Your 60-Hour Work Week Is Not a Badge of Honor

An anonymous reader writes "We've all had to deal with long, tough work weeks, whether it's coming in on the weekend to meet a project deadline, pulling all-nighters to resolve a crisis, or the steady accretion of overtime in a death march. It's fairly common in the tech sector for employees to hold these tough weeks up as points of pride; something good they achieved or survived. But Jeff Archibald writes that this is the wrong way to think of it. 'If you're working 60 hours a week, something has broken down organizationally. You are doing two people's jobs. You aren't telling your boss you're overworked (or maybe he/she doesn't care). You are probably a pinch point, a bottleneck. You are far less productive. You are frantically swimming against the current, just trying to keep your head above water. ... We need to stop being proud of overworking ourselves.'"

Comments

No one is proud of overwork

[Anonymous Coward]

They're just lucky to have a job at all.

American poor

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you are poor in America, working 3 part-time minimum jobs 60+h a week just to pay for food and housing with nothing left over at end of the week.

Re:American poor

[Calavar]

Ah, another yuppie WASP who thinks he knows how to live poor better than a poor person does. Let's put this straight.

Monthly bus pass $100

Taking the bus is only an option if you live in the city and if you live in the city, rent skyrockets. I live in a shabby apartment in an undesirable city (high unemployment, high crime rate, a public transportation system so shitty that it takes an hour and a half to make the three mile bus trip from here to downtown) and the rent for my two bedroom apartment is $1800 a month. So in this scenario, the net benefit of moving into the city and ditching the car would be negative $800 dollars a month. That and the fact that your morning commute would jump from fifteen to twenty minutes to an hour and a half.

Get a roommate

For a family of three? And how is said roommate going to afford 50% of the rent if he/she has the same minimum wage job? No, in this scenario, another family of three would have to squeeze into the second bedroom because they can't afford their own apartment either. Those are called tenements, and we decided that those were dehumanizing sometime in the 19th century.

You're raising 2 kids on $27k: you qualify for Medicaid

That much is true, but you are forgetting that every visit to the doctor equals lost wages at your hourly job. So even if you have medicaid and you have small children who are at that age where they are prone to catching colds, you can easily be "paying" $150 - $200 a month in healthcare costs due to lost wages.

Number 1: if the best work you can get is minimum wage, maybe you should put off that second kid or ask your SO to help out with expenses.

The kids were usually born before the SO (the male one most of the time) packed up and left. And if it was that easy to get the ex-SO to pay up, we wouldn't have family court.

Number 2: $20/day will feed dad+2 kids pretty well, as long as he cooks. Seriously: that's 2 pounds of chicken + 2 pounds of rice + 4 pounds of carrots and a gallon of milk, with enough left over for salt, pepper and ketchup

I'm guessing you've never heard of food desserts? I live in one. The nearest grocery store is about two miles away. It's fine for me because I have a car. But if you don't (and remember, one of your suggestions was to take the bus) it turns into an hour long bus trip each way. It's a lot easier to stop by the corner market two blocks away from your apartment, but it is also much more expensive.

If you're working 2 minimum wage jobs, you don't get the American Dream. You adjust your lifestyle. Those sacrifices will make your eventual success all the more sweet and motivate your kid(s) to rise above.

Oh god, so you are also a libertarian social darwinist. Let me tell you something: American social mobility is a myth. Poor people aren't poor because they are lazy. (Well a small fraction of them are, but that is besides the point.) They are poor because they were born poor and the US social and economic structures tend to keep it that way.

Re:American poor

[Calavar]

Summary: Yuppie WASP thinks he knows the solution to poverty: If they would only get of their lazy bums, they wouldn't be poor anymore!

How are so who are so uninformed about the nature of poverty in the US so confident in their deluded opinions? (Wait, I know, it's because Republican rhetoric about government "entitlements.")

I'd argue that if you have exploited to the fullest the "free education" you get in the US to age 18, never done drugs nor become addicted to alcohol, etc, and neither fathered/mothered a child until you had a stable job and income post-highschool then there's no way you're working minimum-wage jobs for any sustained period of time.

If you would argue that, you'd either be a moron or someone who is so uninformed as to be totally unqualified to speak on the topic.

Education in the US is not created equal. Try being born in the inner city where the high school has a 15% graduation rate (half that of the city average) and even those who do graduate often fail to understand 7th grade level algebra. Now add on to this an alcoholic mother who kicks you out of the house whenever she gets drunk, forcing you to either 1.) spend the night with your drug dealing uncle, 2.) spend the night at a shelter where someone is stabbed to death roughly once a month, or 3.) sleep on the street. Are you going to graduate from high school?

