Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack • Hacker News Board

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#151

Post by hintymad » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

away314159265 wrote: post #63

We are living in a culture of overwork because work (esp. desk work) has lost all boundaries. I'm in academia and had been idealizing overwork for quite a while ("the noble goal of devoting your life to science!"), but now have to fend off becoming cynical about the culture (increasingly after a parent with a blue collar-company died shortly before their well-earned retirement, stress played a role here). I have met…

Cal Newport has been advocating Deep Work for years. He himself has been practicing it and was able to work 8 to 5 for 5 days a week, while still managing to publish high-quality papers to get his tenure and publishing books on self-improvement. Would his method help people working in academia?

Working in industry is a different matter, though, especially for those in a big company. Senior engineers spend most in meetings, while still need to find time to write docs, building prototypes, diagnosing ops issues, and of course learning/deep diving technologies. I'm not sure if there's any solution to such problem except for such engineers to leave for a smaller company, where one is expected to build instead of being a "force multiplier".

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#152

Post by treeman79 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

drclau wrote: post #97

user-the-name wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally, HN people are more educated and better trained in logical thinking The main effect this has is that HN people have an overinflated sense of their own competence, and are more blind to their own ignorance.

I do not disagree, and I hoped it was already visible from my initial comment. But, on average, you probably still get better results from HN crowd than from other crowds, in matters that require knowledge and logical thinking. Do you disagree?

For esoteric topics, HN can’t be beat. For specific topics, like medical issues, Reddit or Facebook are often amazing.

Have condition X. Doctors say Y, which doesn’t actually help.

Support groups will have a long list of things to try. Questions to ask doctors lifestyle changes. Up to date info on diagnosis/ treatment.

What tests should be run, how to interpret tests.

Medications side effects doctors don’t know about.

I always assumed a Facebook medical support group would be all nonsense. Instead it’s got tons of people who have spent years researching and experimenting, and have amazing advise to give.

Simple example. Was going to the bathroom 10+ times a night. Years of doctors were zero help.

Someone suggested aloe Vera freeze dried pills. 3 days later I was sleeping through the night.

Medical community is both amazing and full of major gaps.

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#153

Post by treeman79 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

synaesthesisx wrote: post #29

meheleventyone wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the heart attack itself was caused by a thrombosis that fully blocked the left coronary artery. It actually came on whilst I was doing my morning swim. Results wise I got lucky and got fixed with a stent early enough that there doesn’t seem to be any (noticeable) damage to the heart. Right now the doctors don’t know precisely why I got this clot. Other than having it I’m in good health with no signs of chronic…

Is there any chance you were exposed to COVID at any point? I know there’s an association between COVID-19 and clotting events (even for otherwise asymptomatic individuals)!

{Anecdote warning}

I have clotting issues. Genetic problem. Factor 5 + autoimmune.

I get a lot of symptoms if I lapse on blood thinners, so can easily tell when I’m having a mini stroke.

Covid dramatically worsened the situation. That was six months ago.

Before I could go off blood thinners for 3 days before symptoms started.

Now if I’m late by six hours problems start.

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#154

Post by tomcam » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #119

tomcam wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love those extremely varied anecdotes, esp and tragically the courthouse one. What was the nature of the harassment?

Very rare kind of ~boss, old timer mechanics who had a military style of management, which I don't mind as long as you don't lie, but he started accusing me of shit. And with his persona you'd quickly feel gutted every time he speaks to you. It was extremely petty stuff like not finding screwdrivers but he made it a humiliating session and insisted that you did a wrong job. In reality it was an open warehouse and peo…

Those are both just painful to hear about. Sorry.

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#155

Post by avgDev » Mon, May 17, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #76

lnsru wrote: post #12

I would differentiate between “working” and “sitting in the office”. My grandfather was a passionate carpenter. His workweek was always at least 60 hours. Sourcing wood, visiting clients, organizing everything, etc. He was in good shape and died at 92 years age. Being forced to sit in the office 45 hours a week I don’t think that I reach age above 60 years. This sitting whole day in the noisy environment was destroyi…

I have a few anecdotes like that: - 39h/week at a truck dismantling warehouse (very heavy duty stuff) I was fresh like a dolphin (was doing pushups during pauses to get ready for the next shift, pretty telling), had to leave after harassment, missed that job a lot. - part time gig as morning newspaper delivery, couldn't be easier on paper.. couldn't last more than 2 months due to very peculiar stress that driving and…

I can add to this:

-server at a restaurant crappy bosses, crappy work environment, many awful interactions with customers, terrible pay, 0 benefits

-full time auto body painter - hard work, mixing chemicals all day can be extremely dangerous to lungs, pay was low but I enjoyed it

-sales @ verizon decent pay, hostile regional manager, constant push to improve sales and sell more data plans(few years ago), quite stressful in general as the 2008 crash destroyed our sales and few months later i was laid off

-installing siding lasted one day, turns out I hate heights and people that work at this company had little to no care about safety

-machine operator at a manufacturing company, one of the crappiest things I have done, brain numbing 8-4, awful on the body, after injury I was unable to lift heavy so went on disability for a while

-software dev stimulates my mind and I learn new stuff, pays the most, my work environment is decent and I have been remote for over a year, boss respects me and company is very flexible. Best job in my life.

