Your 60-Hour Work Week Is Not a Badge of Honor 717
An anonymous reader writes "We've all had to deal with long, tough work weeks, whether it's coming in on the weekend to meet a project deadline, pulling all-nighters to resolve a crisis, or the steady accretion of overtime in a death march. It's fairly common in the tech sector for employees to hold these tough weeks up as points of pride; something good they achieved or survived. But Jeff Archibald writes that this is the wrong way to think of it. 'If you're working 60 hours a week, something has broken down organizationally. You are doing two people's jobs. You aren't telling your boss you're overworked (or maybe he/she doesn't care). You are probably a pinch point, a bottleneck. You are far less productive. You are frantically swimming against the current, just trying to keep your head above water. ... We need to stop being proud of overworking ourselves.'"
American poor (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you are poor in America, working 3 part-time minimum jobs 60+h a week just to pay for food and housing with nothing left over at end of the week.
It's a status thing (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm from Eastern Europe, and I can't believe that 40-hours a week jobs in America can't feed and house you. I guess it really depends on your expectations about the house and the food.
But since everyone around you has a nice house and car, it would be shameful if you don't - especially if you're married, because then it would be shameful for your wife and children, too. So you're overworking yourself for status in society, so that people don't look down upon you and your family.
Re:It's a status thing (Score:5, Informative)
Believe it! That's why Walmart and McDonald's HR include people to help you get food stamps. They know they don't pay well enough to actually live. The expectations are food that is legal to buy for human consumption and housing that hasn't been condemned as uninhabitable.
The car thing is seriously variable. Housing where public transportation is available tends to cost more than housing without it, but then you need a car.
Re:It's a status thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it's not a USA thing anymore, you've successfully exported it to at least Europe.
Here in Germany, more than one million employees are receiving a special form of unemployment benefits, because without it they would actually earn less than the unemployment benefits are. That's just insane, and the solution to compensate for the difference with tax money is so psychotic that it is my honest believe each and every one of the politicians who came up with that should be put into a closed mental institution and kept there for life.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"The capital raises the rents, and the state the rent benefits
In this way one fiddle with the Iron Law of Wages
and even pay less wages than the price of food and rent,
for the state merrily pitches in should the living expens
Re: (Score:3)
Democratic control means state control?
That's a lie, perpetuated by both capitalist and the former "communists". I fail to see where is the state in "the means of production belong to the creators of the wealth".
Re: (Score:3)
Can you elaborate, or post the name of the benefit (in German) ?
In America, it is called EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) [wikipedia.org], and far from being "insane" (as the GP labels it), EITC is generally viewed as a successful policy, and most economists believe that an increase in EITC would be better targeted and more effective at reducing poverty than raising the minimum wage (many minimum wage earners are not heads of households, and do not live in poor families). The EITC cost the federal govt about $56 billion last year.
Re: (Score:3)
Many minimum wage earners are young adults. They aren't heads of households because they can't afford to move out of their parent's on minimum wage. Minimum wage should pay a sufficient amount for an individual to live at an acceptable level given social norms. That isn't the case in most of the world. If the assumption is you can go to the food bank, charities, and multiple jobs greater than what is considered full time minimum wage isn't cutting it.
Re:It's a status thing (Score:5, Insightful)
It's simply called "Arbeitslosengeld" - unemployment money. That is the regular unemployment benefits as you probably know them from your country.
However, after the Agenda 2010 [wikipedia.org] reforms, after one year of unemployment (irrespective of reasons) or under a variety of other conditions (which largely affect especially young people, like not having worked for at least one year in the job you just lost), you will be moved to "Arbeitslosengeld II" - yes, that's just the same with a roman numeral. In colloquial german it is mostly called "Hartz 4", because a Mr. Hartz was the industrialist/lobbyist who came up with the whole concept and convinced the government of it and it was the 4th part of a multi-part reform.
Hartz 4 is very low, in fact it has been raised at least twice because our highest court has ruled that it violates human rights and doesn't allow for humane living conditions. It is tied to a long list of conditions and regulations and even though it is already set as a minimum living expenses, not meeting those conditions can result in further reductions or non-payment for up to three months.
The "idea" behind it is that unemployed people are just lazy and need to be pushed to get back into work. Somehow, people living in ivory towers never got the newsflash that in most industries the number of available jobs is less than the number of available workers.
Oh yes, they can also force you to work for âÂ1/h. That is not a typo. One Euro per hour. If you refuse, your Hartz 4 money will be cut.
50 years ago, there would've been blood in the streets if they had tried this system. But they were smart and spent a decade (and three different government coalitions) to establish it, and like the frog in the story about boiling waters, the country didn't jump out.
The idea works, that's for sure. I have friends who have been on Hartz 4, and one of them is right now afraid of losing her job because it would mean she loses the small appartment she just rented a few months ago and everything she's worked for for the past years. She has panic attacks and is deathly afraid. I'm not using that term lightly, the german word is "Existenzangst" - existential fear.
It would work if it weren't based on a flawed assumption - that the reason for unemployment is that people don't want to work and much rather enjoy unemployment benefits. That kind of people probably exist. Almost certainly, they are like 1% of the unemployed. For the rest, more force doesn't magically generate jobs.
