
A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour - thearchvolta
http://jeffarchibald.ca/60-hour-work-week-badge-honour/
======
x0054
To everyone who jumped in to comment that 60+ hours at work is just fine,
because they can do it. I have to say, stop equating work with progress.
Busiest time in my life was when I was studying for the California Bar exam.
According to the program I was doing, I was expected to study 12 hours a day.
Most people I knew did 12+ hours of studying at least, all of them passed the
bar. I did about 6 hours a day (+ other stuff for my startup), and still got
the same results. The truth is, I actually observed the study habits of my
friends. About 7 hours into their study sessions their brains would start to
shut down slowly. Questions they would normally take seconds to answer would
take them minutes to comprehend.

The point of the article is that working 60+ hours is fine, if you need to,
but being proud of it is silly. Be proud of the work you produce, not the
amount of time it took you to produce it. And certainly don't be proud putting
in 60+ hours for some one else, even if they are buying you with stock
options.

To be clear, some of us are lucky enough to make money by doing things we
would otherwise do anyway, there is nothing wrong with devoting you life to
your hobby and have it bring you a ton of money in the process. But don't kill
your self for someone else and feel proud about it because you think it's
somehow manly to work 60+ hours.

~~~
Shivetya
Sixty hours is fine when you enjoy your work.

Sixty hours a week was a short week in the old days, the conveniences of a
modern society allow us to choose more free time should we want it, all you
have to do is venture outside of our comfortable environments and you will
find people wishing 60 was the max.

Having grown up on a farm all I can say is, you don't notice it unless the
wrong stuff keeps piling up. Its amazing how energized you feel when you enjoy
the work and don't have idle time to worry.

~~~
StavrosK
It's a bit easier when your job doesn't require you to think all the time. You
get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the
physical fatigue farm work brings.

~~~
hueving
>You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the
physical fatigue farm work brings.

Do you have a source for that? I find it highly unlikely that the human body
needs less rest after spending 10 hours a day performing manual labor than it
does after a few hours of programming.

~~~
Ma8ee
Not the human body, but the human brain.

~~~
001sky
Yes, the body is amazingly adept at subliminalizing the motor-co-ordination of
physical work. Truly creative, mental work actually takes a different
approach. This is why traditional academic architecture is the way it is. And
why even artists can suffer through periods of burnout and "creative block".
This is not to diminsh the role of back-breaking labor in any way, but just to
highlight the underlying issue. Its comparing apples and pine-apples.

------
zxcvvcxz
This false dichotomy is seriously getting annoying. If 60 hours is sustainable
for you, do it. If only 30 hours is sustainable for you, do that instead. But
stop imposing onto others what is right or wrong when there are _so_ many
factors at play.

Some of my most productive memories are summers studying and working for 12
hours a day, 6 days a week (= 72 hours). I didn't get tired, burned out, or
anything. Another summer had me working at a company making "apps" for 40
hours a week, and it fucking drained me... despite taking _far_ less
intelligence and brain effort. I suppose that's not true, the brain effort was
constantly justifying why I wasn't quitting haha.

Regarding friends/partners/etc. If the amount of hours you want to work isn't
compatible with your partner's expectations... _get a new partner_. Seriously.
Your priorities aren't aligned. I don't know what I'd do if my partner
expected me to be home for dinner at 6pm on weeknights... Oh wait I do, I'd
get a new partner, which I did. Now everyone involved (myself, previous
partner, new partner) are very happy.

Finally regarding productivity vs. hours put in. Again, this is completely
irrelevant if you're following the right metrics - _results_. Long hours
obviously don't make sense if they're making you too tired to deliver results.
If you're delivering but not in a sustainable way, well, you need to calibrate
and lower expectations so you don't under deliver.

In short, people should optimize for long-term productivity appropriate to
their goals. This, combined with your unique physiology and work
circumstances, will dictate how many hours you should work. Oh and definitely
exercise every week.

~~~
TacticalCoder
Indeed... And most of the friends around me who made it big also played it
hard.

When Broadcom was nowhere several employees number xxx (with xxx less than
300) were, while in crunch-mode, _sleeping in their trucks_ , on the parking
lot, to deliver chip plans on time. Stock options have been good for them the
day Broadcom was worth $12bn.

I've got a few friends who started a 3D-rendering business for TV ads, short
movies and cartoons. 60 hours a week? Make it 80, 90 and occasionally more
than one hundred (you read correctly). I'm talking about people working 15
hours a day, bringing their sleeping bags and pillows at work and eating in a
few minutes. They now enjoy 40 employees working for them and have the good
life.

I have friends who got money from a business angel and for whom, between angel
money and before VC money came, life was work, work and more work.

I could tell you about other people, on the east coast, getting BA money and
an office in which they'd sleep (and the girlfriend being surprised to see her
new boyfriend living where he works)... And the exit they made selling to a
big software company. No 40 hours a week either here but much, much more.

Or another friend setting up a commodity trading (?) company, who's always on
the phone and on planes around the world, tracking the ships he's renting and
working out deals left and right. Both of us work a lot, yet we find the time
to meet (in this or that city in Europe) once in a while.

These people know about burnouts, crunch-mode and... Wealth. Lots of wealth.
Yet money wasn't the drive. The drive is simply the desire to achieve great
things (build a chip, publish a book, create a company, make an exit, ...).

I've written (and typeset) several books. The last weeks before the book left
to go to the editor/publisher were easily 80+ hours a week, working until
early in the morning and then taking a few hours of sleep. Rince and repeat.
Total crunch-mode. I also know about naps on the bean bag on saturdays and
even sundays (!) at Californian startups.

I understand not wanting to work more than 40 hours a week when you're an
employee and have a life which you prefer more than your work... But when
you're an entrepreneur and want to make a difference, 40 hours a week is
nothing.

I'm not saying that there aren't very successful people who've never worked
more than 40 hours a week (there are also people who never worked and won the
lottery)...

All I'm saying is the entrepreneurs I know who've succeeded big times were
(and most still are) relentless workers.

I'm in my forties and I just _love_ what I do. It's saturday, and what did I
do? Spent time with my SO, went to buy stuff to paint a room in the
appartment, went for a cool drive with my oldtimer and... Spent several hours
coding in Clojure..

I even find the time to spend some time on HN ^ ^

You can come with all the studies you want about how 40 hours a week is the
limit not to break, unreasonable men will keep being driven by passion and
will keep working more than that.

It's not black & white. You want 40 hours a week or, heck, why not 35: try to
go to France if you want. Even try to fetch a 4 days out of 5 and you'll be
doing 28 hours a week there.

But don't discourage the ones who simply want to work more.

EDIT: fixed a few sentences, not a native english speaker here

~~~
ExpiredLink
Work smart, not hard.

