Strongly disagree with the arguments made in this paper.
In my opinion this post is fundamentally biased due to the author professional situation. From what I understand she currently works « remotely » meaning she doesn’t spend 2H commuting per day.
Hence she seems to be a « lead xxx » at toptal.
That’s great for her. I’ve worked for many large corporations , every where I went « lead » means you are generally not in « touch » with the operational reality of what the job is about.
So often as a lead your job is basically to keep a spreadsheet with people reporting to you because supposedly you understand what they do and can solve their issues if they have some.
Maintaining a spreadsheet is fairly easy, on the other hand solving 10 years legacy code without any sort of documentation is a competely different topic.
This is a well know issues in modern societies , where the higher you go in the hierarchy the less people are actually working and the more are actually doing bureaucracy and the more you are disconnected from reality.
I don’t see how an engineer in a service company working 40-50 hours per week can have any sort of motivation during his weekends to create something new while he just gave every bits of his brain for 5 days straight trying to fix someone else’s bugs , issues and legacy code.
This is an example of course, but I’m sure many people on HN are on this situation. They just stay at this job because it pays theirs bills or they can’t anything better but they just wish they had their own business doing something completely different.
Reading this type of article somewhat buggers me. I guess a « content writer » can probably work on a side project on his free time but what about the lower worker class ? What about the higher class like surgeons , lawyers etc..
These peoples often already work on the weekends to complete the work they were assigned... now they should also start a company on the side ?
Some job are more demanding than others , this is why some people must quit if they want to succeed.
Thanks for the feedback and while I can understand your point to some degree, I am not a << content writer >>, or someone that sits in a spreadsheet watching other people work. I was part of my team before leading it and continue to be an individual contributor.
I too have encountered leaders who operate in the way you described, but I think it's actually a really unfortunate viewpoint to have of leaders overall.
One of the key points of the article is that you do have more time than you think. This amount of time varies per person based on their life, but I would argue that everyone does have at least 30 minutes per day that they could re-allocate to something more effective.
I think your article has some valid points. But I think time available is not the only thing in the equation, as a few other commenters have pointed out.
For example, I also work remotely, but I've found myself suffering from burnout lately because of hectic schedules. This has been a mentally draining experience, and as a result I've not been able to even begin thinking about side projects, let alone work on them.
I do have more time available to myself than when I used to work in an office, but the time available to me now is worth way less than when I was working in an office because of my current job's intensity.
Some of the most successful people I know spent a few years in 'coast mode' jobs. Where they received large salaries to maintain spreadsheets of other workers and fake work meetings. These roles offered them ample downtime to study, plan, research, network and invest in personal growth projects without having to sacrifice much leisure time.
Granted the article has some fundamental tips, the author seems to be biased in one of these situations.
This is the ironic trap of maker-type people. We want fulfilling jobs making stuff, but they are also tiring on the brain, leaving little bandwidth at the end of the day to make your own stuff. But if we could just take a cushy job, and learn the requisite BS to get and sustain such a job, then maybe we'd be better off!
This is so true. Media advertises people who just jump from one task to another with full energy showing them as all-rounders who can do it all with their multi tasking. Truth is that most of the tasks are bullshit tasks which are some silly spreadsheet edits etc.
Try doing some real programming and it becomes very tiring after the days end. Having any energy to do something after work becomes incredibly difficult.
In my opinion this post is fundamentally biased due to the author professional situation. From what I understand she currently works « remotely » meaning she doesn’t spend 2H commuting per day. Hence she seems to be a « lead xxx » at toptal. That’s great for her. I’ve worked for many large corporations , every where I went « lead » means you are generally not in « touch » with the operational reality of what the job is about.
So often as a lead your job is basically to keep a spreadsheet with people reporting to you because supposedly you understand what they do and can solve their issues if they have some.
Maintaining a spreadsheet is fairly easy, on the other hand solving 10 years legacy code without any sort of documentation is a competely different topic.
This is a well know issues in modern societies , where the higher you go in the hierarchy the less people are actually working and the more are actually doing bureaucracy and the more you are disconnected from reality.
I don’t see how an engineer in a service company working 40-50 hours per week can have any sort of motivation during his weekends to create something new while he just gave every bits of his brain for 5 days straight trying to fix someone else’s bugs , issues and legacy code.
This is an example of course, but I’m sure many people on HN are on this situation. They just stay at this job because it pays theirs bills or they can’t anything better but they just wish they had their own business doing something completely different.
Reading this type of article somewhat buggers me. I guess a « content writer » can probably work on a side project on his free time but what about the lower worker class ? What about the higher class like surgeons , lawyers etc..
These peoples often already work on the weekends to complete the work they were assigned... now they should also start a company on the side ?
Some job are more demanding than others , this is why some people must quit if they want to succeed.