This is not a hypothetical story. I am describing an actual person that I knew back when I volunteered with the social work department at an inner city hospital.

Let's say that you beat the odds that are overwhelmingly against you and graduate from high school. If you are like the young man that I knew, you have never even heard of the SAT. Your high school's average SAT is below 1000 (on the 2400 scale). And those that do go to a local HBCU with only a 30% graduation rate and absolutely horrendous job placement. Trade school is a more reasonable alternative, but you can't afford the tuition and financial aid for trade school is basically non-existent.

Your only option at this point is to go for jobs that will take people with a high school diploma, but you live in a city where unemployment is 147% that of the rest of the state. Odds are that the best you will be able to get is a part time job at the local McDonald's. If you work hard, in three or four years, you might work your way up to assistant manager and make a whopping $10/hr.

This will barely be enough to pay for your rent (usually about $700/month for a single bedroom, perhaps $600 after rental assistance), let alone enough to save up for an education or to pay for the cost of raising children.

If you see any way to escape this situation through hard work, please let me know. If there were any bad choices made here that resulted in their just deserts, please let me know.

Now, if you have a cellphone, and cable, kids, and you smoke, and own a house...that $24,000 starts to get pretty thin. But then, you're already living better than 2/3rds of the people on the planet, not bad for "being poor"?

1.) A lot of the people I knew back when I volunteered with social work would have killed to make $24,000 a year. The average income of the people I worked with was probably closer to $10k - $15k per year because most people were unable to find anything but part time work. 2.) Let's pretend that it is easy to make $24k/yr. So poor people in the US on average live better than sub-Saharan Africans and we call that progress? The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. We absolutely should not be comparing ourselves to the lowest 2/3rd that still

Re:American poor

[strikethree]

I am of the opinion that I do not like you. Your world is too black and white and your answers are too simple.

Monthly bus pass $100

That will work for some Americans. For others, it is simply not an option at all. What about those people? What about the people that can choose it as an option but it steals 3 or more hours from their day? I know their time is not worth much but their time is not worthless.

Get a roommate

Are we talking about raising a family here or just bare single subsistence? If family, roommate will not work. If not, American society is not like it is elsewhere in the world. Finding a roommate who is trustworthy and will actually pay is VERY difficult. I recall when I was younger trying to go the roommate route. Inevitably, they would not have rent money at the end of the month because they had some other "emergency" they had to take care of. Sure, they can be kicked out but when it is the majority of them doing it, that is a LOT of months paying full rent solo along with the hassle of dealing with the assholes.

Step back to basic cable (or even broadcast TV) and drop the unlimited data phone plan. Never seen an apartment yet that split out HVAC by unit, and it's hard to spend that much heating/cooling a 2-BR, unless you leave the doors open all winter.

Fuck off with the holier than thou "basic cable" bullshit. In the 80s, I lived without cable and the heating bill alone was over $200, so the amount listed is not even realistic for this day and age. Electric alone in my current house is almost that much. I still do not have cable even today and my utilities/phone/internet are well over $200.

This was the part that made me dislike you the most. You dismissed the utilities issues as if it was a pleasure issue that needed to be curbed. Meh. That attitude sucks HARD.

If you're working 2 minimum wage jobs, you don't get the American Dream. You adjust your lifestyle. Those sacrifices will make your eventual success all the more sweet and motivate your kid(s) to rise above.

There are a whole lot of shades of grey between the American Dream and dying of hunger on the streets. The "complaint" is that the shade of grey is getting too black to be considered humanitarian. Your dismissal of this concern deserves to be derided and insulted. I ought to throw a fuck you in there to help you wake up and see what you are not experiencing but you would likely just close your mind even tighter then.

Yes, if you're living on the edge, then small calamities become disasters. One hopes those are the circumstances where your community (church, neighborhood, or government) pulls together and helps you through.

You realize that this is America we are discussing right? People will stand there and watch you die and then walk on as if nothing had happened. The government? Help? ROFLMAO. Perhaps if you are female, a minority, a felon, or a child. Oops. I mean if you are a single man in America that has never been involved with the system, there are zero safety nets. You are 100% fucked, short of a miracle. Don't ask me how I know this.

