Does it partially explain the high failure rate of tech start ups?
SpaceX prides itself on its Silicon Valley culture. I hope they’re not driving people to the point at which they have an accident.
19 thoughts on “Sleep Deprivation”
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The military prides themselves on the ability to operate for 20 hour days while in the field.
They use a lot of energy drinks and Provigil. This is probably the source of a lot of poor thinking
in the Pentagon.
“In the field” =/= “Pentagon.”
HQ depends upon field reports and suggestions from the field.
Do you have anything relevant to say regarding startups?
I’m pretty sure my years of long hours led to my burnout as a software developer, there were times when I was first starting out when I would pull 80 hour weeks (for salary, I was a young idiot), and on one project I pulled a 36 hour day. When I hit my late 30’s I found myself less and less motivated to do any kind of software development, and now in my 50’s it’s much more interesting to work development support, setting up development automation, and debugging system failures.
The worst thing about long hours, even if there wasn’t any brain damage, is that the brain just doesn’t process information as quickly, kind of analogous to muscles that have been working too long with lactic acid buildup getting weaker. Like you, I hope some of the SpaceX crew are grown-up enough to not let their teams get carried away with overwork.
As an aside, if this kind of working for long hours is harmful, think of what doctors go through in residency…
I’ve worked in several startups and I very much doubt sleep deprivation plays a major role in startup failure. Turns out telling the good ideas from the bad ones (without the benefit of hindsight) is actually really hard. And even if you get really lucky and have the right idea at the right time, turns out executing is even harder. Of the dozens of things that kill startups, sleep deprivation just doesn’t rank that high on the list.
I tend to agree with you. I think one of the biggest challenges is the tendency to entertain time wasters who can string together an alluring line of bullshit, which is why every successful entrepreneur I’ve ever met has a very low tolerance for people who can’t “shoot straight”. Honestly, if you can’t understand someone’s idea in the first 20 minutes, move on. They might be a genius, but they might also just be a time sink.
The place where this is of most concern is in the hospitals, where intern and resident doctors are required to work 24 hours straight. I have no doubt that this kills people.
I also doubt that the military prides itself on soldiers being able to function effectively for 20 hours. The best sleep deprivation data available came from the Army, measuring the drop in effectiveness of soldiers as a function of nightly sleep time. The verdict was that anything less than 8 hours a night causes a precipitous drop in effectiveness in every human function.
It’s pretty common for elite units to train for operating in surge mode for extended periods. In Navy SEAL training, there’s Hell Week where candidates are pushed extremely hard for 5 1/2 days with little to no sleep. The Army Rangers used to say, “Learn what it’s like to get 8 hours of sleep…in a week.” Every Marine recruit has to go through the Crucible test before graduating boot camp. Other elite units do similar things during selection and training because when you’re really hanging yourself out there, you may not get an opportunity to get some sleep until you’re extracted.
There are limits to how long you can continue to operate like that, perhaps a week is at the upper end of the range. But it can be done but not without degradation in performance even by the most elite warriors. I’ve read that at the end of Hell Week, SEAL candiates are locked in their rooms until they’ve gotten several hours of sleep so they don’t hurt themselves or someone else.
yes DoD, and particularly Army has done wonderful studies on sleep and human performance,
I’ve met and talked with some of their top sleep scientists. They had a great sleep lab at Walter Reed.
The problem is culture, without standing orders requiring the personnel to get 6 hours / night, and a net of
60/week, and people getting cashiered for making mistakes while sleep deprived, it’s just going to
become a “Quien es mas macho” thing. (that’s an old SNL reference, for the casual reader).
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/superman/2013/05/sleep_deprivation_in_the_military_modafinil_and_the_arms_race_for_soldiers.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident
All,
Sleep deprivation is a large and growing problem that is finally starting to draw general attention. Back in 2009 I wrote a piece on my blog about it. The piece was about Michael Griffin, but it did discuss his sleep practices. You can find said piece on my blog as An Interesting Side Comment by Michael Griffin.
I have heard Elon Musk works 100 hours per week and demands that his employees work at least 80 hours per week. If true, this is not good. Musk also talks about retiring on Mars. I don’t share his enthusiasm for that goal. I wonder if we will be able to even get a living human to Mars in this century.
