People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours

Post by kansface » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

marvin wrote: post #48

WalterSear wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in that environment, but without anyone goofing off. Fortunately, as a contractor, I did not have to come in on the weekends. My coworkers were no more productive than me: IMNSHO, they would end up dragging as much busywork out of every problem as they could, simply because they were too overworked to think more than one step ahead. To wit: we were running 10 AWS servers - to serve a mostly static website…

If you can bill $200 per hour for 75 hours a week for a year, though, maybe you'd be willing to do that for a year or so just in order to never have to do it, or any other work, ever again. Of course, if the client actually has to pay $200 per hour you're present, it's exceedingly likely that the overtime culture will stop overnight. It's obvious that it isn't working already, once the company actually pays for it as…

Post by radicalbyte » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

yibg wrote: post #45

Many years ago I was working for a small consulting firm and had a stretch of time with a lot of overtime; aka "crunch time". Since these were billable hours, time was tracked daily, even if they weren't all actually billed. The tracked hours varied over the ~6 month span, but ranged from 55 hours a week to 93 for one week. Of course not 100% of the time was spent on actual work but it was pretty close. The 93 hour w…

Post by okmokmz » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #29

rogerkirkness wrote: post #2

Actually working more than ~55 hours in a week is soul crushing and physically very hard. At a certain point you would need an escalation of stimulants or risk not being able to get out of bed if you actually worked 75 hours.

I can confirm. In the consulting world I've had several instances of either being doubled up on projects or having to hit extremely demanding deadlines for milestone payouts that required legitimate 60+ hour weeks. One week is doable, 2 is a stretch, beyond that people (myself included) generally had to turn to things like modafinil to keep going and there's a noticeable toll on general health and wellness. On the fl…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #6

bryanlarsen wrote: post #3

And even if they do spend 75 hours at their workplace, they're probably spending far less than 40 actually working. (says the guy posting on HN instead of actually working).

Also true of people who spend 40 hours at their workplace, which is totally fine (and often necessary!) for most knowledge work.

Post by graedus » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

kansface wrote: post #61

marvin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can bill $200 per hour for 75 hours a week for a year, though, maybe you'd be willing to do that for a year or so just in order to never have to do it, or any other work, ever again. Of course, if the client actually has to pay $200 per hour you're present, it's exceedingly likely that the overtime culture will stop overnight. It's obvious that it isn't working already, once the company actually pays for it as…

Thats only 750K$ - roughly have the price of a house in the Bay Area before taxes (maybe just enough for the down payment).