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"Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."
- bitops 15y agoA lot of nice feel good answers on this post. But for some of us, too freaking bad if you have to work long hours. I'm not personally a fan of long hours, but not everyone can work for a LinkedIn. And in many shops, long hours are unavoidable regardless of how much well-intentioned process is in place.
- peteretep 15y agoI realize it's rarely this simple, but get a new job if you care. The labour market is a market, and unless you leave, citing whichever of manager incompetence or lack of money is the problem, it won't get fixed because /it doesn't need to be fixed/.
- pnathan 15y agoThat is a sign of bad planning & bad management. And software engineers' acquiescence to being abused like that ensures that it will continue.
- gte910h 15y agoRoutine long hours are sign of a broken process. Rare spats of long hours due to abnormal events is not an issue
- liljimmytables 15y agoOr even due to awesome coding. I would hate to miss out on my occasional bouts of can't-drag-me-away-from-the-keyboard inspiration simply because someone "fixed" my work ethic and shut the office at 5pm. But yeah, I appreciate the sentiment that no-one should be allowed to pillage their workers' evenings and weekends simply because they don't want to tell their boss "I promised something I couldn't deliver."
- mburney 15y agoI'm curious how efficient most coders are even in an 8 hour work day. I find that I can only log about 4 - 5 hours a day (on average) of solid coding time (or marketing/business work). This is because I limit myself to an 8 hour work day, but of course there are breaks and inevitable down time.
- orlick 15y agoOur startup team of 10 has kept pretty strict time logs for the past 3 years. We have an official policy of 40 hour work weeks, but yeah, no developers are able to have that much productive time. Usually we see about 25-30 hours of solid development time, 5 hours of meeting/admin time, and 5 hours of lunches/coffee/break time.
- djb_hackernews 15y agoI'd like to hear more about the choice to keep strict time logs in a startup environment. Especially strict ones that provide enough granularity to see 5 hours of break time/wk.
- quizbiz 15y agoMe too. (Another case where seeing up votes would be useful)
- hugh3 15y agoIf you can honestly spend 75% of your office time doing actual development, and divide the rest evenly between breaks and meetings, I'd like to see how. I've recently got into pomodoro timing. I set the timer for 45 minutes, focus totally on work, then take a fifteenish-minute break. I can't do it all day though. I know the classic pomodoro technique is supposed to be 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off, but a five minute break is too short for me (I like to get out of the building) and the rhythm of the half-hours just goes by too quickly. 45 minute serious-work periods work much better for me.
- run4yourlives 15y agoI think 37Signals is completely accurate with their assessment of working time. It mirrors your take of a maximum of 4-5 hour blocks that can effectively considered "productive work".
- malkia 15y agoThis broken process ships a lot of games :(
- tomjen3 15y agoI used to think so too, but the truth is that it ships at most 7 or so games, the rest being copies of that with slight (mostly trivial) variations. I don't know how many hours Braids creator worked, but I have a feeling that it was a lot less than a deathmarch.
- MartinCron 15y agoIt ships a lot of derivative and buggy games while chewing up game developers like consumables.
- Hisoka 15y agoIt's nice that LinkedIn has a great process: regression testing and the like, but what if you work in an environment where you can't afford to test every single little thing, and where business models, let alone requirements change constantly (ie. a startup)? What if a competitor just launched a feature that will put you out of business if you don't implement the same thing in 48 hours? What if there is a mission-critical bug that has to be fixed by the end of the day or else all your customers will bail out? Secondly, most who work in Wall Street will tell you it's not about the process. It's about the culture. People don't work until 7 or 8 because they're fixing bugs, or because development is so slow. It's because they're expected to and if they get up and leave at 5, it leaves a bad impression on management and their co-workers.