~~~
mertd
The falsest dichotomy of all. What are the circumstances? what is the "work"
trying to accomplish? Who are your competitors? Sometimes you have to work
both smart and hard.

~~~
enraged_camel
Yes, sometimes. The point of the article is that that is OK, as long as it is
only some of the time. The main problem however is people who do it all the
time, treat it like it is the norm, and try to deceive themselves (and others)
that it is completely fine.

------
nickbauman
The army has done a lot of research on this topic from WWII onwards. I've read
some of the studies. I've also read some papers done in the private sector on
this topic in the construction industry. What they found was about the same:
people who work more that 40 hours a week can do so for a short period of time
before it starts to impact a lot of aspects of their health, which translates
directly to their performance. This is not controversial.

What I haven't seen much of is how it affects people who don't soldier for a
living or who don't work with their hands outdoors for a living. People like
me who code. I'm sure the studies are out there, I haven't taken the time to
read them. My guess is that the negative impact of working longer hours to
outcomes is even more pronounced, not less.

I can cite an internal audit at a large software company I worked at back in
the 00's. They found that having people work longer hours wasn't worth it.
Period. It didn't improve linear increased output, it produced a negative
output ratio per hour overall, furthermore it increased attrition and problems
with engineering implementations. Note that said software company's goals were
well aligned with getting people to work as long as possible for the same
money and they still reached this conclusion.

So go ahead. Work those longer hours. Just be aware that the all the best
numbers we have don't support you doing it for long for any good reason.

~~~
yapcguy
Can you link to some of these studies you mention? Would love to read them.
Thanks.

~~~
nickbauman
I don't remember the exact study, sorry. I did a search and found this,
though, which looks close: [http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-
Resources/Ca...](http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-
Resources/Calculating_Loss_of_Productivity_Due_to_OT_Using_Charts_-
_Nov_2001.pdf)

------
wazoox
When I was 25 to 29, I used to spend a lot of time at work. For a while, it
just came naturally because I was so eager to learn; I'd stay at work reading
books, programming, looking for information on the web and newsgroups (I
hadn't internet access at home back then).

But at some point in 1998, for a few months we entered in death march after
accepting to be the rescue team for a doomed, undoable project; I've worked
100 to 120 hours a week for 4 months, one of my colleague burnt out like a
candle (I remember him asleep the face literally on his keyboard, late at
night, while waiting for compilation to end; two days later he lied on an
hospital bed) and after that I had serious health problems repeatedly for
several years. We had the satisfaction to actually save the project and make
the deadline, but two of us ended in hospital, and most on the team had
serious family, health of other serious problems afterwards.

So what to say? Know your limits. Don't try to push it to far; it's actually
very easy to kill oneself, for instance falling asleep at the wheel, late at
night, on the way back home after a very long day.

~~~
frozenport
You saved the project and made somebody a ton of money?

~~~
wazoox
There was actually a huge heap of money involved, because we made the CGI and
stats software and animations for the worldwide TV broadcast of FIFA World Cup
'98\. It was a crazily ambitious project, not to be equalled by off-the-shelf
software for 8 years, and we had to throw an insane amount of hardware at it:
2 SGI Origin 2000, 30 SGI Octanes and 60 high-end PCs, plus some custom
hardware at places to interface with the video mixers. We of course got almost
nothing in return :)

~~~
aylons
Upvoted both of his comments so people learn it is not worth working this much
for someone else.

~~~
jotm
What happened to working and sacrificing towards a single goal? Would you say
the same if the project was to bring water or electricity to a few remote
villages or parts of a city somewhere?

I'm not saying it's a must - everyone decides for themselves - but some might
think it was all worth it even if someone else got all the recognition.

~~~
pmorici
Two things...

1\. Workers that build water and electricity projects are typically unionized
and get paid at least time and a half if not double for hours over 40 per
week.

2\. If those remote villages have gone w/o power and water for years and years
there is no good reason to work excessive hours to bring those things to them
a few weeks faster.

------
sergiotapia
I work 40 hours a week at maximum - most weeks I work about 34 to 38 hours.
You 80 hours a week guys, what the hell are you doing with your time? Are you
divorced? No family? No friends?

Is 'disrupting' an industry really that important to you?

~~~
rickhanlonii
My name is Rick and I'm a 80 hour a week guy.

I'm 26, single, and have no pets. I have a family and friends, but I'm very
transparent about my work habits and priorities as a full-stack engineer.

Being so young, I see myself as training to be the person I want to be in the
future. The best programmers in the world worked at it relentlessly. Sure,
there are variances in the amount that they all worked, and some did it with
much less work than others. But if I want to be the best in the world, or at
least attain my personal upper bound, I have to work hard at it and I have to
work consistently at it.

John Resig didn't wake up one day and write jQuery. Steve Wozniak didn't just
throw together the Apple I. Linus didn't just decide to write the Linux kernel
one afternoon. They all put to work the investments they made in themselves.

I don't do it because I want money, success, or fame. I do it because I deeply
want to make a meaningful impact on the world. I want it so bad that when I
think about it my palms sweat and my chest gets heavy. When you look at the
future of humanity as a whole, we need to either improve or die. And to
improve, we need improvers. I want to be an improver and I don't want to rest
until I am.

To be clear, I love what I do and I don't really consider it work. Solving
hard problems with creative techniques is one of my favorite things to do. I
really enjoy learning new things, and being able to pull them into my work is
really satisfying. Being able to build something that I imagine, push it out
to people, and see them get excited about it is surreal. I don't _want_ to be
doing anything else. I don't _want_ to stop working.

But I understand the research. I understand that the work I put in will be
more productive and beneficial to me if I have a balance in all areas of my
life--which means that I need to be social, have hobbies, and live a healthy
lifestyle.

So I've aligned my life such that those interactions still help me reach my
upper bound. My friends are smarter than I am and many are in technical fields
so getting a beer with them involves talking about a hard problem we solved.
My hobbies include writing StackOverflow posts, trying out new frameworks, and
reading books like Thinking, Fast and Slow, RabbitMQ in Action, and Secrets of
the Javascript Ninja. I truly enjoy and am satisfied with these parts of my
life, even though I'm never really leaving the mindset of work.

One day I want to write those books, not just read them, and I want those
books to meaningfully impact the world. So I train, and that means I'm an 80
hours a week guy.

~~~
gaius
Please don't talk this the wrong way but your use of the phrase "full stack"
makes it unlikely you are working on hard problems with creative techniques.
You're building websites. And you are deluding yourself if you think it is
sustainable or meaningful or worth it.

Later "frameworks" and "ninja". Oh dear.

~~~
dwaltrip
You are making some leaps, as well as a few judgments, based on relatively
little information. I hope you realize this.

~~~
gaius
Sure, but there is only one community that uses that vocabulary. No-one doing
computational chemistry or machine learning or weather forecasting or
quantitative finance (or any of a hundred other kinds of programming) calls
themselves a "full stack engineer" or a "javascript ninja". Only guys
assembling websites out of pre-built components (aka frameworks) like Ikea
furniture, for companies to use for marketing.

~~~
dwaltrip
He didn't even call himself a "javaScript ninja". He read a book that has that
phrase in the title. Also, why do you assume building websites is mutually
exclusive with doing something meaningful? Pretty bold assertion.

------
AutoCorrect
I had a boss tell me at an end of year meeting that another employee had
worked 1000 more hours that year than I had. I looked my boss in the eye and
said "then he's doing something wrong". Consistent 60 hour weeks is a failure
of management and of the employee to better manage their time. Especially if
you are salaried.

~~~
iambateman
This week I was told another employee has been "working weekends for months"
to get the project done, passive aggressively implying I hadn't done the same.

