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I have run a company for 13 years and I don't have doubt about it at all. Dropping to 5 hours is for sure going to be less productive unless all your employees
by jblow 9y ago
I have run a company for 13 years and I don't have doubt about it at all. Dropping to 5 hours is for sure going to be less productive unless all your employees are terrible in the first place (in which case, just hire people who want to work more).
I am not claiming that the standard 8-hour day is the maximum; but I think if a shorter day is better, I would guess the situation would peak around 7 or 7.5 hours. But again this depends on what kind of people you are talking about. I personally work 60+ hours a week, most weeks, and I prefer it that way.
- theshrike79 9y agoAnd you are actually productive for all of the 60 hours? I work a normal north european 37.5 hour week and I'm productive about 75% of the time. If I'm having an off day, I'll just go home and do something else and come look at the problem from a new angle the next day. Programming is a creative profession, just piling on the hours doesn't affect productivity in a linear fashion.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoPiling on hours will affect productivity super-linearly. It means more parts of the project are fresh on your mind.
- GFischer 9y agoI actually believe that the optimal amount of hours depends on the work being performed. For coding and hard sustained mental work, I believe 8 hours is way too much. That doesn't mean they don't have to think about the work after leaving work - there was an article recently on HN about thinkers having breakthroughs when going on long walks. Maybe a flexible schedule would work best (short burst of intense 80+ hours of coding are also common but not sustainable). OTOH there are many other kinds of work where working 60+ hours is sustainable long term (though I would advise against much more than that, there's a life to enjoy too!).