Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1210242184341000192

by sjs • 7 years ago

552 236 7 years ago

twitter.com

IB885588• 7 years ago

Original thread on twitter: https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1210242184341000192?s=20

keyP3• 7 years ago

I've unrolled the thread for easier reading https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1210242184341000192.html

dang• 7 years ago

Thanks! We changed the URL to that from https://www.businessinsider.com/shopify-ceo-success-long-hou..., which is mostly just reporting on it.

What does the s=20 do?

ivl• 7 years ago

What does the s=20 do?

Seems to be tacked on by Twitter to track the source of shares. Pretty sure the number changes by device.

pmoriarty2• 7 years ago

"I've never worked through a night. The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night. Same with everybody else, whether we admit it or not"

So he didn't. What about his employees?

Not to imply that long hours are necessary. I think they're abhorrent. But they're also endemic. Some bosses do get away with working shorter hours while they flog their employees to work like crazy. On the other hand, workaholism at many companies tends to gets worse and worse as you gain responsibility, and some of the most insane hours are worked by those near the top.

thebradbain• 7 years ago

I can't speak on behalf of the entire company (or even a portion of it), but anecdotally, my colleague previously worked at Shopify and said the atmosphere and culture there was very laid back. Taken in conjunction with the Twitter thread the CEO wrote, that all seems to check out.

luhn• 7 years ago

If you read the Twitter thread [0], ostensibly they don't.

For creative work, you can't cheat. My believe is that there are 5 creative hours in everyone's day. All I ask of people at Shopify is that 4 of those are channeled into the company.

Obviously Shopify has thousands of employees now, there's very real chance that Tobi's perception does not match the reality of the employees.

[0] https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1210242184341000192

rogerkirkness• 7 years ago

I worked there. It's clearly a more focused environment than other SV companies I've seen since. Tobi works hard and does the right thing. I think the challenge was actually the first rung of middle managers not being smart enough to understand the long term focus. That's part that's hard to scale. But the leaders walked the talk and empowered others to do so.

pmoriarty2• 7 years ago

"Tobi works hard and does the right thing."

What does it mean to "work hard" at a white collar job when you don't work long hours?

Honestly curious.

arcticbull• 7 years ago

Not to imply that long hours are necessary. I think they're abhorrent. But they're also endemic.

That's definitely true of the Bay Area, but Shopify is an Ottawa, Canada company. Having gone to college there, I don't get the feeling that Tobi is doing anything out of the ordinary for an Ottawa company. That may not be the case in Kitchener/Waterloo or Vancouver -- and it's definitely not true of the Bay Area -- but it's much less endemic out there.

It's at once nice to see but also frustrating because I feel like Ottawa tends to lack that drive, motivation and commitment broadly speaking to develop more Shopify-type companies. There's IBM, Mitel, Adobe, Blackberry, Corel and a bunch of companies selling into government out there from a tech perspective. But hey, hopefully Shopify leads the way here and we see more of them.

Shopify is something of a point of pride for Ottawa and I do wish them all the best!

eigenvector• 7 years ago

For those who are not familiar, Ottawa is Canada's capital and its labour market is dominated by government jobs. It's a very 9 to 5 (actually, more like 9 to 4:30) culture and anything else would be a shock to the system for most people.

Ericson2314• 7 years ago

I'm quite glad that working more hours isn't productive. It's good we have an inate defense against that race to the bottom. Makes the societal battle (imagine it being illegal to work more hours, deemed being unfair competition) a bit easier to win.

wbharding• 7 years ago

I think we're all rooting for the narrative that it's possible to get ahead working 9-5. But it's hard for me to ignore the survivorship bias at play here. Yes, if your company has a market cap in the billions, you probably don't need to be grinding on the weekends anymore. If you've built a company with amazing programmers and predictable revenue (e.g., dhh/Jason Fried) you probably don't need to grind weekends.

But when you're at the front lines, striving to create something new, you'll be competing against very motivated entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs will often have more resources than you, and zero aversion to working weekends. In those circumstances, Tobi's lifestyle probably isn't going to cut it. When an entrepreneur is working to create that spark, it pays to be completely obsessed, sometimes for years.

Thankfully, very few of us are on the front lines struggling to launch something momentous. Tobi once was, but he was smart and surrounded by great people, and now he's in scaling mode, which seems like a much different beast. I'm grateful that he and other successful tech leaders don't force their teams to work as hard as they needed to in the early days.

achow• 7 years ago

I've never worked through a night. The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so.

...never...

zorpner• 7 years ago

But it's hard for me to ignore the survivorship bias at play here.

Surely it works the other way as well -- for all the stories of people who worked all night to achieve success, there are others about people who either did so and didn't win, or worse yet burnt themselves out or hurt their lives in other ways.

k__• 7 years ago

This.

Everyone thinks their experience reflects an universal truth.

That's the one big error, in my opinion.

What I learned in my life is, find your individual way. Don't play other peoples games, play your own game.

Pick what you need from the system and throw the rest away.

I'm bad at standing up before 12 and even worse at working 40h a week.

I'm don't like doing the same stuff for years.

I'm bad at networking for work, most people I meet there are just boring or upsetting to me.

All these things set me up for failure, still I'm doing better than most of my friends who are better at these things by a mile.

themagician• 7 years ago

I think his point was more about focus. If you know what you’re doing, you can do it on any (reasonable) timeline you want.

Most entrepreneurs are just chasing money like a Leprechaun. Wherever it goes, you follow. Run, turn, grind, pivot.

Shopify has always been really focused. Moves slower than the competition in many ways. They’ve been at it for 15 years. Mostly behind the scenes, not the sexiest stuff.

