16 ms·

How Some Consultants Fake an 80-Hour Workweek (2015)

147 points by attfarhan 8y ago

galvarez800 8y ago
This makes perfect sense to me. From what I've seen anecdotally, it seems most people can work 80-hour weeks at full productivity for maybe one or two weeks, tops. After that, the fatigue starts to set in and that person's performance starts to decline. In the long run, the person working 80 hour weeks isn't getting much more done than someone working far fewer hours, simply because during those 80 hours they are operating at greatly diminished mental capacity.
- cma 8y ago
  Depends if they are engaged or not and how taxing it is. People can play MMOs or MOBAs way past 40hr/week and they don't all have a huge performance dropoff. They are probably more prone to RSI and stuff at more hours though. I wouldn't be surprised to see a productive 100hr week in some kind of MMO player.
  - yorwba 8y ago
    > People can play MMOs or MOBAs way past 40hr/week and they don't all have a huge performance dropoff. Is that your personal observation or do you have access to some actual data? I imagine pro-gaming teams do use all kinds of analytics to maximize their performance, stuff like hours played, hours slept, nutrition, physical exercise ... so there must be some pretty good datasets out there. Unfortunately probably all closely-guarded secrets. In my own experience as a heavy Anki user, I have found sleep to be the most important determiner of performance. When I sleep 1–2 hours less, my error rate the next day roughly doubles.
  - kaikau 8y ago
    I wake up and work until I go to sleep. Every day. 8 hours of sleep, either in one chunk or in two (biphasic). I feel better with biphasic. So that leaves 13 hours each day after subtracting eating time, housekeeping, bathroom "tasks", reddit/HN, and falling asleep transition time. 91 hours per week. Been living like this for years without burnout, although I think at 100-130 hours one is asking for trouble.
    - Letmesleep69 8y ago
      Can I ask why? I did similar hours for a while but I couldn't date or see friends or exercise and even sit done and read a book for long. If I was forced to do that often I would have quit. Its not like its hard to get another job as a developer. When working 80 hours or more you're basically doing the work of two developers and the company should really just hire another IMO.
      - kaikau 8y ago
        The startup is my baby and I'm solo. I don't just develop, I design, market, handle investor relations, etc. I wouldn't do this if it wasn't this specific situation. Edit: Haven't had a girlfriend or dated or regularly socialized with friends in years, but I don't feel bad about it. Most of my friends who I respect the most are just as busy as I am pursuing their goals in music and neuroscience. :) Edit2: I do hire additional devs when I can afford it, but that doesn't have an effect on my hours.
        Letmesleep69 8y ago
        If you're working for yourself I suppose I can understand that.
  - JamesBarney 8y ago
    I think the OP is talking about knowledge workers specifically. If you're a security guard, I think it's obvious you could do your job for 100 hrs with very little drop off in performance.
    - chris_mc 8y ago
      Don't think that's true, watchstanding positions are amongst the most mind numbing jobs that actually require your full attention. I stood watch in the Navy as officer of the deck in port, and I can truly say that 6 hour shift was torture for the mind, much worse than coding 6 hours.
      - Aeolun 8y ago
        To a point I guess, but I imagine the drop off in performance from 2 hours to 8 hours of standing watch is much larger than the one from 8 to 20 hours.
        chris_mc 8y ago
        From 8 to 20 hours watchstanding, you're basically not watchstanding. It went like this: Hour 1: Fine Hour 2: Walk around a bit, then fine Hour 3-5: Jesus, I never should have joined the Navy Hour 6: I want to pull out my 9mm and use it on myself Hours past 6: I am functionally useless Some jobs that aren't knowledge-jobs are hard on your mind, too. The reason security/watchstanding is so hard is that you have to be alert at all times while doing, effectively, jack squat. It isn't a much different level of alertness than I am in while programming, now that I think about it carefully.
      - JamesBarney 8y ago
        Granted I've only met 5 security guards in my life. But not a single one gave the job their full attention. All basically saw the job as a warm body position.
- 01100011 8y ago
  Depends. There was a time in my 30s(IIRC) where I had 3 contracts going at the same time. It was exhilarating. My mind was constantly humming and I was really into it. I was pulling about 80 hours a week for a few months. It really depends on the type of work and how much it engages you.
  - kentosi 8y ago
    The parents comment still seems to hold though. What you're talking about is a fixed time period that you knew was going to end (once the contracts' deadlines arrived). Imagine having to continue working like that.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- danieltillett 8y ago
  Having worked longer than 80 hour weeks for years at a time at full productivity I know it is possible for at least some people. The issue for me was not one of fatigue, but of a slow corruption of my perception of reality. The longer I worked at this pace the worse my ability to differentiate important from unimportant became and I made some very "interesting" decisions during that time. I still work more 40 hours a week, but nowhere near the level I did in the past.
seibelj 8y ago
I have definitely seen this is various ways. Another outcome of the intense pressure to deliver hours is when you have a simple phone call with lawyers / accountants and there are 2 parters, 3 associates, and an assistant taking notes. Haven’t you guys heard of email? Oh yes, everyone must be there in person because it’s critical they hear it directly (so you can bill us $5000 for a 30 minute call).
gringoDan 8y ago
I'm convinced that most of the long hours of corporate America can be explained as a form of signaling. This is just more evidence that there are a whole lot of bullshit jobs out there. [0] Anecdotally, when I worked as an investment banking analyst, there was hardly anything to do from 9-5, then 6-8 hours of work was dumped on my desk at 5pm. Half of that work was un-doing changes I made the day before because the VP on the team didn't like the updates the Associate wanted. Organizations are set up to be inefficient in order to signal how serious they are and what hard workers they have. [0] https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
- da02 8y ago
  Was this the reason or part of the reason you left being an investment banking analyst? What's the educational requirements/qualifications to for an investment banking analyst?
  - rohitb91 8y ago
    Not OP but to get in generally go to an ivy league school, or go to a non target with an amazing GPA, ECs and luck, or have connections.
    - gringoDan 8y ago
      OP here - I agree with this. If you're at an Ivy the banks and consulting firms come to you, then it's just a matter of 1) studying the basic interview questions and being able to speak semi-intelligently about financial topics and 2) interviewing a ton until you find a firm with people similar to you and like your personality. I left because I was depressed during the job and realized I wanted work with fewer hours that was more intellectually challenging. I saw people 2-3 years ahead of me in their careers leaving for startups and thought I'd skip the 2 years of misery and do that straight away.
      - da02 8y ago
        What industry/field did you go into afterwards? B2B or B2C startups?
ousta 8y ago
men and women. parity folks. dont be so misogynist
- Shikadi 8y ago
  Quoted from the article: "Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it."
- jnwatson 8y ago
  Read the article. It was mostly men that faked it, while women would request lighter work more formally and be punished for it.
- withinrafael 8y ago
  The study included women and results differed between the two. Misogyny is not in play here. "A second finding is that women, particularly those with young children, were much more likely to request greater flexibility through more formal means, such as returning from maternity leave with an explicitly reduced schedule. Men who requested a paternity leave seemed to be punished come review time, and so may have felt more need to take time to spend with their families through those unofficial methods." [Edit: Unfortunately, a moderator made a similar error and revised the title. Ah well. The previous title was: How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters]
