I didn't like this article at all. First - it states that putting insane pressure on people to work long hours is counter productive - and mandating week-end work leads to burn out.
The very next sentence then immediately says this:
"People who love their job and the company will work all the time anyway. If you’ve hired good fits, you’ll see this happen."
Uhh.. so you want to replace mandatory week-end over time, with an informal criteria where good fits work all the time anyway - thus if you don't work on the week-ends (of your own """choice""") you confirm you aren't a good fit?
Now, there's nothing wrong with working on week-ends when there's a deadline or an important milestone, but substituting explicit expectations with implicit ones is flat out horrendous and it means that you have to constantly read between the lines to find out exactly what you have to do.
> Now, there's nothing wrong with working on week-ends when there's a deadline or an important milestone
I disagree with that, on the basis that deadlines and milestones are artificial constructs of the company. It should always be wrong to work on weekends.
I worked for 15 years for a Fortune 100 company and I experienced probably five or six 'crises' each year that required me to work unusual hours.
The worst case in each scenario was that the company might lose some money; the most common case, though, was nothing at all; it had been declared that we would be 'competitive' by an arbitrary date and it was all-hands-on-deck to meet that target.
Looking back I now understand and regret that neither of those cases are anything I should have worried about as an individual person. I gave my personal time to the company simply to avoid being sacked; that doesn't seem like a fair trade.
I didn't really read it that way. I read it more like treat people with respect, don't force them to create work that is a nice or should when they should be relaxing... but people who love their job will be happy to go the extra mile, work weekends, etc when there are Must or Mission Critical things that need to get done.
Sure - and I agree with all that. The issue comes with the circularity of the reasoning:
- People who are a good cultural fit don't mind working all the time
Therefore:
If someone minds working on week-ends - then they weren't a great cultural fit. It's almost Calvinist in its logic.
As you said, there's absolutely no problem working on week-ends when it's needed, or getting really caught up in an exciting new tech and spending evenings getting it up and running. However - when this become (implicitly) expected as a marker of good cultural fit, you've basically placed it as a burden for everyone.
The very next sentence then immediately says this:
"People who love their job and the company will work all the time anyway. If you’ve hired good fits, you’ll see this happen."
Uhh.. so you want to replace mandatory week-end over time, with an informal criteria where good fits work all the time anyway - thus if you don't work on the week-ends (of your own """choice""") you confirm you aren't a good fit?
Now, there's nothing wrong with working on week-ends when there's a deadline or an important milestone, but substituting explicit expectations with implicit ones is flat out horrendous and it means that you have to constantly read between the lines to find out exactly what you have to do.