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Comment by ewestern | Hacker News Reader

> 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

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.

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> 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.

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

Is it that the 56th hour you don't do anything, or that the 56th hour makes the other hours 1/55th less productive, therefore making it seem like you are getting something with the extra hour?

Yes, exactly this, obviously in the 56th hour next week if you want to you can 'do something'; the point must surely be (to mean anything at all) that if you attempt to sustain that, the 'first 55' suffer more than the 56th rewards.

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.

> As another commentor says, it simply can't be that marginal productivity drops to zero.

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.

No, that's 'just' a bad outcome of his productivity.

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.)

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.

I just imagine a guy who spends 10 hours a day cracking rocks with a sledge hammer, 6 days a week. It's too bad those last 5 hours worth of rocks just don't count....

Obviously, the last rocks don't unsmash themselves. However, if someone plans to work 60 hours a week, they might work 9% slower--perhaps even unconsciously--thereby causing their output to be be the same as if they were only supposed to work 55 hours.

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.

Lawyers make the same hourly rate for the 40th or 80th hour.

This oversimplfies things a bit. Law firm associates generally receive a salary and a bonus. The bonus can be substantial (six figures) if they hit various performance targets. These targets are largely based on the number of hours billed, although work quality is also relevant.

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.

Lawyers also don't bill real hours...

you should point to a specific part of your link to the 55 hours. searching for 55 doesn't get a productivity graph, and figure 10 has some interesting notes below it.

I think you need to be a lot more specific citing 'evidence'.

Try the graphs on page 2060/2061 of this link:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecoj.12166

I feel you are making a very big and incorrect generalization about all workers based on a study of World War 1 factory workers.

I definitely want to check the book out because I love playing the game but I think there is a certain amount of nuance to account for.

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.

This notion is absurd on its face. When I was a young man, I helped my grandfather build a house one summer. We worked from sunup to sundown, with breaks for meals, and Sunday off, which comes out to much longer than 55 hours in a week.

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.

You don’t need negative marginal productivity after the 55th hour to see a negative impact of more than 55 worked hours a week. Things like exhaustion will affect you all the time and decrease overall productivity. So sure, you might still do some useful work after 55, but over the course of the week you’d do still less than if you worked 40 hours. There are caveats and exceptions as usual, but it is not as ridiculous as you make it sound.

The point here is that if you know you're stuck at the worksite "until it's done", you'll work at a more manageable pace.

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.

The 81st hour's productivity might not be 0, but if you worked 81 hours last week, that will impact your productivity in the current week, including reducing your productivity in the much more important first 32 hours.

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