| Some Dot-commers Say Long Hours are OK When Work is Fun
To dot-com or not to dot-com--that is the question.
We at Livelyhood had a very basic question we wanted answered: Why is it that so many people working in supposedly liberating technologies are putting in some of the longest hours in America today?
Cyrus Mistry, an employee at Trilogy Software in Austin, Texas:
When Livelyhood last spoke with Cyrus, he was working an average of 17 hours a day in order to get product out the door. Weekends mean nothing to Cyrus and his colleagues, who are constantly canceling dinner dates as they openly devote their hearts and minds to their 24-7 demanding jobs.
But don’t go designing a virtual picket sign just yet. According to Cyrus and many like him, such long hours are a welcomed part of an exciting job they wouldn’t trade for the world. To them, it’s not just the stock options, but the flexibility, project ownership, challenge and chance to be surrounded by alike-thinking colleagues and projects where they can make an impact that more than make up for missed zzzs.
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Dot-Com CEO Says Seven Hour Days are OK by Him
What about the dot-commer or software designer who wants to sleep eight hours a night instead of work eighty hours a week? Enter Dr. Jim Goodnight (--no pun intended).
Dr. Jim Goodnight is founder and CEO of SAS Institute, the largest privately held software firm in the world with 17,000 employees.
While some top bosses of high tech firms brag about employees who pull all-nighters and work around the clock, Goodnight is proud of the opposite work culture at SAS. In an exclusive interview with Livelyhood, Dr. Goodnight explains why there’s no peer pressure to stay late at SAS:
Q: What kinds of hours do people work?
We encourage people to work seven hours a day. We are basically a nine to five company. We always have been since we started back in 1976. In the early days, we certainly did work more that. But with the speed of computers these days, we can compile and test programs in a matter of seconds whereas it used to take 24 hours to get a turn around. . .
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