The problem with this is the guy is addicted to working weekends. He's been
doing it for years and it makes everyone else look like "slackers", despite
his obvious burnout.

~~~
jbl
I think this hints at the crux of the problem. I have no problem with others
working long hours, and will even put in a stint here and there when I feel
it's warranted.

The problem I see is that it slowly becomes the new norm and benchmark,
regardless of whether long hours are productive. These new expectations then
get encoded in cultures that devalue those who either choose to spend time on
other things or who are simply more efficient.

Do we just need to find better measures of output and figure out what fair
compensation for average output is?

------
gregholmberg
We forget so soon. Labor movements within recent memory were fought at great
cost to secure the possibility of shorter working hours. People were killed at
factory gates trying to get labor laws enacted, in part to reduce employer
demands for long working hours.

One argument in favor of capping work hours: unrestricted overtime
discriminates against workers unable or unwilling to compete. A race to the
bottom is not in the long-term best interests of any participant or the
society.

An imbalance in society might show up as (under|un)employment in groups
outside the core demographic -- in this case, anyone who is non-20-something,
non-male, or non-white, who is not "crushing it" at work after nine on
weeknights.

~~~
shitgoose
In contrast with early labor movements the modern IT workforce seems to be
quite happy with 60-80hrs and reacts aggressively to suggestions that 40hrs is
better for them. I guess _capital_ has learned a thing or two about managing
the workforce. Don't give them money, give them more hours and JavaScript book
to read before bed. Marx would shave his beard if he saw that.

------
alexandros
I wonder if the author would give the same advice to famous workaholics like
Paul Erdos?

Here's my issue: I'm an entrepreneur. Doing a startup is my dream. I'm having
fun and creating amazing memories. I work as much as I possibly can. Stopping
me from working on my startup is like keeping a child locked in a room. I
don't force my team to do the same (and they don't). I don't brag about it, I
am not burning out, not messing with my sleep, not jeopardising my health.
Moreso, when I force myself to stop it takes me a long time to start again.
That's how my brain works. Why is 40 the golden standard? Do I have to
apologise for the amount of work I do?

~~~
patio11
I'm also an entrepreneur. It's the best job I've ever had.

Back in the day, I was a salaryman. A Japanese megacorp owned me body and
soul.

If you had asked me, during much of those three years, whether I was
overworked, I would have told you no. Seventy hours was surely not more than
many salarymen worked, and anyhow, I had just had a nice relaxing 50 hour week
only... what month is it again? I would have described myself as an attentive
boyfriend, and didn't understand _at all_ why a girlfriend might disagree with
that assessment. My best friends had an album titled Patrick Falling Asleep At
Parties -- they were such kidders, those two. I had blackouts. I stayed in a
hotel frequently, some days because it was impossible to catch the last train
but some days because while I technically could have made the train I was
staggering so much I was uncertain that I'd make it home safely. Somebody once
did a graph of HN posts by hour it was utterly impossible to identify core
sleep hours for me by looking at it, for three years. When my salaryman
friends and I got together for dinners we'd do the requisite amount of
kvetching about our jobs and then talk about people who had _real_ problems.
Did you hear about how bad it gets at the Tokyo office? Cripes, we dodged a
bullet, didn't we.

In hindsight, I can only describe it as three years of temporary insanity.

I don't want to attack any part of your self-conception, and wish only for
your happiness. In that spirit: consider the possibility that alexandros is
executing on unreliable hardware and attempt to get verifiable external
measurements about what that hardware is telling you.

~~~
alexandros
Hi Patrick!! Big fan!! _cough_

I am indeed very much aware I am running on unreliable hardware. My evaluation
of my productivity comes from reviewing things done in micro and macro scale,
as well as feedback from people around me. Seeing my HN history from PhD years
to Startup years is night and day. I've even installed RescueTime to get a
better idea of how I spend my time. I try to get as much external data as
possible, always happy to apply any other (sensible) metric you (or others)
can suggest.

But keep in mind these same considerations hold for everyone claiming they're
super-productive in 40 hours a week.

------
nnq
...will we ever get to a point of normality and sanity where:

1\. guy A who want to work _just 30hrs a week_ can say that this is how much
he wants to work and get paid a fair hourly rate (same as guy B if he's just
as good)

2\. guy B who wants to work _70+hrs a week_ can say that this is how much he
wants to work and get the same fair hourly rate (same as guy A if he's just as
good, a reasonable 25% more for hours worked about a certain threshold - let's
say 40hrs per week mandated, to set an arbitrary bar and stimulate employment
of more people over exploitation)

3\. guy A and B can have a coffee together and both see each other as equal
value guys but with different life priorities, both ok

4\. employers will not favor type B guys over type A guys (if this happens,
mandatory extra-payment for overtime or extra-taxation could sway things to an
equilibrium).

...it all boils down to Bertrand Russel's idea: why not have two people
working X hrs a day instead of one guy working 2X hrs a day, and at the same
time let the guy who wants to work 2X do it but don't discriminate in his
favor
([http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)).

~~~
capisce
Or better yet, pay for results, not hours - if only results were always easily
measurable. If A and B have the same base productivity assuming they work the
same amount of hours, B's productivity per hour might be less if he works 70+
hours and A works 30 hours. So it might not be fair that they're then still
paid the same per hour.

------
seivan
Who the fuck brags about this? Who the fuck thinks this is a good thing?

This happened to me recently. More than 70h per week.

But that's not. The fact of the matter is, I was the sole programmer on the
product and the product is so attached to me that if it fails, I fail.

I don't see it that way, but the employees at the place I work at do. The
clients who were brought in to meet me, do.

~~~
ronnier
Nobody outright brags about it, it's done a different way by:

1) Sending out team wide emails very late at night and on the weekends

2) Sending out team wide code reviews very late at night and on the weekends

3) Monday morning during scrum standup mentioning "Over the weekend I did..."

I believe the above behavior is eventually toxic to a team if done on a
regular basis.

------
jewel
So far I've only accepted jobs that will let me be paid by the hour, instead
of salary, with 1.5 times pay for overtime. I feel like it much more
reasonably aligns expectations, and in 10+ years of working that way, I've
only done a few hours of overtime here or there during true emergencies.

~~~
AutoCorrect
I think that's where the job market has gone wrong in IT: bosses think
salaried == enslaved

------
nonce42
Going the opposite direction, I'm working 80% (32 hour weeks) by choice and
it's awesome. I have so much more time for other interests and family and it's
much less stressful. Of course I only get paid 80%, but that works for me.

I'm doing this at a major computer company and my management is supportive.
Nonetheless, it took months of discussion and needed to get approved by the
VP. And it's probably hurting my "career path".

Culturally, I find people don't understand working less than 100%. You have
Friday off? Is that vacation? Is that a partial layoff? (I'm male, and in the
US for context.)

Overall, it would be nice if working less than 40 hours were an option for
more people.

