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I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Having so little free time and so little time to spend with frie

I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Having so little free time and so little time to spend with friends and family seems like a sad life regardless of the paycheck. I agree with this: "Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card." I also agree that "Showing up a lot increases your odds" (in this case meaning working a lot of hours), but I just don't think it's worth the trade-off. Life outside of work is, for many of us, far more meaningful than work. I thought this feeling was extremely common, but judging by what gets to the front of HN I'm in the minority here.

evincarofautumn 13y ago
You’re not alone. I’m only awake for 80 hours during the week. Devoting half of that to a job is insane enough, thanks.
- khuey 13y ago
  You sleep an average of 12.5 hours per day?
  - ars 13y ago
    He's probably not including weekends. But weekends are the way that people do 80 hour weeks.
  - Andrenid 13y ago
    I'd assume he means work week. 8 hours sleep per week night.
  - marvin 13y ago
    Hehe...only in Silicon Valley will people look at you funny because weekends are not subconsciously part of your work week.
ryanjshaw 13y ago
If I have to work 80+ hours a week to have the absolute financial freedom to live the rest of my estimated 40-50 years on this planet in any way I chose, nevermind ensuring similar benefits accrue to my family, then I think that's a pretty good deal. I still have down time and plenty of fond memories -- you just have to plan how you spend that time a bit better. I live in a part of the world where a lack of financial resources is death. Every single day I pass by people begging for money and for work, and I live 5min away from my office. My crappy little second hand Fiat is worth more than combined net worth of every person I pass on the street. I remember seeing a documentary once where a labourer said something to the effect of: "I work like a horse so that my children can work like dogs, so that their children can live like people, and their children can be free." And before any says your children should take care of themselves: try telling that to a child born with severe autism or down's syndrome, or some other disabling birth defect. If you're not planning for your family so that you can enjoy your younger years a bit more fully, you're taking a huge, selfish risk. I'm much more fortunate than that guy was - my parents worked like dogs.
- legulere 13y ago
  There's a nice parable about working hard to have free time later: http://www.protolink.com/MexicanFisherman.html http://www.protolink.com/MexicanFisherman.html
  - Xylakant 13y ago
    The parable is nice, but it certainly does not apply here. To quote the GP: > I live in a part of the world where a lack of financial resources is death In that setting, any cent that you can accumulate on you bank account is a life insurance. I can totally understand that the GP wants to spend some time in his life working like crazy so that for the rest he can work less while still enjoying a moderate amount of safety. It certainly beats working part time all your life and worrying about how to pay today's food, heating or rent.
  - ryanjshaw 13y ago
    The problem with this parable is that it equates two different scenarios. A fisherman without extensive financial resources is not the same as a person with extensive financial resources choosing to fish. Here's some alternative endings, in a country without social and medical support in place, for you to consider: 1. The fisherman develops a serious illness and finds he can no longer support his family. His wife, who was barely getting by on a fisherman's income as a housewife, finds herself working at a local bar, serving drunk, lecherous men every day and night. His son and daughter find themselves unable to afford an education and really don't want daddy to die. With mounting medical bills, the son finds himself involved in crime to support his family and is eventually sent to prison for life for a crime he didn't commit. The daughter meets a wealthy man and everything is great until he starts hitting her. But at least she can support her father, lying on his deathbed in hospital. Daddy eventually dies but by that point she's stuck with 2 kids married to a man she hates. 2. Oh but medical welfare would solve the problem in #2? Setting aside that this is contrary to my stated scenario (a country without medical welfare), consider this scenario: the fisherman loses his fingers and toes in a freak fishing accident. 3. Oh but somehow he managed to afford an insurance policy that paid out on disability? Setting aside how unlikely this is to be for people barely making a living wage, consider this scenario instead: the nearby waters are polluted by an American oil extraction firm, and the fisherman finds himself scrubbing toilets at McDonald's to support his family. The American happens to come by one day and leaves him a nice tip.
pliu 13y ago
Your values are not universal to all humanity. Sometimes I work an 80 hour week. I do this because I'm engaged with something and I don't want to be doing anything else. When I don't want to do that, I work normal hours. I live how I want to live. I have friends, family, and a life. I'm also naturally introverted, and sometimes I just want to put my head down for a week and jam. This is something I like doing. Different strokes for different folks man. I think your life is sad if you can't understand that some people are different than you are.
mercer 13y ago
