
It’s pointless to work long hours so why do it? - hhs
https://www.ft.com/content/014b7266-c9a8-11e9-af46-b09e8bfe60c0
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sys_64738
We're productive 4-6 hours a day. Anything longer than 8 hours really is a
waste of your time. As you get older you find your time is more important as
there is finite time on this earth. If you don't have a life outside work then
you really need to reassess your priorities.

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chomp
As someone who’s been on the receiving end of such edicts, and also tangential
to people giving such edicts, my personal opinion is that it’s about
posturing.

Telling your superiors “I’ve had my team working round the clock” conveys more
sense of urgency than “we’re working on it, that request will be handled as
soon as my people get back from their weekend.”

It sucks and is bad management in my opinion. But from what I’ve experienced,
people eat that stuff up. Especially people who come from companies that have
constantly fought fires all the time. It’s very frustrating.

As I’ve gotten older, more eyebrows have gotten raised at long work schedules,
so that’s good at least. My personal experience tends towards work/life
balance being more available in larger, corporate positions but I can’t tell
if that is my bubble, or if that’s the general case.

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spease
I can’t read the article, it’s behind a paywall.

It depends a lot on what the work is. If I’m talking to people in different
departments about various issues, I find I can still pull a full day. Even
coding, I can still be productive if it’s a lot of boilerplate or checking off
possible causes for a bug. It’s when it gets to deeply complex technical tasks
that I find it becomes worse than useless to put in that time.

That being said, I’ve found that around 70 hours in a week of coding, my mind
just shuts down.

This all assumes I’m engaged in what I’m determined - if I have doubts that
the time I’m spending is in my self-interest as well as my employers, it’s a
lot harder for me to stay motivated past what I have to do.

