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Comment by atemerev | Hacker News Reader

Which is why most professions are settled on 40-hour work week, as the ideal way to extract long-term productivity. If other time arrangements will give more productivity, employers will be eager to adopt it. But it is not the case for e.g. 15 hour work week.

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Most occupations are settled on a 40-hour work week, sure, but that's because employers have done the math and determined paying overtime is worse than extending output. They don't cap it at 40 hours/week for optimal productivity; it's for the bottom line.

However, I can think of very few professions which involve a 40-hour work week, given that most professionals are salaried. In The U.S., 60 hours/week is more the norm (not to mention being subservient to email at all hours) and in certain competitive careers, taking vacations is eschewed.

This mentality is silly.

This looks strange to me (I am European). If working for 40h week is more productive than 60h week, why company owners even choose the latter?

It's not that less is more; rather it's that more work has diminishing productivity returns. And, after a certain point, the returns dip negative due to fatigue-related risks (this is a unique example, but it's always major news when the maximum hours allowed for medical residents gets reformed/reduced on account of patient mortality related to doctor fatigue).

And that's just when we limit the scope of "returns" to productivity. As the article points out, there are many, many non-productivity benefits associated with a shorter work week.

I don't think many Americans will be on their death bed lamenting "oh, if only I'd spent more late nights/weekends at the office working on spreadsheets."

Because the marginal cost, to the employer, of hours beyond 40 is zero – remember these employees are almost always paid a salary, i.e. a fixed amount regardless of hours worked (beyond 40). Thus, even if an employee's productivity plummets – but is still above zero – it's in the employer's interest to persuade (or prod) them to work more hours.

But of course even that's a gross simplification. There are lots of 'non-linear' considerations, e.g. burnout.

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