~~~
capisce
Are you 20 % less productive than those that work 40 hours a week?

~~~
marvin
I am currently writing my Masters thesis four days a week, working
approximately five hours a day the days I am working. (I had complications
from mononucleosis which temporarily screwed up my health, Post-Viral Fatigue
Syndrome or somesuch).

I get almost as much work done as the other Masters students in my department.
In practice, I only work about 50% of a regular workweek but I'd estimate that
I get about 80% of the results by being focused during the hours that I am
actually there.

------
gedrap
I am doing do a degree and paying the bills by freelancing. So 50-60hr/wk,
combined education and work, is something regular.

It is possible to sustain it, if you are an introvert like me. It's just
important not to do the same thing all the time. My degree is focused on low
level programming and hardware, and I mainly do AngularJS development for
living. So this kind of switch definitely helps.

Other thing which is important, at least personally, is that when you take a
break, you must do something that counts. Browsing internet just drains more
energy, personally. But I find playing an action packed video game (if you
can't bother to go outside - or if you live in North England like I do) quite
recharging. [0]

[0] I wrote more about that in my blog
[http://blog.gedrap.me/blog/2014/02/09/its-all-about-the-
shor...](http://blog.gedrap.me/blog/2014/02/09/its-all-about-the-short-
breaks/)

~~~
Iftheshoefits
Please don't suggest that introversion has anything whatsoever to do with what
you've described. Introversion/extroversion has little or nothing to do with
overworking oneself.

~~~
saamm
I think he may be implying that it is easier to handle the lower levels of
social interaction (with friends/family) that come along with working a lot of
hours if you're more introverted.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with whether a person is overworking
himself or not.

I'm introverted. There is not and has never been any meaningful connection
between that and my limits with respect to working hours.

------
mindcrime
For most people, I'd agree. But as a startup founder, given how resource
constrained we are (and we've chosen the self-funded, bootstrapping model for
now) I don't have a whole lot of choice if we're going to succeed. Especially
when you factor in that I still work a regular job to pay the bills.

So, 40 hrs at the regular job + x hours working on the startup, where x
consumes almost every evening and almost all day on Sat. and Sunday, I'm
regularly doing 70+ hour weeks.

Humblebrag? I don't know, and I don't care. I just care about getting this
damn thing going and achieving my dreams.

Luckily I _enjoy_ this, because I'm working on something I am actually
passionate about. Not that it doesn't get frustrating on occasion, but most of
the time it's more pleasure than pain.

So why do all this? Well, as theorique says here:

 _It isn 't about disrupting an industry. It's about money._

That's a little bit of an oversimplification, but there's a lot of truth
there. There are things I'd like to do, dreams I'd like to live out, that I
can't do at my present level of income. But it's more than that for me (and,
I'm guessing, for a lot of other people). I work on building a startup because
A. I enjoy the act of building and creating something, and B. as the founder
I'm in control and get to call the shots. Here, succeed for fail, it'll be
down to my decisions and actions, not some random $BOSS. (Yeah, yeah, go ahead
and chime in "everything is luck" crowd. I don't care about you either).

Anyway, when I get tired of working I just imagine myself cruising through New
York or London, driving a Ferrari while getting sucked off by a gorgeous
readheaded supermodel, and remind myself that there are reasons for doing all
this work...

~~~
djyaz1200
You had me there till the end... Maybe just rent the Ferrari and the girl :)

------
DanielBMarkham
Okay, fair enough call with the humblebrag -- many times people talking about
how many hours they work are simply socially posturing: _look at how much more
important I am!_

Also, it's bad for you. Bad for your health and bad for your performance.

Having said all of that, there's nothing wrong with 1) pouring yourself into
something that's bigger than you, and 2) living a life that's dedicated to
something aside from yourself, one which doesn't have traditional work-life
boundaries.

That's probably only true in 1% of these cases, but I don't want to lose those
folks while giving lectures to the other 99% about values and performance.

ADD: Rephrased, articles like this are _also_ a form of social posturing, and
please don't kill the next Thomas Edison with your well-meaning advice to ten
thousand corporate drones.

------
daviddaviddavid
I probably average around 60hrs per week and my biggest reservations about
this are:

1\. That's 60hrs of being a sedentary lazy-ass

2\. The more I work outside of work, the less well-rounded I will be

I'm a fit person and take regular walking/stretching breaks and switch between
standing and sitting but I still feel like I'm spending way too much time
being motionless.

Regarding being well-rounded, I've spent large chunks of my life focused on
music, philosophy and learning new (natural) languages. I find that it makes
me happier and makes me a more creative programmer, so I tend to feel guilty
when realize at the end of the week that I've spent all of my evenings coding
and reading RFCs.

------
mjn
Two relevant articles from a few years ago, on the culture around taking pride
in being overworked:

"The cult of busy":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187353)

"The busy trap":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4184317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4184317)

------
mtkd
It's not that binary.

Some weeks 60+ hours can be very productive - but it's important to recognise
when you're not being productive and take a proper break - I still find that a
challenge.

~~~
opinali
I should add that the right way to count these hours is including both the
"productive" work, and associated activities such as learning new tools or
"working" on pet projects, i.e. things you do for fun/passion but are also a
career investment. Considering also that these "extras" are often easy to
accommodate without big sacrifices—reading a book in your long bus/train
commute, hacking in your laptop while watching the kids, listening to tech
podcasts in the gym, etc.—a 60h week may be perfectly normal if it includes
everything... and even 70-80h not too bad if that number includes ALL your
computing, up to reading HN ;)

------
ksk
This article doesn't pass the smell test. There is nothing magical about 40
hours per week. 60 hours is just as arbitrary as 40. Also, it probably
originated when people did actual physical labor, and so it wont apply to dev
work. Countless people in the sciences have toiled day and night to bring
about great discoveries - and that's a good thing.

Question: Do non-software people (I'm thinking Scientists, Mathematicians,
etc) ever complain about this?

~~~
claudius
Complain about 60 hours/week? Rarely. Work 60 hours/week? Rarely.

Professors tend to put in roughly 40 to 80 hours depending on their scientific
and organisational workload, but most others hardly ever work 60 hours/week
with an average of 40-ish. But then, nobody really measures how much time they
put in, and you have to keep in mind that in science, the ‘passive work’ done
sort-of in the background while doing something else plays a larger role than
in programming (at least that’s my impression).

That said, 40 hours is not entirely unjustified, given that 8 hours/day is
relatively practical if you want to have both breakfast and dinner at home
with an 2hours/day commute and that at least most universities are relatively
closed-down on weekends (though some enjoy the much more quiet environment…).

~~~
ksk
>Work 60 hours/week? Rarely.

Do you have any data on this? Some quick data points that I found :

[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06302/nsf06302.pdf](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06302/nsf06302.pdf)

[http://www.stthomas.edu/media/hollorancenter/pdf/Should-
We-B...](http://www.stthomas.edu/media/hollorancenter/pdf/Should-We-Be-
Working.pdf)

[http://arthropodecology.com/2012/10/25/the-work-life-
balance...](http://arthropodecology.com/2012/10/25/the-work-life-balance-how-
many-hours-do-professors-work/)

A lot of people seem to work more than 40 hours per week. I'm sure some of
them do complain. Maybe devs are just more likely to blog about it.

~~~
claudius
Not really data in any sense justifying the plural use of the word, merely a
look down the hallway of the chair where I work – nobody comes in before 8:30
and most people have left by 18:30, averaging a nice-ish 40h/week, given that
those who come in early will leave early, too, there are extensive lunch and
coffee breaks and most people keep their evenings and weekends work-free
(though, of course, not all of them).

------
wellboy
I think it's about what the 60h is for. As a salary man, completely agree,
what are you working for? So that you make $180,000/year in 5 years instead of
$100,000? Not worth it.

But 60h/week for your own startup? Gosh, when I just started out, I loved
every single minute of work on my startup, I even didn't want to sleep, I
wouldn't get more joy of doing anything else than my startup, because it
wasn't work, it was me. I was building my very own future.

I think a 60h week is a completely different story if you compare it to being
a salary man and building your own company --> your own life.

------
ditoax
I am 29 and did several years at a large blue chip on 60-80 hour weeks (when
the odd month at 100 hours!) and it gave me a break down. Perhaps I am just
not as "strong" as others but I much prefer being in control of my own life
(social, work, personal). I learned a lot but personally I don't feel it has
done me any good in the long run. Interestingly the people who have done "the
best" when it comes to promotion/salary are the ones who didn't slave away for
60+ hours a week so I question why others do it.

