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0 pointsborski11y ago0 comments

Right; my point is that some people genuinely enjoy it and are proud of when they have moments of inspiration and end up working late nights to complete something. Some people genuinely work best at night, and I get the impression that if an engineer doesn't fit into the author's specific idea of "work life balance" they are considered "young."

In my experience, that's not necessarily true; some engineers just genuinely enjoy working late at night, and are often proud of the results. Otherwise, they would presumably stop working late at night.

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saganus11y ago

I read it more as referring to the way the engineer approaches the problem vs what time of day they work.

An engineer who starts hacking away a solution and keeps at it 90+ hours a week (or whatever amount) but then because of this burns out and looses interest in 2,3 or 6 months is not as valuable as an engineer who can consistently keep working at something until the product is delivered. The engineer that is burned out probably won't be able to last X years at the company, and since the author is trying to somewhat maximize the time the employee stays the "burn-out approach" engineer is not desired.

Kind of like that other article that popped up in HN a few weeks ago that basically said "discipline over motivation", which I read as "it's better to be able to work 2-3 hours a days every day for 5 years, than being able to work 15+ hours a day for 3 weeks".

Obviously your opinion might vary as to how useful this strategy is, but I think it has a different meaning than just "an engineer that works at night".

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