In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week

Let's see...he states he has no life outside of work, that he forced himself to pull those hours even when there wasn't work enough to demand it, that he was working those hours without remuneration of any kind, and while conflating 'working' with 'learning', leading me to question if he was really being productive, rather than just playing around with new languages and technologies, 'causing him to credit what he would have done in his free time to 'working'.

Just before shipping, I realized I was making so many ridiculously obvious mistakes that I requested someone shadow all my code commits.

And then when the project was done? I was burned out so bad I would have panic attacks if I even saw code. It was nearly three months before I could program again.

Just because you love it doesn't mean you will avoid burn out and other downsides to sustained long work days.

This is what everyone else is arguing against and what the research is invalidating. You may feel you're getting more done, but are you really? Few high quality hours are much more productive than many low quality hours, especially if its work that requires your brain to actually work efficiently (anything creative, programming etc).

I refuse to believe that this tipping point is exactly 40 hours per week

Of course its not some one-size-fits-all magic number. Different people have different capacities. The same person has different capacities based on age, what they're working on, their health/mood/etc. Its also well researched that limited crunch time is more productive but that it drops very sharply over time. Its also often observed that the people don't realise they're not productive - like a lot of things, it can be hard to self-measure.

As long as your net contribution3 per hour is positive, what is the harm in working more?

You're health? You're social life? You're non-work-related interests?

I actively assess what makes me productive and what hurts me

This is good. Many people don't do this.

But the other thing is that when I was in my early twenties (I'm in my late twenties now, so not that long ago) I was absolutely able to work 30 hours straight without problem - but its not sustainable and ultimately leads to burnout. As you get older, it becomes even less sustainable and really, looking back, I would have benefited much more from normal hours and more of a life outside of study/work (I did have a reasonable one, but in hindsight I should have had even more of one). This persons statement that he has no life outside work is scary to me - he'll fuck himself up longer term.

In my opinion, the biggest problem isn't even how effective it is for one-self, but rather the expectation for others. Most people don't assess how productive they actually are (or do it badly), but will work long hours. One might think "Great! A person willing and able to work long hours! Hired!" and get significantly less quality work out of them than from someone working more "normal" hours.

I think the previous discussion was not about turning down people working long hours. It was about turning down the idea that working 60+ hours is something heroic, something which is worthwhile to do for everyone.

I think that people making the argument of 40 hours a week is not that is it impossible or not beneficial to work 60+ hours a week at a particular time. But that it's not sustainable. It's not the same living on ramen for two years than defending that living on ramen is actually great. Again, assuming that an exceptional situation (young startup founder with no commitments) is the norm is a mistake.

Also, it is easy to think that working those extra 20 hours are a big deal, hey 50% por output! But the fact is that that's not necessarily true. Ideas need time to develop, and spending time in different activities is good for your mind. I had a shop for a couple of years, and I worked A LOT during that time (I was the only one taking care of it), and I know how founding a company sucks up absolutely all your energy and mind. But being obsessed with it is not sane on the long term. I also work right now a lot less hours and more relaxed than when I was younger and I am waaaaay more productive.

“All else being equal, why would I hire someone that works 40 hour weeks when there are a ton of other people willing to work 60? “

So, which one is it?

> (yes, I am passionate about lawn care)

> As long as your net contribution3 per hour is positive, what is the harm in working more?

Look, if people who have done this exact thing before tell you it doesn't work, maybe listen a bit? But I guess there is nothing quite like a lesson you learn for yourself.

A good one is that this person has no clue of business, resources and the general nature of deals. They just signed a contract for 40 hours and are willing to throw 20 hours on top, cutting down their effective wage. Unless you make a 60 hour contract with them.

I cannot, with good conscience, have this person make guesses on costs of parts of a project, assert the cost letting work done outside of the company or generally allow them to make any decisions on efforts. I cannot have them work in a group of people that has to plan with time constraints.

