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In a place I worked, if someone left at 5:30 pm, the CTO used to joke "half day today?", even though the person came in at 9 am. In many places I worked in the

In a place I worked, if someone left at 5:30 pm, the CTO used to joke "half day today?", even though the person came in at 9 am. In many places I worked in the US, it is somewhat of a badge of honor to spend long hours at work (how many of those are actually productive, is a different story). And these aren't even startups. This can't continue - an entire generation of people have been brainwashed that hard work = good, costs be damned. It has to change. IMHO, the only reasons to work long hours are - real emergencies (like the kind doctors and cops deal with, not the kind when some photo sharing app goes down for 15 mins), or you're working on your own business. It is ridiculous to work 70 hours a week bringing someone else's dreams to life, especially while getting paid for only 40 out of that 70. This is even more annoying when the said job adds no value or negative value to society.

ErikVandeWater 7y ago
I'm pretty sure I understand what you mean when you clarify emergencies. I'd like to add that it's pretty silly how many hours doctors work regularly. In a triage situation, it's understandable for someone with that job to work 100 hours, but if that is a regular week they will make unnecessary mistakes.
reymus 7y ago
> In a place I worked, if someone left at 5:30 pm, the CTO used to joke "half day today?", even though the person came in at 9 am. In both the places I've worked, it's a common joke anyone says when somebody leaves. everybody laughs and nobody gets offended. It doesn't mean anything.
- EnFinlay 7y ago
  As far as I can tell, jokes are an important method of communication. There are times where they are light-hearted, or just part of the culture, but there are other times (where there is, say, one person in a position of authority, making the same joke repeatedly) where it is meant to call out a behaviour and implicitly shame it. It's like if you're on the bus and someone's sitting really close. Some people would say "Excuse me, you're too close", but others would jokingly say "Little close, aren't you?", but the meaning is the same - Move.
- scotu 7y ago
  it is toxic though, repear a (lie) joke enough time and becomes the truth
- GuiA 7y ago
  That’s a very toxic attitude to have, especially as a manager. You don’t know that “nobody gets offended”. All you know is that “no one chose to express their discomfort”, a very different thing.
  - rubber_duck 7y ago
    It's pretty easy to make sure nobody gets offended - you communicate (in a serious setting) that you value results over hours worked and you demonstrate this in practice. At that point irony and sarcasm is safe territory (appropriate or tasteful is another matter). Being afraid to joke about this because it could be missunderstood tells me you are failing at that which is far more important than worrying about what are potential interpretations of your jokes. I would say this applies to any value.
    - GuiA 7y ago
      It’s not being afraid to joke, it’s making sure that employees do not feel like they are receiving mixed signals (“he says results are what matters but he’s always joking about me leaving early when I’m leaving at a reasonable hour and getting my work done?”). This is particularly important when considering employees who might not have English as their first language, or come from a culture where joking is perceived differently.
- ACow_Adonis 7y ago
  interesting, in that from my perspective it's a joke that only works if you're reinforcing a cultural attitude that they're breaking a norm. I.e. it wouldn't exist or even thought to be said unless there was an inherent expectation/value in working long hours. Also, I'd probably worry that such frequent jokes walk a very fine line towards passive aggressive behavior (again, such jokes just won't exist where there is no expectation). obviously I don't know your workplace, so there's a good possibility no one gets offended, but just pointing out there's different interpretations of such actions, and just because no one's saying anything doesn't mean it's not happening... (
- jdreyfuss 7y ago
  Joking that a reasonable leaving hour == too early isn't a good joke. It plants the idea that the reasonable hour maybe isn't reasonable in other peoples' minds. That kind of thing only works as a joke when it's about an obviously late hour (i.e. well past the norms of the company). If someone stays until 9pm to put out some fire and then people joke about working a half day, its obvious that there's no underlying meaning to that, since the leaving hour is well past the established norms
bamboozled 7y ago
I read the book “Why we sleep” and they present some statistics from studies. One being that lack of quality sleep from working such long hours which can negatively impact sleep and has massive economic costs due to workspace accidents, errors and poor judgement. From memory, one statistic showed Japan was losing the most money by far. I highly recommend the book for those interested in improving your life.
- kittiepryde 7y ago
  I found that study. It's pretty neat. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1791.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1791.html (PDF link near bottom)
chris11 7y ago
> IMHO, the only reasons to work long hours are - real emergencies (like the kind doctors and cops deal with, not the kind when some photo sharing app goes down for 15 mins) Even that doesn't make tech look great. Hours are bad for most doctors, but it seems like emergency medicine handles it a lot better. Doing some brief reading it looks like doctors can work 40 hours a week or under in the ER if they want to, and this is shift work. The poll here tops out at 45hrs/week https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/how-many-hours-are-you-working-a-month.1378537/ https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/how-many-hours-are-...
- ACow_Adonis 7y ago
  there's a real open question regarding app downtime. I know being 'on call' is a common occurrence in a number of tech positions, but if the thing really 'needs' to be responsive and up 24 hours VA day 7 days a week and something can explode and take it down, then one should probably look at what other sectors with that kind of need do and have rotating shift/ rosters... course, that would probably result in lower wages for those shift (that being said, in my country, doctors working hours in the likes of hospitals are notoriously unsafe/long/unreasonable/unethical as well, so your mileage may vary)
- arkades 7y ago
  The problem with the way doc hours are handled is: there's zero back-up. Whether private practice or group or hospital, everyone is utilized at maximum. I had a colleague once get terrible food poisoning - and had to come in anyway. They crawled in. We saw them, stole a bed from the trauma surgeons' on-call room, stuck an IV in him, and told him to sleep. When he emerged two hours later, clinging to his IV pole, we were grateful for the manpower. That's not counting all of our "unofficial hours". You officially work, whatever, 9-6. You're packed with patients for those hours, though, with almost no time to chart, so you go home and chart ... and on a daily basis at home, you're catching texts from colleagues for informal consults and requests to see patients the next day. Your "off" hours aren't off - and if you have to take call, and end up driving back to the hospital... EM "handles it better" (a phrase I'm loathe to use) because they have legit shift work, with no continuity. No one calls them for a consult; they're not responsible for anyone after they leave because all their patients are short-stay, they don't have to see "every patient on X roster," they just have to manage their ER while they're in it. They manage shifts because of features more-or-less specific to their specialty. A handful of other specialties share those features, and manage to do the same. But not most. Hell, I chose to pursue my specialty specifically because it lacks emergencies. I never wanted to wake up in the middle of the night post-residency; no one pays you enough for those hours (you're generally not paid for those hours.)
cmurphycode 7y ago
Hours in front of screen are perhaps the easiest metric to check up on workers. Unfortunately, it's also not well correlated to productivity! Lazy managing, for sure. Personally, I'm pessimistic that any metric about productivity can be useful in the long term, but I recognize that in this reality, there WILL be metrics used to judge you. So, what's the best way to handle this? Is there anything an individual contributor can do to guide towards better metrics, or even just the perception of such?
megablast 7y ago
> This can't continue It doesn't continue, I have never accepted that or let it get to me. Why do you?
thrwo3123123 7y ago
Ditto. Happened to me in Tokyo - I was told work times were flexible and so in order to avoid peak Yamanote traffic I started doing 7-4 only to receive an passive-aggressive e-mail from the HR person that such behaviour can't be tolerated.

