
Less stress, more productivity: working fewer hours is good for you and your boss - itamarst
https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/18/productive-programmer/
======
pc86
> _Long hours: "It's 5 o'clock and I should be done with work, but I just need
> to finish this problem, just one more try," you tell yourself. But being
> tired it actually takes you another three hours to solve. The next day you
> go to work tired and unfocused._

> _Shorter hours: "It's 5 o'clock and I wish I had this fixed, but I guess
> I'll try tomorrow morning." The next morning, refreshed, you solve the
> problem in 10 minutes._

I have too much experience with this. I remember when I was self-employed I
humble-brag tweeted about my production deployment ~15 minutes after starting
work. A friend of mine asked why I hadn't just deployed last night and the
quote above was my first thought (in addition to the fact that you should
never deploy to prod then go to bed). I was done with work, so I stopped. It
avoids hitting that "grind it out" phase where you're lucky just not to do
more harm than good.

~~~
overcast
This has happened way more times than I can count. Spending hours staring at a
line of code, up all night. Wake up next morning, and it's a simple spelling
mistake I've missed. Grinding out work has never been productive. Mistakes
happen when you're tired. This applies to study cramming as well, and it's
completely pointless. Study as much as you can, until your NORMAL bed time,
then stop and get a full nights rest before the test.

Side note, it's no wonder these big games come riddled with bugs these days.
Pushing developers to the extreme during crunch time, just to meet a deadline.
There is NO WAY they are doing everything correctly.

~~~
brianwawok
I think it does sometimes work, which is why at last I fall back to it.

Grind out fix.. 90% success rate, average time to solve - 1 hour.

Sleep and fix in the morning.. 100% success rate, average time to solve - 15
minutes.

Clearly better to sleep but if something needs fixed NOW... then it's time to
grind I guess...

~~~
inglondon
What about the 3rd option, getting two tasks done?

\- Grind for 1 hour and assuming 90% success rate, finish the task 9 out of 10
times

\- Sleep

\- Finish another task in 15 min with, again based on your assumption, a
success rate of 100%

In start-ups there is usually a near endless list of tasks to solve so this
would be the most productive approach. Again, based on a lot of assumptions.

[edit: formatting]

~~~
st3v3r
Except that success rate was assuming that you did get the rest you needed,
mainly from leaving at a reasonable time. Staying and grinding directly
contradicts that, so you're not going to be rested and well in the morning,
and you're not going to have the success rate of 100%.

Basically, you just advocated for crunch time and death marches. Things that
are known to not work.

------
bcrescimanno
Just this week, I've been collecting feedback from my team. Some of the most
powerful I received was, "Since you took over, I feel like I've gotten more
done with so much less stress and extra hours. Until you came in, I didn't
believe that we could really have work-life-balance and be MORE productive and
now I know we can."

Having been in companies where my approach has been called everything from
"lazy" to outright "damaging," this feedback was both rewarding and
validating.

Edit: For those who are in jobs where you're putting in those long hours, I
can tell you there are managers out there who believe in the message here. I
have three of them working for me right now and I constantly reinforce the
philosophy of working sustainably. Don't settle for less than a manager who
respects you the person--not just you the engineer!

~~~
ncallaway
Totally agree. We're running a team with engineers working 20 hours a week.
That seems like about the amount of "productive engineering time" that most
people have in them in a week, regardless of how many hours they actually
spend working.

It's a bit of an experiment, but I have to say that I'm really happy with what
it's doing for us. Our engineers are still quite productive. Their work life
balance is good, so we can avoid burnout (though this will take a long time to
actually prove). And, finally, it gives us a _huge_ competitive advantage when
it comes to hiring top quality engineers.

~~~
jtrtoo
Neat. Checked out your web site and really like your philosophy! I'm a solo
consultant going into my tenth consecutive year. I too have found that >20
hours definitely throws off the balance. It's still a work in progress, but
that 20 hour mark is about what consider my level of useful (high impact)
hours.

I understand what you do for employees of your firm, but how do you apply your
philosophy to yourself (and the other principals)? Client work is one thing,
but there's plenty of non-client work too. Particularly in a small firm!

~~~
nathan_f77
I'm also a solo consultant (really just a contractor), and I've been working
20 hour weeks for the last month or so. I'm finding that I actually don't feel
productive enough, mainly because I'm working for a small unlaunched startup,
and they are really itching to launch. I mean, I'm still feeling productive
for those 4 hours, but when I'm in "the zone", I can focus for much longer.
When I'm work on a personal startup or side project, I often spend all day on
it, maybe with a few breaks for food.

I'm holding fast to my 4 hour days, but I'm starting to feel like it's not
ideal to be the sole part-time developer on a project that needs to launch
soon.

But I suppose this could probably be mitigated if they hired another 1 or 2
developers.

