For something I'm passionate about? No.
For what I'm actually doing? Yes.
Is 40 hours a week too much?
51–60 of 230 posts
Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?
#52Many 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.
This is very dependent on the industry. My friend does tech support for field technicians at a major alarm company. When he is working he is really working. The calls/paperwork are constant.
Conversely, many gigs I've had there was multiple hours per day of mindless web surfing because there just wasn't work to do.
Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?
#53Back in the golden age of working from home, when internet service wasn't sufficient for for the barrage of pointless meetings, I was working no more than two hours per day. My coworkers and employers, who all worked in the office at the time, used to joke that I must be an entire team of people. I still only get time for no more than two hours of actual work each day, but now that so many think they should expand to…
It is also very difficult to define "work" and the various definitions contradict each other. I've met programmers who start coding as soon as they hear about a requirement and then spend weeks untangling the web of spaghetti code they have previously written down.
I tend to sit down and think before I write even a single line of code. In the office, I used to stare at my screen with headphones on to "look like I was working". Now that I work from home, I usually spend that time walking around the house, doing mindless chores, and sometimes lying down on my bed in the dark.
I would say that the time spent lying in my bed is my most productive time. Someone else might say I steal billable hours.
Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are different types of voids. 1. Non work social media. 2. Work socializing (water cooler). 3. External support/collaboration/reviews. 4. Day dreaming not about work. 5. Thinking about work while not “producing” maybe not even at computer. I can work 40 hours where it feels like 10-20 hours are actually working on my “planned” work, but the other time is on #3 and #5 which “feels” like a void but is actually cr…
5 is a big one.!I’ve solved more problems playing guitar or in the shower than I ever have banging my head against the keyboard
In that sense coding is like writing a book. Are you only productive when you actually type the words?
Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?
#55Many 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.
Freelance web developer background currently developer / business owner - my achievable baseline is 30 hours of billed out time and around 10 hours of admin/emails/meetings etc. Keeping the emails from eating the rest is an ongoing battle though.
Do you not charge for meetings? And what about emails where you're hashing out something clearly in the domain of what you're working on?
Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?
#56There is a frequent pattern which concerns me of primarily justifying the desire for reduced work hours in terms of the alleged increase in productivity this will bring about (by allowing recharging, preventing burnout, etc.).
I worry that this already concedes too much. This allows for just as much stressful dominance of work over the rest of life, and shame over any deviation from this script, as maximizes productivity.
Even if my shorter-work-hours productivity doesn't match my longer-work-hours productivity, I'd still prefer shorter-work-hours, with no guilt over having those preferences. My goal in life is not to optimize everything I do for maximum benefit of my employer; I have my own priorities and trade-offs to worry about.
Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?
#57In 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.
Yeah, 40/week in restaurants or a trade really was a breeze. Most of the time you wanted to put in minimum 40 to get benefits.
Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?
#58It'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.
It is extremely interesting to see how people lived in a pre-industrial era. There is a series of videos about long retired german tradesmen, who worked in long dead traditional trades (wheel making, woodcuting and many other very fascinating and obscure ones). I liked it a lot. The consistent theme there is that these people do not have a "work day". There is absolutely no seperation between their private life and what they do for work. Of course they are not doing high intensity work for 16 hours a day, but they are going through a wide varity of different activities, some leisure ones like eating with their families, but a lot of it directly or indirectly related to their work. How much and when they work can be dependent on a varity of factors, but their work is completely integrated into their lives.
One thing I really dislike about a 40h work week as a person living further in the north is that in the winter it is dark when I return. The sun rises at around 7:30, long after I need to wake up.
Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?
#59Many 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.
I think the shocking this is we are still talking about this when it has been everyone's lived experience for decades.
Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?
#60Many 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.
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