- djb_hackernews 15y agoThose sound like outliers and they happen. I think he was getting at chronic long work days. However, I'd like to make a few points. regression tests should be baked in from the start, especially easy at a startup starting from fresh. Features that can be implemented in 48 hours have no business being in the way of your success. Mission critical bugs are a symptom of a broken process. They happen, but shouldn't be pathological. Yes, and that culture stinks. Luckily for software developers at this point in time we have MANY options and don't have to be subject to shitty working conditions.
- plastics 15y agoIf your company is put out of business by a feature from a competitor you can not copy it within 48 hours, you do not have a business.
- rokhayakebe 15y agoWhat if a competitor just launched a feature that will put you out of business if you don't implement the same thing in 48 hours? Even if we stretched the 48 hours to 48 days, I am pretty sure this has never happened.
- mattmanser 15y agoFacebook suddenly rushing out stuff as Google+ launches. Reddit having to work crazy to take up the exodus from Digg. That bookmark service that did great out of the del.ici.ous fiasco (sorry I honestly can't remember your name!). Perpetuum having a mass of new players because of the Eve monocle incident. I'm sure others can think of times when one business has had to react rapidly to either manoeuvres or failures of another business. Not quite put out of business, but massive opportunity cost if the reaction is not made.
- dave_sullivan 15y agoI know a lot of people who seem to like working long hours. It allows them to think they're getting more done, but I suspect that many of the processes involved could be optimized if they thought about it a bit. For me, I work long hours but it's spread out over the course of a day (so removing breaks/bs it's probably not much more than 40 hours p/wk), and I love what I do, so I do get a lot done (and it feels less like work than other jobs I've had). For other jobs, like being a big firm lawyer, long hours are kind of baked in: You get paid a salary (a big one), the company you work for bills you out by the hour, person with the highest billables doesn't get fired. That's probably not likely to change, it's not a process problem per se, and I suspect there's plenty other jobs generally like that.
- gte910h 15y agoThere is an opposite though. Legal projects don't really seem to have budgets like software projects do. I know at my rates, if I work 14 hour days, my productivity shoots down, and I blow the face and upper body off the budget in no time.
- gte910h 15y agoThere is an opposite though. Legal projects don't really seem to have budgets like software projects do. I know at my rates, if I work 14 hour days, my productivity shoots down, and I blow the face and upper body off the budget in no time.
- gte910h 15y agoThere is an opposite though. Legal projects don't really seem to have budgets like software projects do. I know at my rates, if I work 14 hour days, my productivity shoots down, and I blow the face and upper body off the budget in no time. I tell people this, but they still want it sometimes. But really, it's usually better to cut expectations and go at a measured pace all the time.
- gte910h 15y agoThere is an opposite though. Legal projects don't really seem to have budgets like software projects do. I know at my rates, if I work 14 hour days, my productivity shoots down, and I blow the face and upper body off the budget in no time. I tell people this, but they still want it sometimes. But really, it's usually better to cut expectations and go at a measured pace all the time.
- rdouble 15y agoLong hours are not always because of a broken process, or death march deadlines. Many times when I have worked long hours, it was because I was really into the problem I was trying to solve, and didn't want to quit.
- funkah 15y agoYes, precisely. This only applies if you were forced to work the long hours, as opposed to doing it because you felt like it.
- DaveWAlbert 15y agoWhich is why I don't like the 9-5 nonsense either. Also programming isn't just done at the computer. When I am working on a problem, I am working on it at lunch, on the bus, on my cycle, sitting out side starring into space, etc. Left to my own devices I would "work" infront of my work pc 60 hours one week 5-10 the next 40 the next two. Being forced to be in the office a set time is no good for anyone in my position.
- billswift 15y agoSame here. Any time you are working a difficult problem, especially one that is difficult because of its complexity, you have to keep a lot of context in your head. In that situation, keep going as long as you can and are still making progress. This is the same problem, but in a more extreme context, as the "getting back on track" problem caused by interruptions that was discussed in Peopleware, and frequently since.
