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How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

nytimes.com

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Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#51

Post by perl4ever »

georgewsinger wrote: post #35

"You shouldn't work long hours" is consensus advice masquerading as contrarian advice. You can see this for two reasons: (i) count the number of people in threads like this who advise against working long hours; (ii) go to Amazon.com and count the number of books that advocate (often using empirical evidence) against working long hours. The same is true for "you shouldn't multitask". Everyone thinks they're clever fo…

"under what conditions is the consensus opinion wrong"

Someone I read suggested (specifically regarding Musk), it's a productive state of hypomania, that isn't full-blown mania.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#52

Post by Infernal »

foxfired wrote: post #29

When I was hired as a consultant, the very first day I was asked to give an estimate on how long it will take me to complete the project. (Coincidentally, it was for a New York Times) I spent my time studying the code base and the requirement. By the end of the day, I told them around ~20 hours. It was a fairly easy project. I spent a month and a half to complete the project. What I didn't take into account was how l…

My rule of thumb (can't recall where I first heard of this, but it's not original) for translating from an engineer "how long will it take me to create a technical solution" estimate into the real world is to convert the estimate into the largest whole-number unit (so ~20 hours would be 3 days), then double the scalar and increment the unit, in this case 3 days would become 6 weeks - which while not perfect, is much closer to the reality than your original estimate.

I'm amazed by how often this rule has turned out to be reasonably accurate, though I'm sure there's some selection bias at work. And it certainly starts breaking down when you begin estimating in multiple months - however I would counter that if you're able to credibly estimate months of work on a solution, then you don't need this particular rule of thumb :)

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#53

Post by da02 »

gringoDan wrote: post #5

I'm convinced that most of the long hours of corporate America can be explained as a form of signaling. This is just more evidence that there are a whole lot of bullshit jobs out there. [0] Anecdotally, when I worked as an investment banking analyst, there was hardly anything to do from 9-5, then 6-8 hours of work was dumped on my desk at 5pm. Half of that work was un-doing changes I made the day before because the V…

Was this the reason or part of the reason you left being an investment banking analyst? What's the educational requirements/qualifications to for an investment banking analyst?

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#54

Post by ellius »

blhack wrote: post #37

Can some of you chime in with your experience here re: consulting and hours. None of the consultants I know of would estimate a time requirement (other than something incredibly loose) for any kind of job bigger than a few hours. The MO seems to be some version of: "You give me [the consulting firm] a maximum per week that you can afford on this, and we will have a weekly stand up where we talk about what was complet…

The first guy who trained me as a software consultant said that estimates are generally laughably incorrect, because you just never know what you will run into. Software (and technology in general) is about hiding complexity. As soon as you start to dig into complexity, you have no idea what you're going to get. But that's not really a pleasant concept to a businessperson who is trying (perfectly reasonably) to predict cleanly and clearly what something will cost so that they can gauge their ROI. So what happens is that everybody bids on a job, some people will massivley lowball their estimate to win work, and then a year or two later another company will get called in to clean up whatever mess the lowballer made. So it goes.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#55

Post by humbleMouse »

In the NYT comments someone said

>>"Consulting and Finance are like sports..."

In my experience this is exactly true. Assuming competence in the area you are consulting - It is most definately a sport of managing expectations more than doing actual work. Companies expect to be billed for time you spend sitting around waiting for emails and other things of that nature. More hours "worked" is not equal to more actual "work".

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#56

Post by bluGill »

horsecaptin wrote: post #12

It is possible to do 80 hour workweeks if: - The rest of your life is exactly where you want it to be. So, this one isn't true for 99% of the population. - You have the correct mental attitude for it. This isn't true for most of the population either. - You are doing exactly what you want to do in life. The chance that you could be distracted by another possibility / avenue is next to nil. None of the above are impos…

It is possible for anyone to work a 80 hour week.

However is it worth it? If you are single and getting paid a lot it might be - with the idea that you save everything and retire early. If you have a social life at all (including a family) and this is a less than once a year request, taking one for the team is probably the right thing to do, but only if it really is a rare thing.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#57

Post by Swenrekcah »

Infernal wrote: post #52
foxfired wrote: post #29

When I was hired as a consultant, the very first day I was asked to give an estimate on how long it will take me to complete the project. (Coincidentally, it was for a New York Times) I spent my time studying the code base and the requirement. By the end of the day, I told them around ~20 hours. It was a fairly easy project. I spent a month and a half to complete the project. What I didn't take into account was how l…

My rule of thumb (can't recall where I first heard of this, but it's not original) for translating from an engineer "how long will it take me to create a technical solution" estimate into the real world is to convert the estimate into the largest whole-number unit (so ~20 hours would be 3 days), then double the scalar and increment the unit, in this case 3 days would become 6 weeks - which while not perfect, is much…

Berlin Brandenburg Airport was originally supposed to take 5 years, so according to this it will take 10 decades.

Currently 1.5 decades in.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#58

Post by ghaff »

runj__ wrote: post #48

I had a big fight with the other co-founders of a company regarding work hours a while back. Most programmers hit something like up to four "good" hours per workday, the biggest problem is capturing those hours while they're at work. A separate problem is hitting those hours while they have access to their manager or colleagues that can help them overcome small but time consuming problems. I'd like to think that prog…

I don't think of myself as having trouble with work/personal separation. I like my vacations, try to enjoy work trips, and don't feel obliged to work into the night.

That said, I tend to scan my email when on vacation or if I'm watching TV at night and, if there's something I can deal with in a few minutes or at least flag as "I'll get back to you next week," why not?

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#59

Post by kaikau »

cma wrote: post #4
galvarez800 wrote: post #2

This makes perfect sense to me. From what I've seen anecdotally, it seems most people can work 80-hour weeks at full productivity for maybe one or two weeks, tops. After that, the fatigue starts to set in and that person's performance starts to decline. In the long run, the person working 80 hour weeks isn't getting much more done than someone working far fewer hours, simply because during those 80 hours they are ope…

Depends if they are engaged or not and how taxing it is. People can play MMOs or MOBAs way past 40hr/week and they don't all have a huge performance dropoff. They are probably more prone to RSI and stuff at more hours though. I wouldn't be surprised to see a productive 100hr week in some kind of MMO player.

I wake up and work until I go to sleep. Every day. 8 hours of sleep, either in one chunk or in two (biphasic). I feel better with biphasic. So that leaves 13 hours each day after subtracting eating time, housekeeping, bathroom "tasks", reddit/HN, and falling asleep transition time. 91 hours per week. Been living like this for years without burnout, although I think at 100-130 hours one is asking for trouble.

Re: How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

#60

Post by gscott »

Aloha wrote: post #49

Does anyone actually accomplish 40 hours of work a week within a 40 hour work week? In a typical 40 hour work week, it'd take me 80 hour 'of time at work' to actually get the 40 hours of actual work, meaning most weeks, I might to 18-25 hours of actual work. The issue, I think here, is requiring people to go to a place, to do a thing, for X hours per week - given the ability to be flexible about working hours, most p…

You are working even if what you are doing is an interruption or helping someone else.
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