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I work 60 hours a week and cook most days. Where it gets hard is over 70 hours a week.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fzeroracer 4y ago
You're an engineer at Google working 60h weeks meaning either Google is scamming you or you're scamming yourself. And more importantly, you and I as engineers are going to operate in drastically different mental spaces than someone that has to work 60h weeks solely to survive. Someone that needs to work between multiple jobs, or deal with physically intensive jobs or customer facing jobs are not going to able to turn off after work as easily. My parents were fishermen and would spend way more than that out in the bay due to the necessities of the job. When you're done with that work, after hauling bait and working on the boat you have zero energy to do much else afterwards.
atom058 4y ago
I believe the focus on comparing 'hours worked' is very damaging to our culture. The effect is that employment becomes a competition, where 'they who works the most hours are the most valuable/noble'. In reality people who work more than the standard working hours (40) are effectively undercutting everyone else in terms of price per hour worked. Working more hours for the same pay is not something to be proud about; it is an attack on you colleagues. The overwork behaviour causes increased competition, where everybody's expected work hours will silently increase ('why don't you work as hard as they are'). The employer will of course be happy, because they get a better deal. Giving away your time for free shouldn't be something honorable. It's a bit different if you are getting compensated for the extra hours, e.g. if you are the founder of the company, or are getting good overtime pay. But I still think there needs to be moderation. Emolyees should be working less than they are today, not more. 40 hours is already too much to have a balanced life. I think a more reasonable level would be somewhere around 4x7 = 28 hours per week. But instead of moving an inch towards that level, our societies have gone in the other direction, where unpaid overtime is the norm. I hope we can see a attitude change about work / overwork in my lifetime. But I'm not very optimistic about that.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

You're an engineer at Google working 60h weeks meaning either Google is scamming you or you're scamming yourself. And more importantly, you and I as engineers are going to operate in drastically different mental spaces than someone that has to work 60h weeks solely to survive. Someone that needs to work between multiple jobs, or deal with physically intensive jobs or customer facing jobs are not going to able to turn off after work as easily. My parents were fishermen and would spend way more than that out in the bay due to the necessities of the job. When you're done with that work, after hauling bait and working on the boat you have zero energy to do much else afterwards.

atom058 4y ago

I believe the focus on comparing 'hours worked' is very damaging to our culture. The effect is that employment becomes a competition, where 'they who works the most hours are the most valuable/noble'. In reality people who work more than the standard working hours (40) are effectively undercutting everyone else in terms of price per hour worked. Working more hours for the same pay is not something to be proud about; it is an attack on you colleagues. The overwork behaviour causes increased competition, where everybody's expected work hours will silently increase ('why don't you work as hard as they are'). The employer will of course be happy, because they get a better deal. Giving away your time for free shouldn't be something honorable. It's a bit different if you are getting compensated for the extra hours, e.g. if you are the founder of the company, or are getting good overtime pay. But I still think there needs to be moderation. Emolyees should be working less than they are today, not more. 40 hours is already too much to have a balanced life. I think a more reasonable level would be somewhere around 4x7 = 28 hours per week. But instead of moving an inch towards that level, our societies have gone in the other direction, where unpaid overtime is the norm. I hope we can see a attitude change about work / overwork in my lifetime. But I'm not very optimistic about that.