4 ms·

Nobody works 80 hour weeks. It’s just that these people have a weird interpretation of what constitutes “work”. I recall reading an article about some exec and

by ein0p 3y ago

Nobody works 80 hour weeks. It’s just that these people have a weird interpretation of what constitutes “work”. I recall reading an article about some exec and they even considered their meals to be “work” if they thought about work even a bit, it was really stretching the definition. If that’s how you interpret it, a lot of us in this industry are working much longer hours than what we get paid for. IDK about others but I don’t have an “off” switch in my head.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kuchenbecker 3y ago
Ive worked a 110 hour week, a few 80-100 hour weeks. But stable state more than 60 burnout is within a month.
- ein0p 3y ago
  That must also be some weird definition of work. Otherwise this doesn’t even leave time for meals, personal hygiene or for communicating with your s.o, let alone any kind of rest.
  - mewpmewp2 3y ago
    Not everyone has a s.o. In addition you can work remotely, order everything in, and nothing truly terrible happens skipping a week of hygiene. I think I frequently have days like that if I add my side projects as work on top of actual work. I wouldn't want to spend that time on actual work as of now though. I usually don't eat for the first 12 hours and then at some point eat everything I have for the day all at once. Kind of intermittent fasting, but not intentionally or for those reasons. I.e. if I am excited about a particular side project I would do that. So really depends on whether the work is exciting enough. If it is, this would be easy. It is rare if you are working for someone else or specifically a large company though. If it is truly interesting work then you wake up focus completely in it and all of sudden it is end of day. In that case it is a little bit like an addiction where you just always have to build this one thing more, delaying eating, sleep, etc. For usual work I would maybe only consider it if I was paid 4x the usual hourly rate for it.
    - kuchenbecker 3y ago
      My wife covered the slack that week and I'm 100% family after 6pm most nights
      - mewpmewp2 3y ago
        Covered the slack? I do not follow. Edit: oh you must mean household chores, I was thinking about the App. That your wife was so pissed off she decided to cover the monitor your Slack was open on.
    - interbased 3y ago
      Agreed. I’ve put in days where I did nothing but work because the project was fun and also due in a week or very soon. Food really doesn’t take that long especially if you order in or pick up close by. Doing this consistently though would surely lead to burnout. Unless, of course, you just consistently love the project you’re working on. Even then, you need a break.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      What's the point though of working so much you have no time left to live your life? Making money is just a means to be able to live IMO.
      - Willish42 3y ago
        I completely agree but I will say that as somebody who intellectually understands that principle, overwork and burnout are still insanely common and arguably even rewarded in some work cultures / tech in general, and I screw this up a lot. Even people who understand this rule / philosophy end up violating it if they're not careful. ... and with that I think I'm probably going to sign off for the day. It's late.
      - sandspar 3y ago
        Cuz for some people work is fun. It's like asking a guy who likes fishing why he fishes so much. "But you've already caught enough for dinner...?"
- orf 3y ago
  You worked 16 hours a day for 7 days? I doubt that - you would be getting only 3-4 hours sleep max?
  - kuchenbecker 3y ago
    I got about 5-6 hours of sleep, and meals were 10 minutes. Basically most waking hours for a week. 1 week of that is not that big a deal as long as it's not expected.
  - bicx 3y ago
    Don’t really understand the deniers here. I’ve also worked through weeks of literally waking up and building software until time to go to bed, 7 days a week. It is definitely possible, but it destroys you mentally. It was never the expectation that it would be the norm, so my wife was supportive.
    - ein0p 3y ago
      Were you 63 years old when you worked like that, like Phil?
      - bicx 3y ago
        No, but I'm not talking about Phil. People here are claiming no one can work that much. You can, but it's not healthy or sustainable.
      - sandspar 3y ago
        Millions of old guys work like that. The old dude who owns your local bodega probably works like that.
        ein0p 3y ago
        For him work constitutes for the most part just being at the bodega. I worked from home for about 5 years. I was at home nearly all the time, and did concentrated work 8-9 hours a day. Can I claim I actually worked 16 hours a day just because I was at home and there were deep learning training runs running in my garage? Of course not. When I say "work" I specifically mean _doing_ something, not just being there.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
The type of work they're doing is also radically different than what IC do. When I was a manager, I could "work" longer days because I didn't need to do ask much of the deep, focused work that I did as an IC.
- ein0p 3y ago
  Yeah. ICs typically don’t consider answering BS on Slack or over email after work to be “work” at all, within reason
  - mewpmewp2 3y ago
    Although, it is work, and more annoying work than the actual coding I would think.
zeagle 3y ago
Nobody is a strong statement unless you mean just within tech. During residency I would pretty regularly work 10 hour days with 3 24+ call shifts that week on the ward. Like Monday 7am till Tuesday noon, sleep, regular Wed Thu, Friday Sunday call. Next week similar but Saturday call. Was brutal.
- throwaway5959 3y ago
  That seems dangerous for both you and patients.
  - n8henrie 3y ago
    It has been studied, and (surprisingly) restricting resident work hours to "only" 80 hours did not improve patient care / outcomes. One of the reasons is suspected to be increased number / frequency of "hand-offs," a high-risk time for information to be lost. Plenty has been written on the topic.
  - zeagle 3y ago
    n8henrie summarized it well. Its a basically a bandwidth issue. You might sign over 25 patients in 30 minutes... things get lost or miscommunicated which cascades to errors vs. being sleep deprived. Sick/new admissions get more time but still can only say so much. There is decent literature on signover tools to guide this process too. I used to joke second and third Mondays of working in a row should have a different name like SecondMonday and 3rdFnMonday. Thankfully never did a 3rd weekend in a row on call like that.
  - ein0p 3y ago
    That _is_ dangerous for their patients. Quarter of a million deaths per year in the US are attributed to medical mistakes. Why they keep doing this IDK.
    - zeagle 3y ago
      The are a lot of sources of error in the system other than long duty hours for residents and alternatives e.g. shorter duty hours introduce error at other points and individuals in healthcare. Should something be done? Sure, reducing error is obviously good but its simplistic to attribute it to this or think alternatives aren't worse. I personally also think the trend shorter duty hours in medical school and residency when you have that support is it's own problem of not learning enough to be as competent (and at the expense of career longevity for practicing physicians as inevitably all that gets dumped on the attending).
anonzzzies 3y ago
It is indeed how you define work. You can quibble if it has to be fully focused producing assets, back to back meetings or just thinking about work related stuff, but let’s take a simple one; what I get paid for on paper. I would say, if my pay slip says I worked 80*4 hours then I did. Meals are almost always work really; we sit together and talk code; I also think, at least where I live, breaks like meals are included in your contract as paid time, so I consider them work no matter what we talk/think about. I think a different view is; many of my none-IT acquaintances ‘work’ (in the definition you are looking at) maybe 1 hour a day, and get paid for 32-36 hours (never any overtime, ever, just exactly their contractual hours). But they would say they work 5-6 hours a day. They think I am crazy for working 8+. Realistically, focused asset creating hours, I do 3-5 hours (usually early in the morning), but I easily spend 5 hours just chatting with my colleagues helping them and they me. Doesn’t burn me out for the past 30 years; it would do if I was forced 8 hour focused asset producing.
Ekaros 3y ago
My definition of work is what hours a hourly paid factory line worker would be paid for. Extending that to sitting in front of computer and sitting in person in meetings or in some pod. Same hours the people physically building their products are paid for in this case.

