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Comment by methyl | Hacker News Reader

> this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health

I can relate to that. I used to work not more than it was required for being perceived as a very productive person (10-15 hours / week), but at some point I couldn't stand it. I co-founded a startup and for first two years I easily crossed 60 hours/week on average, yet I was much happier and had more energy than previously. Of course 60 hours work week is not sustainable, but I definitely felt better mentally doing too much rather than too little.

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60 hour workweeks are absolutely sustainable?

Desirable maybe not, but I’ve known lots of people who have worked ten hours a day six days a week. Especially if they don’t have other commitments.

I think many doctors work much more than that (60-80 hours each week) for pretty much their entire careers.

So what

Yes, and burning out and stress are huge issues for doctors their entire careers too

This horrifies me. I want medical professionals, law enforcement, fire departments, basically any essential public service well rested and happy.

No they don't. They do it for a brief period when they are interns, under the theory that if you only have 2 years to make someone a good enough doctor you need that many hours per week to accomplish it.

The majority of doctors work 41 to 60 hours per week. This is self reported, so it is likely that it is somewhat inflated. I once met someone who claimed to work 180 hours one week (do the math).

No, they work 60-80 during the 3rd and 4th year of med school, then 80-100 during residency, which lasts 4-7 years. It's absolutely an insane system.

It depends on the type of work being done

Yeah, it depends on the work and the person. I've had periods at my company where 60h absolutely would have been sustainable for what I was working on at the time, and periods at the same company where 40h is still headed towards burnout. And I've experienced much worse elsewhere. I actually really like the periods where I have stable things that give back enough energy to keep me sustainable at 60h.

I think 60 hours of debugging a compiler is different than 60 hours of wining and dining executive clients.

I think it's largely depending on the person which of those sounds more tiring. An extrovert would thrive on these meetings, while an introvert might hate every second of them. Conversely, an extrovert might hate sitting alone in front of his PC for 60h, while an introvert might find it very fulfilling (assuming that he loves writing compilers).

Sure, debugging a compiler is more fun.

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