How many hours did you work this week?

If you're reading this, you're probably what economists call a "Knowledge Worker," a major element of the new, techno-driven workplace. The government says your average work week is 32.9 hours, and employers enthusiastically agree. Nuts. Thanks to laptops, cellphones, palm pilots and wireless modems, you're probably working nearly all the time, part of every day and night. How many hours do you really work? Post below and read more.

If you're reading this, the odds are shockingly good that you're overworked and underpaid, or, at the very least, not compensated for anywhere near the hours you work.

Government statisticians, media reports and popular mythology make much of the fact that American workers are more productive than ever - the last consecutive quarters of l999 recorded a 5% growth in worker productivity. This rise frequently gets cited as a major reason for the country's long, high-tech inspired economic boom.

In the late l990's, according to economist Stephen S. Roach, productivity sped up fastest in the so-called service sector - transportation, public utilities, trade, finance, insurance, real estate, and a broad array of professional and business services. Collectively, this segment of the economy employs 77% of the workforce that isn't in government or on farms. Contrary to myth, Roach says, these people aren't low-paid, unskilled hamburger flippers and chain-store underclass. Nearly half of them are knowledge workers - like many of the people reading this - now the largest occupational category in America. In fact, almost all tech workers, from programmers to administrators to developers, are knowledge workers.

The government maintains that the average work week in the service sector is 32.9 hours; no different than a decade ago, and five hours shorter than in l964.

Roach and other economists have long argued that these figures are absurd. Surveys by the Labor Department and private pollsters suggest that people in knowledge jobs work a good deal longer. That means lots of knowledge workers aren't getting paid for the work they do.

"The dirty little secret of the Information Age," wrote Roach in Monday's New York Times [you have to join, but it's www.nytimes.com] , "is that an increasingly large slice of work goes on outside the official work hours the government recognizes and employers admit to."

Roach has a very powerful point. Laptops, cell phones and beepers, hand-held computing devices, fax machines and wireless technology mean that tech and knowledge workers can now work all the time - in their cars on the way to and from work, in planes on business trips, in their own homes. Tech and service workers are tied to their workplaces, and can hardly ever escape.

Although few companies openly insist on this, workers who want to remain valuable are understandably driven to work through nights and weekends. If they don't, they know their colleagues and co-workers might be. People hard- wired into their work are commonplace in the tech workplace, a particularly challenging environment for obsessive personalities. In fact, new technology has nearly obliterated all of the traditional lines between office and home, work and leisure time. This is a phenomenal boon to employers and companies, who get more work than ever for less cost. In that context, almost all non-entrepeneurial workers in the so-called knowledge workplace are almost surely underpaid.

College students report something of the same phenomenon - technology keeps them studying, socializing, messaging and researching much of the time, much more than is acknowledged by school administrations.

In fact, this round-the-clock work ethic is an integral part of the high-tech economy. Does anyone reading this actually work 33 hours a week? Or even 40?

Postal employees, cops and assembly-line and factory workers can boost their incomes by working overtime. But how can knowledge workers, who are already working most of the time? Workers who think for a living have a hard time boosting their efficiency.

Beyond that, there are numerous social and health implications: fatigue, stress, single-mindedness, and lack of balance and recreation in life.

Perhaps the toughest thing about being a round-the-clock knowledge worker is that you can't even acknowledge it. The rest of the world, including media and government, thinks you've got it made.

Question: How many hours do you work each week? Is it remotely close to what the government says?

Why is this the case?

I believe it's due to two factors: First, the IT field is made up by a lot of young ( Second, most of these workers are probably single. Life outside of work, they're not expected to have by management.

I also think that there is no union as far as I know within tech workers.

I wouldn't go as far as suggesting a union, but something needs to be done; the workers need to stand up and REFUSE to work unpaid overtime, or have a time where the beeper will not go off, or anything else like that. The fact that 'spineless' IT workers has been the norm means that we need to fight against that. If you are going to be working 60 hrs/wk (and you might enjoy that), make sure you get paid for 60hrs and not 30. Demand vacation time, make sure they know you have interests outside of work, and that you don't necessarily live and breath their work ethic.

