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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.
.. the answer is no.
And now that seems very valid.
I find that occasional long days of 14-16 hours can be just fine. Doing it on a regular basis would kill my productivity after about hour 11. There is also an important element of engagement, which must be considered. If the project is interesting to me, and I am engaged, the long hours don't matter near as much as if I am doing something I hate.
I work 90 minutes a day. That feels about right to me.
...they would still be stupid.
Yes, on occasion:
I love this article and intend to quote it if I ever need to.
It's crazy, working 12 or 16 hours a day, and that five days or maybe six a week? If you have no social life, earn $10k+ a month, if your work is your hobby, if it's your own business - maybe. I cannot imagine doing this, but I know people who live like that. I prefer a 32 hour workweek, all year, and here (in the Netherlands) this is very common. We do also have 25 holidays a year (for a fulltime 40 hour workweek).
If know that my performance will go down when working 10+ hours a day. I even think that 7.5 hours work would be more productive.
When I'm making on my contract work or just on a personal project (and not just IT-related), I can easily spend 12 hours.
Working in my full-time job as an employee for 12-16 hours? No way, you'd get 4 good hours out of me, and the rest I may just idle away.
As a former manager, I would not do it myself, so I wouldn't ask anyone else either.
Work at a safe speed!!!! Mistakes can be a lot more costly than a missed deadline or disappointed exec.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Why is he still your boss?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
It's funny how the definition of socialism has turned into "whatever the corporate bozos at the top don't like."
Let think about this:
+2 hours travel - If I take the the bus it takes me about an hour to get to work and an hour home.
+8 hours working (minimum usually 10 for me)
+1 hour lunch and breaks
---------------------
11 hours just to work
+8 hours sleep
---------------------
19 hours dedicated work and sleep
That leaves at best 5 hours for doing things like dishes, meals, wife, kids, laundry, continuing education, and most important showers.
So if you want stinky hungry employees who don't see their families then by all means push them. But you'll find the good one's will find other jobs in about 2-3 months. That what happened at my last full time job. 40% of teh staff left in 4 for weeks of each other and another 20% 2 months after that.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Sure, before you have a family, you can do bursts of 12-16 hour days. After a week the work product and morale will suffer, but your manager/company has to eat that up.
Once you have a family, it's abusive behavior. Not spending time with family/kids is how the American family and education got fucked up.
I am LEAST EFFECTIVE after the 8 hour mark every day. Same with all the co-workers, every hour after a standard 8 hour day degrades exponentially in productivity. In reality things start degrading at hour 6, but honestly we are still above the "typical productivity" water mark for the next 2 hours.
any manager demanding extreme work days is a highly uneducated and ineffective manager. Upper management needs to look at replacing any manager that is so bad at his/her job that the average daily work time is greater than 8.5 hours.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
But not for me when I have to keep fixing the mistakes made by the guy who doesn't understand when he's hit a wall and needs to go home.
I find the 12 hour a day people come from 5 camps, the first are compensating for the fact that they actually suck. They know in their hearts that they suck so they put on a dog and pony show about how "dedicated" they are. Then they have something to lord over the actually productive people who are in for 8 hours or less. An easy way to detect these people is that they don't have any sense of proportion. They are working on a project to save some printer ink or whatnot and get mad at someone else taking time off for a very sick family member.
The next group (and often overlapping with the first group) just have OCD and don't know any other way. They would work 24 hours a day if they could. As with all things OCD they can't explain why they are driven to do what they do but they think something bad will happen if they don't. An easy way to tell this type is by the size of their spreadsheets. I have met OCD types with time management spreadsheets that went into the double letter columns.
Another group are screw-ups or frauds and don't leave because they need to control the whole situation and make sure that people don't step into their position for a moment and detect the fraud. This type often either avoids vacation or breaks it up into short little one so that nobody takes over.
The least frequent is someone who is determined to succeed at something where the benefits to success are huge, curing cancer or something and they are actually contributing to the end goal with every hour they put in.