by ein0p 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kuchenbecker 3y ago

Ive worked a 110 hour week, a few 80-100 hour weeks. But stable state more than 60 burnout is within a month.

ein0p 3y ago
That must also be some weird definition of work. Otherwise this doesn’t even leave time for meals, personal hygiene or for communicating with your s.o, let alone any kind of rest.
- mewpmewp2 3y ago
  Not everyone has a s.o. In addition you can work remotely, order everything in, and nothing truly terrible happens skipping a week of hygiene. I think I frequently have days like that if I add my side projects as work on top of actual work. I wouldn't want to spend that time on actual work as of now though. I usually don't eat for the first 12 hours and then at some point eat everything I have for the day all at once. Kind of intermittent fasting, but not intentionally or for those reasons. I.e. if I am excited about a particular side project I would do that. So really depends on whether the work is exciting enough. If it is, this would be easy. It is rare if you are working for someone else or specifically a large company though. If it is truly interesting work then you wake up focus completely in it and all of sudden it is end of day. In that case it is a little bit like an addiction where you just always have to build this one thing more, delaying eating, sleep, etc. For usual work I would maybe only consider it if I was paid 4x the usual hourly rate for it.
  - kuchenbecker 3y ago
    My wife covered the slack that week and I'm 100% family after 6pm most nights
    - mewpmewp2 3y ago
      Covered the slack? I do not follow. Edit: oh you must mean household chores, I was thinking about the App. That your wife was so pissed off she decided to cover the monitor your Slack was open on.
  - interbased 3y ago
    Agreed. I’ve put in days where I did nothing but work because the project was fun and also due in a week or very soon. Food really doesn’t take that long especially if you order in or pick up close by. Doing this consistently though would surely lead to burnout. Unless, of course, you just consistently love the project you’re working on. Even then, you need a break.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    What's the point though of working so much you have no time left to live your life? Making money is just a means to be able to live IMO.
    - Willish42 3y ago
      I completely agree but I will say that as somebody who intellectually understands that principle, overwork and burnout are still insanely common and arguably even rewarded in some work cultures / tech in general, and I screw this up a lot. Even people who understand this rule / philosophy end up violating it if they're not careful. ... and with that I think I'm probably going to sign off for the day. It's late.
    - sandspar 3y ago
      Cuz for some people work is fun. It's like asking a guy who likes fishing why he fishes so much. "But you've already caught enough for dinner...?"
orf 3y ago
You worked 16 hours a day for 7 days? I doubt that - you would be getting only 3-4 hours sleep max?
- kuchenbecker 3y ago
  I got about 5-6 hours of sleep, and meals were 10 minutes. Basically most waking hours for a week. 1 week of that is not that big a deal as long as it's not expected.
- bicx 3y ago
  Don’t really understand the deniers here. I’ve also worked through weeks of literally waking up and building software until time to go to bed, 7 days a week. It is definitely possible, but it destroys you mentally. It was never the expectation that it would be the norm, so my wife was supportive.
  - ein0p 3y ago
    Were you 63 years old when you worked like that, like Phil?
    - bicx 3y ago
      No, but I'm not talking about Phil. People here are claiming no one can work that much. You can, but it's not healthy or sustainable.
    - sandspar 3y ago
      Millions of old guys work like that. The old dude who owns your local bodega probably works like that.
      - ein0p 3y ago
        For him work constitutes for the most part just being at the bodega. I worked from home for about 5 years. I was at home nearly all the time, and did concentrated work 8-9 hours a day. Can I claim I actually worked 16 hours a day just because I was at home and there were deep learning training runs running in my garage? Of course not. When I say "work" I specifically mean _doing_ something, not just being there.