But as with everyone else employed, I'd know I'd be afraid to approach my bosses with such requests. That's why there needs to be some collective effort, maybe lead by those IT workers already engrained in the system so that *they* can fight for better pay and offtime for workers.

Re:Average of 60 hours

That is the heart of it, really. The people who work daft hours do it because they want to, or because they start out that way and then feel guilty about cutting back.

We (skilled computer types) are a very rare resource compared with demand and can easily set reasonable hours as part of our package, especially at big companies. I leave the office at 5.30 every day, unless I'm doing something fun and I'd rather stay late to finish it in one go.

Yes, at small companies people tend to work later to meet the deadlines. But that's because the industry is incapable of good project management, and because in many small (and large) companies employees feel very loyal, and really want to ship stuff on time.

There are very few places (in my experience of the UK market) that will have a problem with someone who says 'Sorry, I have a family and I only work my contracted hours'. Of course, if they then also spend 2 hours a day reading slashdot, then sure the boss won't be happy.

And that's another thing. Alot of people work very inefficiently, so the hours stretch out. Think of all the times you started out looking for documentation on a troublesome driver and ended up spending an hour reading about the latest developments in something else.

So, yes, there are lots of people who stay in the office alot, but it's not a case of exploitation (of course in some cases it may be, but not as an industry).

a brief history of work...

when i was young, and my father had already made it in the professional world as an executive, it always amazed me the amount of moneyt hat they paid him, because even though he was in the office 60 hours a week, he was still making like 90 dollars an hour... i would ask him, "dad, i have been to your office, all that you do is sit around, talk on the phone, and think about stuff... you don't lift heavy things, you don't build anything, nothing! how can you possibly be worth the insane ammount they are paying you?" and he would say: "simple, when a janitor goes home, the work stays at work. when a builder goes home, the work stays at work. for me, there is no difference between home and work." and i never really understood that...

flash forward about 10 years or so, i am now the CTO of an internet startup, getting paid way more than i "deserve" by my old scale, and yet all i do is, sit on the phone, talk to the people that work for me, talk to the people i work for, and think... and for me, there is no difference between home and work. i understand now what my father told me so many years ago...

when you are paid to think, there isn't an amount of hours that you "work" if you are good at your job, and if you are successful at it, at least in part, you are always at work, you are always thinking about how you can make something a little bit faster, how you can set up a strategic partnership, or whether payroll checks will bounce or not.

so to answer the question, how many hours a week do I work, i argue, i work all of the hours i am awake, and even some of those when i am asleep, for my job, even visits me in my dreams...

What about THIS study

here [washingtonpost.com] .

Is it mere coincidence that the fortune at the bottom of the page read, "the only person who got his work done by Friday was Crusoe"?

There are several aspects the make IT an around the clock experience: 1) training. When I went into electronics 25 yrs ago they said, "this is such a fast changing field that you're going to be in school the rest of your working days". 2) Access to mission critical servers and workstations: in many cases the only chance you get to do maintenance on servers etc. is at 4AM in the morning or early Sundays. Most of us just can't 'leave work behind' when you exit the building - we're often working on long projects and I get lots of insirations in the middle of the night or early morning, and keep a pad by the bed to jot down ideas. Yet, with all that, I resent the fact that we're often treated like factory laborers! I can't stand supervisors who want you to punch in a 7:30, be focused and creative for precisely 2 hours, take a 10 minute break, then back to the "THINK!" tank. Maybe if these managers could actually organize with effecient specilization and division of labor one could crank out code like a machine shop all tooled up for a production run, but anything that's already that mechanized is already obsolete and not worth persuing, it ain't bleeding edge!

Bozorro the swashbuckling clown

/. polled this some time ago

...and here's [slashdot.org] the link.

