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People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

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Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#161

Post by scarecrowbob »

jnbiche wrote: post #139

I worked 60-70 hours a week for 6 months and destroyed by health ( actually programming for 50+ of those hours, tracked time since it was billable hours for a consulting firm). Finished the project by the deadline I was hired for, but quit soon afterwards and within 2 months I was in the ICU, and then in and out of the hospital several times with some serious chronic health issues that I'm still recovering from 2 yea…

"Why isn't there someone disrupting software development paying experienced people like me a low salary for 20-30 hours a week? I'd still get over half as much done as I do working 50 hours a week, I'm sure."

That's what I do. I started out freelancing and eventually I found a client who eventually needed buy all my available time. 30/h a week, at a salary that feeds me fine.

For reference, I do PHP and linux admin for WordPress and some linux admin work. It's not super fun, but I work for a tiny company and have to look at all parts of a bunch of rando tech stacks (like, moodle, drupal, java applications, mail servers, etc and everything from firewalls to CSS for IE10).

It doesn't "scale". So there there is nothing to "disrupt". I just work with a couple of smart people who do good work, and if we tied to make the business grow substantially we'd probably just work more for the same amount of money, so we are just really selective about what jobs we take. I think. I don't have a great analysis of what makes it work cause I am in the middle of it.

Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#162

Post by eeZah7Ux »

Robotbeat wrote: post #121
rdm_blackhole wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only if our current economic model stays the same. At the moment most developed countries rely on immigration to create growth by adding more consumers. However, it is changing, as the world develops, fewer people are born and within a century our population growth will flatten and our global population will even decline to the 2000's level. Children should not be made just to keep society going. That's quite…

That’s the opposite of selfish.

With 7.7 billion people and a world the brink of collapse having kids is not helping anyone.

Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#163

Post by 321yawaworht »

osrec wrote: post #14

Investment bankers will often claim this, while also lying about their salary. I was often surprised by my colleagues claiming extra long work weeks, all while looking remarkable fresh. I couldn't work it out - I mean, if I worked a solid 14 hour day, you could see it clearly on my face, yet if they do it, they seem to develop a healthy glow. Turns out a lot of them were in the building, but not at their desk. Oftent…

Reminded me of this Amazon video about life as an SDE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX1P-gGqNjo

All of them seem tired, with strong dark circle under their eyes.

Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#164

Post by feistypharit »

jnbiche wrote: post #139

I worked 60-70 hours a week for 6 months and destroyed by health ( actually programming for 50+ of those hours, tracked time since it was billable hours for a consulting firm). Finished the project by the deadline I was hired for, but quit soon afterwards and within 2 months I was in the ICU, and then in and out of the hospital several times with some serious chronic health issues that I'm still recovering from 2 yea…

Agreed! I feel the same way...flexible time is better than money.

I think part of the problem in the US is health care. Employees still want it, but employers view it as a high fixed cost for a partial employee.

That being said, I get healthcare through my wife, so wouldn't need it.

Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#165

Post by jacobolus »

NotHereNotThere wrote: post #159
gwbas1c wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent who added a second child when my first was 2 and a half, I think you're doing it wrong. A year later, both children are still extremely demanding. It's all about setting limits and knowing when to bend them, like last night when my daughter finally figured out how to wake herself up in the middle of the night to go poop. That's one of the rare sleepless nights that's worth it. Otherwise, knowing how you s…

As a parent of multiple children (3+), your comment really rubs me the wrong way. It comes off as judgemental ("you're doing it wrong", "you really need to learn to"), and you're generalizing your own children's behavior as if it applied to every child. Every child is different, their sleep cycles, reactivity, personalities, etc. I'm not even going to comment on the 1-2-3-timeout technique apart from saying I think i…

Moreover, not all parents/families are the same. Some are heavy sleepers, some are light sleepers. Some get to sleep easily, some have difficulty getting to sleep. Some families have everyone on the same schedule, other families have everyone on shifted schedules. Some have generous parental leave or a non-working parent and can devote significant direct time/attention to kids, others are working full time with little parental leave and not much support. Some are extremely relaxed and are unfazed by noise or mess, while others are anxious and have trouble controlling physiological responses to stress. And so on.

Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#166

Post by scarejunba »

NotHereNotThere wrote: post #159
gwbas1c wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent who added a second child when my first was 2 and a half, I think you're doing it wrong. A year later, both children are still extremely demanding. It's all about setting limits and knowing when to bend them, like last night when my daughter finally figured out how to wake herself up in the middle of the night to go poop. That's one of the rare sleepless nights that's worth it. Otherwise, knowing how you s…

As a parent of multiple children (3+), your comment really rubs me the wrong way. It comes off as judgemental ("you're doing it wrong", "you really need to learn to"), and you're generalizing your own children's behavior as if it applied to every child. Every child is different, their sleep cycles, reactivity, personalities, etc. I'm not even going to comment on the 1-2-3-timeout technique apart from saying I think i…

The frequency of advice-giving usually is inversely proportional to the range of skill available. It's also inversely proportional to the degree to which skill is differentiable.

It's why parenting advice is so common. No one can evaluate parenting skills and exceptional parenting and good parenting don't have that much of a difference between them.

Though I guess poor parenting can be pretty bad with abuse and whatnot, so let's say we exclude the malicious things.

Look at this guy. He saw some limited effect size with a sample size of two and decided he's a guru.

Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#167

Post by DoreenMichele »

kelnos wrote: post #73
radicalbyte wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make that 6 months into two years and the sleep time to an average of 5 - 5.5 hours a night and you have parenthood of a crybaby. You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.

Except that having a child is an optional activity that you choose to do, whereas going to work is (usually) required. Ideally that work doesn't include periods of extreme overwork, and lucky people are sometimes able to walk away from jobs that do, but many people just have to do it in order to put food on the table.

having a child is ...optional

A high percentage of children are not planned. They are a natural consequence of sex, which Mother Nature sneakily designed to be desirable in its own right, whether people wanted babies or not.

Most of human sexual morality seems to be rooted in this inconvenient, annoying fact of life.

Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#168

Post by avinium »

321yawaworht wrote: post #163
osrec wrote: post #14

Investment bankers will often claim this, while also lying about their salary. I was often surprised by my colleagues claiming extra long work weeks, all while looking remarkable fresh. I couldn't work it out - I mean, if I worked a solid 14 hour day, you could see it clearly on my face, yet if they do it, they seem to develop a healthy glow. Turns out a lot of them were in the building, but not at their desk. Oftent…

Reminded me of this Amazon video about life as an SDE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX1P-gGqNjo All of them seem tired, with strong dark circle under their eyes.

Hah! Interesting video, never seen it before.

Maybe I'm being suggestible because you raised it, but they all seem to have that shell-shocked, thousand yard stare that only comes after months of crunch time and no rest.

Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#169

Post by intuitionist »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #157
Robotbeat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing something that’s essential to society but which requires enormous amount of individual sacrifice and cost. Voluntarily.

And That's where we disagree. Having kids is not essential to society. Actually, society would be better off if we just maintained our current population level and learned to live with the resources at hand instead or ever expanding and depleting the ocean, the underground and the forests until there is nothing left. If you consider having kids as an individual sacrifice, then maybe you are having kids for the wrong…

You realize that in order to maintain our current population level, people still have to have kids, right?

Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

#170

Post by taneq »

gwbas1c wrote: post #87
radicalbyte wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make that 6 months into two years and the sleep time to an average of 5 - 5.5 hours a night and you have parenthood of a crybaby. You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.

As a parent who added a second child when my first was 2 and a half, I think you're doing it wrong. A year later, both children are still extremely demanding. It's all about setting limits and knowing when to bend them, like last night when my daughter finally figured out how to wake herself up in the middle of the night to go poop. That's one of the rare sleepless nights that's worth it. Otherwise, knowing how you s…

As a parent of two kids, the older of whom is still a pain in the ass and woke us up 6 times last night and the younger of whom slept through from the start, every child is different and any blanket statements about children based on your own parenting experience (other than "they're all different") are wrong for most other parents.
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