The saddest is the over stressed employee who works for a crappy company where they have to give "110%" just to keep their jobs. Sort of the Glengarry Glen Ross thing of "First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado, second place is a set of steak knives, and third place is you're fired." These places tend to be family run where the family feels that every low paid employee should work as hard as they did once when they first started the business.
In almost all of the above situations the person is a bully and even if they are productive their insanity drives the the best employees away resulting in a slow but sure gutting of the company. The horrible problem is that for a short while it usually generates results. So you bring in the new type A manager and boom the team doubles productivity. Manager gets huge bonus. But a 6 months later 3 of the very best people have left. A year later those 3 have recruited 6 more of the very best. The remaining dregs develop ulcers and huge mistakes start to happen. The golden child manager successfully blames those who have left for the new problems. Then the golden child moves on to something new and more lucrative highlighting their success where they doubled productivity when they took over.
Are 12-16 Hour Workdays Productive? - This is the wrong question.
The Real Question/s should be Why ?
Why does the company find it necessary ?
Why can't they employ more staff?
Why do staff spend 16 hours at this company?
Why haven't they got a life outside of work ? (I mean come on 8 hours which is just enough time to sleep)
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.
and they should be treated like the sociopaths that they are.
Lordy. I know I shouldn't have RTFA, but this guy Horowitz comes across as the biggest asshole not featured on a .cx TLD.
When Steve came into my office I asked him a question: “Steve, do you know why I came to work today?”
Steve: “What do you mean, Ben?”
Me: “Why did I bother waking up? Why did I bother coming in? If it was about the money, couldn’t I sell the company tomorrow and have more money than I ever wanted? I don’t want to be famous, in fact just the opposite. ”
Steve: “I guess.”
Me: “Well, then why did I come to work.”
Steve: “I don’t know.”
Me: “Well, let me explain. I came to work, because it’s personally very important to me that Opsware be a good company. It’s important to me 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.”
Steve: “OK.”
Me: “Do you know the difference between a good place to work and a bad place to work?”
Steve: “Umm, I think so.”
[continues to drone on in this patronising and insulting vein...]
He sounds like a reject from a 50s infomercial.
What an insufferable prick.
Missing "work?" No, I've been missing a lot of meetings.
(For managerial, talking is working. For technical staff, meetings are precisely the opposite of work.)
Nobody ever died wishing he'd spent more time at the office.
Once you get a homelife and kids (assuming you can squeeze dating into your 16-hour workdays) you'll hopefully realize how precious that is before it's too late.
As a European I find her use of "positive" rhetorics/manipulation to be worrying... like she is offering you something, namely a chance to do "what really matters to you" while at the same time she robs you blind of the biggest part of your free time and this fact isn't even part of the discussion. So you lose 4 to 6 hours free time each working day and get 1 or 2 hours back "to be with the kids". Sure, what a great trade-off for the employer. Sure she could do it in 1999 when she was in her early 20s, now she is 36 and I doubt she does 16 hours each day and if so then how long does she think she can keep it up? If work is all you have in life, sure you can invest the maximum of your available time in it but you know, for most people it is NOT all they have in life. I think this is recklessly endangering her own health and as someone in important positions like this, she actually OWES it to her company to take care of her health especially well.