Maybe here they don't, but I think generally people see things your way. I don't, and I didn't, even before I got into 'tech' and started reading HN. For me, the statement 'life outside of work is more meaningful than work' just doesn't make sense. While I do treat 'work time' slightly differently than 'free time', the difference is not so great for me. It's mostly to keep some ritual and prevent weeks turning into long blurs. In fact, I've never really treated 'work' as something so discrete. In high school, as soon as I figured out the 'tricks' to not getting kicked out of school and not failing classes, I spent most of my time doing what I wanted. I could skip many classes and engage in the few that interested me. And I had loads of time and energy left to learn stuff that I wanted to learn. Often I could make a deal with teachers to not go to class because when I was present, I was active and engaged, and I treated them like, well, just people, not bosses. In university, there were less hoops to jump through, and there was more freedom, but once again I skipped classes I didn't care for (while making sure that I'd still have a decent grade and participate in group work), and actively engaged in the fun classes. Despite my absence, my targeted interested usually meant that I was one of people that the professors 'knew', rather than just a a face in the crowd. And now, as a freelancer, I do make a point to set aside blocks of time for work, but for the most part I primarily try to make sure that I enjoy whatever I'm doing. Every once in a while a project feels like a chore, but for the most part I can choose the projects or the parts of projects that I enjoy or that I learn from. Most of the time 'work' doesn't feel different from 'life outside work'. I love talking about my work and I'm baffled by my friends who make a point of actively avoiding the topic on a Friday pub night. I occasionally work in the weekend, but it doesn't feel like I'm 'losing' any of my weekend because of this. I occasionally take on projects that pay shit but are fun or helpful, and 'subsidise' this with bigger, often less fun projects. Meanwhile throughout high school and college I saw classmates go to every class no matter the value, diligently do all the exercises 'just because', and complain about how it all sucked. Working as a contractor, I see colleagues drag themselves into work on Monday after a rough weekend of 'outside work life', and joke on a Wednesday about how it's almost Friday. And complain about how much work sucks. I do get that not everyone has the freedom to find work that they enjoy, but what I don't get is that so many people do have that freedom, and quite a good safety net (especially here in Europe), but don't exercise it. The happiest people I've known were generally the ones that didn't make a strict separation between work and 'life', but instead found work that didn't feel like work most of the time. It took a lot of creativity, effort and uncertainty to get there, but the results were worth it. EDIT: I do realize that OP acknowledges this, so perhaps this should not have been a reply. apologies.
bradgessler 13y ago
Our company was founded on not working insane hours. From our jobs page (http://www.polleverywhere.com/jobs http://www.polleverywhere.com/jobs): "We do not do death marches. We do not do lockdowns. We do not believe in 80 hour work weeks as a way of life." If anybody is stuck in this kind of unnecessary insanity looking for a way out shoot me an email!
- voltagex_ 13y ago
  Finding the right people for our team is far too important to outsource. We don't work with recruiters. Seriously, we have a recruiter vodoo doll; if you contact us we're going to stick a pin in it. Love it. I'm a C# dev on the other side of the world from you, but I'll be here if you ever need me.
- marvin 13y ago
  It is so fascinating to me that advertising a job as "not 80 hour work week" is a major selling point. I mean, kudos to you, you will probably attract a lot of skilled developers with this attitude. You will also get almost as much done as someone who does 80-hour weeks. Where I live, by law you're not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week. If a company violates this, you can literally go to court and get a summary judgement to get paid for every hour beyond this you worked, plus a 40% bonus for every hour beyond 40 each week. Most companies here don't do a lot of overtime, yet we're still at the very top of the list of productivity by country.
  - nerfhammer 13y ago
    45+ hours per week is a typical part of any professional career in the US
    - _delirium 13y ago
      In terms of in-office hours, that's not really true; it's more of a programmer thing. It's pretty common for engineers in other fields work regular 40-hour weeks, unless something unusual is happening. Partly this is because the classic professional workplace has fixed hours: 9-5 or 8-4. Many people have no choice but to stick to those hours closely, because they commute in carpools, so you can't go in early or stay late unless you convince the whole carpool to do so. Admittedly, it is getting more common to do some email in the evenings nowadays, which sneaks in some extra non-office work hours.
dmead 13y ago
to be frank about it those types are literally gambling away time of their lives. they're going for a huge payoff which might mean they won't have to work ever again. all these posts about "making an impact" and "being good at what you do" are all bullshit posturing. they really want is marketing material to show investors that they can be trusted with their money. the problem is that those kinds of shitpiles get confused with actual content around here. it's like the hacker news equivalent of meme posts on reddit, except instead of karma points they're hoping for actual dollars.
TheSmoke 13y ago
i thought that 80+ hours work was irony. it's really interesting if it's not irony.
- Uhhrrr 13y ago
  That was my take as well, especially since at the end of the article he says, "No one will tell you to take more time with your family."
qwerta 13y ago