ErikVandeWater 7y ago

I'm pretty sure I understand what you mean when you clarify emergencies. I'd like to add that it's pretty silly how many hours doctors work regularly. In a triage situation, it's understandable for someone with that job to work 100 hours, but if that is a regular week they will make unnecessary mistakes.

reymus 7y ago

> In a place I worked, if someone left at 5:30 pm, the CTO used to joke "half day today?", even though the person came in at 9 am. In both the places I've worked, it's a common joke anyone says when somebody leaves. everybody laughs and nobody gets offended. It doesn't mean anything.

EnFinlay 7y ago
As far as I can tell, jokes are an important method of communication. There are times where they are light-hearted, or just part of the culture, but there are other times (where there is, say, one person in a position of authority, making the same joke repeatedly) where it is meant to call out a behaviour and implicitly shame it. It's like if you're on the bus and someone's sitting really close. Some people would say "Excuse me, you're too close", but others would jokingly say "Little close, aren't you?", but the meaning is the same - Move.
scotu 7y ago
it is toxic though, repear a (lie) joke enough time and becomes the truth
GuiA 7y ago
That’s a very toxic attitude to have, especially as a manager. You don’t know that “nobody gets offended”. All you know is that “no one chose to express their discomfort”, a very different thing.
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  It's pretty easy to make sure nobody gets offended - you communicate (in a serious setting) that you value results over hours worked and you demonstrate this in practice. At that point irony and sarcasm is safe territory (appropriate or tasteful is another matter). Being afraid to joke about this because it could be missunderstood tells me you are failing at that which is far more important than worrying about what are potential interpretations of your jokes. I would say this applies to any value.
  - GuiA 7y ago
    It’s not being afraid to joke, it’s making sure that employees do not feel like they are receiving mixed signals (“he says results are what matters but he’s always joking about me leaving early when I’m leaving at a reasonable hour and getting my work done?”). This is particularly important when considering employees who might not have English as their first language, or come from a culture where joking is perceived differently.
ACow_Adonis 7y ago
interesting, in that from my perspective it's a joke that only works if you're reinforcing a cultural attitude that they're breaking a norm. I.e. it wouldn't exist or even thought to be said unless there was an inherent expectation/value in working long hours. Also, I'd probably worry that such frequent jokes walk a very fine line towards passive aggressive behavior (again, such jokes just won't exist where there is no expectation). obviously I don't know your workplace, so there's a good possibility no one gets offended, but just pointing out there's different interpretations of such actions, and just because no one's saying anything doesn't mean it's not happening... (
jdreyfuss 7y ago
Joking that a reasonable leaving hour == too early isn't a good joke. It plants the idea that the reasonable hour maybe isn't reasonable in other peoples' minds. That kind of thing only works as a joke when it's about an obviously late hour (i.e. well past the norms of the company). If someone stays until 9pm to put out some fire and then people joke about working a half day, its obvious that there's no underlying meaning to that, since the leaving hour is well past the established norms

