What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either.
Exactly. The culture should be 'everybody else' works 80 hours a week and dealts with a nasty commute? But the CEO, lives a couple blocks away and blocks out time here and there to play with his kids...? Ok, There is certainly nothing wrong with this advice for CEOs, but the question goes begging as to wether or not such a "game theoretic" outcome is stable if the strategy is pursued by a broader set of employees. One clue, of course, is in the original story...where work/life balance is a "value" to the company...and the c-level execs are all washing their cars and feeding them pizza...while the engineering team they slave away...on the weekends in the cubicle farm...missing kids ball-games and family meals...etc. WTF. That's one heck of an 'omission' from the problems that face the CEO. And in one sense it is also incredibly narcissistic (literal sense), to be "fixing" your own problems but not those of your team at work. It's so bizzarre I'm not sure I didn't mis-understand something? It seems a glaring error in the essay not to reconcile this part of the plotline. I do give him credit for having at least woven part of it into the story, however.
Exactly. The culture should be 'everybody else' works 80 hours a week and dealts with a nasty commute? But the CEO, lives a couple blocks away and blocks out time here and there to play with his kids...? Ok, There is certainly nothing wrong with this advice for CEOs, but the question goes begging as to wether or not such a "game theoretic" outcome is stable if the strategy is pursued by a broader set of employees. One clue, of course, is in the original story...where work/life balance is a "value" to the company...and the c-level execs are all washing their cars and feeding them pizza...while the engineering team they slave away...on the weekends in the cubicle farm...missing kids ball-games and family meals...etc. WTF. That's one heck of an 'omission' from the problems that face the CEO. And in one sense it is also incredibly narcissistic (literal sense), to be "fixing" your own problems but not those of your team at work. It's so bizzarre I'm not sure I didn't mis-understand something? It seems a glaring error in the essay not to reconcile this part of the plotline. I do give him credit for having at least woven part of it into the story, however.