Blurry vision

While I agree with Katz (Whoa!!) that technology makes it possible to work outside work, and that this is sometimes abusive, I have a different perspective.

How much time do I spend 'working' at work? Less than 40 hours. I pursue personal interests as well and professional duties. I read /., I check out a bunch of developer sites, I flip through books, heck - sometimes I even do my grad-school homework.

I spend most of my 'free' time doing the same sort of stuff. I write some code, read a few articles, argue with friends (who are in the same field).

Often-times I'll wake up in the middle of the night, with my head cranking away at some problem, either work related or personal-interest related.

It's all the same. The lines have blurred to the point where work is hobby and hobby is academics, and academics is work. The symbiosis of interests, the new paradigm or leveraged synergies (well, slap me with a halibut - I could be an MBA) is the matter of fact lifestyle of the technology worker.

In the course of a week, I probably put in 80 to 120 hours of mind-time into things that are somehow relevant to what I do for a living. If I were to broaden the definition more, I'd also count eating and sleeping, since it enables me to work and learn. The lines really are THAT fuzzy.

We LIKE what we do. We're not piece-workers whose productivity is measured by the number of boxes we stuff on an assembly line. The 3am revelation on a work-related data structure isn't time I charge for, and I don't clock out to write this post.

We work hard, long-hours, beacuse we ENJOY what we do. I think I speak of more than just myself, but, if I were independently wealthy, I'd still do what I do - the way that I do it. I might be a little more cocky with the boss, but that's a matter of choice in today's job market.

Those of us who feel they work 'too hard' have the option of throttling back, slowing down or going elsewhere, thanks to the market being as it is.

We've come full-circle to the times before the industrial revolution, I think. We're sort of farming/home-steading IT. It's what we do. It's what we love. We work to live AND live to work, both at the same time.

This is not to say that we do not have non-tech interests or lives, but WHAT we do is part of WHO we are. IT's not just a job, it's a choice of life-style.

Priorities. Get some.

If $$$ and InternetStartupdom is your #1 priority, then the 60hrs.week is part of that. If not, resist it. I started at a startup last May, and soon was getting pulled into the 'need to finish things up over the weekend' / could you do this VPN'ed in at home tonight?' etc.

My quality of work took a nose dive. The CEO recognized this immediately, and we talked about it. I work 40-42 hours a week.

My strength comes from my doing other things with the other hours of my life, whether it be getting Linux talking to the VooDoo card, going out swing or salsa dancing, jamming on the jews harp, etc. etc. etc.. If I don't have time for these activities, Bad Things happen.

I know my priorities in life. My CEO knows my priorities in life. And I still get raises. Don't be afraid to stand up for your free time and time that is disconnected from the office. If you are afraid, well, it's a good job market out there...

Huh?

33 Hours a week? That's definitely a joke if you work with computers (or any kind of technology). Not even counting the beeper time that a lot of folks don't deal with, that's an unrealistically low figure.

I officially work 37.5 hours a week -- that's what I get paid for. In reality it's more like 50 or 60, what with never eating lunch and leavin an hour or two late every day ("just one more thing!").

I find it bizarre that the government would base statistics on what employers report their professional employees working -- this is a class that doesn't get overtime and thus is generally easy to add "just a little more" work to.

Not that I'm complaining, I enjoy my job and it pays better than most of my friends in college have (except those who are just now graduating law school! (g)). But we shouldn't officially pretend that everyone in America is getting home at 4 in the afternoon...

Linda Richman

I've found my ability to tolerate Jon Katz has remarkably improved since I started imagining his stories (or at least the summary) read in the voice of Mike Myers playing Linda Richman on SNL:
So how many hours do you really work, anyway? Discuss.

Re:Huh?

>That's definitely a joke if you work with
> computers (or any kind of technology).

Amen, brother. My official policy through my employer is that we work a total of 80-hours over a two-week pay period. Upon the discression of the employee, you are allowed to complete those 80-hours in practically any manner you see fit (flex-time, work 9 hours a day then take the second Friday off, etc).

