To everyone who jumped in to comment that 60+ hours at work is just fine, because they can do it. I have to say, stop equating work with progress. Busiest time in my life was when I was studying for the California Bar exam. According to the program I was doing, I was expected to study 12 hours a day. Most people I knew did 12+ hours of studying at least, all of them passed the bar. I did about 6 hours a day (+ other stuff for my startup), and still got the same results. The truth is, I actually observed the study habits of my friends. About 7 hours into their study sessions their brains would start to shut down slowly. Questions they would normally take seconds to answer would take them minutes to comprehend.
The point of the article is that working 60+ hours is fine, if you need to, but being proud of it is silly. Be proud of the work you produce, not the amount of time it took you to produce it. And certainly don't be proud putting in 60+ hours for some one else, even if they are buying you with stock options.
To be clear, some of us are lucky enough to make money by doing things we would otherwise do anyway, there is nothing wrong with devoting you life to your hobby and have it bring you a ton of money in the process. But don't kill your self for someone else and feel proud about it because you think it's somehow manly to work 60+ hours.
This is my experience as well. I had my final exams, 2 days with 5 exams each day at mid April (of more than a decade and a half ago, boy I'm getting older fast). Most people in my class (around 40) had been studying since November, around 12+ hours a day.
I begun studying in February, just due to my natural tendency to be lazy, I should have started in November too. But the point is that I tried all kind of timetables and ways to study in the next 2 and a half months. Early , late, all day, nothing.
I discovered that for me what it worked was 4 hours at the morning, with a mandatory break every hour.
Then lunch and maybe a nap or gym. Then another 3 hours at the afternoon. Every time I did less I was loosing time. If I did try to push it too much, studying till late, it was time lost sitting but not really advancing. Each hour of studying or writing had a effective time "on the zone" of around 20 min only.
But what´s more interesting is that if I studied more than 7 hours, the next day was almost lost due to my lack of concentration.
I managed to get the 3rd best results of my class, only failing one exam which I had only studied for 2 days. Only two students passed all the exams, and they were sitting very close and they confirmed me that they had been checking results between them when possible (yes cheating).
So I guess that smart studying was more important that time spent seated. Of course there are other fundamental factors, but I actively tried to improve my study routine during that months, and I felt the difference.
Sixty hours a week was a short week in the old days, the conveniences of a modern society allow us to choose more free time should we want it, all you have to do is venture outside of our comfortable environments and you will find people wishing 60 was the max.
Having grown up on a farm all I can say is, you don't notice it unless the wrong stuff keeps piling up. Its amazing how energized you feel when you enjoy the work and don't have idle time to worry.
Thank you for bringing some sense to the debate. It's typical that threads on this topic result in a pointless debate about <40 and >40 work weeks (I'm in the > 40, but am a founder) in which neither side understands each other, and this thread has not disappointed.
I work like a madman, but unless you asked me about my hours, you'd never know. I work for a result, and if I ever do brag, it's about the result of the work. The hours worked are the natural side effect of achieving said result.
I would never take a job in which I was required to work 60 hours per week (unless I believed the pay made that sacrifice worthwhile), nor would I expect 60 hours per week from employees on a regular basis.
You'll find me breaking from this sentiment near the 40 hour point (I've been vilified for this on this very site), but I'd rather hire more people than burn them out, which is inefficient and leads to resentment.
People are self-renewing resources, and a manager can either choose to cultivate them as assets, or treat them as a battery, throwing them out when they've run out of juice. I'd prefer the former.
This false dichotomy is seriously getting annoying. If 60 hours is sustainable for you, do it. If only 30 hours is sustainable for you, do that instead. But stop imposing onto others what is right or wrong when there are so many factors at play.
Some of my most productive memories are summers studying and working for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week (= 72 hours). I didn't get tired, burned out, or anything. Another summer had me working at a company making "apps" for 40 hours a week, and it fucking drained me... despite taking far less intelligence and brain effort. I suppose that's not true, the brain effort was constantly justifying why I wasn't quitting haha.
Regarding friends/partners/etc. If the amount of hours you want to work isn't compatible with your partner's expectations... get a new partner. Seriously. Your priorities aren't aligned. I don't know what I'd do if my partner expected me to be home for dinner at 6pm on weeknights... Oh wait I do, I'd get a new partner, which I did. Now everyone involved (myself, previous partner, new partner) are very happy.
Finally regarding productivity vs. hours put in. Again, this is completely irrelevant if you're following the right metrics - results. Long hours obviously don't make sense if they're making you too tired to deliver results. If you're delivering but not in a sustainable way, well, you need to calibrate and lower expectations so you don't under deliver.
In short, people should optimize for long-term productivity appropriate to their goals. This, combined with your unique physiology and work circumstances, will dictate how many hours you should work. Oh and definitely exercise every week.
This false dichotomy is seriously getting annoying. If 60 hours is sustainable for you, do it. If only 30 hours is sustainable for you, do that instead.
Two different things are frustrating about this simple homily.
* It's very easy to fool yourself into thinking you can handle things you can't, especially with peer pressure, job pressure and so-forth involved. By the time your health is ruined, your marriage is ruined and etc, it's too late to just say "uh, that didn't work for me". IE, for every "unique physiology", there twenty self-deceivers. I mean, what are the odds? Next, tell me you have "unique physiology" that gets healthier on Cheetos and Ramen (not impossible so it must be true, right).
* The poor result of a permanent 60-hour week aren't just felt by those who make the mistake of following it but by their families and their co-workers.
Sure, freedom. I mean, this article obviously isn't about physically blocking someone from working 60 hours at their workplace but rather encouraging the person to think again whether those 60 hours really make sense.
zxcvvcxz says: "Regarding friends/partners/etc. If the amount of hours you want to work isn't compatible with your partner's expectations... get a new partner. Seriously. Your priorities aren't aligned. I don't know what I'd do if my partner expected me to be home for dinner at 6pm on weeknights... Oh wait I do, I'd get a new partner, which I did. Now everyone involved (myself, previous partner, new partner) are very happy."