I am okay with freelancers working 60 hours and billing them, if they really want to optimize for money. I am not okay with people singing on for bad deals, skewing the market for everyone with a tiny bit of business sense.

I'll just throw in my 2 cents about my experience.

A couple years ago I put in 3000 hours over the course of the year. Multiple 80 hour weeks, etc.

I was completely and absolutely burned out for about a year and a half after that. The massive amount of effort I put in really took a toll in every aspect of my life. I'd say I was about 50% as productive at work in my burn out period. Socially I was about 10% the person I was before, rarely hanging out with people and rarely wanted to do anything. Everyone on my team said essentially the same thing happened to them.

YMMV

In the UK, there is an ongoing political issue about declaring people with disabilities or chronic illnesses "fit to work". Everyone from cancer and dialysis patients to those with chronic fatigue, pain, depression or back injuries. An essentially binary prospect is presented: you have to take a job you are deemed fit to do, or the money you were relying on to eat is cut off.

The thing is, quite a lot of these people can do some things for some period of time. But if you force them to 40 hours it will run down their health and achieve zero productivity. With reasonable accomodation they could be part time workers. But nobody is interested in making this happen. The person who figures out the "hack" of making one 40 hour week out of four people's 10 hour weeks will be doing the world a great service.

Less extremely, this applies to parents of small children and the elderly; scope for doing more than zero hours, but not the full 40.

Is he sure he will say the same thing when he will be 40 yo ?

By all means do as many hours of work per week as you want but if you want to justify it, prove (as in scientific proof) us that you are more productive than standard a 40 hours / week .

As in, every single one I worked with that stayed in work that much without being burned out or tired did that.

It means they are too cheap to pay you what you are really worth (you are being paid for 40 hours of work, but work over 50% more thus severely constricting your 'hourly' rate) and too cheap to hire enough people to do the job (i.e. 2 people need to do the work that 3 people are supposed to do). Nothing more, nothing less.

Hence at 23 I think you should embrace longer work hours, as long as you also maintain a healthy social life in the balance.

'My company is my life' should be a red warning flag however, because for any number of foreseen and unforeseen reasons that company might not exist in the future.

And the "single most prevalent argument against working long hours", supported by research, is that there is more to life than just work and humans require a balance between work and other things that, unlike the author, they find valuable, e.g. love, family, friends, travelling, exploring and learning about interesting things unrelated to what you do "at work". There is also evidence showing that creativity comes easier during play time, not work time.

Nevertheless, I worked long(er) hours until I was about 28, and also at 31 because of my startup. The bottom line, for me, is that you end up missing out on life; unless there's nothing in your life but work, of course, and that, for me, is quite sad. And, like mrcharles, given the level of stress work I've been experiencing, right now I too feel anxious just thinking about coding (thanks man, now I feel more normal).

There are definitely benefits to having one person work 60 hours rather than two work 40, beyond cost savings to the company. Often if you're tackling a hard and involved problem, it often isn't something that can be easily split up. There is a lot of context, and one person working on it steadily will certainly be more efficient than trying to have two people work on it and communicate.

I don't work like this now, but I can say that when I did I was remarkably productive. It does come with an associated cost on family life and out-of-work activities, and unless you're going to actually get compensated for it; it is likely not worth it.

Working on an interesting problem, though, can be very difficult to put down.

I will ask people, when you are in your death bed and thinking back about your life, how many people will wish they worked more or wished they travelled more and had more fun in life?

Done those kind of hours earlier in life and learnt by experience that if you work to much you do not have balance in your life. You have unreasonable expectation of professionalism of everyone around you and get easily annoyed by minor work misshappenings.

I can understand being upset by having to work >40hr/wk when you don't want to, or those 70hr/wk coworkers being declared best. employees. ever., but the reaction when someone expresses an opinion on their personal experience is just ridiculous. It's either the patronizing "when you're my age, sonny, you'll understand" or the similarly unhelpful "you're doing it wrong", with no admission that someone's experience might be different.

