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A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

jeffarchibald.ca

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Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#91

Post by SEJeff »

rickhanlonii wrote: post #52
sergiotapia wrote: post #12

I work 40 hours a week at maximum - most weeks I work about 34 to 38 hours. You 80 hours a week guys, what the hell are you doing with your time? Are you divorced? No family? No friends? Is 'disrupting' an industry really that important to you?

My name is Rick and I'm a 80 hour a week guy. I'm 26, single, and have no pets. I have a family and friends, but I'm very transparent about my work habits and priorities as a full-stack engineer. Being so young, I see myself as training to be the person I want to be in the future. The best programmers in the world worked at it relentlessly. Sure, there are variances in the amount that they all worked, and some did it…

The world needs more hard working dreamers like you. If you're able, please keep it up

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#92

Post by erichocean »

ksk wrote: post #40

This article doesn't pass the smell test. There is nothing magical about 40 hours per week. 60 hours is just as arbitrary as 40. Also, it probably originated when people did actual physical labor, and so it wont apply to dev work. Countless people in the sciences have toiled day and night to bring about great discoveries - and that's a good thing. Question: Do non-software people (I'm thinking Scientists, Mathematici…

Filmmaking is an area where you work a lot. And then you don't, because you're trying to get work.

But when you're working, to say that it takes over your life is a bit of an understatement. The director is typically putting in 18 hours a day for shoots that can last for months. The crew gets 1 day out of 7 off, but not the director (and the crews typically also work long days—overtime is rampant).

It's a frigging marathon to get the footage in the can, and yet, despite nobody really liking that aspect by itself, almost without exception the end result is to want to do it again.

The same is true for almost everything else surrounding the making of a film. Only the actual screenwriting is done on a relatively slow schedule.

Anyway...

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#94

Post by jimbobimbo »

drdeadringer wrote: post #34
AutoCorrect wrote: post #9

I had a boss tell me at an end of year meeting that another employee had worked 1000 more hours that year than I had. I looked my boss in the eye and said "then he's doing something wrong". Consistent 60 hour weeks is a failure of management and of the employee to better manage their time. Especially if you are salaried.

How did your boss respond?

It doesn't matter, really. If you are at the stage when you have talks like that with your boss, it's clear that you're ready for a change. Be it changing the way your work is managed or changing companies altogether.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#95

Post by claudius »

pizza234 wrote: post #23
sergiotapia wrote: post #12

I work 40 hours a week at maximum - most weeks I work about 34 to 38 hours. You 80 hours a week guys, what the hell are you doing with your time? Are you divorced? No family? No friends? Is 'disrupting' an industry really that important to you?

The problem comes from the culture; certain cultures identify success as the core value of a person, so people tend to identify their identity with the product of their work. It's more than some "important"; work is how people [with this attitude] values theirselves. Keep in mind that if you grow up pushed to be the best at school and then at work, there's nothing really meaningful in life outside those areas. That's…

So, err, what other metric than work output (be it products, ideas, bright kids or whatever else you might think of) are you using as the ‘core value’ of a person?

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#96

Post by mattmanser »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #82
Derbasti wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics tell a different story. There were numerous studies on productivity relative to many measures. Then again, you know, you might be a actual snowflake...

[Citation needed] I've gotten the following list of citations in the past, which suggest that the 40-60 hour regime is (aggregated over many workers) optimal for construction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7089557 But I've never seen anything even remotely suggesting that an individual needs to be an "actual snowflake" in order to productively work more than 40 hours. Since you claim there are "numerous studie…

They don't suggest that at all! Can you not read?

The key thing you've just conveniently left out is this:

overtime is only effective over very short sprints

Operative words. VERY. SHORT.

And overtime, in the context of the article and all the supporting literature, is working more than 40 hours.

Worst still, you or your employees then become stupid. Unimaginative. Burnt out. They make silly mistakes.

Does that sound like a place that will foster innovation and greatness? Is that the kind of company you want to lead?

Kid yourself all you want with your 40-60 'optimal'. But don't cite actual research that says quite the opposite of what you claim.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#97

Post by hox »

asolove wrote: post #84
alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So most people don't make it. Do you really think that you're telling him something he doesn't already know? Some people are served well by humility, others aren't. Just because humility and practicality works for you (and me, I might add) doesn't mean that it's the approach for everyone.

I just want people to see that there are many paths to a fulfilling, excellent life. In this community, we have so many models of two of those paths--making FU money, or achieving technical mastery--and so few public models of other options, like the patient parent, the spouse to an emotionally-troubled partner, the upstanding community member, etc. I understand that some people people who attempt one of these goals…

We need far more discussion of this type in this forum, especially because the "FU money" and "technical master" roles are rare and difficult to achieve. These can be ideal scenarios for people, but we need to discuss that not achieving this feats does not equal failure.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#98

Post by ByronT »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #82
Derbasti wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics tell a different story. There were numerous studies on productivity relative to many measures. Then again, you know, you might be a actual snowflake...

[Citation needed] I've gotten the following list of citations in the past, which suggest that the 40-60 hour regime is (aggregated over many workers) optimal for construction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7089557 But I've never seen anything even remotely suggesting that an individual needs to be an "actual snowflake" in order to productively work more than 40 hours. Since you claim there are "numerous studie…

Snowflakes don't even have jobs! Lazy crystalline bastards.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#99

Post by rickhanlonii »

lutusp wrote: post #87
ritchiea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to the poster you're replying to, he did mention reading Thinking Fast & Slow which is by the nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. That's no web programming manual.

> To be fair to the poster you're replying to, he did mention reading Thinking Fast & Slow which is by the nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. When I read this, I realized something was wrong. Psychology isn't a science, and scientific Nobel prizes are awarded for scientific breakthroughs. So I looked it up and discovered that the psychologist Kahneman won the Economics Nobel, which makes more sense (ec…

You make a valuable distinction; Kahneman did not win the Nobel for psychology, and in fact there is no such thing.

But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples.

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