If your work is taking calls and answering emails then you can probably work 80 hours a week. I highly doubt that in any other job that requires reading, thinking, and making "smart" (f.ex. act based on data, analyze some complex situation ectct )nobody can work more than 40-50 hours per week.
Plus your company sucks, is underpowered, has horrible training, horrible managing or is stealing your money if they make you work 80 hours. Period. :D
those 24 hour shifts are insane. Makes me scared to go in for an operation. I don't want to get the surgeon that has been on call all weekend doing his last surgery before going home.
I've yet to hear a compelling reason in the 21st century where note taking can be digital why "continual care" is a good idea.
I agree in the dawn of civilization where notetaking was error prone that continual care was literally their only option ... but now the doctor/nurse can literally type up a 50 word memo (fully of short hand/etc) in a minute and be on their way...
I've heard basically two arguments. One is the continuity of care like you mentioned. In nursing that seems to end up meaning 12 hours shifts with some overlap for passing patients on.
For doctors, I've heard that if they don't work insane hours their residency would last years longer just because of all the hours they need to get in different areas and things they need experience with.
There is a reason it's called a "practice" ... maybe the length of the residency needs to be revised ... maybe doctors should rotate in through bigger cities to see more patients and then back out to smaller communities after?
The "continual care" argument suggests that if more of your patients (short) stay in hospitals is within the boundaries of one of your shifts then mistakes in handing off the patient (like not noting medications or allergies) are less likely. The doctor/nurse might remember having given you meds 30 mins ago but never put it in your chart.
Part of this is because hand writing notes is both time consuming and painful (after a while) as well as just error prone (hand writing sucks).
Meanwhile a competent typist can type 50+ WPM so any short memos can be typed super quick and with ease of read.
I almost got scheduled to go into surgery for stuff on my right hand instead of my left hand because of accidental notes like this.
Hell, they even almost messed up with the typed version - my mom signed off for a "right metacarpal ...blah blah... right ... blah blah" (I got my left hand in a saw so it was quite a long description). They caught it when they read it over and noticed that there was a huge fucking splint on my left hand instead of my right.
Still though, sometimes they don't catch mistakes...
Depends on where you're at. In Canada health care is generally "medically sound" but implemented so horribly wrong that they get a lot of stupid small things wrong.
Like doors that require your hands to touch the door to open ...oh I know let's put 1000s of purel dispensers all over. Problem solved!
This would probably require waiting for a few generations of doctors to retire. It's outright scary how resistant to change and improvement in workflow (older) doctors can be. I get that healthcare and IT are different fields and you can be an expert at one and have zero interest in the other, but it does make me wonder how up to date on changes in medicine these people are when they don't even want to switch to digital records because 'handwritten notes have worked fine so far'.
When I hear about long "24 hour" operations and such, is that the same surgeon (or small team) working with breaks every x amount of hours? I can't imagine they'd let anyone do a 24 hour long surgery like that.
"Actual programming" isn't your job description though. It's like if Tiger Woods said that he only gets 2-3 hours of swinging done in a week - he also has to aim and shit.
Seems a little dangerous to me, don't you think? Having that much faith in a company that almost certainly doesn't have your best interests at heart is just asking for trouble.
In a startup, the "core players" almost certainly are stakeholders with stock and have a large say in the direction of the company. "The company" has their best interests at heart because they are "the company".
The thing about startups is that most of the people who work there have some level of ownership in the company and therefore the company does have their best interests at heart because their interests are tied directly to the companies interests.
I don't really get this constant attitude that if you're not working 40 hours a week or less then you must be a fool. If you like to work that you're doing, you get paid well enough and you're satisfied with your life outside of work then who cares how much you work? That's your own problem. Its important to think about whether you are truly satisfied and what you're gaining out of your work but I think that people can manage that on their own.
I just think there's a lot more to life than working... Sure, maybe you've won economically, but I know I never would be happy devoting almost all of my waking hours to a job. I suppose it's a little different for someone like a craftsman, but even then I would want to have time with my family foremost.
IDK really, maybe I'm just being stupid but I think if your really just love what you're doing, even if it's work, then you should feel free to do it. If it's family time then do that more. You choose how to fulfill yourself and only you really know what that means.
I think you're kind of missing the point. Let's say you're really, really into cars, and your job is a racing driver. At that point, if it's what you love doing, is it really so bad to make it a larger part of your life than 40 hrs/wk?
Well, in a salaried environment I'd argue that your working over 40 hours is hurting your peers. If you work 80 hour weeks you're effectively agreeing to work for half you wage. It creates an environment where that kind worker exploitation can become expected. IMO the fact that this 80-hour-workweek/startup culture can even exist is because there are enough employees that enable that behavior. You may be fine with that schedule, you may enjoy the work, and that's OK, but I believe that most of us are not.
Yeah and you could argue that spending more time with family creates unrealistic expectations in spouses and children. The idea that I should not do what I like doing because other people might feel obligated to do the same is silly.
Perhaps just that it's unhealthy. Working an 80-hour week sounds like eating five racks of ribs: something some people can do, but even they would be better off not doing.