~~~
epalmer
I used to be a consultant and went through periods of Uber productivity for 30
to 40 hours a week. When I was in this phase I let my productivity and
creativity drive my total weekly effort. Being in the flow feels good and
leads to better solutions. But it is not sustainable week after week. Now 30
years later, at 62 years old, I just can't sustain more than 20 hours per week
of coding, software design or pre project planning for complex projects. I now
find productivity and pleasure doing some of the administrative work managing
my team and reporting up. Actually have a new boss and he is asking for lots
of data and more. Right now his questions seem valid so it is not a burden. If
he learns and grows great. If his information needs don't die down in a few
months this may be a burden.

Edit: typos. Need coffee.

------
jhummel
I started a consulting/services company a few years ago, and this year was
finally in a position to start hiring. I'm a big proponent of this type of
thinking, so while I couldn't offer the best salary, or the best benefits - I
could offer a better work/life balance. I knew it was a win-win for us and the
new employee.

We landed on a 36 hour work week. 8-5 Mon-Thurs, then 8-12 on Friday. We had
more applicants than I ever dreamed of, and scored a great hire that was
coming from the 70-hr-a-week startup life. Everyone's been extremely happy
over the past six months, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on any
productivity what-so-ever.

~~~
acangiano
This is great, but isn't that a 40 hour work week? Most places consider 9-5 to
be 8 hours (lunch and coffee breaks count towards the total).

If we accept this convention, your workers are technically there for 9 hours a
day for 4 days and 4 hours on Friday. Still clocking in 40 hours.

Nevertheless, I'm sure they enjoy their half day off on Friday and the work
culture that put it in place.

~~~
kirykl
lunch and coffee breaks count towards 8 hour work day? usually 8 hour work day
= 4 hours work before lunch and 4 hours work after

~~~
jawilson2
I count my work day as "time spent commuting, working, or anything else
keeping me from spending time at home with my family."

~~~
camelNotation
Me too. It isn't time off just because I'm not producing for an employer. If
it requires me to commute, walk, etc. and it is work related, I classify that
as working hours because those are the hours of my day that are given to my
employer, even if they are not getting an immediate, direct benefit from those
minutes. I realize I am not being paid for that time, but it doesn't change
the fact that I am doing that instead of something else.

~~~
jsprogrammer
If you are salaried, you are being paid for that time. The effect is to reduce
your effective hourly wage.

I quit my last employer because the extra 2 hours required for commuting and
dressing (both of which incur unreimbursed expenses) on top of my 9 billable
hours was taking up a significant chunk of my compensation.

------
gthtjtkt
> One programmer I know made clear when she started a job at a startup that
> she worked 40-45 hours a week and that's it. Everyone else worked much
> longer hours, but that was her personal limit. Personally I have negotiated
> a 35-hour work week.

Wow, what a depressing time to be employed. The old standard (35 hours) is now
considered a "short" workweek, and only the most desirable employees have the
leverage to request it. Not to mention stagnant wages, rapidly rising costs of
living, and off-hour availability expectations.

How did we end up here?

~~~
crdoconnor
>How did we end up here?

MBAs and MBAification.

When management is treated as a generic function that can be performed by a
particular _class_ of people in any field rather than the most senior expert
practitioners in their respective fields, this is what happens.

You get insecure authoritarians who latch on to (utterly wrong) metrics as a
means of "understanding" what it is their subordinates do without actually
understanding what it is they do.

With software developers it used to be SLOC (thankfully that died). With GPs
it's "number of patients seen". With teachers it's standardized test scores.

There's a direct correlation between managerial technical ineptitude and
insistence on working long hours.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Measurement is hard.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
If you need a book to really drive that point home to someone, check out
"Seeing Like A State" by James C. Scott.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Have you seen "All Cared For By Machines of Living Grace" by Adam Curtis? I
wonder if Curtis used this as source material? It's the same basic idea,
although it may appear that Curtis generalizes to a different view of the
fallacy underlying all this.