Man, I hope you develop some empathy before you end up directing others. I've worked for some of these automatons, and it results in a toxic environment with limited productivity. Far more gets done when your people are excited to be along for the ride.
Most things in life, as far as I'm concerned, are best left to you to decide what's right for you. This is not one of them.
First, if you're spending sixty hours a week in the office, you're not only harming yourself. You're encouraging idiot bosses to start demanding the same of other people, which ends up causing real and considerable harm. When your actions start harming other people, that's when it becomes appropriate to respond with social and legal sanctions.
Now you could take a social Darwinist view and say "blow you Jack, I'm alright"; if other people can't hack it the way you can, that's their problem. But the reality is, you almost certainly can't either, even if you think you can. Working excessive hours is like working drunk: it impairs your judgment in such a way that you don't realize how badly your judgment has been impaired, but it shows every time it's put to an objective test.
So yes, if you're spending sixty hours a week in the office, I damn well am going to tell you you're doing it wrong.
> But stop imposing onto others what is right or wrong
Well. I am not sure anything is being imposed here. The original is just a blog by someone stating that working too long (by his definition) is not something he considers a badge of honor/skill/awesomeness. You don't have to follow the recommendation.
If only 30 hours is sustainable for you, then being employed can be a serious problem. I spent three years with chronic fatigue where I could only work 25 without falling asleep at my desk; fortunately I had a very understanding employer who needed me.
(Also, are you by any chance male, under 35 and have no children?)
> If 60 hours is sustainable for you, do it. If only 30 hours is sustainable for you, do that instead.
I'd love to, but no industry in the USA that pays a living wage will put up with less than 40 hours a week, because we fetishize hours-worked...which is another symptom of the same problem.
"Regarding friends/partners/etc. If the amount of hours you want to work isn't compatible with your partner's expectations... get a new partner. Seriously. Your priorities aren't aligned."
I'm going to guess that you're not married or have kids because this is the dumbest and shallowest thing I've heard in a while. Why would anyone want to be with you if at the slightest suggestion that you spend more time with them you would fire/terminate the relationship.
I agree with the sentiment, but the point of the post wasn't that working 60 hour weeks is wrong - it was that boasting "woe is me" having voluntarily worked long hours isn't impressive.
+1 to recognizing that the ability to sustain work volume is unique and personal. The issue comes in when you are asking someone capable of doing a 40 hour/week job to output 60 hours. That ask will ultimately break that person.
Thank you so much for this. I've been kicking myself for working more hours than I've been told are good for me, even though working as few as 40 on what I care about makes me unhappy.
Indeed... And most of the friends around me who made it big also played it hard.
When Broadcom was nowhere several employees number xxx (with xxx less than 300) were, while in crunch-mode, sleeping in their trucks, on the parking lot, to deliver chip plans on time. Stock options have been good for them the day Broadcom was worth $12bn.
I've got a few friends who started a 3D-rendering business for TV ads, short movies and cartoons. 60 hours a week? Make it 80, 90 and occasionally more than one hundred (you read correctly). I'm talking about people working 15 hours a day, bringing their sleeping bags and pillows at work and eating in a few minutes. They now enjoy 40 employees working for them and have the good life.
I have friends who got money from a business angel and for whom, between angel money and before VC money came, life was work, work and more work.
I could tell you about other people, on the east coast, getting BA money and an office in which they'd sleep (and the girlfriend being surprised to see her new boyfriend living where he works)... And the exit they made selling to a big software company. No 40 hours a week either here but much, much more.
Or another friend setting up a commodity trading (?) company, who's always on the phone and on planes around the world, tracking the ships he's renting and working out deals left and right. Both of us work a lot, yet we find the time to meet (in this or that city in Europe) once in a while.
These people know about burnouts, crunch-mode and... Wealth. Lots of wealth. Yet money wasn't the drive. The drive is simply the desire to achieve great things (build a chip, publish a book, create a company, make an exit, ...).
I've written (and typeset) several books. The last weeks before the book left to go to the editor/publisher were easily 80+ hours a week, working until early in the morning and then taking a few hours of sleep. Rince and repeat. Total crunch-mode. I also know about naps on the bean bag on saturdays and even sundays (!) at Californian startups.
I understand not wanting to work more than 40 hours a week when you're an employee and have a life which you prefer more than your work... But when you're an entrepreneur and want to make a difference, 40 hours a week is nothing.
I'm not saying that there aren't very successful people who've never worked more than 40 hours a week (there are also people who never worked and won the lottery)...
All I'm saying is the entrepreneurs I know who've succeeded big times were (and most still are) relentless workers.
I'm in my forties and I just love what I do. It's saturday, and what did I do? Spent time with my SO, went to buy stuff to paint a room in the appartment, went for a cool drive with my oldtimer and... Spent several hours coding in Clojure..
I even find the time to spend some time on HN ^ ^
You can come with all the studies you want about how 40 hours a week is the limit not to break, unreasonable men will keep being driven by passion and will keep working more than that.
It's not black & white. You want 40 hours a week or, heck, why not 35: try to go to France if you want. Even try to fetch a 4 days out of 5 and you'll be doing 28 hours a week there.
But don't discourage the ones who simply want to work more.
EDIT: fixed a few sentences, not a native english speaker here
I agree that developers should not try to work more than 40 hours per week on a regular basis.
But when I was younger, I went for years working around 16 hours per day, 7 days per week and everybody thought that I was a rockstar genius. But it was not all mental work. I probably spent about 8 hours a day on software development and then I wehnt home and worked another 8 hours in my half acre of gardens, 3 acre asparagus field or shoveling the daily snowfall of 6 inches or so, off my 100 yard driveway. Not to mention sawing and splitting a few cords of firewood to heat the house, cutting Christmas trees to sell.
The physical work was energizing after a day spent writing software, and the mental work was energizing after all the physical labor that I had done the day before. I'm not saying that the physical labor made me more productive at developing software, although that may be true. But I think that when people count hours and then try to use that to prove a point, they forget to classify what is being done in those hours.
