
In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week - stevencorcoran
http://blog.lawnstarter.com/post/77371611550/in-defense-of-the-60-hour-work-week
======
lostcolony
So at 23 this person feels he has enough anecdotal experience to trump 100+
years of research.

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

~~~
mdmarra
The HN crowd baffles me sometimes. It seems to move between "This person is
too old. They are disconnected from today's generation," and "This person is
too young. They don't have the experience to share meaningful anecdotes."

At what age would this person's comments hold water? 25? 28? 30?

~~~
RyanZAG
When someone is making statements about a global truth, such as the ability to
be productive, experience is paramount. We all know you can pull off 80 hour
weeks for a little bit before bad stuff happens, etc. It takes a bit of
experience to learn what happens after a couple years of that.

When someone is talking about fashions or the popularity of new technologies
etc, then being too old is going to make your opinion less useful as it's
going to be harder for you to unlearn what you've already learned. This is
generally far less of a problem and I really haven't seen much "This person is
too old" on HN, but you do see it a lot on reddit as reddit attracts a very
young crowd.

------
mrcharles
I used to think it was possibly to work 60 hour weeks just because I loved
what I was doing. When I was shipping Assassin's Creed 2 and being both the
team lead and main programmer on the combat system, I worked sustained 60 hour
weeks for somewhere in the range of six months.

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

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

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

~~~
robinduckett
Ahah! So it's your fault! Nah, I'm only kidding. I love AC2.

------
dkersten
_You Learn and Accomplish More_

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

 _I refuse to believe that this tipping point is exactly 40 hours per week_

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

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

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

 _I actively assess what makes me productive and what hurts me_

This is good. Many people _don 't_ do this.

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

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

~~~
jaimebuelta
_I refuse to believe that this tipping point is exactly 40 hours per week_

Ok, give or take 5 hours (35-45). That's different than 50% more :-P

------
parasight
I have not problem with someone working 60+ hours per week. It is your life.
Do with it whatever you like.

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

~~~
iopq
Exactly this. I would even agree with him that 40 hours is not the point where
you become less productive. It's less than that. I don't want to waste my time
when I'm less productive, my time is important to me. I would like to work 20
hours a week.

------
jaimebuelta
_Me, I’m a 23 year old startup founder_

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

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

~~~
theorique
Absolutely right.

Just because a few driven individuals can survive Navy SEAL selection (BUD/S)
doesn't mean that BUD/S is the optimal practice for everyone to have a
productive, balanced, or happy life.

Some people do fine on 60 hours a week. Some people burn out on 40 hours. Some
people sleep 5 hours a night. Some people delude themselves into thinking that
5 hours a night is all they need and then sleep 14 hours on Saturday.

This article is good insofar as it's one man's exploration of the question.
But everyone needs to figure it out individually - there's no one-size-fits-
all answer.

~~~
danielweber
Except that this guy wants and expects to only hire Navy SEALs.

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

To which I'd ask, why would someone who isn't horribly naive work 60 hours to
make _you_ rich?

~~~
theorique
Well, yeah, leaders need to lead from the front, or at least give a strong
impression of doing so. Otherwise, people will ask your question, and for good
reason.

------
kfk
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with working a modest 40 hour week. I am in
no way putting this normal practice down.”

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

So, which one is it?

------
RyanZAG
This guy is going to read this in 10 years time and be appalled at how naive
he was.

 _> (yes, I am passionate about lawn care)_

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

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

~~~
ulfw
I give him 5 max.

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

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

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

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

------
brohoolio
It's interesting reading these sorts of articles.

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

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

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

YMMV

------
pjc50
We need a good "in defence of the partial work week".

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

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

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

------
jiggy2011
The problem isn't the 60 hour weeks, it's the expectations they create. A 60
hour week is easy when you're happy, but having to do a 60 hour week when
you're not because that's all you've done for the last year is a serious drag.

~~~
parasight
Another problem is the expectations it puts on others in a team. Is it ok if
there are people working 40+ hours and people working constantly 60+ hours in
the same team? I guess this can lead to serious tensions.

------
rmrfrmrf
I'm starting to think that lawnstarter is an experiment in content marketing
rather than an actual business. At this point I've "learned" more about the
founder than the business itself, but honestly, so many of these types of
articles are paid for that I doubt it reflects anyone's real personality.

------
jmnicolas
I think people need to mature a bit before giving life advices.

