleagues who take pride in working a lot of hours and they even login from home just to reply to emails. Do they really need to do that ? In most cases, I would challenge that they don't. But it is a tendency that develops over time and one day you suddently realize that you are clocking 60+ hours/wk and don't even know why.
But then you could argue that everyone else on the team does that, my boss likes it that way blah blah. Again, totally understood that if everyone else is doing it, why wouldn't you but the fact still remains "you can control it to an extent". That's the point.
I have made it a point to set some strict boundaries. Sure, I have the luxury of doing that after being in the industry for a while as a specialist and my clients depend on my expertise. So it is more about value than time. Focus on creating that for your employers/clients and you are golden.
I probably average around 60hrs per week and my biggest reservations about this are:
1. That's 60hrs of being a sedentary lazy-ass
2. The more I work outside of work, the less well-rounded I will be
I'm a fit person and take regular walking/stretching breaks and switch between standing and sitting but I still feel like I'm spending way too much time being motionless.
Regarding being well-rounded, I've spent large chunks of my life focused on music, philosophy and learning new (natural) languages. I find that it makes me happier and makes me a more creative programmer, so I tend to feel guilty when realize at the end of the week that I've spent all of my evenings coding and reading RFCs.
I totally agree that a long work week is not a badge of honor and that the results of your work should speak for themselves. Things take time and sometimes you can't rush things.
I've worked crazy long weeks and its not glamorous and, in my opinion, just straight unhealthy on so many levels.
I think the challenge in working 45+ hours/week is maintaining adequate sleep/diet/exercise/social so that you can remain productive and happy over the long-term. Best of luck.
So far I've only accepted jobs that will let me be paid by the hour, instead of salary, with 1.5 times pay for overtime. I feel like it much more reasonably aligns expectations, and in 10+ years of working that way, I've only done a few hours of overtime here or there during true emergencies.
If I hadn't been reading this on a Saturday at 11:30 local while waiting for my regression tests to finish, I may have been more enthusiastic to the message.
Speaking in extremes rarely doesn't do anyone any good. Yeah, this weekend is capping out a 60 hour week for me (and then some), but the problem isn't that this occurred. Its when this becomes the norm. I look at it like peaks and valleys. This week I'm working long. Last week, I did, too. But, this weekend's testing will be testing a prod bug we've been chasing for three weeks. My boss knows, and he's going to trade me some time in the upcoming weeks. Likewise, there have been plenty of weeks that I worked sub-40. As long as work doesn't take over your life unwillingly, things are probably fine. Paraphrasing a TV theme (the source of all wisdom) - you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life.
I've never done a 60 hour work week, even on crunch mode - you run into the risk of your mind deteriorating too much and putting out sloppy work that needs to be fixed when you come in for the next day.
I don't know why anyone would pride themselves over it.
I wonder if the author would give the same advice to famous workaholics like Paul Erdos?
Here's my issue: I'm an entrepreneur. Doing a startup is my dream. I'm having fun and creating amazing memories. I work as much as I possibly can. Stopping me from working on my startup is like keeping a child locked in a room. I don't force my team to do the same (and they don't). I don't brag about it, I am not burning out, not messing with my sleep, not jeopardising my health. Moreso, when I force myself to stop it takes me a long time to start again. That's how my brain works. Why is 40 the golden standard? Do I have to apologise for the amount of work I do?
I'm also an entrepreneur. It's the best job I've ever had.
Back in the day, I was a salaryman. A Japanese megacorp owned me body and soul.
If you had asked me, during much of those three years, whether I was overworked, I would have told you no. Seventy hours was surely not more than many salarymen worked, and anyhow, I had just had a nice relaxing 50 hour week only... what month is it again? I would have described myself as an attentive boyfriend, and didn't understand at all why a girlfriend might disagree with that assessment. My best friends had an album titled Patrick Falling Asleep At Parties -- they were such kidders, those two. I had blackouts. I stayed in a hotel frequently, some days because it was impossible to catch the last train but some days because while I technically could have made the train I was staggering so much I was uncertain that I'd make it home safely. Somebody once did a graph of HN posts by hour it was utterly impossible to identify core sleep hours for me by looking at it, for three years. When my salaryman friends and I got together for dinners we'd do the requisite amount of kvetching about our jobs and then talk about people who had real problems. Did you hear about how bad it gets at the Tokyo office? Cripes, we dodged a bullet, didn't we.
In hindsight, I can only describe it as three years of temporary insanity.
I don't want to attack any part of your self-conception, and wish only for your happiness. In that spirit: consider the possibility that alexandros is executing on unreliable hardware and attempt to get verifiable external measurements about what that hardware is telling you.
I am indeed very much aware I am running on unreliable hardware. My evaluation of my productivity comes from reviewing things done in micro and macro scale, as well as feedback from people around me. Seeing my HN history from PhD years to Startup years is night and day. I've even installed RescueTime to get a better idea of how I spend my time. I try to get as much external data as possible, always happy to apply any other (sensible) metric you (or others) can suggest.
But keep in mind these same considerations hold for everyone claiming they're super-productive in 40 hours a week.
I respect you and your work ethic, even if it isn't for me. I do have one thing I'd like to add a general comment on, even if it doesn't pertain to you:
> I don't force my team to do the same (and they don't).
For anyone who does work at all hours, before and after the traditional workday, I would just kindly remind you to be cognizant of the messages you send to your team if you're firing off emails and sending other work products every other night at 10pm and every morning at 5am. While you don't mind doing it for yourself, and externally you tell everyone you don't expect the same, it does begin to put informal social pressure on everyone else. This is particularly true if one or more employees start responding/emulating those odd-hour communications, out of drive or a sense of unspoken obligation, which pushes everyone else into a "I do this but you don't have to [but really you should wink wink]" situation. Even if people don't match behavior, it can lead to stress.
In short: be aware of the pressure your behavior can send irrespective of your words, in light of your position of authority.
I couldn't agree more. Sometimes it is the fault of the worker, but unless that worker is an executive, this is almost always the fault of management. I have occasionally worked more than 40 hours because something was engrossing, but this is unusual as I know when to stop. In almost every single case of working more hours it was because of bad management. Unfortunately, a lot of these management decisions are do or get fired and I have left many a job because of it, usually to my detriment.
The other problem is that somehow people want to make an exception for their startup. Their startup is special. Their startup won't suffer from these problems. As if their startup has found a way to make humans efficient and healthy without sleep. Please. That kind of thinking (I'm staring at a comment right now) is exactly what leads to this kind of mess. Where does the 40 hours a week come from? Years of experience by both workers and their managers and executives.
Why then are executives nowadays so clueless, especially the ones at startups?