The ghost of Otto von Bismarck laughs every night.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Thanks for the suggestion - the summary info I read makes it sound like a lot
of intuitions I don't have fleshed out well enough to explain thoroughly. It's
likely going to be either great or maddeningly off in subtle ways. Either way
I'm interested in watching it.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Adam's films are .. just essays. They're flawed and informal, but the basic
... bones of his ideas are intriguing and stimulating.

I am glad I could reciprocate with something because I really like "Thinking
Like a State" ( after my rapid-read treatment, with a slow read TBD). It
encapsulates so many ideas I've never really seen bundled before, along with
some that require further digging. I would not be surprised if "Thinking.."
wasn't an influence on him.

------
imh
>There are companies where this won't fly, of course, where management is so
bad or norms are so out of whack that even a 40-hour work week by a productive
team member won't be acceptable. In those cases you need to look for a new
job, and as part of the interview figure out the work culture and project
management practices of prospective employers. Do people work short hours or
long hours? Is everything always on fire or do projects get delivered on time?

I have _never_ figured out how to ask this. It always feels like I'm asking,
"I don't like to work much, is that ok with you?"

~~~
martincmartin
Its tricky. I usually wait until near the end of the interview, after I've
asked a bunch of questions, especially when they say "do you have any other
questions?" Then I say, "Hmm. What is work/life balance like at X?" I used to
wait until the end of the full-day interview, but many times found out I'd
wasted a day on a company that I wouldn't want to work for. So now I do it at
the end of the phone screen.

~~~
st3v3r
How do you ensure that they're answering it honestly, though? Or, less
maliciously, that they're answering it with something in line with what you'd
think is a decent work life balance?

~~~
martincmartin
Its not really in their interest to answer dishonestly: if I take the job and
it turns out the work/life balance sucks, I'll leave, and they'll have wasted
a lot of time & effort on me.

Also, the people I'm asking are typically engineers, they're not inclined to
lie about things like this, and they're not expert spin doctors. Plus, when I
go for the full day interview and talk to many people, I'll ask many of them
about it.

------
dasil003
Having spent a lot of time both as a manager and as an individual contributor,
here's the rub (at least for programmers): software developers are a classic
market for lemons. The bigger the org and the more operational complexity the
more space there is for poor developers to hide out and draw a pay check. But
even at a small scale it's remarkably difficult to measure productivity
actually.

Therefore, what you need is intrinsic motivation. You need engineers who
really care about solving the right problem at the right time in the right
way. 35 hours or 70 doesn't matter if they can't get that right, and it's very
hard to have management that is qualified to make that judgement on people
(especially as an org grows and management becomes a full time job). So the
problem is that given this opacity, finding someone who works 70 hours a week
is a better proxy than someone who seems excited about a 35-hour work week—the
former are people who are clearly driven whereas the latter are literally
everyone. It's far from a good metric, but perhaps the best one available to
the pointy hairs of the world.

Speaking from personal experience, it wasn't until I had a kid that I found
out what I could do in a 40-hour week. Once I had that time constraint, it
forced me to be more efficient in a very deep and fundamental way from the
core of my being. When I was 25 I would hit 5pm and think to myself: I still
have another 8 hours to solve this problem before bed. Perhaps this is post-
hoc justification, but I think that makes sense when you are just starting out
and not really competent yet. Once you've passed the magic 10k hours or
whatever, I think turning over problems in ones subconscious can provide a lot
more of the value. So sleep / exercise / meditation can all help elevate your
performance far more than extra hours—but only if your brain knows what it's
doing.

~~~
quantumhobbit
In my experience the lemons have no problem working 70 hour weeks; they
weren't working that hard to begin with and know that they need to appear
productive since they can't be productive. Whereas employees who are
productive are tired after 35 hours or want to get home and work on side
projects.

Long work hours actually select for lemons.

------
tonyjstark
Of course every personal experience is just anecdotal but since I only work 24
hours a week I feel able to educate myself, do sports, feel more healthy.
Before that I worked one week full and one week only 4 days repeatedly and I
really got the feeling that coming in on Mondays after a short week was so
much easier. I felt more relaxed and satisfied because I could do other stuff
on the weekend than trying to catch up with buying things and all that
organizational junk you have to do as an adult.

Now I work 6 hours a day, 4 days a week and I don't take long breaks anymore.
I stopped to read blogs or news at work after lunch, I just work. Would be
really interesting if this is just me or if it could be scientifically proven
that working less is more.

~~~
rdm42116
May I ask what industry you work in?

