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Is 50 hours that crazy? Does anyone else feel like these days they put in well above 40 hours a week doing WFH? Granted, during the day I can't stay 100% focu

Is 50 hours that crazy? Does anyone else feel like these days they put in well above 40 hours a week doing WFH? Granted, during the day I can't stay 100% focused in my apartment, so I waste maybe an hour throughout the day online. Then I feel guilty and stay online well into the evening/weekends. I can't meet my deadlines otherwise.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
Over the long haul? yeah it is. Some people absolutely adore their work, so 50 or even 60 hours is nothing. The majority of us though 40 hours is plenty.
mikestew 6y ago
Is 50 hours that crazy? I dunno, an extra 25% over what is normally expected? What exactly is your threshold for a ticket on the Crazy Train?
DocTomoe 6y ago
In large parts of the western world, 50 hours is actively illegal and opens the company up for legal trouble with the state.
haswell 6y ago
50 hours can mean the difference between: - Getting a healthy amount of sleep or not - Having time to eat a proper breakfast or not - Having time to prepare dinner (vs. order out) - Getting that evening bike ride in before dark or not - And on and on I can't help but feel your response to this is part of the problem. 50 hours is a lot of hours, and we shouldn't normalize it. This was less clear to me earlier in my career. I held a similar viewpoint for awhile. As time went on, and I saw the long term impact on those around me, and eventually myself, I shifted my viewpoint greatly.
- Arrath 6y ago
  >I can't help but feel your response to this is part of the problem. 50 hours is a lot of hours, and we shouldn't normalize it. While I absolutely agree with you, my career first as a union laborer and now a construction field engineer have really jaded me to the count of hours. It can be very different across different industries. On my current project Engineers are expected to be present to support field operations, which means starting before the craft workers to ensure everything is ready for the day (possibly as early as 0500) while still being here until 1700 like any other 'office job'; its pretty outrageous. At least when I was a laborer I was hourly. What can be done to fight the normalization of this? For myself, I fought my way to a senior engineer position and lobbied for a larger staff. Now I not only have enough people to do the job, but we stagger our shifts out to each get around 8hr/day while ensuring full coverage for our field guys throughout their shift. I've worked to instill a culture of "hey you've been here long enough, go the fuck home" with my team. But it took too long to get to this point, and much more tooth and nail fighting than it should have to convince higher ups of the need for what they saw as 'excess staffing', even for my department which is very much production critical.
lagadu 6y ago
Definitely crazy. I've been WFH for a few years now and I've created a method that works really well for me: I make a hard separation between work time and me time. During work time (which starts at 8:00 local time for me) I don't do anything else that I wouldn't do at the office, and this goes on until 15:30 (I have lunch during work), at which point I shut down my work computer and phone and never touch them again until 8:00 the following day. I'm actually more productive because I don't spend > 1hr socializing during the day, like I did at the office and have far fewer interruptions. Regarding deadlines, we plan our sprints and provide estimates for all tasks. Sometimes they slip but if I spend more time one day working on something, you bet your ass that I'm leaving that same amount of hours early next Friday. It's been years since I worked 40 hours in any given week.
stefanmichael 6y ago
> I can't meet my deadlines otherwise. working for free to meet deadlines is more a problem with the deadline than it is with your working additional hours
aidenn0 6y ago
Plenty of people work 40 hours per week with a 1 hour (each way) commute. I think that is worse than 50 hours per week with a minimal commute. Maybe some people have a job that is worse than sitting in stop-and-go traffic, but I'm not sure. My current commute is about 20 minutes by car, which is the longest commute I've had in almost 20 years and I really don't like that. Prior to COVID I switched to biking to work and that was much more pleasant (40 minutes of exercise beats 20 minutes of driving hands-down for me, and we have showers at work).
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  didn't think about the commute. Yeah, that definitely figures in . There are only so many podcasts and audible books.
deleted 6y ago
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peruvian 6y ago
Not really. I log in and 9am and close my laptop at 5pm. If I work more it's like 42 hours per week... I'm definitely not working an extra two hours per week day.
Hamuko 6y ago
>Is 50 hours that crazy? The collective agreement for IT service sector workers (incl. software developers) in Finland is 37.5 hours per week, so it sounds pretty crazy actually.
rafaelvasco 6y ago
For me it's a no go. These days, even 40h/week is too much. As I got older (33 now), I got less tolerant to long work hours. When I code I get super focused, hardly even move. So in a week I'll get 20h of focused work at most. The rest will be me wanting to get up and go away.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Over the long haul? yeah it is. Some people absolutely adore their work, so 50 or even 60 hours is nothing. The majority of us though 40 hours is plenty.

mikestew 6y ago

Is 50 hours that crazy? I dunno, an extra 25% over what is normally expected? What exactly is your threshold for a ticket on the Crazy Train?

