Haixiang Huang

Really? What do you mean by stop working hard?

Introduction In the software engineering world, I have seen statements or participated in conversations where people say things like "I worked xx hours per week" or "I pushed xx lines of code per week", and etc. These are examples where people come up with metrics to measure how hard they work. At the same time, many people also use how hard they work as a proxy metrics to measure how aggressive their career should progress.

The Frustration Unfortunately, working harder does not always lead to faster career progression. I've talked to many people who mentioned something like "I am the most hard working person on my team, I don't understand why XX is getting rewarded/promoted instead". Some even ended up in a vicious cycle where they decided to work harder -> become more frustrated -> started to believe they were not working hard enough -> decided to work harder -> ...

Time is Limited Many people ask the question "why does my success not scale with the amount of effort I put in?" First of all, working hard does matter. If we control all the other variables, working 8 hours usually produces 2X the result verses working 4 hours. Number of hours spent is usually a linear multiplier. In most cases, you spend 2X time to get 2X result.

However, there is only 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and ~52 weeks in a year. In theory, if we work none stop, this is the MAXIMUM amount of time we can spent at working. This boundary cannot be breached unless we figured out how to create more time. On the other hand, most people works ~8 hours a day and very few can handle ~16 hours a day. Even extending that to an extreme saying someone would work 24/7 none stop, it is ~4X as much as ~40 hours a week. Therefore, if working more hours is your only game plan, it's time to look elsewhere.

The Result Formula In an overly simplified world, we can say [Result] = [Efficiency] x [Time] where we are evaluated based on the [Result] we produced. Since there's a hard cap on the variable [Time] (MAX = 24 hour per day), we should shift our focus on how to maximize the [Efficiency] variable which has no upper bound. In order to do so, first of all, we need to understand WHAT result should we produce. Once the WHAT is clear, we can think of HOW do we achieve that more effectively. Following this simple thought process, we can figure out a tactic that helps us accelerate our career without burning time.

The WHAT Many people started a project without understanding the goal and only focus on delivering as many tasks as possible. In reality, no matter what tasks you are working on, if they do not help achieve the end result, they might be irrelevant! Therefore, spending 40 hours on the "right" project or task is better than spending 60 hours a week on the "wrong" project or task! Understanding the WHAT is the first step towards improving your efficiency. Working on the "wrong" thing is similar to setting your efficiency to 0. If you multiplying something by 0 -> you still get 0! Once you understood this concept, you would know to start with the high impact tasks first and leave the nice to haves for a later time.

This also applies when you think in terms of promotion! Without knowing "what" is expected of someone on the next level, you won't be able to tell if you are working on a promotional project or not. Your promotion happens when you perform on the next level, not how much result you produce on the current level. In other words, working 80 hours a week on the projects that are NOT on the next level won't get you promoted!

The HOW Different person produce results with different speed. We hate to admit this but it is often true. Unfortunately, the difference could be HUGE in certain cases! Earlier, we mentioned that piling more hours is not going to scale, however, the number of skills we can master has almost no limit. Therefore, in order to deliver more results in a sustainable way, we need to figure out HOW to do things in a more efficient way! We can improve our efficiency by learning new technologies, becoming better at managing projects, or even delivering through others. There is no upper limit on how much efficiency we can gain, especially when we mastered certain skills that transform us to a force-multiplier. We will leave force-multiplication to its own article in the future.

Next Steps Before we start our next project, ask the questions like this:

Why are we doing this project? What are we trying to achieve with this project? How do we measure the success of this project? If we are working towards our promotion, try to ask these questions:

What is the responsibility of level X? What are the skills I'm lacking right now and how do I build them? How does project X helps with my promotion / skills building? Once we know the answers to these questions, we can make more informed decisions on how to spend our time wisely and focus on the right set of priorities. We need to admit that spending more hours is a temporary solution and will not scale exponentially in the long run. It is tempting to do so since we can see the short term results quickly but we should try to avoid it. In order to achieve sustainable career growth, we should invest in ourselves instead of constantly working overtime! If we have extra hours, don't use them to "work hard". See if we can use them to master a new skills, read a book, or simply take some rest and recharge. While it might not help us finish our project at hand faster, it would eventually pay off in the long run.

Haixiang Huang

Greater Seattle Area 2K followers 500+ connections

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About

Experience

Reddit, Inc.

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Education

University of California, Los Angeles

Volunteer Experience

UCLA Alumni Mentor Program

University of California, Los Angeles

Languages

Chinese

Native or bilingual proficiency

English

Native or bilingual proficiency

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Greater Seattle Area

2K followers 500+ connections