Case in point. When I have a tough coding problem, I don't slog away at it for extra hours. I go sit in a different chair, stare out the window, look at the cloud shapes, then close my eyes and think of absurd ways to solve the problem. Now if I would include that time in my count of hours per day and tell you that I can regularly put in a 10 hour day, you would be misled. The total hours are not as important as what you do with those hours.
If you are going to play on the net for 20 hours a week, then yeah, you may need to put in a full 60 hours. Or you could stop goofing around and do your work. Pay attention to your productivity. Split your day into chunks, take your coffee and lunch breaks. I used to join the smokers on their smoke breaks even though I didn't smoke because it got me out of the chair, moving around, and I got to stand in the fresh air and sunshine (upwind of course). And I almost always go for a walk at lunchtime. This is not a waste of time. These pauses are essential for you to get your maximum mental effort.
Sure, sometimes you get stuck into a problems and go for hours without leaving the chair. Even if you are 50 you can do that once in a while if you eat healthy (read Joel Fuhrman), but the key here is "once in a while". Once in a while you can pull out all the stops, but like heroin, it does not get better by doubling the dose.
Buddha had it right when he said (and I paraphrase him) "All things in Moderation". It takes great discipline, but discipline is what software developers need to cultivate in themselves.
The army has done a lot of research on this topic from WWII onwards. I've read some of the studies. I've also read some papers done in the private sector on this topic in the construction industry. What they found was about the same: people who work more that 40 hours a week can do so for a short period of time before it starts to impact a lot of aspects of their health, which translates directly to their performance. This is not controversial.
What I haven't seen much of is how it affects people who don't soldier for a living or who don't work with their hands outdoors for a living. People like me who code. I'm sure the studies are out there, I haven't taken the time to read them. My guess is that the negative impact of working longer hours to outcomes is even more pronounced, not less.
I can cite an internal audit at a large software company I worked at back in the 00's. They found that having people work longer hours wasn't worth it. Period. It didn't improve linear increased output, it produced a negative output ratio per hour overall, furthermore it increased attrition and problems with engineering implementations. Note that said software company's goals were well aligned with getting people to work as long as possible for the same money and they still reached this conclusion.
So go ahead. Work those longer hours. Just be aware that the all the best numbers we have don't support you doing it for long for any good reason.
When I was 25 to 29, I used to spend a lot of time at work. For a while, it just came naturally because I was so eager to learn; I'd stay at work reading books, programming, looking for information on the web and newsgroups (I hadn't internet access at home back then).
But at some point in 1998, for a few months we entered in death march after accepting to be the rescue team for a doomed, undoable project; I've worked 100 to 120 hours a week for 4 months, one of my colleague burnt out like a candle (I remember him asleep the face literally on his keyboard, late at night, while waiting for compilation to end; two days later he lied on an hospital bed) and after that I had serious health problems repeatedly for several years. We had the satisfaction to actually save the project and make the deadline, but two of us ended in hospital, and most on the team had serious family, health of other serious problems afterwards.
So what to say? Know your limits. Don't try to push it to far; it's actually very easy to kill oneself, for instance falling asleep at the wheel, late at night, on the way back home after a very long day.
Let me guess. You put in 3 times the effort but did not get 3 times the salary and at the end of it all you didn't even get a bonus to compensate you fairly for the health issues that were created.
Nowadays, if anybody finds themselves in this position, take Aspirin every evening as a prophylactic (talk to your doctor) and cut out all junk food. Eat lots of vegetables, and a bit of meat but avoid sweet things and carbs (you are not a runner). If you are into it, try something like a paleo diet. Get exercise sessions spaced through the day (and night) even if only 5 minutes of intensive aerobics at a time.
And look after your fellow workers because you only win this type of thing as a team.
I work 40 hours a week at maximum - most weeks I work about 34 to 38 hours. You 80 hours a week guys, what the hell are you doing with your time? Are you divorced? No family? No friends?
Is 'disrupting' an industry really that important to you?
I'm 26, single, and have no pets. I have a family and friends, but I'm very transparent about my work habits and priorities as a full-stack engineer.
Being so young, I see myself as training to be the person I want to be in the future. The best programmers in the world worked at it relentlessly. Sure, there are variances in the amount that they all worked, and some did it with much less work than others. But if I want to be the best in the world, or at least attain my personal upper bound, I have to work hard at it and I have to work consistently at it.
John Resig didn't wake up one day and write jQuery. Steve Wozniak didn't just throw together the Apple I. Linus didn't just decide to write the Linux kernel one afternoon. They all put to work the investments they made in themselves.
I don't do it because I want money, success, or fame. I do it because I deeply want to make a meaningful impact on the world. I want it so bad that when I think about it my palms sweat and my chest gets heavy. When you look at the future of humanity as a whole, we need to either improve or die. And to improve, we need improvers. I want to be an improver and I don't want to rest until I am.
To be clear, I love what I do and I don't really consider it work. Solving hard problems with creative techniques is one of my favorite things to do. I really enjoy learning new things, and being able to pull them into my work is really satisfying. Being able to build something that I imagine, push it out to people, and see them get excited about it is surreal. I don't want to be doing anything else. I don't want to stop working.
But I understand the research. I understand that the work I put in will be more productive and beneficial to me if I have a balance in all areas of my life--which means that I need to be social, have hobbies, and live a healthy lifestyle.
So I've aligned my life such that those interactions still help me reach my upper bound. My friends are smarter than I am and many are in technical fields so getting a beer with them involves talking about a hard problem we solved. My hobbies include writing StackOverflow posts, trying out new frameworks, and reading books like Thinking, Fast and Slow, RabbitMQ in Action, and Secrets of the Javascript Ninja. I truly enjoy and am satisfied with these parts of my life, even though I'm never really leaving the mindset of work.
One day I want to write those books, not just read them, and I want those books to meaningfully impact the world. So I train, and that means I'm an 80 hours a week guy.
The problem comes from the culture; certain cultures identify success as the core value of a person, so people tend to identify their identity with the product of their work.
It's more than some "important"; work is how people [with this attitude] values theirselves.
