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work-life balance at npm

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or, why I hate the term "work-life balance" & what this means at npm

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Buzzfeed on Uber's culture "impossible workloads, around-the-clock emergencies, fear of management, a total erosion of work-life balance, and a pattern of public humiliation at the hands of higher-ups"

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this article made me angry maybe even A N G E R Y

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ceej anger boxes checked — 12 hour days ✔ — 7 day a week ✔ — abuse from management ✔ — constant emergencies ✔

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the research is clear: this isn't just inhumane it's also stupid

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"Why crunch modes don't work: 6 lessons" http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons

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the opening "There's a bottom-line reason most industries gave up crunch mode over 75 years ago: It's the single most expensive way there is to get the work done." "More than a century of studies show that long-term useful worker output is maximized near a five-day, 40- hour workweek. Productivity drops immediately upon starting overtime and continues to drop until, at approximately eight 60-hour weeks, the total work done is the same as what would have been done in eight 40- hour weeks."

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5-day 40-hour work weeks were chosen for peak efficiency

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tech is not a magical exception you are not a magical exception

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programmers seem best around 35 hrs/week

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you might think you're helping guilt might push you into overwork but you're not doing your best work

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deny human biology at your peril

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note a lurking fact: brief bursts can be effective!

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it's just that we turn bursts into crunches into death marches

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the fact that "death march" exists as a term of art in project management is pre!y horrifying

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Uber is an extreme example but this is common behavior in tech

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jwz rants: watch a VC use my name to sell a con

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jwz slept under his desk in 1994 to ship Netscape

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managers demanding burnout are a!empting to exploit you

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I reject the premise burnout results in neither speed nor excellence

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you don't run marathon distances at Usain Bolt sprint speeds

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sprinting is sometimes right! for npm right now, it's wrong npm is a marathon

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humans are npm's biggest investment far more than servers & bandwidth

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we need each other at our best our most creative, our most skillful

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and that means we need each other rested, refreshed, recreated

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our mission: take npm to the stars on a budget we can't afford Uber-level

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you bring to npm your previous experiences including this crunch or else habit

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my experience taught me to bring something else to npm

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npm's values unite kindness and pragmatism

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talk of values is all very well; how is this shown in our behavior?

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let's talk about vacations

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why have fixed vacation days?

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"unlimited vacation" means "untracked vacation" which o!en means pressure not to take vacation

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my usual joke is that your vacation is a mandatory minimum

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use all your vacation

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let's talk about sleep

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if there's a Bateson's pyramid of human needs, sleep is the base

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ceej story time: how 2am decisions made the Danger SAN disaster worse

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management needed to appear to be engaged & involved

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never make decisions on that li!le sleep

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you can do mechanical, habitual things while sleep-deprived

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don't try complex cognitive tasks while sleep-deprived

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this lesson affects how we designed npm's operations

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npm does not need you to appear to do lots of work

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npm does need you to accomplish good work

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let's talk about balance

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ceej story time: the General Magic 2am company meeting

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the meeting felt normal narrator voice: it was not

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deeply imbalanced

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why do I hate the phrase "work-life balance"? I reject the premise

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our work & our lives affect each other we're whole human beings

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our work ma!ers to us we want it to be fulfilling emotionally & intellectually

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we need to do our work well

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we still want to do good work and make awesome things but we want to do this effectively

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what balance means is individual and will vary over your lifetime

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a weekend spent hacking is sometimes refreshing sometimes exhausting only you know which

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if npm demands a weekend from you it will be in a dire emergency and the 3Cs will be there too

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then I'll run a retro to figure out how to avoid emergencies like that so it never happens again

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selfish goal: help npm win

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altruistic goal: be kind to our colleagues

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these two goals align when we balance work & life

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the winning strategy is the kind strategy

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I can't stop you overworking you're all adults

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all I can do is explain why it's not effective

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if you need to burst, burst please rest a!er you burst

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be with your loved ones pursue your hobbies take vacations get plenty of sleep

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npm should be a place where you can do the best work of your career thus far and take npm to the stars

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npm ❤ your work

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npm ❤ your life

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npm ❤ your humanity

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npm ❤ you