The problem about the idea of "doing great things in 30 hours" is that people who are not directly involved with implementation and deployment usually think tha

The problem about the idea of "doing great things in 30 hours" is that people who are not directly involved with implementation and deployment usually think that each and every 2 day task takes at most 2 hours, because we humans are unable to expect the complexity that most tasks have on this planet. (every time you think about a college, super market employee etc "just do your job man" you are experiencing that fallacy) And then you as the 30 hours employee are faced with not delivering 40 hours of work in 30 hours (which is possible if you are smarter, more involved, have more experience etc) but no you are expected to do 160 hours of work in 30 hours, because you don't compete with the other engineers but you compete with the expectation of your manager. We need to accept that most people (colleagues, employees, customers, bosses) will always be disappointed by the results we achieved because they had unrealistic expectations to begin with. And we must excuse them because we do the same the other way around. That is why "40 hour week" is so relevant. Because then you can say after working hard for 40 hours, really doing all you can, maybe even achieving 30% more than your colleagues, that time is up and you need to take care of your children, wife, parents, friends and hobbies you may have. Now let's assume for a moment that all I said was BS. Let's assume I'm super untalented and for most people it's actually possible to achieve in 30 hours enough to impress their leaders. Now you do it once. You do it twice. Maybe thrice. But at that point your leader will adjust in his head, maybe without realising, what 100% means for you. So the fourth time he doesn't think it's awesome anymore. The tenth time he thinks you are lazy. And now you have to achieve 50 hours of work in 30 hours. It still doesn't work out.