In American Psycho Patrick Bateman has it pretty chill, spending all his working hours on watching TV, reading magazines and talking trash with his peers. I used to think it was just another example of how unhinged he was, but maybe it’s a comment on some kind of double standard on workload vs. compensation in the corporate life.
If you read "The Meritocracy Myth" by Yale University law professor Stephen McNamee, you will understand the game being played here quite well. There are upper class Americans in particular who basically work extremely long hours (80-105 hour work weeks) to game the system, with no net productivity gains whatsoever compared to the middle and upper middle class who typically work 40-60 hour work weeks at maximum. In fact, the productivity gains generally wane off at about 32 hours per week, and we really do not need longer work hours in modern society, unless it is for the upper class to "protect" their status. Just like sleep is critical, rest is critical too, for recharging, so you can do a good job at work. The health effects of working extremely long hours, even if it affords you things and experiences others do not have, are just simply not worth it.
My father, who grew up as a very indignant American youth, who literally paid for all of his clothes starting by age 12, knew how to play this game very well. He was able to transcend the poor, working, and middle classes, and was comfortably in the upper middle class as senior level management, in the private sector, in finance, as a certified public accountant by training, by the time I was born. At my grandmother's funeral (his mother's funeral) people wished they were industrious as he was in his youth! The sad part about it is he died before he turned 60, and before his mother. It comes at a huge price.
I love technology and I enjoy my work, but it doesn't define me as a human being. There are opportunities I've had to do some work at what people would consider "prestigious" companies but I've turned it down in order to have better work life balance.
This is it.
I've had various issues with unrealistic requests and timelines from those to whom I report, and it feels as if I need to, somehow, "work harder" (whatever that means) to prove that I'm trying to execute their impossible plan.
When I get home, however, the mere presence of my wife and kids, and even pet(s), remind me of how I actually define myself, WHO I AM.
I like art. Be it paintings, music, film, TV shows. That's where I find "myself". I'm good at things I do for work, but I don't care about it the way I care about the meanings of life I can find staring into a painting, or listening to a song (anywhere from Mr. Bungle to Debussy) or watching a TV show (anywhere from Adventure Time to For All Mankind).
I'm privileged enough, and have planned ahead enough, that I could significantly downgrade my already not-very-prestigious, but quite demanding job, and live well.
My job doesn't come close to defining me, to myself anyway. That's probably the other "thing" - how people want to be able to define themselves to others. I'm relatively unaffected by that particular neuroticism.
I like coding. The thinking, the problem solving, the expressiveness, the chiselling out of a solid block of emptiness. It is my art.
I made it my trade. It's a double-edged sword, with which I badly stabbed myself a couple of times. I tried to drop out, but can't help but come back to it.
The job's not me alright, the coding is a big part of me for sure.
> The thinking, the problem solving, the expressiveness, the chiselling out of a solid block of emptiness
Beautifully illustrated. I like a blank whiteboard; it represents potential.
I can do that kind of deep focus, I just can't do it two days in a rows and expect any efficiency the second one, let alone a full week.
Truth be told, I somewhat have to do that due to some sort of mild attention disorder (I can't imagine what life must be like for those with a more serious condition).
Thankfully over the years intentional practice of a great deal of sports taught me that long term consistency is what matters, doesn't matter if I do things in bursts as long as I don't overexert and rest appropriately (and especially don't bash myself for it).
But that requires full agency over my work time, something that I took a decade to unlock via being remote: in a 9-5 office people can't help but wonder why you're slacking all day and dragging your feet in order not to straight up not turning up for work.
The feeling of wasting time and the judgemental attitude (both from others and myself) just made me feel miserable, even though overall I was outputting the work and then some.
I don't care about prestige, I just care about my well being, and not being disparaged.
By not coding for 8 hours. There are many more aspects to being a developer than writing code - documentation, code review, testing, planning, mentoring, etc. Even if you're quite junior and don't get involved in things like planning you can being doing "low mental workload" tasks like writing lots of repetitive-but-necessary tests or manually QAing your own tasks before pushing them to a PR. Your day absolutely should not be 8 hours of extremely focused dev work except on rare occasions when it's needed.
This I tried, took me a long while to realise I should not have, because "low load" is still load, and what I really needed was rest because I had myself throughly mentally exerted.
