It is the fall of 2005 and I’ve just joined Microsoft China’s Advanced Technology Center (ATC) as a Program Manager. One of the suggestions I took was to go to lunch with all the other PMs on the team. So, one by one I schedule lunch and for those that know me, this will seem weird since I typically don’t do lunch (instead I would exercise and/or rebuild my mental sand castles).
From these lunches, what I found in common was the PMs were incredibly busy and had extremely tight deadlines. I didn’t really understand what PMs, so I asked about their projects and what they were busy with. A component that could extract positive/negative sentiment from a product review. A ad qualify component. A media library. A web version of communication software. Typically 10 engineers on the team. A deadline in three or six months. I trusted they were busy and under time pressure but it was at a loss to me why. It seemed to me that they had long timelines and huge teams.
15 years and many projects later I didn’t work with any of these PMs anymore but one day I had a conversation with one who had done very well for herself career wise. Much more successful than me by conventional wisdom. I asked her generically, how things were going? Very busy, very, very busy. Crazy deadlines. And I still didn’t get it. You’ve been crazy busy for 15 years? At what point isn’t there a crisis? I just didn’t get why the woman sitting across from me in 2005 and in 2020 was so incredibly busy. Unless she wanted to be.
I know about being crazy busy. I’ve worked against fixed deadlines where the build had to get out to the client “now”. I worked at startups where we sold things we had not built yet. I know the feeling of being in the office before anyone and after everyone. I’ve spent many weekends at work, being the accountable one. For a while, I worked over more labor day holidays than I’ve had off. I knew pressure and I knew how to work smart or clever to deliver under pressure.
At Microsoft and at other large tech companies, there is an ethos of working extremely hard. 996 (9am - 9pm, 6 days a week) is common at China based tech companies. I see that ethos of working hard with, dare I say the Elon takeover of Twitter and the federal government.
And I just want to call bullshit on all of it.
At Microsoft, leaders could find themselves in a bind. They often felt their teams were not working hard enough but officially company culture focused on work/life balance. The leaders I respected would thank the team for the efforts and set ambitious goals. The leaders I understood, if not admired, would privately advise someone working harder would get ahead and get the best projects. The leaders who I despised, would drop the work life balance lingo (“go recharge over the holidays!”) while dropping workaholic bombs (“over the weekend, I …”).
There is the perception that working hard gets you ahead. And there is the perception that the perception of working hard gets you ahead. The former may be true as far as growing your skills and creating product. And the latter may be true in terms of getting recognized by management.
Something really annoys me about this ethos and I am having a hard time articulating what it is.
I guess it’s back to the disingenuous bullshit of it.
I guess it’s the implicit message that you are not working hard as I am.
I guess I recoil at working hard as a sign of strength for I always felt it was a sign of weakness.
Working hard was always my backstop. I may not be as smart as you, but I could work harder. I just never wanted to let you see me sweat.