Men Get Serious About Work-Life Balance
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
What a ridiculous generalization. And calling wishing to care for your family a women's issue is absurd. I couldn't finish reading the article after that.
An anecdote about work/life balance: I was up for a promotion last year. Also, my wife wrecked her car last year. When I could have been busting my ass in the office meeting arbitrary project deadlines, I was leaving the office hours early to pick my kid up from school, helping my wife negotiate with insurance companies, driving her to the rental car place, to the repair shop, to another dealership, etc.
My project fell behind, and a couple of people complained that I wasn't returning calls fast enough. I lost the promotion. I lost it with a song in my heart, and I'd do it again in a hot second.
That's why 8 hours should be law and overtime should only be used in emergency cases (and paid accordingly).
So that those young & naive, desperate or overly ambitious to foolishly work 10 or 14 hours do not drag down (as "not serious enough with their career") those that want a stable work-life balance.
As soon as you let individuals and businesses decide how they go about it, it's a race to the bottom (those that do want it, fuck all the others).
Or, you get free markets and laissez-faire capitalism, the greatest wealth-producing system known to mankind.
BTW, the only country I can think of that actually practices laissez-faire capitalism is Somalia: they really have no regulation. Not so much wealth being produced there.
Or the suppressor operating at the greatest scale known to mankind (from colonialism and imperialism, to 2 World Wars, post colonialism and still counting).
For, if you want to measure the wealth created by capitalism by the last two (or three) centuries, you cannot just add what you like (e.g the internal US market) and hide the rest under the carpet. Add the ecological impact to the whole thing, and the numbers do not look that good.
Not to mention that such a thing as pure "free market" never existed. It's a slogan, like "Don't be evil". What does exist is a huge market system that's "laissez-faire" only for those in power (countries and individuals) and "take it or be crushed" for others.
And in which the huge wealth comes along with grabbing resources with military might (not very "free"), imposing tariffs and embargoes to who it pleases you as a big western power, operations covert and open to have friendly people (including brutal dictators) in "allied" countries, and the like. Nothing very "free market" about them.
(Actually, from the moment there is even a "patent system", which controls industries and markets of trillions of dollars worth, there's not a "free market" system anymore -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg).
The US isn't where it is today wealth-wise JUST because of cold hard capitalism. It also helps that we have a large market with everyone speaking the same language, having similar laws, one currency, copyright and patent acknowledgement to protect inventors (back before corporations ballooned to their current size), a decent amount of civility, fair business law, a respect for the rule of law (something my home country of Bulgaria does not), strong property and land ownership, and a desire to innovate that have allowed people to build wealth.
A country isn't built on everyone doing whatever the hell they want. There's an actual formula for it.
The US has that - look at the telecom companies. I'm sure there's many more prime examples, but Companies do indeed use the government, at least to help them make money, by stopping competition, getting bailouts and grants for things like infrastructure and just pocketing the money and sticking us with higher costs and no improvements on our service.
Even if you had left off "laissez-faire", the statement wouldn't have been wrong it would have been rather weak: what other systems have we actually conceived and/or tried?
A case could be made for shorter work weeks as a means to reduce unemployment, as well as to force people to take rest from work, but you'd definitely be pricing some people in need out of the job market, and I'm not sure there's a workaround for that side effect.
Oh, but I said it should only be allowed if it's paid for. So that will actually HELP those needing the extra money "brought by longer work weeks".
What happens now it that people slave away extra hours for the same basic salary, and don't get any overtime pay.
And I think it will also help unemployed people wanting work. A company will have to hire 3 people, instead of slaving 2 for 12 hours a day (and it wont hurt them, since no other company could slave 2 people either to get the advantage for themselves).
I've been doing four tens per week (plus occasional disaster overtime, etc) for many years now. The key seems to be exercise at lunchhour including hot shower (if possible/applicable). Then it feels a heck of a lot more like five hour days. I'll never go back to five eights per week unless I absolutely have to.