This article doesn't pass the smell test. There is nothing magical about 40 hours per week. 60 hours is just as arbitrary as 40. Also, it probably originated when people did actual physical labor, and so it wont apply to dev work. Countless people in the sciences have toiled day and night to bring about great discoveries - and that's a good thing.
Question: Do non-software people (I'm thinking Scientists, Mathematicians, etc) ever complain about this?
Filmmaking is an area where you work a lot. And then you don't, because you're trying to get work.
But when you're working, to say that it takes over your life is a bit of an understatement. The director is typically putting in 18 hours a day for shoots that can last for months. The crew gets 1 day out of 7 off, but not the director (and the crews typically also work long days—overtime is rampant).
It's a frigging marathon to get the footage in the can, and yet, despite nobody really liking that aspect by itself, almost without exception the end result is to want to do it again.
The same is true for almost everything else surrounding the making of a film. Only the actual screenwriting is done on a relatively slow schedule.
Yeah and game development is quite similar in this aspect to film making. I was just thinking about the people who mostly sit at a desk and have their brains heavily engaged doing a particular task all day. IMO/IME people get fatigued by mental work way more easily than physical work, so its hard to compare the two. (Discounting some outliers like athletes, construction workers, etc)
Complain about 60 hours/week? Rarely. Work 60 hours/week? Rarely.
Professors tend to put in roughly 40 to 80 hours depending on their scientific and organisational workload, but most others hardly ever work 60 hours/week with an average of 40-ish. But then, nobody really measures how much time they put in, and you have to keep in mind that in science, the ‘passive work’ done sort-of in the background while doing something else plays a larger role than in programming (at least that’s my impression).
That said, 40 hours is not entirely unjustified, given that 8 hours/day is relatively practical if you want to have both breakfast and dinner at home with an 2hours/day commute and that at least most universities are relatively closed-down on weekends (though some enjoy the much more quiet environment…).
Not really data in any sense justifying the plural use of the word, merely a look down the hallway of the chair where I work – nobody comes in before 8:30 and most people have left by 18:30, averaging a nice-ish 40h/week, given that those who come in early will leave early, too, there are extensive lunch and coffee breaks and most people keep their evenings and weekends work-free (though, of course, not all of them).
Management consultants have a culture of overtime that probably beats that of programmers. Investment bankers are on an even higher level. In their culture, overwork is also much more explicitly a badge of honor.
You're begging the question, how does 60, 40, 50 w/e figure into those constraints? And the more important question, because there's going to be variability how do you end up a meaningful number?
To me, this sounds similar to the question - How much weight can you lift? Almost everyone can increase the amount of weight that they can lift. But physical, genetic reasons will force some upper bound on the progression.
As a former mathematician and current dev, they are different environments.
In software engineering, 60+ hours a week on just work stuff is bad...I've noticed a bit of performance degradation at around 50 hours. I do spend a large amount of out of work hours learning more stuff on my own, but mentally it's a different ballgame, which lets you be more relaxed.
In mathematics, your mind is mostly in the relaxed state, unless you're about to take an important exam. For the process of research, you just spend the time you can delving into a particular topic and understanding it.
The life of a mathematician is more analogous to learning & experimemting with different code libraries on the side. The mental balance errs more towards relaxed experimentation as opposed to just getting it done.
Agree that the # of hours worked in a week is by no means an indication of productivity, and sometimes perhaps a product of a misaligned culture.
However, I do find long hours may result out of necessity for the sheer work involved as well. Especially in the earlier days of a company, you compensate for an initial lack of resources and staff by performing multiple roles.
On the business side, you could easily see your mornings taken up by customer calls (especially if you have an international market), the afternoons spent on ad campaigns and marketing content, the late afternoons on general office management. In the evenings when there's less client interaction, I would spend time on product feedback, some data analysis and metrics reporting for the day/week's past. This could easily extend to a 60-80 hour work week, and I would consider fairly typical of early startups.
As you grow there's less need for sure to work so long, as the company grows and responsibilities become more focused. But overall, I think there are circumstances where a 60-80 hr workweeks are necessary, and not necessarily an indication of a problem.
For most people, I'd agree. But as a startup founder, given how resource constrained we are (and we've chosen the self-funded, bootstrapping model for now) I don't have a whole lot of choice if we're going to succeed. Especially when you factor in that I still work a regular job to pay the bills.
So, 40 hrs at the regular job + x hours working on the startup, where x consumes almost every evening and almost all day on Sat. and Sunday, I'm regularly doing 70+ hour weeks.
Humblebrag? I don't know, and I don't care. I just care about getting this damn thing going and achieving my dreams.
Luckily I enjoy this, because I'm working on something I am actually passionate about. Not that it doesn't get frustrating on occasion, but most of the time it's more pleasure than pain.
So why do all this? Well, as theorique says here:
It isn't about disrupting an industry. It's about money.
That's a little bit of an oversimplification, but there's a lot of truth there. There are things I'd like to do, dreams I'd like to live out, that I can't do at my present level of income. But it's more than that for me (and, I'm guessing, for a lot of other people). I work on building a startup because A. I enjoy the act of building and creating something, and B. as the founder I'm in control and get to call the shots. Here, succeed for fail, it'll be down to my decisions and actions, not some random $BOSS. (Yeah, yeah, go ahead and chime in "everything is luck" crowd. I don't care about you either).
Anyway, when I get tired of working I just imagine myself cruising through New York or London, driving a Ferrari while getting sucked off by a gorgeous readheaded supermodel, and remind myself that there are reasons for doing all this work...
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadThis isn't true for all people. I've had weeks where I've worked 100+ hours productively because I was working on my own projects and initiatives, for my own company and enrichment, and had hit a stride. But I would never brag about that effort, because the effort itself is meaningless. Only the results of the effort mattered, and of those I am very proud. Too many brag about the effort regardless of what is often a lack of results.
^1 - http://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2013/03/05/mediocre-manager...
I like the momentum of those 50 - 60 hour weeks. More importantly, makes it easier for those weeks I want to do a 20 hour or a 0 hours work week.
Some weeks 60+ hours can be very productive - but it's important to recognise when you're not being productive and take a proper break - I still find that a challenge.
The problem with this is the guy is addicted to working weekends. He's been doing it for years and it makes everyone else look like "slackers", despite his obvious burnout.
The problem I see is that it slowly becomes the new norm and benchmark, regardless of whether long hours are productive. These new expectations then get encoded in cultures that devalue those who either choose to spend time on other things or who are simply more efficient.
Do we just need to find better measures of output and figure out what fair compensation for average output is?
Of course your interpretation is more likely.
It is possible to sustain it, if you are an introvert like me. It's just important not to do the same thing all the time. My degree is focused on low level programming and hardware, and I mainly do AngularJS development for living. So this kind of switch definitely helps.
