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Is 40 hours a week too much?

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Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#21

Post by [deleted] »

nkozyra wrote: post #10
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.

> If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell. I disagree. But I think what we qualify as "work" is more rigid than it needs to be. Is spending 5 minutes looking at HN every few hours work? Most people would say no, but it absolutely helps developers to know what's going on or new or what other devs outside their company are saying. If I spend 20 minutes reading about a language/app that my c…

[deleted]

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#25

Post by blue039 »

tschellenbach wrote: post #4

If you want to find the optimal number look at how many hours startup founders put in. Incentives are 100% aligned in how they benefit from their work. They have no incentive to work less or more than the optimal number of hours.

There is a point here but it doesn't actually matter that much in my opinion. Your point is if you're invested in your work there is no limit to how many hours you put in. I'd tend to agree with this saccharin made-for-TED description.

If I am paid $10/hr for my work I can't eat. My incentives are not aligned. You dont pay me enough to eat.

If I am paid $xxx/hr for my work but I am bound by NDA and non-compete, don't get bonuses in line with product sales (N% of sales go to my check), etc I am not aligned.

The only people "aligned" are the most useless. Sales. Yes, things need to be sold but if the people laboring are not incentivized sales will be useless along with the entire C-suite.

There is no such thing as a "sufficiently incentivized" laborer unless you're paying them a chunk of sales (see: a co-op). Hence why anti-work is such a popular concept even among the highest paid cohorts. Even as developers, we are being robbed blind and are worth far more than they pay. There's a simple test for this: if you work 20 more hours next week will your check potentially go up significantly? If not, your labor is being stolen from you.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#26

Post by conductr »

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.

They also have different definitions of what productive means. For example, employees may view meetings and such as unproductive whereas the company may view it as a productive part of the decision making process. Organizational & communication overhead is required for working in coordination with large numbers of people in multiple disciplines. However, from the IC employee's perspective it's mostly a distraction and counter productive towards their outputs.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#27

Post by xboxnolifes »

nkozyra wrote: post #10
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.

> If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell. I disagree. But I think what we qualify as "work" is more rigid than it needs to be. Is spending 5 minutes looking at HN every few hours work? Most people would say no, but it absolutely helps developers to know what's going on or new or what other devs outside their company are saying. If I spend 20 minutes reading about a language/app that my c…

Also, there is an assumption that everyone can be productive for any length of time without some form of intermission to break it up. What if most people need a 5-10 minute break for every 30 minutes work? You might not be able to get around that by just making the daily or weekly work hours shorter. You'd just be applying the productivity factor to fewer total hours.

I doubt we've found the optimal work to rest ratio, but a lot of these assumptions go unchallenged in these discussions.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#28

Post by daneel_w »

In my early 20s when I worked as an electrician I never felt that 40 hour long weeks were too much. Working as a programmer I definitely feel that it is way too much. The head (mine at least) really needs a lot more time to recuperate.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#29

Post by goodpoint »

pessimizer wrote: post #18

It's far more than anyone worked before the industrial revolution who wasn't enslaved. Subsistence farming or hunting and gathering don't take 40 hours a week. The reason there's a 40 hour workweek is because socialists, anarchists, and communists fought for one. It was marketed as splitting the day into three even parts, and getting weekends off. There's nothing special about it other than it is a round number, and…

> Subsistence farming or hunting and gathering don't take 40 hours a week.

Also people had tons of holidays during the middle age in Europe.

Crazy working hours peaked during the industrial revolution when workers had life expectations reaching minimums of 20 years.

Not to mention that in many places men were working and women were homemakers some 70 years ago. Now that everybody works we spend our evening and weekends doing chores and housekeeping. (And no, I'm not saying we should go back to 1950!)

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#30

Post by dinkblam »

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.

> 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.

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