80+ is doable if you work from home. I often code with my daughter sitting on my lap. I also do lot of work in my head without computer.
- ccozan 13y ago
  Most of the work in software is done in head without computer. I think I effectively write code for maybe 1h-2h a day in very high intesity bursts, rest is just refining ideas/architectures in head. The latter I can do it while doing some boring house chore or while driving.
alan_cx 13y ago
My take is that it depends how you define working, or a job. If its something you do because you have to for the money, a means to an end, then I agree with you. 80hrs is near slavery, even the standard 40 ish hrs is my idea of pure living hell. But, 80 hrs of that? No. If, however, you are doing something you would literally be doing anyway because its "you", then the number of hours "working" is no longer relevant. Even if the job is 40hrs pw most people, who sort of are their job, will be working one way or another regardless of being in a place of work or not. When I have been in this situation, even if Im doing the family or social thing, my head is still on the project. All I want to do is leave, and keep "working". But its not "working", it is simply what I want to be doing. I just happen to be being paid. To me, that is not "work", or a "job".
ronaldx 13y ago
I read this comment and realised something. Although it's not particuarly my goal to work 80 hours a week: I would rather work 80+ hours a week in something that I valued and that complemented/benefitted my life, than work 40 hours a week in a job where I was always waiting for my free time to come around.
- overgryphon 13y ago
  This is a false choice. You can love your work and find it meaningful, but still go home at 5:30. Work complements life in a meaningful way, but isn't the only significant component.
Spearchucker 13y ago
It's a maturity thing. I worked 80+ hours a week in my 20's, couldn't understand why anyone (my co-workers) wouldn't. The work fascinated me, and was secondary to getting spannered in bars and clubs, which is what others my age were doing. Things slowed in my 30's - the social thing got more important, and I'd seen and done enough to realize how appallingly inefficient most of planet earth is, so I started doing stuff on the side for myself. Net effect is my work week dropped to maybe 50/60 hours a week. When I hit 42 I became a father, and now 40 hours a week seems unobtainable. I probably average no more than 35. You choose your path. What seems right today may not be right tomorrow. I regret none of it, and given the chance would do it exactly the same again.
pavs 13y ago
My personal experience. There was a time in my life when the idea of having "free time" was a foreign concept to me. I took 12-14 credits in college, worked 60 hours (mostly graveyard shift), plus I had small online side projects (needed fair bit of time) which was making me $500/month and I was fairly busy socially and had a girlfriend. The commute to my work and to my school were both about 1 hour each (NYC subway) and most of time I would sleep in the train to make up for rest and would sometimes miss my stop. I did this for about 2.5 years (give or take). Life was bit of a blur, so much was happening, so fast, it was hard to keep track of everything. But I LOVED it. I loved the rush, I loved having something to do all the time. I loved looking forward to vacation times dates or whatever leisure time I could squeeze in. Now that I am older and have much more free time in my life, I am not even 1/10th as productive as I used to be. Honestly given the choice I would gladly take a extremely busy life over all the free time I have right now. Trust me I am not just sitting around with the all the free time I have. I try to take on projects, learn new things, take on difficult physical challenges (training for marathon), but its just not the same.
timjahn 13y ago
THIS. Can't up vote this enough.
_delirium 13y ago
I thought this feeling was extremely common, but judging by what gets to the front of HN I'm in the minority here. I think HN just likes stories about extremes. Stories of people working 80-hour weeks do play well here, but then so do stories of people living in cheap foreign countries and working 10-hour weeks, supported by semi-passive income. Perhaps somewhere in between is 37Signals' philosophy of pretty regular workweeks (5-day workweeks in the winter, 4-day in the summer) and their "quality of hours, not quantity" philosophy.
- golergka 13y ago
  > I think HN just likes stories about extremes. Isn't it because a story about average Joe working 40 hours a week on a pretty regular job isn't much of a story?
mseebach 13y ago
I think it's easy for most people to agree that 80 hour work-weeks are typically bugs, not features - especially as they often seem to be a symptom of a dysfunctional working environment. > Life outside of work is, for many of us, far more meaningful than work. There seems to be a meme that this should be the case. My work is extremely meaningful to me, and my work place is extremely not-dysfunctional and no boss is breathing down my neck for my to work any number of hours. My personal life is also great. In a Sophie's choice situation, I'd choose my wife, obviously, but I don't accept the dichotomy. I love my wife and I love the time we spend together, but a few year ago when I down with the flu for a few weeks, my brain felt like it turned to porridge. That's not good for me and it's not good for her. Being professionally challenged is extremely important to my private life, and working with people who feel the same way about their work is important to me. Right now, I am getting enormous returns, both mentally and financially, from my work, and so I work a lot. I completely expect the calculus to change when we have children, but we don't yet. I understand that there are people who don't feel the same way about their work, and there is no merit in working 80 hours for the sake of working 80 hours. But focusing on that number alone and trying to form some objective truths from first principles is not terribly helpful in my opinion.
