Theory about worker productivity

an organization doing work is just an incredibly complex, dynamic, distributed, parallel process.

The work capacity of an organization scales, at most, linearly as new members are added.

The ceaseless pursuit of force multipliers is the only possible route to superlinear productivity improvements as an organization grows.

Contention costs grow superlinearly as new members are added.

Staffing highly sequential efforts as if they were entirely parallel leads to catastrophe.

Coherence costs grow quadratically as new members are added. [...] The total time spent communicating will grow quadratically as the work capacity of the organization grows linearly.

Principles:

• Keep the work parallel, the groups small, and the resources local
• Prioritize the development of force multipliers
• If possible, factor work products into independent modules; if not, grow slowly and optimize.
• Scale organizational efforts across a portfolio of synergistic products
• Keep responsibility assignment matrices small, sparse, and local
• Prioritize asynchronous information distribution over synchronous
• Build humane organizations

what’s the right number of hours to work in a week

is a question behind work/life balance.

Longer days

there is a mounting body of evidence showing correlation between number of hours worked and decline in both mental health and physical health

Longer workweeks

A friend of mine who read an earlier draft of this article also made the excellent point that 2 hours at work often aren’t equivalent to 2 hours at home

Burnout

The graphs above show that you can indeed get more stuff done by working more, but only up to a point. Beyond that point, you end up with a compounding negative return. But therein also lies a clue: crunch time is fine as long as there is a recovery period afterwards.

Exerting back-pressure

Perversely, this happens more in companies where the employees feel particularly dedicated to the company’s work; employees absorb more work and tighter deadlines by working harder because they care about what they’re working towards.

I want to stress that back-pressure does not mean “just say no”. Instead, effective back-pressure is all about negotiation. [...] when you’re near capacity and someone approaches you with more work, you should present them with what work would need to be dropped in order to take on their work instead.

Working smarter

The first is to get a given thing done faster.
The second is to better choose the order in which you do things such that your time is spent where it matters most. [...] The most needed; is blocking other people; or the closest to completion.
The third is to be more cognisant of what you work on.
the fourth is to be strategic about when you work.

As a wise mentor of mine has pointed out repeatedly to me, working smarter helps, but the real superpower is resting smarter. [...] The important thing is that you feel like that time is replenishing the same batteries you exhaust at work.

Finding the time

The important thing is that you feel like that time is replenishing the same batteries you exhaust at work.

First results of Germany's trial on work time reduction.

Beyond the basics, how did you know if you were doing a good job?

I didn’t. I’m not sure how I would.

When the feedback paths are missing, success is measured through peer opinion, i.e. the practitioners that have a good reputation among their peers are considered skilled, regardless of what their real world impact is.

À voir comment cette loi sera appliquée; et comment les entreprises montrerons la rémunération.

Les salaires de développeurs ne semblent pas avoir augmentés plus que cela. Ils ont cependant suivi l'inflation.

The hourly compensation graphic shows that: the hourly compensation does not go up (9.2%), in contrary to the productivity (74.4%) since 1973.

We need a different approach. We need to hold corporations accountable, fight for fair wages, and advocate for policies that address the root causes of economic inequality.

The path to financial freedom shouldn't be paved with endless side hustles. It should be built on a foundation of fair compensation, work-life balance, and a social safety net that allows everyone to pursue their passions without sacrificing their well-being

The long-term popularity of any given tool for software development is proportional to how much labour arbitrage it enables.

What do I mean with labour arbitrage?

Les personnes qui prennent le temps pour être interviewé peuvent être rémunéré. Ce n'est pas déconnant.

Juste, éviter de vous offusquer qu’un profes­sion­nel demande à être rému­néré quand on solli­cite deux heures de son temps pour resti­tuer son exper­tise.

La majorité des salariés passent par le chômage indemnisé au cours de leur carrière.

Dans un article récent, le sociologue Mathieu Grégoire soulignait que la "fuite" des données de France travail concernait 48 millions de personnes passées par l'institution au cours des dernières décennies.

Il en conclut donc que la plupart des personnes passent par le chômage durant leur carrière.

You see, most of these books on productivity come from places of privilege. They are authored by people who either control their task lists or, quite often, occupy positions where they are no longer burdened by one. The problem is that most of us, the mere mortals who consume these books, do not sit in this graceful position.

As I said at the start, there will always be more work, and that's a good thing to keep moving and stay motivated. However, there comes a point when it becomes too much, the plate is piled too high, and there is no room to breathe. Drowning in tasks is a terrible way to go.

Putting it another way, your work can only be as interesting as your problems.

• Forget your last job
• Add value from the start: how to improve the onboarding process
• Ask a lot of questions
  • trivial with quick answers
  • not trivial with an in-depth answert that gives a lot of context
  • completely nontrivial and no one had ever asked it.
• Have uncomfortable meetings with your manager
• Things are there for a reason
• Get context
• Socialize