Honestly, for people who work more than 40 hours a week, how many of them are actually working more than 40 hours a week? Sometimes it feels like half my day is spent reading HN and the like. If I could focus much more, I'm sure I wouldn't need to spend more than 40 hours a week to get my stuff done.
Every office is different with regard to the hours worked as well as when those hours are worked. I find the latter is more important than the former.<p>At my office most people get in around 9:30am to 10:00am, and leave around 8 hours later. What I found was that I couldn't get any work done around that time because productivity slows down to a crawl in the middle of the day, usually due to meetings, figuring out what they need to do for the day, or the usual inter-cubicle communication.<p>I fixed this for myself by coming in early, around 7:00am. That means I have approximately 2-2.5 hours of uninterrupted time when I have peak energy. Then when everyone gets into the office I don't mind the interruptions. Those are the pros.<p>The cons are that I have to wake up at 6am to drive into the office (~40mins drive). As well, 8 hours from 7am is 3pm, but there's no way I can leave at that time without losing face. Instead, I leave at 4pm. I currently rationalize this extra hour of "work" by saying that I take a 1 hour lunch that I don't charge for.<p>Timeboxing myself into a 8-9 hour timespan means I really need to prioritize my work for the day. Once the clock strikes 3:30pm, I make it a mission to take the next 30 minutes to wind down and prepare for the next day. This has helped me reduce the stress associated with the work day.
Most people who think they work 50-60 hours actually work 40 hours. Most people who think they work 40 hours actually work 30 or less. I've seen that for myself, working very hard from morning to mid-night taking breaks only to eat and tracking every minute, adds up to only 50 hours of REAL work per week (not counting Saturday Sunday). People work a lot less than they think they do. Track your EXACT time worked and see how much you really worked ... I've been doing this for at least the last year.
I've worked frequently where 40 hours is long in the rear view mirror by the end of the week, but it's completely unsustainable over a long term period. I saw a few friends I'd not seen for a while and when they asked what I'd been up to all I could think was "um, work?", which completely defeats the point of working. Building something awesome is, well, awesome, but for the most part you also need to have a life and enjoy yourself.
Unfortunately the statement that 40 hrs a weeks is optimal for each and every person is yet another fallacy. I've started my first full-time job a year ago, I work in France as a dev on a 37.5 hrs contract (extended French 35 hrs in exchange for more days off, which is pretty standard in tech companies here AFAIK).<p>For the first couple of months, I've been drifting away mentally after 6.5-7 hrs. Now I'm used to it, and of course, sometimes when I'm in programming nirvana, I deliberately stay longer to finish some logical part of the task to avoid the recreating-the-context problems next day, but anyway even with avg of 37.5 hrs a week, in the long term I'm exhausted.<p>Long commute (2x1h) and living alone (everything's on my head) certainly do not help.
I work at a company that has a mean age of probably 35-40. It has the great effect that 9-5 is pretty pervasive. I can take a half day without giving notice, work more or less than 8 hours a day. Doesn't matter as long as I get my stuff done. Honestly, if I'm having a productive day, I can't get more than 8 hours of work out of my brain anyway.
Take the "Germany bans 48 hours weeks" with a grain of salt. In certain branches, working 50 hours and more is still considered part of the codex, especially in advertisement agencys. Hours are rarely logged. Working long hours is still seen favourably in Germany.<p>The big problem is that basically working an unbounded amount of time without logging it hides problems: your work environment sucks and make you slow? Just work more and the problem goes away.
I get this in the context in which it was initially studied: repetitive work that nobody would be passionate about, but I would theorize that with passion and variety you can extend this. In other words, you can only do 40 hours a week of factory labor, coding, sales calls, etc. However, you can do networking breakfasts at 7, alternate between a variety of tasks, do lunch meetings, product discussions, sales calls, and network until 7 Monday to Friday, then check email intermittently totaling an hour or two over the weekend.<p>So this is something like 60 hours and it sounds pretty sustainable to me, particularly if you have resources to avoid doing non paying work, such as chores. Anyone know if there is research to support this theory? Obviously that is relevant to startups.
Not really buying this.<p>Bill Gates and Elon Musk and their inner circle worked very long hours consistently to build something great.<p>How do you compete with those who work smart and work hard doing something they are very committed to and passionate about?<p>This is the issue I have with investing in most startups outside the Valley.<p>On average, are they not going to lose to those singularly focused on being the best?<p><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UNFjRkquCewJ:www.mycomeup.com/Business-Opportunities/What-Was-Bill-Gates-Work-Ethic-Like-In-His-20s-Check-Out-His-Daily-Routine-When-He-Was-Just-Another-Millionaire.html%3Fprint%3D1%26tmpl%3Dcomponent+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UNFjRkq...</a>
Is anyone interesting in working on a long term project to change the laws about the computer professionals exemption from being paid overtime? Drop me a note johnk@riceball.com
I recently had a phone interview that went rather well for a very interesting position but the company asks a minimum of 45 hours per week and that is a deal breaker for me.
I manage full-time contractors who can work any hours they choose and have an endless stream of work. Many of them are paid 4-5x average pay for their countries. I've noticed that most of them end up working 30 hrs/week. They're required to stop tracking time for every break, verified by cam/screen shots. Additionally, many end up taking on a second job. I wonder if that's because they can extend their productivity by doing completely different things.
The problem is corporate culture and chasing secondary indicators of productivity (hours spent in the office, lines of code written, emails sent). The actual output of knowledge workers is hard to determine and bursty (you can spin your wheels on a problem for days but have a break-through in minutes) so people come to rely on these proxies.<p>I don't even think the problem is employers [in Silicon Valley]. Employees themselves, unaware of how best to show their worth, <i>choose</i> to optimize for these proxies because it's perceived as a safer bet.<p>That said, I think when I've worked 80 hour weeks before I've gotten twice as much done as 40 hour weeks, but only because I felt driven to produce a certain output, not because I cared about the hours.
Oh how I wish I could settle down to 40 hours a week.Im actually looking forward to it. Currently work about about 60, and thats without counting the extra work I do on weekends. Anybody got a remote position for a Python guy? :)
This is a year old post although the title is very attractive. Does anyone now a newer, more comprehensive and scientifically solid article having the same claim?
If you want a book full of studies on this very topic -- many of which show the perils, yes, of trying to do non-manual-labor for extended hours -- get the book Be Excellent at Anything, which is a misnomer. The book used to be titled The Way We're Working Isn't Working, and it was a huge overview of studies that show, well, the way people are working isn't working.