~~~
tonyjstark
I support researchers of the humanities by developing different services like
registries and restful apis. But you know, everything has it's cost. I am
definitely underpaid but at some point I decided time > money for now.

------
codingdave
Even better, drop hours as a metric of work. Offer the flexibility to work
whatever hours are most productive... and find a boss who doesn't care whether
that is 40 or 20, as long as he gets the value he expects from your time.

After all, employment is a business contract. You are given money in exchange
for the value you add to the organization. Not hours... value.

~~~
imh
I have heard managers respond that if you can get your responsibilities done
in half the time, you should be getting more responsibilities.

~~~
jocro
I'd respond that I'd expect to be getting a requisite increase increase in
compensation.

At least I hope I would.

~~~
dnh44
Years ago I casually met an owner of a small software company who happened to
be hiring, and I was looking for a job. He asked if I was cheap and I
instantly answered 'why, are you?'

Normally I don't think of witty things like that to say until about a week
after the event.

------
rabino
I was expecting the list of sources at the bottom of the article to be a mile
long. Not a single one. Hot damn, so much broscience and red herrings.

~~~
ShakataGaNai
To be fair, the title wasn't "New study proves that..." or even "Scientists
say...". It was very clear that this a blog post written by a dude sharing his
own experiences and anecdotes. Not some "proof" that life is better with less
hours.

------
shams93
Its the Theater of Productivity, similar to the TSA. You can see Meyer's
approach to productivity was ultimately just as successful as the TSA on
secutity. Yeah doing an early stage startup it could be on the side of a day
job so yes you are going to inevtiably put in a lot of hours for $0 doing a
startup. But for regular businesses that are well established such as Yahoo
this isn't productivity its Productivity Theater in the same way the TSA are
Security Theater.

------
anupshinde
I think the key is less-stress and not shorter hours. Meetings, especially
long ones, induce stress.

I've tried reducing hours (as a freelance remote developer). I cut my working
hours to 25 per week from somewhere around 60ish per week. (And I could afford
losing out money)

At first, I felt I was missing something. I thought it was the money. After
being completely off work for a month, I realized I was missing the people
(Slack chats, meetings, fire-fights)

When I started back with another client, working just 25 hours per week was
much much much harder. None of these worked: 8x3days, 4x6days, 6x4days,
5x5days. Few weeks I could not even complete 15 hours, and other weeks I was
over-working. I was still stressed. Finally, what worked was odd - (10-12
hours)x2.5 days. So I ended up working a bit more hours than I wanted to. It
was proven again that it takes time and focus to pickup momentum and costs a
lot more to loose it frequently. And I still work on my other stuff totalling
to about 45-50 hour work-weeks and still feels much less stressful.

~~~
dnh44
Have you tried working when you feel like it (or when you really have to), and
just not working when you're not in the mood? I had a three year period
working freelance and it was most profitable and fun. I have no clue how many
hours I was doing but for the last six months I only worked a few hours a week
because I was able to automate most of my work.

I'm doing a startup now and this lifestyle wouldn't be acceptable to my
partners so it's back to a 9-late schedule plus weekends. I'm nowhere near as
productive and strongly feel like I'm accomplishing less, but to go back to
working how I like would just cause conflicts.

~~~
anupshinde
Unfortunately, I do not have such luxury. I do have flexibility within a work-
week. i.e. I could be working on client project on MTW or FSS or in between,
but I prefer doing much work within Tue-Fri. Fortunately, I have been with one
very good client working on challenging stuff yet does not have tight
deadlines. It is a risky strategy to stay with just one client - but I am not
worried too much about it now. Since its billable hours, I don't see
automation would help reduce my hours - it increases efficiency though.

I tried a startup with some partners and recommended a flexible schedule, but
unfortunately partners got too flexible and it never took off. It is better to
slog and make others do that in a startup.

------
jupiter90000
There are certain jobs where it may not work, but from what I've seen places
I've worked, 40hr workweeks seem like a holdover from some, in my opinion,
truly bizarre cultural expectations. I mean, at some offices I've worked
people are basically shooting the breeze for at least 10 hours at the office a
week with coworkers. Some of them don't like being at home with their families
and so seem to think work is a way to get away from their responsibilities
outside of work. I'd rather have that 'time bullshitting with coworkers' to do
things I like to do not at work.

Is this some holdover from previous generations of just wanting to pressure
everyone to do what they had to do? Sure, sometimes things need to get done,
but alot of jobs aren't saving lives or doing much amazing, but "hit that
deadline or we're going to die" is almost the implication made in business in
the US in my experience...