This is a problem at SpaceX. But it may not come into play for some time. I’ve heard several people talking down the working conditions at SpaceX. Long hours are fine if you are young or for short spurts. I mean I’ve worked 12hour days, 6 days a week, for a few months, but I was in my early 30’s, and even then it wiped me out. It took me at least a month to fully recover (and nearly cost me my marriage). You might be able to develop a short turnaround product like a phone or webpage, this way. But if you want to still be making rockets 20 years from now, then you might not want to burn out your engineers. I’ve seen photos of SpaceX employees, not a gray hair in sight. It is fine to start a company with youth and energy but eventually those guys get old. Consistent 60+ hour weeks, are a sign that you are a flash in the pan not a long term commitment. I’ve worked at places with high risk operations. They had is simple “10 Hours: You’re Out” policy. If you’d been there for more than 10 hours your boss sent you home or you (and he) would get a safety violation. It didn’t matter if you were a janitor, engineer or CEO. I don’t think it ever slowed us down.
The other more important operation I’d like to see operate on more sleep is Doctors. When it’s MY life on the line I don’t want my Doc, Nurse, or Pharmacist to be operating under military combat conditions.
Interestingly, a lot of high tech companies in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and other asian tech meccas never see long hours as an issue. I’ve worked with a lot of big tech OEMs there, and taking a nap on the office desk is a thing of pride, not something to be frowned upon. Basically, the rule is : you never leave office before your manager does. People regularly work 12 hour days, and at crunch times which in a normal product development cycle last for months, they almost never leave the office. And they are proud of it. This is the case both in big, established company cultures and also in small outfits.
My good buddy worked in Tokyo for a few years, and his Japanese wife basically made them move back to Europe due to the insane working culture.
Sleep deprivation may be correlated with startup failures, but the causality link is insubstantial.
AFAIK this is not true in Japan anymore. Many companies close the office at a certain time to prevent this from happening after a lot of lawsuits and suicides a couple decades back. In fact the trend is for a lot of young people not to take full time jobs and live on part time jobs with low incomes. This is a backlash against the traditional Japanese work culture and people prefer to have more spare time rather than income.
AFAIK this is still true in South Korea though.
Its definitely 100% true in companies like Sony, Panasonic etc. and no, age is not really a factor at all.
I work with these guys on a regular basis and actually have spent a ton of time over there in offices and labs over the last decade.
And subway suicides and people sleeping in trains standing up is common.
Yes south Korea is more extreme, as basically families are entirely living in Samsung/LG complex and never leave it during normal work week
I must join in the chorus on getting enough sleep, though there *is* an interesting new data set to talk about.
It is becoming apparent that the brain cleanses itself during sleep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system
“…..the changes in efficiency of CSF–ISF exchange between the awake and sleeping brain were caused by expansion and contraction of the extracellular space, which increased by ~60% in the sleeping brain to promote clearance of interstitial wastes such as amyloid beta. On the basis of these findings, they hypothesized that the restorative properties of sleep may be linked to increased glymphatic clearance of metabolic waste products produced by neural activity in the awake brain.”
Lack of sleep starts to look worse and worse, especially as people age, and have more problems with inflammation. If that inflammation includes the brain, then sleep becomes ever less effective. A friend has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and the one thing that partially helps make sleep effective for him in restoring waking clarity is anti-inflammatories. Unfortunately, these cannot be used often, because of side effects.
As noted by others above, young people with no inflammatory problems may tolerate low sleep for some time, but may be storing up trouble for themselves for later. Many things cleansed in sleep are highly reactive, like amyloid beta, and the longer they sit in the tissues in larger than usual amounts, the more damage.
I am a type 1 diabetic, and I can tell you that highly reactive chemicals like blood glucose, or like amyloid beta, are damaging your tissues every minute they are there. They are necessary, yes, but they react whenever they can, not just when we want them to do so.
A friend has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and the one thing that partially helps make sleep effective for him in restoring waking clarity is anti-inflammatories. Unfortunately, these cannot be used often, because of side effects.
I used to take a small dose of NSAIDs before going to bed when I was in college when it was exam time for this reason. Your friend probably needs to go to a doctor for allergy testing and doing an X-ray of his nasal cavities though. It may simply be that he is not getting enough rest because his brain isn’t being oxygenated properly.
When doing flight test, every responsible company enforces maximum crew duty days for all test personnel, whether vehicle crew, vehicle maintenance, control room engineers, etc. if you don’t show up with the right people with the right amount of crew rest, you don’t fly. I would be truly shocked if SpaceX doesn’t follow those rules.
In development though…I know plenty of old-line engineering managers that feel that to truly excel, you must basically give up your life. I’ve heard stories of the “700 Club” during development of the B-2, denoting people who worked at least seven straight weeks of at least 100 hours on the job per week. Interestingly, the younger engineers that I work with are much more protective of their free time, but will still perform the overtime heroics if truly necessary to meet a schedule they believe in. Responding to management chain-jerking, not so much.
I used to put in long hours, but draw the line when management starts expecting it on a regular basis.