With the exception of your own business of course.

------
Chapstar
I totally agree that a long work week is not a badge of honor and that the
results of your work should speak for themselves. Things take time and
sometimes you can't rush things.

I've worked crazy long weeks and its not glamorous and, in my opinion, just
straight unhealthy on so many levels.

I think the challenge in working 45+ hours/week is maintaining adequate
sleep/diet/exercise/social so that you can remain productive and happy over
the long-term. Best of luck.

------
Bahamut
I've never done a 60 hour work week, even on crunch mode - you run into the
risk of your mind deteriorating too much and putting out sloppy work that
needs to be fixed when you come in for the next day.

I don't know why anyone would pride themselves over it.

------
shitgoose
If most of you 60hrs/weekers would work just 6hrs/week, the world would hardly
notice. And some people need to be paid more to work less, so they can inflict
less damage. It is sad to see so many proud slaves in this industry.

------
bmahmood
Agree that the # of hours worked in a week is by no means an indication of
productivity, and sometimes perhaps a product of a misaligned culture.

However, I do find long hours may result out of necessity for the sheer work
involved as well. Especially in the earlier days of a company, you compensate
for an initial lack of resources and staff by performing multiple roles.

On the business side, you could easily see your mornings taken up by customer
calls (especially if you have an international market), the afternoons spent
on ad campaigns and marketing content, the late afternoons on general office
management. In the evenings when there's less client interaction, I would
spend time on product feedback, some data analysis and metrics reporting for
the day/week's past. This could easily extend to a 60-80 hour work week, and I
would consider fairly typical of early startups.

As you grow there's less need for sure to work so long, as the company grows
and responsibilities become more focused. But overall, I think there are
circumstances where a 60-80 hr workweeks are necessary, and not necessarily an
indication of a problem.

~~~
jhack
That sounds like one person doing the work of three or four people.

~~~
bmahmood
True, but in an early stage startup (<10 people), you often have to perform
the roles of multiple people, which in turn may result in longer hours.

------
theorique
One 60 hour week in isolation is not a problem. Sometimes it's crunch time and
deadlines happen.

Endless 60 hour weeks are a problem. Perpetual crunch time means that
expectations are misaligned with the resources needed to meet them.

------
joesmo
I couldn't agree more. Sometimes it is the fault of the worker, but unless
that worker is an executive, this is almost always the fault of management. I
have occasionally worked more than 40 hours because something was engrossing,
but this is unusual as I know when to stop. In almost every single case of
working more hours it was because of _bad management._ Unfortunately, a lot of
these management decisions are do or get fired and I have left many a job
because of it, usually to my detriment.

The other problem is that somehow people want to make an exception for _their
startup._ Their startup is special. Their startup won't suffer from these
problems. As if their startup has found a way to make humans efficient and
healthy without sleep. Please. That kind of thinking (I'm staring at a comment
right now) is exactly what leads to this kind of mess. Where does the 40 hours
a week come from? Years of experience by both workers and their managers and
executives.

Why then are executives nowadays so clueless, especially the ones at startups?

------
EGreg
I find it very interesting.

When people want their time to be respected, they show how little free time
they have. They basically are saying they are dirt-poor in time.

Imagine if people all announced they were dirt-poor in money. And when they
met up with their friends, they kept saying, somewhat with pride, how little
money they have saved up. In the USA that would seem ludicrous.

------
eddieroger
If I hadn't been reading this on a Saturday at 11:30 local while waiting for
my regression tests to finish, I may have been more enthusiastic to the
message.

Speaking in extremes rarely doesn't do anyone any good. Yeah, this weekend is
capping out a 60 hour week for me (and then some), but the problem isn't that
this occurred. Its when this becomes the norm. I look at it like peaks and
valleys. This week I'm working long. Last week, I did, too. But, this
weekend's testing will be testing a prod bug we've been chasing for three
weeks. My boss knows, and he's going to trade me some time in the upcoming
weeks. Likewise, there have been plenty of weeks that I worked sub-40. As long
as work doesn't take over your life unwillingly, things are probably fine.
Paraphrasing a TV theme (the source of all wisdom) - you take the good, you
take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life.

------
cgag
60 hours a week is a big much, but if you're working on your own company then
I have no problem with it. Working on your own stuff, for your own benefit, is
a totally different thing than working for someone else. If you're doing 60
hours a week to make someone else rich, you're most certainly doing it wrong.

~~~
gutnor
You are doing doubly wrong.

Look at people opinion on HN (i.e. our peers). Being good require to train in
new tech and work on personal project outside work time.

If you are pushing yourself to the max for an employer you are most likely not
doing that. Meaning in addition of making your boss richer for no personal
gain, you make yourself look incompetent to your peers, potentially arming
your career.

------
einhverfr
I am not sure that the question is whether a 60 hour workweek is fine. There's
a huge difference, like it or not, between on one hand answering tech support
calls for 60 hours in a week, or coding 60 hours in a week, or the like, and
working as a self-employed individual for 60 hours every week.

I probably work 60 to 80 hours a week, most weeks. During slow times I work
less. It includes everything from software development to discussing tech
support issues with customers, to doing my own billing, to accounting, to any
number of other tasks. If I worked less than 60 hours a week I wouldn't have
time for real work most weeks.

But a few points:

1\. I don't have a commute. When I used to work at Microsoft I would work 40
hours a week, spend at least ten hours a week stuck in traffic, and have at
least 5 hours a week in unpaid break time. That adds up to 55 hours by itself.
Had I lived a little further away, those could have added up to over 60 hours
committed to work for 40 hours of pay. I also find being stuck in traffic
significantly more stressful and draining than working.

2\. I don't spend more than 40 hours a week doing any specific kind of work.
Most weeks, I do less than 20 hours of work software development, and I know
that if I am doing particularly heavy software development work, that going
above 20 hours a week is courting burnout (I would rather put in 20 hours of
really good effort than have to throttle effort in order to stay sane). For
lighter work? Sure I could go up to 40.

3\. The 60 to 80 hours includes a lot of time that would otherwise be hobby or
personal project time, but which I can count because I am self-employed ;-).
For example, I spent 20 hours worth of work this week on a strategic project
that has no immediate impact regarding revenue, etc, but is fun and I think
will make the rest of my work a lot more fun (when I have examples of how I
will certainly submit them here on HN). That counts.

4\. I work from home so all kinds of break time are usually family time unless
I am on HN ;-).

So my point is that there are so many factors that go into this. I _think_ the
author is talking about working 60 hours for a business, particularly where
you don't work from home, doing just one job. That's fine for short bursts but
I wouldn't recommend it as a lifestyle. On the other hand there are certainly
contexts where over 60 hours a week for the long run makes sense once you
escape the idea that "it's a job."

~~~
dclara
That's really true. Counting for hours regardless of the intensity of workload
is meaningless. I also think the OP's meaning behind how the hours is counted
is regarding the full capacity of work load during the day, instead of
including everything work related.

The intensity of the software development prevents one to work over 8 hours a
day, and even not for too long without a break. What I mean is pretty much
continuous work, reading news, emails and making calls are not included. This
number is usually 5 hours for some standard software companies, which usually
have meetings and chatting from time to time during the 8 hours of office
work.