The hidden agenda (what a fitting term!) is of course to increase pressure on the workforce so people accept worse jobs for less money. And that has worked very well. Wages are actually declining, and a lot of people work in part-time work and a lot of people work for money that nobody sane would've worked for one or two decades ago, because it simply isn't enough to feed and house a family.
Re:It's a status thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Total bullshit.
We can afford a social security twice as expensive. If we stopped increasing income disparity and dared to raise taxes on the rich to... levels they used to be at without the world ending.
Germany had half a trillion Euros available literally overnight when the banks needed to be bailed out, but we're seriously discussing over raising social security benefits a few Euros per month.
Money isn't the issue, and anyone trying to tell you that is pulling a fast one.
Re: (Score:3)
see my reply to the other troll you fucked up asshole.
I have friends who are unemployed. They would love to have a job. I have a friend who is so afraid of losing her job that she's having panic attacks and sleep issues.
Frankly, I'd vote immediately for a law to put anyone who play the "unemployed people are just lazy" card without solid evidence into jail with forced labor for life, because it is a lie.
The real parasites in this society are not at the bottom, they are at the top.
Re:It's a status thing (Score:4, Insightful)
other way round buddy..
Negative. When I was a child, we still had working social security networks over here and losing your job sucked, but didn't make you a hobo. This is an intentional political change. It even has a name: Agenda 2010 [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3)
Believe it! That's why Walmart and McDonald's HR include people to help you get food stamps. They know they don't pay well enough to actually live. The expectations are food that is legal to buy for human consumption and housing that hasn't been condemned as uninhabitable.
The car thing is seriously variable. Housing where public transportation is available tends to cost more than housing without it, but then you need a car.
A severe manifestation of how the wealthiest have passed along tax burden to the rest of us. This allows them to have most of us subsidize their profits. And pay a higher percentage of our salaries as taxes.
Sweet deal if you can get it.
Re:It's a status thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Our policies could learn something from the military (at least the Canadian army where I served): shareholders shouldn't get profits until the people generating the profits have a livelihood. When I served the troops eat first. Then the sergeants, then the officers. If the food ran out or you ran out of time etc. too bad for the higher ups. A similar pecking order can be seen in a lot of religious groups, leaders are meant to be the first of the servants not the reason why the whole thing exists.
Re:It's a status thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's all of us subsidising these corporations to pay lower wages through our taxes and gov services through our social services. People shouldn't put up with that. I'm in favor of needed social services, but not so that companies can pass the buck.
Re:It's a status thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely! That's why I support raising the minimum wage high enough that people receiving it no longer need food stamps.
Re:It's a status thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad that's all there is for the people working there trying to feed their families. There is simply no excuse for any full time job (and yes, 39.5 hours is close enough to full time, it's just a dodge to avoid benefits) to not pay enough to at least get by without needing government assistance. No excuse whatsoever.
The minimum wage should be set such that no person working full time qualifies for any sort of food stamps or welfare AT LEAST. If we set it at any less than that the taxpayer ends up subsidizing employer's payroll. The press costs what it costs to run and if you pay less it dies. An employee costs what he costs to run and if you don't pay enough, he dies (except for public assistance since we don't want dead Wallmart employees littering the streets).
Boo Hoo, a Big Mac might cost an extra quarter (yes, that would actually be enough to cover raising minimum wage to a barely livable wage).
Re: (Score:3)
so you want food stamps and welfare to no longer be family size tested?
you can more than reasonably live off 40 hours a week at minimum wage in many places (that is 14k a year, and net no taxes before any government transfers), but that is living alone. In Florida you don't even qualify for food stamps at that level of income because they know it is sufficient. It'll be hard if you want every employer to assume you were dumb enough to have 3 dependents and then decide minimum wage was how you were going to
Re:It's a status thing (Score:5, Insightful)
You might not have noticed, but a lot of people lost their decentish jobs over the last few years and have had to take minimum wage jobs. What is your suggestion, sell the kids for experiments?
Meanwhile, it is hardly unreasonable to expect 40 hours of ANY job to be enough to have a family (perhaps you didn't notice, but that is a normal part of human life).
Re:It's a status thing (Score:5, Insightful)
What convinces you that someone working full time should not necessarily be able to have a normal life? I'm not talking McMansion and two new cars, just the basics needed to live without government assistance.
A full time job should provide all the basics for a normal life (which means a reasonable size family). Keep in mind, many of the adult minimum wage employees aren't there because they have no more skills, but because that's the only job available and the employer has used their desperation for income against them.
Minimum wage during the Clinton presidency went further than it does today. Minimum wage has stayed put while inflation marches on.
Unskilled labor has never paid well, but not paying enough for even a small family is a fairly recent development. A long term labor surplus is also fairly new on the scale of written history.
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Two minimum wage earners in the same household? By definition one of those workers is working just to pay minimum wage for childcare. Two income households only makes sense if both adults are making more than minimum wage.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's unreasonable for a 16 year old to have a job.
A 16 year old should be in school, they should not be working at all. A college student should not be working more than 10 hours a week, if at all. Oh, and "saving for college" with tuition where it is today is just plain stupid. You come out behind if you try.