But that's just official policy. In practice, take the current work week for example:

Monday: 7:00am - 8:30pm, 30-minute lunch: 13 Hours.
Tuesday: 7:30am - 5:30pm, 30-minute lunch: 9 1/2 Hours.
Wednesday: 7:00am - 7:15pm (heading home right after I post this comment), 1-hour lunch: 11 1/4 Hours.

That's almost 35 hours in a three day period... I beat the gov't expectation by Wednesday. ;) And unfortuantely these type weeks are more the norm than the exception.

And don't get me started about the 24-7 on-call period, the weekend wakeup calls at 3am to tell me something is broken, etc etc...



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Question: How do I leverage the power of the internet?

Re:Huh?

Given that it's Friday, here's an update on my previous times for this week:

Monday: 7:00am - 8:30pm, 30-minute lunch: 13 Hours.
Tuesday: 7:30am - 5:30pm, 30-minute lunch: 9 1/2 Hours.
Wednesday: 7:00am - 7:15pm, 1-hour lunch: 11 1/4 Hours.
Wednesday Night: 11:00 - 3:00 from home: 4 Hours.
Thursday: 7:30am - 6:30pm, no lunch: 11 hours. Friday: 7:00am - 5:30pm (est), 1 hour lunch: 8 1/2 hours.

Grand total? FIFTY-SEVEN hours and fifteen minutes of work, in a single week. And that's not counting the at-home work I'll be putting in on some presentations this weekend.

Final point, even though this has been much discussed and pretty much agreed upon:
37 HOURS IS IN NO WAY AVERAGE, FOR THE IT INDUSTRY!!! Why? Because for those of you who say "yes I work 37 hours a week", there are lots like me who say "50-60 hours per week". And there aren't enough (if any) saying 15-25 to make the average come out to the mid/upper 30's.

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Question: How do I leverage the power of the internet?

Re:NEWS FLASH! Service sector is not just computer

I didn't bother quoting that because I know it's bullshit.

http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/ empsit.t11.htm [bls.gov]

The above link points to the recent employment statistics in the United States for the entire economy. Unless he defines "knowledge workers" as including people like legal secretaries, the entire motion picture industry, and people who work behind the front desk at various hotels across the country, and if he narrows the "service sector" down to "services/miscellaneous" (or 'services2' in the table), we don't even come close to that 50% mark.

The fact of the matter is that people who do software development or work for IT departments, or other "knowledge workers" who work in the computer industry comprises of slightly more than 10% of the entire service-producing economy. (That's the total of all engineering-related services and all business related services, verses the entire service-producing economy, which employs around 104 million people. And that significantly overestimates "knowledge workers", as the statistics I added up in the above categories also include secretarial support and the like--as the statistics are compiled by looking at employment at various companies verses it's NAICS category.)

The long and the short of it is that Katz's second-hand hearing about 50% of the people in the service sector are "knowledge workers" is a crock, and not supported by the statistics from the US Department of Labor Statistics.

NEWS FLASH! Service sector is not just computers!

The government maintains that the average work week in the service sector is 32.9 hours; no different than a decade ago, and five hours shorter than in l964.

I've got a newsflash for Mr. Katz. The "service sector" is not just computer-related jobs. In fact, computer-related jobs, such as IT jobs, are an insignificant percentage of those jobs.

Other jobs which bring the average down include part-time hamburger-flippers at McDonalds (which are considered service sector jobs), the plumber who comes over and fixes your drain (another service sector job), and the woman you hire to sit your pets when you go on vacation.

Basically, the "service sector" is jobs which involve providing a non-tangable "service", as opposed to manufacturing (where you make concrete things like cars), or retail (where you sell things like clothing to people).

Because the "service sector" includes part-time fast-food hamburger flippers and self-employed pet sitters and the like, I would be highly supprised if the average for the entire service sector of our economy was much above 40 hours a week. The number 32.9 sounds just about right.

