Reasons to work Overtime

A few years ago, a big classmate went to a well-known domestic electronics company to work. The beginning of the two weeks is "freshman training", 9 O ' clock Class 6, is supposed to say very relaxed, about his work out to eat a meal, unexpectedly can't come. Ask him why, he said: "After 6 hours after class, the whole department even the supervisor is still in position, who dares to go first?" So what time do you have? " About 10! " What are you doing in the middle four hours? Don't know, on the Internet, find a job to do ah ...

I was very, very surprised by the fact that it was not overtime, but how stupid the reason for overtime was. You probably think I am very surprised, not so, everyone in the boss than late to go ah, this is not a part of the work ethic, very normal?

No, it's not

The purpose of a company is to "produce something of value". A company can succeed by being "more efficient in producing value" than a competitor. In other words, with similar resources, people who can get more value output will win.

Only companies that have no way to produce efficiency must rely on more resources to compete, and "long hours" is the way to go. But this method is only feasible in the short term and cannot last long. The reason is very many, for example: (a) time is limited, you can only work overtime to 24 hours a day, in the end, it will be defeated by the efficiency of the other party; (b) The physical strength of the people is limited, and most people have no way to work overtime and maintain a healthy body. (c) People are social animals and need a healthy social life in order to have a good working attitude; Knowledge workers need a variety of incentives, long-term in a single environment will only cause a decline in productivity ... Wait, wait.

In other words, if a company is forcing employees to work overtime for a long time, it will eventually get a decline in efficiency, not a promotion. But at the same time, if overtime work cannot be improved as soon as possible, the company will start to get sick, a very serious disease. Employees will slowly confuse "work" with "productivity", and everyone starts to spend more time on work than who produces more value. So, there is a "I can not go ahead of the boss," the absurd idea.

It's a cancer.

It's a kind of cancer, because the company looks like a centripetal force, and there's no problem with health. But in a few years, the cancer will begin to attack, problems, jumping off the jump, explosions, regardless of the management of the exhaustion of methods, the burn, are not back to the past good times. Why? Because you've got it all wrong, productivity is focused on efficiency, not on the amount of time invested.

Just before Stackexchange see this passage, share with you:

Many engineers think that overtime is a very manly thing, but it is simply stupid behavior. I have been involved in the most powerful startup with a very solid testing framework, with no unexpected bugs (regressions), and extremely high efficiency. Everyone is at 9 o ' clock, 5 o ' clock, weekends never overtime, even my wife is surprised I go home to dinner every day. We occasionally need a little overtime, but at that time everyone was physically strong.

Of course the company finally failed ... That's weird. As you may have heard, this company is called "LinkedIn".

Remember, any time you need to work overtime, it's because the company has some kind of mechanism to break down. You should insist that they repair these mechanisms before agreeing to help them.

If LinkedIn succeeds in creating a value of 9 billion dollars in just a few years without working overtime, what excuse do you have? Remember, entrepreneurship is not just to make people like products, entrepreneurship is an attitude –hack modifiable!