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What Long Hours Really Mean

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Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#41

Post by curyous »

qq66 wrote: post #13
dalek_cannes wrote: post #9

Every human being deserves an average of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of family/leisure, 8 hours of sleep and 2 days a week free. Even a doctor on whom many lives are depending . Lives of critical employees are just as valuable as the lives of those who are affected if they don't work harder. The whole "if I don't do this, the project will sink / things will be destroyed" is a self-imposed ransom situation that managers…

Where do these numbers come from that you proclaim them to be universal human standards? Why not 7 hours of work? Why not 9?

Henry Ford tested his workforce, he discovered that reducing hours to a 5-day 40-hour workweek increased total output.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#42

Post by tslathrow »

e12e wrote: post #36
tslathrow wrote: post #14

Seeing as I grew up on 80+ hour workweeks, I can promise you this is false for a certain group of people. I spent two years in banking - normally we had 18+ hour workdays... definitely gave me stamina later on. Tier 1 bonus bucket at a bulge bracket one year, Tier 2 the other year. You pretty much always end up getting paid for hard work.

Which kind of work did you do that wouldn't have been more effective if it was split in two (or even three) shifts (assuming it would've been possible to find qualified people to help/hire with/for the workload? How much of that time is for breaks/lunch etc? Genuinely interested in what an 18 hour work day consists of. Personally I can absolutely see "working" long hours -- but then that'd probably be something like…

Very often there was a crunch time around getting a deal done.

Could be an IPO, restructuring etc

That means lots of modeling and dicking around with slide decks

RE lunch: I took fewer than ten lunches away from my desk over those two years.

Generally dinner at the desk via Seamless

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#43

Post by nileshtrivedi »

quinnchr wrote: post #29
philwelch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that you're wrong about that.

If you think their is such a thing as objective truth in this world you must be some sort of postmodern miracle.

I think you missed his sarcasm. He feels that objective truth exists. :)

BTW, I have found Yudkowsky's "The Simple Truth" an effective argument against those claim that objective truth doesn't exist. If you walk in the way of a speeding train, you will die irrespective of your beliefs. Beliefs don't alter the reality. http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#44

Post by caycep »

dalek_cannes wrote: post #9

Every human being deserves an average of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of family/leisure, 8 hours of sleep and 2 days a week free. Even a doctor on whom many lives are depending . Lives of critical employees are just as valuable as the lives of those who are affected if they don't work harder. The whole "if I don't do this, the project will sink / things will be destroyed" is a self-imposed ransom situation that managers…

That being said, I think a lot of physician work takes a lot of personal connections - it's not easily "handed off". There's probably a way to make this more efficient/manageable, but it's probably not trivial.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#45

Post by jroseattle »

I've found that long hours are indicators, sometimes of good things and other times not. Long hours over a lengthy duration of time have shown me two things: 1) an individual's work ethic, and 2) bad management.

In the tech industry, specifically with software development, I've had teams I've managed where we needed to pull longer hours in order to meet a deadline. And my teams stepped up, because we all wanted to succeed. The long hours were a known entity, and weren't the negative long hours.

I've also had teams forced into the negative long hours, and those were my fault (or rather, they were my responsibility to manage and I didn't do a good job.) Environments that somehow believe that those of us in the tech industry somehow enjoy acts like the "diving catch" and being "the savior" offer no value, other than learning what not to do.

The biggest thing to be cautious with long-hour situations is burnout. The negative long-hour scenarios can lead to resentment, but those feelings often pass after a while. Burnout, on the other hand, can have very real long-term consequences.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#47

Post by joelrunyon »

dalek_cannes wrote: post #9

Every human being deserves an average of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of family/leisure, 8 hours of sleep and 2 days a week free. Even a doctor on whom many lives are depending . Lives of critical employees are just as valuable as the lives of those who are affected if they don't work harder. The whole "if I don't do this, the project will sink / things will be destroyed" is a self-imposed ransom situation that managers…

> "deserves"

This word always makes me coil. Everytime I hear it - I assume someone is trying to sell me something.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#48

Post by joelrunyon »

enjo wrote: post #18
christianmann wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to discount this, but where does commute fall into this breakdown?

That's on your own time:) Seriously, people need to start living closer to work (and demanding that work make that possible).

That assumes that people are in a position to negotiate & don't work a commodity profession.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#49

Post by joelrunyon »

curyous wrote: post #41
qq66 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do these numbers come from that you proclaim them to be universal human standards? Why not 7 hours of work? Why not 9?

Henry Ford tested his workforce, he discovered that reducing hours to a 5-day 40-hour workweek increased total output.

Source?

If true - that's really interesting. I wonder what the other outcomes / configurations were.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#50

Post by jmvoodoo »

dalek_cannes wrote: post #31
jmvoodoo wrote: post #23

This entire piece is written from the perspective of someone who sees their job as only a way to make money. That person might look at me and say something along the lines of "look at him, wasting his life away spending time at work." To me, though, he is the one wasting his life spending even a few hours a day to do something he would not do for free. If you don't absolutely love your job, quit. And if you absolutel…

I love my job, and I love working extra hours on it. But on my own terms and as a means of building something more, not compensating for lack of planning or management. > why the hell wouldn't you want to stay a few more minutes? Strawman. Everyone stays that extra few minutes. Sometimes even a few hours on occasion. That's not what 'long hours' here refer to.

Fair enough on the straw man. I definitely work closer to 70 hrs a week at the moment.
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