Slashdot Mirror
Half of IT Workers Sleep on the Job
Stony Stevenson writes "According to a new online survey by Harris Interactive, more than half of IT workers say they've fallen asleep at work, while nearly half of techies also are apparently in the mood for love. Forty-seven percent of tech pros admit they've kissed a co-worker, according to the online survey of 5,700 U.S. workers, including 163 techies.
The survey didn't indicate if those work taboos were committed by the same respondents, but in both cases, men were more likely to admit doing both. Forty-nine percent of male techies say they've fallen asleep at work, while only 35 percent of women admitted doing so."
I have an older employee who handles some contracts (hourly) that has a tendency to fall asleep. He's within a decade or less of retirement, and we've caught him napping a few times in recent months (as has the customer he's usually working at). We've talked, and it definitely seems like there's a medical issue here, so it leaves us with having to just compensate the customer for any billable time where he has fallen asleep. We've considered moving him to an internal job, but he's really good at the tasks he leads, and he also works very hard otherwise. The customer is also understanding because they have realized that his productive time more than compensates for his napping time, but there's always a fear that the contract could expire over this particular issue.
I'm sure most of the people polled here are younger, but it's definitely not just a laziness issue.
Funny that I was just about to do an AskSlash about this issue because I was starting to get concerned.
It's been very difficult for me to stay up or want to stay up at the current internship that I'm in, which involves writing software for a corporate firm. While the job itself can be stimulating and logically challenging at times, sometimes I feel like I just have a hard time really concentrating on anything. It's not so much the environment; most of the people that work with me are very active in talking about their roles and responsibilities (most conversations either directly involve or segway into this). Actually, I'm not really sure what it is.
I really like to be mobile and move around in my jobs, but I am devoid of needing to do that for this. My main job is to sit down and review/rewrite/create code. I've never done this before, so maybe I'm just not accustomed to needing to look at a computer screen for 8.5+ hours every business day.
In general, IT jobs can have some physical downtime; it's just inevitable. As for kissing co-workers, I would presume that this is more prominent in corporate environments because the physical quality of the girls are MUCH better than those of more research-oriented or specialized firms (forgive me if I've insulted anyone). I know that there are several women at my job that I would love to take out to dinner sometime, but it can be difficult dealing with a formidable age gap as an intern in a pretty established department...
Good article.
Because we are all overworked and thrown out of our natural rhythms. Not everyone is comfortable with getting up at 5AM to go to work; I honestly believe that "morning people" and "night people" exist, and that night people are being abused by being forced to keep the same hours as "morning people".
And we've come so far technologically and socially but we still have even more demands put on us every day. 40+ hour week can be a bit much if you have tons of other things to do during non-work hours.
We're supposed to be advancing as a society, not becoming a train wreck. Either pull back on our responsibilities or our work hours, and let us get some rest.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
I've never fallen asleep...gone to sleep? Oh, yes. With a former employer it wasn't unusual to bust ass for 7-8 hours starting at 8 PM Saturday to get physical maintenance tasks done (after working 50 hours during the week) and then being in the position of still having several hours before server jobs I had kicked off at the start of maintenance needing to finish so I can go home. Employee lounge with nice comfortable leather sofa...here I come. Management knew and preferred that to me killing myself falling asleep behind the wheel on my way home. Still, it's funny how you can miss the fact that a traffic light is red when you are really sleep deprived. I'm very happy to have a 9-5 now.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Yes, falling asleep on the job is one half of the equation, working 12-18 hour days or being on call 24/7 is the other side of the equation. I was at EBay once and saw people with sleeping bags under their desks as well as watched a father singing a lullaby's to his kid over the phone because something blew up and work needed to be done.
I sleep around 10 hours a night, more on the weekends, but am still tired all the time. I've been checked out, they say nothing is physically wrong with me, which is very frustrating to hear, OF COURSE something is wrong. I guess different people need different amounts of sleep, but if it's true that I need this much just to barely function I really got fucked over genetically.
Power napping is where it's at! Depending on the culture at your work place you may have to be a bit "sneaky" to slip in a power nap, or you may need to scarf lunch and take a quick rest in the car.
I highly recommend it.