- brunnsbe 15y agoThere was a discussion program on radio here in Finland (Eftersnack on YLE Vega) where they talked about heavy jobs and one job, along the other works job that contained physical challenge, was the job as a software engineer. They compared it to playing chess all day long; "the next move is yours and you cannot get it out of your head, you think about the move (read problem in your code/application) all day and night long". Although they went a little bit over the top with the comparison they still hit the nail.
- edw519 15y agoWhat do long hours often represent? Enterprise: Incompetent management, lazy co-workers, and spoiled users. Small Business: Tough competition and limited resources. Startup: Taking advantage of opportunites that may not pass this way again.
- swombat 15y agoThat's very succinct, witty, and more or less diametrically opposed to the point of the OP on StackOverflow. Did you read it? :-) He's making the point that regular long hours are always a sign of bad management. I'd tend to agree. Any business can be run in balance with a reasonable lifestyle. If you're working overtime very often on your own business, it's either because you're incompetent, or lazy, or greedy, or failing (see 'incompetent'). If you're working regular long hours on someone else's business, it's because they are incompetent/lazy/greedy.
- trb 15y agoDon't you think it's a bit unfair to call everyone who works long hours incompetent? I've seen point two that edw519 made a few times. If there's not enough work to pay for another employee, but just enough to pay for your kids college tuition if you make a lot of overtime, what should you do? Growing your business can take years before you can relax a little.
- swombat 15y agoIf the business can't grow and it's taking all your time, it's a crap business. Do something else with your time - no one's forcing you to continue flogging that particular horse. In today's world of opportunity, there are multitudes of ways to run a business that doesn't destroy your life to make a meagre profit... if you persist in running an unprofitable business which takes all your time, then, I guess that would also fall under "incompetent"...
- trb 15y agoThis breaks down as soon as you have dependencies, e.g. a family, as you can't simply abandon your source of income. But aside from that, just because it takes a couple of years to grow a business into profitability doesn't make it not worthwhile, even if you have to put in a lot of work during those years. A large customer with an gradual payment system based on accreditation would be such a scenario. Of course it's incompetent to cling to an unprofitable undertaking, but there are valid reasons for working overtime over an extended period.
- rokhayakebe 15y agoTo start with working 40 hours in itself is probably too much. I do not have studies to back this up, but I think after 5 working hours it is best you stop for the day.
- ptman 15y agoI have this vague recollection of reading a study that claimed people in research and development should be working around 25 hours per week for best productivity. And I've never been able to find that study after that =( I think it was German. I keep wondering if I dreamed about it...
- d0m 15y ago"Any time you have worked long hours it is a sign of a broken process." Or extreme pleasure hacking something.
- terhechte 15y agoIf I'd count all the over hours that I did for my current company over the years, I think it would be the equivalent of one year of work. And yes, most of that wasn't necessary but bad planning and a fraked up process.
- Duff 15y agoThe amusing thing to me is that the question was closed as offtopic. Stackexchange is slowly turning into a Usenet/Wikipedia hybrid.
- Apocryphon 15y agoAll of the best StackExchange questions are the ones that are closed for being too chatty.
- chrisbennet 15y agoUm, that's what is supposed to be. It is not a chat room. It's a place to get answers (or give them). "All questions on Stack Exchange are expected to be objective and have concrete answers; we’re not a place for conversation, opinions, or socializing. We also expect questions to represent real problems, not just imponderables, hypotheticals, or requests for opinions."
- Duff 15y agoThe top voted, open question on that particular SE site is "What should a developer know before building a public web site?" I'm a huge fan of SE, I just find the random prickyness of shutting stuff down without editing annoying.
- robryan 15y agoI think they miss out on an opportunity there, just tag them differently or put them in a different section or something. The question and answer stuff is great for searching but when you have put together such a knowledgeable community it seems like a waste not to allow them to engage on topics like this.
- jgilliam 15y agoAh, so this is why it takes LinkedIn forever to add new features.
- warmfuzzykitten 15y agoProcess schmoces. Any time I work long hours it's a sign I want to work long hours. Sometimes you're hot and you just don't want to stop.
