Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

Tag: work environment

  • Fundamental Flaw of Hustle Culture

    Fundamental Flaw of Hustle Culture

    It’s all over the news. AI companies force their engineers to permanent crunch mode. Expectation for working long hours is like a badge of honor in Lovable job ads. Google defined a 60-hour work week (at the office) as a productivity sweet spot.

    But in the spirit of one-upmanship, everyone was beaten by Scott Wu, Cognition CEO. He announced 6-day work at the office, 80-hour weeks as the new norm.

    “We don’t believe in work-life balance—building the future of software engineering is a mission we all care so deeply about that we couldn’t possibly separate the two”
    Scott Wu, Cognition CEO

    You see? All it takes to suck twice as many hours from every engineer is to stop believing in work-life balance. Voila!

    Why All the Hustle?

    The visible reasons for all that hustle are obvious. Everyone understands that, at the end of the day, there will only be a very few winners of the AI race.

    They will get rich. Everyone else will go bust.

    To make things worse, the bubble has been pumped to its limits. If you want to get a prediction that AGI is just around the corner, there’s no shortage of optimists.

    However, notably, after GPT-5’s lackluster premiere, Sam Altman mentioned that AGI is not a very useful term. Whoa! That’s new! One would wonder what might have triggered such a twist in the official messaging.

    Anyway, seemingly, the rest of the AI crowd is yet to catch up. The extreme hustle culture they install in their companies clearly suggests that they believe AGI is around the corner.

    Otherwise, how would we explain 60/70/80-hour workweeks?

    I mean, these are smart people. They do realize such work is not sustainable, right? Right?

    Cynicism

    OK, I’m not naive. There’s a ton of cynicism behind the hustle culture. The top leaders do it because everyone else does it, too. So they can get away with it. And people fall for this trap.

    Given all the hype, it’s easy to promise mountains of gold to everyone. If. You. Hustle. Just. A. Little. Bit. More.

    People will rationalize it by asking themselves a question: Am I fine coping with that toil for a couple of years and then walk away with $10M?

    Seems like an acceptable tradeoff, doesn’t it? CEOs of AI companies prey on that.

    However, I believe that they know the correct question should be: Am I fine shortening my life for 1-2 years because of the toil when someone dangles $10M in front of me?

    The answers to these questions might be different. But if you expect prominent AI figures suggesting such an alternative vantage point, well, don’t hold your breath.

    They will cynically exploit the opportunity even if it improves their odds of succeeding only marginally. After all, everyone else is doing the same.

    The Cost of Extreme Hustle Culture

    What’s fascinating is that it’s a herd behavior. No one seems to stop and validate whether hustle culture even works. Not even companies historically known to be data-driven, like Google.

    It’s as if a simple linear approximation was all they could conceive: twice as many hours, twice as much work done.

    Any team lead with even meager experience would disagree. It’s kinda obvious that the last hour of continuous work would be less productive than the first, when we’ve been well-rested.

    So, how about adding a few more hours each day? And then replacing one rest day with another workday?

    If you need to spell it out for you, here it is. It means more mistakes, more rework, more context switching tax. And even more toil. Which generates rework of the rework. A vicious cycle.

    At some point, and rather quickly, each additional hour has diminishing returns. Then, at some point, each additional hour has a negative return, i.e., it decreases the total output delivered.

    If you wonder why Henry Ford introduced a 5-day, 40-hour workweek in 1926, while keeping a 6-day pay, it’s not because he was an altruist. He wanted better overall productivity. And, surprise, surprise, he got what he wanted.

    Economics of Crunch Mode

    Sure, a factory floor in 1926 is an entirely different environment from an engineering office a century later. Yet Ford’s was hardly the only such experiment.

    Across many examples, it’s extremely hard to find any argument that supports the hustle culture.

    “We have omitted from this list countless other studies that have shown [dcreased productivity] across the board in a great number of fields. Furthermore, although they may exist, we have not been able to find any studies showing that extended overtime (i.e., more than 50 hours of work per week for months on end) yielded higher total output in any field.”

    Note, it’s about total output, not output per hour.

    Now, when dozens of research papers from different contexts tell the same thing, I tend to listen. So when it comes to the most recent trend for crunch mode in AI startups, there are two potential explanations.

    1. Extreme hustle culture and extended crunch don’t work. Thus, AI startups are harming themselves.
    2. AI startups are so completely different that they operate under a different set of rules.

    Because they surely employ human beings similar to you and me.

