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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.