Keep in mind that if you grow up pushed to be the best at school and then at work, there's nothing really meaningful in life outside those areas.
That's where the false dichotomy "being great vs. family comes". Essentially, it's perceived as having something that makes one happy at the perceived cost of "being a nobody".
At the extreme of this attitude the is Japan, where work is taking over the sexual life (there was an article some time ago in HN).
I had a boss tell me at an end of year meeting that another employee had worked 1000 more hours that year than I had. I looked my boss in the eye and said "then he's doing something wrong". Consistent 60 hour weeks is a failure of management and of the employee to better manage their time. Especially if you are salaried.
We forget so soon. Labor movements within recent memory were fought at great cost to secure the possibility of shorter working hours. People were killed at factory gates trying to get labor laws enacted, in part to reduce employer demands for long working hours.
One argument in favor of capping work hours: unrestricted overtime discriminates against workers unable or unwilling to compete. A race to the bottom is not in the long-term best interests of any participant or the society.
An imbalance in society might show up as (under|un)employment in groups outside the core demographic -- in this case, anyone who is non-20-something, non-male, or non-white, who is not "crushing it" at work after nine on weeknights.
I wonder if the author would give the same advice to famous workaholics like Paul Erdos?
Here's my issue: I'm an entrepreneur. Doing a startup is my dream. I'm having fun and creating amazing memories. I work as much as I possibly can. Stopping me from working on my startup is like keeping a child locked in a room. I don't force my team to do the same (and they don't). I don't brag about it, I am not burning out, not messing with my sleep, not jeopardising my health. Moreso, when I force myself to stop it takes me a long time to start again. That's how my brain works. Why is 40 the golden standard? Do I have to apologise for the amount of work I do?
...will we ever get to a point of normality and sanity where:
1. guy A who want to work just 30hrs a week can say that this is how much he wants to work and get paid a fair hourly rate (same as guy B if he's just as good)
2. guy B who wants to work 70+hrs a week can say that this is how much he wants to work and get the same fair hourly rate (same as guy A if he's just as good, a reasonable 25% more for hours worked about a certain threshold - let's say 40hrs per week mandated, to set an arbitrary bar and stimulate employment of more people over exploitation)
3. guy A and B can have a coffee together and both see each other as equal value guys but with different life priorities, both ok
4. employers will not favor type B guys over type A guys (if this happens, mandatory extra-payment for overtime or extra-taxation could sway things to an equilibrium).
...it all boils down to Bertrand Russel's idea: why not have two people working X hrs a day instead of one guy working 2X hrs a day, and at the same time let the guy who wants to work 2X do it but don't discriminate in his favor (http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html).
So far I've only accepted jobs that will let me be paid by the hour, instead of salary, with 1.5 times pay for overtime. I feel like it much more reasonably aligns expectations, and in 10+ years of working that way, I've only done a few hours of overtime here or there during true emergencies.
Going the opposite direction, I'm working 80% (32 hour weeks) by choice and it's awesome. I have so much more time for other interests and family and it's much less stressful. Of course I only get paid 80%, but that works for me.
I'm doing this at a major computer company and my management is supportive. Nonetheless, it took months of discussion and needed to get approved by the VP. And it's probably hurting my "career path".
Culturally, I find people don't understand working less than 100%. You have Friday off? Is that vacation? Is that a partial layoff? (I'm male, and in the US for context.)
Overall, it would be nice if working less than 40 hours were an option for more people.
I am doing do a degree and paying the bills by freelancing. So 50-60hr/wk, combined education and work, is something regular.
It is possible to sustain it, if you are an introvert like me. It's just important not to do the same thing all the time. My degree is focused on low level programming and hardware, and I mainly do AngularJS development for living. So this kind of switch definitely helps.
Other thing which is important, at least personally, is that when you take a break, you must do something that counts. Browsing internet just drains more energy, personally. But I find playing an action packed video game (if you can't bother to go outside - or if you live in North England like I do) quite recharging. [0]
For most people, I'd agree. But as a startup founder, given how resource constrained we are (and we've chosen the self-funded, bootstrapping model for now) I don't have a whole lot of choice if we're going to succeed. Especially when you factor in that I still work a regular job to pay the bills.
So, 40 hrs at the regular job + x hours working on the startup, where x consumes almost every evening and almost all day on Sat. and Sunday, I'm regularly doing 70+ hour weeks.
Humblebrag? I don't know, and I don't care. I just care about getting this damn thing going and achieving my dreams.
Luckily I enjoy this, because I'm working on something I am actually passionate about. Not that it doesn't get frustrating on occasion, but most of the time it's more pleasure than pain.
So why do all this? Well, as theorique says here:
It isn't about disrupting an industry. It's about money.
That's a little bit of an oversimplification, but there's a lot of truth there. There are things I'd like to do, dreams I'd like to live out, that I can't do at my present level of income. But it's more than that for me (and, I'm guessing, for a lot of other people). I work on building a startup because A. I enjoy the act of building and creating something, and B. as the founder I'm in control and get to call the shots. Here, succeed for fail, it'll be down to my decisions and actions, not some random $BOSS. (Yeah, yeah, go ahead and chime in "everything is luck" crowd. I don't care about you either).
Anyway, when I get tired of working I just imagine myself cruising through New York or London, driving a Ferrari while getting sucked off by a gorgeous readheaded supermodel, and remind myself that there are reasons for doing all this work...
Okay, fair enough call with the humblebrag -- many times people talking about how many hours they work are simply socially posturing: look at how much more important I am!
Also, it's bad for you. Bad for your health and bad for your performance.
Having said all of that, there's nothing wrong with 1) pouring yourself into something that's bigger than you, and 2) living a life that's dedicated to something aside from yourself, one which doesn't have traditional work-life boundaries.
That's probably only true in 1% of these cases, but I don't want to lose those folks while giving lectures to the other 99% about values and performance.
ADD: Rephrased, articles like this are also a form of social posturing, and please don't kill the next Thomas Edison with your well-meaning advice to ten thousand corporate drones.
