| It started well and devolved into a bitter rant about the universe. So... here's some perspective from a career on both sides of the table.... (manager and engineer) - For many teams and personalities, it is very hard to ship anything without a deadline. (as a solo founder, I actually use this psychology on myself to stay on track.) - Short chunks and deadlines work better than longer ones. - Peer pressure is a powerful stimulant. - Your time is not of equal value. You don't really have seventy hours of quality work in a week. You've got maybe 15 "truly inspired" hours, 25 "grind it out" hours, and a lot of filler, face time, and paper shuffling after that. If you're smart, you slip in some employer funded personal growth & education time into that mix. The classic mistake is to screw up the mix. I actually run into this as a freelancer. My rate for "truly inspired" time (real thinking about theory, architecture, influencing others, lecturing, or consulting on high level topics - eg. I must be fully present and prepared) is between $150 - $500 per hour (depending on the degree to which I'm inspired by the topic in question; $500 if I couldn't give a crap, $150 if I'm truly interested), "grind time" is $75 - $90 (you're paying for work without face time or deep insights, done at my convenience), and I'm unsure how to sell people filler, face-time, and paper shuffling. My typical solution is to go take a nap. By the way... once you deduct pitching and running the business (10 hours, mix of inspired & grind), that means a freelancer REALLY has only 20 - 25 hours of useful time to sell in the course of a week. Past that, you're either working much harder than an employee or trying sub in filler and hoping your client doesn't notice it... The typical employee is selling 15 - 25 hours of grind, perhaps 5 of inspired time (if you're lucky) and as much filler and self-directed time as you can get away with. From an employee satisfaction perspective, inspired is a win, filler / self-directed time is neutral to a win (depending on how well you entertain yourself), grind is a negative. Grind time is less onerous if you feel like you are accomplishing something in the process. My goal as a boss is to get as much grind / inspired time for my buck as possible, since that's what generates output. (employee development matters but is a complex payback balancing future productivity / retention / motivation; filler doesn't really help me at all) The essential management challenge is spotting people slipping filler into a day and telling them to get back to grind. Good bosses protect your inspired time. Someday I'll hopefully get to work for one again.... (LOL) There's nothing REALLY wrong with doing an 80 hour sprint one week if you can engineer some paid downtime later. I have weeks where I'm exploited and - to be fair - others where I'm massively overcharging my employer. It evens out. |