- Androsynth 15y agoI'm like this also, but would you be hot for 60 hours a week for a year? I think the op is referring to extending time periods.
- thomasgerbe 15y ago"Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process." I hate absolute statements like these. Some of my best works have come from working long hours voluntarily.
- sliverstorm 15y agoHow about in a cyclical project start -> project release process? I am not referring to "crunch time" where you realize everything is broken and your schedule was unrealistic; rather, many projects I have participated in have an escalating work load as you near release, because a lot of the work simply cannot be done before previous stages are completed. Unless you are a large entity that can heavily "pipeline" by running 10 or 20 projects at once, and shuffle people around as a project's workload changes, to avoid ever working overtime you'd need to either have to hire too many employees, or hire/fire regularly. Not entirely dissimilar to trying to balance a server cluster with load spikes.
- danielharan 15y agoWork that can't be done because of dependencies, long release cycles instead of incremental delivery, planned escalating work load... What part of that do you think is NOT broken?
- sliverstorm 15y agoIt may not be the romantic ideal, but I don't see the fix. Try as you might, some work has dependency trees. About all I can think of is over-hiring, or release cycles could be extended, but for us TTM is pretty sensitive.
- Androsynth 15y agoMy biggest problem with long hours (aside from the long hours themselves), is that like most programmers, I'm not constantly productive for 10 hours a day. It frustrates me that I have to sit in my desk for long periods where I'm unproductive before my muse hits and then I enter hugely productive periods (which often take place outside of normal business hours). I don't think some m-f, 9-5 union type situation is the proper answer, but theres gotta be a better way. Sitting at my desk when I'm not being productive is a waste of my life.
- jrockway 15y agoWork somewhere else? It's 3pm and I'm just now ready to head in to the office.
- felipemnoa 15y agoUsed to do this all the time at my old job. There were so many distractions during the day that I would just come in late and code all by myself. It was awesome.
- KeyBoardG 15y agoJust because LinkedIn was a success does not mean a blanket statement can be made for all. I would have titled it "All too often". Too many outside factors can have an impact. I would use Wordpress for the example of working long hours and also being a success.
- ctdonath 15y agoOne comment mentioned "Fizz-Buzz" which I hadn't heard of. Interesting tidbit. http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-who-grok-coding/ http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-dev...
- hugh3 15y agoThat confused me. Am I overlooking something that makes the problem non-trivial? On further reading I'm pretty sure I'm not, but perhaps the very triviality of the problem confuses people enough that they have difficulty with it. ("Is there some weird edge case I'm not considering?") The other big question with FizzBuzz is whether it's worth making your code more complicated in order to make it slightly shorter. That is, do you start off with a "if i % 15 == 0" or not? My inclination is yes, because I'd rather have ten lines that obviously work than eight lines that might not.
- three14 15y agoI interviewed someone, and following a hunch, asked him to write FizzBuzz, and he couldn't do it within a half hour. He wasn't overthinking it; he just couldn't decompose the problem.
