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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

#171

Post by FiddlyPack »

S_A_P wrote: post #144
FiddlyPack wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No shade here, but how can you possibly be on HN right now? Or do you consider this kind of commenting activity to be part of your job? I consider myself to work maybe 15 hr per week, but according to my contract I work 40, and sometimes my timesheet says 60. Nonetheless, I am “on-call” quite a bit, at my own discretion. I just can’t imagine how I could stay in deep concentration and be “legit 65-70 hours per week,”…

I actually posted this during a change management meeting. I was required to be there despite my portion of the meeting being 10 minutes of the hour. There are varying descriptions of "work", but my day usually lines up like so: 4:30am wake up 5:30 leave 6 arrive at the office 6-9 heads down coding 9-11 status, project, and various other meetings and help/administrative work 11-12 take lunch at the desk while I code…

Oh, yes, I hear you on being present for 10 min of a 1 hr meeting. Your presence is absolutely valuable for the entirety of the hour meeting, even though it’s not clear from the outset where precisely during that time those 10 min will be valuable.

I guess that’s what I mean; it’s not necessarily obvious when is work time and when is not. Even as you’re posting on HN during your meeting as you understand it is not valuable for you to be 100% “present” and it would be more valuable to explore ideas and culture on HN as you listen, so it is also true that many will be working on ideas as they eat dinner with their families, solving problems while they sleep, and planning their dependency graph during their commute. I just don’t think “hours worked” is an honest metric any more than 4 years at college shows that you were anything more than present.

Those 4 years could have been rigorous and honest and intense and valuable with a B average to show for it, or you could have been partying and have an A for your effort. Time spent might be required, but it also doesn’t matter.

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

#172

Post by FiddlyPack »

clubm8 wrote: post #58
FiddlyPack wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The confusion is because many of us work many days remote, and/or have flexible hours. For many of us, our entire existence is oriented around improving a bottom line...so when we have down time, we are recreationally reading about how to do that better, whether we are on the clock or not. So, if you are a remote worker, and you produce 3 proof of concepts for your company for fun, and none of them pan out, how many…

Why does the concept of being salary always seem to go one way (more than 40)? I worked in a place where people "worked long hours". A typical day would go like this: around 4pm they'd declare they had a "conference call" and call a friend from a meeting room. Then they'd watch some Netflix til 7ish, then go out to dinner (probably with the friend they called), where they'd fire off several drafted emails. If someone…

I didn’t think I suggested this necessarily went “more than 40,” only that “on” time might be hard to differentiate from “off” time, and that some activities that look like “off” (having dinner with teammates) might have real value while others that look like “on” (researching some tech framework that is irrelevant to the problem you are trying to solve) might be worthless.

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

#173

Post by kelnos »

intuitionist wrote: post #169
rdm_blackhole wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why is maintaining our current population level something we should shoot for? Arguably the world is already overpopulated, if you consider resource usage per person.

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

#174

Post by bitxbit »

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…

I worked 100 plus for five years on Wall Street. I am still recovering after quitting that job five years ago.

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

#176

Post by mrfusion »

jolmg wrote: post #95
sidlls wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work is optional. There are plenty of people who get by without it. Doesn't mean they're doing well or healthy. And for society to continue to function having children is actually not optional.

> Work is optional. There are plenty of people who get by without it. Doesn't mean they're doing well or healthy. Except if you don't have a kid, you have better chances of staying well and healthy. That's the whole point. That's what is meant with parenthood being optional and work not. > And for society to continue to function having children is actually not optional. With the rate at which world population is incr…

We don’t need to be brutal to livestock now.

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

#177

Post by jedberg »

radicalbyte wrote: post #63
yibg wrote: post #45

Many years ago I was working for a small consulting firm and had a stretch of time with a lot of overtime; aka "crunch time". Since these were billable hours, time was tracked daily, even if they weren't all actually billed. The tracked hours varied over the ~6 month span, but ranged from 55 hours a week to 93 for one week. Of course not 100% of the time was spent on actual work but it was pretty close. The 93 hour w…

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.

> You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.

And crapping their pants while staring at you to show you who's really the boss.

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

#179

Post by freetime2 »

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.

I've seen many, many developers working 30 hours a week. It's generally not acknowledged openly or written into the contract, but it takes the form of coming in late in the morning, "working from home" at least one day a week. Or leaving work early "to beat traffic", pick up the kids etc.

The key in my experience is finding a manager who is willing to evaluate you on your performance rather than time spent at your desk, and to be a little flexible about accepting a job that doesn't pay top dollar. An experienced engineer should be able to get more done in 20-30 hours anyway than a junior engineer can in 50 hours. As long as you're reasonably productive and you don't cause trouble for anyone, I have seen people sustain jobs like that for more than a decade.

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

#180

Post by milesvp »

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #151
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…

Ha! Never had that book when mine were small, but I used to count to 3. Never ever figured out what would have happened -- we never got past 2!

Lucky you. I have toddler twins, and one has learned to ignore all commands. what’s tricky was at some point he thought his name meant ‘other’ while he thought his name was his brother’s, or at least that his brother’s name meant ‘me’. Worse, it’s easy to accidently say the wrong name. Together you get all kinds of goofy conditioning.
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