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Are 12-16 Hour Workdays Productive?
theodp writes " It's important to me,' former Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz recalls saying as he threatened a manager for termination because one of his subordinates failed to conduct 1:1 meetings, 'that the people who spend 12 to 16 hours/day here, which is most of their waking life, have a good life. It's why I come to work.' Ben seems to be cut from the same management cloth as new Yahoo CEO Marissa 'I-Don't-Really-Believe-In-Burnout' Mayer, who boasted how she solved the work-life balance problems of mother-of-three 'Katie,' who was required to attend nightly 1 a.m. video conference calls with her Google Finance team in Bangalore, by no longer making Katie also stay for late meetings on her Google day shift on those occasions where it'd make her miss her kids' soccer games and recitals." Jason Fried, C.E.O. of 37signals, wrote a piece for The New York Times recently singing the praises of working a 4-day week part of the year.
My feeling is that if you need to work long hours, your job is badly designed. Studies have suggested that once over 44 hours a week, productivity starts to decline faster than the gains from longer working hours. I believe this; I've spent so long debugging code from people who thought pulling all-nighters was smart that in at least one case we might just as well not have employed him.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Eight years ago I worked with my team of 12 for 110 days at 16 hours per day. We had to because the project was late (due to client's management and internal politics) and because we were paid by the hour.
Financially it was worth it, the pay was very good and let's just say it changed my life. In terms of accomplishing anything however, I think the money was not well spent. Everyone was so tired after 8-10 hours that they just faked it. Productivity was very low, the resulting code was crap, morale was abysmal even with the financial incentives. Luckily most of the team members were single (only 3 of us were married). After 100 days, no one could actually do any real work that required thought, we had to wind down for a month.
Like I said, I think it was a good experience (both financially and in learning one's limits) but I would not do it again. I don't think an artist or programmer can be productive more that 6-8 hours/day, everything else is browsing, chatting, faking it or simply doing bad work.
Anything past occasional shit-happens-needs-to-be-fixed-now overtime is bad management. When young people are involved, it's relatively easy to push them into pulling insane hours, because they may be single and want to prove themselves and don't know their limits and don't know any better, but it's not productive.
I work 90 minutes a day. That feels about right to me.
Thats kind of wimpy. I've found that at work or home I can put in a real, intense, solid 6 or so hours of work. I mean super intense absolute peak productivity. Doesn't seem to matter if I'm studying/homework at university, or bulk manual labor of yardwork, doing hard core electronics work at home at my workbench, video gaming, programming/sysadmining/troubleshooting at work... just a law of nature that much as I sleep about 7 hours a night I can only work about 6 hours.
I am present at work about 11 hours per day about 4 days a week, but there's lunch, uncountable meetings both informal and formal, about two hundred emails per day have to be read, analyzed, and almost all deleted and about 1 in 100 followed up or acted on, a couple breaks, training classes mostly as recipient some as trainer, lots of time consuming mindless procedures, numerous distractions when I'm concentrating on something.... it works out to a bit more than half the time I'm actually producing.
I can F-off and listen to my coworkers talk sports and surf the net the rest of the time. Also I can "produce" at about 10% to 20% efficiency for an extra 12 or so hours on top of the 6. Beyond 18 hours we're solidly, deeply into negative productivity stage. I can, with numerous breaks / meetings / interruptions spread my "work" across an entire day. "Oh I thought I'd interrupt you while you were concentrating... it'll only take 10 minutes and then an extra hour for you to get back into the zone again". That type of thing.
Overall I'd rather sit in the office for 6 hours and work like a superhero all 6 hours, then spend the rest of the time at home. But I have to put in a show of being at work for 11 hours a day just to amuse bean counters. I had a boss some years ago who explained he hated his wife and family, so he was at work for 16+ hours per day just to avoid them. I feel sorry for those people.
You know those idiot kids who come into work still drunk from the night before and brag how they are "so tired" because they were up all night drinking and only got 2 hours of sleep, and they think everyone else considers them a hero for doing it so they brag and brag about it? Most of us think they're idiots, not heros. Ditto the "I work 18+ hours per day and then pager duty all night you should worship me" sorry dude you're a first class top of the line idiot not a hero.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Norway: 34 hour work week
Denmark: 37,5 hour work week (includes paid break)
Sweden 38 hour work week (excluding unpaid breaks)
And Norway and Sweden are amongst the richest, most successful places in the world. We have a minimum of 4 weeks vacation each year, we perform better because were well rested and healthy.
keyword: occasional. I generally work 7 hours (10am-6pm, +lunch), no more. That's the "usual day". However, there were perhaps 3 days this year that I left work well after midnight to get stuff out by morning. And I've done that without being ``asked''.
Now if I was asked to do that everyday, I'd find another place to work.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
it depends on what you are doing
As an "older" slashdotter I've studied this in myself and coworkers and when I was in retail management I studied this in my employees and was astounded to discover its a concentration thing. Any time you have to concentrate, be it software development, operations support, video games, or manual labor, a minute of concentration seems to be a minute of concentration regardless of why you're concentrating..
You'd be surprised how much concentration it takes to do a manual labor job. There do exist absolutely mindless shoveling jobs where there is no QA and there is no goal and it's a perfectly safe non-distracting environment, but they are VERY few and far between.
I've done call center and cashier in the past and they require too much concentration to do for more than a couple hours both in myself and employees I've supervised. Oh you can make them stand there, you can make them go thru the motions, but one way or another you're only getting 3 to 6 hours of productive concentration out of them before they start screwing up, or getting goofy, or simply not working but being present.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Great for businesses to squeeze the lemon to the last drop from every employee and to have everyone always-on; not so great for the employees. Why bother even having a family or a home if all time is spent at work, thinking about work, or dreaming about work. And yes, I have "been there, done that".
An article in The Guardian listed the top five regrets of dying people:
Lots of people probably feel trapped in the current workplace due to debt, running expenses, or an expensive-to-maintain self-image, which requires maintaining the current position or even advancing the career. My advice is to think outside the bubble, e.g. move to a cheaper location or cut back on luxuries. If not possible today, actively pursue opportunities to make future changes.
The time difference is always the vendor's problem - never the customer's.
We've dumped European vendors because they were unable to provide service and support during August. Believe it or not, your holiday time really screws you economically.