> I suspect that a 36 hour week is a better rule. :-)
According to a lot of sources, including Tom DeMarco's PeopleWare, 35 hours a week is the only sustainable pace for intellectual work. Plus or minus a few hours, maybe.
But that was about stable companies. I'm not sure that startups are trying to be sustainable.
Arguably a startup is really exploring a space of possibilities, searching for a profitable niche. So probably delivering crappy code that delivers three features is better than producing one solid thing. I've been on the cleanup crew for a couple of acquired startups, as well as products that were developed in 20% time at large corporations and grew into larger teams. My impression is that code quality barely mattered to their initial success. So I'm not sure what the optimum workload in a YC-style startup should be.
Also, we have to modify DeMarco et al's advice for a team composed of two or three twentysomethings. It seems likely that their stamina is going to be well above average and their knowledge and experience is going to be well below. So perhaps they are playing their cards right to bet on stamina.
According to a lot of sources, including Tom DeMarco's PeopleWare, 35 hours a week is the only sustainable pace for intellectual work. Plus or minus a few hours, maybe.
But that was about stable companies. I'm not sure that startups are trying to be sustainable.
Arguably a startup is really exploring a space of possibilities, searching for a profitable niche. So probably delivering crappy code that delivers three features is better than producing one solid thing. I've been on the cleanup crew for a couple of acquired startups, as well as products that were developed in 20% time at large corporations and grew into larger teams. My impression is that code quality barely mattered to their initial success. So I'm not sure what the optimum workload in a YC-style startup should be.
Also, we have to modify DeMarco et al's advice for a team composed of two or three twentysomethings. It seems likely that their stamina is going to be well above average and their knowledge and experience is going to be well below. So perhaps they are playing their cards right to bet on stamina.