The minimum wage should be set to a level that someone working 40 hours a week should be well above the poverty level for a family of three. They shouldn't be competing for work with high school students.
And yes, if someone wants to make a career of a full time minimum wage position, they should be able to have a reasonable income.
Start it at $15/hour. Index it to inflation.
Nonsense. The product of a job for a 16 year old individual is not simply money.
Having a job in food service has a huge impact on the social norms the person has as an adult.
Having a physical job (say, loading trucks) has a huge impact on how active the person is as an adult.
Working with people who are stuck there in their 40's (after 5 DUIs and jail time for cocaine possession) has a huge impact on "gee, better not do that myself"
Those things people learn at that age makes them better, and results
Re: (Score:3)
A job pays what the product of the job is worth. No more.
Bull. A job pays the minimum an employer can get away with paying. Whether that minimum is set by market conditions, greed, or their moral compass, no-one pays more than they think they "should". That's why there's a minimum wage.
If you raise the minimum wage to above what the job's productivity is worth, the job's wage doesn't magically increase. The job simply ceases to exist. All those no-skill jobs kids in high school get to make some spending cash? Gone. All those entry-level jobs for people who learned a lot of book knowledge but don't yet have practical experience? Gone. All those unskilled assembly line jobs? Exported to third world countries or replaced by robots.
Again, bull. There's never going to be a lack of demand for food-servers and store clerks. And those are jobs that don't export easily. What we're already seeing happen is the opposite - employers pushing for "temporary foreign workers", importing folks who *will* work for those ch
Re: (Score:3)
Hours worked is the key (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed it can. the Bureau of Labor reports that the percentage of people that are poor in the US AND working at least 1000 hours per year is just 4%. Considering a full time year is 2000 hours, the % of those that are poor and working full time is practically 0.
Also, the average hours worked a week for a poor person in the US is 16.
So, being poor in the US is largely because you can't find work.
Re: Hours worked is the key (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:American poor (Score:4, Interesting)
Or you are middle class, and can't quit your job because you took out a huge loan to pay 3 times too much for a house.
Re: (Score:3)
And an education.
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Re:American poor (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, another yuppie WASP who thinks he knows how to live poor better than a poor person does. Let's put this straight.
Taking the bus is only an option if you live in the city and if you live in the city, rent skyrockets. I live in a shabby apartment in an undesirable city (high unemployment, high crime rate, a public transportation system so shitty that it takes an hour and a half to make the three mile bus trip from here to downtown) and the rent for my two bedroom apartment is $1800 a month. So in this scenario, the net benefit of moving into the city and ditching the car would be negative $800 dollars a month. That and the fact that your morning commute would jump from fifteen to twenty minutes to an hour and a half.
For a family of three? And how is said roommate going to afford 50% of the rent if he/she has the same minimum wage job? No, in this scenario, another family of three would have to squeeze into the second bedroom because they can't afford their own apartment either. Those are called tenements, and we decided that those were dehumanizing sometime in the 19th century.
That much is true, but you are forgetting that every visit to the doctor equals lost wages at your hourly job. So even if you have medicaid and you have small children who are at that age where they are prone to catching colds, you can easily be "paying" $150 - $200 a month in healthcare costs due to lost wages.
The kids were usually born before the SO (the male one most of the time) packed up and left. And if it was that easy to get the ex-SO to pay up, we wouldn't have family court.
I'm guessing you've never heard of food desserts? I live in one. The nearest grocery store is about two miles away. It's fine for me because I have a car. But if you don't (and remember, one of your suggestions was to take the bus) it turns into an hour long bus trip each way. It's a lot easier to stop by the corner market two blocks away from your apartment, but it is also much more expensive.
Oh god, so you are also a libertarian social darwinist. Let me tell you something: American social mobility is a myth. Poor people aren't poor because they are lazy. (Well a small fraction of them are, but that is besides the point.) They are poor because they were born poor and the US social and economic structures tend to keep it that way.
Re:American poor (Score:5, Insightful)
I am of the opinion that I do not like you. Your world is too black and white and your answers are too simple.
Monthly bus pass $100
That will work for some Americans. For others, it is simply not an option at all. What about those people? What about the people that can choose it as an option but it steals 3 or more hours from their day? I know their time is not worth much but their time is not worthless.
Get a roommate
Are we talking about raising a family here or just bare single subsistence? If family, roommate will not work. If not, American society is not like it is elsewhere in the world. Finding a roommate who is trustworthy and will actually pay is VERY difficult. I recall when I was younger trying to go the roommate route. Inevitably, they would not have rent money at the end of the month because they had some other "emergency" they had to take care of. Sure, they can be kicked out but when it is the majority of them doing it, that is a LOT of months paying full rent solo along with the hassle of dealing with the assholes.
Step back to basic cable (or even broadcast TV) and drop the unlimited data phone plan. Never seen an apartment yet that split out HVAC by unit, and it's hard to spend that much heating/cooling a 2-BR, unless you leave the doors open all winter.
Fuck off with the holier than thou "basic cable" bullshit. In the 80s, I lived without cable and the heating bill alone was over $200, so the amount listed is not even realistic for this day and age. Electric alone in my current house is almost that much. I still do not have cable even today and my utilities/phone/internet are well over $200.
