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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

"People who hate their jobs often work 40 hours weeks, why be one of them?"

Working 40 hours doesn't make you one of them. It's not even a symptom of the real problem.

I work 40 hours weeks, and love my job. And I loved my last job. And I liked all the jobs before that. That's because I have pride in doing my job well, I've worked for people who appreciate it (even if that sometimes means the customer, and not my boss), and general have a good disposition towards getting things done.

There are things I dislike, like red tape, but in general, I accept them as part of the process so that I can get to the good stuff, like coding the backend of a complicated system.

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"People who hate their jobs often work 40 hours weeks, why be one of them?"

The quote smacks of truisim. Most people work roughly 40 hour weeks, so it sounds to me like saying "Most people who hate their jobs have jobs. Ergo, don't have a job".

You'll find plenty of part-time workers who hate their jobs as well - lots of hospitality workers, for a start.

"There are things I dislike, like red tape, but in general, I accept them as part of the process"

I'm having a hard time accepting it. I find it frustrating to wade through the red tape. So by the time I get to the interesting bit, it feels like a chore.

My Solution: I secretly write dev-tools and unleash it to the group just so I can by pass the red tape that comes with starting a new project. I do collect feedback after the release and fix stuff. But the initial release is based entirely on my design decisions which in turn are based on what I've observed.

> I work 40 hours weeks, and love my job.

Do you work exactly 40 hours? As in, start and 9am, leave at 5pm and never arrive early or leave late? Never a week of 41 hours? Because if I worked at a job I absolutely loved - as you describe - I would probably choose to work 50 or 60 hours. I think that the assumption here is that if you work 40 hours, you're probably doing it because that's what is expected of you and you're not willing to put in more.

It seems unlikely that most people who like their jobs so much would actually stop at 40 hours.

If you're talking about working for yourself (that is, working for customers), then sure, that makes sense.

If you're working for someone else who is paying you specifically to work 40 hours, then there's no reason to work more than that unless you consider your time worthless.

That's the difference between really liking your job and really liking the money your job provides.

I can really like my job and really like my family, hobbies and down time even more...

I frequently put in extra time on projects without compensation. I care more about doing the job right than I do about squaring up a timesheet. It's not about my time being worthless, it's about my life being worthwhile.

If you equate worth with money, in that case you are correct. Hopefully there is a lot more than money to your job or, no matter how many hours, you'll likely not enjoy that work week.

I very much think this is a question of personality and not a question of which one is better.

Personally, I'm like you -- if there's something really interesting to work on, I like to dive in and really attack it until I'm done. Even if that means 14 hour days for a stretch.

But other people I've worked with work differently -- they like routines. Go to work, have 5 things to accomplish that day, accomplish them, then go home. Then it's time for the daily walk in the park, or maybe on Tuesdays it's time to mow the front lawn, or whatever other things they slot into their time that make up their lives. Lots of people love having a life like this. And it doesn't mean they don't care about their jobs or take pride in their work the way people like us do, it just means they're different.

Yeah, some of us just don't fit in the modern world though. I can't focus on any one thing for 40 hours in any week. I get bored and lose interest. I can put 14 hours of high speed hacking in one day. But the next day I'll be lucky to get two hours of focus on code. On the other hand, I could easily put 8 hours of back breaking labor into the garden that next day. On the third day I won't be able to garden or focus on code, but I might be able to write a great blog article or work on that book I've been chewing on.

There is currently no space for someone like me in the work world. Jobs just aren't designed for generalists who need so much variety. So I'm stuck as a 40 hours a week programmer and struggling with it, because no matter how I try, I'm lucky if I can find 20 hours of real focus on programming a week.

NO.

I love my job but I also love other things. I get all my tasks done in the 40 hours (usually). I take the rest of my time to do other things I love.

I have a family and many hobbies. I love to travel and take time off whenever I can just to go and have fun.

That is why I stop at 40 hours.

I really love my job, and when I am working on 'the good parts' of it, I find it very hard to stop at 40 hours (ok, honestly, usually it's a little bit more like 45). I do force myself to stop, in large part because I have a family at home who deserve to know me. But I've also found that when I not working, filling my time with some other things than work really does enrich my life, and I feel that my performance at work does increase, or at least is more consistent because of that.

In any case, I see very clearly, also in people around me, that loving your job and working extremely long days are not the same thing.

What is it that you do for a living?

The way it worked for me--during a summer job--was that days when I had something cool going I'd stay as long as I felt; if I was bored or unoccupied, I just left early. As far as I could tell, almost all of the developers worked this way.

In practice, I'd average maybe 45 hours a week. However, this was mostly because I didn't wake up early and, since I was biking, tried to leave before dark as often as possible (although sometimes I was too occupied to notice).

Overall, I think that was basically a perfect schedule for me.

I love sweets but that does not mean I fill my plate with them.

I'm sad that people voted you down for saying that.

Yes, I work pretty close to 40 hours each week. Honestly, I tend to come in too early, and leave a little early from the schedule I told them I'd work. In the end, it probably is more like 41 hours.

>Do you work exactly 40 hours? As in, start and 9am, leave at 5pm and never arrive early or leave late? Never a week of 41 hours? Because if I worked at a job I absolutely loved - as you describe - I would probably choose to work 50 or 60 hours. I think that the assumption here is that if you work 40 hours, you're probably doing it because that's what is expected of you and you're not willing to put in more.

Either that or you've put in anywhere between 50 and 80 hours in the past, burned out, and learned your lesson. Sometimes, I have to force myself to stop and go home after eight hours. In the moment, it feels horrible, as if I'm "quitting" or "giving up". I have to remind myself that I'm not quitting, but instead am forcing myself into a sustainable pace.

The marathoners learned this ages ago. If you allow yourself to take a fast pace right away, you'll burn out towards the end and won't have enough energy to finish. Debugging a subtle bug or implementing major new functionality is like a marathon. Even after you've accomplished the main effort, there are lots of little things that need to be done in order to go from "done" to "usable". Forcing a 40 hour work week ensures that you save some of your energy for the polishing and don't flame out after building the skeleton of the solution.

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