81–90 of 243 posts
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What software is this productivity tracker?
Qbserve
What is work anyway? If you are a programmer then work is different. Sure you are not on your feet all day at the beck and call of customers, however, if you are not working then your computer is. Waiting is not supposed to be part of the job. Learning on the job is also verboten. Very little time that is on the company clock is spent travelling. I have colleagues in sales that do lots of travel, then, when they are…
>What is work anyway? I had a co-worker who negotiated having his commute home be counted as work. His reasoning was that he did a lot of thinking and problem solving during the drive. Working as a developer it was kinda hard for the company to argue that thinking wasn't in fact a large part of his job.
I’m currently working legit 65-70 hours per week. We have a hard stop that costs millions if we miss. It basically means 6am-6pm Monday through Saturday. I’m not as productive as when I work less but there is a net win in productivity. I don’t think I can do this for much more than a few months. I can already tell it has markedly harmed my health. Being stressed for months at a time is hard.
No shade here, but how can you possibly be on HN right now? Or do you consider this kind of commenting activity to be part of your job? I consider myself to work maybe 15 hr per week, but according to my contract I work 40, and sometimes my timesheet says 60. Nonetheless, I am “on-call” quite a bit, at my own discretion. I just can’t imagine how I could stay in deep concentration and be “legit 65-70 hours per week,”…
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.
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Medicine is an interesting case. The prioritization isn't so much on the health of medical practitioners and nurses, but on patient safety. It is argued that patients have higher survivability rates when patient handoffs/shift changes are kept to a minimum. The focus has never been on the health of doctors, nurses, X-Ray technicians, etc. but from a public health perspective. This has far-reaching consequences in its…
Yes, I've heard that argument before. I've asked before if the research shows the problem is handoffs per se, or the protocol around them, but haven't had a good answer. There also doesn't seem to be good research into the longer term impact of these negative consequences on the practitioners. I've worked around clinicians and clinical staff, and several times been surprised how much is left to personal memory and sc…
I suspect that, even if fewer handoffs does take an edge over exhaustion, the handoff process could be improved greatly; from what I'm told, handoff processes vary wildly, often aren't formalized, and even when they are, adherence to process is pretty lax, in part due to the effects of exhaustion.
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Medicine is an interesting case. The prioritization isn't so much on the health of medical practitioners and nurses, but on patient safety. It is argued that patients have higher survivability rates when patient handoffs/shift changes are kept to a minimum. The focus has never been on the health of doctors, nurses, X-Ray technicians, etc. but from a public health perspective. This has far-reaching consequences in its…
The nurses may be working 12 hour shifts, but they’re unlikely to work more than 4 in a week. Overtime is expensive for employers, so they prefer to hire more or hire contract nurses where necessary. Even the doctors usually cover 12 clinical 12hr shifts a month. They may do more work after another takes over, academic work, moonlight, or have admin work. And having a good income allows you to buy your way out of mos…
I stretches credibility to me that people can keep up a high quality of work for 14 hours straight, even with a 3 day break every 3-4 days.
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…
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.
A year later, both children are still extremely demanding. It's all about setting limits and knowing when to bend them, like last night when my daughter finally figured out how to wake herself up in the middle of the night to go poop. That's one of the rare sleepless nights that's worth it.
Otherwise, knowing how you sleep is also important. I fumble around in the dark, use extremely dim lights, and have no problem letting my kids sleep with me for an hour or two. A full night's sleep is vital. I'm really good at falling asleep after giving a bottle because I make them before going to bed, turn on no lights, and keep my eyes closed once I'm in the rocking chair.
> You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.
You really need to learn modern discipline techniques. We use 1-2-3 magic. When our toddler screams at us, it's usually an immediate "ONE!" If it's really bad, there's a time out with no counting. It really works.
I even help my wife learn by shouting "ONE!" "TWO!" ... when I'm out of the room and hear my toddler get tough. The 1-2-3 magic technique requires a lot of disciple to not get sucked into a toddler argument.
See https://www.amazon.com/1-2-3-Magic-Effective-Discipline-Chil...
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You can't. After a few solid months of 70 hour weeks you start seeing some serious health effects (blood pressure spikes, nervous system issues triggered by high levels of persistent stress, insomnia, exhaustion, etc).
This is quite a generalization. It depends on how much you value and enjoy your work. And, every person's limit is different. There exist people on both extremes.
Sure, there are always outliers, but in general, 70+ hours per week over several weeks to months will severely damage your health.
Note that we're talking about 70 hours of actual work. Being in the office for 70 hours but only working 50 hours is what's more common, and doesn't cause the same hit to your health.
In 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…
I heard from people who work in that culture that it is more for show. Most people still browse YouTube/Reddit and stuff. When everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency.
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On the other side, I know some investment bankers and they work more than 60 hours per week. They look unhealthy to me :)
I too was one of those unhealthy looking, overworked bankers. I was promoted at a young age and had a lot to prove, so I overdid it for a year or two. Then I understood the secret the other MDs had known for years - you just have to look busy, not actually be busy!