This was the part that made me dislike you the most. You dismissed the utilities issues as if it was a pleasure issue that needed to be curbed. Meh. That attitude sucks HARD.
If you're working 2 minimum wage jobs, you don't get the American Dream. You adjust your lifestyle. Those sacrifices will make your eventual success all the more sweet and motivate your kid(s) to rise above.
There are a whole lot of shades of grey between the American Dream and dying of hunger on the streets. The "complaint" is that the shade of grey is getting too black to be considered humanitarian. Your dismissal of this concern deserves to be derided and insulted. I ought to throw a fuck you in there to help you wake up and see what you are not experiencing but you would likely just close your mind even tighter then.
Yes, if you're living on the edge, then small calamities become disasters. One hopes those are the circumstances where your community (church, neighborhood, or government) pulls together and helps you through.
You realize that this is America we are discussing right? People will stand there and watch you die and then walk on as if nothing had happened. The government? Help? ROFLMAO. Perhaps if you are female, a minority, a felon, or a child. Oops. I mean if you are a single man in America that has never been involved with the system, there are zero safety nets. You are 100% fucked, short of a miracle. Don't ask me how I know this.
FYI, I have the American Dream now.
(lol, CAPTCHA is agonize)
Re:American poor (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary: Yuppie WASP thinks he knows the solution to poverty: If they would only get of their lazy bums, they wouldn't be poor anymore!
How are so who are so uninformed about the nature of poverty in the US so confident in their deluded opinions? (Wait, I know, it's because Republican rhetoric about government "entitlements.")
If you would argue that, you'd either be a moron or someone who is so uninformed as to be totally unqualified to speak on the topic.
Education in the US is not created equal. Try being born in the inner city where the high school has a 15% graduation rate (half that of the city average [washingtontimes.com]) and even those who do graduate often fail to understand 7th grade level algebra. Now add on to this an alcoholic mother who kicks you out of the house whenever she gets drunk, forcing you to either 1.) spend the night with your drug dealing uncle, 2.) spend the night at a shelter where someone is stabbed to death roughly once a month, or 3.) sleep on the street. Are you going to graduate from high school?
This is not a hypothetical story. I am describing an actual person that I knew back when I volunteered with the social work department at an inner city hospital.
Let's say that you beat the odds that are overwhelmingly against you and graduate from high school. If you are like the young man that I knew, you have never even heard of the SAT. Your high school's average SAT is below 1000 (on the 2400 scale). And those that do go to a local HBCU with only a 30% graduation rate [about.com] and absolutely horrendous job placement. Trade school is a more reasonable alternative, but you can't afford the tuition and financial aid for trade school is basically non-existent.
Your only option at this point is to go for jobs that will take people with a high school diploma, but you live in a city where unemployment is 147% that of the rest of the state. [google.com] Odds are that the best you will be able to get is a part time job at the local McDonald's. If you work hard, in three or four years, you might work your way up to assistant manager and make a whopping $10/hr [glassdoor.com].
This will barely be enough to pay for your rent (usually about $700/month for a single bedroom, perhaps $600 after rental assistance), let alone enough to save up for an education or to pay for the cost of raising children.
If you see any way to escape this situation through hard work, please let me know. If there were any bad choices made here that resulted in their just deserts, please let me know.
1.) A lot of the people I knew back when I volunteered with social work would have killed to make $24,000 a year. The average income of the people I worked with was probably closer to $10k - $15k per year because most people were unable to find anything but part time work. 2.) Let's pretend that it is easy to make $24k/yr. So poor people in the US on average live better than sub-Saharan Africans and we call that progress? The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. We absolutely should not be comparing ourselves to the lowest 2/3rd that still
Your Boss (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't want to hear it. Its his fault you are working 60 hour weeks instead of the business hiring another worker. He approved it, he is aware of it, and he could give half a shit as long as you keep working. You get sick? Not his fault. You get burned out, well you should have taken steps to prevent that but still stayed and worked to get things done.
You will never win. If you are working 60 hour weeks and want to stop doing so, just stop. Take a day and do some interviews, find another job. Cause the second you stop giving 150%, they are going to fire you anyways.
The corporation has no loyalty to its employees. You can all be replaced. What YOU need to start doing, is to think of the corporation as being replaceable. Shop around, find a better deal, and take it for a couple years, then shop around again, find a better deal, and take it. You owe them nothing, they need you, not the other way around. You can leave all this and buy land and subsistence farm and sell produce to city-dwellers for the rest of your life if you want. The corporation cannot, it dies without workers.
Never forget, they need you. To work for them. To buy from them. Stop doing both and they die. Its that simple.
Re:Your Boss (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to the above, as overhead per worker goes up, the pressure to not hire a second worker will go up. Until overtime costs more than overhead, the company has a strong incentive to not hire another worker. This is especially true for salaried professionals who get the same pay no matter how long they work each week. A lot more programmers and developers on salaries should be demanding hourly wages, with overtime pay based on best estimates of a companies per-worker, per-hour overhead costs, and should be greater than that cost.