SkyPuncher 3y ago

The type of work they're doing is also radically different than what IC do. When I was a manager, I could "work" longer days because I didn't need to do ask much of the deep, focused work that I did as an IC.

ein0p 3y ago
Yeah. ICs typically don’t consider answering BS on Slack or over email after work to be “work” at all, within reason
- mewpmewp2 3y ago
  Although, it is work, and more annoying work than the actual coding I would think.

zeagle 3y ago

Nobody is a strong statement unless you mean just within tech. During residency I would pretty regularly work 10 hour days with 3 24+ call shifts that week on the ward. Like Monday 7am till Tuesday noon, sleep, regular Wed Thu, Friday Sunday call. Next week similar but Saturday call. Was brutal.

throwaway5959 3y ago
That seems dangerous for both you and patients.
- n8henrie 3y ago
  It has been studied, and (surprisingly) restricting resident work hours to "only" 80 hours did not improve patient care / outcomes. One of the reasons is suspected to be increased number / frequency of "hand-offs," a high-risk time for information to be lost. Plenty has been written on the topic.
- zeagle 3y ago
  n8henrie summarized it well. Its a basically a bandwidth issue. You might sign over 25 patients in 30 minutes... things get lost or miscommunicated which cascades to errors vs. being sleep deprived. Sick/new admissions get more time but still can only say so much. There is decent literature on signover tools to guide this process too. I used to joke second and third Mondays of working in a row should have a different name like SecondMonday and 3rdFnMonday. Thankfully never did a 3rd weekend in a row on call like that.
- ein0p 3y ago
  That _is_ dangerous for their patients. Quarter of a million deaths per year in the US are attributed to medical mistakes. Why they keep doing this IDK.
  - zeagle 3y ago
    The are a lot of sources of error in the system other than long duty hours for residents and alternatives e.g. shorter duty hours introduce error at other points and individuals in healthcare. Should something be done? Sure, reducing error is obviously good but its simplistic to attribute it to this or think alternatives aren't worse. I personally also think the trend shorter duty hours in medical school and residency when you have that support is it's own problem of not learning enough to be as competent (and at the expense of career longevity for practicing physicians as inevitably all that gets dumped on the attending).

anonzzzies 3y ago

It is indeed how you define work. You can quibble if it has to be fully focused producing assets, back to back meetings or just thinking about work related stuff, but let’s take a simple one; what I get paid for on paper. I would say, if my pay slip says I worked 80*4 hours then I did. Meals are almost always work really; we sit together and talk code; I also think, at least where I live, breaks like meals are included in your contract as paid time, so I consider them work no matter what we talk/think about. I think a different view is; many of my none-IT acquaintances ‘work’ (in the definition you are looking at) maybe 1 hour a day, and get paid for 32-36 hours (never any overtime, ever, just exactly their contractual hours). But they would say they work 5-6 hours a day. They think I am crazy for working 8+. Realistically, focused asset creating hours, I do 3-5 hours (usually early in the morning), but I easily spend 5 hours just chatting with my colleagues helping them and they me. Doesn’t burn me out for the past 30 years; it would do if I was forced 8 hour focused asset producing.

Ekaros 3y ago

My definition of work is what hours a hourly paid factory line worker would be paid for. Extending that to sitting in front of computer and sitting in person in meetings or in some pod. Same hours the people physically building their products are paid for in this case.