  - ghaff 8y ago
    One big difference is that you can often gain flexibility unofficially when you are, well, flexible about it. Fewer hours or less travel so long as you do so informally and schedule around various work constraints. Whereas if you really need shorter work hours or to minimize travel or whatever in a predictable way, you probably need to get it down on paper.
  - rustcharm 8y ago
    It's "misandry" not "misogyny". A hatred of men.
  - 8y ago
NikolaNovak 8y ago
Interesting but unsurprising article. I receive a thank you note from our practice lead every time my utilization exceeds 100% in a week. I have repeatedly asked to be removed from such "congratulatory" emails, as I don't find it something to be lauded. In my mind, this means I/we have not properly planned, scheduled, costed, or staffed a project. Market disagrees though; long hours are absolutely the norm in my segment, and while I've seen managers of all types, those more and less understanding that there's life outside of the office, nonetheless there is an overall feeling that if you're not working long hours, you're not working hard or contributing or dedicated enough. At the same time, it is an accepted paradigm that project/client/company will suck what they can out of you, and it's up to you to set the limits, communicate them and deliver quality. I have observed people who at beginning of the project indicate "I will take my vacation, and I will spend my weekends at home", and due to quality of their work and abilities, are respected, promoted, recognized. So there's culture and there's individual response to the culture. [personally, I "enjoy" a sprint or two every now and then, there's excitement in building something and working hard towards it; but still believe that continued crunches are failure of planning. That doesn't mean I'm immune to them :P, just that I refuse to consider them the norm]
sdfsdfffff 8y ago
"consultants who quietly lightened their workload did just as well in their performance reviews as those who were truly working 80 or more hours a week suggests that in normal times, heavy workloads may be more about signaling devotion to a firm than really being more productive." Except that they didn't measure productivity, they measured performance reviews. Those might not be the same things. I think it has long been known that if you make a big fuss about your contributions, you will be noticed more (and maybe even be promoted). Productivity and perception of productivity might be only weakly correlated. I don't know if the conclusion should be to fake more, or for managers to notice more. In any case, would expect the market to take care of it (good workers aggregating in companies that notice their productivity).
Nelkins 8y ago
(2015)
- dang 8y ago
  Added. Thanks!
kristjansson 8y ago
N.B. this article is from 2015
horsecaptin 8y ago
It is possible to do 80 hour workweeks if: - The rest of your life is exactly where you want it to be. So, this one isn't true for 99% of the population. - You have the correct mental attitude for it. This isn't true for most of the population either. - You are doing exactly what you want to do in life. The chance that you could be distracted by another possibility / avenue is next to nil. None of the above are impossible asks, but they certainly unreasonable. But some managers like to ask anyway, mostly as a form of leverage. If you're foolish or desperate enough to fall for it, then well, only fools and desperate people will give you time week after week to listen to how much you hate your boss / job.
- bluGill 8y ago
  It is possible for anyone to work a 80 hour week. However is it worth it? If you are single and getting paid a lot it might be - with the idea that you save everything and retire early. If you have a social life at all (including a family) and this is a less than once a year request, taking one for the team is probably the right thing to do, but only if it really is a rare thing.
  - screye 8y ago
    It is not like you are getting paid more hourly for each extra your put in right ? If what you suggest is done, then you are basically selling your youth for equivalent time with an older body. It may even be worse, since a 50 year old you may be worth a lot more /hr than you are now. So it isn't even an equal trade. I have struggled to understand workoholic mentality for a while. Sure you work more, but to what end. For what ?
ghaff 8y ago
I'm not sure where the "faking it" comes from. The point seems to be people who get their job done and don't make a big deal out of structuring their work arrangements to create more flexibility/fewer hours don't get penalized. Which squares with my personal experience though obviously doesn't apply everywhere and isn't something you can always depend on being able to do on an informal basis. I find modern communications are a big help in this regard. In past lives, there often was no real replacement for being literally "by the phone." Though I still took month-long vacations in those days which some co-workers found rather hard to comprehend.
thrower123 8y ago
Well, duh. I can't even work a full 40 hour week as a programmer without being completely braindead. I think the dirty secret is that as long as you hit the meetings you're supposed to be at, and show your face at strategically useful times, nobody cares the slightest whether you are actually there or not - as long as the work gets done. > The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply. This is generally good advice to live by. If something is worth doing, you are wildly better off just doing it, rather than asking for permission to do it. At best, the thing you wanted to do will get denied, and at worst so crusted up with input and bikeshedding from everyone that is sucked into it that it is actively detrimental.
- baddox 8y ago
  > nobody cares the slightest whether you are actually there or not - as long as the work gets done. That only works if the people with authority have the desire and ability to determine whether the work is being done. When they don’t, easy metrics like working hours unfortunately are what they care about.
  - WaxProlix 8y ago
    Even easier because then you don't have to do the work; just make extra sure that you've put in the face time to the right moments.
- swingline-747 8y ago
  I would wager fewer hours coding and more doing exercise, yoga, meditation, getting massages, sauna, etc. would lead to greater productivity per calendar unit time.
tajen 8y ago
I was surprised at the evocation of “men” in the title. It is obvious that if we found a flaw in some women, we wouldn’t say it outright in the title. Whereas finding a flaw in men calls directly for a click, since it appeals to the human’s innate hate for men. Then I understood: “It’s a disadvantage for women, because they ask more formally.” There you go, misandry followed by feminism. Which is fine. If it goes both ways. Would we ever find an article titled as such: “Some people beat their children. 70.2% of them are women[1]. Here’s why it matters.” [1] CDC 2001-2006 And it matters because 60% are boys. And most (don’t remember how many, about 90%) of the prison population received hits on the head as kids. And what they need is not judicial treatment, nut medical treatments. 97% prison population is men. It also matters because, even when sane father ask for custody, we consciously decide to give it to the mother. Father is ambassador of Sweden and mum is in psychiatric yard beating up the baby? That’s right, give the baby to the mother[2]. [2] Breivik, 77 killed. It’s more than time women stop getting the newspaper headline for unfair misandry, while men commit suicide 3 times the rate of women: The two of them are related. But it doesn’t matter. They’re men.
scandox 8y ago
Of course. In the past. Now. And long into the future. It's vastly easier to project a convincing illusion than it is to sustain a reality. Self interested, shrewd people will always put their energy into the illusion. Illusions give you massive leverage. Reality grinds you down. And the conscientious and the passionate burn their energies to actually help the magicians cast their shabby spells.
tptacek 8y ago
A friend of mine used to check all his code into a private CVS repository and then trickle his commits out into the official company repository over the course of a week.
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  I still do this because I don’t have very consistent productivity. Some sprints I will get 3-4 sprints worth of work done whereas in others I won’t be able to complete my work. Since I started smoothing out my performance I have gone from being seen as a decent dev to a 10x dev.