When you have a simple business you don’t have to grind weekends to try and convince someone to give you more money. The business is self sustaining and profitable.

thetrumanshow2• 7 years ago

A few thoughts to add to the discussion, loosely related:

1) If I know exactly where to spend my time for the best rate of return, its likely that I'll have to spend relatively few hours achieving success.

2) For most people, the success they can achieve through just having a plain old job can be had for a mere 40 hours. Anything they want above what 40 hours can grant them should probably be done elsewhere (second job, side-hustle, etc) since the ROI will be very low for spending those additional hours at work.

3) The 80 hour week lifestyle is probably necessary for people who are still frantically doing what Felix Dennis calls "The Search", trying to build a company without the foggiest notion what people want.

simonw4• 7 years ago

Study after study has shown that working 80 hours dramatically reduces your productivity during those hours.

I loved what Tobi said in this tweet: https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1210622908143415297

"For creative work, you can't cheat. My believe is that there are 5 creative hours in everyone's day. All I ask of people at Shopify is that 4 of those are channeled into the company."

5 creative hours in a day absolutely matches my experience based on my own career. I can get a HUGE amount done in those 5 hours if I apply them sensibly.

pastor_elm2• 7 years ago

If he's asking for 4 hours of work, then why ask for a 40 hour work week and not a 20 hour one?

40 hours (9-6) is rough enough!

kobayashi• 7 years ago

Wrong Twitter link posted. That’s about Apple and RSS

rpastuszak• 7 years ago

My experience/conclusions are similar to the comment above.

I feel like the hardest skill in jobs like programming, design (or any creative jobs, to be fair) is managing your cognitive resources, understanding when to approach problems requiring particular modes of thinking and when to stop, work on something else, or learn to do nothing.

In my mid 20s I did my share of reckless 80-100h weeks—ending up with depression and health issues that took years to recover. Some days are still challenging. And, I’m just 31.

therealdrag0• 7 years ago

Work isn't always creative though is it? It's often more menial: meetings, learning new APIs, stepping through existing code, trial and error, mentoring, etc.

For these your ROI per hour goes down, but your total ROI still goes up even after 5 or even 8 hours. Maybe not for everyone everyday, but for some people some days for sure.

simonw4• 7 years ago

Oops, Twitter link should have been https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1210242188870930433

dangero3• 7 years ago

I agree and regarding 3) would you put most startup founders into this bucket? In reading Peter Thiel Zero to One I was struck by his point that real power law focus in a startup means you're doing something new, thus "The Search" is a required first step even if it's not your first rodeo.

thetrumanshow2• 7 years ago

I would suspect its true that most successful startup founders fall into the 80+ hour bucket, but I only have a handful of personal anecdata to support this (and for technical founders in the early days probably only 1/4 of that would be considered work, the rest being just an intense form of play!).

Re: Thiel, wasn't the point of that power law section meant to say that each founder should focus on what gives them leverage? I don't recall correctly.

"The Search" is the discovery of those things outside of your normal circles of concern, which makes it doubly-difficult to find _on purpose_. Felix Dennis describes the process more akin to an aware predator waiting for something to enter its kill-zone.

wrnr• 7 years ago

Long hours are neither necessary or sufficient to be successful, some have to work long hours just to keep their head above water.

pastor_elm2• 7 years ago

Shopify is obsessed with growth like every other public company. They are nothing like Basecamp. They can get away with shorter hours, maybe, because Canadian salaries are relatively low compared to San Francisco, but something will eventually have to give.

pat2man• 7 years ago

Maybe Shopify’s growth is actually due to their shorter hours. Study after study shows this to be true, but for some reason the Bay Area can’t wrap their minds around that fact. In all likelihood Bay Area companies would be more productive if they forced their employees to go home after 40 hours.

abledon• 7 years ago

whats the average hours for FAANG in SV? 60-65 ?

daok• 7 years ago

The average is probably around 45. 60-65 are the high hand numbers. Some people in SV do less than 40 real hours of work, a lot 40-45 and some do a few days/weeks of a stretch above 50h but let's not fall into the fallacy that everyone is working +60 hours all the time.

kilbuz• 7 years ago

It depends what hours you are trying to count. In the office? Remote? Actually 'working'? Including shuttle time? In my FAANG circle, small N, none of those values would be above 40 hours a week, except possibly if you include shuttle time. Certainly not anything approaching an average of 60-65 hours a week. That's averaging a 12-13 hour day, in a 10am-4pm core hour culture.

chris11• 7 years ago

I'm at a unicorn in the bay area, and I'd say it's under 45. It depends on the day, and I occasionally check on work in the evening, but that's rare. My hours in the office are about 45, but that includes breakfast and a long lunch.

I've also been pleasantly surprised about the unlimited vacation. I started late in the year, and the company isn't really busy near Christmas. But I've already taken a decent amount of vacation.

rolltiide• 7 years ago

In jobs that don't compensate overtime, that have no improved networking component after hours, and suffer from declined cognitive output after 6-8 hours you absolutely shouldnt work longer

Success is never defined

dvt2• 7 years ago

What's unfortunate is that on the other side of the coin, "rockstar CEOs" like Elon Musk claim they sleep 4 hours a night and work 90 hour weeks. I think Musk does this mostly for publicity/image reasons and not that it's actually true, but you've got plenty of wantapreneurs parroting this (imo) unhealthy lifestyle.

zarkov993• 7 years ago

There is anecdotal information that he does indeed do what he claims. And he is the most impressive CEO in this generation, perhaps in history, so long hours must work for some people.

dvt2• 7 years ago

... he is the most impressive CEO in this generation, perhaps in history

How anyone can say this with a straight face blows my mind when even in the tech vertical he has some serious competition (are we forgetting about Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc.), let alone actual historical figures like Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, etc.

rifung• 7 years ago

And he is the most impressive CEO in this generation, perhaps in history, so long hours must work for some people.