And what a well-researched "opinion" to simply claim "burn out" does not exist.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
Just left a company that "leveraged" salaried staff to make up for bad business deals, poor project management, etc. Our project manager used to say "when our client's day ends, ours is only half over"... Leaders thought it was funny. There were three types of people: -Those who defined their "boxes" so they could do a lot of "that's not my responsibility" in order to keep their workload manageable. -Those that attempted to pick up all of the dropped work (i.e. the people that burned themselves out) -Those that said "enough of this crap" and left (many like me) You are fooling yourself if you think it is sustainable or productive. I'm now smiling when I get home. Have already lost 10 lbs... YMMV
“In summary, you and Tim are preventing me from achieving my one and only goal. You have become a barrier blocking me from achieving my most important goal. As a result, if Tim doesn’t meet with each one of his employees in the next 24 hours, I will have no choice but to fire him and to fire you. Are we clear?” Digressing from the topic a little, but an arbitrary threat of firing over that? What if: - Tim's team have a very important deadline to meet the next day?Is it more important that the deadline is met, or that a one-to-one meeting is held? - Tim doesn't make it into work that day, due to illness or other extenuating circumstances? I realise the typical CEO response to that would be to shout "Don't make excuses!" and then to fire people. As they do. And yes, 12-16 hour days is a lunatic amount of time to expect people to spend in the office. Unless your job is to stand on a production line putting things into boxes - i.e. next-to-no thought required - then you will not be able to perform as well at work after a certain amount of time.
I work to live, and while I really do enjoy my work, I don't enjoy it so much that I'm willing to sell the majority of my life to a faceless corporation that won't remember me five minutes after I've retired. I work as much as I need to in order to pay the mortgage, and the rest of the time, I travel, study, read, and compose. The hours that exist outside of work hours are simply not for sale at any price.
There are two kinds of riches.
One is the big house, the fancy new car, all the toys.
The other is time with your family, friends, time for yourself.
I've worked the crazy hours, made a ton of money, and I'd go home and I did not know the people there -- my wife and daughter.
Decide what you want. Make trade-offs for work/life balance.
You can get another job pretty easily. You cannot get new family or friends so easily.
Are 12 to 16 hour work days productive? Yes, if you only care about the money.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Perhaps this guy should take a look at how his employees view his company: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Opsware-Reviews-E11055.htm
Doesn't look like those 1:1 meetings are really paying off in "that the people who spend 12 to 16 hours/day here, which is most of their waking life, have a good life."
It really isn't even about that. I think the entire work debate is hugely misframed. We live in a society where large failing corporations aren't allowed to die because we can't afford to lose the jobs. Where nonsense work like marketing and fashion jobs have to be endlessly created just to give people work. Unemployment is at record highs around the world. 16 hour days are downright unethical. I don't care if your sympathy is for codemonkeys pulling 16 hour shifts where only a fraction of it is really productive time, or for the unemployed codemonkey struggling to make ends meet with 0 hours per day. It is unfair. We need to mandate a maximum 8 hour working day so that the work can be more evenly shared. Didn't we in fact do that in like the 1920's? What happened to that?
Not to mention we have spent the last 100 years tirelessly working on labour saving devices which reduce the number of hours required to create the necessities of life. We could probably move to a 4 hour day without any serious problems. This is stupid, backwards and uncivilised and the argument about whether one can be productive for 16 hours at a stretch is entirely beside the point.
Denial is the first symptom. Trust me, I know too many people who suffered from it. One of them was a sysadmin who was proud that his pills made him stay awake for 24 ours so he could work that long. It took 3 months before he collapsed. He was in such a bad condition afterwards that I wonder if he ever could have a job again.
Alas it does not matter if you believe in burnout. Burnout believes in you.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I regularly work 16hr days - but it is for my own company.
Would I work 16 hour days for a $100,000 annual salary? Yeah, no. But, equity stakes, large bonuses, overtime - you have my attention.
I don't work because it is fun, I work to acquire money.
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.
8 hours sleep.
8 hours work.
8 hours leisure (which INCLUDES travel to/from work and everything else).
I think you should be grateful that you get ONE HALF of my entire waking life every weekday. And I *earn* the weekends by not doing a crappy job.
Weekends are also my buffer if you don't pay me enough, I have an emergency of some kind that needs me to work for money, or whatever else. Out of respect for the working agreements, I won't do that as a night-shift or after work during the week without your permission, but if I suddenly need to earn money at the weekends too - that's *my* business. Even if it's just flogging some old tat on eBay or a boot sale.