The 60+ hours I worked last week, not including the time I spent last week working on free software stuff (another 10 or so), multipled by everyone on /. who work similar hours, won't make a dent in that aggrigate number, just as the self-employed people in the 1960's who worked their ass off in marketing consulting or similar highly-paid, high hour count jobs in the 1960's didn't make a dent back then. In fact, the decline in this number from the 1960's can be attributed to the rise of fast-food restaurants and their use of part-time workers.

What makes this misunderstanding spectacularly sad is that it formed the keystone of Mr. Katz' article. Without the fact that the number '32.9' is the average number of hours worked across the entire service sector, including part-time fast-food hamburger flippers and the like, Mr. Katz appears not to have an article at all.

Six figures isn't worth your life

This is something that I've thought about for awhile now.. most of the places I've worked have been chronically understaffed in the technical department (this does not seem to carry over to marketting, however). It's my personal belief that shoddy software coming from a lot of places is a direct result of this - but that's another issue.

How many people have stopped to think about what they make per hour? Especially if you don't get overtime? If you're working 15-20 more hours a week, then there's obviously either a problem with you, or the tasks you're being asked to do.

Some employers get it - IBM is one of them - that long hours != high productivity. I personally think I'd be a more effective programmer if I was only in the office for 4 hours a day - most of my planning for programs I do in my head while I'm doing other things, then, when I go to write code, I sit down and go hardcore. The only exception is debugging a serious problem - that could take a few weeks in a large system.

Take a look at what you're taking home and see if the lack of a life is worth it. I like playing with my own stuff, and what's the good of having money for cool toys if you have no time to play with them! :)

Don't let bosses take away your life just because they think they can take advantage - and if you're working 20 hours overtime a week, you're getting screwed. If you need money, ask for more money & less time. Lots of places are cluing in.

Kudos!

Going independent

In the Uk more and more people in the IT sector are becoming contractors (working for a one person company, CEO = themselves), there is a minor tax glitch comming up (called IIR35) but even so the tax situation is pretty good. You get paid on average around 50% more, and most of the time you get overtime. With 000s of unfilled jobs its about time people in IT started dictating their conditions, remember you can get a job with your companies competitor, they'll have a harder time getting a replacement than you had getting that new job.

Re:Ha, more bullshit from the government

I probably put in about 28-32 hours a week.
My work ethic: If it ain't done by 5, darlin', it's getting done next business day. The deal is money for time -- if I'm not getting paid for the hours worked, they're not gonna get worked. I can get a job and money pretty much anywhere in this economy and with my skills, but there aren't enough $100 bills in the world to buy my afternoons or weekends back -- they're gone forever.

From my personal observations, there's no damn need to work more than 40 hours a day -- most deadlines are utterly arbitrary. How much of those extra hours are productive, anyway? Slap-happy on caffeine, punchy from fatigue toxins, I bet the quality of work done in the 70th or 80th hour of the week sucks a lot harder than work done around hour 10 or 20. Thinking more hours directly translates to more production is delusional at best, especially for knowledge workers where mental acuity is key to useful production.

Why spend 20 hours coding over the weekend if you're so tired and pissed off you'll introduce bugs that it'll take you 40 hours to clean up next week? Don't give your life over to the company, and especially not for freakin' free.

Leave at 5. Read a book. Go minigolfing with a friend or sweetheart. I promise the code will still be there tomorrow.

gomi

Work hours

Man, I've went off on this more times then I can count. Many right here on Slashdot.

People look at me like I'm crazy when I say I only want to work 40 hours per week. When I interviewed for my latest job, I said this in interviews, word for word: "If you're looking for somebody to work 45 or 50 hours per week, don't hire me. I have to get home to my real job, being a husband and a father." Result? I'm sure I lost out on some positions. Instead took a job with a consulting firm that now (3 months later) does what? Pressures we to bill more than 40 hours a week!

As for after hours work? I've done it a few times to get something done, but I bill it and try to take comp time. Mostly, I'll surf or play games or study for a certification test if I get on the computer.

