There was a time when people used to glorify working till late hours, not taking a day off, gulping down their 14th cup of coffee for the day to finish a presentation and not having a family life. Thankfully, this work culture has been recognised as toxic and many have been advocating for work-life balance.
Hadi Partovi is the CEO of the education nonprofit Code.org. He had joined Microsoft at the age of 22 around 25 years back. He was part of the team working on developing Internet Explorer, reports NDTV.
While nostalgically talking about his time working on IE, he mentioned that he ate all his meals at the office, held fun tournaments at 2 AM, and added that there were a few divorces and broken marriages while the employees worked like their “lives depended on it”. Have a look at the tweets here:
I had joined the IE team a year earlier, at age 22. The team was only 9 people and trying desperately to grow as quickly as possible. I remember one question I was asked in every interview: “How soon can you start?”
— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 14, 2021
The Internet Explorer team was the hardest-working team I’ve ever been on. And I’ve worked at multiple start-ups. It was a sprint, not a marathon. We ate every meal at the office. We often held foosball tournaments at 2 am, just to get the team energy back up to continue working!
— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 14, 2021
Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that even at a 20,000-person company, you can get a team of 100 people to work like their lives depend on it.
— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 14, 2021
This part didn’t go down well with many people online. While some slammed him for glorifying toxic work culture, a few others claimed that working for long hours only highlights a team’s “inefficiency” and “mismanagement”.
Wow, imagine sacrificing your employees marriages for a piece of software that poorly portrayed badly designed static webpages.
Wasn’t worth it man. Not remotely.
— Advanced Persistent Talker (Jack Baylor) (@2wiredSecurity) August 15, 2021
“Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But…” There are no buts. This was the problem with 20th century working life generally. It’s not something to be proud of.
— Dave Nicolette (@davenicolette) August 15, 2021
Am lucky my dad and then my first boss instilled into me that working beyond the assigned hours is a sign of inefficiency and bad discipline. If you can’t do it within the 40 hours in a week then you are either not being efficiently productive or you need more power.
— Historical Facts (@histofactors) August 15, 2021
This is an awful story, with an awful outcome. Only the moral (which you missed completely) is worth anything. Don’t let your self get exploited folks, sometimes midnight oil needs burning, but if that’s the norm and not the exception, run. Things will ONLY go down hill.
— Mike (@TechFinnell) August 15, 2021
No matter how great the pitch, remember that no software is worth sacrificing your family and health. https://t.co/NGE1jmLOow
— Renato Valdés Olmos (@renn) August 16, 2021
When we tell you to avoid companies that make demands like this on your time? This is why. People lost their families for a product pretty much everyone hates https://t.co/6Cyha6Zec3
— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) August 16, 2021
Painted as heroic.
Destruction of families due to work demanding you stay to play football at 2 AM to have more energy to keep working.
Microsoft culture was always toxic & definitely not inclusive.
To work like your life depends on it to me means work takes a back seat to family https://t.co/hda5uA8CIl— Katie Moussouris (she/her) is fully vaccinated (@k8em0) August 16, 2021
After facing flak, Hadi Partovi made a few clarifications. He said that nobody was forced to work against their will and that most of them were in their 20’s and that they chose to work their hardest.
Footnote to my mention of divorce (which I don’t glorify, but to note repercussions, and I must admit I exaggerated): there were 2 divorces, both in leadership, one due to gender reassignment surgery.
— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 15, 2021
This wasn’t a toxic pressure cooker of working against one’s will. The leadership worked hardest of all. Most of us were in our early twenties and it was a launch point for many careers.
— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 15, 2021
Also, I wasn’t the boss then, I was 22. I wasn’t exploited, I chose to work my hardest and loved my managers. As an immigrant who grew up poor and wanted to advance quickly and pay off college debt, it was absolutely what I wanted.
— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 15, 2021
I mentioned divorces etc not to glorify but precisely to say hard work has repercussions. But these were absolutely repercussions we chose for ourselves.
— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 15, 2021
Clearly my poor word choice gave a very falsely exaggerated impression. A recent dad who worked too hard chose to take a break to focus on family, and everybody supported him fully. The one boss who divorced was 25, no kids. Another boss got divorced but it was ~10 years later.
— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 15, 2021
Considering how young this team was, the main repercussion wasn’t on families, it was self-imposed sleep loss, which is bad for health. (Had I known this tweet would blow up I would have written that bit differently!)
— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 15, 2021
What are your views on this topic? Tell us!