And there is "work" outside of paid work too - I either have to pay some professional to do some DIY or do it myself. Either way, that's more of my earned money and free time I burn up *NOT* lazing around the house.
Anything above and beyond that is for something:
- that was caused by something stupid that I did (including lack of planning!). I *will* rectify my mistakes if they've caused some provable, detrimental effect on the business. That's professional pride.
- is absolutely vital, cannot be put off, and cannot be done by others during the working day, is voluntary and that I will expect back in kind (notice: not money necessarily, but when I want a day off later in the year, or better tools, or training, or whatever, you better not get snarky about it).
Anything outside those criteria? You're trying to steal my life for your company and the only recompense I can possibly EVER reap is money (if anything!) which can't cover the sort of ills that work like that can cause.
If you regularly work more hours than that, you either have no concept of life outside work, value money too much, or you are, quite honestly, weak-willed or mentally ill (e.g. depression, anxiety, etc. causing you to not want to say No).
The bigger question is: What does the company get out of employing tired drones? Savings on wages for any "free" work they can make you do? That's about it. They should be hiring someone else instead, if they cared about their customers, products or services. Better an extra part-timer for a year than wearing your best workers into the ground chasing some mythical business utopia. And if they can't afford that? Then they were doing business on a knife-edge all along and are probably better off without staff anyway.
You can ask me nicely and "bribe" me for some short-term changes to my contract. Anything longer and you're not upholding your responsibility to your customers or your staff by doing a shoddy job where you should have hired more people.
When you have half my waking life during work-days and you want more? Then I look elsewhere for someone running their business properly rather than a cash cow obtained by grinding up lesser employees.
And, really, if you can't do something in 8 hours, 5 days a week, then you have problems bigger than what you can squeeze out of your employees. Some of the most productive countries in the world work less, on average. And anyone who's worked for themselves knows - you actually earn a LOT more when you just do the job and nothing more, get paid for the day, and go home.
Hell, when I was doing THIS EXACT JOB, but on a self-employed basis, I was earning the same money in less than half the working time. The difference is stability - chasing potential customers, economic fluctuations, insurance, etc. is all a gamble. At any time, you could be doing NO work at all, and not be able to find any. The way out of that is to scale up so that losses are absorbed by profits elsewhere, etc. which is a net gain - you actually make more money out of 10 people working 8 hours than you do 1 person working 80 if you do it right. The *stability* of a good job that you like is just-about worth half-your-money.
The cost of even the best job is unlikely to be worth half-your-waking-life, though.
Bloody hell, people. You hav
1. Sloppy work.
2. Work filled with errors (not just sloppy, but defective).
3. Resentment.
4. It puts the company as risk of sabotage and theft.
5. A bad reputation....does anyone really want to work at Dell?
I think that in all likelihood the vast majority of achievements in the world came from people who were NOT compelled to work 12 hour days. They may have been working long hours, but they did that because of their passion or competitive drive...they wanted to.
But unless you are on some legitimate high states deadline, long days for the sake of longs days is a bad idea all the way around.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The time saving devices free you up for other pursuits, and make your more productive (ostensibly).
I think what they actually do is make you available for further slavery. A few 8hr+ days is ok. Beyond that sucks your life away. For an entrepreneur that voluntarily gives up freedom for 12-16hr days, fine-- sweat equity. The other works in this equation don't get that equity, and some don't even get overtime pay.
There are indeed creative endeavors that sometime require long stretches, and I acknowledge those-- work while the iron's hot. Life, however, is finite. Corporations and other employers will gladly let you contribute to their wealth. Make sure you're adequately compensated.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Actually, yes, it does. It's a moral thing.
I had both kinds of bosses in my time. The one that tells you to "fix that crap no matter how long it takes" and heads off to play a game of golf with his buddies, and the one that tells you the same but stays around and is available in his office doing some work himself, aids you or at least orders some pizza for the techs while reading his economy journal. Believe me, it is a completely different motivation.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You are wrong, mister. Here in Denmark, we are off on vacation for the month of July.
