Two thoughts on how sleep deprivation directly impacts hackers and people working in the tech industry:
1. Glorifying low sleep through all-nighters, perpetual crunch time, etc., has become part and parcel of startup life for generations [0]. (I've always wondered if it's a carryover from the particularly collegiate nature of software culture [1]). There's been some backlash against founders and the like boasting about operating on low sleep, as part of the general backlash against poor work-life balances in tech. Hackers need to push back against the suboptimal performance and system degradation that chronic sleep deprivation creates.
2. The tech industry, known for its whimsical benefits and presumptions to think differently and be unconventional, could explore allowing employees to take nap breaks. So far it looks like Google and Cisco are among the handful of large tech companies to allow employees to nap [2], but one wonders how many employees with poor sleep hygiene actually do take advantage of it, and whenever those articles pop up it always seems like ads for sleep pods. Yet siestas and naps are something that have been allowed in cultures around the world, even in work-heavy East Asia [3].
1. Glorifying low sleep through all-nighters, perpetual crunch time, etc., has become part and parcel of startup life for generations [0]. (I've always wondered if it's a carryover from the particularly collegiate nature of software culture [1]). There's been some backlash against founders and the like boasting about operating on low sleep, as part of the general backlash against poor work-life balances in tech. Hackers need to push back against the suboptimal performance and system degradation that chronic sleep deprivation creates.
2. The tech industry, known for its whimsical benefits and presumptions to think differently and be unconventional, could explore allowing employees to take nap breaks. So far it looks like Google and Cisco are among the handful of large tech companies to allow employees to nap [2], but one wonders how many employees with poor sleep hygiene actually do take advantage of it, and whenever those articles pop up it always seems like ads for sleep pods. Yet siestas and naps are something that have been allowed in cultures around the world, even in work-heavy East Asia [3].
[0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11299145
[2] http://fortune.com/2011/08/18/why-companies-are-cozying-up-t...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/japanese-firms... http://mashable.com/2017/07/12/capsule-beds-beijing/#ohlpi6K...