- VLM 13y ago
  "But focusing on that number alone" "there is no merit in working 80 hours for the sake of working 80 hours" Bad managers beg to differ with you. Inevitably this turns into MBA disease where you rank workers by the hours present. Your boss deathmarches you for 85 hours a week and his competition only deathmarches his workers for 75 hours? Guess who's getting the bigger annual bonus, Mr 85 hours of course. You're only willing to work 75 hours, what are you not a team player (aka why aren't you willing to destroy yourself to make me richer)? Its very hard for someone who doesn't know anything about a domain specific subject to evaluate the quality of a specialist worker. On the other hand its pretty easy to record, graph, chart, and rate number of hours. Half of all managers by definition are below the median; 50:50 odds aren't looking so good. The worst possible outcome is when professional goals and workplace metrics don't align. So I could do that in 40 hours of serious head down grinding, which would be OK if I only had to be in the office for 40 hours, but worker has to be present for 80 hours to meet the metric goal of appearing busy to show off to the other managers and get that bonus. Wish I could be learning a new language or technology or playing games sitting out on my patio at home for some of those 30-40 hours/week. Well, back to checking social media sites and watching cat videos so the time can get marked off as "present". Unless you're all open plan office in which case you either have to not give a F and do it anyway, or be very stealthy, or most likely just socialize and do busywork. Also over 50 or so hours work quality takes a sharp dive, so at 60 hours you're probably actually accomplishing less than if you worked 40, so now you "need" to work 70, which results in even less milestones accomplished, inevitably the negative feedback loop spirals out of control until you're present for the maximum physical possible time, yet accomplishing basically nothing.
rfnslyr 13y ago
I absolutely hate the idiots that praise long work. Praise hard work. Praise efficient work. If you're working 80 hours a week (and aren't a founder), then you are a chump. The whole point of work is to fund your life. People lose sight of this and started romanticizing long hours.
- lotyrin 13y ago
  I guess I'm possibly damaged in that I don't find life (including my own) to be inherently valuable unless I'm doing something I'm good at and/or effecting some kind of change on things (it just happens that the things I'm good at and changes I can effect are fairly marketable and so they became my job). I don't work to live, or live to work, I work to work and live because the alternative (very probably, at least) lacks opportunities for interesting work or socialization. I try to get into hobbies (which seem to by definition be doing sorts of work which aren't marketable or impactful) but it's hard to find the point in them. I'll likely never get good enough at say, guitar for it to matter in any way. If I've got nothing social to do on a Sunday evening, closing a ticket at least makes the customer and/or a few hundred of their end users a bit happier come Monday morning. If I'm hourly on the project then it's a few more bucks for my retirement account. All in all, it handily beats feeling like an idiot clumsily flailing on my guitar for a few hours - though I sometimes choose to do that anyway.
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    Practice a wide array of things and you will get good at them in a few years. Lift, play an instrument, go for a run, do some drugs. Have fun.
hackula1 13y ago
Da Vinci most certainly worked 80 hour weeks, and I am sure he loved every minute of it. Why? Because he got paid to think up cool shit day in and day out. I have worked jobs that were so mind numbingly boring that I could barely muster 30 hours a week when I was single. Now I am married and could easily pull 60-70 hours a week at my significantly more interesting job. Work is the place you will spend most of your life. Do your best to find a place you can live with.
- normloman 13y ago
  If he did work 80 hours a week, he could have accomplished the same amount of work in half the time, had he given himself breaks. Everyone knows productivity goes down when you work to long. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/working-hours http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/working-...
- marvin 13y ago
  You should keep in mind that not everyone is able to work "80-hour weeks". I myself would not stand a chance. It is cool if dedicating your life to work like this works out for you, but it is irresponsible to hold it up as some ideal which everyone must aspire to. I'm not sure if this was the intention of your comment, but I get the general sense whenever this subject pops up on HN that you aren't really doing your best if you aspire to a regular 9-5 workweek. Nothing could be further from the truth - I am a very ambitious guy, but I will refuse to work longer weeks unless it is absolutely necessary. And if so, only for a limited amount of time. Violating this will literally ruin my mental health. I am not the only person who works this way.
  - hackula1 13y ago
    > I'm not sure if this was the intention of your comment Definitely not my intention, although I did not specify. An expectation of anything over a 40 hr/wk average is completely unreasonable IMHO. I only meant to say that some people happily choose to work over that average for periods of time.
ExpiredLink 13y ago
> I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Work smart, not hard. 80+ hours people are not the brightest.

