> In the 19th century, when organized labor first compelled factory owners to limit workdays to 10 (and then eight) hours, management was surprised to discover that output actually increased – and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased. This is an experiment that Harvard Business School’s Leslie Perlow and Jessica Porter repeated over a century later with knowledge workers. It still held true. Predictable, required time off (like nights and weekends) actually made teams of consultants more productive.
The mistakes/accidents bit is especially compelling when talking about a $100 billion spacecraft.
Startup culture would do well to learn from this lesson.
https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-bac...
> In the 19th century, when organized labor first compelled factory owners to limit workdays to 10 (and then eight) hours, management was surprised to discover that output actually increased – and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased. This is an experiment that Harvard Business School’s Leslie Perlow and Jessica Porter repeated over a century later with knowledge workers. It still held true. Predictable, required time off (like nights and weekends) actually made teams of consultants more productive.
The mistakes/accidents bit is especially compelling when talking about a $100 billion spacecraft.
Startup culture would do well to learn from this lesson.
See also: how NASA wrote software for the shuttle: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff