Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide • Hacker News Board

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#61

Post by snapplebobapple » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 8:14 PM UTC

n_ary wrote: post #58

chollida1 wrote: post #2

I think this is more about manual labour but I'll take the opposite side when it comes to white collar work that working more hours can be better early on in your career. When I was just out of school and in my early 20s I worked as much as I could, I probably did close to 12 hours days in my 20s. I think I probably averaged an all nighter a month for a few years and worked at least one day on weekends and I loved ev…

> I said yes to almost all the work I could get. My bosses loved me and I got raises/promotions faster than anyone else. That culture of “hardwork = reward” is long behind us. Instead of being the “guy who reliably gets things done whatever you throw at them”, I advise on saving one’s sanity and avoid potential burnout by finding a friendly place where they enjoy and have power to make decisions(yes, place exists whe…

That's kind of true. You need to find a smaller company that is growing fast for hard work to translate into reward.I've seen hard workers kill it many times in the right,s maller up and coming company and I've seen hard workers die in bigger, less caring places. It's more about whether management values you the incremental value you bring because it's growing fast or if management is worried about your incremental cost because they already have a large enough position to have market power and are now optimizing for somethign other than growth (i.e. profit maximization by exploiting labor monopsony, minimum spend to defend the market power, etc).

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#62

Post by tmtvl » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 8:27 PM UTC

anonzzzies wrote: post #16

tokai wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We concluded that working long hours is associated with depressive state, anxiety, sleep condition, and coronary heart disease. https://www.sjweh.fi/download.php?abstract_id=3388&file_nro=... >The evidence that long working hours are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease is accumulating and suggests a small risk. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11886-018-1049-9 >[...] working long hours is associated w…

> >[...] working long hours is associated with an elevated risk of early cardiovascular death and hospital-treated infections before age 65. But that sounds more like stress, depression and burnout which releases cortisol which causes inflammation right? If you work 12+ hours/day with 0 stress and only enjoyment, will the outcome be the same?

Sounds like an interesting experiment, though probably impossible to set up.

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#63

Post by marcusverus » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 8:37 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #41

jonas21 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing: working hard doesn't just benefit your employer. It also benefits you because you'll learn new skills rapidly. If your employer doesn't recognize the value you're adding, don't just sit around hoping for a raise someday. Use your new skills to find one who will. At least in my experience (as an engineer in the US), this is relatively easy and is considered a normal thing to do in one's career.

"It also benefits you because you'll learn new skills rapidly." Only if those skills are in wide demand. Moving companies can be risky and complicated depending on one's personal and family issues.

> Only if those skills are in wide demand.

Of course it's not worth spending extra time to learn skills that aren't in demand. This would, by definition, be a dead-end job. If you have a growth mindset like GP, having a dead-end job doesn't mean that "hard work doesn't pay off". It just means that the 'hard work' should go into looking/training/applying for a job/career with more learning opportunities/upside.

> Moving companies can be risky and complicated depending on one's personal and family issues.

"Edge cases exist" is a given. It's still good advice in general.

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#64

Post by Clubber » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

switchbak wrote: post #45

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious take. I would think that "a cushy office", which normally means sitting for very long periods, would directly lead to many of these issues over the long term. Indeed, I've seen many research reports and articles over the past decade declaring "sitting is the new smoking".

Sitting is pretty bad, yes. And it's also incredibly common - which is why it gets the press it does. Combined with a sedentary lifestyle, it's a recipe for serious and predictably poor health outcomes. But it isn't half as hard as extended periods of hard physical labour, day after day, especially as you grow older. Doubly so if you don't have proper medical care, and your employer doesn't tolerate sick days. These…

I dunno, is getting exercise all day at work better or worse for your health than sitting down all day at work? Naturally hazardous jobs like coal mines excluded.

