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The Toxic Laziness of Overwork Culture

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cattralli directly confronts the pervasive belief that success, particularly in tech and startup environments, requires extreme hours and personal sacrifice. He argues that the conflation of ‘hard work’ with ‘overwork’ is not only false but detrimental.

Cattralli presents research data to debunk the economic rationale for overwork. He cites studies showing that productivity gains diminish sharply beyond 50 hours per week, with someone working 70 hours producing no more than someone working 55. He further breaks down the minimal financial return, calculating that working an extra 5 hours per week for a year might only yield an effective wage increase of 80 cents per hour for those extra hours, making it a poor investment of one’s most finite resource: time.

The discussion shifts to examine the potential benefits of overwork, concluding that outside of rare scenarios like beating a competitor to market, the extra hours primarily benefit the company by extracting more labor, not the individual. More critically, overwork fosters a toxic culture where commitment is lazily measured by hours logged rather than actual outcomes, creating inequity for those who cannot work extra hours and leading to burnout.

Cattralli concludes by framing overreliance on overwork as ‘intellectually lazy’—a brute-force algorithm that ignores smarter strategies like prioritization and measuring real impact. He urges listeners to establish boundaries for the long-term health of their careers and companies, advocating for a model of success built on sustainable effort rather than self-sacrifice.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to the myth of overwork as a requirement for success — Jonathan Cattralli introduces the episode’s core thesis: that developers do not need to work excessively long hours, sacrifice health, or give up personal life to succeed. He identifies this as a common narrative pushed by founders and admired figures, stemming from cultural stories equating hard work with intensity and sacrifice.
  • 00:04:42 — Research evidence against the productivity of overwork — Cattralli presents research showing diminishing returns on overwork. Studies indicate that working over 50 hours a week yields no extra productivity—someone working 70 hours produces the same as someone working 55. He also analyzes financial studies, calculating that the extra income from working more hours often translates to a pitiful hourly wage increase, proving it’s a poor use of time.
  • 00:08:47 — Examining the potential (and rare) benefits of overwork — The host examines the two potential benefits of overwork. The first, and only potentially positive one, is timing the market to beat a competitor. The second benefit is to the company, extracting more labor. He argues that in almost all other scenarios, overextension harms both the individual and the product quality, as fatigue leads to errors.
  • 00:11:55 — How overwork creates and reinforces a toxic culture — Cattralli explains the worst outcome of overwork: it reinforces a toxic culture. Celebrating late nights or weekend work encourages more overwork, creating a cause-and-effect error where success is attributed to hours rather than skill. This creates an inequitable environment for those who can’t work extra hours and goes unchecked, feeling like passion but ultimately leading to burnout.
  • 00:15:11 — Overwork as intellectually lazy and a conclusion — The host frames overwork as ‘intellectually lazy’—a brute-force heuristic used instead of smarter strategies like prioritization and measuring real outcomes. He urges managers and engineers to establish boundaries based on research and long-term sustainability, not just humanism. The episode concludes with a call to verify the claims through personal experience and data, and to share the message.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2022-11-10T08:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:17:42

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] In today’s episode, we’re taking on a topic head on, something we rarely do.

[00:00:14] My name is Jonathan Cattralli, you’re listening to Developer Tea.

[00:00:17] My goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose

[00:00:22] in their careers.

[00:00:24] You do not have to work long hours to succeed.

[00:00:32] Let me say this very clearly so everyone who is in this audience understands it.

[00:00:38] You do not have to sleep in the office.

[00:00:40] You do not have to put in 50, 60, 70 hours at work to succeed.

[00:00:48] You do not have to give up your friendships.

[00:00:51] You do not have to sacrifice your mental or physical health to succeed.

[00:00:59] This is a common thread that you will hear from founders, from very successful engineers,

[00:01:06] people that you might admire.

[00:01:10] People who are indeed successful may tell you this and it’s easy to believe because

[00:01:18] the story itself seems rational.

[00:01:23] It sounds like in order to succeed, I need to put it all out on the field.

[00:01:29] I need to extend myself and work hard.