I probably average around 60hrs per week and my biggest reservations about this are:
1. That's 60hrs of being a sedentary lazy-ass
2. The more I work outside of work, the less well-rounded I will be
I'm a fit person and take regular walking/stretching breaks and switch between standing and sitting but I still feel like I'm spending way too much time being motionless.
Regarding being well-rounded, I've spent large chunks of my life focused on music, philosophy and learning new (natural) languages. I find that it makes me happier and makes me a more creative programmer, so I tend to feel guilty when realize at the end of the week that I've spent all of my evenings coding and reading RFCs.
Some weeks 60+ hours can be very productive - but it's important to recognise when you're not being productive and take a proper break - I still find that a challenge.
This article doesn't pass the smell test. There is nothing magical about 40 hours per week. 60 hours is just as arbitrary as 40. Also, it probably originated when people did actual physical labor, and so it wont apply to dev work. Countless people in the sciences have toiled day and night to bring about great discoveries - and that's a good thing.
Question: Do non-software people (I'm thinking Scientists, Mathematicians, etc) ever complain about this?
I think it's about what the 60h is for. As a salary man, completely agree, what are you working for? So that you make $180,000/year in 5 years instead of $100,000? Not worth it.
But 60h/week for your own startup? Gosh, when I just started out, I loved every single minute of work on my startup, I even didn't want to sleep, I wouldn't get more joy of doing anything else than my startup, because it wasn't work, it was me. I was building my very own future.
I think a 60h week is a completely different story if you compare it to being a salary man and building your own company --> your own life.
[+] [-] x0054|12 years ago|reply
The point of the article is that working 60+ hours is fine, if you need to, but being proud of it is silly. Be proud of the work you produce, not the amount of time it took you to produce it. And certainly don't be proud putting in 60+ hours for some one else, even if they are buying you with stock options.
To be clear, some of us are lucky enough to make money by doing things we would otherwise do anyway, there is nothing wrong with devoting you life to your hobby and have it bring you a ton of money in the process. But don't kill your self for someone else and feel proud about it because you think it's somehow manly to work 60+ hours.
[+] [-] omegant|12 years ago|reply
I begun studying in February, just due to my natural tendency to be lazy, I should have started in November too. But the point is that I tried all kind of timetables and ways to study in the next 2 and a half months. Early , late, all day, nothing.
I discovered that for me what it worked was 4 hours at the morning, with a mandatory break every hour.
Then lunch and maybe a nap or gym. Then another 3 hours at the afternoon. Every time I did less I was loosing time. If I did try to push it too much, studying till late, it was time lost sitting but not really advancing. Each hour of studying or writing had a effective time "on the zone" of around 20 min only.
But what´s more interesting is that if I studied more than 7 hours, the next day was almost lost due to my lack of concentration.
I managed to get the 3rd best results of my class, only failing one exam which I had only studied for 2 days. Only two students passed all the exams, and they were sitting very close and they confirmed me that they had been checking results between them when possible (yes cheating).
So I guess that smart studying was more important that time spent seated. Of course there are other fundamental factors, but I actively tried to improve my study routine during that months, and I felt the difference.
[+] [-] Shivetya|12 years ago|reply
Sixty hours a week was a short week in the old days, the conveniences of a modern society allow us to choose more free time should we want it, all you have to do is venture outside of our comfortable environments and you will find people wishing 60 was the max.
Having grown up on a farm all I can say is, you don't notice it unless the wrong stuff keeps piling up. Its amazing how energized you feel when you enjoy the work and don't have idle time to worry.
[+] [-] nhangen|12 years ago|reply
I work like a madman, but unless you asked me about my hours, you'd never know. I work for a result, and if I ever do brag, it's about the result of the work. The hours worked are the natural side effect of achieving said result.
I would never take a job in which I was required to work 60 hours per week (unless I believed the pay made that sacrifice worthwhile), nor would I expect 60 hours per week from employees on a regular basis.
You'll find me breaking from this sentiment near the 40 hour point (I've been vilified for this on this very site), but I'd rather hire more people than burn them out, which is inefficient and leads to resentment.
People are self-renewing resources, and a manager can either choose to cultivate them as assets, or treat them as a battery, throwing them out when they've run out of juice. I'd prefer the former.
[+] [-] zxcvvcxz|12 years ago|reply
Some of my most productive memories are summers studying and working for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week (= 72 hours). I didn't get tired, burned out, or anything. Another summer had me working at a company making "apps" for 40 hours a week, and it fucking drained me... despite taking far less intelligence and brain effort. I suppose that's not true, the brain effort was constantly justifying why I wasn't quitting haha.
Regarding friends/partners/etc. If the amount of hours you want to work isn't compatible with your partner's expectations... get a new partner. Seriously. Your priorities aren't aligned. I don't know what I'd do if my partner expected me to be home for dinner at 6pm on weeknights... Oh wait I do, I'd get a new partner, which I did. Now everyone involved (myself, previous partner, new partner) are very happy.
Finally regarding productivity vs. hours put in. Again, this is completely irrelevant if you're following the right metrics - results. Long hours obviously don't make sense if they're making you too tired to deliver results. If you're delivering but not in a sustainable way, well, you need to calibrate and lower expectations so you don't under deliver.
In short, people should optimize for long-term productivity appropriate to their goals. This, combined with your unique physiology and work circumstances, will dictate how many hours you should work. Oh and definitely exercise every week.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|12 years ago|reply
Two different things are frustrating about this simple homily.
* It's very easy to fool yourself into thinking you can handle things you can't, especially with peer pressure, job pressure and so-forth involved. By the time your health is ruined, your marriage is ruined and etc, it's too late to just say "uh, that didn't work for me". IE, for every "unique physiology", there twenty self-deceivers. I mean, what are the odds? Next, tell me you have "unique physiology" that gets healthier on Cheetos and Ramen (not impossible so it must be true, right).
* The poor result of a permanent 60-hour week aren't just felt by those who make the mistake of following it but by their families and their co-workers.
Sure, freedom. I mean, this article obviously isn't about physically blocking someone from working 60 hours at their workplace but rather encouraging the person to think again whether those 60 hours really make sense.