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The corporation has no loyalty to its employees. You can all be replaced. What YOU need to start doing, is to think of the corporation as being replaceable. Shop around, find a better deal, and take it for a couple years, then shop around again, find a better deal, and take it. You owe them nothing, they need you, not the other way around.
The way I say it, be loyal to people, not to corporations. The corporation will fire you in an instant, but people are real.
I've stuck around at companies longer than I needed to, just so my coworkers wouldn't have so much trouble picking up after me. I don't regret it.
Re:Your Boss (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Your Boss (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever my boss demands I work more than 40 hours per week I do so, but I spend 50% of the time just sitting around doing nothing* and taking 1 hour lunches.
Like I give a fuck. Don't like it? Fire me.
I work so I can afford to do other stuff. If I don't have time to do that stuff what the fuck is the point of working so hard?
* Note that here I'm assuming regular demands of working more than 8 hours per day. Not a week long rush to get things ready for release.
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Sometimes OK in the short term (Score:5, Insightful)
However it's not something you should do for free.
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Sounds great but people get stuck. You move to a medium sized town with what you think will be a great job. For a couple years it is. You get married have kids, buy a house etc. Now it is hell. You can piss away half a years salary on relocation expenses, get your wife to leave her job and hope she can find something wherever your going that is comparible, relocate kids etc. Or you are tied down geographically because of family reasons (parents getting older etc). Either way "just get another job" only work
Another type that is interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another type that is interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean the people that actually come in, knuckle-down, get work done instead of facebook/instagram/etc, then leave and go have a life?? Damn them, Damn them all to hell!!
Re:Another type that is interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, he means the people that come in and send an email at 8am to "prove" that they are in the office then go fuck around out of sight for 3 hours.
Re:Another type that is interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing wrong with leaving at 4pm if you started work at 7am. And certainly nothing wrong with employees not responding to work communications outside working hours.
Re:Another type that is interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the point was about people who TALK about how much work they do but only put in 40 hours a week (hold on to comments about that "only").
Essentially those people are doing PR for the 60 hour week that the other people are putting in.
So not only do you have to convince management that more workers are needed BUT you also have to convince management that you aren't the problem because Bob says he's working all the time but he's not complaining like you are.
Re:Another type that is interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing wrong with giving said person -2% raises year after year either since they're piggybacking off the rest of the team that is available to help with emergencies when they come up.
Get a life. Your life and health are more important than your job. If they work hard, meet deadlines and live it their all when they are work, that is all that is needed. This is especially true if it is not their work that causes the emergencies in the first place.
Maybe you need to start taking your work more seriously so that you don't have to face "emergencies" so often.
Re: (Score:3)
Then you put in a request for new equipment, and explain that it will make them far more in increased productivity from you than it costs. A $2k upgrade only needs to increase your productivity by $1/hour to return the investment in the first year. That's usually a no-brainer expense.
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If you know you will get emergencies you should have an agreed plan of who to contact and who will take overall responsibility when one occurs.
Umm... (Score:4, Interesting)
The merely pragmatic considerations of fatigue degrading certain cognitive functions of various important sorts aren't false, and may even be the primary concern in the cases of self-employed contractors and startup jockeys with equity stakes(that they might even keep after the VCs are finished with them...); but if you are working for a paycheck and reporting to a boss, your bigger problem isn't whether working those additional hours makes you a less visionary creative or whatever. It's the fact that your effective pay, per hour, is plummeting (and in the way that annihilates your life outside of work, and sucks you dry, rather than just making you feel poorer, as working 40 hours for a stagnant or declining salary would).
Probably good practice for the bold future!
GDP (Score:4, Informative)
US Per Capita GDP is 51,704. French per capita GDP is 35,392. Americans work about 200 hours more per year.
Re:GDP (Score:5, Interesting)
Average American monthly wage is $3769. Average French monthly wage is $3698. Even though they're working about 15 hours less per month.
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Average American monthly wage is $3769. Average French monthly wage is $3698. Even though they're working about 15 hours less per month.
This sort of thing is so difficult to measure, because it's hard to separate all the variables. Any time you see a raw number like this, you know the person telling you is either an idiot or spreading propaganda.
Consider some of the issues:
*) It should really be measured by hour of work, not month of work, although you took that into consideration, most people don't.
*) Make sure you somehow are aware of the people who can't find a job, making $0 a month. Should they be counted?
*) It shouldn't be measu
Re:GDP (Score:5, Interesting)
More intersting countries to investigate:
Luxembourg and Denmark; Much greater per capita GDP than the USA / shorter working week.
Greece and Mexico; Some of the longest working hours. Much less GDP than the USA.
Re:GDP (Score:5, Insightful)
...and the french have a longer and healthier life, as W.H.O.'s data prove. And they are also far slimmer and better looking.
Working 60 hrs a week is just stupid, stupid, stupid. It causes heart diseases, fast aging, stomach problems, etc...
People who work so much should be mocked and laughed at, rather than respected for it.
Re:GDP (Score:5, Insightful)
Also take into account the fact that the US Per Capita GDP is extremely bloated; median income is near equal.
Re: (Score:3)
That might mean something if the US and France had similar wealth distribution. The average American may produce more but certainly doesn't get to keep it.