[00:01:35] This kind of lines up with, at least from the American culture side of things, the story

[00:01:42] we are told about how to succeed when we’re children and all the way through growing

[00:01:48] up into adulthood, that hard work, intensity, the kinds of words that you would hear being

[00:01:59] thrown around in a world-class athletic environment are applied to our startup lives or the lives

[00:02:10] that whatever you are doing with your career, whether you’re in a startup or not, doesn’t

[00:02:15] really make a difference.

[00:02:18] This idea that hard work will ultimately be the key to your success and that hard work

[00:02:23] is interchangeable, this is a critical point, interchangeable with overwork.

[00:02:31] Hard work is interchangeable with work that pushes you to your limit, that requires you

[00:02:36] to say no to social events, it requires you to say no to the extra hour of sleep, to say

[00:02:44] no to weekends and no to those vacations that they promised you would be unlimited.

[00:02:53] It is not necessary and it’s also not rational.

[00:02:57] We’re going to break down a few kind of basic reasons why this is true.

[00:03:02] If someone is telling you that in order to succeed as a young programmer, that you have

[00:03:09] to spend the extra nights and weekends, you’re going to have to extend yourself, you’re going

[00:03:14] to have to work hard, translating to overwork, that you have to sacrifice, they’re wrong

[00:03:25] and you don’t have to listen to it.

[00:03:28] You can live your life in a balanced way as a brand new programmer, new to the field and

[00:03:36] you can succeed.

[00:03:39] Now that doesn’t mean that it’s easy and it also doesn’t mean that everyone who’s listening

[00:03:42] to this show has equal opportunity or access to do what I’m talking about.

[00:03:48] For some people this may be harder than others and I empathize with that, I certainly don’t

[00:03:54] mean to make it sound like it’s easy or like it’s as easy for you as it would be for me.

[00:04:04] But frankly it’s not easy for anyone.

[00:04:08] Being successful is not easy but the answer when something isn’t easy shouldn’t just be

[00:04:17] to work harder longer.

[00:04:20] The answer to solving hard problems is not always just pure energy and time and grit.

[00:04:28] Now before we go down the road of saying well there’s an arbitrary line that you’re drawing

[00:04:32] Jonathan, that there’s a line where it’s overworking for you but it’s not for me, well there’s

[00:04:39] actually some pretty good research around this.

[00:04:42] We all share a common kind of need, a common physiological need for rest for example and

[00:04:52] so there is good research to show that working for over 50 hours a week specifically is what

[00:05:00] the research shows, produces not only diminishing gains but someone who works 70 hours produces

[00:05:08] exactly the same value, exactly the same amount of productivity as someone working 55 hours.

[00:05:15] For that specific study you’re working four times as much for the same amount of gain.

[00:05:24] This isn’t a smart use of time, it’s a low leverage use of your time and time is your

[00:05:30] most critical resource, the one that we all share, the one that is not something we can

[00:05:37] recover.

[00:05:39] Another study shows that for every five hours you work above 47 hours, so let’s say you

[00:05:46] work 52 hours where your colleague works 47 hours, you might get a 1% raise in your salary.

[00:05:55] In other words for the people who work 52 hours they make 1% more than the people who

[00:06:01] work 47 hours.

[00:06:03] If you do the calculation on your personal salary, whatever it is, I can almost guarantee

[00:06:09] you that five hours a week for the entire year is not worth that 1% difference.

[00:06:17] If you’re like most people who take around two weeks worth of vacation then that five

[00:06:22] extra hours per week translates to 250 hours and if you were to use like a base salary

[00:06:29] of 200,000, 1% of that salary is only $2,000, that’s before taxes.

[00:06:40] Those 250 hours over 8 an hour.

[00:06:49] Before you answer, the person who’s working 47 hours a week versus the 52 hours a week

[00:06:56] based on this study, if they’re making that same $200,000 salary that you were making

[00:07:03] before you got your 85 an hour for every hour they work.

[00:07:10] Just to put a little more math behind this, the difference between what you make per hour

[00:07:16] on that extra five hours per week is only 80 cents.

[00:07:23] 80 cents per hour.

[00:07:26] That’s what you are buying with 250 hours per year.

[00:07:31] So the math here simply doesn’t check out if you’re just talking about from the monetary

[00:07:37] side.