FYI, I have the American Dream now.
(lol, CAPTCHA is agonize)

Your Boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't want to hear it. Its his fault you are working 60 hour weeks instead of the business hiring another worker. He approved it, he is aware of it, and he could give half a shit as long as you keep working. You get sick? Not his fault. You get burned out, well you should have taken steps to prevent that but still stayed and worked to get things done.

You will never win. If you are working 60 hour weeks and want to stop doing so, just stop. Take a day and do some interviews, find another job. Cause the second you stop giving 150%, they are going to fire you anyways.

The corporation has no loyalty to its employees. You can all be replaced. What YOU need to start doing, is to think of the corporation as being replaceable. Shop around, find a better deal, and take it for a couple years, then shop around again, find a better deal, and take it. You owe them nothing, they need you, not the other way around. You can leave all this and buy land and subsistence farm and sell produce to city-dwellers for the rest of your life if you want. The corporation cannot, it dies without workers.

Never forget, they need you. To work for them. To buy from them. Stop doing both and they die. Its that simple.

Re:Your Boss

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to the above, as overhead per worker goes up, the pressure to not hire a second worker will go up. Until overtime costs more than overhead, the company has a strong incentive to not hire another worker. This is especially true for salaried professionals who get the same pay no matter how long they work each week. A lot more programmers and developers on salaries should be demanding hourly wages, with overtime pay based on best estimates of a companies per-worker, per-hour overhead costs, and should be greater than that cost.

Re:Your Boss

[phantomfive]

True, but bosses aren't the only ones at your company. And I never overwork, unless it comes with a paycheck.

Re:How about 80?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work over 100 hours a week once in a while. Not for more than a month at a time though. After that you are pretty useless. Just driving a car becomes dangerous.

When I hear "I work 60 hours a week"...

[Old VMS Junkie]

... my BS meter begins to go off the scale. While I've done my fair share of brutal weeks (I'm an IT guy), it's been my experience that 99% of people who claim that they regularly work 60 hrs a week are full of crap. If you work an extra hour a day, and then put in five more over the weekend, you're still only at 50. You need to work five ten hour days and then STILL put in ten more hours over the weekend. Humans just aren't built for that. When people have boasted that in interviews, I've drilled into them and I'll get excuses like, "I was on call, so even though I wasn't actually working, I was still working..." or "Technically I have a home office so when I drive every day, I count my commute..." or "Well, it was 60 hours for the last three weeks before go live, but before that it was 45-50!" Yes, there are legitimate workaholics that do 60 hours a week. Average Joes doing it? Rarely.

Re:When I hear "I work 60 hours a week"...

[AthanasiusKircher]

Yes, there are legitimate workaholics that do 60 hours a week. Average Joes doing it? Rarely.

Maybe true in IT. But other fields like law, medicine, finance? The common perception is that when you're starting out as an intern or assistant, the way you get ahead is working 12 hours days or weekends or whatnot.

There have been recent stories of Wall Street firms trying to get people to stay home on Sundays. (The assumption being, of course, that everyone has to work on Saturdays.)

Thankfully, some physicians have finally started speaking out about the grueling hazing done on residents and young doctors at hospitals, where insanely long hours actually put lives at risk.

Maybe other professions can finally start catching on....

Re:Another type that is interesting...

[amjohns]

You mean the people that actually come in, knuckle-down, get work done instead of facebook/instagram/etc, then leave and go have a life?? Damn them, Damn them all to hell!!

Welcome to the new capitalism

[jmd]

Neoliberalism

I'm glad I'm out of the race to the bottom.

Definitely not from the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was reading his blog post I was wondering to myself, what planet is this guy from? Then I noticed the .ca and it made sense. I'm from the US and have relatives in around Toronto. They make fun of the labor practices in the US. Most of them have 40 hour work weeks and 6+ weeks of paid vacation a year. It always makes me laugh when I hear US corporations lament the high cost of labor. If labor were free these same corporations would complain that people don't pay to work for them. It's all about maximizing shareholder value and you lower you can drive labor costs the better.

Re:Definitely not from the US.

[CohibaVancouver]

Why is America a super power? Because we work our asses off. Nuff said.

What benefit does that give you, as an American, over a Canadian?

Other than thumping your chest and saying "We're a superpower (that pats down grannies at checkpoints) BOO YAH!" what benefit does that yield *you*, as a person compared to a Canadian?

Re:Definitely not from the US.

[Tom]

Why is America a super power? Because we work our asses off. Nuff said.

That is actually false on several accounts.