Other thing which is important, at least personally, is that when you take a break, you must do something that counts. Browsing internet just drains more energy, personally. But I find playing an action packed video game (if you can't bother to go outside - or if you live in North England like I do) quite recharging. [0]
[0] I wrote more about that in my blog http://blog.gedrap.me/blog/2014/02/09/its-all-about-the-shor...
I'm introverted. There is not and has never been any meaningful connection between that and my limits with respect to working hours.
Is 'disrupting' an industry really that important to you?
60 hour a week people haven't got that idea yet.
I think the "art of working" is deciding what kind of work you want to do, how big a part of your life you want it to be, and then doing that.
I always find these types of discussions interesting. It's never about things like work ethic, efficiency, or even skill, it seems to devolve in to what everyone thinks is the ideal work schedule for someone else. I have friends that think I am crazy for working like I am now. I don't really care, I am happy, the clients are happy, and my bank account is most certainly happy. But I would never tell someone else they should work as much as I do, or that they should only work 30 hours, or some other random number of hours.
I had to work a 90 hour week a few weeks ago to address a operational crisis. That netted me a bunch of overtime and a week off.
This applies to salaried or consulting professionals of course; if you're working your ass off to build your own business and maybe hit big rewards in the future, it's a sensible choice. Otherwise, you're just busting your health and personal life for somebody else's benefit. Which is only acceptable if you have no choice (really need the money, and don't have the market value to earn the same in a job with more normal dedication).
Many video game developers work 80+hr weeks for well under 100k.
The (perceived?) prestige of being a video game developer makes up the difference.
OK, I don't want to be overly cynical here ... but come on, if you read some of the stuff in our echo chamber ... just don't take yourself so seriously. I mean I know there ideologues are only in startups so they can one day build some utopia in which there is no such thing as money ... but come on. :)
It's more than some "important"; work is how people [with this attitude] values theirselves.
Keep in mind that if you grow up pushed to be the best at school and then at work, there's nothing really meaningful in life outside those areas.
That's where the false dichotomy "being great vs. family comes". Essentially, it's perceived as having something that makes one happy at the perceived cost of "being a nobody".
At the extreme of this attitude the is Japan, where work is taking over the sexual life (there was an article some time ago in HN).
Everything else is secondary.
Note: I use the term "measuring" since you've specifically introduced "metric".
The time constraint is more motivating when you're working on your product full time and have not released yet (are not making any money).
I'm 26, single, and have no pets. I have a family and friends, but I'm very transparent about my work habits and priorities as a full-stack engineer.
Being so young, I see myself as training to be the person I want to be in the future. The best programmers in the world worked at it relentlessly. Sure, there are variances in the amount that they all worked, and some did it with much less work than others. But if I want to be the best in the world, or at least attain my personal upper bound, I have to work hard at it and I have to work consistently at it.
John Resig didn't wake up one day and write jQuery. Steve Wozniak didn't just throw together the Apple I. Linus didn't just decide to write the Linux kernel one afternoon. They all put to work the investments they made in themselves.
I don't do it because I want money, success, or fame. I do it because I deeply want to make a meaningful impact on the world. I want it so bad that when I think about it my palms sweat and my chest gets heavy. When you look at the future of humanity as a whole, we need to either improve or die. And to improve, we need improvers. I want to be an improver and I don't want to rest until I am.
To be clear, I love what I do and I don't really consider it work. Solving hard problems with creative techniques is one of my favorite things to do. I really enjoy learning new things, and being able to pull them into my work is really satisfying. Being able to build something that I imagine, push it out to people, and see them get excited about it is surreal. I don't want to be doing anything else. I don't want to stop working.
But I understand the research. I understand that the work I put in will be more productive and beneficial to me if I have a balance in all areas of my life--which means that I need to be social, have hobbies, and live a healthy lifestyle.
So I've aligned my life such that those interactions still help me reach my upper bound. My friends are smarter than I am and many are in technical fields so getting a beer with them involves talking about a hard problem we solved. My hobbies include writing StackOverflow posts, trying out new frameworks, and reading books like Thinking, Fast and Slow, RabbitMQ in Action, and Secrets of the Javascript Ninja. I truly enjoy and am satisfied with these parts of my life, even though I'm never really leaving the mindset of work.
One day I want to write those books, not just read them, and I want those books to meaningfully impact the world. So I train, and that means I'm an 80 hours a week guy.
My challenge to you is this: What gives you confidence that the impact you'll have on the world will in fact be positive?
Engineering certainly gives us the ability to impact the world. Increasingly and since the first industrial revolution power goes to the greatest engineers. But are the skills that give us the ability to change the world really sufficient to decide what change is best? For that, I believe we need wisdom and understanding far outside our field of expertise, and in the evening and on the weekend we should be reading not just Javascript Ninja but also books on history, philosophy, political theory, literature, and psychology - if we want to optimize the chance that our impact will truly be positive.
When I read this, I realized something was wrong. Psychology isn't a science, and scientific Nobel prizes are awarded for scientific breakthroughs. So I looked it up and discovered that the psychologist Kahneman won the Economics Nobel, which makes more sense (economics isn't very scientific, but it's certainly more scientific than psychology).
A quick search reveals that a psychologist has never won a science Nobel for psychological work. As in the above example, the notable work of some psychologists is recognized by awarding a Nobel in a more scientific field, to avoid polluting the Nobel's reputation and opening the door to awards in any number of other pseudoscientific fields.
But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples.
It certainly doesn't call into question the definition of science -- that's well-established by a consensus among scientists. The consensus is secure enough that science is now written into law, for example laws meant to prevent Creationism from being taught as science in science classrooms. Here is an excerpt from one such law now on the books (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) (there are many):
1. It is guided by natural law;
2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;
3. It is testable against the empirical world;
4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and
5. It is falsifiable.
Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. Therefore, based on society's accepted definition of science, psychology is not a science.
This isn't remotely controversial, in fact society is moving away from psychology toward neuroscience as we speak. The director of the NIMH recently ruled that the DSM (psychology's "bible") can no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. In his explanation (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) the director said:
"While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."
"Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." [emphasis added]
> In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples.
Yes, but these are descriptions, not testable, falsifiable explanations. Science requires explanations, explanations that can be empirically tested and possibly falsified. But because this is a discussion of science, let's prove this point with a thought experiment -- let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, just like a psychologist.
Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes o...
That's not what falsifiable means.
> I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works.
Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works. That statement, taken literally, is provably false, as sooner or later somebody will die even if you're shaking a dried gourd over his body. But lets say that you meant the cure improves the condition of those that suffer from common cold, or that simply we want to find out before anybody dies.