  - aptwebapps 8y ago
    If you have slow patches, you're slow. If you have fast patches, the work must have been easy, right?
fludlight 8y ago
Are SciHub links allowed on HN? EDIT: Here's the DOI string of the paper referenced: 10.1287/orsc.2015.0975
spiderfarmer 8y ago
You Americans are messing eachother up with your workaholic culture. Relax folks, there’s much more to life.
- leroy_masochist 8y ago
  The tens of thousands of highly educated Europeans who voluntarily work in stressful finance jobs in New York provide an interesting counterpoint to your argument.
  - borroka 8y ago
    Because it is difficult to get those challenging jobs in Europe and you are getting paid much more in the US. Plus, a certain "capitalism-envy" of the European. I agree with the point about the weird American workaholism and the very peculiar boring personalities, low worldliness, and loneliness of the highly paid American professional.
  - spiderfarmer 8y ago
    I guess there always will be some masochists.
epx 8y ago
Two anedoctal stories of mine: a) I do some consulting for a healthcare company, and bill them by the hour. It is very difficult to reach 60h/month, I managed to get that once, and it translated to an incredible amount of work. Initially they were worried about the cost, and put a cap of 80h/mo, but I never got even near that. b) Back in the 1990s I worked as technical support for a small ERP company. I had a colleague that kept a frantic pace the whole day, did a lot of overtime, always buried by work, complaining, etc. He had so many booked overtime hours, he took a 3-week vacation solely on them (in Brazil you have 30 day of vacation per year, as well). Those 3 weeks were the most quiet I ever saw in my work. I even found the K&R book and learnt C (I was really amused to find that UNIXes came with a free compiler. Development tools used to cost several thousand USD back then.)
GirlsCanCode 8y ago
What does this really have to do with "men" other than the white-knight author seems to have an issue with "men?"
leroy_masochist 8y ago
Makes fairly rational sense -- in addition to the hard deliverables provided by professional services firms (market studies, fairness opinions, consummated M&A transactions, etc), their "product" is to a great extent the warm-n-fuzzy feeling that clients get from the general perception that a bunch of intelligent, highly educated and broadly competent, insecure overachievers are burning the midnight oil to triple-check that everything is going to plan and there are no contingencies left unexamined. As such, on a meta level, the "product" in this regard is not some kind of impartial measurable standard of client-related vigilance, but rather, constant reinforcement of a perception in the client's mind. And so, it's totally rational that, for example, investment banking associates will always respond to a late-night email from the client's internal M&A guy or corporate development lady on the same night the incoming email was sent -- even if it's an email of the "hey no need to respond to this, just wanted to make sure I sent you the attachment" variety. Maintaining the perception that someone is always watching the store is paramount not only in maintaining client relationships, but also in justifying high fees.
rustcharm 8y ago
Original title is: "How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters" and the author makes a Big Deal over this being a "man" thing. Why do the people at "hacker news" want to gloss over the sexism behind the author's shaky premise? Normally an inflammatory article like this would be [flagged] and the submitter shadowbanned.
- dang 8y ago
  Because it was an interesting article. When there's an interesting article with a baity title, we ask submitters to de-bait the title, or (failing that) do it ourselves. This is in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
foxfired 8y ago
When I was hired as a consultant, the very first day I was asked to give an estimate on how long it will take me to complete the project. (Coincidentally, it was for a New York Times) I spent my time studying the code base and the requirement. By the end of the day, I told them around ~20 hours. It was a fairly easy project. I spent a month and a half to complete the project. What I didn't take into account was how long it will take to get resources from them. When I asked a question, it took anywhere from 48 hours to an entire week to get a response. When I completed a task, I got no response. But I needed to be on call because they would sent hundreds of emails about everything except what was needed. I charged them for all the hours I spent waiting for them, and reading long emails that led nowhere.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  it might have still ended up as 20 hours of your time doing the actual 'work', but all the ceremony and support around everything else if 5-10x what you think it will be.
- Infernal 8y ago
  My rule of thumb (can't recall where I first heard of this, but it's not original) for translating from an engineer "how long will it take me to create a technical solution" estimate into the real world is to convert the estimate into the largest whole-number unit (so ~20 hours would be 3 days), then double the scalar and increment the unit, in this case 3 days would become 6 weeks - which while not perfect, is much closer to the reality than your original estimate. I'm amazed by how often this rule has turned out to be reasonably accurate, though I'm sure there's some selection bias at work. And it certainly starts breaking down when you begin estimating in multiple months - however I would counter that if you're able to credibly estimate months of work on a solution, then you don't need this particular rule of thumb :)
  - Swenrekcah 8y ago
    Berlin Brandenburg Airport was originally supposed to take 5 years, so according to this it will take 10 decades. Currently 1.5 decades in.
raverbashing 8y ago
In the same spirit of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes", I'll describe this as "making stupid demands is asking to be deceived" " For people who were good at faking it, there was no real damage done by their lighter workloads." Well, duh. The customer is the limiting factor in a lot of cases and downtime means you get to focus more on the work (when you're actually working)
tetha 8y ago
I think one important takeaway is also: A good, motivated team will make it work. For example we need to cover 0800 - 1800 due to SLAs, but usually we have 2 guys just organizing Kita (kindergarten) duty with their wifes. One brings his kids to the Kita in the morning and comes in at around 0900, and the other guy comes in early and leaves at 1700ish to collect the kids. Simple. We also had this when our application just went into a royal meltdown earlier this year and we had pretty much constant OOH work to do. Eventually we arranged that I don't come into the office for a week or more, and I'll just work reduced night hours. This allowed us to tackle that mayhem much more effectively - they'd figure out issues and create patches and manual tasks. I'd apply them overnight, and hand them everything that caught on fire this time. I don't like to work at night, but I'm the guy without ties and who's gonna complain about 20 - 25 hour weeks?
georgewsinger 8y ago
"You shouldn't work long hours" is consensus advice masquerading as contrarian advice. You can see this for two reasons: (i) count the number of people in threads like this who advise against working long hours; (ii) go to Amazon.com and count the number of books that advocate (often using empirical evidence) against working long hours. The same is true for "you shouldn't multitask". Everyone thinks they're clever for saying this. But in fact it's just consensus advice (and of course: there are good reasons to think it). The question then is: under what conditions is the consensus opinion wrong? Why do notable outliers (i.e., people like Elon Musk) do the opposite of consensus and perform so well (Elon in particular not only consistently works 80+ hour weeks, but seems to multitask quite a bit)? The interesting data points are always the outliers, not the averages.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  Do we even have well-documented cases of these outliers? Are any unbiased outsiders allowed to watch what e.g. Musk does in his 80-hour week? How do we know it's not 40 hours of hard work interleaved with 40 hours of "working" meals, travelling and other low-productivity time?
  - sheepmullet 8y ago
