I felt dismayed and sad. Was this life in academia? Luckily, only a short while later I went to another conference, this one dominated by European PhD students. More chill discussions over a beer at five o'clock, more talk about people's hobbies and free time. Still, hard work, but also life. I was relieved.

I have not been exposed to the work life of "ordinary" Americans, but all the stories seem to indicate that this attitude is pervasive. It's sad, I think. And certainly unhealthy. And it must also make work culture unbearable for Americans that do value a healthier work-life balance.

Even in finance, the phenomenon of working crazy hours didn't end with the 80s. I'd be shocked if it wasn't still the norm there.

In the medical field, it's quite typical for doctors and nurses to work insanely long shifts and get by on very little sleep... this was the case even before the pandemic hit, but as everyone knows it's gotten even worse since as doctors and nurses started getting sick, dying, and quitting, leaving more work for the rest.

It's long been common in the tech field.. especially in startups, but even among established firms working long hours is quite common.

All sorts of people living paycheck to paycheck and undocumented workers are routinely exploited, and working long hours is common there too.

In many parts of the world it is the fortunate minority who can afford to have a healthy work-life balance and get enough sleep.

There's, I suppose, a weird societal level "getting your money's worth" from their compensation - since their actual hourly rate would plummet on the basis of working 30 hour shifts non-stop and the like.

Not to mention that the institution as a whole has enormous difficulty actually properly handing off care between different providers, yet we would only see benefits from being effective at doing so - not to mention minimizing the impact of bad doctors.

He also was a serious cocaine addict who injected it every day. It's of course an oversimplified historical narrative, but at least part of the reason medicine does things this way is the traditions were set up by someone out of his mind on coke.

One study compares the ACGME limits (max 24 hour shifts) against a "flexible" system with 28 hour ones. Unsurprisingly, there's no effect--since both groups are totally zonked at the end. Meanwhile, data from lab experiments and virtually every other field (trucking, aviation, etc) shows that performance craters well before that.

The rationale for long shifts (other than money) is "handoff": when a new doctor takes over, details about the patient's condition and treatment plan get lost in the shuffle. In some cases, they might not ever have been recorded (e.g., a subliminal impression of a patient's color or breathing). Many people are weirdly nihilistic about improving this, but it seems like it almost has to be the lower-hanging fruit since solving it doesn't require butting up against fundamental limits of human physiology.

Another thing is hospitals adopting air industry style checklists, which doctors fought tooth and nail as 'insulting'. Despite every ounce of evidence massively pointing toward this saving lives.

Making tired people less stupid would require a fundamental breakthrough in neuroscience---and it's not for want of trying that no one has found a way to do so yet.

My mum worked for the NHS and I'd regularly hear her complaining for weeks/months on end about new IT systems that either didn't work, were hard to use or were months or even years behind schedule. All while knowing how much these projects cost (it's all public info here) and that the people working on it where getting paid in a day what she would be lucky to make in a week.

How is it seen if someone is at work by 7am? Or even 6am? Genuine question.

For a couple of reasons, I spent a period of time going into work at 6AM. Most came at 8 or 9. Far more people commented when I stayed until 6PM one day.

A former co-worker of mine used to do this as well. I didn’t notice for weeks and only because I logged in very early one day.

What no one seemed to notice was I was coming in at 11. I never felt the need to correct anyone.