DocTomoe 6y ago

In large parts of the western world, 50 hours is actively illegal and opens the company up for legal trouble with the state.

haswell 6y ago

50 hours can mean the difference between: - Getting a healthy amount of sleep or not - Having time to eat a proper breakfast or not - Having time to prepare dinner (vs. order out) - Getting that evening bike ride in before dark or not - And on and on I can't help but feel your response to this is part of the problem. 50 hours is a lot of hours, and we shouldn't normalize it. This was less clear to me earlier in my career. I held a similar viewpoint for awhile. As time went on, and I saw the long term impact on those around me, and eventually myself, I shifted my viewpoint greatly.

Arrath 6y ago
>I can't help but feel your response to this is part of the problem. 50 hours is a lot of hours, and we shouldn't normalize it. While I absolutely agree with you, my career first as a union laborer and now a construction field engineer have really jaded me to the count of hours. It can be very different across different industries. On my current project Engineers are expected to be present to support field operations, which means starting before the craft workers to ensure everything is ready for the day (possibly as early as 0500) while still being here until 1700 like any other 'office job'; its pretty outrageous. At least when I was a laborer I was hourly. What can be done to fight the normalization of this? For myself, I fought my way to a senior engineer position and lobbied for a larger staff. Now I not only have enough people to do the job, but we stagger our shifts out to each get around 8hr/day while ensuring full coverage for our field guys throughout their shift. I've worked to instill a culture of "hey you've been here long enough, go the fuck home" with my team. But it took too long to get to this point, and much more tooth and nail fighting than it should have to convince higher ups of the need for what they saw as 'excess staffing', even for my department which is very much production critical.

lagadu 6y ago

Definitely crazy. I've been WFH for a few years now and I've created a method that works really well for me: I make a hard separation between work time and me time. During work time (which starts at 8:00 local time for me) I don't do anything else that I wouldn't do at the office, and this goes on until 15:30 (I have lunch during work), at which point I shut down my work computer and phone and never touch them again until 8:00 the following day. I'm actually more productive because I don't spend > 1hr socializing during the day, like I did at the office and have far fewer interruptions. Regarding deadlines, we plan our sprints and provide estimates for all tasks. Sometimes they slip but if I spend more time one day working on something, you bet your ass that I'm leaving that same amount of hours early next Friday. It's been years since I worked 40 hours in any given week.

stefanmichael 6y ago

> I can't meet my deadlines otherwise. working for free to meet deadlines is more a problem with the deadline than it is with your working additional hours

aidenn0 6y ago

Plenty of people work 40 hours per week with a 1 hour (each way) commute. I think that is worse than 50 hours per week with a minimal commute. Maybe some people have a job that is worse than sitting in stop-and-go traffic, but I'm not sure. My current commute is about 20 minutes by car, which is the longest commute I've had in almost 20 years and I really don't like that. Prior to COVID I switched to biking to work and that was much more pleasant (40 minutes of exercise beats 20 minutes of driving hands-down for me, and we have showers at work).

stjohnswarts 6y ago
didn't think about the commute. Yeah, that definitely figures in . There are only so many podcasts and audible books.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

peruvian 6y ago

Not really. I log in and 9am and close my laptop at 5pm. If I work more it's like 42 hours per week... I'm definitely not working an extra two hours per week day.

Hamuko 6y ago

>Is 50 hours that crazy? The collective agreement for IT service sector workers (incl. software developers) in Finland is 37.5 hours per week, so it sounds pretty crazy actually.

rafaelvasco 6y ago

For me it's a no go. These days, even 40h/week is too much. As I got older (33 now), I got less tolerant to long work hours. When I code I get super focused, hardly even move. So in a week I'll get 20h of focused work at most. The rest will be me wanting to get up and go away.