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I'm sorry but only at my most very dedicated periods of work did I work 100 hour weeks, and that was like 3 or 4 weeks tops. I highly doubt that anyone sustains

I'm sorry but only at my most very dedicated periods of work did I work 100 hour weeks, and that was like 3 or 4 weeks tops. I highly doubt that anyone sustains a 100 hour work week for much longer. Eighty hour work weeks? Sure, that is doable, but sleeping at the job site because you are pulling a 100 hour work week is just not sustainable.

Kranar 1y ago
Rules changed in 2003, but until then medical residency programs routinely had doctors working 100+ hours a week or longer. In 2003 a cap of 80 hours a week was instituted along with a maximum of 24 hours in any given period, but programs found various loopholes around that cap which still had doctors working close to 100 hours a week. So further restrictions were placed so that over any 4 week period there's a hard cap of 320 hours, no exceptions. At any rate, for most of the HN crowd who work a fairly routine IT or an office job, 80+ hours sustained for months and months might seem impossible, but join the military, work on a ship, work on a farm, work the oil fields, work in investment banking, work in a film crew which threatened to go on strike in 2021 for having 98 hour work weeks for months on end... and you find that while it's not common, it certainly happens in various fields.
- JambalayaJimbo 1y ago
  Are residents and people working on ships actually making decisions for 100 hours a week? It's the cognitive load that I find difficult to believe about these numbers, not the At one point I was also working crazy hours at a fast food shop. But that was only possible because I could "zone out" and just pour the customer's coffee and make sandwiches. Writing code for that long would have been impossible.
  - trenchpilgrim 1y ago
    > Are residents and people working on ships actually making decisions for 100 hours a week? Residencies? Yeah. The guy who came up with the US' system for medical residency was high on cocaine pretty much constantly and expected everyone to perform at his level. https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-resident https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/a-day-in-th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted
  - cfu28 1y ago
    Obviously not every moment of every hour in a residents day is deep clinical thinking with high cognitive load, but we’re definitely not “zoning out” when making medical decisions. Patient statuses change very quickly and very often in the hospital, and every problem should be re-evaluated like it is a fresh concern. Decisions can be made quicker with more experience but you’re expected to be “on” all the time. Plus, lots of things contribute to cognitive load outside sheer medical decisions - social work, dispo issues, patient preferences, etc. Luckily my residency is closer to 60-70 hours a week but 100 is still common. Remember - the 80 hour a week limit is not a max limit. It is the max hours per week AVERAGED OVER 4 weeks. You can easily work 100 hours this week if you do 60 the next.
- amy_petrik 1y ago
  [flagged]
- guappa 1y ago
  I'm sure prisoners in labour camps work more than that. And the death toll for patients cured by overworked doctors is not insignificant.
nostrebored 1y ago
6 days / 16 hours or 7 days / 14 hours still leaves time for a normal sleep schedule. Many of the people in our YC batch were doing this for the duration of the batch. My cofounder and I both have families and managed to make a similar schedule work (with more peaks and valleys). The last few weeks have been a crunch where I’ve been getting a lot closer to a true 140ish. That is unsustainable and I’ve had to go into it knowing that the price is future productivity. But as a student with no commitments, 100hrs a week feels like the norm in YC startups right now.
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  And somehow you seem to be defending it. Even though there is statistically a better return just working in a bank as a Java dev in a second tier city.
  - nostrebored 1y ago
    This is absolutely untrue. We pay ourselves and all of our employees competitive salaries.
    - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
      See you paying them at least $335K in cash seeing that an average enterprise dev can make $140K working 40 hours a week and you want them to work 2.4x as many hours?
- himeexcelanta 1y ago
  This is performance - the human brain doesn’t work like this.
  - nostrebored 1y ago
    I've frequently had points in my career where this is just life. It comes down to planning when you do which tasks. I'm absolutely not at peak decision making capacity, but sometimes you aren't making decisions, just executing on work that takes time.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Kranar 1y ago

Rules changed in 2003, but until then medical residency programs routinely had doctors working 100+ hours a week or longer. In 2003 a cap of 80 hours a week was instituted along with a maximum of 24 hours in any given period, but programs found various loopholes around that cap which still had doctors working close to 100 hours a week. So further restrictions were placed so that over any 4 week period there's a hard cap of 320 hours, no exceptions. At any rate, for most of the HN crowd who work a fairly routine IT or an office job, 80+ hours sustained for months and months might seem impossible, but join the military, work on a ship, work on a farm, work the oil fields, work in investment banking, work in a film crew which threatened to go on strike in 2021 for having 98 hour work weeks for months on end... and you find that while it's not common, it certainly happens in various fields.

JambalayaJimbo 1y ago
Are residents and people working on ships actually making decisions for 100 hours a week? It's the cognitive load that I find difficult to believe about these numbers, not the At one point I was also working crazy hours at a fast food shop. But that was only possible because I could "zone out" and just pour the customer's coffee and make sandwiches. Writing code for that long would have been impossible.
- trenchpilgrim 1y ago
  > Are residents and people working on ships actually making decisions for 100 hours a week? Residencies? Yeah. The guy who came up with the US' system for medical residency was high on cocaine pretty much constantly and expected everyone to perform at his level. https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-resident https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/a-day-in-th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted
- cfu28 1y ago
  Obviously not every moment of every hour in a residents day is deep clinical thinking with high cognitive load, but we’re definitely not “zoning out” when making medical decisions. Patient statuses change very quickly and very often in the hospital, and every problem should be re-evaluated like it is a fresh concern. Decisions can be made quicker with more experience but you’re expected to be “on” all the time. Plus, lots of things contribute to cognitive load outside sheer medical decisions - social work, dispo issues, patient preferences, etc. Luckily my residency is closer to 60-70 hours a week but 100 is still common. Remember - the 80 hour a week limit is not a max limit. It is the max hours per week AVERAGED OVER 4 weeks. You can easily work 100 hours this week if you do 60 the next.
amy_petrik 1y ago
[flagged]
guappa 1y ago
I'm sure prisoners in labour camps work more than that. And the death toll for patients cured by overworked doctors is not insignificant.

nostrebored 1y ago

6 days / 16 hours or 7 days / 14 hours still leaves time for a normal sleep schedule. Many of the people in our YC batch were doing this for the duration of the batch. My cofounder and I both have families and managed to make a similar schedule work (with more peaks and valleys). The last few weeks have been a crunch where I’ve been getting a lot closer to a true 140ish. That is unsustainable and I’ve had to go into it knowing that the price is future productivity. But as a student with no commitments, 100hrs a week feels like the norm in YC startups right now.

raw_anon_1111 1y ago
And somehow you seem to be defending it. Even though there is statistically a better return just working in a bank as a Java dev in a second tier city.
- nostrebored 1y ago
  This is absolutely untrue. We pay ourselves and all of our employees competitive salaries.
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    See you paying them at least $335K in cash seeing that an average enterprise dev can make $140K working 40 hours a week and you want them to work 2.4x as many hours?
himeexcelanta 1y ago
This is performance - the human brain doesn’t work like this.
- nostrebored 1y ago
  I've frequently had points in my career where this is just life. It comes down to planning when you do which tasks. I'm absolutely not at peak decision making capacity, but sometimes you aren't making decisions, just executing on work that takes time.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]