    At a risk of oversimplifying matters, these companies do software engineering. A fancy and cutting-edge flavor, I give them that, but software engineering nonetheless. They are not that different.

    Well, put two and two together.

    Data-Driven? Data-Driven My Arse

    If either of them, celebrity CEOs, had actually looked at the data, they might have realized that they’re harming their businesses.

    Of course, they’re harming their people, too. Yet I wouldn’t expect enough empathy or reflection from Sam Altmans of this world to make it a viable point in a discussion.

    If they want cutting-edge and speed, they’d be better off going against the tide and sticking to healthy work conditions. Ultimately, these companies have no shortage of investment money, and if AGI is, indeed, just months ahead, they could burn through some of those dollars by hiring more.

    Even more so, given that raising funds for these startups is easier than ever. These days, you don’t even need to tell what you’re working on, let alone release anything, to get billions. That is, given that you properly market your idea as AI.

    That is true, of course, only unless AGI is not even remotely close and the AI startups CEOs know it all along (but won’t say, as then it would be harder to attract investors’ dollars).

    Extended Crunch Mode Story

    There are industries known for crunch mode (I’m looking at you, game dev), and there’s no shortage of stories about how extended hustle was behind well-known disasters.

    I had a chance to listen to a creative director from CD Projekt RED speaking about their engineering culture just weeks before the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. During Q&A, inevitably, he was asked whether they would release on an announced date (which had already been moved a couple of times).

    “There’s no other option,” was his answer.

    We know how it ended. “Buggy as hell” was the reviewers’ consensus. The game was pulled from sale on PlayStation. And shareholders filed a class action lawsuit over the share price drop. A hell of a launch party, if you ask me.

    CD Projekt RED has extended crunch mode to thank for all that fun stuff. In an interesting twist, after they dropped the hustle and started working in a more sustainable way, they were able to recover from the initial disaster.

    Unsustainability of Hustle Culture

    The camel’s back is already broken, but I’ll add one more straw anyway.

    People will burn out working under such a regime. Some of them will last months, some quarters, some may even last years. But break they will.

    Again, I don’t expect empathy from the celebrity CEOs, but the consideration of their bottom lines is what they’re paid for, isn’t it? So, what’s the cost of replacing an expert engineer specialized in AI? Given the outrageous poaching offers we see, it’s absurdly high.

    And I don’t even mention all the time lost before a company manages to hire a replacement. Yes, precisely the time that seems to be precious enough to make CEOs force their engineering teams to toil for 6 days and 80 hours a week.

    It. Is. Not. Sustainable.

    Never has been. Never will be.

    If similar topics are interesting, I cover anything related to early-stage product development (and, inevitably, AI) on the Pre-Pre-Seed Substack.

  • Money and Motivation

    A few people have left. Or I should say a few good people have left. Yes, the company has tried to stop them but well, when people decide to go it’s usually way too late.

    The next station is realizing that people are gone. Well, they will still come to the office for a couple of weeks but they are gone. Gone. If you wanted to change their minds you should have worked with them a few months earlier.

    And then there comes the idea that you should at least take care about those who are still here. When people leave, their colleagues start thinking about leaving too. That’s how it works.

    So we come to the point where most of managers use tools they have to keep retention on reasonable level. Quite often they use the only tool they think they have, which is money. “That should keep them motivated for some time. And they won’t leave either.”

    Yes, except it isn’t true.

    As I think more about money and motivation I’m closer and closer to Dan Pink’s approach: pay enough to get the money off the table and then focus on things which really motivate people. By the way if you haven’t seen Dan Pink’s TED talk about the subject you really should do it now.

    OK, so what kind of effects you should see when you throw more money at people? For some of them it would take the money problem off the table. Will it keep them in the company in the long run? I don’t know. You are either able to build creative, motivating work environment or you aren’t and raise won’t change anything in the long run.

    For others money wasn’t the issue in the first place. They will happily accept raise, that’s for sure, but is it going to change their approach? Not so much.

    Now you can point a number of examples when someone you know has changed jobs purely for money. I think they fall into the first group. The only difference is in their cases money was a major problem and not a minor one. Bigger salary doesn’t make them motivated – it just gets the problem off the table. It isn’t guarantee that they won’t eventually leave. If your organization suck they will. You can buy a few months but the outcome is going to be the same – they will be gone soon.

    In short: if you have a big bag of money you can make people stop complaining about their salaries, but you won’t make highly motivated top performers out of them.