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#65

Post by Clubber » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 8:43 PM UTC

n_ary wrote: post #58

chollida1 wrote: post #2

I think this is more about manual labour but I'll take the opposite side when it comes to white collar work that working more hours can be better early on in your career. When I was just out of school and in my early 20s I worked as much as I could, I probably did close to 12 hours days in my 20s. I think I probably averaged an all nighter a month for a few years and worked at least one day on weekends and I loved ev…

> I said yes to almost all the work I could get. My bosses loved me and I got raises/promotions faster than anyone else. That culture of “hardwork = reward” is long behind us. Instead of being the “guy who reliably gets things done whatever you throw at them”, I advise on saving one’s sanity and avoid potential burnout by finding a friendly place where they enjoy and have power to make decisions(yes, place exists whe…

>That culture of “hardwork = reward” is long behind us.

No it's certainly not. I think it's a convenient excuse to not work hard though. People talk. I always get asked, "we're hiring, you know anybody?" I would recommend someone who works hard and never mention someone who doesn't. I had a brilliant but lazy colleague who I've never recommended to anybody.

Every job I've had in the last 25 or so years is because I worked hard and someone noticed and recommended me when they switched jobs or knew someone who was hiring. My first job out of college I had to do the recruiter/interview thing. I worked hard. Every job since has been an offer over lunch.

Working hard matters a great deal.

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#66

Post by anonzzzies » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 9:11 PM UTC

CP3f6kMA wrote: post #51

anonzzzies wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> >[...] working long hours is associated with an elevated risk of early cardiovascular death and hospital-treated infections before age 65. But that sounds more like stress, depression and burnout which releases cortisol which causes inflammation right? If you work 12+ hours/day with 0 stress and only enjoyment, will the outcome be the same?

I'd wager that most workers doing 12 hour days aren't enjoying themselves.

Sure, but if they were, would that not result in another outcome?

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#67

Post by potatopatch » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 9:34 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

Etheryte wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > Of the 2.96 million deaths, 2.6 million are due to diseases derived from employment such as circulatory problems, cancer, and respiratory diseases. The remaining 330,000 are related to work accidents. It's hardly surprising a cushy office spares of you of most of these issues. I'm happy to hear your career has been a successful one, but what you describe is completely unrelated to the submitted ar…

Curious take. I would think that "a cushy office", which normally means sitting for very long periods, would directly lead to many of these issues over the long term. Indeed, I've seen many research reports and articles over the past decade declaring "sitting is the new smoking".

Nonetheless, the article's examples sound like clearly attributable job specific cancer risks. Cancer decades later from lots of longterm sitting are harder to account and probably not included.

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#68

Post by supertimor » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

anonzzzies wrote: post #66

CP3f6kMA wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wager that most workers doing 12 hour days aren't enjoying themselves.

Sure, but if they were, would that not result in another outcome?

As someone who really enjoys their job and also typically works 10-12+ hrs a day full time, I can tell you that the lack of sleep and lack of work/life balance really adds up. It’s just not very sustainable long term and requires entire weekends to recover from and inevitably leads to burnout.

Because even with loving your job, there are still only 24 hrs in a day, and spending most of those working leaves very little time to take care of anything outside of your work life. So even if I may not be stressed out over my job, trying to get everything else in my life done in between work can cause huge amounts of stress.

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#69

Post by jncfhnb » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 10:00 PM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #2

I think this is more about manual labour but I'll take the opposite side when it comes to white collar work that working more hours can be better early on in your career. When I was just out of school and in my early 20s I worked as much as I could, I probably did close to 12 hours days in my 20s. I think I probably averaged an all nighter a month for a few years and worked at least one day on weekends and I loved ev…

I did good too doing the opposite of this advice.

I think it sounds nutty.

Re: Working more than 55 hours a week kills 750k people a year worldwide

#70

Post by supertimor » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 10:03 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #5

If we worked zero hours, then zero people would die from working. See also: "we lowered the speed limit and get X fewer deaths on the road".

Yeah, this logic is seriously flawed.

For this analogy to work you would need to say “if people drove zero hours, then zero people would die from driving.”

No one is suggesting that people stop working and it’s pretty disingenuous to imply that.