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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

#261

Post by aestra »

Shivetya wrote: post #206
x0054 wrote: post #181

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…

Sixty hours is fine when you enjoy your work. Sixty hours a week was a short week in the old days, the conveniences of a modern society allow us to choose more free time should we want it, all you have to do is venture outside of our comfortable environments and you will find people wishing 60 was the max. Having grown up on a farm all I can say is, you don't notice it unless the wrong stuff keeps piling up. Its amaz…

Depends on what you mean by the old days. It is thought that hunter gathers had the most leisure time in history.

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

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

#262

Post by ausjke »

Just curious, as human race, what makes us think 40-hour(or any numbers of hours) is the norm that everyone should stick to?

if we switch to 4-weekday in the future, we will then consider 4*8=32 hour per week is typical, and work 40+ hours a week will burn you out? where and how to draw the line?

I agree that there is no point to brag about your 60+ hour work style, but, what really decides the 'normal' work hours each week?

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

#263

Post by 001sky »

Ma8ee wrote: post #256
hueving wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the physical fatigue farm work brings. Do you have a source for that? I find it highly unlikely that the human body needs less rest after spending 10 hours a day performing manual labor than it does after a few hours of programming.

Not the human body, but the human brain.

Yes, the body is amazingly adept at subliminalizing the motor-co-ordination of physical work. Truly creative, mental work actually takes a different approach. This is why traditional academic architecture is the way it is. And why even artists can suffer through periods of burnout and "creative block". This is not to diminsh the role of back-breaking labor in any way, but just to highlight the underlying issue. Its comparing apples and pine-apples.

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

#264

Post by aestra »

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…

Agreed. This person sounds like an egomaniac.

http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/14/to-avoid-regret-put-ro...

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

#265

Post by com2kid »

lutusp wrote: post #242
com2kid wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No responsible practitioner in the field of psychology argues that the mind is a biological organ or an empirical part of physical reality Huh? What psychologists do you go to, ones only attached to churches? I'm not going to bother arguing against mind body dualism[0], I have better things to do with my time! I am however confused, you bring up criticisms of a field not acting scientifically, but it appears you ar…

> I'm not going to bother arguing against mind body dualism ... Good idea, you aren't qualified. Meanwhile, the mind is not a physical organ and it cannot be relied on to produce empirical evidence or falsifiable theories. This is a burden on psychology, it has been since the beginning of the field, and it explains why psychology has been determined not to be a science by scientists : Title: "Why psychology isn't sci…

Your position is still not 100% clear, although it appears that you are arguing that something called "the mind" exists outside the physical realm. Without resorting to religious nonsense that hardly seems like a tenable position.

Psychology's job has been one of categorization. It is fancy pattern recognition that some poor fools thought had actual meaning behind it. Now it turns out it also managed to realize that if you poke and prod someone in a certain way that occasionally a positive change can take place. Of course I'd argue that change has a real, physical, and measurable impact, just that we lack the tools to completely measure it in a non-destructive fashion! Thus, as you mentioned, actual scientists are coming along and fixing things up properly, but it is going to take some time.

> The above explains why psychology is being replaced by neuroscience, the study of the nervous system. This change means we can gather actual data and shape real theories.

Well yeah, we agree on that part. I am just confused as to your seeming insistence as to the existence of something non-physical. I can grok taking that position if one is a religious nutter, but your website[0] makes you out to be an individual who is well grounded in reality.

[0]Upon further research you appear to have been someone's whose software I used while growing up.

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

#266

Post by mattgreenrocks »

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…

You're headed straight for burnout. How do you expect your body to feel after you don't ever give it a break from this programming thing? This is exactly what happened to me.

By the looks of it, it isn't a matter of if, but when. If you bet your whole life on work, and then work starts biting you in the ass (which it will over a long enough timespan) then what will you do? What other areas will you be content in to carry you through?

The real benefit of balance is being able to shift your focus among various areas of your life to weather the storms of life.

A technical piece of advice: develop your taste for languages and constructing software beyond what Industry tells you.

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

#267

Post by gaius »

dwaltrip wrote: post #159
gaius wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are making some leaps, as well as a few judgments, based on relatively little information. I hope you realize this.

Sure, but there is only one community that uses that vocabulary. No-one doing computational chemistry or machine learning or weather forecasting or quantitative finance (or any of a hundred other kinds of programming) calls themselves a "full stack engineer" or a "javascript ninja". Only guys assembling websites out of pre-built components (aka frameworks) like Ikea furniture, for companies to use for marketing.

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

#268

Post by kenjackson »

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…

I only read four of the sources you noted, but none of the four state what you claim.

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

#269

Post by nickbauman »

yapcguy wrote: post #213
nickbauman wrote: post #110

The army has done a lot of research on this topic from WWII onwards. I've read some of the studies. I've also read some papers done in the private sector on this topic in the construction industry. What they found was about the same: people who work more that 40 hours a week can do so for a short period of time before it starts to impact a lot of aspects of their health, which translates directly to their performance…

Can you link to some of these studies you mention? Would love to read them. Thanks.

I don't remember the exact study, sorry. I did a search and found this, though, which looks close: http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Ca...

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

#270

Post by nickbauman »

hueving wrote: post #251
StavrosK wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit easier when your job doesn't require you to think all the time. You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the physical fatigue farm work brings.

>You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the physical fatigue farm work brings. Do you have a source for that? I find it highly unlikely that the human body needs less rest after spending 10 hours a day performing manual labor than it does after a few hours of programming.

I remember reading a while back a study that revealed people who do exhaustive mental work are less tolerant of hard physical labor. I think this speaks to the notion that there is no real mind-body separation (or simply you brain is part of your body).
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