Everybody has his own strength during different age range. As startup company,
it's really necessary to work 60-80 hours a week including overall work
related activities. Just make sure not to burn out yourself.

~~~
einhverfr
I can do 8 hours of light-weight development easily enough, things like minor
bugfixes, minor tweaks, etc. and carry that on for months if needed. But for
stuff like coding from scratch, aside from brief bursts, I usually find that 4
hours is a good general guide. Obviously when nearing release, the long
stretches of 8-10 hours of coding is going to be much lighter. Most of the
tweaks are going to be minor, you hope, and so you can throw the rules out the
window for a bit.

If you are working 60-80 hours a week, _hopefully_ you aren't just doing one
thing. It's one thing to put in 20 hours a week on software development, 20
hours a week on sales and marketing, 20 hours a week on fundraising, and 20
hours a week on business administration. It is far worse to put in 40 hours a
week on software development, IMO.

~~~
dclara
Yes, on top of the 40 hours of intensive work including design, coding, learn
a new technology with intensive reading, or even tackling business/marketing
strategies and tactics, etc., the rest hours are on lighter work related
things, such as email, news, phone calls, book-keeping, etc.

Regarding how to dividing the time slots, my usual practice is to concentrate
on one major task and get it done completely in the shortest time period. For
example, while I'm doing patent application, I have to complete it with all
the available resources being collected and everything in the real-time memory
for 2-3 weeks until it can pass the criteria. If it's a software development
or fundraising, it may take 3-4 weeks to finish one round of intensive
development and reach a milestone. After that period, I'm pretty much
exhausted, and have to switch to something else to concentrate on, just like
what you said. Focus and hammer down the nails with a deadline in mind is so
important. Bug-fixing is a side job, light but time-consuming to cover every
possible exceptional cases, but it also depends on whether it needs a
redesign.

~~~
einhverfr
At the same time, I find that being willing to quit and come back is important
to. I usually devote blocks of 4 hours to achievable tasks in that case.
However if I run into problems getting things where they need to go, after 2-3
blocks, I may shelve the task and come back later as needed.

There are times when quitting is necessary for perspective, and where you can
get the same task done quicker by quitting and moving onto something else, and
then when you need to, coming back, than you would by pushing for a deadline.
Learning to recognize that there are signs of "I don't really understand this
problem, so I should come back after I have a chance to digest my failure
today" and recognizing when that's a good idea takes some time though.

~~~
dclara
You reminded me in some cases I did, but I don't feel well about that. But
I've already spent too much time on one item, if I didn't quit, it would delay
the rest of the tasks.

Most of the time, I have to do extra hours of work to get it completed.
Otherwise, it's hard get chance to revisit again unless it's a critical
feature or bug.

Another strategy is, just like what you mentioned, once we are stuck at
somewhere for more than 4 hours, we have to move to other tasks, give it up
temporarily and later on when we come back, maybe things changed or mind
changed, it's no longer that hard any more.

~~~
einhverfr
I have found that if I never get the opportunity, chances are it wasn't
important anyway. For a lot of things that seem to be moth-balled, they have
an amazing way of coming up later.

For example, a month after I gave up on rewriting the financial logic for
LedgerSMB, I got a project that required a small subset of rewritten code
there. So I went ahead, took the short cuts required for that, wrote an
implementation and such in a half a day, from scratch, when my previous
attempt took two weeks with nothing to show from it.

That lead to starting the rewrite again which will begin again in earnest
after 1.4 branches off. Instead of budgetting months, I am now budgetting only
days.

~~~
dclara
Yes, budgeting for days instead of budgeting for months. When we well manage
the task list, usually a feature implementation takes 1-3 days, a project may
take 3-4 weeks to reach a milestone. So no feature can take more than a week
to finish. Priority is the key.

------
maj0rhn
Hours-per-week is not the issue. The issue is the tradeoff between
productivity-per-week (which is related to, but not identical to, hours-per-
week) and how worthwhile the project is (in terms of what you'll sacrifice to
achieve it).

So, if you're Jonas Salk working on a vaccine for polio, you're quite right to
leave everything else in the dust and save people's lives (being highly
worthwhile, sacrifices are made to get peak productivity).

If you're working for your ego, or for something ridiculous like letting
people share pictures in a new way, or to silence some inner demons, then you
may need to be a little more clear-eyed about the costs of your time
investment.

------
coldtea
No -- it's a badge of failure. "I am not succesful enough to be able to work
less. Plus, I'm not bright enough to be able to understand that my business is
in the grand scheme of things a means to an end".

------
pyrrhotech
As a decent software engineer with a couple years of experience, you need to
be making at least 80-100/hr or you are cheating yourself. If you are working
60 hours a week, you better be making at least $250k/year

~~~
hashberry
yeah bro if you are working 40 hours a week, you better be making at least
$166k/year

~~~
pyrrhotech
correct, if you are any good at engineering and negotiating

------
Ryel
I started software development recently, and coming from the restaurant
industry it's extremely hard to wrap my head around the way most people in the
tech industry think when it comes to work ethic. Personally I think it has a
lot to do with being spoiled with an over-abundance of jobs. Most of you are
very comfortable and wouldnt be worried about finding work if you were fired
tomorrow.

In the restaurant industry it is part of the culture that no successful chef
rises from the trenches of building a well-regarded establishment working less
than 60-70 hours a week. That is the minimum.

I've worked nearly every position in the restaurant biz (I love the industry
and would do it everyday if it paid anything decent) including a couple well-
regarded NYC places where I worked consecutive 100+ hour weeks for extended
periods of time, 24 hour shifts, and often times ended up sleeping somewhere
in the restaurant so instead of spending an hour to get home and an hour to
come back, I could use 2 extra hours of sleep. When I was 17 I saved a
paycheck with 112 hours on it.

At almost 21 now and having recently completely left the industry (except for
occasional catering gigs) I was up until recently still working consecutive
70-90 hour weeks.

It's likely because Im young and maybe naive but the appeal for me has always
been the camaraderie and for the life of me I cannot find that in a startup.
I've interviewed in person with over a dozen startups now in Manhattan and
Brooklyn and I've turned down offers from the majority of companies I
interviewed with because at 5pm, they all turn off their computers and go
home.

I want to work with a team that's put all their chips into the company.
Financially, physically, emotionally. I want the blood, sweat, and tears that
make up the restaurant industry. Not because I think my hours are "cool" or
"impressive" because I know I wont be able to maintain those hours as I get
older and have real commitments. For now what I want is a team that has it all
on the line. I know the risks are high but I know the reward is higher, the
friendships that come out of those experiences have always been the strongest
ones for me and the experiences have taught me how to handle the worst.

