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9 hours / day is about 3 hours / day more than what has been confirmed by studies to be efficient for a knowledge worker. So if you're working over 6 hours/day

by dscrd 13y ago

9 hours / day is about 3 hours / day more than what has been confirmed by studies to be efficient for a knowledge worker. So if you're working over 6 hours/day, you are most probably wasting your employer's time and your own life. Infrequent longer streches of work are a different thing, of course, they work, but they need to be countered by vacation time which brings the average to about 5-6 hours /day anyway.

kamaal 13y ago
>>9 hours / day is about 3 hours / day more than what has been confirmed by studies to be efficient for a knowledge worker. May be, but nearly every successful person I know falls into two basic categories. 1. Either cheats/is-lucky, is active in corporate politics and can get job done because of being in the circle of a higher manager's yes men. Gets out of turn opportunities etc. Or in short your usual cheating. 2. Works very hard, gets stuff done. Solves problems which people want. Makes it rain and takes the rewards back home at the end of the day. I haven't seen any exceptions to these scenarios. You can point factory assembly era type studies, where incentives for both succeeding and failing are none. The rewards are very linear to efforts. And you get only incremental hourly income for more effort. Obviously in such cases productivity will fall with extra working hours. Because motivation falls, the person begins to associate working extra with slavery and being paid bones for slogging to make somebody else rich. But if the reward and work relationship is non-linear. And you get good enough money for taking a risks and working real hard. The motivation peaks and corresponding work done and profit from that rise.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  1. Either cheats/is-lucky, is active in corporate politics and can get job done because of being in the circle of a higher manager's yes men. Gets out of turn opportunities etc. Or in short your usual cheating. OK, lesson time. There are people who make corporate social climbing a full-time job. Their code (if there is any) isn't great. They don't have real software accomplishments. Yet they rise. It has nothing to do with what they build, because they don't build anything. They take a lot of credit and endure (or call) a lot of meetings. That's a fundamentally different game from building software. 2. Works very hard, gets stuff done. Solves problems which people want. Makes it rain and takes the rewards back home at the end of the day. You don't have to work 70-hour weeks to make things that people want.
ceoloide 13y ago
Can you point me to specific case studies or research papers? I think they would be an interesting read. Many thanks in advance!

by dscrd 13y ago

kamaal 13y ago

>>9 hours / day is about 3 hours / day more than what has been confirmed by studies to be efficient for a knowledge worker. May be, but nearly every successful person I know falls into two basic categories. 1. Either cheats/is-lucky, is active in corporate politics and can get job done because of being in the circle of a higher manager's yes men. Gets out of turn opportunities etc. Or in short your usual cheating. 2. Works very hard, gets stuff done. Solves problems which people want. Makes it rain and takes the rewards back home at the end of the day. I haven't seen any exceptions to these scenarios. You can point factory assembly era type studies, where incentives for both succeeding and failing are none. The rewards are very linear to efforts. And you get only incremental hourly income for more effort. Obviously in such cases productivity will fall with extra working hours. Because motivation falls, the person begins to associate working extra with slavery and being paid bones for slogging to make somebody else rich. But if the reward and work relationship is non-linear. And you get good enough money for taking a risks and working real hard. The motivation peaks and corresponding work done and profit from that rise.

michaelochurch 13y ago
1. Either cheats/is-lucky, is active in corporate politics and can get job done because of being in the circle of a higher manager's yes men. Gets out of turn opportunities etc. Or in short your usual cheating. OK, lesson time. There are people who make corporate social climbing a full-time job. Their code (if there is any) isn't great. They don't have real software accomplishments. Yet they rise. It has nothing to do with what they build, because they don't build anything. They take a lot of credit and endure (or call) a lot of meetings. That's a fundamentally different game from building software. 2. Works very hard, gets stuff done. Solves problems which people want. Makes it rain and takes the rewards back home at the end of the day. You don't have to work 70-hour weeks to make things that people want.

ceoloide 13y ago

Can you point me to specific case studies or research papers? I think they would be an interesting read. Many thanks in advance!