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Comment by Yeul | Hacker News Reader

36 hours is the standard in my country- it's called progress. A century ago it was probably 80 hours for everyone over 12 lol.

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In France in 1851, a new law limited child labour to 10 hours per day between 8 and 14 years old. Then max 12hrs until 16 (Then you are conscripted at 18).

36 hours is 5 days a week, unless you work ridiculously long days.

9 hours is considered ridiculously wrong?

Plus lunch, yes. No way I could do anything that involves thinking for that long. Menial tasks maybe.

In which country?

However, the free market dictates that you will be outcompeted by anyone who is willing to work 40+ hours. So much for progress.

Please provide a citation for that

would you be twice as productive working 80 hours a week as you are at 40?

surely there's diminishing returns, and it doesn't seem obvious that 40 is the sweet spot.

Diminishing returns doesn’t invalidate their point.

Working more hours will always produce more output, even if the marginal increase in output decreases.

That doesn’t consider the greater picture and all the costs.

If the harder worker becomes dissatisfied sooner and leaves the position sooner than the worker putting in fewer hours, that increased employee turnover will result in lower company productivity and higher overhead.

The net result may be far worse.

It invalidates their point because what’s stopping you from saying say “you can be outcompeted by someone willing to work 168 hours a week.”

it’s not diminishing positive returns. Eventually you work so much the returns go negative.

According to you it doesn’t matter if on the 49th consecutive hour the worker is basically dead and unable to come into work the next week. Overwork leads to loss of productivity and possible negative outcomes for the business if mistakes happen because of exhaustion.

In the real world there is probably some equilibrium for maximizing productivity vs hours work vs supply of workers capable of working those hours to that quality consistently.

You’re being sensationalist to try to make a point that doesn’t stand on its own.

Most studies show that productivity per hour doesn’t go down until about 60 hours, or higher for low skilled work.

Actually, that isn't true. The marginal output of working more than about 40 hours per week turns negative after about 4 weeks of doing so. There's plenty of research on this.

https://ericdodds.com/research-and-the-realities-of-time-wor...

You can barely even have a single income household anymore these days, thanks to the free market.

If progress exists, it's going in the wrong direction.

we don't have a free market, it's highly regulated

Lmao work 40+ for almost the same pay?! No thanks.

That's not necessarily true.

Maybe people can't produce more than 4 days of work per week or 5 hours per day; in that case the productivity would be the same and people working more are essentially wasting time.

My empirical evidence say otherwise (sample_size=1) I can be quite productive up to ~70hrs doing knowledge work (I've been on it for 8 months, hours are tracked and connected to tasks, no idling is counted), but that's pushing it and it might not be sustainable for longer period of time. My will to live is certainly at historical lows.

Lawyers in big law can also do 60-80 hours (while ruining their life) so I think it's reasonable.

I've heard people in other professions (eg. nurses) pushing 90-100hrs but they are not actively thinking all their working time.

If 4-day workers are 25% more productive than 5-day workers, or 5-day workers are 20% less productive than 4-day workers, then no.

While it's hard to increase productivity by 25%, it's not a problem for workers to drop productivity by 20%. Owners can work as much as they want, of course.

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