Hopefully we'll stop this work addiction some day and realize lots of things
can get done without making people be behind a desk an arbitrary number of
hours per day...

~~~
mattm
> Some of them don't like being at home with their families

I've noticed this as well. The people who worked the longest hours did so
because they didn't like going home.

------
dsugarman
Henry Ford originally found that 40 hour work weeks were optimal for
productivity for his factory employees. Before this, they only had one day of
rest and were generally overworked and inefficient. I think the work of a
factory worker is vastly different than the work we do today behind a
computer, especially programmers where your brain power is everything. It
would be interesting if a big enough company were to do some proper research
on the most efficient working patterns of a programmer today.

------
Apreche
Recruiters. Find me a company that believes this, and I'll actually reply to
you.

~~~
tarr11
Ask them on the interview.

It will be a red flag to dysfunctional companies who think you don't want to
work hard.

Employees at good companies will be proud that they don't overwork.

~~~
actsasbuffoon
This is true in my case. We work 8 hour days, 5 days per week, and I always
mention it when interviewing candidates. We're proud of the fact that we can
ship a successful product without working the team to constant exhaustion.

------
fizixer
In my experience, in order to maximize the productivity in creative work and
still work 40 hours, you have to pick the best 40 hours out of a 168 hour time
frame:

\- If it means you work '13 hours 20 minutes' on Monday Wednesday Friday, so
be it.

\- If it means you work '5 hours 45 minutes' Monday thru Sunday, so be it.

\- If it means you work one way one week, the other way the next week, so be
it.

\- If you work best in the middle of the night, so be it.

\- If it means you work 10 hours everyday for 52 days straight, and take the
rest of the quarter off (39 days!), so be it.

The problem is, we have to do this thing called 'work/life balance' in which
we are at work 9 to 5, whether we feel fresh or tired, and have to forget
about work for the remaining 128 hours.

Combine that with the need for in-person interaction with the team, the boss,
and what not, it gets worse.

IMO you can't have it both ways.

------
zxcvvcxz
Yeah.... not so much for me. I'm going to give an alternate point of view.

To become world class at something, you need to be obsessed. You need to put
in as many hours as possible and just love what you're doing.

"Oh but you won't be as effective after 8 hours of work!"

So what. Let's say I'm only 20% as effective after 8 hours. I'll take it --
20% of the last 5-6 hours of the day towards my craft over 0% doing 'normal'
things (drinks on the patio? Pointless travelling? Whatever my fellow annoying
millenials like to do).

This is the kind of mindset you need to reach the top of a field. And it
should develop naturally, you should really want it. Whether it means outdoing
everyone at your company, getting that prototype done two months earlier,
closing more leads, getting that tricky piano passage, whatever.

If you love what you're doing, more is more. Because you probably can't help
yourself. If you feel like working more, just do it. Don't let normal social
expectations hold you back, especially if you're young, because you only get
so long to become great at something.

I'll finish with one final caveat. Figure out what level of sleep, exercise,
and nutrition your body needs to sustain your desired work habits. Get those
right ASAP, keep trying modifications, and realize it's different for
everyone's unique biology. I like 8 hours of sleep a night, weightlifting
3x/week at 45-60mins each, and a certain amount of protein and certain
vitamins (and coffee of course, ha). You'd be surprised how these 3 lifestyle
factors can make such a huge difference in your energy levels and hormones --
one can literally become a different person!

~~~
Fargren
The theory here is that not only are you at 20% for the last hour: you will be
at 90% at the beginning of the second day, 80% on the third and so on. Of
course the percentages are totally made up, but it is obvious that there is an
amount of work from which no single instance of rest can cause a complete
recovery. If the results of such unrest are cumulative, then there must exist
some amount of work that is less productive than working less for any kind of
sustained endeavor.

The problem is we have no real way of measuring personal productivity, so we
have no real way to find where the optimal point is for any individual.
Society as a whole has chosen 40 weekly hours as a standard for mostly
orthogonal reasons. In aggregate, the number is probably wrong. But it seems
crazy to me to argue that there's no (sizable) fragment of the population that
would not be as productive, or more so, with less than the 8 hours they work
now.

