6 ms·

I get this in the context in which it was initially studied: repetitive work that nobody would be passionate about, but I would theorize that with passion and v

by mchusma 14y ago

I get this in the context in which it was initially studied: repetitive work that nobody would be passionate about, but I would theorize that with passion and variety you can extend this. In other words, you can only do 40 hours a week of factory labor, coding, sales calls, etc. However, you can do networking breakfasts at 7, alternate between a variety of tasks, do lunch meetings, product discussions, sales calls, and network until 7 Monday to Friday, then check email intermittently totaling an hour or two over the weekend. So this is something like 60 hours and it sounds pretty sustainable to me, particularly if you have resources to avoid doing non paying work, such as chores. Anyone know if there is research to support this theory? Obviously that is relevant to startups.

Argorak 14y ago
As someone who did that for a longer strech of time last year, because of starting a company, organizing a conference in parallel and socializing within the local programming community: it sucks you out. Not physically, but mentally, because all you do is "work". Worse: you get used to that state. I still do that from time to time if things just cannot be pushed, but in very short spans. I should say that I consider all my learning endeavors "free time", so its not like I just watch TV after work. I just don't do any business work. As a sidenote, I had the most productive time in my life when I was working in France, 35 hours a week. As someone used to 40 hours, I always felt like I shouldn't waste any minute to get my stuff done :).
tyang 14y ago
Agree. Great points.
thisone 14y ago
7-7 so, say 5am - 8pm with the commute and the morning thrown in. That's no family life. If you're checking into work over the weekend, you may think it's an hour or two, but it'll be 5 or 6 hours, you just don't realize it. So out of the what, 32? hours you have for family over the weekend, another 5 or 6 are spent working. And there's no "personal time" in that schedule yet. That's not sustainable to me.
- roel_v 14y ago
  So the OP says '60 hours can be done, under some circumstances'. Then you come in and say '100 hours doesn't leave you with a life'. I don't have a stake in this discussion, I don't care - but I hope you see the flaw in your response.
  - thisone 14y ago
    The flaw is that the OP doesn't count the actual time involved. Thinking that working 7-7 means you're home and having a family life for the rest of the time is incorrect. Working 7am - 7pm translates more to 5am - 8pm. Just like working 9-5 means 7am - 6pm. Thinking that you will only spend 1-2 hours at the weekend "checking email" is also incorrect. You may spend that much time reading email, but you're going to be spending much more time actually responding to it and checking up on anything required.
    - roel_v 14y ago
      Seriously man, as my nan used to say - "When you're in a hole, stop digging". They guy says "spend 2 hours on the weekend", to which you reply "you can't stop at 2 hours", yet at the same time you try to defend working only 40 hours? How inconsistent is that? The OP sketched out a baseline scenario, and you're saying "yeah but if you change assumptions, your conclusion doesn't hold!". No shit Sherlock? Perfectly valid and reasonable observation: "Yeah it is safe to drink 2 glasses of beer." You: "BEER IS EVIL! IF YOU DRINK 25 GALLONS YOU'LL DIE!" O RLY, who woulda thunk?
      - thisone 14y ago
        heh, I'm not sure where I'm defending anything. I'm saying that the baseline scenario is wrong.
DanBC 14y ago
I tend to agree that European Working Times Directive was especially useful to protect low pay low skill (or semi-skilled) jobs such as factory work. Some fast food workers were expected to turn up for work, and when the restaurant wasn't busy they'd have to clock out, but stay in their waiting room until they got busy, when they'd have to clock in. That's clearly abusive, and those workers needed protection. If someone loves their job and wants to work 50 hours; or can work and enjoy the occasional 60 hours, well, it's their choice and they should be able to. But most people do not enjoy that, and recognise it's not healthy, and do not want to do that, but are pressured either by bosses or by work culture. And so this flexibility has been removed because some companies were not self regulating. 60 hours a week is 10 hours a day, with one day off. That doesn't include travel time. Let's say 30 minutes each way. Does it include lunch hours? (UK: No, but tea breaks are paid). Let's call lunch another 30 minutes. That's 11.5 hours a day. 7 hours for sleep makes 18.5 hours a day. That leave 5.5 hours a day (plus that one day off) for everything else; your parents, your partner, your children, your friends, your bills etc, your life.
- rmc 14y ago
  Some fast food workers were expected to turn up for work, and when the restaurant wasn't busy they'd have to clock out, but stay in their waiting room until they got busy, when they'd have to clock in. That counts as work under the EWT. Any time you have to be on the premises, counts as 'work' under the EWT Directive.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Yes, that's what I'm saying. Before the EWT they were expected to do this, and were losing pay, and had little recourse. The EWT comes in, and now they have legal protections.
- lolcraft 14y ago
  Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. What my country (Spain) labor legislation does, and I suspect many of the european ones, is not at all what you think it is, don't worry. The law just allows workers, if they consider their rights to have been breached, to file a demand. It's somewhat complicated, because your employer, in principle, is still free to fire you when they want. In practice, employment here is and has always been, believe it or not, at will. What dismissal is not is "free as in beer": without a good cause (wrongful dismissal), they will have to pay you some quantity of money. With a good cause, it's disciplinary dismissal, which is free. That's true in all but a few cases, which protect you from wrongful dismissal. Say, you're the union's representative, or your son has cancer. So you can demand to have your dismissal count as wrongful. You're still fired, but at least you get some extra money, including all extra hours, which have to be paid when demanded. If your employer threatens you with dismissal if you don't work 50 hours/week, then dismisses you, the judge could make it void and file a civil suit for threats, so there's still that protection. But the catch is, no one can force you to enforce your rights. No one can demand your extra hours (any over the standard 40) be paid to you. Workers are still free to kill themselves on insane hours, if they want. In fact, because of ignorance of labor laws and fear of being fired, it's actually pretty common to do so.
nagrom 14y ago
I don't agree. You start work at 7am and leave work at 7pm. This takes twelve hours from your day. That leaves you twelve hours for: sleeping, eating, hygiene, commuting and personal time. Say you sleep the normal 7.5 hours per day (to keep a sustainable lifestyle) and commute a total of 1.5 hours per day. Now you have three hours left. Personal hygiene takes at least 0.5 hours per day. Even if you eat quickly, and take your breakfast as 'work', this leaves you 30 minutes per day for two meals. Or if you count lunch as work, then you gain an extra half hour. (Two meals a day as 'working meals' sounds pretty awful to me, btw.) Leaving you 1.5 - 2.0 hours per day of personal time. That's one visit to the gym, or the chance to play with your kids and put them to bed. There's no cultural involvement, no chance to work on a hobby or a passion, no reading, television, or film and no chance to see friends during the week at all. I simply will not work for you if the only luxury that I get is the chance to visit the gym and whatever time at weekends is left after I finish answering what are almost certainly non-urgent emails. There are too many compromises. You'd need to be a fool to find that acceptable; there's simply no point in having the money from the job, because you won't enjoy it. You may enjoy the job for a while, but if you are a salaried employee, then that depends on factors outside of your own control and will change. And it's much harder to regain a pleasant life than it is to keep one. Of course, if you are a startup founder, then we have a different meaning of sustainable. There are not very many people at all who live a startup-founder lifestyle for more than a couple of years without significant breaks, I believe. And I'm not saying that it is not possible to live like above - I'm saying that I'm good at what I do, and I don't need to, so I won't.