-- Make America hate again!
“Do you know the difference between a good place to work and a bad place to work?”
Well for one, in a bad place to work you're expected to be in the office for 12-16 hours a day.
Working 12-16 hours per day, 5-7 days a week, prevents the workers from having time available to find better jobs. Welcome to your new reality, USA. Freedom in slavery, etc, etc.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Socialism won't work until people prefer working to earning a shitload of money.
On the contrary, it seems the Scandinavian countries have shown that Socialist policies in a market setting allow the production of a "shitload of money", whilst still ensuring reasonably equitable distribution.
For me, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, + commute is uber-suckage. It consumes nigh my entire existence. Compound that with the fact my wife works two 12 hour shifts every other weekend. It pretty much leaves us with little time. We have to try to take care of all the business side of things, medical bills, auto stuff, taxes, etc while dealing with work.
Furthermore, I've found in programming, that I am far more effective when I get into the flow. It might take me 1-2 hours to achieve flow. Then there's lunch, then trying to get back on flow. Then meeting, then trying to get back on flow. I often find that around 4pm I start becoming much more effective. And then it's shortly time to go home.
I really think programming would benefit from three days of 12-13 hours. This would allow us to get into the flow, continue the flow, and then basically have 4 days of laying fallow. Furthermore, two employees would easily cover an entire week of schedule. But I wager many developers would be a lot more effective if they could work three long days with less interruptions. And then have 4 days to take care of life, have a mini vacation any weekendt they want, be able to work on side projects, etc.
Sadly, companies refuse to consider such because they believe 5, eight hour shifts are the only way to go. Why? Is it for the work? Nope...it's for the control. Companies want you there EVERY day. Sat/Sun has been established as a mandatory break for most, so they want you there every other day.
That conversation goes like this:
Employee: "I'd like to talk to you about this overtime we're all doing. A lot of us have to neglect our other obligations to do it, and we'd like to find a way of having a better work/life balance."
Boss: "You'll work the hours I tell you to, and you'll like it. Shut up and get back to work or you're fired."
Even if an agreement is reached during compensation negotiations on hiring the employee, there are no consequences for saying "I don't care what you were told. You're a salaried employee, we're not obligated to pay overtime. Now, get back to work, you lazy shit."
Yes, that's probably the time to get a new job. But, with the economy being in the toilet, jobs are pretty hard to come by, even for talented programmers. Since you don't want to go bankrupt (or lose your or your family's health insurance), you do what you're told.
I am fortunate in the fact that I do not have one of those bosses. My manager does not care when I come in or when I leave, as long as I take paid time off accurately when I hand in my time card. When we came under a ridiculous deadline recently from a Big Important Potential Client, I was given a budget and told to find a freelance developer to help out. When I had to get up at 0300 recently to fix an upgrade to Apache that had gone wrong, he gave me a gift card as compensation. But, I work for a not-for-profit company, and thus don't have investors or stockholders demanding that I be worked to death to make them money.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
If there's nothing to do, I don't mind if you simply use the overtime to take a day off.
This is theoretically how salary is supposed to work. how often does that actually happen though? typically what is done is that if you have time to take a day off, that means you weren't given enough work and will soon find another project on your desk..
Didn't we in fact do that in like the 1920's? What happened to that?
What happened to that? The creation of the "non-exempt" category, which businesses quickly pressured the powers that be to expand that to cover most jobs, except for part-time and certain labor positions that have unions. Since programmers, system analysts, engineers, etc. are all now classified as non-exempt professionals, we are (almost always) excluded from any overtime, expectation of normal work days, or in some cases, guaranteed lunch breaks.
There was a chance that the classification got changed a few years ago when congress was looking to reign in what was non-exempt, but I think the only people who were effected at the end were nurses.
This whole discussion really rings true with me. I'm glad for a lot of what people are posting.