First, many countries on the planet work harder and longer than americans, especially in Asia. A lot of us westeners get quite a shock when we go working in Asia, because all the bullshit crap we smile politely about in our own culture, like the "company as a family" message some dumbo internal PR asshole actually thinks anyone believes in, is seriously real there.

Second, America is a super power because it profited massively from WW2. The numbers are in books such as "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" (excellent read, strongly recommended). The short is that every other world power was massively devastated by the war, except the USA who emerged from it with no domestic damage, lots of highly skilled immigrants, as debt-holders of several european powers and a strengthened industrial base. When you get stronger while everyone else is essentially burnt down, it's not difficult to emerge as a super power.

Third, time (and effort) worked does not equal productivity.

Re:Another type that is interesting...

[BasilBrush]

Nothing wrong with leaving at 4pm if you started work at 7am. And certainly nothing wrong with employees not responding to work communications outside working hours.

Re:doing two people's jobs

[CohibaVancouver]

This is Slashdot, where the edge use case wins, every time.

Re:GDP

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the french have a longer and healthier life, as W.H.O.'s data prove. And they are also far slimmer and better looking.

Working 60 hrs a week is just stupid, stupid, stupid. It causes heart diseases, fast aging, stomach problems, etc...

People who work so much should be mocked and laughed at, rather than respected for it.

Stop inviting it

[Strange Ranger]

What I see is way too many people bending over backwards in order to get bent over forwards in return. Just because you have a smart phone and a laptop doesn't mean you have to reply instantly. It doesn't mean you have to give an ETA on a project or task that requires you to get it done with 60 hours in a week or 14 hours in a day.
 
    And once you start doing that everyone starts expecting it. Don't start! If you do work at home wait until the morning to send it out. Don't reply to email at 8pm. When your boss says "Where were you last night?" You say "Did we have an after hours appointment?" and make a show of looking at your calendar. The next time you say "Taking my son to xyz." Say it like it was wonderful and not like it's an excuse. Don't for a second feel guilty. Do this publicly as much as possible. Nobody else there wants to work 14 hour days either.

It's like an idiotic prisoners' dilemna. We all do it because everybody else is. Even your boss is sick of it, and has wife who is sick of it too.

The only way to win is not to play. If that means moving on to another job so be it. Keep moving until the tide around you moves with you.

Re:Another type that is interesting...

[aristotle-dude]

Nothing wrong with giving said person -2% raises year after year either since they're piggybacking off the rest of the team that is available to help with emergencies when they come up.

Get a life. Your life and health are more important than your job. If they work hard, meet deadlines and live it their all when they are work, that is all that is needed. This is especially true if it is not their work that causes the emergencies in the first place.

Maybe you need to start taking your work more seriously so that you don't have to face "emergencies" so often.

Re:GDP

[ElementOfDestruction]

Complete bollocks. Americans get 0 weeks of vacation, French have mandated 6. There's your difference, ignoring the differences in hours per week.

Also take into account the fact that the US Per Capita GDP is extremely bloated; median income is near equal.

It's a status thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from Eastern Europe, and I can't believe that 40-hours a week jobs in America can't feed and house you. I guess it really depends on your expectations about the house and the food.

But since everyone around you has a nice house and car, it would be shameful if you don't - especially if you're married, because then it would be shameful for your wife and children, too. So you're overworking yourself for status in society, so that people don't look down upon you and your family.

Re:It's a status thing

[sjames]

Too bad that's all there is for the people working there trying to feed their families. There is simply no excuse for any full time job (and yes, 39.5 hours is close enough to full time, it's just a dodge to avoid benefits) to not pay enough to at least get by without needing government assistance. No excuse whatsoever.

The minimum wage should be set such that no person working full time qualifies for any sort of food stamps or welfare AT LEAST. If we set it at any less than that the taxpayer ends up subsidizing employer's payroll. The press costs what it costs to run and if you pay less it dies. An employee costs what he costs to run and if you don't pay enough, he dies (except for public assistance since we don't want dead Wallmart employees littering the streets).

Boo Hoo, a Big Mac might cost an extra quarter (yes, that would actually be enough to cover raising minimum wage to a barely livable wage).

Re:It's a status thing

[schlachter]

Well, that's all of us subsidising these corporations to pay lower wages through our taxes and gov services through our social services. People shouldn't put up with that. I'm in favor of needed social services, but not so that companies can pass the buck.

Re:It's a status thing

[sjames]

Absolutely! That's why I support raising the minimum wage high enough that people receiving it no longer need food stamps.

