Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct. It's not an option.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
There are next to no stable part-time jobs in programming. I don't really know what you're getting at.
A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
191–200 of 323 posts
Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Upvoted both of his comments so people learn it is not worth working this much for someone else.
Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
#193This 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 approp…
This is the huge problem. I've worked in offices with people who were obsessed with pulling 12 hour days, and it soon became an expectation. Even 10 hour days.
I work 8 hour days and get all my shit done, everything. If I worked 10 hour days, I'd probably get a little more done at the beginning but then my productivity would plummet and then I'd just become resentful of it.
Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
#194If most of you 60hrs/weekers would work just 6hrs/week, the world would hardly notice. And some people need to be paid more to work less, so they can inflict less damage. It is sad to see so many proud slaves in this industry.
Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ruin…
Its even easier to fool yourself into thinking you can't handle things that actually can handle. At least when you take on something that's too much, there are signs of failing or your wellbeing declining.
Its even easier to fool yourself into thinking you can't handle things that actually can handle.
I don't know if that's true or not. It's probably too vague to be even true or false.
But it also seems like a dangerous sort of symmetry to invoke because the consequences of going beyond your capacities tend to be a lot worse than the consequences of not quite reaching them. I recall you as fitness person from other discussion - what's worse, not stretching as much as your tendons allow or stretching more than your tendons allow?
In the case of work, as noted by the people here mentioning studies, most people can push themselves for short periods. But that pushing is definitely going involving learning to ignore tiredness and such. But you take that skill and use it ignore your constant tiredness, you can get to a really bad place after a while.
In other words, I disagree with any contention that a person's body provides a magic signal that distinguishes between "hard but you can handle it" and "too much for you, you must stop or suffer bad consequences". The degree to which people do harm themselves today shows this.
Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
#196We forget so soon. Labor movements within recent memory were fought at great cost to secure the possibility of shorter working hours. People were killed at factory gates trying to get labor laws enacted, in part to reduce employer demands for long working hours. One argument in favor of capping work hours: unrestricted overtime discriminates against workers unable or unwilling to compete. A race to the bottom is not…
In contrast with early labor movements the modern IT workforce seems to be quite happy with 60-80hrs and reacts aggressively to suggestions that 40hrs is better for them. I guess capital has learned a thing or two about managing the workforce. Don't give them money, give them more hours and JavaScript book to read before bed. Marx would shave his beard if he saw that.
Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Please don't talk this the wrong way but your use of the phrase "full stack" makes it unlikely you are working on hard problems with creative techniques. You're building websites. And you are deluding yourself if you think it is sustainable or meaningful or worth it. Later "frameworks" and "ninja". Oh dear.
Glad I wasn't the only one that thought that.
Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
#198This 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…
> But stop imposing onto others what is right or wrong when there are so many factors at play.
...
> Oh and definitely exercise every week.
Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
#199To 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…
This is my experience as well. I had my final exams, 2 days with 5 exams each day at mid April (of more than a decade and a half ago, boy I'm getting older fast). Most people in my class (around 40) had been studying since November, around 12+ hours a day.
I begun studying in February, just due to my natural tendency to be lazy, I should have started in November too. But the point is that I tried all kind of timetables and ways to study in the next 2 and a half months. Early , late, all day, nothing.
I discovered that for me what it worked was 4 hours at the morning, with a mandatory break every hour.
Then lunch and maybe a nap or gym. Then another 3 hours at the afternoon. Every time I did less I was loosing time. If I did try to push it too much, studying till late, it was time lost sitting but not really advancing. Each hour of studying or writing had a effective time "on the zone" of around 20 min only.
But what´s more interesting is that if I studied more than 7 hours, the next day was almost lost due to my lack of concentration.
I managed to get the 3rd best results of my class, only failing one exam which I had only studied for 2 days. Only two students passed all the exams, and they were sitting very close and they confirmed me that they had been checking results between them when possible (yes cheating).
So I guess that smart studying was more important that time spent seated. Of course there are other fundamental factors, but I actively tried to improve my study routine during that months, and I felt the difference.
Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour
#200Please, if I want to work 60 hours I'll work 60 hours. If you don't like it don't do it.