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#156

Post by bdefore » Mon, May 17, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

philmcp wrote: post #33

In years to come we will look down on current working conditions in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. As a step in the right direction, I believe that most jobs should be offered on either 4 days (80% salary) or 5 day (100% salary) contracts. On this topic, I recently built https://4dayweek.io - Software Jobs with a better work / life balance

Such agreements are common in Switzerland, for example. I'm in the US where you can imagine it's harder for a US company to make the math work due to ponying up for health care costs per salaried employee. Anyone care to weigh in from companies where this is commonplace?

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#157

Post by Siira » Mon, May 17, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #151

away314159265 wrote: post #63

We are living in a culture of overwork because work (esp. desk work) has lost all boundaries. I'm in academia and had been idealizing overwork for quite a while ("the noble goal of devoting your life to science!"), but now have to fend off becoming cynical about the culture (increasingly after a parent with a blue collar-company died shortly before their well-earned retirement, stress played a role here). I have met…

Cal Newport has been advocating Deep Work for years. He himself has been practicing it and was able to work 8 to 5 for 5 days a week, while still managing to publish high-quality papers to get his tenure and publishing books on self-improvement. Would his method help people working in academia? Working in industry is a different matter, though, especially for those in a big company. Senior engineers spend most in mee…

This is very hard to implement.

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#158

Post by admissionsguy » Mon, May 17, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

satysin wrote: post #55

admissionsguy wrote: post #35

> The research found that working 55 hours or more a week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with a working week of 35 to 40 hours. That is a risk I'm willing to take, I'm afraid. To put it in context, according to Google search infobox, "The global lifetime risk of stroke is approximately 25% starting at the age of 25", so the risk jumps from 2…

> That is a risk I'm willing to take, I'm afraid. Fair enough, it is your life after all :) I do have a question though - What are you doing with that extra 15 hours of work per week that justifies a 9% increase in the chance of stroke or heart attack?

According to the first result from Google [1], men who died of stroke lost 11.4% of their lifespan on average. Using figures form my post above, an average person working 55 hours will lose 3.87% of lifespan due to stroke compared to 2.85% for a person working "normal" hours.

With life expectancy of 82 years, it's a difference of about 300 days (and, statistically, these will be the lower quality days at the end of life) - in exchange for over 20,000 extra productive hours over 30 years, i.e. for ability to become world-class at two more things. Well yes, that is worth it, without a question.

To answer your question, I have just finished client work for the year, will attempt to bootstrap a company now. Which itself is just means to another goal. I would sacrifice so much more than 300 days for it..

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33406864/

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#159

Post by watwut » Mon, May 17, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

drclau wrote: post #125

watwut wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it primary does instead is to disseminate feel good assumptions. Because the people don't state them as assumptions, they claim them to be facts. The conversation does not lead to corrections often enough in programming and business unrelated topics. That is fairly normal, group of people talking about something they dont know much about is not supposed to randomly pivot to correct conclusions. But, HN is unique…

I take it you are also uniquely convinced that you are superior in this regard, then. :) But here's an honest question: why are you on HN, then? Sure, it's a decent source of tech&related news. But there's no reason for you to spend time reading and writing comments, if you truly believe it's as bad as you say.

It is light tech adjacent news with a taste of drama and arguing, but not too much drama. Because I wait for tests to run and want to idle kill time. Cause I am procastinating.

I use it same way as reddit, basically. Except this don't sends notifications so it is less pushy.

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#160

Post by ex_amazon_sde » Mon, May 17, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

user-the-name wrote: post #92

drclau wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, HN people are more educated and better trained in logical thinking (most being engineers of some sort or in other professions that require a bit more thinking). Hence, the GP's expectation, I assume. However, this is just my impression from reading comments here for a few years. I may as well be wrong. Smart people do have their own blindspots, too. Edit: I noticed you were downvoted, and I disagree with t…

> Generally, HN people are more educated and better trained in logical thinking The main effect this has is that HN people have an overinflated sense of their own competence, and are more blind to their own ignorance.

I found http://n-gate.com/ helpful.