    > other low-productivity time? How would you even measure low productivity time for someone like Musk who has incredible leverage? For example I was chatting with a friebd about his companies product and it sounds awesome. Yet for me this was a “low value” conversation as I know I couldnt get my workplace to purchase it. Musk on the other hand can delegate the evaluation and if it’s a good fit his company will buy it. So for Musk the same conversation could be very high productivity.
    - runj__ 8y ago
      Musk spending time with his children could be seen as training future C*Os (I'm not saying this is what he claims to do). Someone reading an business magazine is business development. Someone reading up on video game development is educating themselves in the database query issue they're currently investigating at their workplace.
blhack 8y ago
Can some of you chime in with your experience here re: consulting and hours. None of the consultants I know of would estimate a time requirement (other than something incredibly loose) for any kind of job bigger than a few hours. The MO seems to be some version of: "You give me [the consulting firm] a maximum per week that you can afford on this, and we will have a weekly stand up where we talk about what was completed, what will be completed by next week, and how we can allocate resources to accomplish these things." To me this seems like an incredibly good way of managing this relationship. However, plenty of people I talk to on the other side (trying to hire consultants) insist that they need a full bid of how much time a project will take. I almost always tell these people that I can't really give them that answer, and that I also to be wary of anybody who actually responds to this question. Am I the strange one here? I almost wonder if this is the source of the overage that is being talked about in this article. They're quoting them $foo hours per week, when in reality it will take $foo/4. So when they get the work and finish it at $foo/2, they don't lose money. That seems really dishonest to me.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  I don’t know if you’re strange, but you aren’t somebody whom I would award a consulting contract to at a big company. The usual model is to budget 3-5x the actual requirements, filling it with knowledge transfer and other complete the work you can accomplish yourself as early as possible and and milk as long as possible.
- bluGill 8y ago
  No, it is a constant issue in software. Business people want to know upfront how much it will cost. It makes budgeting very easy. Unfortunately if the project is anything non-trivial it is impossible to know up front how long it will take. Business works great making the Model T Ford on an assembly line. A small improvement to the assembly line will cost X and result in Y more cars being built. If you need to make more cars it costs N to make a whole new line. All easy to budget for and the business becomes easy - no surprises, not failed projects. Of course as Henry Ford discovered the hard way (apparently more than once) eventually your competition will invest in something a little more open ended that will produce results.
- 8y ago
brycehamrick 8y ago
'...people, who in her terminology were “passing” as workaholics, received performance reviews that were as strong as their hyper-ambitious colleagues.' This is the takeaway from the article. Hours worked != delivered value. One of many reasons I've always steered consulting engagements towards another compensation model, e.g. weekly retainer fees.
wallflower 8y ago
I remember a story from a BigCo consultant. Many years ago, when he worked remote and wanted to appear busy, he turned on his oscillating fan and tied a string to it and then to the wired mouse of his computer so that the 2000-era “idle” detection (used for chat “presence”) of the computer would not kick in.
baxtr 8y ago
Don’t be fooled. That third group has also a shitty life. I’ve been there. I had exactly that life. It’s not the working hours that take the toll on you but the lifestyle in general. Just consider this from the article: “I try to head out by 5, get home at 5:30, have dinner, play with my daughter,” he said Yes, I did that too. You’re dead zombie walking after a couple of weeks getting up at 4:30am just to be back at 5/6pm to play with the kids, catch up on mails and calls you’ve missed after the family went to bed until 11/12 or even 1am just to get up at 4:30am again for the next round
runj__ 8y ago
I had a big fight with the other co-founders of a company regarding work hours a while back. Most programmers hit something like up to four "good" hours per workday, the biggest problem is capturing those hours while they're at work. A separate problem is hitting those hours while they have access to their manager or colleagues that can help them overcome small but time consuming problems. I'd like to think that programmers have a creative or even artistic occupation (personally I'm more manager than programmer these days). Forcing something creative out is rarely good or even possible. The majority of the employees in my organization are in sales. There's a limit to where you can push that for most people too, but it is a different kind of limit. Personally I've only put in proper 80-hour work weeks something like three times working as a disillusioned startup "employee" or as a consultant in extreme crunch because of launch marketing costs. Sure, something is deployed and it you certainly feel a sense of accomplishment but it's not something that should be used by any serious company expecting people to stay longer than a year or two. With that said: people checking/answering their email or checking error logs at odd hours "for free" really do bring value to a company though.
- ghaff 8y ago
  <With that said: people checking/answering their email or checking error logs at odd hours "for free" really do bring value to a company though. I don't think of myself as having trouble with work/personal separation. I like my vacations, try to enjoy work trips, and don't feel obliged to work into the night. That said, I tend to scan my email when on vacation or if I'm watching TV at night and, if there's something I can deal with in a few minutes or at least flag as "I'll get back to you next week," why not?
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    Why not? Because you’re on vacation! That’s a good enough reason for me.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      I don't feel an obligation. But if I can make someone else's life easier with minimal investment on my part. Why not?
Aloha 8y ago
Does anyone actually accomplish 40 hours of work a week within a 40 hour work week? In a typical 40 hour work week, it'd take me 80 hour 'of time at work' to actually get the 40 hours of actual work, meaning most weeks, I might to 18-25 hours of actual work. The issue, I think here, is requiring people to go to a place, to do a thing, for X hours per week - given the ability to be flexible about working hours, most people will do more, in less time, and be more available for customer needs.
- gscott 8y ago
  You are working even if what you are doing is an interruption or helping someone else.
humbleMouse 8y ago
In the NYT comments someone said >>"Consulting and Finance are like sports..." In my experience this is exactly true. Assuming competence in the area you are consulting - It is most definately a sport of managing expectations more than doing actual work. Companies expect to be billed for time you spend sitting around waiting for emails and other things of that nature. More hours "worked" is not equal to more actual "work".
Balgair 8y ago
There is also the opposite idea: ghosting hours. Where you are actually working 80 hours, but billing 40. I've had meetings where the bosses of the consulting firm state that the more junior consultants much be in before the client, must leave after the client, and much not ghost hours at all. When they say these things, they really mean that you must ghost hours. A lot of consulting is learning to read between the lines. A great show on the topic is House of Lies. Though most consultants won't claim to have seen everything in the show, they have seen about half. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lies
cascom 8y ago
Having worked in one of these businesses - I would have been classified as a “faker” - but that is the wrong way to interpret it, if you are: inefficient, can’t prioritize/identify what’s really important, can’t make yourself available with a cheery attitude after hours/weekends, and can’t manage expectations, these jobs are killer If you can, it’s very plausible to work a 55ish hour week (excluding the occasional hell weeks) with the same if not better work product and great client and employer satisfaction