On top of that "low load" doesn't mean the task is of less importance. Mistakes come by easier when one's already exerted.
I don't think the parent meant it that way but suggesting that solution can come out as demeaning for people that already are on the edge of exhaustion and internally questioning themselves.
I sometimes enter "the zone" in which I lose track of time and work just flows. But not every day.
People in the upper class don't need to work because they're able to live off of, and build wealth from, their assets.
The lower and middle classes are defined by their economic precarity that hinges on their ability to sell their labor. If someone needs to work to "protect their status", they're upper middle class at best.
There is some confused language being used here. If you're saying the marginal productivity of the 81st hour worked in a week is 0, then that is almost certainly wrong. If you're saying that the marginal productivity of the 81st hour in a week is less than that of the 32nd hour, that may well be true, but if so, nothing else of what you said follows from that.
No, I am correct here, and there is no "confused language" in my writing. This has been studied by prominent economists at Stanford University, which is ironically one of the worst Universities in the US for encouraging "working nonstop".
Once you work over 55 hours per week, your productivity at that point effectively becomes zero [1]. You effectively cannot accomplish anything more, productively, as a human, past 55 hours of work per week.
I suggest that you become more aware of human limitations, along with becoming more aware of human behavior, especially human tribalistic behaviors. Then you would not fall for these kinds of falsehoods. It would help you play "the game" more successfully, which you seem to take interest in.
[1] The Productivity of Working Hours (Stanford University study by economist John Pencavel): http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf
This is just false but I suppose it’s all a matter of what you call “work”. For some people, going to client dinners and golf outings is “work”. I agree coding for 55+ a week is difficult but there are plenty of folks that have this ability to sit down and grind.
The idea that some economist at Stanford discovered a secret 55 hour breaking point for productivity that generalizes to every human on earth is beyond preposterous.
I suspect like many economist papers this does not replicate and is simply a means for generating headlines to help this person get tenure or funding for their work.
This is borne out in data from a British bomb factory during WWI. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecoj.12166
Figures 1 and 2 (page 2060 and 2061) show that, across four cohorts doing different tasks, output plateaus at about 48 hours/week. Indeed, output from 70 hour week (10 hr/day x 7 days) was slightly lower than a 48 hour week (8 hr/day, with Sunday off). These workers were pretty motivated by the circumstances and doing skilled but not particularly creative work, so I suspect this is likely an upper bound.
There's lots of interesting data about working conditions from the the Health of Munition Workers Committee.
As another commentor says, it simply can't be that marginal productivity drops to zero. At least, if you're trying to produce, there's some external motivation, then it'd take something really serious (starvation, massive sleep deprivation, etc.) to make it actually zero; more than just 'a long week'.
It's like if you're super motivated and work all-night on something exciting: if you were rational for a second, you'd realise you'd probably accomplish more on it with a few hours' break to sleep. But that doesn't mean the alternative is doing nothing in the last x hours.
It can even fall below zero. Imagine the totally overworked surgeon killing his patient because of fatigue and total exhaustion. His net productivity has fallen, reducing the outcome of the last 12 hours.
His contribution to 'product' is providing the service of surgery; he has done that.
But yes, overworked and tired surgeons are more likely to kill patients; killing patients bad; overworking surgeons bad. (It's just not a 'productivity' issue.)
After the 55th hour, there was certainly productive work being accomplished. Less productive than the 1st hour I am sure, but the amount of valuable work being done was more than zero. It was observably evident.
BUT if you know your workday is exactly 8 hours with a 30 minute lunch in the middle, you'll pace yourself differently.
The difference between two equal people doing the same thing, one working until they drop and the other working 8 hours and leaving, isn't big enough to warrant the longer hours worked in the long run.
The one working longer hours might get more work done for a day, maybe a week or two. But after months of work the first person is burned out and the second one is still going strong.
I work a full time job and contract for at least 25hrs/week.
In my full time job I’m paid for 40hrs but not all 40 of those are productive. I take an hour lunch, we have a bunch of meetings and social things, etc.
If you ask, I work 65+ hours per week. If we’re being honest I probably only work 40 or less between lunch, catching up with coworkers sitting in meetings not doing anything, etc.
