<i>&gt; The sad thing about the metrics-driven performance culture the Times describes at Amazon is studies show overworked people perform worse.</i><p>I&#x27;m glad the author made this point and backed it up with a reference. It reaffirms something I already believed (whether on the basis of personal experience, something I&#x27;d read before, or mere wishful thinking, I couldn&#x27;t tell you so the reference helps). It is a sensible constraint that came to mind in reading all the tech workplace horror stories that the Times&#x27;s Amazon piece inspired.<p>While reading that Times article I checked out the link to their 14 sacred principles. The funny thing was that I agreed with most of them. They were all ideas that occurred to me over the course of my career working independently, with small companies, and especially now in corp.<p>The one thing that was missing, I felt, was a Rule #15: Never work more than 8 hours a day.<p>Without it, it&#x27;s no surprise you end up burnt out or living in the sort of dystopian workplace documented in the Times&#x27; Amazon article.<p>But then I suppose, as has been pointed before, long work hours are more about cultural signaling and penny-wise-pound-foolish accounting than really improving productivity.