evincarofautumn 13y ago

You’re not alone. I’m only awake for 80 hours during the week. Devoting half of that to a job is insane enough, thanks.

khuey 13y ago
You sleep an average of 12.5 hours per day?
- ars 13y ago
  He's probably not including weekends. But weekends are the way that people do 80 hour weeks.
- Andrenid 13y ago
  I'd assume he means work week. 8 hours sleep per week night.
- marvin 13y ago
  Hehe...only in Silicon Valley will people look at you funny because weekends are not subconsciously part of your work week.

ryanjshaw 13y ago

If I have to work 80+ hours a week to have the absolute financial freedom to live the rest of my estimated 40-50 years on this planet in any way I chose, nevermind ensuring similar benefits accrue to my family, then I think that's a pretty good deal. I still have down time and plenty of fond memories -- you just have to plan how you spend that time a bit better. I live in a part of the world where a lack of financial resources is death. Every single day I pass by people begging for money and for work, and I live 5min away from my office. My crappy little second hand Fiat is worth more than combined net worth of every person I pass on the street. I remember seeing a documentary once where a labourer said something to the effect of: "I work like a horse so that my children can work like dogs, so that their children can live like people, and their children can be free." And before any says your children should take care of themselves: try telling that to a child born with severe autism or down's syndrome, or some other disabling birth defect. If you're not planning for your family so that you can enjoy your younger years a bit more fully, you're taking a huge, selfish risk. I'm much more fortunate than that guy was - my parents worked like dogs.

legulere 13y ago
There's a nice parable about working hard to have free time later: http://www.protolink.com/MexicanFisherman.html http://www.protolink.com/MexicanFisherman.html
- Xylakant 13y ago
  The parable is nice, but it certainly does not apply here. To quote the GP: > I live in a part of the world where a lack of financial resources is death In that setting, any cent that you can accumulate on you bank account is a life insurance. I can totally understand that the GP wants to spend some time in his life working like crazy so that for the rest he can work less while still enjoying a moderate amount of safety. It certainly beats working part time all your life and worrying about how to pay today's food, heating or rent.
- ryanjshaw 13y ago
  The problem with this parable is that it equates two different scenarios. A fisherman without extensive financial resources is not the same as a person with extensive financial resources choosing to fish. Here's some alternative endings, in a country without social and medical support in place, for you to consider: 1. The fisherman develops a serious illness and finds he can no longer support his family. His wife, who was barely getting by on a fisherman's income as a housewife, finds herself working at a local bar, serving drunk, lecherous men every day and night. His son and daughter find themselves unable to afford an education and really don't want daddy to die. With mounting medical bills, the son finds himself involved in crime to support his family and is eventually sent to prison for life for a crime he didn't commit. The daughter meets a wealthy man and everything is great until he starts hitting her. But at least she can support her father, lying on his deathbed in hospital. Daddy eventually dies but by that point she's stuck with 2 kids married to a man she hates. 2. Oh but medical welfare would solve the problem in #2? Setting aside that this is contrary to my stated scenario (a country without medical welfare), consider this scenario: the fisherman loses his fingers and toes in a freak fishing accident. 3. Oh but somehow he managed to afford an insurance policy that paid out on disability? Setting aside how unlikely this is to be for people barely making a living wage, consider this scenario instead: the nearby waters are polluted by an American oil extraction firm, and the fisherman finds himself scrubbing toilets at McDonald's to support his family. The American happens to come by one day and leaves him a nice tip.

pliu 13y ago

Your values are not universal to all humanity. Sometimes I work an 80 hour week. I do this because I'm engaged with something and I don't want to be doing anything else. When I don't want to do that, I work normal hours. I live how I want to live. I have friends, family, and a life. I'm also naturally introverted, and sometimes I just want to put my head down for a week and jam. This is something I like doing. Different strokes for different folks man. I think your life is sad if you can't understand that some people are different than you are.

