Comment by passivate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by passivate | Hacker News Reader

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>We need to stop normalizing working beyond a 40 hour work week. I can accomplish far more and with greater clarity of purpose, mental acuity and motivation in an actual 40 hours, than I could if I attempt to push myself to 10-12 hours a day.

But normalizing any number is problematic. It depends on the job, and the specific individual. A warehouse packer or a burger flipper are unlikely to accomplish more by working less. So lets say each person can be productive for X hours per week. This number might be the same throughout the year, or it might go up/down, etc. It might be co-related to other things (pandemic, life events, etc). And then you have some people that can be productive for 80 hours / week. (I want to explicitly make a distinction between warming a chair for 80 hours versus actually producing something valuable.)

The tricky question is, what is the threshold below which you are considered a poor performer? And the corollary - If you are one of those outliers who can be productive 80hrs/week - Should you be compensated more than your peers? I know that if I was one of those outliers (I'm not), I would expect to get rewarded for being more productive.

> So lets say each person can be productive for X hours per week.

I don't think productivity is the right way to frame things. This makes it sound like a human is nothing more than a tool. The reason people should work fewer hours is so that they can enjoy life outside of work, remain healthy, spend time with family and friends, etc. Not to maximize productivity for the stockholders.

Even if some person is capable of being productive working 80 hours a week, it's not clear that this is good for the person, either in the short run or the long run. Workaholism can be a bad habit.

> This makes it sound like a human is nothing more than a tool.

Yes, from your employer's perspective, you are. In fact they will replace you with a literal tool as soon as possible. That might be a burger flipping robot, or a CRUD app producing bot one day, whatever. Tools

Well, I cannot judge what is good for you, and neither can you for me. Its an individual choice, not something that is forced upon. The point is, 40 hours/week is a completely arbitrary number. I enjoy working extra hours, it allows me to work on multiple projects simultaneously that I otherwise couldn't do in an 8 hour day.

If Michael Jordan wasn't such a workaholic would he still have become 'The' Michael Jordan. No data, but I find it unlikely. (No, I'm not comparing myself to Jordan)

> If Michael Jordan wasn't such a workaholic would he still have become 'The' Michael Jordan.

1) Michael Jordan retired from the Chicago Bulls (for the second time) at age 36. I suppose in tech with rampant age discrimination, that's also when you're expected to retire after burning yourself out...

2) Michael Jordan made enough money that he could have retired even earlier. No employer was forcing him to work. He did it "for the love of the game".

3) None of us here are or ever will be Michael Jordan. Either in talent — arguably the greatest of all time — or in financial security — one of the highest compensated athletes ever.

You say you're not comparing yourself to Jordan, but why even bring him up? He's not only the world's greatest basketball player but also the world's worst analogy for comparing with normal people working at a job.

If you're in control of your own destiny, then by all means, do whatever you like. But a lot of people are busting their butts just for their current employer, and eventually you're going to find out that you actually mean very little to your employer, who will drop you at the drop of a hat and not give a damn about your fate. Your family and friends are the only ones who will stick with you and care for you in the long run.

We're on a tangent with Jordan, so I'll just let it go. I don't fundamentally disagree with you, I'm just having a discussion. If you work more and produce more, you should be entitled to benefits from that extra work. If as you said, things are just transactional and nobody cares about you, then you should want to extract as much monetary value as you can for your work.

This is missing the broader context: workers are competing with each other for jobs and promotions.

If one worker finds that they can achieve a competitive advantage by working more hours, then other workers will copy that strategy. They may have to copy that strategy whether they want to or not, just to get jobs. Suddenly, working overtime is no longer the exception, it's now the norm, expected. And in that situation, the workers don't benefit, only the employers benefit from the expected overtime work. And then you have a culture of overwork and burnout in the industry. Employers may not care, because they can exploit you for a few years, until you burn out and are incapable of working any more, at which point you quit or get fired, and the employer moves on to the next employee. This situation is not to your long-term benefit at all, because you have to take a lot of time post-burnout making no money.

This is why all workers need to take a stand and not allow employers to exploit them, not to agree to work unreasonable hours. Your career — indeed your whole life — is a marathon, not a sprint. Trying to run a marathon in a series of sprints is not an effective strategy.

I agree, but a lot of what you fear is already happening. People are putting in a lot of time for advancing their career in various ways - learning new skills, taking extra classes, attending conferences, lectures, networking, etc. All of that is time they don't get paid for and don't spend with their family/friends, etc, etc.

>This is why all workers need to take a stand and not allow employers to exploit them, not to agree to work unreasonable hours.

As with anything leverage will change based on the situation. To get to this point of leverage a lot of things need to change. Not just locally, but globally.

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