Re:It's a status thing

[sjames]

You might not have noticed, but a lot of people lost their decentish jobs over the last few years and have had to take minimum wage jobs. What is your suggestion, sell the kids for experiments?

Meanwhile, it is hardly unreasonable to expect 40 hours of ANY job to be enough to have a family (perhaps you didn't notice, but that is a normal part of human life).

Re:It's a status thing

[gordo3000]

no, that is really unreasonable, and if you think about what it functionally means, you would realize it quickly.

The idea that the same job you were qualified for at 16, without a high school education (in a country where some amount of continued education after high school is the norm) is not reasonable. There are people at the age of 16 who either want to or need to work and there should be jobs that suit their skill set.

Should I be able to support my wife and kids, and send my children to college, and have a modern home, as a caddie? simply because the job of carrying golf clubs for someone else exists that job should support all these things? My friends, in high school (to save for) and in college (to pay for it) needed these kinds of low skilled jobs. They were never meant or though of as careers. If you have spent 20 years rotating between different ultra-lowskill jobs that are meant as transitions I've got nothing for you. And if you are dedicated to walmart and stay there and put up with the crap conditions for 10 years, you can support a family (and since you can start at 16, this means you can afford to be married and looking at having kids in your mid-20s). But if you mean you should be able to afford to get married and support a family well while rotating around across work places in ultra-lowskill jobs, never building any useful skills or firm knowledge?

There need to be jobs that give people with no skills a chance to do something. Yes, we did have a recession and compared to pre recession levels, the percent of people at or below the minimum wage higher than it was under Bush, but it is lower than any time under Clinton's tenure except the absolute peak of 2000 (http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012tbls.htm). It's not exactly the end days in the US labor market.

Re:It's a status thing

[Tom]

other way round buddy..

Negative. When I was a child, we still had working social security networks over here and losing your job sucked, but didn't make you a hobo. This is an intentional political change. It even has a name: Agenda 2010.

Re:It's a status thing

[Tom]

It's simply called "Arbeitslosengeld" - unemployment money. That is the regular unemployment benefits as you probably know them from your country.

However, after the Agenda 2010 reforms, after one year of unemployment (irrespective of reasons) or under a variety of other conditions (which largely affect especially young people, like not having worked for at least one year in the job you just lost), you will be moved to "Arbeitslosengeld II" - yes, that's just the same with a roman numeral. In colloquial german it is mostly called "Hartz 4", because a Mr. Hartz was the industrialist/lobbyist who came up with the whole concept and convinced the government of it and it was the 4th part of a multi-part reform.

Hartz 4 is very low, in fact it has been raised at least twice because our highest court has ruled that it violates human rights and doesn't allow for humane living conditions. It is tied to a long list of conditions and regulations and even though it is already set as a minimum living expenses, not meeting those conditions can result in further reductions or non-payment for up to three months.

The "idea" behind it is that unemployed people are just lazy and need to be pushed to get back into work. Somehow, people living in ivory towers never got the newsflash that in most industries the number of available jobs is less than the number of available workers.

Oh yes, they can also force you to work for âÂ1/h. That is not a typo. One Euro per hour. If you refuse, your Hartz 4 money will be cut.

50 years ago, there would've been blood in the streets if they had tried this system. But they were smart and spent a decade (and three different government coalitions) to establish it, and like the frog in the story about boiling waters, the country didn't jump out.

The idea works, that's for sure. I have friends who have been on Hartz 4, and one of them is right now afraid of losing her job because it would mean she loses the small appartment she just rented a few months ago and everything she's worked for for the past years. She has panic attacks and is deathly afraid. I'm not using that term lightly, the german word is "Existenzangst" - existential fear.

It would work if it weren't based on a flawed assumption - that the reason for unemployment is that people don't want to work and much rather enjoy unemployment benefits. That kind of people probably exist. Almost certainly, they are like 1% of the unemployed. For the rest, more force doesn't magically generate jobs.

The hidden agenda (what a fitting term!) is of course to increase pressure on the workforce so people accept worse jobs for less money. And that has worked very well. Wages are actually declining, and a lot of people work in part-time work and a lot of people work for money that nobody sane would've worked for one or two decades ago, because it simply isn't enough to feed and house a family.

Re:It's a status thing

[sjames]

What convinces you that someone working full time should not necessarily be able to have a normal life? I'm not talking McMansion and two new cars, just the basics needed to live without government assistance.