Even if we assume the first statement is true, which is a big if, it still doesn't necessarily support the idea that working long hours is good. After all, you can't tell whether he was successful because of, or despite the long hours.

shanemlk2• 7 years ago

CEO is different from employee with no stake in the company. Sure, he probably does spend 80+ hours on his companies, but he's enjoying it. He's not beholden to any expectations of a manager. He's spending time reading/exploring/chatting and including that as 90 hours of work. Musk has no line drawn between work and play. I think Musk flaunts this public image to encourage a breakdown of work and play, not to say you should spend 90 hours checking boxes your manager gave you.

bdcravens2• 7 years ago

Or his sleep patterns are completely orthogonal to his success.

system16• 7 years ago

With the inordinate amount of time Musk spends on Twitter, I'm gonna go ahead and assume most of those 90 hours are not productive.

paxys• 7 years ago

Considering the amount of publicity he gets from Twitter, they can definitely be considered productive.

xiphias2• 7 years ago

Most people (and competitors) underappreciate how well Elon manages requirements over Twitter.

If you want to know why he selected the features for the Cybertruck, go back 1 year when he asked the desired features on Twitter. It's crazy how many of those small looking features (like a bed for normal sized / tall people, lighting in the back) were included in all models.

slumdev• 7 years ago

sleep 4 hours a night

This is not healthy or impressive, and it may be the first sign of dementia for many people.

smileysteve2• 7 years ago

And we've seen the news stories here that his employees would hope he wouldn't "work" at their department because he'd often change things or otherwise slow them down affecting quality and quantity

ilrwbwrkhv• 7 years ago

He runs three companies which are changing the future of humanity though. Not some ecommerce gig. He is an outlier.

tim3332• 7 years ago

Reddit AMA:

How much do you sleep per night, on average?
ElonMuskOfficial: I actually measured this with my phone! Almost exactly 6 hours on average.

The 4 hour thing seems kind of made up by journalists for clickbait as far as I can tell from a brief google. Though he was up last night working on Starship stuff that seems quite cool https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1210649166407438336

bwb2• 7 years ago

I don't believe anyone really does 80 hours. I just don't think it is possible and I don't think you can call sitting at a desk doing nothing "work".

I've done 60 hours during intense periods just fine... but it was only effective because of the nature of the work I was doing at the time. And, I usually took a break down the road to compensate. In no way was it even 50% creative work.

4 to 6 creative hours seems right, but a lot of work isn't creative. There is also the bullshit work that still has to get done, ie, loading up contacts in a CRM, building and nurturing relationships, reviewing emails, checking links, etc etc etc..

Consultant32452• 7 years ago

I think some of the people who are making claims of really long hours are using amphetamines or other performance enhancing drugs.

whoopsthereis• 7 years ago

Or loads of caffeine to the point it is questionable?

penagwin2• 7 years ago

I'm diagnosed with ADD and have a prescription for Ritalin/Concerta. I'm a full time programmer, and I think my sustainable "real work and focus" time is max 6 hours. Today looks more like 4.

A higher dose does not increase that time, at least for me. I'm curious how those without add/adhd are affected.

Proziam3• 7 years ago

I can only speak for myself, but I don't even consume much caffeine anymore and still maintain 80+ hours. Between managing people, building products, meeting with clients, documentation, and more I always have something I can do that doesn't require my maximum performance at the moment.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say my personal lifestyle and habits (eating healthy, maintaining daily exercise, blah blah) are massive contributors to my having sustained this consistent output since 2012.

originalbryan22• 7 years ago

In my 20s I worked 80-90 hours for ... 4-6 months. It was day job, then side hustle software that I was very excited about. Now in my late 30s with kids, yeesh. Honestly it's impossible to get 40 hours in some weeks.

Edit: no drug use

CydeWeys3• 7 years ago

Totally agree with this. To give an example, in the months ahead of launching .app (which I was the tech lead of), I was pulling some 50-60 hour work-weeks vs a typical 40. That was exhausting and definitely the maximum I was capable of pulling (talking about actual hours of work here, not just hours spent in the office). Plus, post-launch, I took things easy for a couple months to recover.

embit• 7 years ago

Agreed. I can do more than 40 hours of intense focused work not more than once a quarter.

carbocation• 7 years ago

I did a few years of 80 hours, but that was as a medical resident / fellow. There is a lot of creativity in medicine (especially thinking adversarially to try to reduce premature closure on a diagnosis), but even then certainly we’re not being creative for all 80 hours a week.

randycupertino• 7 years ago

Agree with this. Also in medicine we can work 12hr or 24hr shifts which imo helps "stack" together more hours so it's easier to hit larger work weeks.

As an EMT some of our crew worked 1 48hr shift and then later in the week 1 24hr shift. They got paid so little ($9.25 an hour back then!) that was the only way to survive in the Bay Area was to stack your shifts and then hit time and a half after 40hrs and double time for the last 20 hrs.

I had a preceptor who worked those shifts and I had to work her schedule while she was evaluating me. It was horrific. The 48s were brutal and I was wrecked later in the week when it came time to do the 24. Those months went by in a blur and it was basically hell to get through it.

When I advanced and got to set my own schedule I just worked 1 24hr and 1 12hr and life was great. Got to do chores and errands and long hiking trips on my days off, had enough time to travel and enjoy my hobbies.

Left EMS to more of an office job because I needed to make more $$, but I miss the patients, the camaraderie, and being out in the field.

Aunche2• 7 years ago

A lot of surgeons have 80 hour workweeks. This is especially common is smaller hospitals in rural areas. It's not all surgery, but they're definitely not sitting at their desks and doing nothing. Before regulations, it was not uncommon for some doctors to work over 100 hours because they were in such high demand.

lr4444lr• 7 years ago

For how much of that time are they actually performing the specialized work or at least decision making that only they can do?

droopyEyelids• 7 years ago

This doesn't exactly address the point.