[00:07:39] But I also want to talk about from the principal side.

[00:07:42] You may make the argument that it’s not just about the money, it’s about the thing that

[00:07:46] I’m building.

[00:07:47] I want to build something great and someone told me that in order to build something great,

[00:07:52] you have to sacrifice.

[00:07:53] You have to sleep in the office sometimes.

[00:07:56] Sometimes you have to say no to the vacation so you can get the extra lines of code written.

[00:08:01] But I want to challenge this assumption on one single basis.

[00:08:06] Why does it matter that you do it now, that you do it at 6 p.m., that you do it on a Saturday

[00:08:17] rather than waiting until the next workday?

[00:08:20] Rather than waiting until the next time that you would normally have allocated to do work?

[00:08:27] Why does that matter?

[00:08:29] How does that change the quality of the product that you build?

[00:08:33] There’s a strong case to say that the quality of the product that you would build would

[00:08:37] be greater if you weren’t overworking.

[00:08:41] Developers listening to the show are probably painfully familiar with deadlines.

[00:08:47] And this is simply just another form of a deadline, but it’s one that’s always looming.

[00:08:56] The constant pressure to get more done in less time can really only confer two potential

[00:09:03] benefits.

[00:09:04] And of the two, only one is potentially going to have a positive effect on you.

[00:09:11] The first, and the one that could have a positive benefit on you, is timing the market in such

[00:09:17] a way that you’re beating a competitor to the market.

[00:09:21] In other words, you need to get this particular job done, you need to get this particular

[00:09:26] feature complete and shipped into the market before someone else beats you to the punch.

[00:09:33] If they beat you, then all of the work that you’re doing is not going to fulfill its actual

[00:09:39] potential.

[00:09:40] Now, setting aside the argument that it’s likely that you could have done something

[00:09:46] to get to market sooner that didn’t involve overworking, this kind of external timing

[00:09:52] that you probably don’t have much control over that has a lot of uncertainty attached

[00:09:58] to it might be the only situation where you could actually positively affect your career

[00:10:03] by doing a bit of extra sprinting at the end of a project.

[00:10:09] In almost every other scenario, the overextension does not benefit you and almost definitely

[00:10:16] harms you and the product you’re working on.

[00:10:20] The potential benefit that I was talking about, the second potential benefit was not to you,

[00:10:26] it’s to the company that you’re working for.

[00:10:29] If the company has, whether on purpose or accidentally, created a culture where delivery

[00:10:37] is always rushed, where you’re always trying to get things done faster, then it’s possible

[00:10:43] that the company is benefiting from getting more from you than what you really signed

[00:10:47] on to give.

[00:10:48] In other words, the hypothesis of the working culture is that you’re doing more with the

[00:10:54] time that you have if you’re overworking.

[00:10:58] That’s calendar time.

[00:11:00] You can deliver more per quarter or per year if you’re working more hours.

[00:11:07] This is again the rational side of our brains that likes to treat our human side in a kind

[00:11:14] of mechanistic way.

[00:11:16] Can we deliver more?

[00:11:17] Well, do we have time?

[00:11:19] If we add more time, we can add more productivity and voila, we can deliver more.

[00:11:26] Once again, we’ve already shown that this isn’t true.

[00:11:29] We actually dip in productivity and go backwards.

[00:11:32] We start making errors as we begin to overwork.

[00:11:36] So hopefully you see the case clearly for what it is that overworking does not produce

[00:11:43] a significant benefit for your career.

[00:11:46] It typically doesn’t produce a significant benefit for your company or your actual productivity.

[00:11:53] So what does it produce?

[00:11:55] This is the worst part of the story because as you begin to overwork, you are reinforcing

[00:12:01] this culture.

[00:12:03] If you have someone in your company who was successful and they have stories of overworking,

[00:12:09] it’s easy to attribute that person’s success to their overworking.

[00:12:14] This is a cause and effect error that we’re making.

[00:12:19] Additionally, if you begin to celebrate this overworking, for example, someone stays late

[00:12:25] and everybody the next day applauds them.

[00:12:28] Someone works over the weekend and they get a special bonus for extending their time.

[00:12:34] Then the culture, whether it’s intending to or not, is encouraging future overworking.