Well, we can do doubly-blind A/B testing and measure several things, like the presence of the associated symptoms, its progression, the average duration and so on. And nowadays, any treatment must beat the placebo effect in order for it to be considered valid.
But lets say that we couldn't determine if this particular cure is valid or not. It would still be falsifiable, because it's related to things that we'll be able to measure in the future, if we can't already - like the autoimmune system's response to this treatment.
> That's not what falsifiable means.
You truncated the original, cut out an essential word, then argued against the edited version. Here's what I said:
> Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. [emphasis added]
In point of fact, empirical, falsifiable evidence is the only legitimate basis for theories that should be discarded if reality disagrees, and on which the notion of falsifiability depends -- that's how it's defined.
The meaning of falsifiability is that a reality test decides whether a given idea has merit, not philosophical weight or rhetorical argument. And if the reality test fails, a scientist discards the failed idea. A pseudoscientist may elect to discard reality instead.
> Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works.
Yes, and on that basis I can claim that my idea is falsifiable. But until I take the daring step of trying to explain what I have described, I haven't crossed the threshold of science.
That's why I use this example -- it has empirical evidence, it is falsifiable, it is replicable by dispassionate third parties. It has everything that psychology recognizes as science, except the crucial element of theory, of explanation. Because psychology is satisfied to describe without making an effort to explain, so am I.
What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology. This could be OP's second point of confusion. Essentially the only time real experiemnts as opposed to quasi-experiments are possible in science is where a known physical quantity is already well understood (e.g. moles of Hydrogen, quanta of photons, metres of distance, joules of energy etc). Where complete control over a known physical quantity is not practical, the only possible experimental design is in fact a quasi experimental design. However, to claim that quasi experiments are not valid is to deny a large amount of scientific knowledge, and flies in the face of deductive logic.
Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring. The discipline of psychology was the original field that enabled the types of statistical analysis that underpin much of the modern economy. Psychology provided the intellecutal basis of using single case studies (e.g patients with a rare or unique illness) to further scientific understanding. In psychology this resulted in much of our understanding of the functions of different parts of the brain prior to the development of neuroimaging.
Finally, lots of concepts in computer science originate in psychology - heuristic being the one that comes to mind at the moment. My entire development methodology is based on the idea that human short term memory is fixed to 7±2 items (based on data from quasi-experimental studies). Thus when I am writing code my primary purpose is to only have to attend to 5 things at a time, at most, as this is the lower bound of the reliability of my short term memory.
Pretend to be a scientist and post your evidence. Here's mine -- the director of the NIMH has recently ruled (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) that the DSM (psychology's "bible") may no longer be used as the basis of scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. The director went on to say:
"The goal of this new manual, as with all previous editions, is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology. While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."
"Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." [emphasis added]
There is often an embarrassing degree of self-reference in discussions where psychologists try to claim that psychology is a science. The defenders invariably see no need to produce evidence for their claim, as though evidence is irrelevant in a discussion of science. And for a typical psychologist, saying psychology is a science is expected to end a conversation, whereas for a scientist, that claim can only begin a conversation in which evidence rules.
> Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring.
Only if science isn't defined as it is in the law -- which it is. Science-defining laws are on the books to keep Creationism out of public school classrooms, and while crafting those laws with the assistance of expert witnesses, guess which non-negotiable criterion always appears in the final ruling? Falsifiability.
Here is one such ruling (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) -- science must have these properties:
1. It is guided by natural law;
2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;
3. It is testable against the empirical world;
4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and
5. It is falsifiable.
I bring up this law to make perfectly clear that falsifiability, empirical evidence, and the other standard requirements for science, are only red herrings to people who think they can define science any way they please. For a scientist, obviously this kind of argument is unnecessary -- they already understand what science requires.
> What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology.
Wait, what? Because one cannot design reliable experiments in psychology, therefore psychology is scientific? On what basis -- that real science is too difficult?
> This could be OP's second point of confusion.
The only confusion is yours.
You are very long winded, and you present as if you think your understanding is better than it actually is.
I posed evidence, you posted opinion. If you understood science, you would know the difference.
Only if you change the definition of "scientific knowledge" to something much more vague that is not the definition agreed upon by scientists. If you loosen it up to where it seems you are targeting, it lands well into pseudo-science or just religion. By expanding it to include theories that aren't falsifiable, it's nothing more than a circle-jerk because unfalsifiable theories indicate that they provide no information gain to the scientific community and are ultimately worthless.
Oh dear. I've got news for you. While currently not practicing, I have been paid to do scientific work in the past. That makes me a scientist. And according to my professional opinion, your entire frame of reference is wrong.
1. Contradicts some natural laws
2. Is not explained by the natural world except in reference to itself (often due to changes beyond a certain scale)
3. Not necessarily testable against the empirical world (yet)
4. Always up for debate (so good there) as is psychology.
5. Falsifiable or not depending on your stance, in a similar way to psychology, in that there is a lack of complete understanding. The swan example in the wiki article could not be applied for instance because all of the facts and observations are not available (again... yet.)
As for Kahneman (and many other psychologists), if you believe that he starts with the conclusion and refuses to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation, you may have skipped some very important parts of Thinking Fast and Slow. The book in question goes over many examples where the outcomes do not fit what is expected and lead to discovery.
Not arguing exclusively against what you are saying, just pointing out that there are fields that utilize the scientific method, which by their very nature are not entirely beholden to the current 'laws of science' often because their laws have not been fully laid down or explored yet.
Medical science moved past simply treating based on symptoms due to a great deal of work. Who's to say psychology can not do the same? There is still much to learn.
There are fundamental differences. In quantum theory one can craft a theory that makes empirically falsifiable predictions about phenomena not yet observed, even in advance by decades, like the Higgs boson.
The theory is the Standard Model, and it predicted the Higgs boson decades ago. Much time passed because we just didn't have a way to observe reality in the right energy domain. Now we do.
There is nothing remotely like this in psychology.
> Contradicts some natural laws
Not really. The quantum and relativistic worlds are non-overlapping, but both have copious observational evidence, which means we need to look for a theory that explains both of them in a unified way. That search is underway. One candidate is string theory, very controversial because no single string theory candidate is the obvious "final theory".
> Is not explained by the natural world except in reference to itself
This is a non sequitur because it's true for any theory -- at some scale it becomes self-referential. Cosmology, a theory about everything, is self-referential at the level of the entire universe.
> Not necessarily testable against the empirical world
No. Quantum theory is constantly empirically tested and is the best-confirmed theory in existence, both in terms of description and prediction. In fact, the computer you're sitting at represents a confirmation of quantum theory.
There is no other scientific theory that has so much agreement between an abstract theoretical construct and careful observation. During the debates that led to modern quantum theory, Einstein and his group (the critics) posed any number of seemingly absurd objections to quantum ("... and that would be a perfectly absurd outcome"), but each of the objections turned out to be true -- entanglement, superposition of states and others.