Human beings are only capable of sustained attention for limited periods of time, plus they have biological needs and must navigate a physical world.

Now, if you're just talking about time on the clock, then sure- 168 hours is the limit per week. But we're talking about people doing productive, mentally demanding work. 80 hours might not be possible.

mantas• 7 years ago

How much of that was hands-on and being on-call? Being on-premises or on-call within X minutes but allowed to do whatever including sleeping... Not exactly a match to creative work.

Barrin92• 7 years ago

although it should be noted that the performance problems with long work hours among physicians are known and drastic. As is the rate of drug abuse among physicians. So in a literal sense, you can do it, but physicians do it at the expense of their own health and their patients (not to their fault of course, the system is just screwed up).

faitswulff• 7 years ago

This schedule was established by a literal drug addict (cocaine and morphine) named William Halsted, not due to high demand.

nugget• 7 years ago

Sometimes the hard part of the job isn't the number of hours per week at a desk but the need to always be on call to deal with problems. For me, being on call leads my brain into thinking about potential problems ahead of time, so there's a low level of work-related background noise going on all the time anyway.

toufka• 7 years ago

It does happen, but generally in environments that are different from the 'normal' workplace - environments that contain a sense of community, where breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and sometimes evenings and sleeping are part of the job: grad school, hospitals, fieldwork, law/consulting/IB firms, etc. It seems like the mid-decade tech ideal was to import that kind of workplace style.

And you're right, that those hours are not all 'at the desk working', but they are still most definitely working hours when you're waiting for a page, an email, or a piece of data that require immediate response at 3am.

That kind of work can be deeply rewarding (in retrospect), but is very clearly damaging if it persists for too long.

zentiggr• 7 years ago

I can say I've done a few 72 - 96 hour stretches of near total wakefulness (power naps of 20-40 minutes as possible, food and caffeine available nearly any time) but there's definitely a feeling of disconnect, being separate from the senses and just floating inside my own head toward the end of those.

We're talking full up tactical exercises in the military, and a couple of critical repair scenarios here and there since.

A couple of days of near total downtime is a minimum to reset from that kind of effort, and 'normal' work for at least a week or two if possible.

AndrewKemendo10• 7 years ago

Most of my work weeks clock in around 50-60 hours regularly. It's pretty simple how this happens. It's meetings all day and then once meetings are over it's email, documents, admin paperwork, training etc...

Here's an example of just last Thursday which was busy but was at least not double booked and had some times I could stop and go to the bathroom, I also wasn't traveling this day which was good:

8-12 - US Senate Staff Delegation and budget review

12-1 - Software Requisition Review

1-2 - Infrastructure planning meeting

2-3 - Conference call with colleague in HI

3-4 - Meeting with an LP

4-5 - Talking with my Deputy and Admin

5-7 - Meeting with Army Futures

7 - Dinner

8-10 - Emails, Award review for employees, look over presentations due in Jan/Feb

Now, almost none of that work is creative because I'm not in a creative job anymore really. I am an executive with a 200 person data engineering and data science team building the future way the DoD builds and runs software.

That's how you get to these hours.

I'd also suggest that "Building and nurturing relationships" isn't "Bullshit work."

whatshisface3• 7 years ago

You can also get hours like that by working multiple low-level service or industrial jobs, or working a lot of overtime at a job that pays overtime. I have known people to do both, and the only thing that really limits it is the cost to your personal life and basic maintenance (relationships, health, home repair, that kind of stuff.) Men with a stay at home wife who is good at managing the home and keeping up relationships can really push it for long periods of time and come out fine in the end, but it's becoming increasingly rare for families to be able to get by with only one person working.

parthdesai2• 7 years ago

I'm asking this seriously, but how much of that was actual work done? I would be pretty surprised if you said that you actually worked for entire 4 hours between 8-12.

tmpz222• 7 years ago

Do you ever feel stressed, anxious, or trapped, with such a packed schedule? And do you ever feel regret over the value you produce due to the fact that you're stretched in so many directions?

My career - I think - is heading in the same direction (though still early) and I have a severe problem internalizing every little thing and its relative yield to the business. Thankfully I only manage 3 people at a small company, but training alone has been my biggest regret because I know there is so much potential in the team that has been untapped because we haven't invested enough into training (mostly due to my ability to generate and executing training resources and exercises).

mindblownlazy• 7 years ago

I keep seeing this but why do non-creatives count dinner, commuting and exercise as work? (You don't do all these but you put dinner there)

As a creative I find it hard to justify that, sure I did talk about work during lunch with a coworker or an ex coworker or friend but damn I was just enjoying my pork chops, that's not work!!!

mattrp• 7 years ago

This is a typical executive schedule. If you’re managing a global workforce, you can generally take 2am to 6am quiet hours but that’s about it. It’s not everyday but at minimum you’d usually see check-ins from Europe needing response coming in around midnight to 2am pretty much every day.

m0zg• 7 years ago

Yeah, that kind of low intensity work I could do for longer (although I'd rather not). Try to maintain the level of concentration required for non-trivial programming for more than a few hours a day though - it doesn't really work. It's the difference between a leisurely bike ride (which you could do all day) and running five miles.

randomsearch• 7 years ago

No offence, but I’ve done extremely creative and demanding intellectual work, and then work like you’ve listed.

What you’re doing is valuable and useful work, but it is a lot easier to do. Much less mentally demanding.

bwb2• 7 years ago

Yep sorry, I misspoke, I meant more non-creative but vital work. I just spent a day doing nothing by CRM work and data entry and used a colorful pejorative :)

I think that is how you get to 60 hours, I don't think that is how you get to 80 hours like I said.

blhack• 7 years ago

Ive done it. It was a startup, but not explicitly a tech company. We legitimately got to work at 7:30 every day and left at 9:00 7 days a week for several weeks.

