[mmt]

I got two takeaways:

The early hires (especially engineer #1) can have a huge influence on the culture. I think that's important to note both for founders and for prospective early employees.

> devs have only worked longer than a 40 hour week maybe 5 times total.

> That dev team has consistently deployed great feature after another at an incredible rate.

This second takeaway, that being disciplined about working hours is a boon to productivity, is generally supported by what few studies [1] have been done on productivity versus working hours.

[1] I believe most of, especially the early ones, have specifically studied industrial/factory output, including an early-1900s experiment showing that reducing working days from 9 hours to 8 hours actually increased output.

[danbolt]

I think the restriction on working hours ensures that management is more conscious about spent labour too. We have this (often true) stereotype of bad leads wanting employees to overwork and I would bet that’s because they assume that the team can “passionately” do more.

When I’ve seen good projects complete on time, I remember seeing my producer comb the milestone tasks asking herself “can this deliver value and be feasible”, rather than making a marathon for other people to run.