------
sakian
How does a company like SpaceX fit into this? They seem to promote the
opposite and are seeing some pretty amazing success. Do they succeed because
of or despite working long hours?

~~~
fluxquanta
Maybe I've seen it in the past but I don't remember it now -- what is their
employee turnover rate? I imagine they have no shortage of applicants willing
to put in 70 hour weeks until they burn out, just to get that name on their
CV.

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/309990/why_does_spa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/309990/why_does_spacex_require_such_long_hours_instead/)

~~~
projektir
This sort of thing makes it hard for me to respect Elon Musk. He is,
personally, doing great things, but I wonder if his overall effect on the
world is negative in the long term because he's promoting some views that I
find very harmful. So many people around him, who admire him, yet he feels
like a one man team.

------
yodsanklai
The most (professionally) successful persons I know worked very hard at least
at some point in their life. For instance, I know tons of professors that
pretty much work all the time. Same thing with former schoolmates working in
finance now.

I'm not saying it's the road to follow, and obviously, not all careers are
comparable, but I think that in order to reach their full potential, people
have to (and can) work a lot.

~~~
Noseshine
Just a few days ago I read an article or blog entry - which I may even have
found through a comment on HN? - where a successful important person described
the reunions with the people he had studied with over 20 years.

At first everybody was so amazingly successful, great wife, then great kids,
all doing very well, financially too. But after 10 years with each reunion
less and less people showed up. Those who were missing had no wife and family
left and didn't want their old pals to know how their personal lives had
faltered.

You only mention careers...? Please report overall long-term life success that
includes the family :)

Also, since you mention finance, while they personally benefited, and their
industry did too, what about the rest of society? Does the latest microsecond
computer trading algorithm really benefit mankind overall?

So to summarize, the questions I have are about 1) individual success not just
"career", "financial" and "short term", and 2) that individual success from
the perspective of society.

~~~
yodsanklai
As I said, I didn't want to mean that everybody should work hard or that
professional success is the only important thing. But I think that in order to
succeed in a competitive field, one has too work hard and it's definitely
doable.

That being said, I'm an advocate of less working hours and more vacation. I
worked in the US for a couple of years, and this is the one thing that made me
go back to Europe. Free time is the most important thing in my opinion.

~~~
projektir
I wonder if that just selects for people who can work longer without losing
productivity / sanity. That doesn't strike me as normal.

------
SonicSoul
There is no science here what so-ever. Just a bunch of feel good rah rah BS
about working less hours and getting more done. Some fodder to go to your
manager with I guess.

Who said that 35-40 hours is optimal? How can you even quantify it considering
every job is different. I've had jobs where 50% was brainless support so i'd
work 10-12 hr days and my brain was totally fine to keep going. Some jobs come
with inevitable social BS that will take 50% of your time anyway.

The problem is that management and developers have different incentives.
Managers [in more cases then not] are pushed by executives to justify their
worth and deliver results.

Developers want to create, but also don't care as much about the bottom line.
They want to have a life outside of work.

It's that simple. Let's not go pretending like anything beyond 40 hours takes
10x time to get done because it simply doesn't. It's just an empty thing to
say like "you should give me a raise because of inflation".

There are plenty of people working their own startups doing 80-100 hr weeks
and getting shit ton done. Does it mean that you should do this at a
corporation? Maybe not, maybe yes. It all depends on the trade offs either
side is willing to make. Managers will of course be incentivized to push for
more productivity per employee.

Places such as Basecamp take a stance against this incentive gap. They're
actively working at making employees take more vacation, sleep better, and
have a better work life balance. This must improve employee morale and
retention. No idea what it does to bottom line or employee paychecks.

As a manger I've had people that worked 40- hrs and delivered amazing results.
I'd never even think about caring how many hours they've put in. Then there
were others that worked more but delivered a mound of technical debt or
nothing at all. They were usually the ones most vocal about working too many
hours. There are very few people out there that can come in, get straight to
work, and deliver quality. Simply making a blank statement that they will do
more by working less is silly.

~~~
meddlepal
I agree strongly with the idea that "40 hours" is just as made up as "15
hours" or whatever. We need actual data to draw any conclusions here.
Similarly we haven't explored all the ways we can make people more productive
either. Maybe if the employees who feel tired after six hours could take a
long nap mid-day they'd be able to work 12 hours a day at a high level.

That said I'm on the work what you feel comfortable working and as long as
goals are being met then it doesn't matter.

~~~
mindfulgeek
The 40 hour work week comes from Ford. It is optimized for factory workers.
Data for creative/makers would be interesting to see.