There are some quantities predicted by quantum theory that have been confirmed in experiment to ten decimal places -- an outcome unmatched by any other scientific theory.
Title: "The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science"
Link: http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2011/05/05/the-most-preci...
Quote: "Experimental tests of QED measure small shifts, but to an absurd number of decimal places. The most impressive of these is the “anomalous magnetic moment of the electron,” expressed is terms of a number g whose best measured value is: g/2 = 1.001 159 652 180 73 (28) ... Depending on how you want to count it, that’s either 11 or 14 digits of precision ..."
> Falsifiable or not depending on your stance
Definitely falsifiable. There was much discussion before confirmation of the Higgs that its absence would constitute a falsification of much of the Standard Model, which is technically accurate and was a matter of much speculation before the results were in.
Quantum theory is eminently falsifiable in the classic sense, persistently resists falsification, and is the cornerstone of much of modern technology.
> As for Kahneman (and many other psychologists), if you believe that he starts with the conclusion and refuses to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation ...
Wait, I never said that and I don't hold that view. What I said was that Kahnemann's work describes, it doesn't explain. It is in the area of explanation that psychology fails. To explain (and to put it simply), psychologists would have to seek out root causes of behaviors, but that would require the mind to be a physical organ, open to empirical observation. This is why society is moving away from psychology toward neuroscience -- the chance to offer an empirical, falsifiable explanation.
(What follows should clearly demonstrate the differe...
When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future. Mental illnesses are very much real and because of that it is entirely possible to measure the effectiveness of a psychological treatment.
The problem with many psychological treatments is the same problem we have with nutrition - doing studies is excruciatingly hard because the validity of a test is compromised if the patients aren't kept under observation 24/7, because patients have a tendency to lie or to forget, so short of keeping them locked in a cage for the next 10 years, we lack the capability of keeping them under observation and this is necessary to eliminate variables that could have an impact on the result. Doubly-blind tests are also excruciatingly hard sometimes - for example, in regards to nutrition, the only way one could conduct such a test would be to control the patients' basic senses. And in the future, we may be able to directly measure the body's reaction to a treatment, which would eliminate the need for A/B testing entirely.
Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.
Not in science. In science, falsifiability means the failure of an empirical test, a failure that invalidates a claim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
Quote: "The concern with falsifiability gained attention by way of philosopher of science Karl Popper's scientific epistemology "falsificationism". Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience. This is often epitomized in Wolfgang Pauli famously saying, of an argument that fails to be scientific because it cannot be falsified by experiment, "it is not only not right, it is not even wrong!"" [emphasis added]
> At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false.
No, falsifiability in science means that an empirical test -- a test against reality -- proves a claim to be false. In science, falsifiability is not about philosophy or rhetoric, it is about empirical tests.
> When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future.
In psychology, defined as study of the mind, none of those are falsifiable in a scientific sense, because the mind is not a source of empirical evidence.
> The problem with many psychological treatments ... [etc.]
Your paragraph explains why psychology is not and cannot be scientific.
> Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.
On the contrary, that is exactly what it means. No objective empirical evidence on which similarly equipped observers can agree, ergo no falsifiability, ergo no science.
In any case, falsifiability is only one missing property in psychology. Another is psychology's tendency to be satisfied to describe what it should be explaining. Are testable, empirical explanations required for science, or are descriptions adequate? To find out, read my description of a phony cure for the common cold posted above. It shows that explanations are a requirement for science, and to avoid all sorts of quackery.
That is a false statement, your mind is quite physical!
(and indeed you call upon neuroscience in your very next line!)
> That is a false statement, your mind is quite physical!
Citation needed. No responsible practitioner in the field of psychology argues that the mind is a biological organ or an empirical part of physical reality.
> and indeed you call upon neuroscience in your very next line!
Now I see what I'm up against. Neuroscience studies the brain and nervous system, not the mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience
Quote: "Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system."
Huh? What psychologists do you go to, ones only attached to churches?
I'm not going to bother arguing against mind body dualism[0], I have better things to do with my time! I am however confused, you bring up criticisms of a field not acting scientifically, but it appears you are then arguing in favor of pseudoscience of the worst sort, unless I have misconstrued your position.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%2...
Good idea, you aren't qualified. Meanwhile, the mind is not a physical organ and it cannot be relied on to produce empirical evidence or falsifiable theories. This is a burden on psychology, it has been since the beginning of the field, and it explains why psychology has been determined not to be a science by scientists:
Title: "Why psychology isn't science"
Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-...
Quote: " Psychology isn't science. Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability."
The above explains why psychology is being replaced by neuroscience, the study of the nervous system. This change means we can gather actual data and shape real theories.
Psychology's job has been one of categorization. It is fancy pattern recognition that some poor fools thought had actual meaning behind it. Now it turns out it also managed to realize that if you poke and prod someone in a certain way that occasionally a positive change can take place. Of course I'd argue that change has a real, physical, and measurable impact, just that we lack the tools to completely measure it in a non-destructive fashion! Thus, as you mentioned, actual scientists are coming along and fixing things up properly, but it is going to take some time.
> The above explains why psychology is being replaced by neuroscience, the study of the nervous system. This change means we can gather actual data and shape real theories.
Well yeah, we agree on that part. I am just confused as to your seeming insistence as to the existence of something non-physical. I can grok taking that position if one is a religious nutter, but your website[0] makes you out to be an individual who is well grounded in reality.
[0]Upon further research you appear to have been someone's whose software I used while growing up.
Wait, hold on, I didn't invent the mind, psychologists did. I'm simply pointing out that the subject of psychological work doesn't have a physical existence.
I'm certainly not arguing that the mind "exists outside the physical realm". I'm arguing that psychology needs to reconcile their insistence that psychology is a science, with the nonphysical, non-empirical subject of their investigations.
> I am just confused as to your seeming insistence as to the existence of something non-physical.
Wait, hold on. I'm not arguing that the mind exists on a non-physical plane, that's psychology's claim -- I'm objecting to it, as do most scientists.
Title: "Why psychology isn't science"
Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-...
Quote: "Psychology isn't science. Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability."
> Now it turns out it also managed to realize that if you poke and prod someone in a certain way that occasionally a positive change can take place.
Yes, but without an explanation, that outcome can't rise to the level of science. Science requires explanations, mere descriptions won't do. If I say, "The night sky is filled with little points of light", that's a description, not very useful. But if I say, "Those points of light are actually distant thermonuclear furnaces like our own sun," that's an explanation, it's testable and falsifiable, and I've crossed the threshold of science.
Ah OK, I was obviously confused.