- akeefer 15y agoOne thing my company has done since way back in its startup days (we're pretty successful at this point) is put an emphasis on working reasonable hours, and it's been successful for us. Some people still choose to work long hours because they're excited about what they're working on, but it's not expected or asked of anyone. There were two reasons for doing that even as a startup, and I think they're both still valid. Reason #1 is that working long hours often becomes an excuse to not prioritize properly. Working under realistic constraints forces you to really decide whether some feature is worth it, or if spending 40 hours on Feature A is better than spending 40 hours in Features B, C, and D combined. Too often the answer at companies is, "Well, A, B, C, and D are all really important, so just work harder and do everything." That's a very seductive trap to fall into, but it's absolutely the wrong escape valve. At least in my view a failure to focus and prioritize properly is far more often a cause of failure for startups than "we didn't work hard enough." Reason #2 is that you want to avoid burning people out if you expect to be around for the long haul. Our company just turned 10, and we still have a surprising number of long-tenured engineers, which I'd attribute in large part to the work environment and the relative sanity of the work/life balance people can have. If you expect people to work 60+ hours a week every week, they're not going to stick around for 10 years; they're going to get burned out and bored and they'll feel like the only way to get a break is to quit. You can quibble with the second reason, but I think that even in a situation where you feel like you have to get a ton done and working 40 hours a week isn't an option, it's very important not to use "we'll just work harder" as an excuse to avoid making the hard decisions around priorities.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoThe punch line is that this is how LinkedIn grew, however I know for a fact that the operations guys put in some odd hours :-) That being said, its symptomatic. I've been places where the hours were modest and lots got done, and places where the hours were insane and nothing got done. So the title (and the point the OP makes) don't really hold up. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that if you can't get done what you need to get done during nominal work hourse, then one possibility is that your process is broken. Of course that isn't as impactful :-)
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- AlexC04 15y agoHonestly I think the real answer is "if you're asking that question, it's time to find a new job" I've been through this very same ringer recently and strongly believe that changing from within is far more trouble, far more stressful and far more difficult than the effort is worth. If you've got so many options, leave. I've very happy in my new role and it took getting out of the old one to fix it.
- mcculley 15y agoCertainly, if you work on an assembly line. If you work in some industry where you have to come up with solutions to problems, the workload may be more lumpy because nobody has figured out how to build a production line for it yet.
- patternpaul 15y agoI am surprised no one has quoted something from Steve Blank http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-entrepreneur/ http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-entrepreneur... "Work Smarter Not Harder As I got older I began to realize that how effective you are is not necessarily correlated with how many hours you work. My ideas about Customer Development started evolving around these concepts. Eric Ries’s astute observations about engineering and Lean Startups make the same point. I began to think how to be effective and strategic rather than just present and tactical."
- forgotAgain 15y agoGoldratt saw this 30 years ago. No one has done a better job explaining why this is true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliyahu_M._Goldratt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliyahu_M._Goldratt
- jowiar 15y agoThe broken process may not be company-specific. We are in an industry that is driven not just by getting things to market, but by getting things to market faster than the other guy. As we all know, software does not really scale too well to adding people to the problem. Thus, being to market faster is often achieved by coaxing more work out of the same number of people, this results in long hours. Thought experiment: Imagine some sort of truce declared among startups to skip this part of the arms race. Or, imagine a law passed capping work weeks for software engineers at 50 hours, no exceptions (again, the reason this happening by law would be to eliminate the arms race). What would it do?
- barnaby 15y agoThat's a good thought experiment. I imagine we would very suddenly see an explosion of automation solutions for making engineers accomplish more with less time. We would also see an almost perfect eradication of most time-sinks in software development.
- trustfundbaby 15y agoAny time you have worked long hours it is a sign of a broken process. -------------------------- I see the point they're trying to make, but this is the problem with speaking in absolutes ... My personal preference (and I suspect other developers do this too, but I could be very wrong about that) is to work when I'm in the zone ... sometimes I can go for 8 hours, others I can go 24 hours straight without any trouble (other times I don't get anything done for a couple of days) ... during projects when I'm knee deep in building something, its not uncommon for me to do 10 - 14 hour days ... not because its expected of me, but because that's how I work. As long your employer isn't forcing you to do death marches/ insisting you work on weekends and you're getting good rest, exercise and eating well, I don't see a problem.
- DavidSJ 15y agoOr it's a sign that you love your job.
- rick888 15y agoI've seen this at companies where the boss or manager either doesn't understand the development process or just wants to make money and doesn't care. So you have situations where a feature should take 2 weeks to implement, but they want it in a week (so you need to work extra hours to make up for it). This is one of the reasons I hate working for other people. If I'm going to be wasting my youth away for something, I'm going to be getting all or the majority of the profits.
