Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer On 130 Hour Work Weeks

gamerk2 said:
Kind of highlights that salaried employees basically have no worker protections. Boss says work 100+ hours, you work that many. Period.
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  • You can tell the boss you are not going to work the hours and see what happens.
  • You can find another job where the boss is not stupidly burning out their employees.
 
I've worked a couple long ass weekends (basically working 40 hours over 3 days (Friday-Sunday) plus a normal work week from Monday-Thursday) and I'm completely shot after that.

I remember when I was in the army and I was deployed to Bosnia and we where the detail company...basically got to pull guard duty around the clock for 30 days...we worked 3 on, 6 off for 24/7 and where lucky to get 4-5 hours of sleep during that time. You lose track of what day it is very quickly.

I normally work about 9 hours a day, taking lunch at my desk...but i'm still home before 5 (start at 7:15-30) so its no big deal.
 
I guess it depends on what you do and how well you like doing said job. During some satellite build testing, you will routinely have 40/50 hour tests that will have a break between, like 4 to 8 hours or something and then start another long one. But it is kind of short lived, like two to three months of that and then normal for a few months, continuing until launch. The long tests eventually get much shorter the more you do them and fix issues, but the hours are long. 130 is not realistic while still being able to be proficient at your job though, as mental fatigue is a funny thing and will attack things you normally don't consider.
 
Here is a good quote to remember about working lots of hours:

Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.

Wernher von Braun
 
gamerk2 said:
That's more then I get on Weekdays. :/

Kind of highlights that salaried employees basically have no worker protections. Boss says work 100+ hours, you work that many until your recruiter finds you a new job
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FTFY :p

Seriously though. I'm OK with working extra during crunch times, as long as the boss is flexible and also gives you extra time off during non-crunch times.

If they are flexible, so am I.

If the average week is much above 40 hours - however - the boss will soon have to spend his time interviewing new candidates.

15 years into my career, no. I may have been foolish and allowed myself to be taken advantage of when younger, but now I'm an experienced professional with several recruiters calling me every day, and that shit just won't fly anymore.
 
Sure are a lot of successful CEOs in here that know what it takes to run a multi-billion dollar multinational company.
 
When you read the article, it turns out that she's talking about her time at Google, not at Yahoo; also, she never actually said that she ever worked a 130 hour week. Here's the pertinent part of the article:

"When reporters write about Google, they write about it as if it was inevitable. The actual experience was more like, 'Could you work 130 hours in a week?' The answer is yes, if you're strategic about when you sleep, when you shower, and how often you go to the bathroom. The nap rooms at Google were there because it was safer to stay in the office than walk to your car at 3 a.m. For my first five years, I did at least one all-nighter a week, except when I was on vacation--and the vacations were few and far between."
 
Grahamkracka said:
Sure are a lot of successful CEOs in here that know what it takes to run a multi-billion dollar multinational company.
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Would you describe Marissa Myers as a successful CEO?

I'm pretty sure everyone here is qualified enough to drive a company into the ground.
 
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Working more hours does not necessarily mean being more productive. It depends on the individual and type of work, but studies have shown that there are diminishing returns (ie a breaking point) for everyone. I find that most people who "brag" about how many hours they work are very unproductive per hour and are wasting time instead of being efficient.
 
gamerk2 said:
That's more then I get on Weekdays. :/

Kind of highlights that salaried employees basically have no worker protections. Boss says work 100+ hours, you work that many. Period.
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And often you just work with no paid overtime because "It's not in the budget"

Personally I'm sick and tired of executives who have no personal life and hobbies, and think their employees should work 100+ hours a week without a complaint because they assume you have no personal life either.
 
Jim Kim said:
Does she talk about the big crap she took on yahoo?
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Yahoo was crapped on long before she got there. The worse you could say about her tenure there is she didn't make it any better. But Yahoo was a long way down the road to dead before she ever even thought about leaving Google.
 
Gweenz said:
Working more hours does not necessarily mean being more productive. It depends on the individual and type of work, but studies have shown that there are diminishing returns (ie a breaking point) for everyone. I find that most people who "brag" about how many hours they work are very unproductive per hour and are wasting time instead of being efficient.
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That's probably true, after about 7 hours my productivity diminishes drastically. And I assume other people aren't much dissimilar in that regard even if they don't care to admit it. Something gotta give, either it will be productivity or it will be quality (if the work is such) or, if your refuse to let up, then your health.

So in the long run putting on 1-2 hours every day is probably more detrimental to the actual work completed than doing your regular stint, and getting to work well rested every day. Sure one or two all nighters can boost productivity in that instance, but a the cost of zero productivity for the next 1-2 days. So actually you're not getting more work done on the grander scale, you just compressed 2-3 days work into one.

That's why I think the sweet spot is 35 hours / week. Up to that the amount of work completed scales almost linearly with the amount of time worked. But above that there should be a sharp drop in the actual work done compared to the time invested.
 
Ideal work day is 6hours with no lunch.. I am convinced we would be more productive nation that way.
 