All the psychologists I have known have admitted that they are just an inaccurate subset of neurology, none of them would follow the concept of "mind", I tend not to bother dealing with people who go for mind/body dualism!
Any psychologist who is an atheist and a skeptic pretty much has to come to the same conclusions. Meh.
Psychology is defined as the scientific study of mental functions and behavior--not the mind. Therefore, since scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior, Psychology is a science.
And as I said before, in Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman outlines many of these studies, and the citation section of his book serves as an atlas of counter-examples to your position.
I've refuted the central point of your argument, and therefore have no logical obligation to address the rest of your points. If you intend to argue, you must necessarily refute my claim by proving the studies I cite in my argument either are not scientific or do not concern mental functions or behavior.
It's a long list so if I were you I would get up early, eat my Wheaties, and instead of trying to prove me wrong, think about how ridiculous you carried yourself in this thread.
Let's look up the definition of psychology and see if it corresponds to your claim:
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology
Quote: "Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors."
No denial that the mind is the focus of psychological research -- not surprising, since the word "mental" fully acknowledges the role of the mind. This means psychology relies on the mind for its content. And the mind cannot produce empirical evidence.
Next Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#Criticism
Quote: "Criticisms of psychological research often come from perceptions that it is a "soft" science. Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn's 1962 critique[68] implied psychology overall was in a pre-paradigm state, lacking the agreement on overarching theory found in mature sciences such as chemistry and physics."
"Because some areas of psychology rely on research methods such as surveys and questionnaires, critics have asserted that psychology is not an objective science. Other concepts that psychologists are interested in, such as personality, thinking, and emotion, cannot be directly measured[69] and are often inferred from subjective self-reports, which may be problematic."
Gee, that sounds familiar.
> Therefore, since scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior, Psychology is a science.
Not without the empirical evidence that the mind cannot produce, or an effort to shape empirical, testable, falsifiable theories. But don't take my word for it -- because this is a discussion of science, let's try a thought experiment -- let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, just like a psychologist.
Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no?
> And as I said before, in Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman outlines many of these studies, and the citation section of his book serves as an atlas of counter-examples to your position.
False. These are descriptions, not explanations, and they do not shape an "overarching theory", for the lack of which every commentator has criticized psychology for decades. Science requires explanations. I should tell you that this is not a new argument -- it's been put forth any number of times in the history of psychology, most recently by the director of the NIMH in his recent ruling that the DSM may no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...).
> I've refuted the central point of your argument ...
You have done nothing of the kind. You do realize, don't you, that scientific discussions must be accompanied by evidence, yes? Where is your evidence that mind studie...
In the citation section of the book. Until you refute this evidence, the claim "scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior" stands.
All I will do is put in a word that most people who start down that track don't finish, but they still get a chance to change the world. Their chance comes through the coworkers they mentor, the spouses whose less-profitable careers their high-paying programming jobs support, and the children who they raise with, hopefully, some psychological balance.
Remember that this path is just as hard, requires as much thinking and practice, and is mastered by just as few people. For now, if you don't think that's what you're called to, great. But there's nothing to be embarrassed about if you find out later that it is.
And if you get to that realization, approach the rest of life with the same zeal you poured into becoming a technical expert, plus perhaps a bit of new-found humility. Practice constantly, seek help from books and from people who have thought about the problem extensively (religious leaders, therapists, or trusted friends), and remember that you're in training as an excellent person to be.
(Edit: I guess I should also say, I'm not sure the options are exclusive. I've read the books you mention, I've spoken at JSConf, and I've built some really incredible things, all while never regularly working more than a normal workweek.)
Do you really think that you're telling him something he doesn't already know?
Some people are served well by humility, others aren't. Just because humility and practicality works for you (and me, I might add) doesn't mean that it's the approach for everyone.
I understand that some people people who attempt one of these goals will fail through lack of effort, intelligence, or luck. But I want to help people not devote their lives to one of these goals just because they don't see the other options or know themselves well enough to see that they're working hard in the wrong direction. I don't judge or disagree with anyone's informed choice, but you can't be informed if you only see two models of success and not other roads to a happy life.
I just thought I'd post a public reminder, and hope a few people find it useful.
(Edited: pretty sure it was clear what I meant, alexeisadeski3, but made it even clearer.)
Seems a bit presumptuous to judge how others choose to live their lives...
I pity these poor fools, who thought Exchange was their only option...
I had that exact same attitude when I was 26 and single and had no pets. "I'm going to get awesome at embedded C++ programming, work my ass off in my 20s so I write world-changing software in my 30s and I can retire in my 40s." No pain, no gain, live at work, 80 hour days, all night caffeine and coding sessions. F-yea! I'm a varsity software jock training for the Career Olympics!
Almost 2 decades later, a family to take care of, a little fatter, a little less healthy, a lot more tired, I look back and what difference did it make? There are a bunch of gadgets out there with my software in it. Am I retired? No. Did I change the world? No. Did I invent the next Linux? No. At least for the companies I worked for, my tireless efforts made the shareholders a bit more money, but that's about it.
Look at it by the numbers. Suppose 1 out of every 10,000 jobs out there offer you the opportunity to reach whatever your goals are (ultra-wealth, change the world, create something awesome, whatever your goal is). I think 1 out of 10,000 is EXTREMELY generous given all those "opportunities" out there to build yet-another CRUD web app or yet another B2B IT portal or yet another crappy plastic consumer product. The career lifespan of a software engineer is (again generously) 40 years. If you're an extreme job hopper you can probably try something new once a year. So you have 40 at-bats.
So,
P(home run) = 0.0001
N = 40
P = 1 - (1-P(hr))^N = 1 - (1-0.0001)^40 ~0.4%
So the likelihood of you lucking into that one life-changing opportunity throughout your entire career as an engineer is minuscule. Unless you really think you can both identify the next Facebook before it happens and land a job there while they're tiny. A lot of people think they can do that. A lot of people also think they can pick stocks, predict horse races, or read tea leaves.
I'm not writing this to discourage you, but do understand that the extreme hours you are putting in now are a bet against enormous odds. Don't end up a jaded burnt out 40 year old engineer.
Looking at the failure rate of startups of 82% as a first timer, by starting your own company you have just 40-folded your chances to success.
There are several other numbers out there, but it's all in the 75%-90% range. So 10% chance to become a millionaire, thus free to do everything you want and I will learn so much in the meantime? I take it.
There are 168 hours a week. Say you sleep for 8 hours per day. That takes up 56 hours, leaving 112 hours. If you legitimately work for 80 hours, that leaves 32 hours of downtime a week, or roughly 4.5 hours per day. That's only 270 minutes (it's closer to 4.6 hours, but that is only 276 minutes).
270 minutes a day. What can you accomplish in that time? Is there enough left over to stay sane?
