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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

#131

Post by claudius »

ksk wrote: post #124
claudius wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complain about 60 hours/week? Rarely. Work 60 hours/week? Rarely. Professors tend to put in roughly 40 to 80 hours depending on their scientific and organisational workload, but most others hardly ever work 60 hours/week with an average of 40-ish. But then, nobody really measures how much time they put in, and you have to keep in mind that in science, the ‘passive work’ done sort-of in the background while doing some…

>Work 60 hours/week? Rarely. Do you have any data on this? Some quick data points that I found : http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06302/nsf06302.pdf http://www.stthomas.edu/media/hollorancenter/pdf/Should-We-B... http://arthropodecology.com/2012/10/25/the-work-life-balance... A lot of people seem to work more than 40 hours per week. I'm sure some of them do complain. Maybe devs are just more likely to blog a…

Not really data in any sense justifying the plural use of the word, merely a look down the hallway of the chair where I work – nobody comes in before 8:30 and most people have left by 18:30, averaging a nice-ish 40h/week, given that those who come in early will leave early, too, there are extensive lunch and coffee breaks and most people keep their evenings and weekends work-free (though, of course, not all of them).

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

#132

Post by wellboy »

I think it's about what the 60h is for. As a salary man, completely agree, what are you working for? So that you make $180,000/year in 5 years instead of $100,000? Not worth it.

But 60h/week for your own startup? Gosh, when I just started out, I loved every single minute of work on my startup, I even didn't want to sleep, I wouldn't get more joy of doing anything else than my startup, because it wasn't work, it was me. I was building my very own future.

I think a 60h week is a completely different story if you compare it to being a salary man and building your own company --> your own life.

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

#133

Post by dmunoz »

aet wrote: post #119
pyrrhotech wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe you are an 80 hour a week man. Unless you count reading HN, browsing the web, reading email, eating lunch, commuting to work, getting ready for work etc. NO ONE does 80 hours of legitimate work a week. It's a myth.

I agree. 80hours ~ 12 hours 7 days a week w/ 30 min break for lunch. I work all day all the time, but it often equates to 8 hours a day, not 12. Even if you work 7-8s that is less than 60 hours.

It's interesting to play around with this.

There are 168 hours a week. Say you sleep for 8 hours per day. That takes up 56 hours, leaving 112 hours. If you legitimately work for 80 hours, that leaves 32 hours of downtime a week, or roughly 4.5 hours per day. That's only 270 minutes (it's closer to 4.6 hours, but that is only 276 minutes).

270 minutes a day. What can you accomplish in that time? Is there enough left over to stay sane?

Of course, there are plenty of variables to play around with. Sleep 6, and that's an extra 14 hours a week. Now you have plenty of downtime. Over the long run, is stealing these two hours away from your sleep beneficial? Maybe for some. Are you in that category. Are you sure? Really?

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

#134

Post by nnq »

...will we ever get to a point of normality and sanity where:

1. guy A who want to work just 30hrs a week can say that this is how much he wants to work and get paid a fair hourly rate (same as guy B if he's just as good)

2. guy B who wants to work 70+hrs a week can say that this is how much he wants to work and get the same fair hourly rate (same as guy A if he's just as good, a reasonable 25% more for hours worked about a certain threshold - let's say 40hrs per week mandated, to set an arbitrary bar and stimulate employment of more people over exploitation)

3. guy A and B can have a coffee together and both see each other as equal value guys but with different life priorities, both ok

4. employers will not favor type B guys over type A guys (if this happens, mandatory extra-payment for overtime or extra-taxation could sway things to an equilibrium).

...it all boils down to Bertrand Russel's idea: why not have two people working X hrs a day instead of one guy working 2X hrs a day, and at the same time let the guy who wants to work 2X do it but don't discriminate in his favor (http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html).