mercer 13y ago

Maybe here they don't, but I think generally people see things your way. I don't, and I didn't, even before I got into 'tech' and started reading HN. For me, the statement 'life outside of work is more meaningful than work' just doesn't make sense. While I do treat 'work time' slightly differently than 'free time', the difference is not so great for me. It's mostly to keep some ritual and prevent weeks turning into long blurs. In fact, I've never really treated 'work' as something so discrete. In high school, as soon as I figured out the 'tricks' to not getting kicked out of school and not failing classes, I spent most of my time doing what I wanted. I could skip many classes and engage in the few that interested me. And I had loads of time and energy left to learn stuff that I wanted to learn. Often I could make a deal with teachers to not go to class because when I was present, I was active and engaged, and I treated them like, well, just people, not bosses. In university, there were less hoops to jump through, and there was more freedom, but once again I skipped classes I didn't care for (while making sure that I'd still have a decent grade and participate in group work), and actively engaged in the fun classes. Despite my absence, my targeted interested usually meant that I was one of people that the professors 'knew', rather than just a a face in the crowd. And now, as a freelancer, I do make a point to set aside blocks of time for work, but for the most part I primarily try to make sure that I enjoy whatever I'm doing. Every once in a while a project feels like a chore, but for the most part I can choose the projects or the parts of projects that I enjoy or that I learn from. Most of the time 'work' doesn't feel different from 'life outside work'. I love talking about my work and I'm baffled by my friends who make a point of actively avoiding the topic on a Friday pub night. I occasionally work in the weekend, but it doesn't feel like I'm 'losing' any of my weekend because of this. I occasionally take on projects that pay shit but are fun or helpful, and 'subsidise' this with bigger, often less fun projects. Meanwhile throughout high school and college I saw classmates go to every class no matter the value, diligently do all the exercises 'just because', and complain about how it all sucked. Working as a contractor, I see colleagues drag themselves into work on Monday after a rough weekend of 'outside work life', and joke on a Wednesday about how it's almost Friday. And complain about how much work sucks. I do get that not everyone has the freedom to find work that they enjoy, but what I don't get is that so many people do have that freedom, and quite a good safety net (especially here in Europe), but don't exercise it. The happiest people I've known were generally the ones that didn't make a strict separation between work and 'life', but instead found work that didn't feel like work most of the time. It took a lot of creativity, effort and uncertainty to get there, but the results were worth it. EDIT: I do realize that OP acknowledges this, so perhaps this should not have been a reply. apologies.

bradgessler 13y ago

Our company was founded on not working insane hours. From our jobs page (http://www.polleverywhere.com/jobs http://www.polleverywhere.com/jobs): "We do not do death marches. We do not do lockdowns. We do not believe in 80 hour work weeks as a way of life." If anybody is stuck in this kind of unnecessary insanity looking for a way out shoot me an email!

voltagex_ 13y ago
Finding the right people for our team is far too important to outsource. We don't work with recruiters. Seriously, we have a recruiter vodoo doll; if you contact us we're going to stick a pin in it. Love it. I'm a C# dev on the other side of the world from you, but I'll be here if you ever need me.
marvin 13y ago
It is so fascinating to me that advertising a job as "not 80 hour work week" is a major selling point. I mean, kudos to you, you will probably attract a lot of skilled developers with this attitude. You will also get almost as much done as someone who does 80-hour weeks. Where I live, by law you're not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week. If a company violates this, you can literally go to court and get a summary judgement to get paid for every hour beyond this you worked, plus a 40% bonus for every hour beyond 40 each week. Most companies here don't do a lot of overtime, yet we're still at the very top of the list of productivity by country.
- nerfhammer 13y ago
  45+ hours per week is a typical part of any professional career in the US
  - _delirium 13y ago
    In terms of in-office hours, that's not really true; it's more of a programmer thing. It's pretty common for engineers in other fields work regular 40-hour weeks, unless something unusual is happening. Partly this is because the classic professional workplace has fixed hours: 9-5 or 8-4. Many people have no choice but to stick to those hours closely, because they commute in carpools, so you can't go in early or stay late unless you convince the whole carpool to do so. Admittedly, it is getting more common to do some email in the evenings nowadays, which sneaks in some extra non-office work hours.

dmead 13y ago

to be frank about it those types are literally gambling away time of their lives. they're going for a huge payoff which might mean they won't have to work ever again. all these posts about "making an impact" and "being good at what you do" are all bullshit posturing. they really want is marketing material to show investors that they can be trusted with their money. the problem is that those kinds of shitpiles get confused with actual content around here. it's like the hacker news equivalent of meme posts on reddit, except instead of karma points they're hoping for actual dollars.

TheSmoke 13y ago

i thought that 80+ hours work was irony. it's really interesting if it's not irony.