Obviously unsustainable, but easily one of the most enjoyable periods of my work life. Everybody was helping doing everybody else’s job. It was really fun.

bobthemover• 7 years ago

The fact is that the nature of work changes at the c level. You are no longer doing any actual work yourself. You don’t prepare specifications, do analysis or any other for of work that you might recognize from before. You won’t touch any Microsoft products yourself. Your team does this. You are responsible for hiring people to build that team for you, so even people management is delegated to a large extent.

Most of your work is being present, either in meetings or work functions. These will include breakfast lunch and dinner, and something all three on the same day.

Your main focus is communication. This work extends to working within your own departments, the company, the rest of senior management, government, share holders, banks etc.

Most of your hours are not effective. You write them off. It’s understanding that you only have 10 hours a week of effective hours out of 80 hours and making sure those hours are actually effective.Effective time will be 5 minutes in an hour most likely.

That said some people are really good at juggling all of this bs, and some people are really terrible.

We can talk about different approaches and what works and what doesn’t, but it doesn’t change the fact that the 80 to 100 hour work week is real for a lot of people in that position.

lefstathiou• 7 years ago

I’m confused. You say you don’t believe anyone does 80 hours and then you seem to add a qualifier to define work as that which is creative or meaningful.

To your first statement, it is possible and very common in law and investment banking, so it’s easy to dispel that misconception for you. I worked in investment banking for years and there were dozens of people on my floor which was one of dozens of floors pulling 70-90 hour weeks routinely. There is some % of an 80 hour week lost in transition (sitting at a desk waiting for feedback on a book that needs to go to printing by 4am for the 8am meeting) but you have no choice but to be there and at any moment you have to be prepared to act on whatever next step is required.

To your second point: was this work deeply creative or meaningful? To me it was. Perhaps less creative than technical. As for meaning, that depends. We would routinely work on projects that had 9-figure dollar impact on companies with tens of thousands of employees. Our numbers determined the fates of thousands of employees and hundreds of thousands in their supply chains. Today I manage over 50 people, while I have a more direct human impact now than I did then, my impact today is a fraction of what it was when our teams changed the course of companies from a little Excel spreadsheet.

soperj• 7 years ago

I worked pipeline. We'd do 11 hour days, 3 weeks on, 3 days off. Not quite 80 hours, but we worked the entire time.

awinder• 7 years ago

I have strong feelings on this and am almost afraid to post because of, I suppose, the stigma of being a hard worker. But this is what I’ve seen & experienced:

1. Hours worked & productivity are interrelated variables but they do not equal each other. So you have to explore the other variables involved in your productivity equation if you want to control effects on productivity.

2. The brain works on solving big problems even when you’re not actively focused on it. Anyone who experiences the effect of coming back to a problem they were beating their heads on for a while and quickly figured out a path forward has experienced this first hand.

3. If you’ve bought into this, then also consider that your output is solved problems. That’s what other people will see about your work. If the outcome is that you stayed at the office for 12 hours solving a problem, versus at work for 6 hours, said f this, went home, came back the next morning and worked the problem out in an hour, then what was the difference?

You kinda keyed in that a lot of work is not creative, so I think that kinda fits into this framework too. I find that doing rote work is a nice warm up or wind down block of time. So having scheduling awareness can help boost your productivity. But yeah for all of that, I’ve never been able to buy into the idea that 60/80 hour work weeks are at all a necessary idea, or a very proper one either. And this is how I’ve tried to make myself feel better that I could never personally do that kind of time, lol.

nik736• 7 years ago

I can tell you that I worked 80 hours a week for several months and while it is not effective, it was "necessary" for the business to survive. I had 4-6 hours per day that were really effective (if even), the others were just there to get simple stuff done, which was necessary to meet deadlines.

Would I do it again? Absolutely not, because it is simply bad management. But I can imagine how easy it is to get stuck in such a work environment. Or people might think "when it is working once, it will work all the time". The truth is that if the deadlines and work would have been planned better it would easily be achievable in 40 hours.

The problem is that some startups are super chaotic, overpromise, underdeliver without even thinking about how long something takes.

Permit• 7 years ago

I think it's possible but probably not sustainable. Nick Winters did a 120-hour programming/game-dev workweek and filmed it so you could see if he was cheating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0qlr22cF14

HN discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6760685

I'm also open to the possibility that might be a very small percentage of people who could do it and that I might just not be one of them.

I'm also open to the possibility that I've been conditioned to expect 40 hour work weeks and that's why I may not be able to do much more. Apparently it's common for students in China to attend school for 12 hours a day. Perhaps if I'd been raised in a similar environment it would be easier to focus for longer?

losvedir• 7 years ago

I don't believe anyone really does 80 hours. I just don't think it is possible

That's a weird thing to believe. I saw it all the time when I worked in finance (but I was capped at 60 hrs, which I did routinely), and it seems pretty par-for-the-course for my friends who are doctors and lawyers.

I don't think it's healthy, but it's certainly done.

efsavage• 7 years ago

If you find something you love doing and can do it in the way you want, 80 hours isn't bad at all if you're otherwise unencumbered.

I did a 7 month stretch where I was working from home, on my own schedule, doing what I loved, and was doing 15-18 hour days 6 days a week (~90-100/week), while still managing to have/cook dinner and a bit of downtime with my now-wife each day, plus a full day off. It was fantastic.

Once the product was live the work shifted just so slightly from pure create/build to maintenance/improvements, going into the office a couple of days a week, and suddenly even 60 hours felt like a lot, and eventually it was just a job and I was doing 40-45.