I used to work for a pr0n company where people were actually paid for sleeping on the job (not to mention kissing co-workers...hehe) but I guess my experience is not really that of the 'typical' IT worker... That said, I think all IT workers should take at least a one hour nap midday sometime, it makes dealing with non-IT types much easier afterward. A colleague of mine introduced me to the 30 min powernap. At 3pm when you feel tired, chug a Red Bull or a coffee and quickly take a nap, by the time the drink kicks in you should be waking up from your nap charged up and ready to take on another 3hrs or so...try it! fsckr
fsckr.com - go fusk yourself!
This is why I wish my company either had shorter core hours, or only have core hours 4 days a week. I really have trouble falling asleep at night, but once I'm asleep, I can stay asleep just fine. If I could fall asleep on my own time and come in on my own time, I'd be much more productive/code better, because I wouldn't be as tired.
I think there's definitely something to be said for having only 4 hours of core hours a day. While everyone would still be required to work their 40 hours during the week, you'd only be required to be at work during those 4 hours, and could decide when you wanted to work the other 20 hours.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
when i was working the morning tower in the oil field (7PM to 5AM) i made about 2/3s of my paycheck sleeping in the dog house, the driller would throw an old boot on to the top of the dog house from the drilling platform when he need me, and i would have to find that boot and bring it back up to the platform...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I sleep around 10 hours a night, more on the weekends, but am still tired all the time.
You might have sleep apnea or some other kind of sleep disorder (assuming you haven't been checked for that). You can be waking up in the middle of the night multiple times and not even realize it. I'm no expert, but if I were you I'd try to get refered to an expert. They can give you some kind of monitoring device that'll tell you how many times/night you're waking up.
There's also special sleep clinics around the country that will observe you while you sleep and can diagnose other kinds of sleep disorders. Many doctors aren't aware of the different sleep disorders that exist. (A number of years ago I attended a speech given by a top sleep researcher given to medical professionals, so that's where my primitive knowledge comes from)
AccountKiller
I'm 24 and nap through half of my lunch hour. Its right after you get some food in you and are looking to do some resting. People snicker at it, but they have no idea what its like for it to be 4PM and feel great instead of pulling their hair out because its almost time to go but not quite.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I usually have a 5 - 10 minute nap at my desk after lunch. It's perfectly normal and natural, I refuse to be apologetic about it (even after co-workers stuck postit notes on me, took pics and stuck them on the noticeboard *) ) and anyone who doesn't like it can piss off. Luckily the war between workers and management at my employer is at a happy state of silent truce; we slog our guts out to help the boss buy a new Bentley, they don't fire us for minor infractions of rules. (I work in security and I've argued several times against aggressively trying to prevent people listening to music. What's the point? We can only manage with the consent of the managed...)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Also, I think thirty minutes is a bit long. An old boss of mine (!!!) taught me this trick: take some metallic object in your hand, such as a keyring, a stapler, whatever. Something that makes some noise but doesn't break when it hits the floor. Once you've fallen asleep and relaxed, the object will fall and wake you up. Works like a charm. Of course, YMMV.
Believe it or not, there is actual research done on this--not that anyone ever pays attention to the results. If I recall correctly, it boils down to something like this:
- Productivity is low for the first 1-3 hours of a day as people get into the swing of things- Daily productivity mostly goes up, but drops toward the end of the day (possibly because people are consciously "winding down")
- Productivity per worker hour peaks somewhere around a 30-hour week.
- Total sustainable productivity per week peaks at around a 45-hour week.
- Around 50 hours and up, fatigue builds up over time until burnout kicks in. Sustained work weeks of 50 hours are likely to be getting less TOTAL WORK done than sustained 35-hour weeks.
- Work weeks of around 80 hours are sustainable for maybe a week or so before catastrophic loss of total productivity occurs
- Anything much more than 80 hours likely results in immediately LOWER productivity, as fatigued workers make mistakes that take more time to fix than the extra hours provide.
From this, one can conclude that European schedules are more likely to maximize individual productivity (more work per hour), while American schedules are more likely to maximize organizational productivity (more work per person). One can also conclude that any manager who demands sustained work weeks of 50 hours or more is incompetent and a fool; the management equivalent of the kind of programmer who creates so many bugs he provides a net negative productivity to the team.
In practice, actual work hours are lower than they appear; most salaried workers are prone to finding numerous ways to not work while at work, largely because in many office environments physical presence is seen as more important than actual productivity.
I suspect the best balancing point would be something like four 9-hour workdays per week. Longer days to minimize the productivity drain of mornings, but a shorter total work week to allow occasional bursts of extra effort without creating long-term burnout.