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

#136

Post by dmunoz »

jleyank wrote: post #77
zxcvvcxz wrote: post #56

This false dichotomy is seriously getting annoying. If 60 hours is sustainable for you, do it. If only 30 hours is sustainable for you, do that instead. But stop imposing onto others what is right or wrong when there are so many factors at play. Some of my most productive memories are summers studying and working for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week (= 72 hours). I didn't get tired, burned out, or anything. Another summ…

zxcvvcxz says: "Regarding friends/partners/etc. If the amount of hours you want to work isn't compatible with your partner's expectations... get a new partner. Seriously. Your priorities aren't aligned. I don't know what I'd do if my partner expected me to be home for dinner at 6pm on weeknights... Oh wait I do, I'd get a new partner, which I did. Now everyone involved (myself, previous partner, new partner) are very…

I found the same sentence strange. Is sacrifice no longer in the dictionary of reasonable action? Running around thinking you can mutually maximize "everyone involved" is a recipe for disaster.

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

#137

Post by thesz »

sokoloff wrote: post #71
Avshalom wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If only 30 hours is sustainable for you, do that instead. This is not an option for most us.

I'd wager that more than 25% of "full-time" employees in an office-worker setting are spending less than 30 hours per week actually working . Probably far more than 25%. How many facebook posts do you get at all hours of the workday? Assuming their job isn't social media community relations manager, those people aren't working ; they're simply attending their job.

My former boss was a PSP/TSP certified software developer.

He said studios had shown that programmer can work 4 hour/day and plans should be made accordingly (e.g., if you have 16 hours to solve set of tasks, plan for four days, not two). He also said that this statistics was actually proven true during the course of their training and later in the practical application.

Other four hours of "work" time is related to documentation and social aspects of development, like discussing ideas and plans.

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

#138

Post by aet »

dmunoz wrote: post #133
aet wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. 80hours ~ 12 hours 7 days a week w/ 30 min break for lunch. I work all day all the time, but it often equates to 8 hours a day, not 12. Even if you work 7-8s that is less than 60 hours.

It's interesting to play around with this. There are 168 hours a week. Say you sleep for 8 hours per day. That takes up 56 hours, leaving 112 hours. If you legitimately work for 80 hours, that leaves 32 hours of downtime a week, or roughly 4.5 hours per day. That's only 270 minutes (it's closer to 4.6 hours, but that is only 276 minutes). 270 minutes a day. What can you accomplish in that time? Is there enough left o…

I think at that level of exertion you'd have to give your self the 8 hours sleep. Either that or lead an extremely healthy lifestyle otherwise.

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

#139

Post by jbl »

iambateman wrote: post #33
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.

This week I was told another employee has been "working weekends for months" to get the project done, passive aggressively implying I hadn't done the same. The problem with this is the guy is addicted to working weekends. He's been doing it for years and it makes everyone else look like "slackers", despite his obvious burnout.

I think this hints at the crux of the problem. I have no problem with others working long hours, and will even put in a stint here and there when I feel it's warranted.

The problem I see is that it slowly becomes the new norm and benchmark, regardless of whether long hours are productive. These new expectations then get encoded in cultures that devalue those who either choose to spend time on other things or who are simply more efficient.

Do we just need to find better measures of output and figure out what fair compensation for average output is?

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

#140

Post by joe_the_user »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #56

This false dichotomy is seriously getting annoying. If 60 hours is sustainable for you, do it. If only 30 hours is sustainable for you, do that instead. But stop imposing onto others what is right or wrong when there are so many factors at play. Some of my most productive memories are summers studying and working for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week (= 72 hours). I didn't get tired, burned out, or anything. Another summ…

This false dichotomy is seriously getting annoying. If 60 hours is sustainable for you, do it. If only 30 hours is sustainable for you, do that instead.

Two different things are frustrating about this simple homily.

* It's very easy to fool yourself into thinking you can handle things you can't, especially with peer pressure, job pressure and so-forth involved. By the time your health is ruined, your marriage is ruined and etc, it's too late to just say "uh, that didn't work for me". IE, for every "unique physiology", there twenty self-deceivers. I mean, what are the odds? Next, tell me you have "unique physiology" that gets healthier on Cheetos and Ramen (not impossible so it must be true, right).

* The poor result of a permanent 60-hour week aren't just felt by those who make the mistake of following it but by their families and their co-workers.

Sure, freedom. I mean, this article obviously isn't about physically blocking someone from working 60 hours at their workplace but rather encouraging the person to think again whether those 60 hours really make sense.

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