As I get older I'm sure I'll come to learn the differences between being paid
for physical labour and being paid to develop software. Eventually I'll be in
the same boat as most of you but for now I'll continue to work a 12 hour day
and wakeup excited to check my emails and excited to hack on the next feature
for my next side-project.

~~~
korzun
I worked in both industries and while hours in restraunt industry might be
longer than '40', you comparing the two makes it obvious that you did not do
much in tech sector to say that.

Staring at a computer all day and writing code is way harder on you than
running around the restaurant. There are also stuff like deadlines, bugs, 12
am outages and tons of other issues that always are in the back of your mind.

------
just3ws
I was just let go from a company the day before yesterday and this was a
primary reason. It was a startup and the CEO said that it's just how things
had to be. I did in the end explain my position and why what they were doing
was chaos and unnecessary. They were in a constant state of breaking or
incomplete but they think that spending nights and weekends is how it's
supposed to be so they will continue on down that destructive path and just
keep on patting each other's backs for being so dedicated.

------
codegeek
There is definitely many sides to this whole argument of "x hour work week".
For many, it makes sense to push their limits and clock up 60+ hours/wk while
many are productive working just about 40 or less. And we can certainly
discuss the pros and cons of both. But one of the fundamental things that I
believe we should all think about is the ability to control what/how/when you
do things. This includes work hours as well. As an example, I know many
colleagues who take pride in working a lot of hours and they even login from
home just to reply to emails. Do they really _need_ to do that ? In most
cases, I would challenge that they don't. But it is a tendency that develops
over time and one day you suddently realize that you are clocking 60+ hours/wk
and don't even know why.

But then you could argue that everyone else on the team does that, my boss
likes it that way blah blah. Again, totally understood that if everyone else
is doing it, why wouldn't you but the fact still remains "you _can_ control it
to an extent". That's the point.

I have made it a point to set some strict boundaries. Sure, I have the luxury
of doing that after being in the industry for a while as a specialist and my
clients depend on my expertise. So it is more about value than time. Focus on
creating that for your employers/clients and you are golden.

------
bestrapperalive
I agree with the headline if only because "hours present at desk" is a
completely facile metric for performance. What matters is what was
accomplished, not how much time was taken. Is your feature or project closer
to (successful) completion? Have you automated away the busywork time-sink
that has has been slowing down your team? Is your organization now more able
to effectively use its scarce resources? If not, fuck your "hours."

------
just3ws
What seems to be misunderstood is that working more than 40 hours per week
isn't the problem. It's what and where one is working and how much they value
their time. I regularly work and study well over 50+ hours per week but not
all of it is on my primary job. I also work on personal projects, small side
jobs, learning new skills, etc. This whole concept is like the conversation a
few years ago about the 5 o'clock developer. Our profession demands a great
deal of time and dedication but that doesn't mean you have to subordinate your
life to your employer. ---- For the people who think that chaining yourself to
working 80+ hours to an employer is good, you need to step back and ask what
do you think you're going to own after you finally burnout? Might setting up
boundaries and investing in your own projects and external skills leave you
with something you can own and take pride in or are you going to have to leave
everything you've built behind and have no ownership when it's all said and
done? I've been down that path and regret it. Learn to value your own time and
invest that extra energy and time in building something for yourself.

------
ausjke
Just curious, as human race, what makes us think 40-hour(or any numbers of
hours) is the norm that everyone should stick to?

if we switch to 4-weekday in the future, we will then consider 4*8=32 hour per
week is typical, and work 40+ hours a week will burn you out? where and how to
draw the line?

I agree that there is no point to brag about your 60+ hour work style, but,
what really decides the 'normal' work hours each week?

------
j45
I find working a lot of hours can lead to confusing activity with results.
When you're gaining experience you don't know what to focus on so you spend
your time focusing on things that don't matter in the end. As you get wiser,
you learn to focus on what matters more, and have the choice of doing it more,
or not.

One other very big caveat is this type of a conversation with me when I was 20
would have been tougher because I had much less of a clue of what else was out
in the world that I couldn't live without and wanted to have as part of my
life. It's also what allows young people to give up their 20's pursing
startups that have little to no chance in hell of setting them up to chase
their interests for the rest of their life.

It's also why I very much agree with PG's advice to simply solve actual
problems as a student, as the closer you are to solving problems, the closer
you're to value that can carry you forward into the next thing you work on.

Invariably, many 20-somethings don't know much about the world, or what's in
it. The more time spent behind a keyboard the more once can be left behind the
eight ball in becoming well rounded enough to interface with the problems that
are out in the world that need solving.

Life hasn't been binary for me so far, there's no specific generalization
available to follow. Instead of focusing on one thing for 60 hours a week,
I've found that paying attention to make sure I'm growing and having
experiences that are helping me grow in a meaningful, satisfying, fulfilling,
and lasting way was enough to kind of get the hang of.

Getting caught up in the echo chamber of doing what others doing got me what
most others got -- not much that I valued for those hours, until I changed it
up.

------
pattisapu
The first draft of the Fair Labor Standards Act had a 30 hour workweek, past
which you'd get overtime.

Many laws before the FLSA (like the New York law famously struck down as
unconstitutional in the later-reversed Lochner v. New York) capped the
workweek at 60 hours.

Imagine if either of these laws were the standard for the country ... maybe
that would change our perspective on what is healthy and what is unhealthy.

------
overgryphon
From a manager perspective, you wouldn't want an employee working 60+ hours on
a regular basis. When actual crunch-time happened, that employee wouldn't have
room to work more. You likely wouldn't be able to meet expectations, because
your under-staffing problem had been hidden by regularly overworking some
employees.

~~~
Codhisattva
Crunch time is a management anti-pattern.

~~~
craigvn
Exactly. Crunch time means oop's management stuffed up, now fix it for us.

------
thekevan
I like a 60 hour work week. There are several projects or even different
"jobs" in that 60 hours. I like getting a lot done because I like the money it
gets me.

I like the momentum of those 50 - 60 hour weeks. More importantly, makes it
easier for those weeks I want to do a 20 hour or a 0 hours work week.

~~~
afterburner
If you're not averaging 60/week then you're not really doing the "60-hour work
week" thing.

------
kenster07
Actually, it is almost universally admired when a person pushes him or
herself. One way to do that happens to be to work harder than other people.
Now, it can get to the point where you become so inefficient that it's stupid.
No, we don't typically admire stupidity. But let's not kid ourselves -- hard
work is respectable.

As an extreme example, I'd wager that most people instinctively admire those
who can make it all the way through Navy SEAL bootcamp, and one of the reasons
is that participants are literally working NONSTOP during that period, at a
level of physical exertion that most people nowadays could not sustain for a
few hours, let alone days on end.

------
protomyth
I still find it a bit odd that the 3-day week before I go on vacation is
probably my most productive, focused week. It probably has to do with focus
and weeding out the distractions with the "I need to get this done by Weds
night, so can we talk when I get back?".

I've worked a sustained 60 for a lot of years and done back-to-back 80's. I
just don't think I was super productive. My most personally productive run was
on a job that I had 4 hours in the morning to program and was doing something
completely different in the afternoon.

~~~
dclara
"My most personally productive run was on a job that I had 4 hours in the
morning to program and was doing something completely different in the
afternoon."

I totally agree with you. If you super concentrated on solving one hard
problem within 4 hours in the morning, it's hard to have the same amount of
energy to do another on in the rest of the day. So we need to manage our
productivity in a better way to balance the work load and intensity. We need
to have time to get recharged.

------
memracom
Kudos for writing about this. So many people in the startup world like to brag
about how they do things without a whole lot of evidence to back them up.
Usually it is about some cool tech that they use, but as you point out, the
long hours meme is also something that is going around like a virus even
though there is no evidence that it does any good.

There is a lot of talk about big data in our industry, but it seems to me that
some small data experiments would be useful as well because there is so much
that we do with no data to back up the practices.

------
lazyjones
People have worked more than 60 hours a week for hundreds of years (farmers,
soldiers, ...). There's nothing normative about the 40 hour (or 38,5 hour in
this country) working weeks we are used to because we grew up with them.

We should worry more about getting our minds occupied with useless
information. How healthy is a strict 40 hour week when 20 more hours are spent
browsing the web and another 20 or more watching TV? Do we even still know
what else we could do with our time? We might as well do some productive work
...

------
fredgrott
Somewhat interesting..

The productivity studies of Navy military groups on ships is moving them away
from 60+ hour weeks to 40 hour work weeks.

They are finding that it hampers alertness/awareness

~~~
dinkumthinkum
This is a very different situation.

