Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity(thewebivore.com) Video from the "Go The Fuck Home" Ignite Philly presentation. |
Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity(thewebivore.com) Video from the "Go The Fuck Home" Ignite Philly presentation. |
In fact, I would prefer a page full of posts with titles that contain 'fuck' rather than an entire page of posts about copycat blogging platforms or 'my weekend project, now app, now "business," made with rails and coffebonemongodb.js'.
Well, that came out of no where.
Time to read the OPs post.
/rant (which was supposed to be in reply to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771670)
Edit: I definitely agree with the video and wish everyone worked like that. The part about the managers leading the team by going home on time is true too.
I just started a new job and everyone is telling me how much everyone here works. I look at the products we make and the deadlines that are set and they aren't any bigger or more agressive than anywhere else that I worked.
It has just always been a part of this companies culture I guess, but I don't see the need to sit in my office for 8 extra hours a week when all I'll end up doing is bullshitting on the Internet.
Now I get up every morning, I get to work around 8:30. I spend about an hour in the morning getting my work sorted out, getting my head together, figuring out my tasks for the day, and then being productive until 5 PM, then leaving. I've been more productive, I've been more accessible to coworkers with different schedules, I'm enjoying my job more, and more importantly, I'm enjoying life more. I'm not tired all day, I'm not useless when I get home, I'm not up late for no good reason.
Working a fixed, reasonable schedule (with occasional exceptions) has been such a huge boost to my productivity that even people I don't work directly with have commented to my manager on how much of a difference it's made.
The hardest part, as she mentions in her talk, is leaving even though my manager is still here, and still working on things, but when I realized that I stopped being very productive at about 4:30 anyway, I figured that was a good reason to tap out and go home.
Try it. It works.
In many cases, I don't think it has anything to do with employees wanting to be there. The problem I've found is that most managers (and VCs) I've met seem to think that if you aren't devoting your life to your code monastery, you aren't productive and you aren't dedicated. Startups place an enormous amount of value on "ass in seat" time even though sometimes being in the seat isn't often the productive thing to do. There is a horribly mistaken belief that the more you sit at work, the more you get done, and if someone else is sitting there longer than you, they're a "better" employee. It's perception, not reality.
If we really want to go the fuck home, managers need to drastically change what they think "productive" is in a knowledge industry. Writing code is not like being on a factory line. The motions are not repetitive and you are required to be creative. I think I'm as productive in a 30 hour week as I am on a 60 hour one: in the latter case, I'm spending too much time spinning on overhead or burned out and playing Portal.
People are always preaching at us to work until our faces fall off, but that's just not sustainable nor productive.
I am reminded of http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-...
I have more of an issue with people who take an issue with swearing. How does a word become a "curse word". It's an arbitrary assignment by society. Regular use of a particular word in a situation with negative emotions that conditions a response when used in conversation again... are we no better than Pavlov's dog?
People who are offended by swearing... well... it's their own fucking problem. :P
Not true. We specifically make it a taboo, ie. a word that's not supposed to be said by anyone at any occasion, and after that, from time to time, we brake this taboo. But beware, if you use a swearword too frequently, it will lose its power.
If English had standard intensive forms, and we could add additional intensity just by tweaking a word ending, we wouldn't have this issue. But we don't.
Normally I think unnecessary swearing is lame too, but I'm having trouble figuring out a better way to intensify 'go home'. 'Go the heck home' is corny, 'seriously, go home' lacks the same punch, and 'GO HOME!' is just ugly.
I wish I knew how and when 'the fuck' became the intensive of choice after an imperative. Now that'd be interesting.
"Go home" doesn't need an intensive on par with cursing or copulation.
Especially combined with the unfounded accusation that there is some kind of deliberate, manipulative intent behind it. What on earth makes you think this is intended as linkbait? Nobody ever uses swear words where you're from?
I'd be curious how the management of this company (and others like it) feel about the actual content of the talk - sustainable pace vis-a-vis productivity & all that. I would not be at all shocked to find out that there was an inverse correlation between employee distrust and a GTFH ethic.
I can think of certain phrase to describe that that wouldn't make it through those filters.
My guess is that when you use the word professional you mean things that you would say in front of your clients/customers/employers, and that's what irks me about the term.
But is it really any different than 'sex sells'?
Perhaps if we narrow it down to titles only: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...
I think that's pretty much what he means, but you can't blame the author since it seems to work. People here are passionate, especially when it comes to articles related to the human side of software development. Profanity can tap into that emotion fairly well.
So a formula for getting knee-jerk clicks and votes is to "bait" the user by using language that elicits an emotional response. :)
Even the submissions with "fuck you money" in the title since that is a linkbait-y term unto itself. I am of the opinion that unless you're discussing the word 'fuck' there is almost no possible reason to use it in a title unless it's to attract clicks and votes by eliciting an emotional response.
Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth.
I'm purely focused on the link-bait aspect. Using swear words in a title is in a way like gaming the attention economy by subconsciously tricking peoples' minds into thinking that a piece of content "grabs" them on some level, even before seeing that content.
What I would be interested to know is if there is data that shows that people up-vote those articles -- before reading them -- disproportionately more often than articles with no swear words in the title.
At any rate, I just don't see why it would be useful for him to have specific examples in mind. What is the point in asking for that?
Now that said, there's not really much wrong with making broad assertions about the number of silver cars you're seeing without a more in-depth analysis. Chances are, nobody will care if you're wrong. There is something wrong with making a broad claim about things other people are doing without at least a little bit of evidence to support what you're doing. Just giving a list of search results and expecting others to find their own evidence isn't the best way to go about doing that.
You don't think that's important? If you had put a lot of time into this presentation, were proud of it, and submitted it to Hacker News to share it with others (without realizing that some people would take the profanity as a linkbait attempt), wouldn't you be at least a bit upset if someone said:
"Why do you people keep linkbaiting by putting profanity in the title?"
If it were me, I'd probably tune them out and their (valid) complaints would go unheeded. But if someone said something like:
"That was a great presentation! I think it would be even better if you excluded the profanity though. To be honest, it's a bit offensive. But that's just me. What do you think?"
...then I'd be more likely to listen, and might change the title just because I couldn't fathom offending someone so nice. Wouldn't you?