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Is 40 hours a week too much?

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Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#181

Post by pcthrowaway »

notacop31337 wrote: post #158
sbf501 wrote: post #65

8-to-5 is 45 hours a week. I'm still in the office, even for lunch. Considering travel, it bumps up to 50 hrs/week. I hate how this 10-hour "work tax" is always dismissed as part of 40 hour work week.

I'm at the stage now where if a company required me in the office, the surcharge I'd be asking on top of my wage (30% would do it) would be so hilarious that it would be insulting, but in my mind, that's kinda the point.

I don't think it's unrealistic to think you can get a 30% pay bump by taking another job, or that asking for 30% over what you might think is "fair market rate" for your skills is a bad idea

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#182

Post by philmcp »

rqtwteye wrote: post #118
epaulson wrote: post #98

At the beginning of the pandemic, as a cost-saving measure my company did furloughs, which for most of us were mandatory unpaid days off two days a week for 6 weeks. We could take off Sun/Mon, Mon/Tues, Thurs/Fri, Fri/Sun, or Mon/Friday, depending on coverage and what made sense regionally. (Our middle east offices worked Sun-Thu normally, the Islamic weekend is Fri/Sat) I have to say, only 3 days "at work" in a week…

I agree about the 4 day week. During Covid may company reduced work hours to 32 and we took off Friday. I definitely felt that people were actually working these hours and meetings were way more focused. Overall i don’t think our release schedule got hurt at all by being less hours at work

Did you return to a 5 day week out of interest? If not I'd love to add the company to https://4dayweek.io/

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#183

Post by vsareto »

fourseventy wrote: post #168
johnthuss wrote: post #2

There is so much variability in the kind of work people do it's hard to make a rule that fits everyone. For knowledge workers I think 40 hours is near the top of productive time you are able to wring from people. Certainly some individuals could work much more if engaged, but on the whole, without a strong incentive otherwise, I think 40 hours is a maximum limit.

Most doctors, lawyers and investment bankers all work well over 40 hours.

Investment bankers are just being exploited though. I don't think they fight against it because of the payoff.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#184

Post by 65 »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #70
sbf501 wrote: post #65

8-to-5 is 45 hours a week. I'm still in the office, even for lunch. Considering travel, it bumps up to 50 hrs/week. I hate how this 10-hour "work tax" is always dismissed as part of 40 hour work week.

This is why I will only take remote jobs. I got sick of spending two hours a day in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

You could try living in a city where you can commute via train. 1 hour on a train is significantly different than 1 hour driving a car.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#185

Post by Moissanite »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #94
mkl95 wrote: post #7

Many companies think their employees are being productive for 40 hours a week, while it's actually somewhere between 10 and 20, with the rest being a big void. If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell.

> with the rest being a big void. There shouldn't be a 20-30 hour "void" in people's work week. If people are meeting, discussing work, building relationships within the company, or otherwise doing things around their work, I still consider that to be productive time. Nobody actually expects programmers to be writing code 40 hours a week. We know this. On the other hand, if people are spending 30 hours per week messi…

While I agree with you in principle, some of us have KPIs which implicitly assume "productivity" equals "hands on keyboard, delivering features".

I'm a consultant with a 70% utilisation goal, meaning that at least 28 hours per week needs to be spent on things which I can defend billing a customer for. Add non-billable pre-sales activity and admin task on top, and not much time is left over.

My own experience and what I've observed in other people is that this is unsustainable both because of normal working habits and the unreliable cadence of new projects. As a result, I spend a few months of the year working 60 hours per week to get ~100% utilisation, then the next few months getting as much project time as possible while also catching up on all the other obligations I was forced to neglect like training.

As I write this, consulting seems more and more like a really shitty style of working...

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#187

Post by Moissanite »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #63
dinkblam wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while it's actually somewhere between 10 and 20, with the rest being a big void. are you joking? 2 hours a day is nothing. > actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell. i've easily topped 100 hours a week for prolonged periods. i'd guess it is the same for any founder.

Yeah, I think there is a pretty big culture bubble, and know people on both sides. Some people spend most of their life working 60 real hours weeks, especially blue collar work. I have a white collar workplace, and there is a big spread. There are people that do 20 hours of real work and those with a 60+ hour average. I have done 100+ hour weeks of real heads down work & all nighters , but can't/wont do it prolonged.…

> I'm confident that the willingness to pull out the stops and get it done has lead to promotions, raises, and freedom to scale down my workload during slow times.

If I had this confidence, I'd put in the hours cheerfully; I've had spells of 80-100 hour weeks in the past and invariably it was caused by sales people or managers over-promising without asking a technical expert, and could have easily been avoided. Doing the hours resulted in some vague gratitude at best.

Now (in a new role), I can see clear evidence of things which are correlated with promotion, but working long hours is not one of them.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#190

Post by leoh »

Shouldn’t it just really be contextual? Sometimes work a lot, sometimes a little. Depending on the project, time to relax and gain clarity, burnout—lots of other variables?
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