At this last RailsConf we were introduced to the concept of the 4-day workweek by DHH, and the audience snickered. Many of us are working small companies and startups. The 4-day workweek is definitely a luxury I never could enjoy during my times in small startups.
Not only that, but a little bird inside 37s told me that the true 4-day work week works for only a few people at 37s while a few other people put in long, hard hours getting a lot of the tedious work of maintaining a body of software done.
If they keep playing at this, DHH is going to exemplify a new icon of the Pointy Haired Boss. The thing that's most frustrating about that is that DHH is actually pretty good at what he does (meaning framework capture), and if he focused more he'd be a lot better and we'd see a lot more good features out of products of 37s.
the true 4-day work week works for only a few people at 37s while a few other people put in long, hard hours getting a lot of the tedious work of maintaining a body of software done
If that's true, it's significant. It would mean that what they're saying is bullshit, no?
What it means is that its not axiomatic. Sometimes you need to roll the hard 8 (or more appropriately work the hard 80) to get things done. Other times when there isn't quite so much on the line it makes sense to keep your workload lower.
Our profession is very subject to burnout and requires a lot of education to keep up. Taking time off is valuable for peak cognitive function.
That said, DHH may take it too far. And I know it would frustrate the hell out of me if I heard DHH talking about the 4-day work week while I was working on the things he is almost unconsciously refusing to do.
Sometimes you need to roll the hard 8 (or more appropriately work the hard 80) to get things done. Other times when there isn't quite so much on the line it makes sense to keep your workload lower.
Every time that I've worked with people who put in "startup" hours, they've been less productive than me and the other folks who worked sane hours, and just wrote better code that required less debugging.
I've noticed the same thing, but this niggling voice in the back of my head keeps wondering if that's because I was just working on easier problems than they were. There've also been times when I've worked long hours and produced pretty crappy code that didn't really work all that well.
There's sorta this downward spiral that a lot of software projects get into. Because the project is difficult, the engineers start working long hours and pushing through to get it done. Because they're working long hours, they get tunnel vision and make mistakes. Because they make mistakes, the codebase sucks. Because the codebase sucks, the project gets more difficult. Etc.
The solution is really just to not do hard problems - which is basically what DHH and 37s advocate. But there are a limited supply of easy problems to go around, so you get things like the Web2.0 gold rush where thousands of people are chasing the easy problems.
Not only that, but a little bird inside 37s told me that the true 4-day work week works for only a few people at 37s while a few other people put in long, hard hours getting a lot of the tedious work of maintaining a body of software done.
If they keep playing at this, DHH is going to exemplify a new icon of the Pointy Haired Boss. The thing that's most frustrating about that is that DHH is actually pretty good at what he does (meaning framework capture), and if he focused more he'd be a lot better and we'd see a lot more good features out of products of 37s.