- gxs 15y agoI don't know - and I absolutely loathe statements like these. Sometimes, I prefer to work 18 hours in one day and enjoy 2 days free, rather than 9 to 5 it for 3-4 days. At this point, you're insulting my personal preferences, not my process.
- FrancescoRizzi 15y agoIndeed: "Late nights are a sign of scope failure. Hero mode is a sign of scope failure." (J. Fried of 37signals, from http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2185-a-new-way-of-working-a-two-month-recap http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2185-a-new-way-of-working-a-t... )
- lwat 15y agoOne of our most successful clients (grew from nothing to 200+ employees in 5 years) has always had a very strict 6pm closing time. Everyone must be out of the building at 6pm and there's no 'working from home' or 'work on the weekend' allowed.
- robryan 15y agoI'm sure this cut people off in the zone when 6pm hit from time to time. As others have said here I think that the best is a happy medium, no enforced long hours but no enforced breaks either.
- felipemnoa 15y ago<rant> What a bunch of B.S. In fact I cannot believe it is even here in Hacker News. "Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process." This is a such a horrible generalization. Successful people always work hard/long hours to make something succeed. Imagine telling your kids that to be successful you should work just 40 hours and no more. They will be easily steamed rolled by other kids that are willing to work harder/ go the extra mile. Here is a relevant piece from: http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html >>Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office!<< >>What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this.<< Yes, sometimes it may mean that working long hours there is something wrong and the title should reflect that rather than just generalizing. I remember there was a study done at one point that the best piano players had worked longer hours per week practicing as opposed to the so so piano player. You want to work 40 hours and be happy? Good! But I doubt you will be able to achieve greatness like that. Achieving success requires sacrifices. Edison is another example of a guy that would work really long hours. Look at everything that he accomplished. You want to be mediocre, work 40 hours. You want to be great like Edison, work your ass off. Don't listen to the little people that tell you not to work your ass off. That is the road to mediocrity. Now, if you are saying that you want to have time for family and be another cog in the machine, 40 hours are great for you. </rant> edit - OK, after further reflection I think that what the title means is that IF you are just a cog in the machine of a large corporation AND you are working long hours then something is terribly wrong. If that was the original intent then I completely agree. Is OK to do it once in a while but if it is normal then something is terribly wrong. Now, for academics, athletics, other competitive fields and even startups at least in their earlier faces you still have to work long hours or the other guys will steam roll you. Eventually though you do hit a point of diminishing returns so you have to watch for that.
- jhdavids8 15y agoOne of the worst articles I've ever seen posted on HN. I'm not going to even read through the comments, but I hope most are simply stating that this is complete BS. Otherwise, you're arguing simply for the sake of arguing. Not everything should be argued, not everything should be over-analyzed. Working long hours is often a choice; you do it to get ahead, you do it to improve your product, you do it for any number of reasons (and yes, maybe you do it because something is broken). Any argument to the contrary supporting this stupid argument is simply BS.
- jhdavids8 15y ago"This one time, at one job I had, I was able to work 9-5 Monday-Friday. The company I worked for was successful. Therefore, ANY job that requires extra hours is the sign of a broken process." Why would anyone hire a dude like this with such poor reasoning skills?
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- biznickman 15y agoSo says employee #178 .... I'm being sarcastic, but I doubt employee #1 @ LinkedIn would tell you they worked 9-5
- phatbyte 15y agoI'm lucky, I can't remember doing overnight or weekends, but for the first time we will have to do, but I'll get paid 50% of my salary for two extra working weekends. It really confuses to see kids with red bulls typing code all day and night. I mean, how can you think clear and be productive that way ? You may do more, but do you do it better and deliver quality code ?
- benaston 15y ago>> It really confuses to see kids with red bulls typing code all day and night Those kids are learning and will probably make a success of what they are doing. The payoff comes later.
- known 15y agoNot applicable if you're debugging code
- hm2k 15y agoMaybe you're working long hours to fix the process? That's the only reason I work long hours.