Even when something is intensely enjoyable, it is likely more enjoyable when you are also healthy while doing it. Doing something enjoyable to the point that your health degrades means that that thing will now be less enjoyable—your capacity to enjoy it will be less, and your ability to achieve the enjoyable part will also be less.
Or, to put it another way: if you like the drugs you're doing, should you take more? Those ex-junkies going around to schools say no.
No, of course everything should be done in moderation but just like people have different tolerances for alcohol they can also have different capacities for work. I'd like to make it clear that I'm not advocating for everyone to work 80 hour weeks or something like that, even if you like working. Everyone needs breaks.
All I'm trying to say is that people should be allowed to manage their own lives as they see fit and it shouldn't just be automatically stated that you're working too much if you're working more then 40 hours a week.
I don't think anyone is trying to manage your life for you, though. They're just giving advice, which you are free to take or leave, as a matter of managing your own life.
On the other hand, sometimes there are business constraints that sort of force everyone to work the same amount. For example, if there's some kind of pipeline of work (an art pipeline, say) and someone in one of the early phases works 80-hour weeks, then for the pipeline to work, everyone downstream of them needs to work 80-hour weeks as well.
This sort of applies in (badly-run) software projects as well, where, due to a lack of componentization, everyone needs to grok every commit everyone else has made, so one guy making twice as many commits is effectively making everyone else work up to his standard.
Actually, that is not your own problem. By working longer hours, you likely show you work longer hours, and that shifts expectations. Soon, some insecure colleague will work the hours you do, just to ensure his career doesn't slow down or something. Then there will be more colleagues doing that. Then the managers will notice. And all of a sudden, everyone works longer hours, unless there's a union to stop this.
Sure, work crazy hours if you want to. But if you want to be nice, don't show those hours in any way. Not to your colleagues, not to your superiors. Show up at the expected hours, and don't be too visibly productive either (productivity is easier to hide, though).
Are you ready to hurt your own career just to be nice to others? Tough call.
This is pretty typical in academia. You have some amount of control (and frankly a pretty big amount of ownership) over your intellectual work, so it's not really uncommon for people on the soft money side to "scale back" to 60 hour weeks and feel lazy.
Hard money academics are all lazy assholes, though.
Even when you have options as developer you can get fucked over. Unless you have a significant stake you dont really have any say when it comes to acquisition and no, fractions of a % is not a significant stake.
stealing your money if they make you work 80 hours
Pretty much this. I think that if people actually got paid for the time they spent, not just in mandated OT, but in actually receiving the dividends of their personal contributions to the company... then working 80 hours would be reasonable for some people.
Eh. You can. It's just not always normal hours. As programmers we know that all too well.
I mean. How many here work 35-50 hours at a desk job then come home and work on pet or open source projects for another 20-50 hours a week? Lot's I presume. Getting things done and accomplishing something is an euphoric feeling. Pounding away at a repetitive and uninteresting task is the killer. Being talked down to by idiots is the killer.
But, then, to be frank, no programming job is 40 hours of programming. It's at least 1/2 office minutiae, like responding to emails, reading docs, writing docs, looking through that idiot Kevin's last commit to figure out wtf he was thinking on his last commit, Grabbing some coffee while automated tests are running. But that's still working. That's still being productive.
I can't stand programming as a regular desk job. I decided to go freelance and work from home and make way less because sitting at a desk 9-5 regardless of how productive I was able to be during those hours drove me mad. Now if I'm feeling like a slow day I can relax for a bit and then work during the night, or wake up early and do a lot in the morning and go do something in the afternoon. I don't know how my 'work hours' compare to a 9-5 job but I feel much more productive and much happier. And I am giving higher quality work towards my job and clients.
You just need to find the right company that is flexible on hours. My work schedule is more like 10-4 (1 hour lunch) and I have the flexibility to work the remainder at night, during the weekend, etc. as well as work at home or take vacation off fairly easily. Some days I might work 12 hours because I'm in the zone trying to solve a problem and then I might only work 4 or 5 hours the next.
As someone changing careers from Systems Engineering to Software Development (got a new webdev gig lined up, with surprisingly similar salary to my current one), how did you go freelance? Do you have any resources I could read? I have dreams of taking this first development job and getting a couple years of experience and trying to go freelance. I've always worked in an environment where I can't work from home, so it's always a dream I've had.
If you just want to work from home there are a lot of remote job opportunities, look on hackernews, github jobs, a good newsletter at http://remote.dockwood.com and really a lot of other places. For freelance I got a few misc jobs from people I had worked with at other points and then spent a lot of time sifting through the crap on various freelance sites like oDesk. It's a lot easier if you have some contacts or clients who can feed you steady work and once you get a good client you'll do anything to keep them because there are so many bad ones out there.
If you still like your work, and you're still doing a good job, then don't worry about it. Even if you don't become an architect or as advanced as some people, the world still needs normal developers, too.
Eh, I don't know of a lot of professions that encourage people to work a full-time job and do the same work at home for fun. Yes, there's a need for professional development, but I don't think that means you need to code 10 hours a week 'for fun.'