Law firm partners also don't generally make the same money on their 80th hour. Partnerships will split up the profit at the end of the year, and the number of hours billed and size of the partner's "book of business" factor in heavily here. The size of the book of business depends on the number of hours the partner bills (overseeing associates and paralegals, as well as doing independent work), so working more will increase a partner's share of the annual profits.
Also, a partner whose time is in high demand can raise rates (sometimes done by reducing discounts or charging clients a "NY rate"). So a partner who has plenty of work and doesn't mind not having more work can simply raise rates and make the 80th hour more expensive for clients.
I think you need to be a lot more specific citing 'evidence'.
And I had a taste of something similar myself. Project dropped out of the sky on my plate with due date a little too close for comfort. So what do you do? If you want to deliver, something has got to give..
Obviously, this project wasn't important enough to be given to you with enough time to get it done. Deadlines are often artificial, and this is probably what it was. In the absence of any specifics, I'd say push back on the deadline, negotiate for what you need to deliver something acceptable within a reasonable time, and don't kill yourself for it. If you do kill yourself for this one project, that just sets an expectation for next time that you don't want to have set.
"We said we'd give them X, Y, Z by A for $N. Let's see how close we can get to it." Is not abnormal from my experience with major clients as well. I work in R&D so there is usually an expectation of delays and failures but in this world, the client has an idea of what they want and an upper budget if what they'll spend. People try and feel this out to get as close to their budget as possible and as little as the client with agree to for that budget. Actual budgeting based on requirements and planning doesn't happen, you simply grab the opportunity and run with it. Yes, much of R&D is complete shit show.
But, the type of deadline you point out (we said we'd give them $STUFF by $DATE for $PRICE) is often flexible, if not artificial. For instance, maybe you can work out a schedule where by $DATE, you deliver $SUBSET_OF_STUFF for $LOWER_PRICE, while continuing to build out features to satisfy the original request, ending up delivering $STUFF for $PRICE.
Admittedly, this can be tricky. But, it can be done. I've done it before. Once a client has already agreed to a deal, they're generally inclined to stay with you, provided you're working in good faith with them. This can be somewhat of a sunk cost mentality, but it doesn't really matter as long as you're not taking advantage of that to soak them for cash.
I guess the moral of the story is that any contract is amendable and re-negotiable, if you approach it right. If it's not possible to deliver by $DATE without killing yourself and your team, then it's time to consider re-negotiating. And, as you said, in the real world, delays happen; clients may be willing to accept some small delays.
Even regulatory deadlines can sometimes be a little flexible, but that's a whole higher level of negotiation, and government agencies sometimes don't have the discretion to delay enforcement of new regulations, or the incentive to work with you to get you into compliance. In that case, the choice comes down to either a one-time push to deliver what's needed (and, you should be explicit that it is a one-time push), or temporarily eating the fines while delivering on a realistic schedule. I've never been in this type of situation, but I have dealt with government agencies before, and it can be a pain.
if dates can't be changed, you push back and ask for more resources to be hired.
As an analogy, a house can be painted by 1 guy over 10 days or 10 guys in 1-2 days.
You cannot always just slap more resources on a task to get it done on time. Something that a lot of management does not seem to understand.
Who would be afraid of having to sit and twiddle their thumbs for half an hour waiting for the next meeting, if not someone desperate to uphold an image of being an over-worker?
Reply with this: “Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine.” ― Bob Carter
In my previous team, it would have been "yeah I'm sorry, but there is a fire, this customer is paying us XYZ and threating to take their bussiness elsewhere, ...". Saying "no" would at best give you some additional resources.
(Note that I did say "previous" team and the reason this kept happening is precisely why that team is no longer my current one)
If a problem needs solved by end of week and it takes at least 3 weeks to do properly, you document what you can do within normal office hours by the deadline and ask if that's enough.
If not, then they either need to approve overtime or extra resources. There's exactly zero chance I'm going to be using my free time to fix someone else's fuckup without proper compensation.
I think this is a pretty clever meta comment, but for those who don’t know, it’s a quite graphic book. I never had the stomach for it.
And that's not even considering the management of expectations to prevent complaints about income inequality. I mean, you didn't work 80+ hour weeks, so, who are you to complain?
This. There's nothing bad in wanting to do a great job but most often you're not the one to benefit from that. Especially software devs, some of them can work miracles almost for free, just to get some recognition (but not too much, we don't want them to think they provide something extraordinary )