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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

#181

Post by x0054 »

To everyone who jumped in to comment that 60+ hours at work is just fine, because they can do it. I have to say, stop equating work with progress. Busiest time in my life was when I was studying for the California Bar exam. According to the program I was doing, I was expected to study 12 hours a day. Most people I knew did 12+ hours of studying at least, all of them passed the bar. I did about 6 hours a day (+ other stuff for my startup), and still got the same results. The truth is, I actually observed the study habits of my friends. About 7 hours into their study sessions their brains would start to shut down slowly. Questions they would normally take seconds to answer would take them minutes to comprehend.

The point of the article is that working 60+ hours is fine, if you need to, but being proud of it is silly. Be proud of the work you produce, not the amount of time it took you to produce it. And certainly don't be proud putting in 60+ hours for some one else, even if they are buying you with stock options.

To be clear, some of us are lucky enough to make money by doing things we would otherwise do anyway, there is nothing wrong with devoting you life to your hobby and have it bring you a ton of money in the process. But don't kill your self for someone else and feel proud about it because you think it's somehow manly to work 60+ hours.

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

#182

Post by aNoob7000 »

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…

"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'm going to guess that you're not married or have kids because this is the dumbest and shallowest thing I've heard in a while. Why would anyone want to be with you if at the slightest suggestion that you spend more time with them you would fire/terminate the relationship.

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

#183

Post by wazoox »

frozenport wrote: post #174
wazoox wrote: post #69

When I was 25 to 29, I used to spend a lot of time at work. For a while, it just came naturally because I was so eager to learn; I'd stay at work reading books, programming, looking for information on the web and newsgroups (I hadn't internet access at home back then). But at some point in 1998, for a few months we entered in death march after accepting to be the rescue team for a doomed, undoable project; I've worke…

You saved the project and made somebody a ton of money?

There was actually a huge heap of money involved, because we made the CGI and stats software and animations for the worldwide TV broadcast of FIFA World Cup '98. It was a crazily ambitious project, not to be equalled by off-the-shelf software for 8 years, and we had to throw an insane amount of hardware at it: 2 SGI Origin 2000, 30 SGI Octanes and 60 high-end PCs, plus some custom hardware at places to interface with the video mixers. We of course got almost nothing in return :)

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

#184

Post by lazyjones »

People have worked more than 60 hours a week for hundreds of years (farmers, soldiers, ...). There's nothing normative about the 40 hour (or 38,5 hour in this country) working weeks we are used to because we grew up with them.

We should worry more about getting our minds occupied with useless information. How healthy is a strict 40 hour week when 20 more hours are spent browsing the web and another 20 or more watching TV? Do we even still know what else we could do with our time? We might as well do some productive work ...

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

#185

Post by aNoob7000 »

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 just commented on the same thing. This person is amazing. I can't imagine being his wife or kid.

On the empathy front, I can't agree more. Who the hell would want to work for a person that can't sympathize with going home on time to be with family.

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

#186

Post by nmcfarl »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #94
drdeadringer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or he has an open honest relationship with his boss where both parties respect each other enough that honesty is rewarded.

Of course your interpretation is more likely.

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

#187

Post by com2kid »

lutusp wrote: post #128
rickhanlonii wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology. It certainly doesn't call into question the definition of science -- that's well-established by a consensus among scientists. The consensus is secure enough that science is now written into law, for example laws meant to prevent Creationism from being taught as science in science classrooms. Here is an excerpt from on…

> Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity,

That is a false statement, your mind is quite physical!

(and indeed you call upon neuroscience in your very next line!)

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

#188

Post by com2kid »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #106
opinali wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The thing is, people who make say $120k/year but work 80h weeks, are at exactly the same level of compensation / status / respect as people who work 40h but make $60k/year. This applies to salaried or consulting professionals of course; if you're working your ass off to build your own business and maybe hit big rewards in the future, it's a sensible choice. Otherwise, you're just busting your health and pers…

Who the hell works 80 hours a week to make a measly $120k? You should be making 300k+ for that kind of productivity. Otherwise, you are only cheating yourself. There are tons of 120-160k jobs at 40 hours/week

> Who the hell works 80 hours a week to make a measly $120k? You should be making 300k+ for that kind of productivity. Otherwise, you are only cheating yourself. There are tons of 120-160k jobs at 40 hours/week

Many video game developers work 80+hr weeks for well under 100k.

The (perceived?) prestige of being a video game developer makes up the difference.

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

#189

Post by lutusp »

com2kid wrote: post #187
lutusp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology. It certainly doesn't call into question the definition of science -- that's well-established by a consensus among scientists. The consensus is secure enough that science is now written into law, for example laws meant to prevent Creationism from being taught as science in science classrooms. Here is an excerpt from on…

> Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, That is a false statement, your mind is quite physical! (and indeed you call upon neuroscience in your very next line!)

>> Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity,

> That is a false statement, your mind is quite physical!

Citation needed. No responsible practitioner in the field of psychology argues that the mind is a biological organ or an empirical part of physical reality.

> and indeed you call upon neuroscience in your very next line!

Now I see what I'm up against. Neuroscience studies the brain and nervous system, not the mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience

Quote: "Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system."

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

#190

Post by rwallace »

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…

Most things in life, as far as I'm concerned, are best left to you to decide what's right for you. This is not one of them.

First, if you're spending sixty hours a week in the office, you're not only harming yourself. You're encouraging idiot bosses to start demanding the same of other people, which ends up causing real and considerable harm. When your actions start harming other people, that's when it becomes appropriate to respond with social and legal sanctions.

Now you could take a social Darwinist view and say "blow you Jack, I'm alright"; if other people can't hack it the way you can, that's their problem. But the reality is, you almost certainly can't either, even if you think you can. Working excessive hours is like working drunk: it impairs your judgment in such a way that you don't realize how badly your judgment has been impaired, but it shows every time it's put to an objective test.

So yes, if you're spending sixty hours a week in the office, I damn well am going to tell you you're doing it wrong.

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