[+] [-] jleyank|12 years ago|reply
Man, I hope you develop some empathy before you end up directing others. I've worked for some of these automatons, and it results in a toxic environment with limited productivity. Far more gets done when your people are excited to be along for the ride.
[+] [-] rwallace|12 years ago|reply
First, if you're spending sixty hours a week in the office, you're not only harming yourself. You're encouraging idiot bosses to start demanding the same of other people, which ends up causing real and considerable harm. When your actions start harming other people, that's when it becomes appropriate to respond with social and legal sanctions.
Now you could take a social Darwinist view and say "blow you Jack, I'm alright"; if other people can't hack it the way you can, that's their problem. But the reality is, you almost certainly can't either, even if you think you can. Working excessive hours is like working drunk: it impairs your judgment in such a way that you don't realize how badly your judgment has been impaired, but it shows every time it's put to an objective test.
So yes, if you're spending sixty hours a week in the office, I damn well am going to tell you you're doing it wrong.
[+] [-] Derbasti|12 years ago|reply
Then again, you know, you might be a actual snowflake...
[+] [-] shadowfox|12 years ago|reply
Well. I am not sure anything is being imposed here. The original is just a blog by someone stating that working too long (by his definition) is not something he considers a badge of honor/skill/awesomeness. You don't have to follow the recommendation.
[+] [-] pjc50|12 years ago|reply
(Also, are you by any chance male, under 35 and have no children?)
[+] [-] PhasmaFelis|12 years ago|reply
I'd love to, but no industry in the USA that pays a living wage will put up with less than 40 hours a week, because we fetishize hours-worked...which is another symptom of the same problem.
[+] [-] aNoob7000|12 years ago|reply
I'm going to guess that you're not married or have kids because this is the dumbest and shallowest thing I've heard in a while. Why would anyone want to be with you if at the slightest suggestion that you spend more time with them you would fire/terminate the relationship.
[+] [-] helipad|12 years ago|reply
As you say, results are what impress people.
[+] [-] Avshalom|12 years ago|reply
This is not an option for most us.
[+] [-] btbuildem|12 years ago|reply
Take your own advice much?
[+] [-] rmjacque|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rattray|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kruipen|12 years ago|reply
...
> Oh and definitely exercise every week.
[+] [-] beedogs|12 years ago|reply
Or, hey, just go live in a cave with your sad, forever-alone 60-hour-a-week self.
[+] [-] TacticalCoder|12 years ago|reply
When Broadcom was nowhere several employees number xxx (with xxx less than 300) were, while in crunch-mode, sleeping in their trucks, on the parking lot, to deliver chip plans on time. Stock options have been good for them the day Broadcom was worth $12bn.
I've got a few friends who started a 3D-rendering business for TV ads, short movies and cartoons. 60 hours a week? Make it 80, 90 and occasionally more than one hundred (you read correctly). I'm talking about people working 15 hours a day, bringing their sleeping bags and pillows at work and eating in a few minutes. They now enjoy 40 employees working for them and have the good life.
I have friends who got money from a business angel and for whom, between angel money and before VC money came, life was work, work and more work.
I could tell you about other people, on the east coast, getting BA money and an office in which they'd sleep (and the girlfriend being surprised to see her new boyfriend living where he works)... And the exit they made selling to a big software company. No 40 hours a week either here but much, much more.
Or another friend setting up a commodity trading (?) company, who's always on the phone and on planes around the world, tracking the ships he's renting and working out deals left and right. Both of us work a lot, yet we find the time to meet (in this or that city in Europe) once in a while.
These people know about burnouts, crunch-mode and... Wealth. Lots of wealth. Yet money wasn't the drive. The drive is simply the desire to achieve great things (build a chip, publish a book, create a company, make an exit, ...).
I've written (and typeset) several books. The last weeks before the book left to go to the editor/publisher were easily 80+ hours a week, working until early in the morning and then taking a few hours of sleep. Rince and repeat. Total crunch-mode. I also know about naps on the bean bag on saturdays and even sundays (!) at Californian startups.
I understand not wanting to work more than 40 hours a week when you're an employee and have a life which you prefer more than your work... But when you're an entrepreneur and want to make a difference, 40 hours a week is nothing.
I'm not saying that there aren't very successful people who've never worked more than 40 hours a week (there are also people who never worked and won the lottery)...
All I'm saying is the entrepreneurs I know who've succeeded big times were (and most still are) relentless workers.
I'm in my forties and I just love what I do. It's saturday, and what did I do? Spent time with my SO, went to buy stuff to paint a room in the appartment, went for a cool drive with my oldtimer and... Spent several hours coding in Clojure..
I even find the time to spend some time on HN ^ ^
You can come with all the studies you want about how 40 hours a week is the limit not to break, unreasonable men will keep being driven by passion and will keep working more than that.
It's not black & white. You want 40 hours a week or, heck, why not 35: try to go to France if you want. Even try to fetch a 4 days out of 5 and you'll be doing 28 hours a week there.
But don't discourage the ones who simply want to work more.
EDIT: fixed a few sentences, not a native english speaker here
[+] [-] Elizer0x0309|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] memracom|12 years ago|reply
But when I was younger, I went for years working around 16 hours per day, 7 days per week and everybody thought that I was a rockstar genius. But it was not all mental work. I probably spent about 8 hours a day on software development and then I wehnt home and worked another 8 hours in my half acre of gardens, 3 acre asparagus field or shoveling the daily snowfall of 6 inches or so, off my 100 yard driveway. Not to mention sawing and splitting a few cords of firewood to heat the house, cutting Christmas trees to sell.
The physical work was energizing after a day spent writing software, and the mental work was energizing after all the physical labor that I had done the day before. I'm not saying that the physical labor made me more productive at developing software, although that may be true. But I think that when people count hours and then try to use that to prove a point, they forget to classify what is being done in those hours.