~~~
franlupion
"The eight-hour day movement or 40-hour week movement, also known as the
short-time movement, was started by James Deb and had its origins in the
Industrial Revolution in Britain, where industrial production in large
factories transformed working life. The use of child labour was common. The
working day could range from 10 to 16 hours for six days a week."[1]

It is the second time this month that this misconception about Ford comes
around, I am curious to know where it comes from.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-
hour_day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day)

~~~
mindfulgeek
Interesting! I remember first reading this on Wikipedia a few years ago.
either I'm misremembering or the article has changed since then. Here's one
article about Ford's influence on it: [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2015/sep/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-
henry-ford-or-lab/)

A quick Google search and there are a lot of others like this. Thanks!

------
nathan_f77
Right now I'm working 20 hours per week as a contractor. It's beautiful.

My hours are also pretty flexible. If I'm really in the zone, I can work a 10
hour day. That's what I did today. I started at 3pm, had a break around 7pm,
and I just finished what I was working on at 2am (30 minutes ago).

Yesterday, I wasn't feeling motivated at all, so I just ended up taking the
day off and doing something else.

I'm living in Thailand, so normally I'll work from 10pm until 2am, so I have
overlap with clients in the US. I wake up at 10am, and it feels like I have
the whole day to do whatever I like.

I'm earning less money, but I'm somehow saving much more than I did in San
Francisco.

~~~
dasmoth
The implication of those hours is that you go to bed pretty soon after
finishing work -- how easy do you find it to wind down on a schedule?

~~~
nathan_f77
Yes, that's right. I take about 30 minutes to read or watch something, but I
usually find it very easy to fall asleep.

------
atom-morgan
Imagine trying to convince a slave master that freedom, in the long run, will
lead to more productivity on a scale that they can't even imagine. I believe
working fewer hours is a modern day version of that.

------
afarrell
This also applies if you are in university. Your ability to learn is directly
related to the quality of sleep you have gotten. If your school believes
"sleep is for the weak" and makes labs due at 6am, please realise that this is
bullshit and find tools/habits to enforce a different discipline.

~~~
tbihl
I remember when I realized in my introductory circuits class that all the
problems were just puzzles, and sleep beats the hell out of studying when it
comes to preparing for puzzles.

------
ivanhoe
I've noticed this when playing chess, which is I guess a pretty good way to
measure one's analytical capabilities and concentration. When playing against
a computer in the evening after 8+ hours of work my games are significantly
weaker; I can't anymore beat the same game level that I easily win in the
morning. By looking into game stats I've noticed that in the evenings I make
significantly more mistakes, don't see good moves, make hasty decisions more
often, etc.

------
dumbfounder
Sounds nice, but maybe some evidence would be good?

~~~
baptou12
"Why does working longer hours not improve the situation? Because working
longer makes you less productive at the same time that it encourages bad
practices by your boss. Working fewer hours does the opposite."

~~~
dumbfounder
This is evidence? Working fewer hours than what? There is obviously a point
where your productivity drops off, but that doesn't mean you are producing
less work overall.

What I would like to see is tangible evidence. Perhaps analyzing Jira for
several companies to see the effort put into projects vs the overall
productivity. Maybe set the baseline at the 40 hour week and analyze a few
different chunks like 30, 35, 45, 50, and 60 hours per week. Without some sort
of analysis like this all we have pure conjecture, and no way to understand
where a reasonable cutoff should be.

~~~
Atropos
I agree. Things like having the weekends free and getting enough sleep are
really important for having a sustainable working life. But that does not mean
working 35 hours per week is a must or 40 hours is a natural limit, for
example 9 AM to 8 PM from Monday-Friday is a 50 hour workweek and easily
sustainable. The norm in industries like banking, big law firms or management
consulting is more like a 60-70 hour work week and while it is obviously not
desirable, there are many people who can do it for many years.

------
namenotrequired
I thought this was about working fewer hours than full time, but apparently
it's about working no more than full time.

~~~
itamarst
OP here: I've actually worked 27 hour work/week, but that's a hard sell given
we're in an industry that's trending towards insane hours as the norm. So
partially this is just me trying to explain than normal hours are actually
better (which is I admit a sad thing to have to explain). But less than full
time is even better, yes. For me at least I think 30 hours/week would be the
ideal.

------
ErikAugust
Tired is the worst time to code. There are other things you can do to be
productive - but try not writing mission critical code when you are exhausted.

------
Abdizriel
I agree with that. Last ~1-2hours in job I feel bored and everything is not so
productive than it should.

I would like to work in/create place where engineers work for ~30h a week
including lunch/coffee time.

