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Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

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Re: Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

#21

Post by jonas21 »

veidr wrote: post #9

TL;DR: you can get more done if you work 60 hours instead of 40 hours in a week, but the work done in that extra 20 hours might be a small fraction of what gets done in 20 hours during a 40 hour week. This is self-evidently true for many jobs. E.g., if you pick apples for 40 hours, then even if you only pick one apple per hour after that, you will still pick more apples working 50 hours than 40. We software developer…

I think you might be missing the author's last point which is that in a competitive field, even a small increase in output can lead to a large increase in payoff.

In his example of getting research funding, it's a step function: either you get funded (y=1) or you don't (y=0), and because you're competing with others, even a small output increase can take you from the 0 side to the 1 side.

Re: Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

#22

Post by tome »

veidr wrote: post #9

TL;DR: you can get more done if you work 60 hours instead of 40 hours in a week, but the work done in that extra 20 hours might be a small fraction of what gets done in 20 hours during a 40 hour week. This is self-evidently true for many jobs. E.g., if you pick apples for 40 hours, then even if you only pick one apple per hour after that, you will still pick more apples working 50 hours than 40. We software developer…

Is this really so? Perhaps in the long term 40-hour-a-week pickers pick more than 60-hour-a-week pickers in absolute terms simply because the extra recovery time helps them be fitter and have more energy.

Re: Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

#23

Post by dheera »

I wonder how they got this curve. A lot of things can be sustained for 1 week cannot be sustained in the long term. I'd say in the long term:

* 140-168 hours/week --> almost certain death.

* 100-140 hours/week --> at risk of cardiovascular disease and many other serious medical conditions. Possible early death.

* 80-100 hours/week --> still super-bad for your body. Forget raising children, dating, getting married, or even making friends. You won't have time for any of those. Expect clinical depression.

* 60-80 hours/week --> you might be able to have meals with friends but forget having a life, hobbies, or anything outside of work. Expect depression and overall culture of unhappiness.

* 50-60 hours/week --> sustainable but not really fun. You can't join family or friends for dinner. Expect talented employees to leave because they'll find something that they enjoy more than being in your company.

* 40-50 hours --> reasonable level for long-term sustainability and retention

Re: Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

#24

Post by tertius »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #19

I love how things like the 40 hour work week with two days off get enshrined as some kind of natural phenomenon that has always been with us. 40 hours is an arbitrary number that came from trade unionists demanding fair hours and Robert Owen's slogan: “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” I mean those two things: 8 hour work day and 8 hours of sleep have been considered to be the biological/…

Where can I find this research showing the health of these 100 hour persons?

Re: Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

#25

Post by beager »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #19

I love how things like the 40 hour work week with two days off get enshrined as some kind of natural phenomenon that has always been with us. 40 hours is an arbitrary number that came from trade unionists demanding fair hours and Robert Owen's slogan: “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” I mean those two things: 8 hour work day and 8 hours of sleep have been considered to be the biological/…

The issue is that a normalized office environment will demand or imply that all workers work the same number of hours. The suggestion that you can consistently work 80 hours a week might be viable for you, but what about those who only get 20 hours before their productivity craters? What should you, or that person, do in the normalized 40-hour environment?

And what if the 20 hour worker produces more than you in 80 hours? For many environments, pay is by hour because that's the easiest thing to measure. Or it's per annum (salary) and it's supposed to track some loose or arbitrary or indirect metric.

If you shake loose the norms of a 40 hour work week, you have an awful lot of reconciliation to deal with before we efficiently extract the optimal and earnest amount of labor from all workers and compensate them appropriately with respect to their output and not their hours.

Re: Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

#26

Post by monk_e_boy »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #20
justbaker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-true; it depends how the extra 20 hours are spent for myself. I've had weeks where I program 60 hours or more and it's all spent well, and then the next week I might be a little more burnt out.. take it a little easier and then sprint again.

Which goes towards 60 hour weeks are not sustainable...

60 hours weeks aren't sustainable, but just look at teams during crunch weeks. They sure get a lot of work done.

Sometimes you've just got to put the hours and effort in to get the work done on time.

Now I quit very quickly after doing stupid hours a week. But I'd like to think the work produced was fine. Not that much different to a normal week. The work was all planned in detail, there weren't any big surprises, just lots of code to type in, lots of tests to write and run. I was just more tired.

Re: Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

#28

Post by learc83 »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #26
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which goes towards 60 hour weeks are not sustainable...

60 hours weeks aren't sustainable, but just look at teams during crunch weeks. They sure get a lot of work done. Sometimes you've just got to put the hours and effort in to get the work done on time. Now I quit very quickly after doing stupid hours a week. But I'd like to think the work produced was fine. Not that much different to a normal week. The work was all planned in detail, there weren't any big surprises, ju…

How much of that extra work was because of the extra hours put in and how much was because people work harder when deadlines are close?

Re: Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

#29

Post by barrkel »

trendia wrote: post #11
veidr wrote: post #9

TL;DR: you can get more done if you work 60 hours instead of 40 hours in a week, but the work done in that extra 20 hours might be a small fraction of what gets done in 20 hours during a 40 hour week. This is self-evidently true for many jobs. E.g., if you pick apples for 40 hours, then even if you only pick one apple per hour after that, you will still pick more apples working 50 hours than 40. We software developer…

TL;DR: MS Paint [0] [0] http://imgur.com/a/YrlD7

That graph doesn't reflect the gist of the comment you're replying to. It explicitly talks about negative productivity, not asymptotically zero output like the graph.

Re: Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week

#30

Post by AndrewKemendo »

beager wrote: post #25
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #19

I love how things like the 40 hour work week with two days off get enshrined as some kind of natural phenomenon that has always been with us. 40 hours is an arbitrary number that came from trade unionists demanding fair hours and Robert Owen's slogan: “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” I mean those two things: 8 hour work day and 8 hours of sleep have been considered to be the biological/…

The issue is that a normalized office environment will demand or imply that all workers work the same number of hours. The suggestion that you can consistently work 80 hours a week might be viable for you, but what about those who only get 20 hours before their productivity craters? What should you, or that person, do in the normalized 40-hour environment? And what if the 20 hour worker produces more than you in 80 h…

If you shake loose the norms of a 40 hour work week, you have an awful lot of reconciliation to deal with...."

Yes agreed.

The point is that people should be given roles and responsibilities commensurate with their personality type and then given the flexibility to execute their job as they see fit.

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