NeoNemesis said:
Would you describe Marissa Myers as a successful CEO?

I'm pretty sure everyone here is qualified enough to drive a company into the ground.
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Well, at this point it's clear she isn't. But really...who could have saved Yahoo? (Hint: Nobody). In all likelihood, she would have done fine in any other company.

I'm just pointing out that nobody here actually knows what it takes to actually succeed at that level.
 
Grahamkracka said:
Sure are a lot of successful CEOs in here that know what it takes to run a multi-billion dollar multinational company.
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lol, but way off base.

Mayer is given credit for an increase of Yahoo's stock prices, but that's largely a function of the value of Yahoo's ownership stake in Alibaba. Besides that, and despite expensive acquisitions, Yahoo's core business valuation and revenues have been poor.

There are good reasons to defend Mayer, particularly that it was a near impossible task to turn Yahoo around, but she didn't do anything special to save the company. Excluding Alibaba, which she had nothing to do with acquiring a stake in, Yahoo's core business was worth much less after 4 years of her tenure as CEO than it was before. Generously, she'd get a gentleman's C as a grade for her leadership (that's a failing grade, politely stated!).
 
M76 said:
That's probably true, after about 7 hours my productivity diminishes drastically. And I assume other people aren't much dissimilar in that regard even if they don't care to admit it. Something gotta give, either it will be productivity or it will be quality (if the work is such) or, if your refuse to let up, then your health.

So in the long run putting on 1-2 hours every day is probably more detrimental to the actual work completed than doing your regular stint, and getting to work well rested every day. Sure one or two all nighters can boost productivity in that instance, but a the cost of zero productivity for the next 1-2 days. So actually you're not getting more work done on the grander scale, you just compressed 2-3 days work into one.

That's why I think the sweet spot is 35 hours / week. Up to that the amount of work completed scales almost linearly with the amount of time worked. But above that there should be a sharp drop in the actual work done compared to the time invested.
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Agreed, I hate to use them as a model for efficiency but Europe seems to have figured this out long ago. The thought of state-mandated PTO or maternity leave sounds so crazy and foreign to us but two of the most productive countries in the world are Germany and France, which both have strict laws regarding hours worked. Happy workers are more productive workers, there can be absolutely no doubt about that but it is lost on most U.S. employers.
 
Gweenz said:
Agreed, I hate to use them as a model for efficiency but Europe seems to have figured this out long ago. The thought of state-mandated PTO or maternity leave sounds so crazy and foreign to us but two of the most productive countries in the world are Germany and France, which both have strict laws regarding hours worked. Happy workers are more productive workers, there can be absolutely no doubt about that but it is lost on most U.S. employers.
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On paper maybe Europe did figure it out. But in practice it's not happening. They just keep overtime off the books, which is even worse for the employee as he doesn't even get paid for it most of the time. I've spent 6 weeks in germany working 10-12 hours every day without a single day off, not even national holidays. The way around strict regulations is that we worked for a company from another country as sub contractors of the company in Germany who actually had the project we were working on. Of course we didn't get a single hour of overtime paid out to us.
 
M76 said:
On paper maybe Europe did figure it out. But in practice it's not happening. They just keep overtime off the books, which is even worse for the employee as he doesn't even get paid for it most of the time. I've spent 6 weeks in germany working 10-12 hours every day without a single day off, not even national holidays. The way around strict regulations is that we worked for a company from another country as sub contractors of the company in Germany who actually had the project we were working on. Of course we didn't get a single hour of overtime paid out to us.
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"Sub Contracting" has become the international method-of-choice to screw over employees. Was it because you're not a German national? Do different rules apply?
 
I'm thinking bullshit. I don't work. I'm 40 and have only worked 6 months in a full time job, for the span of my entire life.

Steam Community :: CryonicSuspension

Actually, I clocked 130 hours in one week, playing Atlas Reactor LOL. The game has to be really good.
 
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Her net worth is around $450 millions!!

For the same $$$ Yahoo seemed to have thrown at her during the past few years, I would have worked 48 hour days, 8 days a week!! She is actually a slacker in my eyes!!

But I bet most of her day really isn't her "working" even though she feels she is "on the clock".. just like the POTUS is a 24/7/365 job but there is still plenty of time to golf, give fund raising speeches and go podcast in some guy's garage..

day_in_the_life_inc_500_ceo.gif
 
She had to have been on IV drops of coffee or serious Adderall. I don't see how you can do that much work and maintain functionality.

There comes a time when the law of diminishing returns comes into play and it starts taking you 60minutes to do 15minutes worth of work, so you're actually hurting yourself and productivity by doing that. Especially if you're in a profession where small errors can be costly (such as coding, etc.). Could you imagine the code coming out of someone on hour 15 of the day, hour 100 of the week?
 