A full time job should provide all the basics for a normal life (which means a reasonable size family). Keep in mind, many of the adult minimum wage employees aren't there because they have no more skills, but because that's the only job available and the employer has used their desperation for income against them.

Minimum wage during the Clinton presidency went further than it does today. Minimum wage has stayed put while inflation marches on.

Unskilled labor has never paid well, but not paying enough for even a small family is a fairly recent development. A long term labor surplus is also fairly new on the scale of written history.

Re:It's a status thing

[jafiwam]

No, it's unreasonable for a 16 year old to have a job.

A 16 year old should be in school, they should not be working at all. A college student should not be working more than 10 hours a week, if at all. Oh, and "saving for college" with tuition where it is today is just plain stupid. You come out behind if you try.

The minimum wage should be set to a level that someone working 40 hours a week should be well above the poverty level for a family of three. They shouldn't be competing for work with high school students.

And yes, if someone wants to make a career of a full time minimum wage position, they should be able to have a reasonable income.

Start it at $15/hour. Index it to inflation.

Nonsense. The product of a job for a 16 year old individual is not simply money.

Having a job in food service has a huge impact on the social norms the person has as an adult.

Having a physical job (say, loading trucks) has a huge impact on how active the person is as an adult.

Working with people who are stuck there in their 40's (after 5 DUIs and jail time for cocaine possession) has a huge impact on "gee, better not do that myself"

Those things people learn at that age makes them better, and results in actual "living wages" as a productive person in society. Instead of a highly-paid skag or drag on society. If you want a good society, you lead people into doing good things, not just give them good things.

The idea that everybody deserves a living wage for doing no personal development, no effort, no commitment (at least, learning to, not saying they have to be stupid loyal) to a job is foolish. You are creating another dependent, not another producer.

You sir, are an outright communist. There's no question anymore. Which is fine I guess, the problem is you are SO STUPID you think that it's going to work even in the face of real, big, dire, and far reaching consequences for what you want.

Hint: nothing happens if you lick a red hot stove burner element if your tongue is wet enough. Try it!

Re:It's a status thing

[Tom]

Total bullshit.

We can afford a social security twice as expensive. If we stopped increasing income disparity and dared to raise taxes on the rich to... levels they used to be at without the world ending.

Germany had half a trillion Euros available literally overnight when the banks needed to be bailed out, but we're seriously discussing over raising social security benefits a few Euros per month.

Money isn't the issue, and anyone trying to tell you that is pulling a fast one.

It might not be the job ... it could be you

[petes_PoV]

60 hours a week, huh? And how many of them are spent goofing around - talking to colleagues (and preventing them from working and getting home on time). Updating your FB page every 5 minutes, checking for new cat photos, tweets, that last-second bid on ebay (that you watch like an eagle for the 10 minutes leading up to it), spending a day or two checking out holiday resorts before booking, or buying christmas gifts at Amazon.

Then there are the people who really do need to spend 60 hours working - to achieve what everyone else manages to produce in 35. Slow, incompetent, indolent or simply easily distracted? You choose.

Finally we have the individuals who actually prefer to be at their job - rather than at home, either on their own, getting an earful of "verbal", or simply staring at the wall becuase they have no friends and less imagination about what to do with the empty voids between sleeping and working.

There are plenty of people who work these long hours for the reasons above. Whether they brag about it, or whether others see them as the pathetic specimens they are would depend. But if you do work tose hours, maybe it's because it's either your own fault or it's your way of escaping.

Re:Another type that is interesting...

[radarskiy]

No, he means the people that come in and send an email at 8am to "prove" that they are in the office then go fuck around out of sight for 3 hours.

Re: Hours worked is the key

[jordanjay29]

http://www.bls.gov/cps/earning...

Sometimes OK in the short term

[dbIII]

Long hours make sense during maintainance shutdowns, tight change windows or when things go seriously wrong. It's only making a habit of it that's the problem.
However it's not something you should do for free.

Re:How about 80?

[turbidostato]

"1 month later, the entire team was laid off except me and the documentation writer (all four devs and both full time QA people). We had a fixed deadline to ship to that customer [...] I don't think firing over 60% of the US workforce without transitioning knowledge was the brightest way to transition"

Unless you are the company owner, no, "we" didn't have a fixed deadline, your company, the one that laid off 60% of the employees, had a fixed deadline. And given the results, your are wrong: the way they managed the transition was brilliant because it was cheap and sucessful... thanks to a simpleton that was working 2.5x for free.