The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

> it would be counterproductive for my co-founders to work at

> 9AM (just like it would be inefficient for me to be

> working at 2AM).

Here in The Netherlands, this is a tough sell. It's hard to come by a company that REALLY implements this policy. I've heard the "Just put in your 8 hours" and it often will have the side-clause "But we would like you to put them in as we do".

Even at my previous company, where we were not customer-bound, and most of our contacts were in the U.S. It made sense I'd come in later, and work later.

But they didn't see it that way, and got in a lot of fights with management about it. They didn't "see" all the hours I often put in late nights at home, only the next day I might got in the office with a full day without conversions ..

There were a few people who would make jokes or "annoyed complaints" to management about me coming in a few hours later than them. Being a misfit is often met with ill repute.

  Man, being at work at 11:00 AM instead of 9 made all the difference for me:

- I didn't get upset when I had to talk to contacts in the U.S. when they'd come online around 17:00-18:00 or discussing technical implementations even later.

- Our peak hours were U.S. targeted even, so I was having NewRelic sessions every some other night around 23:00-02:00.

Obviously, every next day when there were server/app outages, I would tell about my 3 hour fit to optimize query x by a factor 100. But in the end these moments seemed to be lost to management quite easily. They will remember the times you will come in late though..

I was putting in 50 hours in a 40 hour week.

For these reasons I now freelance :) I enjoy working in start-ups and with people in general. I think a lot of talent is left on the table by companies because they can't adapt to how developers are generally wired a bit different than other people ..

Some people need strict guidelines to be able to trust they put in the 8 hours. For me that comes naturally with having fun and sense of responsibility and being trusted.

Henry Ford reportedly had a couple of intuitions about his workers also being consumers of his products, so now every time you look at any aspect of the consumerist society, some people will assume that Ford must have thought of that.

Also, you can't talk about socialism in polite society, right? So the whole history of worker-rights movements in XIX and XX century is "forgotten" and concepts are shifted to the next available historical subject.

This is why the practice of historical research is so important, so progressive, and so underfunded. Whoever controls the past, controls the future.

Television to me is the least distracting of them all.