by mchusma 14y ago

Argorak 14y ago

As someone who did that for a longer strech of time last year, because of starting a company, organizing a conference in parallel and socializing within the local programming community: it sucks you out. Not physically, but mentally, because all you do is "work". Worse: you get used to that state. I still do that from time to time if things just cannot be pushed, but in very short spans. I should say that I consider all my learning endeavors "free time", so its not like I just watch TV after work. I just don't do any business work. As a sidenote, I had the most productive time in my life when I was working in France, 35 hours a week. As someone used to 40 hours, I always felt like I shouldn't waste any minute to get my stuff done :).

tyang 14y ago

Agree. Great points.

thisone 14y ago

7-7 so, say 5am - 8pm with the commute and the morning thrown in. That's no family life. If you're checking into work over the weekend, you may think it's an hour or two, but it'll be 5 or 6 hours, you just don't realize it. So out of the what, 32? hours you have for family over the weekend, another 5 or 6 are spent working. And there's no "personal time" in that schedule yet. That's not sustainable to me.

roel_v 14y ago
So the OP says '60 hours can be done, under some circumstances'. Then you come in and say '100 hours doesn't leave you with a life'. I don't have a stake in this discussion, I don't care - but I hope you see the flaw in your response.
- thisone 14y ago
  The flaw is that the OP doesn't count the actual time involved. Thinking that working 7-7 means you're home and having a family life for the rest of the time is incorrect. Working 7am - 7pm translates more to 5am - 8pm. Just like working 9-5 means 7am - 6pm. Thinking that you will only spend 1-2 hours at the weekend "checking email" is also incorrect. You may spend that much time reading email, but you're going to be spending much more time actually responding to it and checking up on anything required.
  - roel_v 14y ago
    Seriously man, as my nan used to say - "When you're in a hole, stop digging". They guy says "spend 2 hours on the weekend", to which you reply "you can't stop at 2 hours", yet at the same time you try to defend working only 40 hours? How inconsistent is that? The OP sketched out a baseline scenario, and you're saying "yeah but if you change assumptions, your conclusion doesn't hold!". No shit Sherlock? Perfectly valid and reasonable observation: "Yeah it is safe to drink 2 glasses of beer." You: "BEER IS EVIL! IF YOU DRINK 25 GALLONS YOU'LL DIE!" O RLY, who woulda thunk?
    - thisone 14y ago
      heh, I'm not sure where I'm defending anything. I'm saying that the baseline scenario is wrong.

