By that logic, you should be enforcing a 60 hour/week, to achieve even better goals.

The problem is that job != job, because different jobs have different requirements.

A doctor needs to be available continuously, but he doesn’t necessarily need to be working continuously. An on-call doctor needs to be available 24/7. A general practitioner may only need to show up for scheduled appointments in strict timeslots.

A programmer on a long term project needs to eventually put in hours, but precisely when he puts in those hours matters less. A senior developer is productive anytime he’s available for advice (and there are others working to be advised — with off-shore resources, this can mean extended availability)

A warehouse worker is productive only when he’s explicitly doing labor. Being available for labor, but not doing any, is worthless.

A programmer on a short term or last-mile phase of a project needs to put in the hours, but on a strict timeline — there’s no room to skip a day and make up for it tomorrow.

Companies already acknowledge this, albeit implicitly. The higher you are in the hierarchy, the more valuable your availability and the less your labor. CEOs don’t get to have strict no-work vacations, but they also don’t have strict 9-5 work/life split, because they need to be available all the time. At the same time, they can go normal days without any real work to do, because they aren’t needed for anything.

You're kind of begging the question when you take "The 40 hour/week company will get more done" as a given, because that is exactly what's at stake here, isn't it? People upthread are theorizing that those extra 20 hours a week really don't make us get more done, because (to quote one of the comments above), "the rest is socialization, pointless meetings, lunches, or trying to look busy"

I can't remember the last time I saw the phrase "begging the question" used in its traditional/philosophical form — how refreshing!

Why 20? Why not 10? or 5, maybe 1hrs a week some how people will magically get more done than 40hrs a week.

I used to think this. But, I've learned that it assumes a bunch of things that aren't really true at many, many companies:

- Clear goals that the team is bought into

- Productive people who can sustain emotional enthusiasm for extended time periods

- An environment where intrinsically motivated people can thrive, and/or incentives for extrinsically motivated people

- A healthy feedback loop so people know when they're improving and are rewarded for it

- etc

Looked at this way, a team of 5 people working 20 hours per week in this type of company can vastly outperform a team of people working 40 hours per week at a company that lacks the above items. (And I'm probably missing some)

That isn't how comparisons work though. You can't compare a 20-hour/week company with good culture to a 40-hour/week company with toxic culture. You have two variables uncontrolled in that comparison.

Compare both companies at 40 or both at 20. The good-culture-40-hour would outperform the both the good-culture-20-hour and bad-culture-40-hour so why wouldn't all companies aim for 40/hours with a good culture?

It could be argued that it is impossible to have a good culture and 40 hours, but that needs a lot of analysis.

You can compare apples and oranges just fine.

(You are working to argue that the comparison being made isn't useful and haven't gotten there. For instance, if I was going to build a company, I'd certainly want to know what parts of a culture were important to a company that compared so well against the longer working company)

I'm saying if you have the above items checked off, then you're ahead of many, many teams. (It feels to me like 99% of teams but that's just looking out my own eyes)

> Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week.

That would be fabulous. Much better than doctors working to a regime designed by a cocaine addict that sees them punch-drunk from a lack of sleep by the end of their rosters.

I've come to believe that big software projects are like a marathon. Burning up your maximum energy every step of the way simply isn't going to yield better results. You need to create a pace and keep to it. Sometimes you speed up, sometimes you slow down, but saying 60 hours/week from start to finish is gonna be counterproductive.

I remember reading some studies on this, I think it was in the world of game development. 60 hrs/week delivers more than 40 hrs/week for the first few weeks, but then it reduces and after about 6 weeks, you're delivering less working 60 hrs/week than you were at 40.

Of course, there are lots of related issues, like are your employees getting enough sleep? Very varied work might tax employees differently. Is 8hr days, 5 on, 2 off necessarily the optimal pattern? Can people work more efficiently for longer if they're working on something they truly believe in?

> Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week.

I rather imagine I’d have two doctors.

Given how many people die from medical mistakes, many of which can be traced to fatigue, maybe we'd be better off with two doctors instead of one tired/exhausted fatigue zombie.

Why would I care about my doctor only working 20h a week? He could work 1h a week as long as he delivers what I need.

This is the same problem as people working 40 hours a week have competing with people working 80 hours a week have; they mostly can’t. Even if the last 20 hours are so marginal that really, you might as well not have bothered the person who worked 80 hours a week got 1.5 times as much done, and in any job that isn’t totally routinised the knowledge and skills gained from working compound. They compound faster for those who work more hours.

> Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week.

The reduction in misdiagnoses and straight up practical errors might give them better throughput overall?

I think the point of the original post in this thread is that 40 hour weeks are in reality 20 hour productive weeks. So a company working 40 hour weeks where 20 hours are productive have the same output as a company working 20 hour weeks where 20 hours are productive.

your assuming that these 20 hour will be 100% work which is unlikely

This is such a silly thing to say. By that logic, our companies would be driving us to work as many hours as possible.

The fact is, most (white-collar) places just don't have enough work to consume people for 40 continuous hours.

I doubt that. The point is that 20 hrs a week * 100% ~= 40 hrs a week * 50%. And most people top out at a few hours of productivity a day.

Beyond that, we solve that problem with government regulation. If companies really need to run 24/5 they can just go to 6 shifts instead of 3.

But isn't 20 hours/week or 40 hours/week a negotiated agreement when you got hired? If you want 20 hours/week, get paid less and stop whining about companies should pay more for less amount of mandatory work hours. The discussion should have been more like employees should have more options on choosing how many mandatory work hours they are willing to offer a week when signing agreement with a company. I am utterly surprised, though not all people here are from the capitalism driven world but majorities are talking like they are living in socialist world.

I think he was being sarcastic.

Yes. But then, people who work 40hours produce more then those who work 60, but it is not stopping teams overworking people.

Meaning, productivity is not only factor.