[00:12:41] We’ve already talked about why overworking is bad, but now we’re creating a culture that

[00:12:46] doesn’t question whether overworking is bad on an ongoing basis and instead invests in

[00:12:54] encouraging that behavior further.

[00:12:57] This is a pure definition of a toxic workplace.

[00:13:02] The interesting thing is it may not feel toxic.

[00:13:05] You may feel like people are just putting in a little more effort, that they’re really

[00:13:10] committed to their work, that they’re passionate about what they’re doing, but the problem

[00:13:16] is that this goes unchecked.

[00:13:20] When this kind of behavior and demeanor towards your work goes unchecked, it can spin out

[00:13:25] of control and create situations that are, for example, inequitable.

[00:13:30] Perhaps there are people in your company who, for some obligation or another, are literally

[00:13:36] not capable of putting in extra hours.

[00:13:39] Does this mean that those people are not producing value for the company?

[00:13:44] Does this mean that they aren’t committed to their work, that they aren’t passionate

[00:13:48] about their work just because they have a different set of circumstances?

[00:13:54] Absolutely not.

[00:13:56] This is why you, as a software engineer, why you as a software engineering manager or director

[00:14:01] or VP or CTO, whoever you are that’s listening to this, you establish these boundaries not

[00:14:08] just because you want to tell people how much you care about them, not just because you

[00:14:15] have the resources to do that, but because you actually want to create a company that

[00:14:20] can sustain itself.

[00:14:23] Because you don’t want to burn out your individuals, you want them to continue working and producing

[00:14:28] value in the long run.

[00:14:31] Because you believe that the research is true, that actually overworking does not produce

[00:14:38] additional value.

[00:14:39] You commit to these boundaries not simply because you’re a humanist or because you think

[00:14:46] it’s important to have work-life balance, but because this is a successful way to run

[00:14:51] a company.

[00:14:53] This is a successful way to run your career.

[00:14:58] Overworking is not a path to success, it is a path to toxic workplace culture.

[00:15:06] And finally, it’s actually intellectually lazy.

[00:15:11] If all we do is rely on overwork to get us to the next spot, to impress our superiors,

[00:15:19] then we’re ignoring the actual outcomes.

[00:15:22] We know the outcomes suffer from overwork.

[00:15:26] It’s lazy to use overwork as a heuristic for commitment, as a heuristic for dependability,

[00:15:32] as a heuristic for productivity.

[00:15:35] Instead, we should do the hard work of finding the right things to spend our time on, prioritizing

[00:15:42] and measuring what matters.

[00:15:44] Asking people for personal sacrifices is a lazy way to identify who will be effective,

[00:15:52] who will be impactful, who will actually deliver value in their role.

[00:15:59] Overwork is a brute force algorithm for finding a path.

[00:16:06] Don’t rely on overwork.

[00:16:07] It is a lazy and toxic way to build your career.

[00:16:12] Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:16:14] I hope you understand the passion that I have for this and the backing, the research that

[00:16:21] backs this, even if there are large companies, large organizations that would directly go

[00:16:27] against this, even if they have anecdotal proof in their situations that say otherwise.

[00:16:36] I’d like to challenge you to look at both your own personal experiences, trust your

[00:16:42] intuition and go and look at the data.

[00:16:46] These are the three ways that you can go and actually research this for yourself.

[00:16:51] Don’t trust me on this.

[00:16:53] Go and verify what I’m saying.

[00:16:56] Overwork is not the path to success.

[00:16:58] Thanks so much for listening.

[00:17:00] If you enjoyed this, if you think somebody else needs to hear this, this is not a typical

[00:17:04] ask on this show, but please share this episode.

[00:17:08] This episode is highly applicable.

[00:17:11] It’s particularly relevant right now, and I hope you will share it if you think somebody

[00:17:15] needs to hear it.

[00:17:17] Otherwise, if you would like to continue listening to episodes like this, hearing content like

[00:17:22] this, subscribe to whatever podcasting app you’re currently using, and if you want to

[00:17:27] continue the conversation, head over to our Discord community.

[00:17:30] That’s developert.com slash Discord.

[00:17:33] Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea.

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