When I hear "I work 60 hours a week"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When I hear "I work 60 hours a week"... (Score:5, Interesting)
Twice I've put in 3 consecutive 80 hour weeks. And both times, as soon as the deadline was passed and everything signed off, I basically collapsed and slept for most of the next 2 days.
I certainly couldn't do anything close to that on an ongoing basis, not even when I was younger, fitter, and considerably dafter.
Re:When I hear "I work 60 hours a week"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there are legitimate workaholics that do 60 hours a week. Average Joes doing it? Rarely.
Maybe true in IT. But other fields like law, medicine, finance? The common perception is that when you're starting out as an intern or assistant, the way you get ahead is working 12 hours days or weekends or whatnot.
There have been recent stories [nytimes.com] of Wall Street firms trying to get people to stay home on Sundays. (The assumption being, of course, that everyone has to work on Saturdays.)
Thankfully, some physicians have finally started speaking out about the grueling hazing done on residents and young doctors at hospitals, where insanely long hours actually put lives at risk. [dailymail.co.uk]
Maybe other professions can finally start catching on....
Re: When I hear "I work 60 hours a week"... (Score:3)
What does work ethic have to do with it?
Every job is different. I want my pilot and copilot both well rested and also able to and have experience working longer than statutory hours. Because if We end up stuck in a pattern I don't want them to be unable to push through.
Similar for my ER surgeon. This is the value of consistent 90 hour weeks in residency. Some jobs you can't just put down and say "sorry, I hit my 40 hour quota" and they require you to actually be effective.
Before they changed residency r
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, there are legitimate workaholics that do 60 hours a week.
But they aren't going to stick around to leisurely tell you about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
K-12 teachers do it all the time.
As a former teacher, I can tell you right now that the claim is bullshit. For three months of the year, they're not working at all (unless they volunteer for summer school or suchlike, for which they get extra pay). Then we get to remove the snow days, weekends, holidays, the occasional bi-annual NEA-goaded strike, etc. On the adding portion, there are PTA meetings, and suchlike, but they don't really make up for much.
By the time you're done removing all that, it comes down to 32 weeks a year or so of actua
Re: (Score:3)
In my state a lot of them were fired before the holidays and reappointed after them to avoid the countries four weeks paid annual leave rule for full time employees. Of course some of them didn't come back. Nothing to worry the people in power though - they still getting to keep those that have no chance getting a job elsewhere and those are the ones that won't rock the boat.
How much time is spent producing a work product? (Score:2)
I don't doubt there are people (young, single, apartment renters) who spend 60 hours a week at work, but I suspect that all those 60 hours aren't spent actually producing a work product.
There's a lot of time spent in IT waiting. Waiting for builds. Waiting for downloads. Waiting for installs, updates, restores, data transfer from box A to box B. And waiting is just one category -- there's yakking with co-workers, Google searches for work-related information that end up in some Wikipedia page 6 times rem
Re: (Score:3)
"I don't doubt there are people (young, single, apartment renters) who spend 60 hours a week at work, but I suspect that all those 60 hours aren't spent actually producing a work product."
So you argument says 'You don't believe it, and if people say it is happening, it's not happening"
Well done, sharp thinker!
"There's a lot of time spent in IT waiting. Waiting for builds. Waiting for downloads. Waiting for installs, updates, restores, data transfer from box A to box B. And waiting is just one category -- th
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, it's not that hard to put in a sixty hour week at work, it's just not the same thing as working 60 hours per week, which is admittedly very, very difficult. People confuse the two, in part because it's so much easier to measure hours with butt in chair than hours working.
Re: (Score:3)
You aren't going back enough.
Before the industrial revolution [mit.edu], "according to Oxford Professor James E. Thorold Rogers, the medieval workday was not more than eight hours".
"Detailed accounts of artisans' workdays are available. Knoop and jones' figures for the fourteenth century work out to a yearly average of 9 hours (exclusive of meals and breaktimes)[3]. Brown, Colwin and Taylor's figures for masons suggest an average workday of 8.6 hours[4]. "
Meh. We've discussed this all before (Score:3)
As I said then [slashdot.org].
We just have a generally messed-up attitude toward work and "getting ahead" in the U.S. There may be many proximate causes, but nothing's going to change until you fix the overall cultural attitude.
Re: (Score:3)
That's not work: it's not even as constructive as t
Welcome to the new capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Neoliberalism
I'm glad I'm out of the race to the bottom.
Definitely not from the US. (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was reading his blog post I was wondering to myself, what planet is this guy from? Then I noticed the .ca and it made sense. I'm from the US and have relatives in around Toronto. They make fun of the labor practices in the US. Most of them have 40 hour work weeks and 6+ weeks of paid vacation a year. It always makes me laugh when I hear US corporations lament the high cost of labor. If labor were free these same corporations would complain that people don't pay to work for them. It's all about maximizing shareholder value and you lower you can drive labor costs the better.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Definitely not from the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is America a super power? Because we work our asses off. Nuff said.
What benefit does that give you, as an American, over a Canadian?
Other than thumping your chest and saying "We're a superpower (that pats down grannies at checkpoints) BOO YAH!" what benefit does that yield *you*, as a person compared to a Canadian?