147 points by attfarhan 8y ago

This makes perfect sense to me. From what I've seen anecdotally, it seems most people can work 80-hour weeks at full productivity for maybe one or two weeks, tops. After that, the fatigue starts to set in and that person's performance starts to decline. In the long run, the person working 80 hour weeks isn't getting much more done than someone working far fewer hours, simply because during those 80 hours they are operating at greatly diminished mental capacity.

cma 8y ago
Depends if they are engaged or not and how taxing it is. People can play MMOs or MOBAs way past 40hr/week and they don't all have a huge performance dropoff. They are probably more prone to RSI and stuff at more hours though. I wouldn't be surprised to see a productive 100hr week in some kind of MMO player.
- yorwba 8y ago
  > People can play MMOs or MOBAs way past 40hr/week and they don't all have a huge performance dropoff. Is that your personal observation or do you have access to some actual data? I imagine pro-gaming teams do use all kinds of analytics to maximize their performance, stuff like hours played, hours slept, nutrition, physical exercise ... so there must be some pretty good datasets out there. Unfortunately probably all closely-guarded secrets. In my own experience as a heavy Anki user, I have found sleep to be the most important determiner of performance. When I sleep 1–2 hours less, my error rate the next day roughly doubles.
- kaikau 8y ago
  I wake up and work until I go to sleep. Every day. 8 hours of sleep, either in one chunk or in two (biphasic). I feel better with biphasic. So that leaves 13 hours each day after subtracting eating time, housekeeping, bathroom "tasks", reddit/HN, and falling asleep transition time. 91 hours per week. Been living like this for years without burnout, although I think at 100-130 hours one is asking for trouble.
  - Letmesleep69 8y ago
    Can I ask why? I did similar hours for a while but I couldn't date or see friends or exercise and even sit done and read a book for long. If I was forced to do that often I would have quit. Its not like its hard to get another job as a developer. When working 80 hours or more you're basically doing the work of two developers and the company should really just hire another IMO.
    - kaikau 8y ago
      The startup is my baby and I'm solo. I don't just develop, I design, market, handle investor relations, etc. I wouldn't do this if it wasn't this specific situation. Edit: Haven't had a girlfriend or dated or regularly socialized with friends in years, but I don't feel bad about it. Most of my friends who I respect the most are just as busy as I am pursuing their goals in music and neuroscience. :) Edit2: I do hire additional devs when I can afford it, but that doesn't have an effect on my hours.
      - Letmesleep69 8y ago
        If you're working for yourself I suppose I can understand that.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  I think the OP is talking about knowledge workers specifically. If you're a security guard, I think it's obvious you could do your job for 100 hrs with very little drop off in performance.
  - chris_mc 8y ago
    Don't think that's true, watchstanding positions are amongst the most mind numbing jobs that actually require your full attention. I stood watch in the Navy as officer of the deck in port, and I can truly say that 6 hour shift was torture for the mind, much worse than coding 6 hours.
    - Aeolun 8y ago
      To a point I guess, but I imagine the drop off in performance from 2 hours to 8 hours of standing watch is much larger than the one from 8 to 20 hours.
      - chris_mc 8y ago
        From 8 to 20 hours watchstanding, you're basically not watchstanding. It went like this: Hour 1: Fine Hour 2: Walk around a bit, then fine Hour 3-5: Jesus, I never should have joined the Navy Hour 6: I want to pull out my 9mm and use it on myself Hours past 6: I am functionally useless Some jobs that aren't knowledge-jobs are hard on your mind, too. The reason security/watchstanding is so hard is that you have to be alert at all times while doing, effectively, jack squat. It isn't a much different level of alertness than I am in while programming, now that I think about it carefully.
    - JamesBarney 8y ago
      Granted I've only met 5 security guards in my life. But not a single one gave the job their full attention. All basically saw the job as a warm body position.
01100011 8y ago
Depends. There was a time in my 30s(IIRC) where I had 3 contracts going at the same time. It was exhilarating. My mind was constantly humming and I was really into it. I was pulling about 80 hours a week for a few months. It really depends on the type of work and how much it engages you.
- kentosi 8y ago
  The parents comment still seems to hold though. What you're talking about is a fixed time period that you knew was going to end (once the contracts' deadlines arrived). Imagine having to continue working like that.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
danieltillett 8y ago
Having worked longer than 80 hour weeks for years at a time at full productivity I know it is possible for at least some people. The issue for me was not one of fatigue, but of a slow corruption of my perception of reality. The longer I worked at this pace the worse my ability to differentiate important from unimportant became and I made some very "interesting" decisions during that time. I still work more 40 hours a week, but nowhere near the level I did in the past.

seibelj 8y ago

I have definitely seen this is various ways. Another outcome of the intense pressure to deliver hours is when you have a simple phone call with lawyers / accountants and there are 2 parters, 3 associates, and an assistant taking notes. Haven’t you guys heard of email? Oh yes, everyone must be there in person because it’s critical they hear it directly (so you can bill us $5000 for a 30 minute call).

gringoDan 8y ago

I'm convinced that most of the long hours of corporate America can be explained as a form of signaling. This is just more evidence that there are a whole lot of bullshit jobs out there. [0] Anecdotally, when I worked as an investment banking analyst, there was hardly anything to do from 9-5, then 6-8 hours of work was dumped on my desk at 5pm. Half of that work was un-doing changes I made the day before because the VP on the team didn't like the updates the Associate wanted. Organizations are set up to be inefficient in order to signal how serious they are and what hard workers they have. [0] https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

da02 8y ago
Was this the reason or part of the reason you left being an investment banking analyst? What's the educational requirements/qualifications to for an investment banking analyst?
- rohitb91 8y ago
  Not OP but to get in generally go to an ivy league school, or go to a non target with an amazing GPA, ECs and luck, or have connections.
  - gringoDan 8y ago
    OP here - I agree with this. If you're at an Ivy the banks and consulting firms come to you, then it's just a matter of 1) studying the basic interview questions and being able to speak semi-intelligently about financial topics and 2) interviewing a ton until you find a firm with people similar to you and like your personality. I left because I was depressed during the job and realized I wanted work with fewer hours that was more intellectually challenging. I saw people 2-3 years ahead of me in their careers leaving for startups and thought I'd skip the 2 years of misery and do that straight away.
    - da02 8y ago
      What industry/field did you go into afterwards? B2B or B2C startups?