bamboozled 7y ago

I read the book “Why we sleep” and they present some statistics from studies. One being that lack of quality sleep from working such long hours which can negatively impact sleep and has massive economic costs due to workspace accidents, errors and poor judgement. From memory, one statistic showed Japan was losing the most money by far. I highly recommend the book for those interested in improving your life.

kittiepryde 7y ago
I found that study. It's pretty neat. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1791.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1791.html (PDF link near bottom)

chris11 7y ago

> IMHO, the only reasons to work long hours are - real emergencies (like the kind doctors and cops deal with, not the kind when some photo sharing app goes down for 15 mins) Even that doesn't make tech look great. Hours are bad for most doctors, but it seems like emergency medicine handles it a lot better. Doing some brief reading it looks like doctors can work 40 hours a week or under in the ER if they want to, and this is shift work. The poll here tops out at 45hrs/week https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/how-many-hours-are-you-working-a-month.1378537/ https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/how-many-hours-are-...

ACow_Adonis 7y ago
there's a real open question regarding app downtime. I know being 'on call' is a common occurrence in a number of tech positions, but if the thing really 'needs' to be responsive and up 24 hours VA day 7 days a week and something can explode and take it down, then one should probably look at what other sectors with that kind of need do and have rotating shift/ rosters... course, that would probably result in lower wages for those shift (that being said, in my country, doctors working hours in the likes of hospitals are notoriously unsafe/long/unreasonable/unethical as well, so your mileage may vary)
arkades 7y ago
The problem with the way doc hours are handled is: there's zero back-up. Whether private practice or group or hospital, everyone is utilized at maximum. I had a colleague once get terrible food poisoning - and had to come in anyway. They crawled in. We saw them, stole a bed from the trauma surgeons' on-call room, stuck an IV in him, and told him to sleep. When he emerged two hours later, clinging to his IV pole, we were grateful for the manpower. That's not counting all of our "unofficial hours". You officially work, whatever, 9-6. You're packed with patients for those hours, though, with almost no time to chart, so you go home and chart ... and on a daily basis at home, you're catching texts from colleagues for informal consults and requests to see patients the next day. Your "off" hours aren't off - and if you have to take call, and end up driving back to the hospital... EM "handles it better" (a phrase I'm loathe to use) because they have legit shift work, with no continuity. No one calls them for a consult; they're not responsible for anyone after they leave because all their patients are short-stay, they don't have to see "every patient on X roster," they just have to manage their ER while they're in it. They manage shifts because of features more-or-less specific to their specialty. A handful of other specialties share those features, and manage to do the same. But not most. Hell, I chose to pursue my specialty specifically because it lacks emergencies. I never wanted to wake up in the middle of the night post-residency; no one pays you enough for those hours (you're generally not paid for those hours.)

cmurphycode 7y ago

Hours in front of screen are perhaps the easiest metric to check up on workers. Unfortunately, it's also not well correlated to productivity! Lazy managing, for sure. Personally, I'm pessimistic that any metric about productivity can be useful in the long term, but I recognize that in this reality, there WILL be metrics used to judge you. So, what's the best way to handle this? Is there anything an individual contributor can do to guide towards better metrics, or even just the perception of such?

megablast 7y ago

> This can't continue It doesn't continue, I have never accepted that or let it get to me. Why do you?

thrwo3123123 7y ago

Ditto. Happened to me in Tokyo - I was told work times were flexible and so in order to avoid peak Yamanote traffic I started doing 7-4 only to receive an passive-aggressive e-mail from the HR person that such behaviour can't be tolerated.