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Ask Slashdot: Does Your Work Schedule Make You Unproductive?
debingjos writes "Management at my company seems to think that our developers can get extra work done if they work extra long days. However, as one of the devs in question, I don't agree. When I've been coding for eight hours, my pool of concentration is exhausted. Working overtime either fails to produce any extra code, or the quality of the code is very bad. What is the community's opinion on this? This can be broken out further into several questions: What are the maximum number of hours you can work in a day/week and still be reasonably productive? When you absolutely must work beyond that limit, what steps do you take to minimize degradation of quality? If you're able to structure your time differently from the typical 9-5 schedule, what method works best for you? Finally, how do you communicate the quality problems to management?"
You aren't a special little snow flake.
Yes, there is a reasonable number of hours each day most folks can dedicate to mentally strenuous tasks, just as there's a limit to physical activity, but if you were getting your job done in the standard 8 hrs/day, 40 hrs/wk, this wouldn't be an issue.
That said, there are plenty of work places that are flexible with back office folks who aren't answering phones or otherwise directly interacting with customers.
If your boss is micromanaging your time rather than focusing on your work, either your work needs to get better or you need to find a different boss.