Case in point. When I have a tough coding problem, I don't slog away at it for extra hours. I go sit in a different chair, stare out the window, look at the cloud shapes, then close my eyes and think of absurd ways to solve the problem. Now if I would include that time in my count of hours per day and tell you that I can regularly put in a 10 hour day, you would be misled. The total hours are not as important as what you do with those hours.
If you are going to play on the net for 20 hours a week, then yeah, you may need to put in a full 60 hours. Or you could stop goofing around and do your work. Pay attention to your productivity. Split your day into chunks, take your coffee and lunch breaks. I used to join the smokers on their smoke breaks even though I didn't smoke because it got me out of the chair, moving around, and I got to stand in the fresh air and sunshine (upwind of course). And I almost always go for a walk at lunchtime. This is not a waste of time. These pauses are essential for you to get your maximum mental effort.
Sure, sometimes you get stuck into a problems and go for hours without leaving the chair. Even if you are 50 you can do that once in a while if you eat healthy (read Joel Fuhrman), but the key here is "once in a while". Once in a while you can pull out all the stops, but like heroin, it does not get better by doubling the dose.
Buddha had it right when he said (and I paraphrase him) "All things in Moderation". It takes great discipline, but discipline is what software developers need to cultivate in themselves.
[+] [-] notastartup|12 years ago|reply
Look at Germany's working hours for the average salary man. They work less than British salary man and are far more productive.
[+] [-] nickbauman|12 years ago|reply
What I haven't seen much of is how it affects people who don't soldier for a living or who don't work with their hands outdoors for a living. People like me who code. I'm sure the studies are out there, I haven't taken the time to read them. My guess is that the negative impact of working longer hours to outcomes is even more pronounced, not less.
I can cite an internal audit at a large software company I worked at back in the 00's. They found that having people work longer hours wasn't worth it. Period. It didn't improve linear increased output, it produced a negative output ratio per hour overall, furthermore it increased attrition and problems with engineering implementations. Note that said software company's goals were well aligned with getting people to work as long as possible for the same money and they still reached this conclusion.
So go ahead. Work those longer hours. Just be aware that the all the best numbers we have don't support you doing it for long for any good reason.
[+] [-] yapcguy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wazoox|12 years ago|reply
But at some point in 1998, for a few months we entered in death march after accepting to be the rescue team for a doomed, undoable project; I've worked 100 to 120 hours a week for 4 months, one of my colleague burnt out like a candle (I remember him asleep the face literally on his keyboard, late at night, while waiting for compilation to end; two days later he lied on an hospital bed) and after that I had serious health problems repeatedly for several years. We had the satisfaction to actually save the project and make the deadline, but two of us ended in hospital, and most on the team had serious family, health of other serious problems afterwards.
So what to say? Know your limits. Don't try to push it to far; it's actually very easy to kill oneself, for instance falling asleep at the wheel, late at night, on the way back home after a very long day.
[+] [-] frozenport|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] memracom|12 years ago|reply
Nowadays, if anybody finds themselves in this position, take Aspirin every evening as a prophylactic (talk to your doctor) and cut out all junk food. Eat lots of vegetables, and a bit of meat but avoid sweet things and carbs (you are not a runner). If you are into it, try something like a paleo diet. Get exercise sessions spaced through the day (and night) even if only 5 minutes of intensive aerobics at a time.
And look after your fellow workers because you only win this type of thing as a team.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sergiotapia|12 years ago|reply
Is 'disrupting' an industry really that important to you?
[+] [-] rickhanlonii|12 years ago|reply
I'm 26, single, and have no pets. I have a family and friends, but I'm very transparent about my work habits and priorities as a full-stack engineer.
Being so young, I see myself as training to be the person I want to be in the future. The best programmers in the world worked at it relentlessly. Sure, there are variances in the amount that they all worked, and some did it with much less work than others. But if I want to be the best in the world, or at least attain my personal upper bound, I have to work hard at it and I have to work consistently at it.
John Resig didn't wake up one day and write jQuery. Steve Wozniak didn't just throw together the Apple I. Linus didn't just decide to write the Linux kernel one afternoon. They all put to work the investments they made in themselves.
I don't do it because I want money, success, or fame. I do it because I deeply want to make a meaningful impact on the world. I want it so bad that when I think about it my palms sweat and my chest gets heavy. When you look at the future of humanity as a whole, we need to either improve or die. And to improve, we need improvers. I want to be an improver and I don't want to rest until I am.
To be clear, I love what I do and I don't really consider it work. Solving hard problems with creative techniques is one of my favorite things to do. I really enjoy learning new things, and being able to pull them into my work is really satisfying. Being able to build something that I imagine, push it out to people, and see them get excited about it is surreal. I don't want to be doing anything else. I don't want to stop working.
But I understand the research. I understand that the work I put in will be more productive and beneficial to me if I have a balance in all areas of my life--which means that I need to be social, have hobbies, and live a healthy lifestyle.
So I've aligned my life such that those interactions still help me reach my upper bound. My friends are smarter than I am and many are in technical fields so getting a beer with them involves talking about a hard problem we solved. My hobbies include writing StackOverflow posts, trying out new frameworks, and reading books like Thinking, Fast and Slow, RabbitMQ in Action, and Secrets of the Javascript Ninja. I truly enjoy and am satisfied with these parts of my life, even though I'm never really leaving the mindset of work.
One day I want to write those books, not just read them, and I want those books to meaningfully impact the world. So I train, and that means I'm an 80 hours a week guy.
[+] [-] pizza234|12 years ago|reply
It's more than some "important"; work is how people [with this attitude] values theirselves.
Keep in mind that if you grow up pushed to be the best at school and then at work, there's nothing really meaningful in life outside those areas.
That's where the false dichotomy "being great vs. family comes". Essentially, it's perceived as having something that makes one happy at the perceived cost of "being a nobody".
At the extreme of this attitude the is Japan, where work is taking over the sexual life (there was an article some time ago in HN).
[+] [-] theorique|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AutoCorrect|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregholmberg|12 years ago|reply
One argument in favor of capping work hours: unrestricted overtime discriminates against workers unable or unwilling to compete. A race to the bottom is not in the long-term best interests of any participant or the society.