    I know people who are leaving with no change in remuneration whatsoever. Heck, if you look for people who changed job and got lower salary in the new place I’m one of examples. And yes, I’d do it again. I’ve never left any organization (or project) for money, even though sometimes it was an issue.

    If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. If the only tool you have is money, every problem seems to be solvable with cash.

    But then you see teams which don’t get any bonus money whatsoever and they’re motivated and those which spend days complaining about lack of bonus money. All in the same organization. They are even paid basically the same. I see two possible explanations: one supports argument above and the other includes words “black magic.”

    If people go, you won’t change that if the only thing you can think of is throwing more money at them. Unless you’re paying peanuts, that is.

  • Money as a Motivator

    OK, the subject will be controversial. Money as a motivator. If you ask people what motivates them to work, they’d throw a bunch of different things much more often than they’d say about remuneration. Self-development options are evergreen here, but good atmosphere, top technologies, interesting products or well-organized processes are all mentioned more often than pure cash. By the way that’s one of my interview questions and, believe me, I hear “money” much, much less than I’d expect. Rob Walling presents quite a long list of different qualities which are valued more than money by developers. That’s first perspective.

    Another one is pointing money actually does no good in the area of motivating people. David Carr in his post about money as a motivator shows a list of examples where money doesn’t really affect positively people’s work or even harm their attitude and, as a result, effectiveness. That’s other perspective.

    Personally I strongly believe in non-monetary motivating techniques. “CEO’s handshake” followed by several words of praise can have much more impact than a payload of money. That’s another perspective.

    Having said all of that, ask people if they’re willing to change the job for a better one in almost every aspect they can imagine. Better atmosphere, cooler technology, more interesting products and wide range of possibilities to self-develop. The only worse thing would be money. Few would follow. And if you leave aside those who are starting their own businesses you end up almost empty-handed.

    Now, do another test – situation is the same but in the second job money is better, but e.g. atmosphere is worse. More candidates? What a surprise. Oh, is that really such a big surprise?

    OK, where’s my point then? There are a few of them actually:

    • Money alone doesn’t work very well when you want to add motivation over the standard effort.

    • Money is very often used wrong. If it is so the result are usually opposite than intended.

    • When used well, which is rather rare by the way, money can work as a motivator.

    • Non-monetary motivation techniques are essential but they don’t substitute remuneration – they supplement money.

    • Money is more important for people than they’d be willing to admit.

  • Role of the First Job

    It’s been told a lot about managing your career. How to plan the career, how to get position you’d be happy with, how to push your way through the recruitment process, etc. You can find a lot of reading about the subject (personally I think Rowan Manahan has nice insights in that area), but I think we usually miss one thing here. We kick-off our careers and define our starting point usually quite unconsciously, when we start the first (longer) job. Of course the kick-off doesn’t limit our potential, but usually defines how painful it will be to achieve the final goal.

    The environment which gives you first professional lessons forms you as an employee. And I don’t mean company culture only – one thing is how the organization as a whole is set up but another, even more important, how your team looks like and what kind of persons are leaders. Well-managed, integrated, team with influential leader is a great kick-off to your career. And it really doesn’t matter what programming language you use or what kind of projects you work on. The most important things you learn aren’t technology specific – team work or accountability can be learnt anywhere, customer/user-centric mindset isn’t the thing which is exclusively available in IT only. And a new programming language or project management technique? You’ll learn it when you need it.

    When I think about my career I always come back to my very first team, where I learnt all those basics. I always considered the first professional environment as important but still when I’ve made a little analysis some time ago and results have surprised me a lot. I’ve taken people from my CDN XL team, where I’d grown up and listed what they’re doing now.

    • Our director now co-owns a company
    • Three of team manager owns or co-owns a company
    • One more is a VP
    • Three developers got director ranks
    • One more is a team manager now
    • Three consultants owns or co-owns a company
    • Another three of them are directors now
    • Three more became team managers
    • Four testers moved to more prestigious developer role
    • Two of them got their teams to manage

    Wow. I mean, really, wow. I’ve just counted about two third of the team back then, and it was just a few years ago. What more, I can think about almost no one who wouldn’t appreciate the role of being there when looking from the perspective of their careers. For majority of us that was the first job, for another group that was first job they stuck with for a longer time. Definitely most of us set up our professional standards during that time. I believe the team, the way it was organized and managed and the atmosphere were very important elements of mixture which brought us wherever we are today.