I think it's more a matter of finding the right thing and schedule for you rather than imposing some kind of convention onto it.

davedx• 7 years ago

I don't believe anyone really does 60 hours. I just don't think it is possible and I don't think you can call sitting at a desk doing nothing "work".

SecurityAmoeba• 7 years ago

I work in IT Security. I do 2-4 pentests a week. I shouldn’t, but I work for a small firm and don’t have much control. I easily do 80 hours a week. If I don’t we don’t get enough done, we bleed clients, and I worry about clients getting hacked. I should not work 80 hour weeks, I do not think it should be possible, but I definitely work 80 hour weeks and I am not wasting time. I do web app pentests, network and infrastructure pentests, and emergency response when they need help, and that is easily an 80 hour week. Maybe 5-10 hours of that is meetings. The rest is legitimate work.

twmahna• 7 years ago

It’s definitely possible to work 80 hrs of real work per week. I’ve done it myself. Your mistake is probably underestimating how diverse people’s values are. If you have a strong enough reason why, working non stop is fulfilling (especially when it becomes habit).

notacoward2• 7 years ago

underestimating how diverse people’s values are

While we're valuing diversity, let's consider diversity of circumstance as well as attitudes. Working 80 hours a week is not the same for someone who's single and healthy vs. someone who is themselves disabled or who has family members who require significant care. Assuming or implying that it's only about values is exactly what makes this discussion so contentious. Many people have the "right" values but their work role or their non-work situation is not as conducive to long hours. Or maybe they've just read the actual research instead of relying on anecdata - especially cherry-picked (or outright fabricated) stories from CEOs and VCs who benefit more from others' overwork than those people do themselves. For most people, 80 hours per week is just not healthy or sustainable.

king_panic• 7 years ago

My experience is ~4 of productive creative work per day. I can go to 6-8, but that gets drawn out to a 12-14h workday. 4h is where Im happiest and most productive. I dont force it.

trianglem• 7 years ago

I’ve literally worked for 85-95 hours over the last 15 days with no days off except Christmas Day at 12-14 hours per day.

golergka• 7 years ago

I just took a single 29-hour workday, right before a major deadline. And coming up to that, didn't have a single off day whole December, typically working from 2pm to 4am. So yeah, it's definitely possible, but really not good for anyone in the long run.

bhouston• 7 years ago

Jason Fried was talking about this a few days ago:

https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1209115637148274690

I wholeheartedly agree as well. The key to working less, while being successful is to focus on what will give you the best rate of return and not doing the things that are not useful. That is really hard to figure out initially though. But I think it gets easier as you get more experienced, as your personal value system gets better tweaked to match reality.

This applies to the company as well like Jason Fried said. The company should have clear values that are attuned to market value and it should be professionally run.

keyP3• 7 years ago

I find if you have a exciting project and you've developed a great team (which includes soft-skills; great technical skills does not necessarily make a great employee), I find a lot of team members voluntarily thinking about the project outside of hours or staying late because they want to.

Whilst more hours certainly doesn't mean more productivity, the idea of nurturing intrinsic motivation is often omitted in discussions about working late and it's more an implicit by-product of a good working environment.

jariel2• 7 years ago

Me thinks there's a bit of selection bias here.

If you're fortunate enough to hit product market fit without too much struggle ... and then can scale it as a regular company - good on you.

But I suggest in the early years, it's really not like that for most founders as they pivot and strife.

In the scale years, I suggest it probably could be more like that for most company employees and leadership. And FYI I think most companies are like this i.e. more or less 9-to-5, even very well known corps.

I also think this might have very much to do with the nature of the technology and the inherent competitiveness/barriers in the category: in companies wherein there's a significant number of talented individuals needed to focus - crunching happens.

For example: Pixar films. Apparently people work pretty long and hard to make production work. It involves a lot of specific talent, working together with ambiguous timelines and schedules, last minute creative changes.

Spotify seems to be the kind of company perhaps wherein the work can be spread out fairly efficiently thereby enabling not only 9-5 hours, but perhaps more importantly: no need for A+ Valley Top Talent. I know Ottawa very well and there isn't remotely enough raw, high end A+ talent and specialisation of skills to make something like the iPhone.

Spotify can be built with a large number of 'smart people' (which Ottawa has aplenty), but I'm doubtful there will ever be an iPhone or 'Toy Story' come out of Ottawa either (though I would desperately like to be wrong).

leblancfg• 7 years ago

s/Spotify/Shopify/g

jariel2• 7 years ago

Yes, of course. Shopify.

But weirdly enough - the same might be said of Spotify.

In the sense that Stocholm is not the Valley and doesn't have A+ stars in many tech categories. But - because Sweden has a historical special relationship with the music industry, and Spotify requires 'smart people and a few geniuses but not tons of specialised geniuses' - Stockholm might make a better choice than the Valley.

One thing about Sweden though - they hit way above their weight in other, more classical industries. They're a small country that makes massive international brands, car companies - for gosh sakes they make the most complicated product category: Jet fighters. Mind you, not all of it, especially the engines, but making a 'Jet Figther' requires A+ players across a broad set of industrial categories, including a diplomatic corps that's deeply and efficiently embedded with industry, as many European countries have. Canada does not have this at all, and is probably last place in the OECD for this kind of economic cooperation.

pm902• 7 years ago

I really like your comment. Dealing in absolutes, either way, seems incomplete. It really does depend on the kind of market you're in and the competitors that you face.

The one distinction I find important is between working long hours because of the nature of your situation v/s working long hours because your manager/company is exploiting you. Determining if that's the case or not is up to the worker.

Reedx• 7 years ago

Long hours aren't necessary for success, and you should do what works for you, but they’re needed if you're aiming for the top in your field.