After 7 years of work at a pay scale that is far below what my job should pay, holding the expectation that I will inherit my family business, I am about to get the biggest shaft most could ever expect: I get nothing. Not a farthing. After helping grow his business, bring up his health, revenue, and standard of living at my expense, I was laughed at when I finally asked formally about details for taking over the business that my own father owns.
My girlfriend has been telling me for years to get an agreement in writing or to leave, she feels like she's dealing with someone in a physically abusive relationship, but I've had it pounded into me that "if I just work a little harder I can get there." It's all too evident now that I'm working for one of the maniacs outlined in an above post: A person who wants a 12 hour day every day, 7 days a week, and even that isn't good enough. Someone with huge spreadsheets, who justifies his own existence and is an abysmal manager, and the saddest part is that it's my dad, who apparently has no qualms with shafting the hell out of his own son for a gain.
Why do I say all this?
I've thought for years that I just needed a "better work ethic", to work much longer hours, to work harder. I've had it beaten into me that I am a total failure no matter what and that no one will take me as an employee. Someone above mentioned this is the new America, work them to the bone so they'll never leave? Well, drive their self esteem into the ground and they won't leave either, and make them think they should work 16 hour days so they feel guilty when they simply can't.
I'm looking for other opportunities where I can put a positive, energetic, and detailed work ethic to the grindstone and really have a career that I feel great about. I love what I do and am actually quite good at it to hear other people (boss notwithstanding) talk, but this thread nudged me to give what I needed: If you're stuck in a situation like this, if you're being ground into the dust and feel helpless, as though you SHOULD be working this much all the time then do yourself a favor and don't be like me, wasting precious years of your life in pursuit of the impossible task of getting the approval or respect of management who can't respect themselves or their work.
Thanks Slashdot : )
-
See, in the old days they actually *measured* productivity instead of just "defining a new reality" and creating "the right story" as my manager said recently.
And they found that the productivity for working 6 days and 5 days was basically the same. And the productivity for working an 8 hour day and a 12 hour day was basically the same.
And then more recently, about 20 years ago, they found that for most people (not those mutants who only need 3 hours a night sleep), that after two weeks of over 8 hours, the error rate rose and the severity of those errors rose and you had a productivity loss.
And it explains the insane and low quality decisions coming out of the executive and management classes these days. They are exhausted and working stupid. We are now told to write up projects "so your grandmother could understand them" because that's how exhausted and brain dead the executives are.
But they think they are doing fine when they really need to get more sleep.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Actually, for Cuba, it's worked out pretty well in a lot of ways: Their GDP is about 10 times what it was in 1970, including recovering from a slump in the early 1990s when they lost all aid from the Soviets. The Communist regime also improved literacy dramatically (from about 60% to 99% today), and has a health care system that's been used as a model for other Latin American countries. Your average Cuban isn't rich and doesn't have political freedom, but they are very likely to have housing, food, clothing, decent health, employment, education for their children, and are living to a ripe old age. They've even been regaining religious freedom since the Soviet collapse, and also are allowed a bit more economic freedom since Raul Castro took over from Fidel.
In short, for day-to-day living, you'd much rather be an average Cuban than an average Haitian.
I am officially gone from
I quit a job with a manager who didn't think that "work-life balance" was valid.
Even in the face of a terrible economy. Engineering requires a functioning brain.
Perhaps the world would be a better place if more people took time off.
I agree. I first realized that reading about Seymour Cray and elves:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray#Personal_life
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Really, let's think for two seconds. We have productivity levels that have skyrocketed (some of which is caused by overtime, but most of it due to automation and increased efficiency), 10%+ unemployment, college students that can't find work, and you are asking if 16 hour work days are productive?
Yes, those work days are a great brainwashing technique, just ask the U.S. army, or any medical residency training program, or your local fraternity. It's pretty well known that those kinds of hours (combined with sleep deprivation) are great for keeping people so broke down that they can't think for themselves. However, in the face of 10%+ unemployment, what are you, crazy? How about we employ the entire work force before we worry about making some of us work 16 hours a day.