ousta 8y ago

men and women. parity folks. dont be so misogynist

Shikadi 8y ago
Quoted from the article: "Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it."
jnwatson 8y ago
Read the article. It was mostly men that faked it, while women would request lighter work more formally and be punished for it.
withinrafael 8y ago
The study included women and results differed between the two. Misogyny is not in play here. "A second finding is that women, particularly those with young children, were much more likely to request greater flexibility through more formal means, such as returning from maternity leave with an explicitly reduced schedule. Men who requested a paternity leave seemed to be punished come review time, and so may have felt more need to take time to spend with their families through those unofficial methods." [Edit: Unfortunately, a moderator made a similar error and revised the title. Ah well. The previous title was: How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters]
- ghaff 8y ago
  One big difference is that you can often gain flexibility unofficially when you are, well, flexible about it. Fewer hours or less travel so long as you do so informally and schedule around various work constraints. Whereas if you really need shorter work hours or to minimize travel or whatever in a predictable way, you probably need to get it down on paper.
- rustcharm 8y ago
  It's "misandry" not "misogyny". A hatred of men.
- 8y ago

NikolaNovak 8y ago

Interesting but unsurprising article. I receive a thank you note from our practice lead every time my utilization exceeds 100% in a week. I have repeatedly asked to be removed from such "congratulatory" emails, as I don't find it something to be lauded. In my mind, this means I/we have not properly planned, scheduled, costed, or staffed a project. Market disagrees though; long hours are absolutely the norm in my segment, and while I've seen managers of all types, those more and less understanding that there's life outside of the office, nonetheless there is an overall feeling that if you're not working long hours, you're not working hard or contributing or dedicated enough. At the same time, it is an accepted paradigm that project/client/company will suck what they can out of you, and it's up to you to set the limits, communicate them and deliver quality. I have observed people who at beginning of the project indicate "I will take my vacation, and I will spend my weekends at home", and due to quality of their work and abilities, are respected, promoted, recognized. So there's culture and there's individual response to the culture. [personally, I "enjoy" a sprint or two every now and then, there's excitement in building something and working hard towards it; but still believe that continued crunches are failure of planning. That doesn't mean I'm immune to them :P, just that I refuse to consider them the norm]

sdfsdfffff 8y ago

"consultants who quietly lightened their workload did just as well in their performance reviews as those who were truly working 80 or more hours a week suggests that in normal times, heavy workloads may be more about signaling devotion to a firm than really being more productive." Except that they didn't measure productivity, they measured performance reviews. Those might not be the same things. I think it has long been known that if you make a big fuss about your contributions, you will be noticed more (and maybe even be promoted). Productivity and perception of productivity might be only weakly correlated. I don't know if the conclusion should be to fake more, or for managers to notice more. In any case, would expect the market to take care of it (good workers aggregating in companies that notice their productivity).

Nelkins 8y ago

(2015)

dang 8y ago
Added. Thanks!

kristjansson 8y ago

N.B. this article is from 2015

horsecaptin 8y ago

It is possible to do 80 hour workweeks if: - The rest of your life is exactly where you want it to be. So, this one isn't true for 99% of the population. - You have the correct mental attitude for it. This isn't true for most of the population either. - You are doing exactly what you want to do in life. The chance that you could be distracted by another possibility / avenue is next to nil. None of the above are impossible asks, but they certainly unreasonable. But some managers like to ask anyway, mostly as a form of leverage. If you're foolish or desperate enough to fall for it, then well, only fools and desperate people will give you time week after week to listen to how much you hate your boss / job.

bluGill 8y ago
It is possible for anyone to work a 80 hour week. However is it worth it? If you are single and getting paid a lot it might be - with the idea that you save everything and retire early. If you have a social life at all (including a family) and this is a less than once a year request, taking one for the team is probably the right thing to do, but only if it really is a rare thing.
- screye 8y ago
  It is not like you are getting paid more hourly for each extra your put in right ? If what you suggest is done, then you are basically selling your youth for equivalent time with an older body. It may even be worse, since a 50 year old you may be worth a lot more /hr than you are now. So it isn't even an equal trade. I have struggled to understand workoholic mentality for a while. Sure you work more, but to what end. For what ?

ghaff 8y ago

I'm not sure where the "faking it" comes from. The point seems to be people who get their job done and don't make a big deal out of structuring their work arrangements to create more flexibility/fewer hours don't get penalized. Which squares with my personal experience though obviously doesn't apply everywhere and isn't something you can always depend on being able to do on an informal basis. I find modern communications are a big help in this regard. In past lives, there often was no real replacement for being literally "by the phone." Though I still took month-long vacations in those days which some co-workers found rather hard to comprehend.

thrower123 8y ago

Well, duh. I can't even work a full 40 hour week as a programmer without being completely braindead. I think the dirty secret is that as long as you hit the meetings you're supposed to be at, and show your face at strategically useful times, nobody cares the slightest whether you are actually there or not - as long as the work gets done. > The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply. This is generally good advice to live by. If something is worth doing, you are wildly better off just doing it, rather than asking for permission to do it. At best, the thing you wanted to do will get denied, and at worst so crusted up with input and bikeshedding from everyone that is sucked into it that it is actively detrimental.

baddox 8y ago
> nobody cares the slightest whether you are actually there or not - as long as the work gets done. That only works if the people with authority have the desire and ability to determine whether the work is being done. When they don’t, easy metrics like working hours unfortunately are what they care about.
- WaxProlix 8y ago
  Even easier because then you don't have to do the work; just make extra sure that you've put in the face time to the right moments.
swingline-747 8y ago
I would wager fewer hours coding and more doing exercise, yoga, meditation, getting massages, sauna, etc. would lead to greater productivity per calendar unit time.

tajen 8y ago

I was surprised at the evocation of “men” in the title. It is obvious that if we found a flaw in some women, we wouldn’t say it outright in the title. Whereas finding a flaw in men calls directly for a click, since it appeals to the human’s innate hate for men. Then I understood: “It’s a disadvantage for women, because they ask more formally.” There you go, misandry followed by feminism. Which is fine. If it goes both ways. Would we ever find an article titled as such: “Some people beat their children. 70.2% of them are women[1]. Here’s why it matters.” [1] CDC 2001-2006 And it matters because 60% are boys. And most (don’t remember how many, about 90%) of the prison population received hits on the head as kids. And what they need is not judicial treatment, nut medical treatments. 97% prison population is men. It also matters because, even when sane father ask for custody, we consciously decide to give it to the mother. Father is ambassador of Sweden and mum is in psychiatric yard beating up the baby? That’s right, give the baby to the mother[2]. [2] Breivik, 77 killed. It’s more than time women stop getting the newspaper headline for unfair misandry, while men commit suicide 3 times the rate of women: The two of them are related. But it doesn’t matter. They’re men.

scandox 8y ago

Of course. In the past. Now. And long into the future. It's vastly easier to project a convincing illusion than it is to sustain a reality. Self interested, shrewd people will always put their energy into the illusion. Illusions give you massive leverage. Reality grinds you down. And the conscientious and the passionate burn their energies to actually help the magicians cast their shabby spells.

tptacek 8y ago

A friend of mine used to check all his code into a private CVS repository and then trickle his commits out into the official company repository over the course of a week.