It's an inconvenient truth, but you're not going to be able to reach the John Carmacks of the world if you're working 40 and they're working 60: https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1210593150303031296

Anyone who thinks he would've achieved the same with far fewer hours are just kidding themselves and pulling crabs down into the bucket. Also implicit in that is Carmack being a fool for working 60, when he would've been as or more(!) effective with less? Nonsense.

wiwillia• 7 years ago

Founding and being the CEO of Shopify, a $48bn company and one of the best-performing stocks of the last few years, isn't "the top"?

Different people have different styles that work for them. Some people love to work 60+ hours and are productive doing it, others get more and better work done when they limit themselves to 40 and take time off. What works for you/Tobi/John doesn't universally work for others.

BadassFractal• 7 years ago

In a "fresh out of school / fresh out of first job founder-wanting-to-build-a-startup" context, you often start with no connections, no capital, no world-class skills, no team, no game-changing idea. The only variable you can control is the amount of effort (time) you put into the venture trying to find something that works before you can no longer afford ramen. The hours are justified in that scenario, because you have no other resource to leverage outside of time.

Years later, when you're already comfortable, have a rich network of experts and trusted past associates, have easy access to capital, have decades of experience of building businesses, and a deep understanding of an industry of two? Yeah, you don't need the long hours, you're fine.

shanemlk2• 7 years ago

The word "work" is not specific enough in this context, and this whole discussion lacks nuance. When we talk about "work" are we talking about renting your own time, or building something you have a stake in? Does a side project that may give you insight into your main focus apply as work? Does reading and curiosity count as work? I spend nearly every waking hour trying to be successful... is that work? I'd like to introduce the word "toil" into the discussion. Elon Musk may "work" 100 hours a week, but there's no chance he's "toiling" 100 hours a week.

misterman0• 7 years ago

I think it's wrong to celebrate a company that claims 80% of what it is to be you, even when other companies claim even more. I question the reason behind us devoting ourselves to these undemocratic structures.

richardlblair2• 7 years ago

I worked at Shopify for 4 1/2 years. I was happy to devote those creative hours because I believe in the mission. It's where I wanted my energy to be spent, and this was the general sentiment.

You have to remember most of the people who work there can work almost anywhere. They have specifically chosen to dedicate 80% of their creative energy at Shopify.

thor24• 7 years ago

Why did you leave? (I am just curious) I am considering applying for the company in the coming months.

rajacombinator• 7 years ago

If you hit the product market fit jackpot, long hours aren’t necessary. Until then, most of us have to grind it out.

gremlinsinc• 7 years ago

1st week of December, I did 87 hours clocked on clockify for clients. I turn clock off when I go to the bathroom, or get distracted on HN/Reddit. It's only on while I'm coding.

But I get burnt out fast when on a schedule like that, and knew I'd have some downtime with holidays and need to fill up on work to pay bills in January. Definitely couldn't sustain hours like that unless I was CEO and it was my baby then I'd be more apt to just keep going because it's a passion project.

hintymad2• 7 years ago

These successful people sound like working long hours is an absolute evil. I think they underestimate the effort that an ordinary person needs to be even moderately successful. What if it takes me twice as long to debug a problem as my team's standard? What if a concept is so simple to everyone else in my team yet it's just so hard for me to understand? What if I see an opportunity to build a truly great product, yet I don't have the required technical background while I have at most two weeks to catch up? What if I really want to tap into machine learning yet I have meetings all day, so my only choice is to study after work? Now, before you ask me to switch my career, what if I do have a passion in tech and I'm even worse at doing anything else?

See? Working long hours sometimes is not a burden, but a choice, a choice that one makes to master what they love, and to make sure they won't regret wasting their life when looking back years later. And sometimes working long hours, as long as it's voluntary, is the only way to succeed.

zeruch• 7 years ago

If it's a choice, that is fine. If it's an assumed baseline that management leverages to squeeze ever more "productivity" out of people without compensating them for it, then its not.

If the latter, I guarantee you will have just as much regret looking back years later. The 'voluntary' part is the gray area that most seem to talk around.

hintymad2• 7 years ago

True

GVIrish3• 7 years ago

The whole argument is not about temporary spikes in hours to meet a goal, it's about the wrong-headed idea that one should be working 60-80+ hours on a long term basis.

Some of the proponents of long term overwork argue that it is a requirement for big successes in entrepreneurship or that people must be willing to burn themselves out to 'change the world' or other such nonsense.

Working long hours on a short term basis is not evil, but there are quite a few organizations exploiting their employees in a chase for big exits that those employees will never benefit from.

bertr4nd• 7 years ago

I always like Richard Hamming’s take on hours worked: “ Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former.” (From “You and Your Research”: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html)

I started incorporating this thinking into my own work schedule, and I believe it to be true. I certainly found that I grew incredibly quickly in my abilities when I started working more (as long as I was applying the hours intelligently, which is admittedly its own trick)

dangero3• 7 years ago

I think this is the generally accepted and obvious view, but there seems to be a push from several popular personalities to virtue signal against it in the name of better working conditions. In the process they are accusing startup founders of abusing their workforce if they mention such an idea as working a little extra to get ahead.

webdood90• 7 years ago

You have summed it up perfectly. It's infuriating to read through the bullshit these personalities are perpetuating without reasonable discourse.

Crusoe123• 7 years ago

As they very well should.

If startup founders want to work extra - let them. But when they create a culture where they expect everyone to give the same extreme amount of sacrifice and work while they stand to gain only a fraction of what those who own the capital or have power in running the companies will gain - that is something that should be fought against as vigorously as possible on every level of society - culture, law etc.

So I applaud this "virtue signaling" and call it common sense.

GVIrish3• 7 years ago

10% more in raw hours is just 44 hours a week. This whole issue is not about companies with 40 hr work weeks versus companies with 44 hour with weeks. It's about environments where 60, 70, 80+ hours a weeks is the norm.