I differentiate between working long hours for yourself (e.g. as a business owner or startup founder) versus for someone else (i.e. as an employee). My observations here are generally about situations where you're working for someone else (although some have general relevance). For business owners and founders, motivations and rewards are very different, and I think that, for them, the decision to work long hours or not is a far more subjective and personal one.

I don't think there's anything intrinsically bad about working long hours, as long as it is the exception (and for relatively short periods of time), rather than the rule. For example, if you're working for a startup and you've got a big product launch coming up, it makes absolute sense to put in extra effort in the run-up to the deadline to add new functionality, eradicate bugs, etc. However, if you are expected to put in 60-hour weeks as a matter of course, that's not good. Work-Life balance is important (and gets more important as you get older).

If you are expected to put in 60-hour weeks as a matter of course and your boss doesn't, I would advise you to quit that job as quickly as it is feasible to do so.

Working long hours wears you down, especially in roles where high concentration is required. I used to work 12-hour days as a trader and, come the weekend, I'd be so exhausted that I'd usually sleep in on Saturday and Sunday until the early afternoon. That's not a good lifestyle.

I also believe that working long hours has a negative impact on creativity and the ability to make intuitive leaps. In my experience, taking a break and stepping back from a difficult problem can often yield a solution. If your work hours do not allow your brain enough downtime from work to disengage from your work problems and engage other things (beyond simply resting), your productivity is likely to take a significant hit, in my opinion.

Finally, there's the impact on your mood. If you're not actually enjoying working long hours, it's likely to make you impatient and irritable, and that will have a knock-on effect on the atmosphere at work.

Certain types of companies (law firms and investment banks, for example) seem to rely heavily on getting more junior people to work long hours. They're able to do that because the rewards that come with climbing the corporate ladder are significant - partners and managing directors get paid a lot of money and, in order to have a chance of getting promoted to that level, you have to serve your time and put in long hours. For many young (and, some might say, foolish) people, the long-term carrot (Ferrari-level income) outweighs the downside of having practically no life during one's 20s. Because of that, I think their decision is closer in nature to a business owner's or startup founder's than a pure employee's.

Bottom line (and TL;DR): It's up to each individual to make their own decision based on their motivations and personal circumstances.

I don't blame them because my boss was, all things considered, kind of a reckless asshole We didn't take breaks on 100 degree days, had 10 minute lunch breaks, and by the end of the summer all of us had fallen off a roof at least once because my boss believed that setting up the safety scaffolding was a waste of time. But goddamn we got a lot of roofs done that summer, and that actually felt great.

But I was 18 then, was in good shape from high school athletics, found the whole situation hilarious, and more importantly, I knew that in a few months, I'd be at college.

In the decade since, I've averaged at least 50 hours a week and would not be surprised if the average was closer to 60. However, the long hours I work now are not in the office. I go home and read and program on side projects/experiments/other people's Github projects, because that's the only way I can eventually figure out solutions to technical problems that not only interest me personally, but that I eventually will apply in my work. If I were to spend 20 hours a day in the office, I wouldn't get done what I do by spending a couple hours in the evening or early in the morning, studying and practicing out of my own volition.

Before my current tech work, I was a newspaper reporter. I was often at the office for 10 to 12 hours a day...some of it was because I cared about the stories and projects I was working on. But honestly, most of it was because of inefficiencies inherent to the work, i.e. waiting until close to midnight because I'm waiting for a source to call me back right before deadline. The 12-hour day then was not because of best practices...I don't think I need to convince anyone here how horribly inefficient traditional media companies are in general.

So I will never work for anyone who would raise an eyebrow if I felt that 8 hours a day in the office were enough. I work extra hours constantly because I get satisfaction out of building things well, and sometimes building things well means taking 4 hours of quiet time, spread over the weekend, to rig up a solution that saves me 50 hours of work in the next couple of weeks. If an employer can't trust me to spend my time right, then that's not an employer that would use me to our maximal mutual benefit.