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

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

------
watwut
The thing about people that have no life outside of work and claim to be happy
is that they bring their communication and socialization needs to work all too
often. Which means a lot longer meetings and a lot more small talk or playing
games together etc.

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

------
ulfw
The problem about 60+ hour work weeks is that it's nothing but utter cheating
by employers.

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

~~~
rjf90
Not necessarily true. If people weren't getting compensated in some way they
would leave. Investment bankers work 80-120 hours per week, and they get paid
as such. Same with lawyers.

~~~
ulfw
How does your average Silicon Valley 60+ hour worker get extra compensation
for those additional hours that are expected of him (beyond the contractually
agreed 40 hours)?

~~~
rjf90
Faster advancement within the company. Executives aren't in their position
simply because they are smarter than everyone else. After an IQ of 120-125,
intelligence is not a good predictor of success (according to Malcolm Gladwell
at least). Hard work plays a role.

If you want to work a normal work week and a normal life, great. But sometimes
to achieve great things you have to make sacrifices.

------
junto
As a husband and father I struggle to put in a 37.5 hour week. Overtime is has
to be traded off against seeing my children grow up and finding (literally) a
few minutes a week alone with my wife.

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

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

------
jmngomes
I wouldn't trust a 23 year old with little work experience to (really) know
why "F500 executives work 80 hour weeks", if indeed they do...

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

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

------
cpwright
You can actually be incredibly productive when working a 60 hour work week,
and I used to do it regularly. When I was doing it at a large company, there
was little reward for it, but I did learn a lot and was able to turn that into
a better, and less stressful job in finance.

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

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

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

------
AnthonyVT
Not only do I completely agree with this article, but I see it every day.
Everything you want has a cost and a sacrifice. I look at the executive team
at my firm and they have be working 60+ hrs a week for over 15 years. And you
know what? They are VPs. Win. Sure it probably cost them a lot of social and
family time, but they accomplished their goals. If your goal is to have a
wife, kids, and a white picket fence, with a low stress job, then go for it.
No one is telling you not to. But if you want to be a senior vice president,
or a founder of a company - news flash you should probably work more than 40
hours a week. Do you think every executive is smarter than the people he was
promoted over? No, of course not. So most likely they worked harder and longer
to get there.

------
acd
I think it is ok to work 60 hours+ when you are young, have only yourself to
take care about and a skill set to build. As soon as you starting having a
girl/boyfriend or family you are not taking care of your private life when you
are working 60hours+. Then you are prioritizing work in front of your private
life.

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

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

------
davidmr
I'm always surprised at the passion this subject always generates,
particularly in how many people express an opinion on how many hours a week
_I_ should work.

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

------
50MilesToGo
I've found that working long hours is practical with regimented conditioning,
much like training for any strenuous activity. If you jump headlong into a
60-hour work week, you'll suffer and burn out rather quickly. A slow ramp
eases you into the commitment and tests your limits, gradually pushing them
upward. It's also crucial to take down weeks every so often.

------
jackgavigan
I have worked 60+ hour weeks for significant periods of time and in various
roles, including as CTO of a dot-com startup and as a trader at Morgan
Stanley.

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

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

If you are expected to put in 60-hour weeks as a matter of course and your
boss _doesn 't_, I would advise you to quit that job as quickly as it is
feasible to do so.

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

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

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

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

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

------
etanazir
A Bird named the Alpine Swift may fly through the air for a period of several
months without stopping... Some people's minds may work on a problem
similarly.

------
danso
I can kind of see where the OP is coming from. My summer job out of high
school was working as a roofer, where I had to get up at 5 am every morning to
drive out into the small town where we were based. My boss was famously a
jerk: the summer before he was hospitalized because apparently a worker
"accidentally" pushed him off the roof. And the summer before that, the office
workers who were employed on the managing side of the roofing company had to
go up on a roofing job because my boss's crew quit on him.

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
tomswartz07
I think you hit the nail right on the head.

My take on it is this: You work for as much time as you need.

Different jobs, different positions, different work-styles all dictate
different needs out of a typical work day. Who's to say that one is vastly
superior to another. Further, who's to say that their workflow is so
stupendous, that it should dictate the needs of others?

------
hox
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7246035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7246035)

------
Yuioup
I didn't read the article but I can speak with experience. The 60 hour work
week does not work. The challenge is to try to do everything within 40. If you
need more time then you're not doing it right.

~~~
Yuioup
I got a downvote. Thanks HN.

~~~
DanBC
You commented on the article but you didn't read the article? I'm not
surprised you got a downvote.