Of course, there are plenty of variables to play around with. Sleep 6, and that's an extra 14 hours a week. Now you have plenty of downtime. Over the long run, is stealing these two hours away from your sleep beneficial? Maybe for some. Are you in that category. Are you sure? Really?
Doesn't follow. I consider myself to be on a similar path, perhaps with a touch less passion than yourself. I wish for my future work to be meaningful and beneficial for many, but I don't necessarily ache to "make a meaningful impact on the world." That can be done almost trivially by being kind and helpful to those around you. It doesn't have to be some epoch creating achievement.
I study. I read similar books to you. My end goal is to be really good at what I do, but I don't need to spend 80 hours a week doing it. Are you going to get there faster? I'm not so sure.
One thing that really stuck out to me about your comment:
> So I've aligned my life such that those interactions still help me reach my upper bound. My friends are smarter than I am and many are in technical fields so getting a beer with them involves talking about a hard problem we solved.
Do you never take a break? I go out with great friends that are entirely non-technical, and often never discuss a technical matter all weekend. I don't even think about how "smart" they are. I don't expect my friends to be smarter than I am. I hang out with smart people on occasion, but it's not a requirement.
[Edit: Just to be clear, what I am trying to get across in the above paragraph is my surprise that your choices targeting balance, your social interaction and hobbies, are calculated to derived benefit. Take it when you can, but what you're attempting sounds overbearing. Enjoy some downtime. Don't even think whether it is beneficial or not. What are you missing out on because it's seemingly not beneficial? I would argue: a lot.]
I spend hours reading great fiction with no technical information to be gained. My hobbies are completely divorced from what I want to get great at, and I strive to become good, not great, at them. Yet, I never feel like my true passion suffers.
Then my daughter was born, and while I had no real idea of why on Earth would a 3 months old baby who cannot really communicate in any meaningful way change anything -- I became a different person, so much happier than I used to be. :)
I'm so glad he came along when he did, because I was on my way down the dangerous road of workaholism; but now my priorities are crystal clear, and I refuse to work more than 40 hours/week on a regular basis.
And this is coming from someone that used to work as much as you when younger.
Later "frameworks" and "ninja". Oh dear.
get over yourself, bud.
Rick, you need to be really careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.
By the looks of it, it isn't a matter of if, but when. If you bet your whole life on work, and then work starts biting you in the ass (which it will over a long enough timespan) then what will you do? What other areas will you be content in to carry you through?
The real benefit of balance is being able to shift your focus among various areas of your life to weather the storms of life.
A technical piece of advice: develop your taste for languages and constructing software beyond what Industry tells you.
Is it more effective to grind away relentlessly or could you spend that time more efficiently and eliminate unimportant tasks?
Are great ideas more likely to be obtained by long hours in front of a computer, or would it be better to spend some of that time away from the studio?
I did something similar to you. But before I did the change I was burnt out and very depressed (I was at an extremely low point of my life). I don't regret it.
Believe me. Do some creative destruction. And come back in two-three years time.
Also, it's bad for you. Bad for your health and bad for your performance.
Having said all of that, there's nothing wrong with 1) pouring yourself into something that's bigger than you, and 2) living a life that's dedicated to something aside from yourself, one which doesn't have traditional work-life boundaries.
That's probably only true in 1% of these cases, but I don't want to lose those folks while giving lectures to the other 99% about values and performance.
ADD: Rephrased, articles like this are also a form of social posturing, and please don't kill the next Thomas Edison with your well-meaning advice to ten thousand corporate drones.
Endless 60 hour weeks are a problem. Perpetual crunch time means that expectations are misaligned with the resources needed to meet them.
But then you could argue that everyone else on the team does that, my boss likes it that way blah blah. Again, totally understood that if everyone else is doing it, why wouldn't you but the fact still remains "you can control it to an extent". That's the point.
I have made it a point to set some strict boundaries. Sure, I have the luxury of doing that after being in the industry for a while as a specialist and my clients depend on my expertise. So it is more about value than time. Focus on creating that for your employers/clients and you are golden.
1. That's 60hrs of being a sedentary lazy-ass
2. The more I work outside of work, the less well-rounded I will be
I'm a fit person and take regular walking/stretching breaks and switch between standing and sitting but I still feel like I'm spending way too much time being motionless.
Regarding being well-rounded, I've spent large chunks of my life focused on music, philosophy and learning new (natural) languages. I find that it makes me happier and makes me a more creative programmer, so I tend to feel guilty when realize at the end of the week that I've spent all of my evenings coding and reading RFCs.
This happened to me recently. More than 70h per week.
But that's not. The fact of the matter is, I was the sole programmer on the product and the product is so attached to me that if it fails, I fail.
I don't see it that way, but the employees at the place I work at do. The clients who were brought in to meet me, do.
1) Sending out team wide emails very late at night and on the weekends
2) Sending out team wide code reviews very late at night and on the weekends
3) Monday morning during scrum standup mentioning "Over the weekend I did..."
I believe the above behavior is eventually toxic to a team if done on a regular basis.
I've worked crazy long weeks and its not glamorous and, in my opinion, just straight unhealthy on so many levels.
I think the challenge in working 45+ hours/week is maintaining adequate sleep/diet/exercise/social so that you can remain productive and happy over the long-term. Best of luck.
"The cult of busy": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187353
"The busy trap": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4184317
Speaking in extremes rarely doesn't do anyone any good. Yeah, this weekend is capping out a 60 hour week for me (and then some), but the problem isn't that this occurred. Its when this becomes the norm. I look at it like peaks and valleys. This week I'm working long. Last week, I did, too. But, this weekend's testing will be testing a prod bug we've been chasing for three weeks. My boss knows, and he's going to trade me some time in the upcoming weeks. Likewise, there have been plenty of weeks that I worked sub-40. As long as work doesn't take over your life unwillingly, things are probably fine. Paraphrasing a TV theme (the source of all wisdom) - you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life.
I don't know why anyone would pride themselves over it.
Here's my issue: I'm an entrepreneur. Doing a startup is my dream. I'm having fun and creating amazing memories. I work as much as I possibly can. Stopping me from working on my startup is like keeping a child locked in a room. I don't force my team to do the same (and they don't). I don't brag about it, I am not burning out, not messing with my sleep, not jeopardising my health. Moreso, when I force myself to stop it takes me a long time to start again. That's how my brain works. Why is 40 the golden standard? Do I have to apologise for the amount of work I do?
We should be very careful when we're talking about employees though.
Back in the day, I was a salaryman. A Japanese megacorp owned me body and soul.
