Bring back the 40-hour work week

Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by kamaal on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:19AM (#3707723)

Fact is, I'm productive with a 8 hour a day schedule if and only if:

    1. What I need to do is clear and known.
    2. I've been doing the is same everytime or something of similar pattern.
    3. No meetings and distractions in between.

But the fact is, none of this is true in our area of work. To some extent even if something similar exists it wont work for many reasons.

For every person who wants to go back home, there is always a peer who is putting in extra hours innovating, building and learning. By the well known rate of success coming at an near exponential rate to people to work hard and are productive, the rate becomes exponential if they add crazy work hours to it.

Building stuff requires a goal. Then implementation, experimentation, test a feed back loop and then back to implementation. And then this cycle goes on in iteration.

This requires tuits(Uninterrupted large workable free chunks of time) to allow a degree of focus and flow seep into the person. And most of tuits are generally available only early in the morning or in the night. This by default means you already agree to work crazy hours.

So in summary, I can't do a 40 hour work week because

    1. I will loose out to my peers in the long term race.
    2. Meetings.
    3. My work requires genuine supply of atleast two big tuits a day to remain competitive and have a good growth both money and career wise.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by DanBC on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:30AM (#3707748)

> there is always a peer who is putting in extra hours innovating, building and learning

For every peer putting in stupid hours innovating, building and learning there are > 1 peers putting in stupid hours fixing errors of other overworked colleagues or just grinding through the stuff they could have done in 40 hours if they didn't have an asshole boss / broken business culture.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by kamaal on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:10AM (#3707849)

I don't know why you consider working hard as a broken culture.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by maushu on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:57AM (#3707970)

It is broken if that "working hard" is not productive.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by Ihavenoname on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:56AM (#3707968)

"Lesson Three is this: five-day weeks of eight-hour days maximize long-term output in every industry that has been studied over the past century. What makes us think that our industry is somehow exempt from this rule?"

http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by bmj on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:14AM (#3707855)

There are two things that kill my 8-hour-day productivity:

  1.  Meetings
  2.  Someone upstream not doing their job.

#2 is far worse than #1 (and directly related to the parent's #1). There is truly nothing worse than a project manager who allows requirements to be delivered late, but doesn't push out the deadline for the entire project.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by kamaal on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:24AM (#3707879)

Lets say #2 is not a problem for the minute and you meet somebody like you.

He and you do your day job in 8 hrs. But he puts in an additional 5-6 hours a day and is likely to put for the coming years.

Now suddenly you will find yourself in a corner as he will grow(in comparison) inevitably. And there will be little you can do.

Putting in crazy hours isn't mandatory, but neither is winning and succeeding.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by dagw on Thursday March 15, 2012 @08:26AM (#3708073)

Now suddenly you will find yourself in a corner as he will grow(in comparison) inevitably

I completely fail to see the inevitability. People don't fall into a coma the minute they leave the office. If he's grinding away 5-6 hours extra hours alone in the office every day, while you're spending those 5-6 hours meeting new people, hanging out with friends and colleagues, learning new things and playing around with fun hobbies and projects, why should he grow more than you.

It's just as likely that two-three years down the road he'll be completely burnt out with a stagnant skill-set while you have a great network, varied skill-set, plenty of energy and are ready and able to use those to move onto bigger and better things.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by AlexandrB on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:50AM (#3707941)

Unless he's a machine, his 5-6 hours will be producing shitty, sloppy code that others will have to fix later. This is not a net-positive.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by kamaal on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:34AM (#3708590)

Knowing when to work, when and how to rest is the key.

Besides you can train your biological cycle to do wonders.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by hkolek on Thursday March 15, 2012 @08:14AM (#3708027)

I would just think this imaginary guy is an idiot. Unless he's working for himself but I don't think that's what you're talking about. You'd be pretty stupid to effectively work for free, or do you assume that this overtime gets paid? In any case, if the guy has no life and is happy to work all day that's just fine by me, I wouldn't care at all. And if he gets paid for that, that's great, he deserves it if he really works that hard and actually delivers quality results (which I doubt). You talk as if it would be a competition on who can work the most hours. I don't think it is.

Edit: If it's the money you're after I think you should try to work smarter not harder :-) i.e. if you're only way to get more money is to work more hours maybe you should find another job or change career.

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by bmj on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:59AM (#3707975)

Perhaps I'm just fortunate, but in my current situation, I don't think this would matter much. Sure, my co-worker may get a larger raise, but I'm pretty comfortable with my current salary, and the fact that I can average 40-45 hours a week with a lot of flexibility in when I work those hours. Perhaps one day, my boss will turn evil, and tell me I'm not producing enough, but, at that point, I'll find other work, because I have no interest in working for company that expects 60 hour weeks to be the "norm."

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Re:Bring back the 40-hour work week by kamaal on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:28AM (#3708572)

This is the best answer I have heard so far.

So as long as you are happy with whatever you do, you are the happiest man in the universe.

And I have no problems with this.

I have problems with people who stop other people from working hard, just because they don't want to.

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