However, you'd struggle to find a job with European levels of vacation. Most jobs will start out with 10-15 days of paid vacation, plus ~10 holidays.
The 4-6 weeks you can get in Europe is extremely rare in the US (where I worked, I finally got 3 weeks after 7 years of service).
Not sure I can go without 32 days a year, I'd go nuts I think.
With me - after 4-5 hours in the flow - I am done, squeezed like a lemon.
The only benefit after that is for task that require very out of the box thinking - when i am sleepy dead tired etc the crazy stuff comes on its own. The thing I am most proud of inventing came at 3 am.
That's what I'm currently trying to establish for myself - 4 to 5 hours of work a day tops. I used to think that I could do more, used to work hard on trying to do more, but the truth is pretty simple. If you want to get more done, you need to become more efficient, not work longer hours. And structure your life around those 4-5 hours so that within them, you are able to deliver.
I recommend limiting work hours to everybody these days, but it seems that the mindset is simply too ingrained.
> The only benefit after that is for task that require very out of the box thinking [...] when i am sleepy dead tired etc [...]
Maybe those "you need to put in more than 10 hours a day" people should switch to 4 hours of work, plus a full-out boxing match plus 1 hour of "crazy stuff" work?
Next up on News At Ten - The crazy new crossover trend sweeping through Silicon Valley: A breakthrough mixture of Extreme Programming and Fight Club that has blue collar workers eyes twitching.
If the people I work with would shut their traps when in the office I'd get everything I get done in an 8-hour day today done in 2-3 hours, tops. I find that the people who appear to love to work 100 hours a week are the ones doing most of the yapping.
Part of this is when your work life becomes your social life. Particularly in startups, being at work can be a mix of actual work and chatting, getting lunch, having a drink and a good time.
It's difficult, because you do spend more time with these people than you do most others. Nowadays I work somewhere where we just go to a bar after work. Much simpler.
But they still count that all as work time, which is... silly, and brings lie to this idea that you can productively work 80+ hour weeks. Just hanging out with the gang at the office isn't work. I mean, if you count 'being around people who are employees of the company' as work, it is actually fairly rare that I don't work a 20+ hour day.
I humbly suggest that this is part of your problem.
If you're out of the office by 3:30, but still available by email and willing to work "well into the evening", your work is your life. Pretending that you have some sort of "balance" simply because you're not chained to a desk in an office is pure naiveté.
I spent time at a company that superficially was very 'work/life balance'. When pressed on the specifics of what that ment to them regarding hours on call and in office They responded with a "We're talking more or a 'work/life harmony'" which ment your work should be your life.
Another one you often see is loud trumpeting about training budgets, which happen to be 100% allocated by mandatory safety classes and such. "But we won't discipline you, if you read a book you paid for, on your own time, if it doesn't interfere with your work."
This is a ridiculous statement. Women face a different set of pressures and stereotypes around working and parenting than men. Those pressures are starting to become the same for both men and women, but they're not the same yet, and until then, it's not possible for a man to be better at handling women's issues without also being a woman and being better at it.
A sports analogy is apt here: I have a friend who when he was young used to play competitive rugby at the national level. He said that through high school and even varsity (university) teams, what really put people at the top was their drive, motivation, training, and also of course skill. At the national, world professional level however, it was different. One needed these ingredients of course to gain entrance to this level of play ... but once there, now what really separated the top say 10% from the rest came down to something rather simple: the extent to which you were willing to injure yourself. The best players were the ones that were willing to get concussions over and over again, to perform manoeuvres that resulted in high probability of broken bones, etc. He ended up quitting because he was not willing to hurt his body to such an extent that he would pay for it for the rest of his life. In essence the top players were the ones who were willing to become extreme, who were willing to sacrifice things most people valued in their life (their future health) in order to stay at the top.
So it is in business, finance, academia, you name it. The people you will find at the top are the ones who have made the choice to sacrifice things that most people find valuable, in order to be the top of the top in their chosen field of work / study.