If you had asked me, during much of those three years, whether I was overworked, I would have told you no. Seventy hours was surely not more than many salarymen worked, and anyhow, I had just had a nice relaxing 50 hour week only... what month is it again? I would have described myself as an attentive boyfriend, and didn't understand at all why a girlfriend might disagree with that assessment. My best friends had an album titled Patrick Falling Asleep At Parties -- they were such kidders, those two. I had blackouts. I stayed in a hotel frequently, some days because it was impossible to catch the last train but some days because while I technically could have made the train I was staggering so much I was uncertain that I'd make it home safely. Somebody once did a graph of HN posts by hour it was utterly impossible to identify core sleep hours for me by looking at it, for three years. When my salaryman friends and I got together for dinners we'd do the requisite amount of kvetching about our jobs and then talk about people who had real problems. Did you hear about how bad it gets at the Tokyo office? Cripes, we dodged a bullet, didn't we.
In hindsight, I can only describe it as three years of temporary insanity.
I don't want to attack any part of your self-conception, and wish only for your happiness. In that spirit: consider the possibility that alexandros is executing on unreliable hardware and attempt to get verifiable external measurements about what that hardware is telling you.
I am indeed very much aware I am running on unreliable hardware. My evaluation of my productivity comes from reviewing things done in micro and macro scale, as well as feedback from people around me. Seeing my HN history from PhD years to Startup years is night and day. I've even installed RescueTime to get a better idea of how I spend my time. I try to get as much external data as possible, always happy to apply any other (sensible) metric you (or others) can suggest.
But keep in mind these same considerations hold for everyone claiming they're super-productive in 40 hours a week.
> I don't force my team to do the same (and they don't).
For anyone who does work at all hours, before and after the traditional workday, I would just kindly remind you to be cognizant of the messages you send to your team if you're firing off emails and sending other work products every other night at 10pm and every morning at 5am. While you don't mind doing it for yourself, and externally you tell everyone you don't expect the same, it does begin to put informal social pressure on everyone else. This is particularly true if one or more employees start responding/emulating those odd-hour communications, out of drive or a sense of unspoken obligation, which pushes everyone else into a "I do this but you don't have to [but really you should wink wink]" situation. Even if people don't match behavior, it can lead to stress.
In short: be aware of the pressure your behavior can send irrespective of your words, in light of your position of authority.
The other problem is that somehow people want to make an exception for their startup. Their startup is special. Their startup won't suffer from these problems. As if their startup has found a way to make humans efficient and healthy without sleep. Please. That kind of thinking (I'm staring at a comment right now) is exactly what leads to this kind of mess. Where does the 40 hours a week come from? Years of experience by both workers and their managers and executives.
Why then are executives nowadays so clueless, especially the ones at startups?
Question: Do non-software people (I'm thinking Scientists, Mathematicians, etc) ever complain about this?
But when you're working, to say that it takes over your life is a bit of an understatement. The director is typically putting in 18 hours a day for shoots that can last for months. The crew gets 1 day out of 7 off, but not the director (and the crews typically also work long days—overtime is rampant).
It's a frigging marathon to get the footage in the can, and yet, despite nobody really liking that aspect by itself, almost without exception the end result is to want to do it again.
The same is true for almost everything else surrounding the making of a film. Only the actual screenwriting is done on a relatively slow schedule.
Anyway...
Professors tend to put in roughly 40 to 80 hours depending on their scientific and organisational workload, but most others hardly ever work 60 hours/week with an average of 40-ish. But then, nobody really measures how much time they put in, and you have to keep in mind that in science, the ‘passive work’ done sort-of in the background while doing something else plays a larger role than in programming (at least that’s my impression).
That said, 40 hours is not entirely unjustified, given that 8 hours/day is relatively practical if you want to have both breakfast and dinner at home with an 2hours/day commute and that at least most universities are relatively closed-down on weekends (though some enjoy the much more quiet environment…).
Do you have any data on this? Some quick data points that I found :
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06302/nsf06302.pdf
http://www.stthomas.edu/media/hollorancenter/pdf/Should-We-B...
http://arthropodecology.com/2012/10/25/the-work-life-balance...
A lot of people seem to work more than 40 hours per week. I'm sure some of them do complain. Maybe devs are just more likely to blog about it.
To me, this sounds similar to the question - How much weight can you lift? Almost everyone can increase the amount of weight that they can lift. But physical, genetic reasons will force some upper bound on the progression.
In software engineering, 60+ hours a week on just work stuff is bad...I've noticed a bit of performance degradation at around 50 hours. I do spend a large amount of out of work hours learning more stuff on my own, but mentally it's a different ballgame, which lets you be more relaxed.
In mathematics, your mind is mostly in the relaxed state, unless you're about to take an important exam. For the process of research, you just spend the time you can delving into a particular topic and understanding it.
The life of a mathematician is more analogous to learning & experimemting with different code libraries on the side. The mental balance errs more towards relaxed experimentation as opposed to just getting it done.
However, I do find long hours may result out of necessity for the sheer work involved as well. Especially in the earlier days of a company, you compensate for an initial lack of resources and staff by performing multiple roles.
On the business side, you could easily see your mornings taken up by customer calls (especially if you have an international market), the afternoons spent on ad campaigns and marketing content, the late afternoons on general office management. In the evenings when there's less client interaction, I would spend time on product feedback, some data analysis and metrics reporting for the day/week's past. This could easily extend to a 60-80 hour work week, and I would consider fairly typical of early startups.
As you grow there's less need for sure to work so long, as the company grows and responsibilities become more focused. But overall, I think there are circumstances where a 60-80 hr workweeks are necessary, and not necessarily an indication of a problem.
So, 40 hrs at the regular job + x hours working on the startup, where x consumes almost every evening and almost all day on Sat. and Sunday, I'm regularly doing 70+ hour weeks.
Humblebrag? I don't know, and I don't care. I just care about getting this damn thing going and achieving my dreams.
Luckily I enjoy this, because I'm working on something I am actually passionate about. Not that it doesn't get frustrating on occasion, but most of the time it's more pleasure than pain.
So why do all this? Well, as theorique says here:
It isn't about disrupting an industry. It's about money.
That's a little bit of an oversimplification, but there's a lot of truth there. There are things I'd like to do, dreams I'd like to live out, that I can't do at my present level of income. But it's more than that for me (and, I'm guessing, for a lot of other people). I work on building a startup because A. I enjoy the act of building and creating something, and B. as the founder I'm in control and get to call the shots. Here, succeed for fail, it'll be down to my decisions and actions, not some random $BOSS. (Yeah, yeah, go ahead and chime in "everything is luck" crowd. I don't care about you either).
Anyway, when I get tired of working I just imagine myself cruising through New York or London, driving a Ferrari while getting sucked off by a gorgeous readheaded supermodel, and remind myself that there are reasons for doing all this work...