sheepmullet 8y ago
I still do this because I don’t have very consistent productivity. Some sprints I will get 3-4 sprints worth of work done whereas in others I won’t be able to complete my work. Since I started smoothing out my performance I have gone from being seen as a decent dev to a 10x dev.
- aptwebapps 8y ago
  If you have slow patches, you're slow. If you have fast patches, the work must have been easy, right?

fludlight 8y ago

Are SciHub links allowed on HN? EDIT: Here's the DOI string of the paper referenced: 10.1287/orsc.2015.0975

spiderfarmer 8y ago

You Americans are messing eachother up with your workaholic culture. Relax folks, there’s much more to life.

leroy_masochist 8y ago
The tens of thousands of highly educated Europeans who voluntarily work in stressful finance jobs in New York provide an interesting counterpoint to your argument.
- borroka 8y ago
  Because it is difficult to get those challenging jobs in Europe and you are getting paid much more in the US. Plus, a certain "capitalism-envy" of the European. I agree with the point about the weird American workaholism and the very peculiar boring personalities, low worldliness, and loneliness of the highly paid American professional.
- spiderfarmer 8y ago
  I guess there always will be some masochists.

epx 8y ago

Two anedoctal stories of mine: a) I do some consulting for a healthcare company, and bill them by the hour. It is very difficult to reach 60h/month, I managed to get that once, and it translated to an incredible amount of work. Initially they were worried about the cost, and put a cap of 80h/mo, but I never got even near that. b) Back in the 1990s I worked as technical support for a small ERP company. I had a colleague that kept a frantic pace the whole day, did a lot of overtime, always buried by work, complaining, etc. He had so many booked overtime hours, he took a 3-week vacation solely on them (in Brazil you have 30 day of vacation per year, as well). Those 3 weeks were the most quiet I ever saw in my work. I even found the K&R book and learnt C (I was really amused to find that UNIXes came with a free compiler. Development tools used to cost several thousand USD back then.)

GirlsCanCode 8y ago

What does this really have to do with "men" other than the white-knight author seems to have an issue with "men?"

leroy_masochist 8y ago

Makes fairly rational sense -- in addition to the hard deliverables provided by professional services firms (market studies, fairness opinions, consummated M&A transactions, etc), their "product" is to a great extent the warm-n-fuzzy feeling that clients get from the general perception that a bunch of intelligent, highly educated and broadly competent, insecure overachievers are burning the midnight oil to triple-check that everything is going to plan and there are no contingencies left unexamined. As such, on a meta level, the "product" in this regard is not some kind of impartial measurable standard of client-related vigilance, but rather, constant reinforcement of a perception in the client's mind. And so, it's totally rational that, for example, investment banking associates will always respond to a late-night email from the client's internal M&A guy or corporate development lady on the same night the incoming email was sent -- even if it's an email of the "hey no need to respond to this, just wanted to make sure I sent you the attachment" variety. Maintaining the perception that someone is always watching the store is paramount not only in maintaining client relationships, but also in justifying high fees.

rustcharm 8y ago

Original title is: "How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters" and the author makes a Big Deal over this being a "man" thing. Why do the people at "hacker news" want to gloss over the sexism behind the author's shaky premise? Normally an inflammatory article like this would be [flagged] and the submitter shadowbanned.

dang 8y ago
Because it was an interesting article. When there's an interesting article with a baity title, we ask submitters to de-bait the title, or (failing that) do it ourselves. This is in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

foxfired 8y ago

When I was hired as a consultant, the very first day I was asked to give an estimate on how long it will take me to complete the project. (Coincidentally, it was for a New York Times) I spent my time studying the code base and the requirement. By the end of the day, I told them around ~20 hours. It was a fairly easy project. I spent a month and a half to complete the project. What I didn't take into account was how long it will take to get resources from them. When I asked a question, it took anywhere from 48 hours to an entire week to get a response. When I completed a task, I got no response. But I needed to be on call because they would sent hundreds of emails about everything except what was needed. I charged them for all the hours I spent waiting for them, and reading long emails that led nowhere.

mgkimsal 8y ago
it might have still ended up as 20 hours of your time doing the actual 'work', but all the ceremony and support around everything else if 5-10x what you think it will be.
Infernal 8y ago
My rule of thumb (can't recall where I first heard of this, but it's not original) for translating from an engineer "how long will it take me to create a technical solution" estimate into the real world is to convert the estimate into the largest whole-number unit (so ~20 hours would be 3 days), then double the scalar and increment the unit, in this case 3 days would become 6 weeks - which while not perfect, is much closer to the reality than your original estimate. I'm amazed by how often this rule has turned out to be reasonably accurate, though I'm sure there's some selection bias at work. And it certainly starts breaking down when you begin estimating in multiple months - however I would counter that if you're able to credibly estimate months of work on a solution, then you don't need this particular rule of thumb :)
- Swenrekcah 8y ago
  Berlin Brandenburg Airport was originally supposed to take 5 years, so according to this it will take 10 decades. Currently 1.5 decades in.

raverbashing 8y ago

In the same spirit of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes", I'll describe this as "making stupid demands is asking to be deceived" " For people who were good at faking it, there was no real damage done by their lighter workloads." Well, duh. The customer is the limiting factor in a lot of cases and downtime means you get to focus more on the work (when you're actually working)

tetha 8y ago

I think one important takeaway is also: A good, motivated team will make it work. For example we need to cover 0800 - 1800 due to SLAs, but usually we have 2 guys just organizing Kita (kindergarten) duty with their wifes. One brings his kids to the Kita in the morning and comes in at around 0900, and the other guy comes in early and leaves at 1700ish to collect the kids. Simple. We also had this when our application just went into a royal meltdown earlier this year and we had pretty much constant OOH work to do. Eventually we arranged that I don't come into the office for a week or more, and I'll just work reduced night hours. This allowed us to tackle that mayhem much more effectively - they'd figure out issues and create patches and manual tasks. I'd apply them overnight, and hand them everything that caught on fire this time. I don't like to work at night, but I'm the guy without ties and who's gonna complain about 20 - 25 hour weeks?

georgewsinger 8y ago

"You shouldn't work long hours" is consensus advice masquerading as contrarian advice. You can see this for two reasons: (i) count the number of people in threads like this who advise against working long hours; (ii) go to Amazon.com and count the number of books that advocate (often using empirical evidence) against working long hours. The same is true for "you shouldn't multitask". Everyone thinks they're clever for saying this. But in fact it's just consensus advice (and of course: there are good reasons to think it). The question then is: under what conditions is the consensus opinion wrong? Why do notable outliers (i.e., people like Elon Musk) do the opposite of consensus and perform so well (Elon in particular not only consistently works 80+ hour weeks, but seems to multitask quite a bit)? The interesting data points are always the outliers, not the averages.