------
Brando_
Same as with anything else in life, really. Take fitness for example- I hear
guys bragging about how hard their routine is, how they train every day till
exhaustion. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Trying to constantly be
busy with something is a form of laziness if you think about it. It means not
doing the things that really make the difference- those annoying ones, the
ones we always leave for later.

------
the_french
Every time I see these X0-work week (where X > 4) posts I keep on thinking of
this:
[http://visitnormandy.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/1mai.jpg?w=...](http://visitnormandy.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/1mai.jpg?w=500)
It took us a long time to have the right to a 40 hour week, lets not give that
up especially for salaried employees.

------
venomsnake
And what about when you have two jobs - 40 and 20, when they are unrelated
lets say - front end development to pay the bills and number crunching side
project for fun - they exhaust differently. There are a lot of developers that
put more than 20 hours weekly on side projects or professional level hobbies.

It is probably the more of the same that makes the quick decline after 40
hours.

------
blueskin_
I'll work 60 hours if I'm paid for it.

Otherwise, barring some disaster (as then I get time in lieu), I'm out of the
door once hours are up.

It's not just a money issue - working stupid hours just makes people tired and
they make mistakes, and in many jobs, extra hours just stretch things so they
are spending lots of time sitting around waiting for other things.

------
WalterBright
A study of this was done during WW2. They found that 60 hr weeks initially
boosted productivity, but that boost faded over time to less than that of a 40
hr week. (And this was with a motivated work force.)

They discovered that going back and forth between 60 and 40 hr weeks did
produce a sustained production increase.

------
ericecook
I do agree with the author that there is an inordinate number of us who brag
about the number, but this isn't something that is likely to just go away.
Unless a new and objective measure of 'productivity' comes along people will
still humblebrag about how long they work

------
mcv
I'm proud of my 32-hour work week. That makes more sense to me than being
proud of working 60 hours.

------
auggierose
Hell, I'll do 60 hour work DAYS!

------
zacinbusiness
A 60 hour work week? Jesus. I pulled those before college at a factory. And
during college at a gas station. But now? Hell no. I average 20-30 hours a
week with a daily nap. But then I don't really care about money so long as my
family is happy and comfortable.

------
Havoc
It depends on circumstances. e.g. Right now I'm working 17 hr days on
occasion. Knowing that its temporary makes it 100% easier to endure though.

The whole X hours per week greatly underestimates surrounding factors. X hours
of what? Hard manual labour? Staring at a CCTV screen?

------
josephscott
One of the big problems with doing 60 hours every week is that it leaves no
buffer for emergencies. If normal weeks are roughly 40 hours, then when an
emergency comes up you can usually make room to absorb that.

That means emergencies can't be every week.

------
souravray
Bang on! 3 years back I twitted "if u r working 14 hrs a day, then
possibilities r - either u building a Large Hadron Collider on ur own, or u r
doing it awfully wrong" Guess what? It was a YC gradg & they hv never moved
far!

------
rrggrr
To all you twenty and early thirty-somethings concerned over long hours I say
this... You'll soon be in your 40's. If working 60+ hours a week enables 30
hour weeks in your 40's, it will be worth it.

------
m0g
Just wanted to say that being asked not once, but twice in a very intrusive
manner if I want to suscribe to the blog is a pain in the ass for me. Please
adjust that.

------
mathenk2
I actually think less of those working 60+ hours and being proud of it. You're
being self destructive and trying to make it sound like a good thing...

------
ohwp
The author is right but I think he misses an impotant point. The bigest
problem is that people think there work is there identity.

------
scottydelta
I dont think 60 hours a week is much, its like 10 hours a day, 6 days in a
week and no matter what, it just sounds right to me.

------
coherentpony
Try telling this to anybody in academia. Your funding is based on your
deliverables, not the number of hours you work.

------
knodi
Please, if I want to work 60 hours I'll work 60 hours. If you don't like it
don't do it.

------
craigvn
You can tell a developer who works 60+ hours regularly, they have the most
buggy code.

------
ezl
yeah, seriously. anything less than 70 and its like you're not even trying.

------
presorted
A humblebrag: when you make your use of the word 'humblebrag' a hyperlink to
its definition.

------
a3voices
Does 60 hours mean you're doing work the whole time, or is 1/2 of it browsing
the Internet?

~~~
corresation
I can only draw from anecdotes, but those align with your suspicion: where
overtime was mandatory (where management was largely about maximizing
suffering ^1, as if suffering has any value by itself), everyone simply
compensated by doing less real work per work hour. It does seem like many
people have a fixed quantity of productive output, and the decision is simply
about how much to spread it out.

This isn't true for all people. I've had weeks where I've worked 100+ hours
productively because I was working on my own projects and initiatives, for my
own company and enrichment, and had hit a stride. But I would never brag about
that effort, because the _effort_ itself is meaningless. Only the results of
the effort mattered, and of those I am very proud. Too many brag about the
effort regardless of what is often a lack of results.

^1 - [http://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2013/03/05/mediocre-
manager...](http://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2013/03/05/mediocre-managers-can-
only-manage-suffering/)

~~~
opinali
Well said; the problem is that worked hours is a useless metric of
productivity. Even the horribly poor metric "lines of code written" is much
better—at least I know that you have been producing work, not social media
posts.

------
notastartup
At a company I worked at few years ago in Vancouver, the ratio of project
managers to developers was 4 to 1, on average a designer or a developer was
dealing with 4 different project managers at a time, sometimes more, switching
back and forth between projects with impossible deadlines. This led to people
working on the weekends, often leaving after hours (because people think it's
selfish to leave on time and leave others behind with more work).

What's even worse is when the executives started to delegate tasks outside of
one's job description because they were undermanned. That's where I drew the
line, call them out on it, and got canned. What's even more funny was being
outcasted where a typical company lunch or gathering would always be about who
has done the most hour of work or have become "heros" by saving the project by
working beyond the work hours.

At one point the vice president called me at 1 AM (after leaving work at 10
pm) on the commute back home as I walked him through logging into the company
backend used to power mobile applications.

It's quite interesting because they got funded 6 million dollars but they
couldn't afford to hire more staff and they insisted on breaking even when it
clearly was not scaling.

What I realized about the tech market in BC is that a lot of it is huff piece
by local media and the continued image of "grass is greener over here" where
none of it highlights the exploitative work environment for highly skilled
technical engineers in the software/web industry. With the rising real estate
prices and people basically living check to check to keep a roof over their
heads, I wouldn't be surprised if Vancouver turns to a resort town with people
leaving for tech jobs outside of BC to where the cost of living and wages are
justified. Already many of the engineers at the company I worked for have left
for United States.

I'm not alone with this story there are many many horror stories I hear from
other local engineers and designers. In fact the only people I hear that are
happy are freelancers charging higher wage.

------
goggles99
What 60hr/week worker is asking for a badge of honor? Do you really think that
a _Badge of Honor_ and _pride_ is why they are working all these hours? I have
never seen this in all the startups that I have worked at.

In my personal observations there are three reasons that people work long
hours. Money, self advancement (skill wise or other) and a loyal commitment to
finish a large task within a time span.

------
dhfjgkrgjg
the problem is that in most locations companies seem to have the upper hand,
and IT staff work in a cost centre, and the drive is on to reduce salaries to
less than that of a french deodorant salesman.