We work more hours per year here in the USA than in almost all industrialized nations. And then we wonder why our divorce rate is so high. Why our teen suicide rate is so high. We don't spend time with our families, that's why! When we do get home, we watch something like 30 hours of tv a week, plus we have to work out, 'cause God forbid we're not skinny and perfect!

A freind of mine recently said to me "You're just gonna have to realize that professionals work a lot of hours. That's what we do." This is from a guy having serious marital problems!

I tell ya, my employer clears over $1500 a week beyond my salary easy with me billing 38 hours. They're not hurting. They need to get over it.
---

I work in Canada, eh?

I live and work in Canada.

My work day begins at 4 am, when I get up to feed the Huskies. At the same time, I have to chase off any polar bears that have been wandering around my igloo.

By 5:30 am, I have eaten my smoked bacon and am ready to begin my daily 40 mile commute (by dog sled) to work.

After I get there at about 7:30, I need about 2 hours to get any sensation in my fingers so I can type properly. In that time, our boss holds very productive discussions about last night's hockey game. This keeps the employees happy.

At about 9:30, when the feeling returns to my limbs, I work for about 15 minutes and then take a coffee break.

After that, it's time to slaughter a seal and cook it for lunch. We alternate this chore daily between all the employees at the company. (Company pays for the lunch every day - keeps the employees happy, again).

After lunch, we do about 3 hours of work, and then head home because the sun is setting and it's not safe to be out in the dark in the winter.

I make my way home by 5 pm, have a beer, watch the hockey game (I like to be ready for the next day's meeting) and go to bed by 8 pm.

Life is good in Canada.

Bart

Unskilled labor vs. Knowledge Workers

I'm a computer programmer. I find it quite unfortunate (for the unskilled laborers of the world) that I probably put forth far less effort than an unskilled laborer, enjoy my job a good deal more than most, and probably earn a good deal more. Even by doubling my current salary I don't think you could convince me to switch to an unskilled labor job. How ironic. Yes I do make more money than I feel I deserve *compared to the average laborer*, and no I don't think I even put as much effort into it. It's just the luck of the draw I guess.

On the topic of the main post, I must be unusual. I for one almost never have to work late or even think late. I finish projects so quickly that I'm often left reading Slashdot for a good portion of the day, sometimes all day for days in a row. When I leave work, I *leave* it (behind). I spend the rest of the day on my *own* projects, almost never thinking of anything related to work. Ususally it's TV or music composition, sometimes a personal programming project. That's arguably related because it might be considered practice, but business programming is not very related to game programming.

Even the extra time, effort and money spent on a 4-year college education (same one as CmdrTaco, BTW!) doesn't account for all that discrepancy that will likely last a lifetime. (BTW, the education was finished early too -- 3 years.)

I make it a point to be at work 40 hours a week as precisely as possible, since that's what I figure I'm paid for as a full time employee -- no more, no less. Is my job or skill so unique? I haven't yet figured out why my situation seems so different. Am I supposed to find myself a more challenging job? I'm quite happy with what I've got already :-). It's not that I don't get work to do, just that I've never found it necessary to think or work beyond (or even up to) the supposed regular 40 hours a week (8 to 5 minus one hour for lunch).

What counts?

It seems important to consider what the government counts as "hours spent working." I wonder what measure the government uses in comparison to what most people count.

Let's have a new survey. When you say "I work X hrs each week", what do you count?

[ ] Only the hours you get paid for.
[ ] Only the hours you spend in an office / home office.
[ ] Only the hours you actually do business related tasks.
[ ] All the time you spend thinking about work.
[ ] Include all the you spend enhancing skills that relate to your work.
[ ] Other hours: ____________

In consulting firms, bonuses are often related to the percentage of hours you bill to a client during the year. Wouldn't it be nice if I could count all of the time I spend on my computer at home working on personal projects!? (Gaming makes me a stronger asset to the company!)