I think with that kind of work everyone would be happy and could easly balance
work/life

------
tzakrajs
The key to this article at a macroscopic level is the willingness to quit when
the manager or culture are unwilling to adapt to your fewer hours proposition.
We can positively change the industry for everyone by uniformly following this
guidanace.

------
aledalgrande
I find that, for boring tasks or everyday work, this is true. I cannot use
"turbo mode" for too long.

But if there is something really challenging in which I plunged in, and at the
same time I am getting results, it will break the rule. I think much of what
written here makes sense:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)#Conditions_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_\(psychology\)#Conditions_for_flow)

Also, if you really want to be productive, it's not about sleep, but about
having very defined and organized tasks, so you limit the number of open
decisions you have to take in a day.

------
Noseshine
[http://dilbert.com/strip/1993-10-26](http://dilbert.com/strip/1993-10-26)

Does anybody have time to comment on the article submitted by OP? :)

------
mindfulgeek
The best "full time" work environment I experienced was a 9-5 week with
morning/afternoon 3-hour coding blocks (no interruptions tolerated) and an
hour lunch. The other hour was spent in the standup, email, one-off
conversations and blogging/community work. We were a highly production and
creative team.

------
ShakataGaNai
This is one of the reasons why more telecommuting/remote work is "better".
Since you've got no boss looking (literally) over your shoulder, you can't be
judged on hours. Then things like output or project completion actually bubble
to the top as most important.

------
us7892
Bottom of the article has a link...to learn from your mistakes (perhaps
because you worked too many long hours.) We can get emailed a list of his
mistakes. [https://softwareclown.com/](https://softwareclown.com/)

------
jsprogrammer
Good article, but I don't see where it addresses how working fewer hours is
good for your boss (though, you can try to read in to it). The article even
says that it (working less hours) won't work at some companies.

------
franciscop
I thought this was about reducing it from 40h to 30h or so, but it was about
fighting for the 40h themselves. I am in Japan now and things are really crazy
here for my friends.

------
Waterluvian
I've been fortunate enough that my employer encourages people to find the
patterns that work for them. Now that I've been there a few years, I've been
taking greater liberties on when I come and go. Some days I just wander home
at 3pm because it's just not happening. Other days I'm there 8-8 and skip
lunch because I'm so excited to see a new feature work. I've never been so
productive or happy.

------
rdlecler1
For much of the article the author is saying that with less time to complete a
project you now use your time more wisely and you'll get the same amount of
work done in a shorter window. If that was the case then managers should
instead add 20% more to every project. Now you'd be delivering 20% more with
the same resources as before. Not buying it.

------
rdlecler1
For much of the article the author is saying that with less time to complete a
project you now use your time more wisely and you'll get the same amount of
work done in a shorter window. If that was the case then managers should
instead add 20% more to every project.

------
zooko4
Hey, I know the guy who wrote this! As a boss, and in fact as the former boss
of itamarst, I agree with this strategy. I want employees to produce high-
quality work, to be predictable in their pace, to not get burnt out, and to be
happy and pleasant to work with.

------
known
Not for Non-IT

------
mastratton3
I agree with the fact about cutting out meetings but I don't know if I agree
with everything here.

While its easy to say "Just leave at 5pm and come back refreshed" is easy to
say, I found personally to have learned to most on the days when I've worked
until 2am really digging into a problem and getting it fixed. I also have
found that the best people I've worked with have a similar get it done
attitude. Obviously this isn't sustainable but I think required from time to
time.

I also think this lacks the notion of "how much do you want to move up vs stay
in your current role". If you don't have any desire for more responsibilities
than this applies, but I think if you want to move up/learn new skills,
reducing the hours works against you.

I guess I follow the mantra of, "The first 40 should be productive and for the
employer in the role I was hired for but I should spend additional time on top
of that learning new skills"

~~~
rdm42116
And I have found that tired employees make huge mistakes on customer critical
systems. I have also found that some people are extremely successful working
insane hours. They have the capacity to, either it's their personality or
they're still young and single. To think that applies to everyone is the
issue. Not everyone can work tired and produce good work or do a good job.
Would you want someone tired working dangerous machinery just to get something
done? We would all be against that.

Yes, it's pretty well established that to move up hours must be put in. The
reason this topic comes up time and time again is because no one asks the
question why nor do they prove that these hours translate to better work or
more productivity. I've seen insane hours in third party consultants. They
mess up. A lot.