Re:Definitely not from the US. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Definitely not from the US. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is America a super power? Because we work our asses off. Nuff said.
That is actually false on several accounts.
First, many countries on the planet work harder and longer than americans, especially in Asia. A lot of us westeners get quite a shock when we go working in Asia, because all the bullshit crap we smile politely about in our own culture, like the "company as a family" message some dumbo internal PR asshole actually thinks anyone believes in, is seriously real there.
Second, America is a super power because it profited massively from WW2. The numbers are in books such as "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" (excellent read, strongly recommended). The short is that every other world power was massively devastated by the war, except the USA who emerged from it with no domestic damage, lots of highly skilled immigrants, as debt-holders of several european powers and a strengthened industrial base. When you get stronger while everyone else is essentially burnt down, it's not difficult to emerge as a super power.
Third, time (and effort) worked does not equal productivity.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, but Russia, for example, is fairly similar to that in many regards, except that it had it industry located largely in the west where the german army left nothing but destruction behind.
I'm not sure if many of us in the west ever realized the massive destruction of Russia during WW2. The numbers are staggering. The book above lists these damages for the german-occupied russian territory:
Re: (Score:3)
we aren't anymore.
It's not becasue we don't work hard( 60 hrs does NOT equal working hard), it becasue we have less money over all and a huge wealth disparity.
That's the problem.
What good is it being one of the richest, most powerful nation if we have cities that are disasters? If we can't fix out infrastructure? Whole cities get wiped out and very little is done to bring them back? If we have area with people without representation?
Re: (Score:3)
Get a hobby? Vacation doesn't need to mean sit around and do nothing.
Build something.
There are many reasons to pull 60 hour week. (Score:2)
Many people find refuge in work. Else they endure a constant stream of "load/unload the dishwasher", "take out the garbage", "fold the laundry", "walk the dog", "do the taxes", "get some exercise", ...They fire up the VPN, log in and
60? Pah, come back when you're in triple digits. (Score:2, Interesting)
Occasionally though, ridiculous hours are required - and I don't have a problem with gritting my teeth and taking it. Moreover I (in retrospect normally) am quite proud of those moments when we "made it happen"
What's more interesting to me is how your employer handles these exceptions. Whilst chatting to future employers, I was quite dismayed by the number that point-blank refused to accept these scenarios every occurred, and ther
Hasn't it been known for a 100 years? (Score:2)
(sarcasm on)
Oh wait, we're talking about IT. The rules don't apply to us. You know, we don't need a business plan. Lets just wing things, it'll work out and sure 60+ hour weeks make sense.
(sarcasm off)
Stop inviting it (Score:5, Insightful)
What I see is way too many people bending over backwards in order to get bent over forwards in return. Just because you have a smart phone and a laptop doesn't mean you have to reply instantly. It doesn't mean you have to give an ETA on a project or task that requires you to get it done with 60 hours in a week or 14 hours in a day.
And once you start doing that everyone starts expecting it. Don't start! If you do work at home wait until the morning to send it out. Don't reply to email at 8pm. When your boss says "Where were you last night?" You say "Did we have an after hours appointment?" and make a show of looking at your calendar. The next time you say "Taking my son to xyz." Say it like it was wonderful and not like it's an excuse. Don't for a second feel guilty. Do this publicly as much as possible. Nobody else there wants to work 14 hour days either.
It's like an idiotic prisoners' dilemna. We all do it because everybody else is. Even your boss is sick of it, and has wife who is sick of it too.
The only way to win is not to play. If that means moving on to another job so be it. Keep moving until the tide around you moves with you.
I'm in IT, you insensitive clod. (Score:2)
We average about 50 hours a week, but there are weeks when it goes up to 60 or more. These aren't too often, however. Plus you know that scene in "Office Space" where we hear that there's a good amount of staring into space? There's some of that too. Take that out of my day and it's a more normal 40 hours of actual work.
The problem is in finding people. I interviewed over twenty candidates last year but no matter that the resumes read "Linux expert", many couldn't change a password expiration or expand an L
It's really not that simple (Score:2)
When I did contract work, we put in 60+ hour weeks because we wanted to. Rather than trying to find another "star" programmer, our team made do with the resources that we had and worked our butts off because of little issues like having to train any new hires on the techniques we were using. It would have been a good 3-4 months before a new hire would be productive, by which time the project would be almost over.
After the project, we'd take a month off and just relax, living off our savings.
Granted,
Sometimes it's fun (Score:2)
Management's Idea (Score:3)
The Papa John's Pizza franchise in Minnesota (PJCOMN corp) would pay it's general managers (GMs) a salary based on a 40-hour work week, but required that all GMs schedule themselves for a minimum of 50 hours per week.
At the store I worked at, 2 of our shift leads quit at the same time, leaving only the GM and one shift lead to run it for over a month. This meant that both of those people were working 60+ hours a week. Because shift leads are paid hourly, and GMs were paid fixed-salary, the shift lead ended up making more than twice as much per week as the GM.
