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IT Night Shift Workers: Fat and Undersexed
wiredmikey writes "The results of a recent survey released today by Men's Health Network found that shift workers, people who work non-traditional hours including IT professionals working overnight shifts, report that these shifts are negatively impacting their health, work, well-being, and quality of life. The survey revealed that the majority of shift workers (79%) believe that they are negatively impacted by their shift work and voiced daily concern over their energy level (47%), weight (43%), and their sex lives (30%). Additionally, the survey showed that the average shift worker hasn't had a meal with their family in two weeks or exercised in 24 days. The results of this survey really shouldn't be surprising. While the survey infers that shift workers may be overweight, the issue extends far beyond and into the general population of the United States, including children. Childhood obesity is at an all time high in America, so this issue isn't just related to the night shift."
People need it, shift workers don't get very much of it. Just the bit most get in passing going to & from work helps allot. Without it, people are in general a bit more unhappy & lethargic.
Come on, Slashdotters. I thought you cared about science. This "study" is awful.
1) Experimental controls. According to the article, lots of shift workers think their work impacts their lives, and are worried about their weight and their sex lives. Guess what? EVERYBODY hates their work, and is worried about their weight and their sex lives. How about asking people who *aren't* shift workers, and seeing if shift workers have bigger problems than the average Joe?
2) Conflict of interest. The summary says the study is by "Men's Health Network", but the linked article says it's by "Men's Health Network and Cephalon". Who's this "Cephalon"? Oh, they're a drug company. What sort of drugs do they make? take a wild freakin' guess.
So, congrats on sucking down free advertising from a drug company trying to turn your life into a treatable medical condition, without a single moment of skepticism.
Have you ever worked a night shift?
I let myself take an 11PM-7AM shift several years ago precisely because I considered myself a night owl. I was waking up in the afternoon anyway, I figured it wasn't really a big deal. Turned out, it was. Working nights pretty thoroughly sucks away your life-force, as nearly anyone who's done one can tell you.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
These problems have nothing to do with night shifts or the people that work them. Having worked a couple of 12 hour night shifts in my work history. I found that there are a couple of easy answers to these dilemmas. Prioritize your health! Don't drink soda. If you need a boost, those stupid 5 hour energies work just fine on a consistent basis. EAT FEWER CALORIES! A nice grilled chicken breast, and a piece of fruit for your first break,the same with something with a few carbs in it during your lunch, and a grilled chicken breast (season as you will) w/ a piece of a different fruit. during your last break. Drink lots of water...iced if possible.
GO TO THE GYM AFTER YOU GET OUT OF WORK! You don't have to be there long, or do it all in one visit. At least 45 minutes of cardio ( I break it up into 3 15 minute cardio sessions on 3 different machines) , 3 sets minimum of 20 reps for abs (any exercise, as long as it is like a partial or full sit-up) and maybe 2 or 3 muscle groups (shoulders, lats, pecs, bis, tris, quads, hamstrings, calves) a day. Do this 4 days (or more) a week and in 4 months you will look awesome! Also for guys....gyms in the early AM are filled with cougars and other single women...lots of opportunity, just remember that you are really only at the gym for yourself. Ladies, the better you look the more we want to look at you...admit it it is just the same the other way around. Also for men and women, there tends to be a strong differential between the attractiveness of someone who takes really good care of their body, and someone who does not....Case Closed.
Oh, and one last thing. Don't try to live like people who are not on the same schedule as you. Nothing causes more stress than bouncing back and forth from normal hours to night shift hours.
-Oz
Come over to Europe. We need good coders and we treat them well. Our programmers arrive somewhere between 8 and 10am and go between 3 and 5pm. Mo-Fr. Occasionally (read: about twice a year) they might be asked whether it would be possible that someone could come in a Saturday for a launch so we can make sure everything's running smoothly. You get 1.5 hours of time off for every hour invested in such Saturday.
The work permit should be trivial if you're good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because of this kind of debates. Somewhere, somehow, somebody has to sell something, and that does not have to be a commodiy. It might just be a propaganda idea. And what is even better - the moron spreading the news sincerely believes in whatever he or she sells. Here we have the drum of obesity which is pretty much the same war as the Apocalypse sold by Muslims and Christians alike. By the way have you wondered that althogh they play in opposition both Muslim Fundamentalists and Christian Right venerate the same god of hatred? Anyway, back to the subject. Here, a moron lead a pointless and irrelevant poll. These are the concerns of the people who answered, which happen to be working nights. Now, some other imbecil takes that and speaks of the problem of obesity. At this point it is somehow, magically related to the sex drive and not low wages and no self-esteem, thus linking two effects as cause-effect. There is no connection whatsoever with the culture of consuming more, but it is implied that IT should have some relation.
Some other moron would be able to take this article, mix it with a drunken teen declaring on TV that she is high because of the sugar in her soft drink and there you have a case against Coca Cola. And a nation of imbecils.
Let me explain this little thing I learned from working a couple of years in Portugal (neverending crunch time), then Holland (8h a day and your manager tells you to go home if you're still in at 5:30 pm) and then England (overwork as norm).
Your total daily productivity working on a norm of 8h/day is significantly better than working on a norm of 10h/day - to put it simply, if you pace yourself and work fewer hours you deliver more.
This is because:
- Working more than 8h/day causes chronical tiredness
- Chronically tired people in intellectual professions make many more mistakes (that also includes managers, who will take the wrong decisions).
- The cost of fixing those mistakes far outweights the gains of working those extra hours.
To put things in software development terms:
- If you constantly work longer hours you're constantly tired. If you're constantly tired you make more bugs. Bug fixing consumes a lot more time than doing things right the first time around (often by a factor or 1000x if the bug ends up in Production), so the increase in bugs means a HUGE increase in time spent in bug-fixing. More time wasted in bug fixing means that the project starts to run late, which means clueless managers demanding even more overwork. In other words, a feed-back loop.
So how did I solved it:
- Well, in England if somebody tries to get me to overwork is say "No" (I will, however, do a little extra in the last couple of days before a release if needed).
Surprisingly (or maybe not if you read what I wrote above), by working just 8h/day I still manage to deliver more than any of my colleagues that overwork. At the end of the day, in the vast majority of places results are what counts, so managers still keep me around (and I'm a freelancer, so easy to get rid of) and I have almost universally good feedback from all managers I worked with.