DanBC 14y ago

I tend to agree that European Working Times Directive was especially useful to protect low pay low skill (or semi-skilled) jobs such as factory work. Some fast food workers were expected to turn up for work, and when the restaurant wasn't busy they'd have to clock out, but stay in their waiting room until they got busy, when they'd have to clock in. That's clearly abusive, and those workers needed protection. If someone loves their job and wants to work 50 hours; or can work and enjoy the occasional 60 hours, well, it's their choice and they should be able to. But most people do not enjoy that, and recognise it's not healthy, and do not want to do that, but are pressured either by bosses or by work culture. And so this flexibility has been removed because some companies were not self regulating. 60 hours a week is 10 hours a day, with one day off. That doesn't include travel time. Let's say 30 minutes each way. Does it include lunch hours? (UK: No, but tea breaks are paid). Let's call lunch another 30 minutes. That's 11.5 hours a day. 7 hours for sleep makes 18.5 hours a day. That leave 5.5 hours a day (plus that one day off) for everything else; your parents, your partner, your children, your friends, your bills etc, your life.

rmc 14y ago
Some fast food workers were expected to turn up for work, and when the restaurant wasn't busy they'd have to clock out, but stay in their waiting room until they got busy, when they'd have to clock in. That counts as work under the EWT. Any time you have to be on the premises, counts as 'work' under the EWT Directive.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Yes, that's what I'm saying. Before the EWT they were expected to do this, and were losing pay, and had little recourse. The EWT comes in, and now they have legal protections.
lolcraft 14y ago
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. What my country (Spain) labor legislation does, and I suspect many of the european ones, is not at all what you think it is, don't worry. The law just allows workers, if they consider their rights to have been breached, to file a demand. It's somewhat complicated, because your employer, in principle, is still free to fire you when they want. In practice, employment here is and has always been, believe it or not, at will. What dismissal is not is "free as in beer": without a good cause (wrongful dismissal), they will have to pay you some quantity of money. With a good cause, it's disciplinary dismissal, which is free. That's true in all but a few cases, which protect you from wrongful dismissal. Say, you're the union's representative, or your son has cancer. So you can demand to have your dismissal count as wrongful. You're still fired, but at least you get some extra money, including all extra hours, which have to be paid when demanded. If your employer threatens you with dismissal if you don't work 50 hours/week, then dismisses you, the judge could make it void and file a civil suit for threats, so there's still that protection. But the catch is, no one can force you to enforce your rights. No one can demand your extra hours (any over the standard 40) be paid to you. Workers are still free to kill themselves on insane hours, if they want. In fact, because of ignorance of labor laws and fear of being fired, it's actually pretty common to do so.

nagrom 14y ago

I don't agree. You start work at 7am and leave work at 7pm. This takes twelve hours from your day. That leaves you twelve hours for: sleeping, eating, hygiene, commuting and personal time. Say you sleep the normal 7.5 hours per day (to keep a sustainable lifestyle) and commute a total of 1.5 hours per day. Now you have three hours left. Personal hygiene takes at least 0.5 hours per day. Even if you eat quickly, and take your breakfast as 'work', this leaves you 30 minutes per day for two meals. Or if you count lunch as work, then you gain an extra half hour. (Two meals a day as 'working meals' sounds pretty awful to me, btw.) Leaving you 1.5 - 2.0 hours per day of personal time. That's one visit to the gym, or the chance to play with your kids and put them to bed. There's no cultural involvement, no chance to work on a hobby or a passion, no reading, television, or film and no chance to see friends during the week at all. I simply will not work for you if the only luxury that I get is the chance to visit the gym and whatever time at weekends is left after I finish answering what are almost certainly non-urgent emails. There are too many compromises. You'd need to be a fool to find that acceptable; there's simply no point in having the money from the job, because you won't enjoy it. You may enjoy the job for a while, but if you are a salaried employee, then that depends on factors outside of your own control and will change. And it's much harder to regain a pleasant life than it is to keep one. Of course, if you are a startup founder, then we have a different meaning of sustainable. There are not very many people at all who live a startup-founder lifestyle for more than a couple of years without significant breaks, I believe. And I'm not saying that it is not possible to live like above - I'm saying that I'm good at what I do, and I don't need to, so I won't.