Seems to me that people tend to get anchored by their high-water marks rather than average... for example I will definitely have 110hr weeks and have the occasional 35hr weeks, my "generic" week is probably 55hrs, but not sure where the true average is (probably closer to the generic week), but the mean of my extremely good weeks and bad weeks is 72.5 hrs...
People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
71–80 of 243 posts
Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
#72I think selling time for money, more than anything, is why I don't want to be an employee forever. It's good for learning the ropes and knowing what it's like in the trenches, but ultimately there are only so many hours in the day and the human body evolved to require a good number of hours for self-maintenance.
The path to sustainable growth is through automation, increasing your market rates/prices/value, and owning capital (money and assets that generate more money/assets).
You can see this analogy play out on an international scale during the Cold War. The Soviet Union reached its peak during the 1970s, where it could not find any more resources (whether labor or raw materials) to use. "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work" is a famous Soviet joke. The U.S., by contrast, invented new blue oceans of productivity (e.g. computers) and increased GDP and GDP per capita. It played out in foreign policy; the U.S. invested in and traded with Western Europe to make it more productive; the Soviet Union cannibalized Eastern Europe for parts. The result was that the U.S. won the Cold War and the Soviet Union died.
At no scale does throwing more resources at a problem change the nature of the game. Devising more efficient ways to use the resources you have changes the game.
Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
#73Many 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…
Make that 6 months into two years and the sleep time to an average of 5 - 5.5 hours a night and you have parenthood of a crybaby. You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.
Except that having a child is an optional activity that you choose to do, whereas going to work is (usually) required. Ideally that work doesn't include periods of extreme overwork, and lucky people are sometimes able to walk away from jobs that do, but many people just have to do it in order to put food on the table.
Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
#74Interesting caveat that people also overestimate leisure time.
I suppose the takeaway may simply be that people are not good at remembering/estimating quantities of time?
Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
#75Earlier 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).
... and also consider that taxes (self-employment tax etc.) and expenses (health insurance) are higher when you're a contractor. You'll be lucky to see half that figure hit your bank account.
Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make that 6 months into two years and the sleep time to an average of 5 - 5.5 hours a night and you have parenthood of a crybaby. You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.
Except that having a child is an optional activity that you choose to do, whereas going to work is (usually) required. Ideally that work doesn't include periods of extreme overwork, and lucky people are sometimes able to walk away from jobs that do, but many people just have to do it in order to put food on the table.
> Except that having a child is an optional activity that you choose to do
I get what you are saying, but this is not a universal truth. Life gets complicated.
Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
#77Investment bankers will often claim this, while also lying about their salary. I was often surprised by my colleagues claiming extra long work weeks, all while looking remarkable fresh. I couldn't work it out - I mean, if I worked a solid 14 hour day, you could see it clearly on my face, yet if they do it, they seem to develop a healthy glow. Turns out a lot of them were in the building, but not at their desk. Oftent…
I have a colleague who works 14 hour days. This includes an hour nap in his car, lunch for 2 hours, and running errands/personal things outside the office for a few more hours. If he sat down and worked straight, we figured he would only need to be in the office no more than 8 hours
Sounds like he is working an 8-hour day, just during non-traditional times of the day. If that works for him and his family, and management isn't pissed off, sounds like a win-win.
(Now if he claims he works 14-hour days, that's a bit dishonest.)
Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
#78In my experience, when a workplace has a perpetual crunch time culture, little if any additional work gets done that wouldn't have gotten done if everyone stuck to 40 hour weeks. I'm very curious how true this is in 996 places. When someone knows that they're going to spend 12 hours in the office regardless of how much work is actually required, that time gets padded out a LOT with non-work stuff, both to preserve th…
Japanese and Korean salaryman culture is 996 and notoriously unproductive.
Koreans have pushed back over the years, and it's much more reasonable now. It was a "trend" at one point, and now that the phase is over, the work-life balance is more favorable. I'm not sure what the situation looks like in Japan, but based on my experience living in Asia, China seems to be lagging behind Korean work culture -- so they will catch the 996 trend for short-lived amount of time, and then it will also normalize again as workers protest and the ill-effects become known.
Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
#79Many 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…
Very common to have an "in the trenches" mentality and to even miss it - the shared stress and common purpose drives people close together, but mostly for the wrong reasons. I still am actively in contact with the people from "that job" and never made as strong of a bond with others, but I still wouldn't go back.
I agree and it's similar for me. The closest work friends I have are from this company and formed during this period. 5+ years later and we still have regular gatherings. Of course the topic of conversation inevitably drift back to when we worked together and specifically during this period.
A bit of silver lining in all this I guess, the friendships that have formed.
Re: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make that 6 months into two years and the sleep time to an average of 5 - 5.5 hours a night and you have parenthood of a crybaby. You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.
Except that having a child is an optional activity that you choose to do, whereas going to work is (usually) required. Ideally that work doesn't include periods of extreme overwork, and lucky people are sometimes able to walk away from jobs that do, but many people just have to do it in order to put food on the table.
Work is optional. There are plenty of people who get by without it. Doesn't mean they're doing well or healthy. And for society to continue to function having children is actually not optional.