Gweenz said:
"Sub Contracting" has become the international method-of-choice to screw over employees. Was it because you're not a German national? Do different rules apply?
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No I'm not a German national. But It think it has to do more with my employer not being a company based in Germany. But we were seriously in violation of work laws of the country I'm originally from too. But since I was a Hungarian national working for a Hungarian company in Germany, the German authorities didn't bother us, as we had work permits, and the Hungarian authorities won't do a surprise inspection on us in Germany. So they could get away with it scott free.
 
Insula Gilliganis said:
But I bet most of her day really isn't her "working" even though she feels she is "on the clock".. just like the POTUS is a 24/7/365 job but there is still plenty of time to golf, give fund raising speeches and go podcast in some guy's garage..
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I had a college who spent enormous amounts of time in the office. Always complained how much he works, and how much overtime he has. But when multiple people were tasked with the same thing, on average he turned out about 25% of the work compared to regular 9-17 colleagues who put their backs to it. Well of course he'd watch movies on multi monitor, go to the hairdressers every week, pop out during the day for this and that all the time.

So having 130 hours on the clock is not an achievement in itself.
 
I think many people here are missing the point of this. Is the article stating that everyone should work 130 hours a week? no. It is saying that for a small start up to make it then you have to put in hard work, and that hard work might mean working a lot of hours which if you schedule your time is very much possible.
 
Exavior said:
I think many people here are missing the point of this. Is the article stating that everyone should work 130 hours a week? no. It is saying that for a small start up to make it then you have to put in hard work, and that hard work might mean working a lot of hours which if you schedule your time is very much possible.
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Then your missing our point. We say that putting in 130 hours of work doesn't mean 300% productivity compared to regular 40 hours. After a while it could actually mean less. I say these people who spend an unearthly amount at work are only doing it for bragging rights and not actually getting shit done.

Edit: one more thought

Grinding 130 hours is not adding value. Innovation adds value. When I went to my current employer. They sat me down to do a job that took 2 days/work unit. Instead of working multiple shifts as they asked me to. I innovated and made the job take 2 hours instead of 2 days I did more for the company in a few days than I could've by grinding at the task 130 hours/week. I increased the productivity of all the 30 employees working at the same task almost tenfold. I was immediately taken off "regular" duty and became the resident innovator instead of the operator.
 
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lol at putting 130 hour work weeks into an irrelevant dinosaur company like yahoo. Toiling away to polish a turd is what that is.
 
CEOs say things like this because they think everyone should be chained to the company like they are. I however, don't get multi-million dollar payouts when I inevitably screw up so bad due to lack of sleep that I'm fired.
 
Anyone calculate her NEGATIVE dollar value per hour? I guess they SHOULD pay her to stop working.
 
People please keep in mind she is talking about 130 hours a week at freaking GOOGLE. It's not a real job. You're not working on an assembly line or in a coal mine, or as a police officer, or being shot at in Iraq/Afghanistan. You're in meetings. You're being fed for free. You get paid for taking craps and showering at campus. They have video game stations, and pool tables, etc etc. Yeah you might "be" at "work" for that amount of time, but you're not always "working". I have worked for software companies and I saw what happened after hours at night during "all night work marathons". Lots of Quake deathmatch and free food.

Being in the "office" all the time does not necessarily equal "working" all the time.

Now I work with management types who pull 65-70 hours all the time, but it's 80% meetings. You better pay me some insane level money for me to be awake & productive in meetings 10-12 hours a day.
 
There have been plenty of studies done on this, the more you work the lower the quality of your work becomes. It gets to the point were every additional hour of work time reduces your overall output and it's not just at the crazy high end of the spectrum, anything past 10 hours in a row and you're in the weeds.

The only way a 130 hour week would even be possible would be if your job only involved going to pointless meetings and you counted times that you crashed out at your desk as working hours.

Weird side note, I've got that SAME CHAIR (Herman Miller Sayl) she's sitting on in the image. I think I may have to burn it now because by the transitive property it's associated with Marissa Mayer.
 
No one is working 130 hrs a week long term. you have a megamerger then sure, but as an everyday thing, no.

Then there is what exactly you are doung as "working"
 
It kills me that these people that jump up and down about metrics and analytics and data driven decision making can ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence that sleep deprivation is really bad for you. There's a reason it's used as a method of torture. Even without relying on the innumerable studies, I bet everyone on this board has pulled an all-nighter at some point and produced some really crappy work. How many here have stayed up all night writing a paper and then read it the next day and thought "was I drunk or high when I wrote this?"

Some people can get by on less sleep than others, but everyone has a breaking point and it isn't remotely close to 130 hours in a week. I did 60 consistently for 3 years and, looking back on it, I was horribly inefficient. Unfortunately, some work environments value the appearance of productivity more than actual production.

There certainly are situations where it makes sense for an individual to work a 60 or 80 hour week, situations where something has to get done and there isn't time to train another person to do the task. If a business is consistently asking for those kinds of hours though, they are ignoring the obvious solution: hire another worker! In the case of CEOs, they should be providing oversight and making big picture decisions. If they are on the job for 100+ hours they are micromanaging and/or have no idea how to delegate tasks.
 
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