Uhhrrr 13y ago
That was my take as well, especially since at the end of the article he says, "No one will tell you to take more time with your family."

qwerta 13y ago

80+ is doable if you work from home. I often code with my daughter sitting on my lap. I also do lot of work in my head without computer.

ccozan 13y ago
Most of the work in software is done in head without computer. I think I effectively write code for maybe 1h-2h a day in very high intesity bursts, rest is just refining ideas/architectures in head. The latter I can do it while doing some boring house chore or while driving.

alan_cx 13y ago

My take is that it depends how you define working, or a job. If its something you do because you have to for the money, a means to an end, then I agree with you. 80hrs is near slavery, even the standard 40 ish hrs is my idea of pure living hell. But, 80 hrs of that? No. If, however, you are doing something you would literally be doing anyway because its "you", then the number of hours "working" is no longer relevant. Even if the job is 40hrs pw most people, who sort of are their job, will be working one way or another regardless of being in a place of work or not. When I have been in this situation, even if Im doing the family or social thing, my head is still on the project. All I want to do is leave, and keep "working". But its not "working", it is simply what I want to be doing. I just happen to be being paid. To me, that is not "work", or a "job".

ronaldx 13y ago

I read this comment and realised something. Although it's not particuarly my goal to work 80 hours a week: I would rather work 80+ hours a week in something that I valued and that complemented/benefitted my life, than work 40 hours a week in a job where I was always waiting for my free time to come around.

overgryphon 13y ago
This is a false choice. You can love your work and find it meaningful, but still go home at 5:30. Work complements life in a meaningful way, but isn't the only significant component.

Spearchucker 13y ago

It's a maturity thing. I worked 80+ hours a week in my 20's, couldn't understand why anyone (my co-workers) wouldn't. The work fascinated me, and was secondary to getting spannered in bars and clubs, which is what others my age were doing. Things slowed in my 30's - the social thing got more important, and I'd seen and done enough to realize how appallingly inefficient most of planet earth is, so I started doing stuff on the side for myself. Net effect is my work week dropped to maybe 50/60 hours a week. When I hit 42 I became a father, and now 40 hours a week seems unobtainable. I probably average no more than 35. You choose your path. What seems right today may not be right tomorrow. I regret none of it, and given the chance would do it exactly the same again.

pavs 13y ago

My personal experience. There was a time in my life when the idea of having "free time" was a foreign concept to me. I took 12-14 credits in college, worked 60 hours (mostly graveyard shift), plus I had small online side projects (needed fair bit of time) which was making me $500/month and I was fairly busy socially and had a girlfriend. The commute to my work and to my school were both about 1 hour each (NYC subway) and most of time I would sleep in the train to make up for rest and would sometimes miss my stop. I did this for about 2.5 years (give or take). Life was bit of a blur, so much was happening, so fast, it was hard to keep track of everything. But I LOVED it. I loved the rush, I loved having something to do all the time. I loved looking forward to vacation times dates or whatever leisure time I could squeeze in. Now that I am older and have much more free time in my life, I am not even 1/10th as productive as I used to be. Honestly given the choice I would gladly take a extremely busy life over all the free time I have right now. Trust me I am not just sitting around with the all the free time I have. I try to take on projects, learn new things, take on difficult physical challenges (training for marathon), but its just not the same.

timjahn 13y ago

THIS. Can't up vote this enough.

_delirium 13y ago

I thought this feeling was extremely common, but judging by what gets to the front of HN I'm in the minority here. I think HN just likes stories about extremes. Stories of people working 80-hour weeks do play well here, but then so do stories of people living in cheap foreign countries and working 10-hour weeks, supported by semi-passive income. Perhaps somewhere in between is 37Signals' philosophy of pretty regular workweeks (5-day workweeks in the winter, 4-day in the summer) and their "quality of hours, not quantity" philosophy.

golergka 13y ago
> I think HN just likes stories about extremes. Isn't it because a story about average Joe working 40 hours a week on a pretty regular job isn't much of a story?

mseebach 13y ago

I think it's easy for most people to agree that 80 hour work-weeks are typically bugs, not features - especially as they often seem to be a symptom of a dysfunctional working environment. > Life outside of work is, for many of us, far more meaningful than work. There seems to be a meme that this should be the case. My work is extremely meaningful to me, and my work place is extremely not-dysfunctional and no boss is breathing down my neck for my to work any number of hours. My personal life is also great. In a Sophie's choice situation, I'd choose my wife, obviously, but I don't accept the dichotomy. I love my wife and I love the time we spend together, but a few year ago when I down with the flu for a few weeks, my brain felt like it turned to porridge. That's not good for me and it's not good for her. Being professionally challenged is extremely important to my private life, and working with people who feel the same way about their work is important to me. Right now, I am getting enormous returns, both mentally and financially, from my work, and so I work a lot. I completely expect the calculus to change when we have children, but we don't yet. I understand that there are people who don't feel the same way about their work, and there is no merit in working 80 hours for the sake of working 80 hours. But focusing on that number alone and trying to form some objective truths from first principles is not terribly helpful in my opinion.