In other words, people on salary who work more than 40 hours a week are simply being taken advantage of by their employer, and the employer loves it when you work 60 hours for 40 hours worth of pay
It might not be the job ... it could be you (Score:4, Insightful)
Then there are the people who really do need to spend 60 hours working - to achieve what everyone else manages to produce in 35. Slow, incompetent, indolent or simply easily distracted? You choose.
Finally we have the individuals who actually prefer to be at their job - rather than at home, either on their own, getting an earful of "verbal", or simply staring at the wall becuase they have no friends and less imagination about what to do with the empty voids between sleeping and working.
There are plenty of people who work these long hours for the reasons above. Whether they brag about it, or whether others see them as the pathetic specimens they are would depend. But if you do work tose hours, maybe it's because it's either your own fault or it's your way of escaping.
Re:Trolling (Score:5, Funny)
I spend 60 hours a week trolling Slashdot. Do you mean there are ways I could be more effective at it?
Absolutely. Perhaps you should outsource and/or automate your trolling to improve your trolling efficiency. This will allow you to achieve a healthy troll/life balance.
Re:How about 80? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about 80? (Score:5, Insightful)
"1 month later, the entire team was laid off except me and the documentation writer (all four devs and both full time QA people). We had a fixed deadline to ship to that customer [...] I don't think firing over 60% of the US workforce without transitioning knowledge was the brightest way to transition"
Unless you are the company owner, no, "we" didn't have a fixed deadline, your company, the one that laid off 60% of the employees, had a fixed deadline. And given the results, your are wrong: the way they managed the transition was brilliant because it was cheap and sucessful... thanks to a simpleton that was working 2.5x for free.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:doing two people's jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:wow really (Score:5, Interesting)
so let me get this straight. If i am in an interview and i explain to them how well i held up under the pressure of ongoing 60 hour work weeks at my current or previous positions, this does nothing for me to get the next job?
Not if they have any degree of intelligence. The oldest study that I know of by Hans Eysenck in war-time Britain showed that people working 57 hours a week produced less than people working 48 hours a week. That was about people producing weapons, who you would assume would have been very highly motivated. Working over 40 hours a week doesn't achieve anything. Six weeks at 60 hours a week produces the same work as six weeks at 40 hours. Except after working 60 hours for six weeks you are so tired that you can't keep up with the 40 hour worker anymore.
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Programming 60 real hours in a week is extremely difficult. Try this. Start a timer when you're doing some real work, not goofing off on /. or procrastinating. Trust me, if you can clock 60 real work hours in a week, you'll be mentally exhausted and will have no motivation to do anything for 2 to 3 days.
Quote from a Microsoft manager: "You can make people be in the office for more than 40 hours a week. You can't make them work more than 40 hours a week. "
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During my most productive days, I may spend 3 hours actually programming, and I will be completely burnt out from it. Mental work is quite draining.
I've recently developed a strange kind of insomnia. If I do not get mentally worked during the day, I have a very hard time getting to sleep. Can take me hours, leaving
Re:No one is proud of overwork (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously? I know full well that at least in SFO, ATL and PDX that a solid sysadmin, DevOps, or DBA has no shortage of openings to pursue. I get pestered at least 6-10 times a week with reputable offers (and don't ask how many fly-by-night Indian outfits I've had to spam-can).
I think I know what's going on... or at least part of it. It's because the market is short-handed in many areas.
I'm trying to hire sysadmins right now - once we weed out the bullshitters and the obviously incompetent, the rest demand one hell of a high salary (call it at least $95k/yr outside of SFO, and $150k/yr inside SFO), and odds are good that management is going to be forced to cut loose with the funds to do it (and for myself as well, damnit). We managed to hire exactly one out of the four slots we have open... in the past 5 months. Meanwhile, I'm trying to make do with the staff I got. We avoid pushing anyone above 50hrs/week, but I often catch a lot of them working 60+ hours anyway.
IMHO, given the amount of work that is out there (at least in my neighborhood of tech), any employer who thinks they can treat employees like crap will quickly find that they're stuck with either no staff, or incompetent staff - either way they're screwed. Example? No problem. A local company around here tried to recruit me as a DevOps (they call it a "Systems Engineer" position.) However, not only was it named as one of the worst companies in tech to work for [huffingtonpost.com], but nearly everyone in the local area I asked has warned me off from 'em (there was plenty to say about them, and little of it good. To top that off, my own research [glassdoor.com] backed it up.)
Re: No one is proud of overwork (Score:4, Informative)
Wait until your resume shows you're over 40.
Most of our best candidates so far are well past 40.
Unlike programmers, age really doesn't have the same impact in employability for everyone else... in fact it seems to enhance it in many aspects (e.g. you're less likely to find the 'cowboy' type in older sysadmins.)
Re:No one is proud of overwork (Score:4)
Ok, is that irony?
It's reality.
In IT fields it is not reality. There are a ton of jobs out there, and it's easy to get one if you're good at what you do.
Re: (Score:3)
I think farm work traditionally has long days during planting and harvest periods, but in between is a lot less time intensive than we think. I don't think there's a shortage of work to be done in between, but a lot of it is dependent on daylight. You just can't get much done in a field in the dark.
In climates with anything approaching winter, there's even less to be done. Livestock may need tending, cows need milking, but there's no field or garden work to be done. I think a lot of winter work now invol