Said differently: if you are trying to achieve top success, you will face the following over and over again: there will be times where you are faced with the choice: work late into the night and miss your son's birthday party, or go home and try to catch up in the morning. Take that work trip for a week even though your wife is sick at home and needs help with the kids, or don't take the work trip.
There will always be someone else at work who will be willing to do the things you are unwilling to do.
It's nice to talk about modern and sympathetic work environments that value well rounded lifestyles but man, it's a jungle out there, this is a fantasy, when the shit hits the fan.
That sounds more like getting to the top of your office or company, rather than the top of your field. I was thinking about the people that invent and create liberally, outside the constraints of product deadlines and work hierarchies. Fantasy indeed :-)
Seriously?! What kind of editor allows such gendered bullshit to make it into an article like this?
Looking after young children for more than just a fun hour in the evening before bed is hard work - certainly much more demanding than working full time ever was.
Working part time is challenging too - nobody is sharing the role, and I find the hours I am working are much more focused now I know I have a hard stop every day. When working 40+ hours a week there was always time for another cup of tea, a short walk or browse on the net. Now, during working hours, I am working.
Last month my wife negotiated a reduction of her hours to 25 per week. This makes us both a lot more flexible and brings in time for things like having breakfast together once a week, working on side project or going on week-long work trips without running into childcare difficulties.
My advice: if you want to try this, you have to negotiate for it. If you don't try, nobody will offer it to you. Great programmers have an incredible amount of negotiating leverage, particularly at the moment. Use it or something you care about.
Fortunately we can afford this at the moment and I keep costs very low and do everything[1] myself which is great for learning but not the best business strategy.
School days 9am to 3pm don't give long to get in the zone and productive but with Agee play dates and after school club I can get a bit more done.
Until 2 years ago I was working in what was essentially a business development role which involved significant travel. It was just about working as my wife's role was fairly quiet and our son was in nursery (8-6 although we didn't use the full period most days). We couldn't have continued this when my wife's role became busier and less flexible.
[1] Design, development, website, accounting, cloud server admin.
Sometimes I feel like I can't complain about working longer because I don't have any kids or wife to care for. I do have a fiancée, but that seems to count less, because we're both young.
I'd really like to get to working 10-hour days 4 days a week, but I don't feel like I have any leverage.
However, partners have significant autonomy over how they run their teams. If you're lucky, you get a partner who is like the partner in this article and actually lets you employ your firm's flex-time scheduling without harming your career. If you're not, you get a partner who cares more about year-end revenue figures than work-life balance. The latter is by far the more common scenario.
Why not give workers flexibility to work when they are productive on work tasks and flexibility to focus on family when that is the most productive outcome. This could alleviate a lot of pressure that everyone feels with the need to balance work and life. What are we trying to balance? 3 hours a night with kids every night for 18 years doesn't mean you balanced your life.
Some people may want to drive their kid to school and then go into work focused. Then chooses to work out and take time to eat a healthy lunch and then work some more and then picks their kids up from school. Stay with them at home till the other spouse comes home and then switches into work mode while the kids are being fed and washed by the other spouse. Read to them a bedtime story and tuck them into bed before some more highly focused time to work again before going to bed at a time they find reasonable sounds good to some people.
Not all people but some. We just need the flexibility to choose to work when we're most productive and when don't feel guilty being away from the kids. How many here like wake up late but work late into the night boarding on the next morning, while others are up so early its still night for others?
We're not identical cogs as much as our education system and society, based upon the needs of the industrial revolution, tried to produce. Give people choice and you'll be rewarded with healthier, well adjusted and productive employees and families.
Was it worth it? Highly debatable. I've also since suffered a whole host of illnesses likely brought on by the almost constant 12-14hr days. But as a couple people have mentioned, if you want to get somewhere, you will have to give something else up.
When the government fixes income inequality gap, then I will. I don't work hard because like to I work hard because I have to.