I think the argument can be made for doing a bit extra regularly to improve and grow. But that's not what is happening in this ridiculous hustle culture where people are burning 60-80+ hours week all year round in an effort to win the rat race by running people into the ground.

krishsai• 7 years ago

Long hours or continuous working exhausts. This does not lead to productive work. Creative work is key and that depends upon flexibility.

ixtli• 7 years ago

This is really a lovely thread. In general I loathe working at large companies and try to avoid it, but this really changes my perception of Shopify. The fact is that people who say they work 80 hours don't really do it. If they ever do it it's a rare event in the totality of their labor.

nif2ee2• 7 years ago

let's see what happens if he starts today all over again. He forgot to mention the most important thing, that he was at the right place and right time. No matter how you come up with a 1000x better Shopify today, you most probably won't go anywhere. Many clunky business projects that were started with the rise of social media (around 2004-2013) made their owners kings ONLY because they were at the right place and time. The free ride is over. His argument is mostly bullshit for anyone starting today, the internet is much more centralized and you can't go viral unless you spend a fortune assuming having a superior product. It's a billion times harder today to succeed with a great product today than with a barely average one 15 years ago.

GVIrish3• 7 years ago

I don't think that argument holds at all. The low hanging fruit from 10 years ago has been picked. But in a lot of ways we only see it as low hanging fruit in hindsight. Today there are new business opportunities that in 10 years will seem like they were low hanging fruit. There are new technologies today that will enable new businesses that wouldn't have been feasible before.

Even then, there are only going to be but so many companies that get to the kind of scale of Shopify and that was true 15 years ago, and it's true today. But there is plenty of room for new small and medium sized companies to make millions of dollars. Success doesn't always have to be at the 3 comma level.

nif2ee2• 7 years ago

I get your argument and I appreciate it. But the nature of those low hanging fruit are more complicated today. For example, you can't just recreate Twitter, Facebook, Reddit today in your home with a couple of friends with no solid experience. You similarly can't start most successful SaaS ideas that were started in 2010-2014. Most successful YouTubers started their channels around 2008-2011. This was a time when you could make a very successful venture relying on the viral marketing by social media and Google search. Nowadays, this is over. You can go and try this same hippie way for starting a small business today but your chances of success are 1000x lower. The internet is much bigger, and it's much more centralized and concentrated and the competition is much more harsher.

nathanvanfleet• 7 years ago

I remember when I applied to work there as an iOS engineer and they didn't even phone screen me because I didn't have a strong enough social media profile.

andruby• 7 years ago

Did they communicate this reason to you? That seems like a ridiculous requirement. Especially for engineers.

patrickdavey• 7 years ago

In my opinion there's absolutely nothing to be proud about in working long hours for long stretches. All you're doing is setting up or maintaining a completely unmaintainable situation. If you're finding you have to work > 40 hours regularly, someone is making and signing off on bad estimates.

If you're salaried, and you're working extra hours regularly, all you're doing is reducing your effective hourly rate.

neo4sure• 7 years ago

If Tesla took Shopify's advice it will be dead right now. Every scenario is different.

CitrusFruits• 7 years ago

I think the shortening of "financial and business success" to "success" can be a bit unfortunate.

My big metric for success is currently how many hours I can spend on my bike a week while still feeding myself and providing for loved ones responsibly.

cdiddy2• 7 years ago

Its funny following this story since I saw the original tweet from Ryan Selkis a crypto twitter entrepreneur. https://twitter.com/twobitidiot/status/1209443243924045825

It has spread to take over twitter and spawned articles and CEOs of large companies weighing in, and now on hacker news. Fascinating to watch where our news starts from and how it spreads

vgchh• 7 years ago

The reality is that there is no single answer. There are companies like Shopify that are able to build a platform while encouraging work-life balance. And then there are companies like Tesla, where employees are expected to forgo work-life balance. I think it comes down to how quickly you as a company may die if left on autopilot. I am going to guess that Shopify had near death moments, but probably fewer. OTOH, Tesla, remains in the default dead territory even now, that they are close to shipping half a million cars per year.

That said, a great work-life balance is great to strive for, just that depending on what your company does, it may or may not happen soon enough.

dmix• 7 years ago

Shopify started off selling snowboards on the internet, Elon took on one of the most powerful, politically connected, and entrenched industries head-on.

There’s always going to be significant differences in the business dynamics and the public pressure on Tesla and their crew was insane. Unfortunately that shit rolls downhill sometimes and it’s hard to control.

Shopify also never faced the massive and constant vitriol and naysayers from day one. It was a massive play out of the gate, not a hockey stick growth but a massive capital investment covering multiple very difficult verticles all at once from design to operations to production and managing a very expensive and risky customer lifespan and regulatory risk for every car sold. Not to downplay how hard it is to do what Shopify accomplished, which was significant and very admirable. But ultimately it’s comparing apples to oranges at a high level like that.

samwestdev• 7 years ago

For creative work, you can't cheat. My believe is that there are 5 creative hours in everyone's day. All I ask of people at Shopify is that 4 of those are channeled into the company.

He's practically asking to put company success before personal growth. That's incredibly selfish if you ask me.

MattConfluence• 7 years ago

That's not how I read it.

Some others, with job titles similar to him, speak of "giving 110%" and how their employees are so dedicated to the company, they gladly take on overtime and crunch and whatnot. This seems refreshingly honest to me in comparison.

Using his math, there's 35 creative hours per person per week; assuming a 5-day work week, he's _paying_ for 20 of those and leaving 15 for personal growth. Sure, some might prefer a different ratio, but at least he's acknowledging that there needs to be a balance.

wesleywt• 7 years ago

Working long hours is for the poor who need to make the rent. Not for successful.

Shopify CEO says long hours aren't necessary for success

Related Stories