An imbalance in society might show up as (under|un)employment in groups outside the core demographic -- in this case, anyone who is non-20-something, non-male, or non-white, who is not "crushing it" at work after nine on weeknights.
[+] [-] alexandros|12 years ago|reply
Here's my issue: I'm an entrepreneur. Doing a startup is my dream. I'm having fun and creating amazing memories. I work as much as I possibly can. Stopping me from working on my startup is like keeping a child locked in a room. I don't force my team to do the same (and they don't). I don't brag about it, I am not burning out, not messing with my sleep, not jeopardising my health. Moreso, when I force myself to stop it takes me a long time to start again. That's how my brain works. Why is 40 the golden standard? Do I have to apologise for the amount of work I do?
[+] [-] nnq|12 years ago|reply
1. guy A who want to work just 30hrs a week can say that this is how much he wants to work and get paid a fair hourly rate (same as guy B if he's just as good)
2. guy B who wants to work 70+hrs a week can say that this is how much he wants to work and get the same fair hourly rate (same as guy A if he's just as good, a reasonable 25% more for hours worked about a certain threshold - let's say 40hrs per week mandated, to set an arbitrary bar and stimulate employment of more people over exploitation)
3. guy A and B can have a coffee together and both see each other as equal value guys but with different life priorities, both ok
4. employers will not favor type B guys over type A guys (if this happens, mandatory extra-payment for overtime or extra-taxation could sway things to an equilibrium).
...it all boils down to Bertrand Russel's idea: why not have two people working X hrs a day instead of one guy working 2X hrs a day, and at the same time let the guy who wants to work 2X do it but don't discriminate in his favor (http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html).
[+] [-] seivan|12 years ago|reply
This happened to me recently. More than 70h per week.
But that's not. The fact of the matter is, I was the sole programmer on the product and the product is so attached to me that if it fails, I fail.
I don't see it that way, but the employees at the place I work at do. The clients who were brought in to meet me, do.
[+] [-] jewel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonce42|12 years ago|reply
I'm doing this at a major computer company and my management is supportive. Nonetheless, it took months of discussion and needed to get approved by the VP. And it's probably hurting my "career path".
Culturally, I find people don't understand working less than 100%. You have Friday off? Is that vacation? Is that a partial layoff? (I'm male, and in the US for context.)
Overall, it would be nice if working less than 40 hours were an option for more people.
[+] [-] capisce|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gedrap|12 years ago|reply
It is possible to sustain it, if you are an introvert like me. It's just important not to do the same thing all the time. My degree is focused on low level programming and hardware, and I mainly do AngularJS development for living. So this kind of switch definitely helps.
Other thing which is important, at least personally, is that when you take a break, you must do something that counts. Browsing internet just drains more energy, personally. But I find playing an action packed video game (if you can't bother to go outside - or if you live in North England like I do) quite recharging. [0]
[0] I wrote more about that in my blog http://blog.gedrap.me/blog/2014/02/09/its-all-about-the-shor...
[+] [-] mindcrime|12 years ago|reply
So, 40 hrs at the regular job + x hours working on the startup, where x consumes almost every evening and almost all day on Sat. and Sunday, I'm regularly doing 70+ hour weeks.
Humblebrag? I don't know, and I don't care. I just care about getting this damn thing going and achieving my dreams.
Luckily I enjoy this, because I'm working on something I am actually passionate about. Not that it doesn't get frustrating on occasion, but most of the time it's more pleasure than pain.
So why do all this? Well, as theorique says here:
It isn't about disrupting an industry. It's about money.
That's a little bit of an oversimplification, but there's a lot of truth there. There are things I'd like to do, dreams I'd like to live out, that I can't do at my present level of income. But it's more than that for me (and, I'm guessing, for a lot of other people). I work on building a startup because A. I enjoy the act of building and creating something, and B. as the founder I'm in control and get to call the shots. Here, succeed for fail, it'll be down to my decisions and actions, not some random $BOSS. (Yeah, yeah, go ahead and chime in "everything is luck" crowd. I don't care about you either).
Anyway, when I get tired of working I just imagine myself cruising through New York or London, driving a Ferrari while getting sucked off by a gorgeous readheaded supermodel, and remind myself that there are reasons for doing all this work...
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
Also, it's bad for you. Bad for your health and bad for your performance.
Having said all of that, there's nothing wrong with 1) pouring yourself into something that's bigger than you, and 2) living a life that's dedicated to something aside from yourself, one which doesn't have traditional work-life boundaries.
That's probably only true in 1% of these cases, but I don't want to lose those folks while giving lectures to the other 99% about values and performance.
ADD: Rephrased, articles like this are also a form of social posturing, and please don't kill the next Thomas Edison with your well-meaning advice to ten thousand corporate drones.
[+] [-] daviddaviddavid|12 years ago|reply
1. That's 60hrs of being a sedentary lazy-ass
2. The more I work outside of work, the less well-rounded I will be
I'm a fit person and take regular walking/stretching breaks and switch between standing and sitting but I still feel like I'm spending way too much time being motionless.
Regarding being well-rounded, I've spent large chunks of my life focused on music, philosophy and learning new (natural) languages. I find that it makes me happier and makes me a more creative programmer, so I tend to feel guilty when realize at the end of the week that I've spent all of my evenings coding and reading RFCs.
[+] [-] mjn|12 years ago|reply
"The cult of busy": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187353
"The busy trap": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4184317
[+] [-] mtkd|12 years ago|reply
Some weeks 60+ hours can be very productive - but it's important to recognise when you're not being productive and take a proper break - I still find that a challenge.
[+] [-] ksk|12 years ago|reply
Question: Do non-software people (I'm thinking Scientists, Mathematicians, etc) ever complain about this?
[+] [-] wellboy|12 years ago|reply
But 60h/week for your own startup? Gosh, when I just started out, I loved every single minute of work on my startup, I even didn't want to sleep, I wouldn't get more joy of doing anything else than my startup, because it wasn't work, it was me. I was building my very own future.
I think a 60h week is a completely different story if you compare it to being a salary man and building your own company --> your own life.