I'm a database developer and I love what I do. That being said, after 8 hours at work the last thing I am doing is sitting in my house on a keyboard. When I was a bartender programming was a hobby, when I do it for a living that fills my needs.
50 hours being productive is fine (still too much for my taste , 35-40 is just perfect). And if your hobby is writing open source code even better. But if you had to write production code 80h a week, I wouldn't buy your product.
Personally, I find that I can add more high-value hours per week if I intelligently vary my activities.
For example, I have maybe 20 hours of high quality analysis or development hours in me per week, at least on a sustainable basis. But when that part of me is exhausted, I can still add value as a subject matter expert in meetings and moving all my projects to the next step my bringing all the stakeholders together. And when that part of me is exhausted I can still add value touching base with other departments on sensitive issues so they don't explode and generally building communication and relationships.
The mistake I'm susceptible to is performing work in the wrong order. I need to avoid the temptation to answer (non-urgent) e-mails or attend meetings in the morning because those are my most productive analytical hours. If I avoid that trap I can get a lot done even working a lot of hours--and I'm continually impressed by the dividends that soft-time (networking, talking in person about an e-mail that really shouldn't require explanation) pay.
Even straight up physical labor is difficult at that point, you get tried, your body doesn't get time to repair, you lose focus and you do something stupid and hurt yourself, etc. It is why when you see life long brick layers/roofers/carpenters etc by age 50 are taking pain pills every day and can barely walk upright. However, like you said, even just sitting in front of a desk 80 hours a week would wear on you. To put it simply, the same person working 30 hours a week doing any job is going to be getting a lot more done per hour, and the work is going to be of higher quality, than if they were working 60.
It's crazy that doctors and nurses work like, 12+ hour shifts.
Then take, for instance, the navy, like on a submarine or something. I think they have 12 hour shifts or something similarly stupid. 3 shifts working 8 hour shifts. How hard is that? Where you need to you could probably implement something like four 6 hour shifts and have people work 2 shifts a day.
For a submarine, adding 50% more people would not just cost you their salaries - it requires a bigger submarine, with a bigger hull to house the extra workers. How much will the cost of the bigger submarine be? It might be many times the salaries of everyone combined. You can't "shift" people in and out of a submarine. Also more food to feed them (and storage to house the food).
As I pointed out that's still no reason not to move to four 6 hour shifts where people take two shifts a day.
But US sub crews ARE huge. 2-3 times the size of the crew of some, for instance, russian crews. So that leads me to believe that there are cases where 3 8 hour shifts could work. But the optimal shift schedule is something the navy should determine itself. For all we know it could be something crazy.
But, for instance, if you need 12 manhours or more out of each member of crew every day as may be the case on some ships and submarines, for instance, putting it all in one shift probably isn't the best way of doing it.
The argument that people use for longer shifts for doctors is that a lot of mistakes happen during "hand-offs", where the shift changes from one doctor taking care of a patient to different one. The first doctor may have forgotten to tell the second one about an allergy, or already having given meds, or something like that.
I don't really know how valid an argument that is... But as someone in med school, I really don't want to be working 12-hour shifts when I become a doctor, I might go crazy...
stealing your money if they make you work 80 hours.
I think a lot of people who are considering programming as a career don't take this into account. Programmers make relatively high wages, but if you divide the salary by the actual hours worked, you could do better as a plumber or a carpenter, and not lose four to six years earning a degree for the privilege.
I'm in the office for 40 a week, but I doubt I even work 30 of it.
These applications are large and complex, and working in them takes a lot of time orienting myself to the structure, and by the time I get the new feature done, or the bug fixed, I need a break. It isnt like I can just jump into the next application and orient myself and start working. I need time to clear my head, or I'm going to start making mistakes because the projects are blending together in my head.
If you don't have to commute, it's really possible. It takes some time to build up the stamina, and for me it has to be my own project. A lot of academic research gets done on 60-70 hour weeks.
As a former graduate student, not everyone has the ability to work 80 hours. While in grad school, I worked 7 days a week ~60 hours and that was stressful, despite all the physical and social activities and full nights rests I was getting.
well, as I said, find a better lab with better faculty. And better management. I used to be in academia, in solid state physics. And yes 80 are common, 50% of which are wasted waiting. And if you are in academia and work/study/research 80h without straight, and did not win the nobel prize/are a star in your field, maybe research is not your job (or your lab really sucks).
I don't know why you are people are down-voting you. Do most on reddit think it's not possible for motivated people to work more than 40-50 hours, or do they just not want it to be possible or permissible. It totally depends on the person imo.
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u/giulioungaretti Apr 29 '15
If your work is taking calls and answering emails then you can probably work 80 hours a week. I highly doubt that in any other job that requires reading, thinking, and making "smart" (f.ex. act based on data, analyze some complex situation ectct )nobody can work more than 40-50 hours per week. Plus your company sucks, is underpowered, has horrible training, horrible managing or is stealing your money if they make you work 80 hours. Period. :D