semi-extrinsic 8y ago
Do we even have well-documented cases of these outliers? Are any unbiased outsiders allowed to watch what e.g. Musk does in his 80-hour week? How do we know it's not 40 hours of hard work interleaved with 40 hours of "working" meals, travelling and other low-productivity time?
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  > other low-productivity time? How would you even measure low productivity time for someone like Musk who has incredible leverage? For example I was chatting with a friebd about his companies product and it sounds awesome. Yet for me this was a “low value” conversation as I know I couldnt get my workplace to purchase it. Musk on the other hand can delegate the evaluation and if it’s a good fit his company will buy it. So for Musk the same conversation could be very high productivity.
  - runj__ 8y ago
    Musk spending time with his children could be seen as training future C*Os (I'm not saying this is what he claims to do). Someone reading an business magazine is business development. Someone reading up on video game development is educating themselves in the database query issue they're currently investigating at their workplace.

blhack 8y ago

Can some of you chime in with your experience here re: consulting and hours. None of the consultants I know of would estimate a time requirement (other than something incredibly loose) for any kind of job bigger than a few hours. The MO seems to be some version of: "You give me [the consulting firm] a maximum per week that you can afford on this, and we will have a weekly stand up where we talk about what was completed, what will be completed by next week, and how we can allocate resources to accomplish these things." To me this seems like an incredibly good way of managing this relationship. However, plenty of people I talk to on the other side (trying to hire consultants) insist that they need a full bid of how much time a project will take. I almost always tell these people that I can't really give them that answer, and that I also to be wary of anybody who actually responds to this question. Am I the strange one here? I almost wonder if this is the source of the overage that is being talked about in this article. They're quoting them $foo hours per week, when in reality it will take $foo/4. So when they get the work and finish it at $foo/2, they don't lose money. That seems really dishonest to me.

Spooky23 8y ago
I don’t know if you’re strange, but you aren’t somebody whom I would award a consulting contract to at a big company. The usual model is to budget 3-5x the actual requirements, filling it with knowledge transfer and other complete the work you can accomplish yourself as early as possible and and milk as long as possible.
bluGill 8y ago
No, it is a constant issue in software. Business people want to know upfront how much it will cost. It makes budgeting very easy. Unfortunately if the project is anything non-trivial it is impossible to know up front how long it will take. Business works great making the Model T Ford on an assembly line. A small improvement to the assembly line will cost X and result in Y more cars being built. If you need to make more cars it costs N to make a whole new line. All easy to budget for and the business becomes easy - no surprises, not failed projects. Of course as Henry Ford discovered the hard way (apparently more than once) eventually your competition will invest in something a little more open ended that will produce results.
8y ago

brycehamrick 8y ago

'...people, who in her terminology were “passing” as workaholics, received performance reviews that were as strong as their hyper-ambitious colleagues.' This is the takeaway from the article. Hours worked != delivered value. One of many reasons I've always steered consulting engagements towards another compensation model, e.g. weekly retainer fees.

wallflower 8y ago

I remember a story from a BigCo consultant. Many years ago, when he worked remote and wanted to appear busy, he turned on his oscillating fan and tied a string to it and then to the wired mouse of his computer so that the 2000-era “idle” detection (used for chat “presence”) of the computer would not kick in.

baxtr 8y ago

Don’t be fooled. That third group has also a shitty life. I’ve been there. I had exactly that life. It’s not the working hours that take the toll on you but the lifestyle in general. Just consider this from the article: “I try to head out by 5, get home at 5:30, have dinner, play with my daughter,” he said Yes, I did that too. You’re dead zombie walking after a couple of weeks getting up at 4:30am just to be back at 5/6pm to play with the kids, catch up on mails and calls you’ve missed after the family went to bed until 11/12 or even 1am just to get up at 4:30am again for the next round

runj__ 8y ago

I had a big fight with the other co-founders of a company regarding work hours a while back. Most programmers hit something like up to four "good" hours per workday, the biggest problem is capturing those hours while they're at work. A separate problem is hitting those hours while they have access to their manager or colleagues that can help them overcome small but time consuming problems. I'd like to think that programmers have a creative or even artistic occupation (personally I'm more manager than programmer these days). Forcing something creative out is rarely good or even possible. The majority of the employees in my organization are in sales. There's a limit to where you can push that for most people too, but it is a different kind of limit. Personally I've only put in proper 80-hour work weeks something like three times working as a disillusioned startup "employee" or as a consultant in extreme crunch because of launch marketing costs. Sure, something is deployed and it you certainly feel a sense of accomplishment but it's not something that should be used by any serious company expecting people to stay longer than a year or two. With that said: people checking/answering their email or checking error logs at odd hours "for free" really do bring value to a company though.

ghaff 8y ago
<With that said: people checking/answering their email or checking error logs at odd hours "for free" really do bring value to a company though. I don't think of myself as having trouble with work/personal separation. I like my vacations, try to enjoy work trips, and don't feel obliged to work into the night. That said, I tend to scan my email when on vacation or if I'm watching TV at night and, if there's something I can deal with in a few minutes or at least flag as "I'll get back to you next week," why not?
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Why not? Because you’re on vacation! That’s a good enough reason for me.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I don't feel an obligation. But if I can make someone else's life easier with minimal investment on my part. Why not?

Aloha 8y ago

Does anyone actually accomplish 40 hours of work a week within a 40 hour work week? In a typical 40 hour work week, it'd take me 80 hour 'of time at work' to actually get the 40 hours of actual work, meaning most weeks, I might to 18-25 hours of actual work. The issue, I think here, is requiring people to go to a place, to do a thing, for X hours per week - given the ability to be flexible about working hours, most people will do more, in less time, and be more available for customer needs.

gscott 8y ago
You are working even if what you are doing is an interruption or helping someone else.

humbleMouse 8y ago

In the NYT comments someone said >>"Consulting and Finance are like sports..." In my experience this is exactly true. Assuming competence in the area you are consulting - It is most definately a sport of managing expectations more than doing actual work. Companies expect to be billed for time you spend sitting around waiting for emails and other things of that nature. More hours "worked" is not equal to more actual "work".

Balgair 8y ago

There is also the opposite idea: ghosting hours. Where you are actually working 80 hours, but billing 40. I've had meetings where the bosses of the consulting firm state that the more junior consultants much be in before the client, must leave after the client, and much not ghost hours at all. When they say these things, they really mean that you must ghost hours. A lot of consulting is learning to read between the lines. A great show on the topic is House of Lies. Though most consultants won't claim to have seen everything in the show, they have seen about half. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lies

cascom 8y ago

Having worked in one of these businesses - I would have been classified as a “faker” - but that is the wrong way to interpret it, if you are: inefficient, can’t prioritize/identify what’s really important, can’t make yourself available with a cheery attitude after hours/weekends, and can’t manage expectations, these jobs are killer If you can, it’s very plausible to work a 55ish hour week (excluding the occasional hell weeks) with the same if not better work product and great client and employer satisfaction