Hours you work

A few days ago I had an interesting discussion with my friend about the headline-grabbing quote from Sergey Brin. For posterity, the quote was “[…] 60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity”. The entire quote was mostly about the AI, Google and supercharging the development efforts, but the last part captured the most attention. Also, as with all the quips like that it started to be applied or derided as if it was the separate statement in it’s own rights.

Reluctantly I have to agree with that statement with one, very strong caveat: there is work and there is work. I too enjoy something that is commonly referred to as deep work. Obviously every one of us has a different endurance and mental resilience but working for 10-12 hours in a day is completely possible. I know because I’ve done it. Not for a prolonged periods of time, but in shorts sprints of course. If you can focus on a computer game for that amount of time you can also work that long. The deep work can be very satisfying. In the movie The Internship (let’s disregard that it had exactly zero overlap with reality) there is a scene where one of the characters (played by Vince Vaughn) asks “Do you remember what ii felt like being that good at something?”. That is the feeling that deep work can give you. And you can draw immense satisfaction from it. So immense that you don’t even count hours anymore. So yes, in this case Sergey is right. When you hunt for bugs, develop an exploit or code new systems then you need those long hours to load the context into your brain and gain the productivity you want to see.

There is, however, another kind of work. The one that working at Google also made me acutely aware of. It is a work of constant interruptions and context switching. The work of tactical objectives, quashing fires, answering questions and acting as catch-all rule for anything security related. But at least that is work. There are also meetings, mandatory trainings, performance reviews and other time consuming events. That kind of work gives very little satisfaction, is very exhausting and mentally taxing. If you spend more than few hours in a day doing that you will have zero capacity for any kind of deep work later in a day. Still this kind of work needs to be done, so if you are not doing it someone else will have to. Sure - the higher level you have the bigger amount of that you can delegate. I am sure that Sergey is not randomly pulled into a meeting because compliance team suddenly needs to understand what is the difference between 7.9 and 8.0 CVSS score.

We have also glossed over other aspects of your life. Some of us have kids, families or people that depend on us. Sure, 10 hours in a day of deep work would be great, but we have groceries to do, kids to pick up, doctor visits to attend. Money of course can solve some of those problems. If you wake up in the morning and your breakfast is ready, your clothes are neatly folded and ready to wear, kids are being chauffeured to school and you don’t have to worry about cleaning up, you can devote your full energy to work. Of course, not all of us are in this position (not to mention - you definitely should not outsource the raising up your kids part).

I am not overly worried about Google. I like to think that Sergey is a smart man who can understand those limitations. After all, a lot of teams at Google have delivered amazing products without toil and death marches (like Chrome) but this is a very different topic. What I am worried about are countless followers and pundits who will take the 60 hours thing as gospel and try to apply it indiscriminately to any breathing body around them. With disastrous results.