VLM 13y ago
"But focusing on that number alone" "there is no merit in working 80 hours for the sake of working 80 hours" Bad managers beg to differ with you. Inevitably this turns into MBA disease where you rank workers by the hours present. Your boss deathmarches you for 85 hours a week and his competition only deathmarches his workers for 75 hours? Guess who's getting the bigger annual bonus, Mr 85 hours of course. You're only willing to work 75 hours, what are you not a team player (aka why aren't you willing to destroy yourself to make me richer)? Its very hard for someone who doesn't know anything about a domain specific subject to evaluate the quality of a specialist worker. On the other hand its pretty easy to record, graph, chart, and rate number of hours. Half of all managers by definition are below the median; 50:50 odds aren't looking so good. The worst possible outcome is when professional goals and workplace metrics don't align. So I could do that in 40 hours of serious head down grinding, which would be OK if I only had to be in the office for 40 hours, but worker has to be present for 80 hours to meet the metric goal of appearing busy to show off to the other managers and get that bonus. Wish I could be learning a new language or technology or playing games sitting out on my patio at home for some of those 30-40 hours/week. Well, back to checking social media sites and watching cat videos so the time can get marked off as "present". Unless you're all open plan office in which case you either have to not give a F and do it anyway, or be very stealthy, or most likely just socialize and do busywork. Also over 50 or so hours work quality takes a sharp dive, so at 60 hours you're probably actually accomplishing less than if you worked 40, so now you "need" to work 70, which results in even less milestones accomplished, inevitably the negative feedback loop spirals out of control until you're present for the maximum physical possible time, yet accomplishing basically nothing.

rfnslyr 13y ago

I absolutely hate the idiots that praise long work. Praise hard work. Praise efficient work. If you're working 80 hours a week (and aren't a founder), then you are a chump. The whole point of work is to fund your life. People lose sight of this and started romanticizing long hours.

lotyrin 13y ago
I guess I'm possibly damaged in that I don't find life (including my own) to be inherently valuable unless I'm doing something I'm good at and/or effecting some kind of change on things (it just happens that the things I'm good at and changes I can effect are fairly marketable and so they became my job). I don't work to live, or live to work, I work to work and live because the alternative (very probably, at least) lacks opportunities for interesting work or socialization. I try to get into hobbies (which seem to by definition be doing sorts of work which aren't marketable or impactful) but it's hard to find the point in them. I'll likely never get good enough at say, guitar for it to matter in any way. If I've got nothing social to do on a Sunday evening, closing a ticket at least makes the customer and/or a few hundred of their end users a bit happier come Monday morning. If I'm hourly on the project then it's a few more bucks for my retirement account. All in all, it handily beats feeling like an idiot clumsily flailing on my guitar for a few hours - though I sometimes choose to do that anyway.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  Practice a wide array of things and you will get good at them in a few years. Lift, play an instrument, go for a run, do some drugs. Have fun.

hackula1 13y ago

Da Vinci most certainly worked 80 hour weeks, and I am sure he loved every minute of it. Why? Because he got paid to think up cool shit day in and day out. I have worked jobs that were so mind numbingly boring that I could barely muster 30 hours a week when I was single. Now I am married and could easily pull 60-70 hours a week at my significantly more interesting job. Work is the place you will spend most of your life. Do your best to find a place you can live with.

normloman 13y ago
If he did work 80 hours a week, he could have accomplished the same amount of work in half the time, had he given himself breaks. Everyone knows productivity goes down when you work to long. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/working-hours http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/working-...
marvin 13y ago
You should keep in mind that not everyone is able to work "80-hour weeks". I myself would not stand a chance. It is cool if dedicating your life to work like this works out for you, but it is irresponsible to hold it up as some ideal which everyone must aspire to. I'm not sure if this was the intention of your comment, but I get the general sense whenever this subject pops up on HN that you aren't really doing your best if you aspire to a regular 9-5 workweek. Nothing could be further from the truth - I am a very ambitious guy, but I will refuse to work longer weeks unless it is absolutely necessary. And if so, only for a limited amount of time. Violating this will literally ruin my mental health. I am not the only person who works this way.
- hackula1 13y ago
  > I'm not sure if this was the intention of your comment Definitely not my intention, although I did not specify. An expectation of anything over a 40 hr/wk average is completely unreasonable IMHO. I only meant to say that some people happily choose to work over that average for periods of time.

ExpiredLink 13y ago

> I feel like I'm a different species when I hear someone excited about working 80+ hours a week. Work smart, not hard. 80+ hours people are not the brightest.