It has nothing to do with being there on Saturday. It has everything else to do with the kind of people and their ability to invest themselves in their goal, and showing up on Saturday is a great indicator of that.<p>I interview a lot of programmers, and I can tell you with about 95% precision whether they will work out and be great based on the single question 'tell me about the programming projects you work on for fun'. If they have some project they work on for fun, even one, that isn't for a class at school or for their job, then they are very very likely to be a great hire. If they don't they are very very unlikely to be a good hire. Side projects don't magically make you smart and capable and good at problem solving and getting things done, but it sure seems to be fundamentally related.<p>And from personal experience, I've worked for 2 startups, one where people worked all weekend and one where they didn't, and interestingly they were doing almost the exact same thing. One had an $80MM exit, the other just slowly went away. Small sample size, for sure.
Honest questions: all the hard working Yahoo employees who worked many many hours overtime under her instead of being with family and friends, what did they get out of this in the end?<p>Marissa was paid big $, I understand she needed to work hard for that money but everyone else, what reason did they have 20 hour days?
I wonder what the actual work she did at Google that would make you work up to 130 hours a week, or at the least pull one all nighter a week. Was it heads down programming? I don't think anyone can maintain a great level of code for long at that level. Manager stuff? Maybe. Infrastructure, did she supervise or help set up servers? Startups don't have to do that anymore, at least in the beginning, just spin up servers at AWS. Like the blog author says, a lot of things that needed to be done in house back in the day can be done remotely now.
I kinda get what she is saying. It takes a certain amount of passion and dedication for someone to show up on weekends. They must truly believe in the company or the idea to put in that type of effort.<p>This dedication and passion will also reflect itself in the product. Many people can make a mediocre product by putting in the minimum amount required, but for something outstanding it usually takes more. Much more. What she has said is nothing outlandish.
Common misconception.<p>Direction is more important than speed. If you are running in the wrong direction it doesn't matter how fast, or if you come in on the weekend.
<i>If</i> you are headed in the rigt direction then speed and velocity can be important.
It's easy to want to believe that success is repeatable and due to an observable formula...
Wherever company she lands at, run. Not only does she have this attitude at rest, she's going to have a chip on her shoulder to prove she's not a failure at whatever venture she winds up at next.
Her attitude comes from the privileged ideal of hard work = success, which stems from the classic attribution error: "I'm successful therefore it must be because I'm better than everyone else in x y or z ways", and often one of those factors is a belief in one's own hard work pay9ing off. Which blithely ignores all the less fortunate people working even harder at three jobs to pay tthe bills.
The weekend work = success is hardly a new item, there was a reference to it in Microserfs... Written in 1992. The VC/money guy said he'd invest in biotechnology but staff didn't work weekends. And as soon as he finds one that did he could bet the farm and retire.<p>As for the rest of it, same tired tropes from the author. I already knew what he was gonna say when I realized who it was.<p>As.for Marissa... She's kinda right. And every current Googler is thankful they can reap the rewards.
Slightly off-topic, how did this get picked by Yahoo? Do they get enough editorial freedom to publish something that doesn't favour their CEO? I'm pleasantly surprised for one.<p>Could this also mean the editorial team believes this to be true?