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An entrepreneur says 32-hour weeks 'killed work ethic' at his startup and now he regularly works 65 hours
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I work an office job and get 9/80s, which is great. I don't think I could do 4/10s, but just getting the extra Friday half the time is enough for a good balance. I'm overall very lucky to work for a company with a good work/life balance culture.
5 or 6 hours a day would honestly be perfect. I don't mind working 5 days a week, but 8 hours per day is such an antiquated concept. If you need to work 8 hours to finish your task then, sure, work 8 hours, but people shouldn't be forced to just be stuck in the office for 8 hours if your brain starts to get tired after 5 or 6 hours.
Very strange to understand. All my friends in finance, law, consulting, medicine all work 60-100 hour weeks regularly. It's a grind but it is what it is.
Not sure 40 hours is really applicable in a lot of professions that are transactional or client dependent in nature. Would be nice though.
Not sure 40 hours is really applicable in a lot of professions that are transactional or client dependent in nature. Would be nice though.
OP
OP
Yeah. It's common there. But you're also getting paid tons in those professions. Are they planning to do that forever? Outside of medicine, the big wigs in those professions tend to take it to work less later on their careers.
I'm in the healthcare field and I'm scheduled to work 3x12 every week with 4 days off, working every other weekend. Overtime only requires an extra day of work for 48 hours total and I still have 3 days off. I can't imagine going to work 5 times a week anymore.
It's the best schedule I've ever had and it makes scheduling vacation/PTO a breeze.
It's the best schedule I've ever had and it makes scheduling vacation/PTO a breeze.
JFC at this take. Borderline slavery? How fucking coddled are you?
Context matters, it's a metaphor. And if you think it's normal to have a couple of days off a week (actually less if you count house stuff) and living for work as most people do (hint: rich people don't) is ok then good for you.
I'm against a 40 hour work week as well, but all of these gross comparisons to slavery in this thread is a massive insult to anyone who's been subjected to or affected by actual slavery. It's whiney and entitled.
I work in one of those fields and I used to work those hours, but let me tell you now that it is fucking bullshit. You're basically being exploited to work for far more hours than you are being paid because the carrot of "career advancement" is constantly being dangled in front of you and it's a competition to see who gets that promotion - and there are fewer opportunities than there are people looking for them.
I mean, it's fine (to a point) if you willingly partake because you believe that you will make partner if you put in fifteen or twenty years of working 12+ hour days, on weekends, and having no life in the meantime. You'll be well compensated, although if you sit down and think about your salary in hourly terms you might realise that it's not quite so attractive.
Essentially, many of these firms are getting away with employing maybe half as many staff as they actually need to get all of the work done within a standard working week, and they get away with it because there are enough people out there who are willing to be exploited in this way. That doesn't make it right, though. And for every person who makes partner there are dozens who don't, and many of them end up burned out, stressed out or managed out of the door because they're unwilling or unable to put their work ahead of every other aspect of their lives.
"It is what it is" is one of those phrases that annoys the piss out of me 😠 The culture in many of these places is fucking toxic.
You do know slavery can also mean
a condition of having to work very hard without proper remuneration or appreciation.
I thought the point by using that word was quite clear, but I see it's not. I still don't see why using metaphors or hyperboles have to do with being whiny, entitled or coddled.
I have currently worked 4x10 for the last year (Work Customer Service/Tech Support for a cell phone company.) Right now, I work from 8am-9pm with a 3 hour "lunch" break in between. I am liking it a lot more than I was in the beginning due to the break in between. A bit of disclosure, I do work from home so that may be a factor in my opinion.
I am curious as to that person's occupation, position and which country they are located in. Fuck it was probably Elon posting that lol.
The article links to the original video they got the info from, which goes into more detail. The problem wasn't the hours, the guy says he just didn't work hard, and if anyone suggested he work harder, he would curse them out. And the company had zero managers to make his employees accountable for getting work done. When they switched to a 40 hour workweek, they also laid a bunch of people off and hired managers, so any change in overall company productivity wasn't due to the hour change but changing the entire company and how it was run.
My work doesn't change the life of anyone. It's not important on a social or a political level. It's also neverending - there is always work to do. Like hell I'm willing to put in more than 40 hours into this job.
People should strive for less work not more. I had a 32 hours work week for years and only changed it because I needed more money. It was fantastic! Having Fridays or Mondays off was good for everything.
The year I changed to a 40 hour week I felt physically and psychologically a lot more drained. It might have been the year I was out sick the most. It's all good now, but I would go back to a 32 hour week in a heartbeat if the payment was the same.
People should strive for less work not more. I had a 32 hours work week for years and only changed it because I needed more money. It was fantastic! Having Fridays or Mondays off was good for everything.
The year I changed to a 40 hour week I felt physically and psychologically a lot more drained. It might have been the year I was out sick the most. It's all good now, but I would go back to a 32 hour week in a heartbeat if the payment was the same.
This is the only way to save the future. I worked 3 x 12 (Fri Sat Sun) when I came home from the service and after the adjustment, it was by far the greatest shift of all time (except during Football Season )
It seems like a clickbait article.
I think anyone who joins or founds a startup is expecting to work ridiculous hours for some sort of payout at the end. Either via the experience, stock options, or the opportunity to create something new. That shit is probably not going to happen if you are only working 32 hours a week.
And I think 32 hours a week would be great for a lot of jobs. And I think it would give more people more opportunities if we did have people cut down on hours in general (would leave to more people being hired to pick up the slack).
But none of this stuff applies to every single situation.
Once these companies start caring about the lives & health of their employees, then we will give a shit about "work ethic". Plus, give me four 10-hour days and that would be the most I care to do.
I lose productivity after 5-6 hours, but I'm a hard/fast worker compared to others at my place. I also don't drink around, I'm busy my full 8 hours often and sometimes skip my lunch due to it.
I can absolutely tell my focus goes bad after lunch break (5.5 hours in) and my overall speed and efficiency goes down exponentially over time. I start making mistakes more often and that slows me more. This leeches into the later half of the week's mornings, and I get slower and worse overall.
40 hours is too much in my opinion. Also, ftr I've done 50s before for years at an old job, it's awful and permanently made me resent working. Still, with that, I don't hate my time here, but by ~5/6 hours in I'm done and getting miserable. I think I'd enjoy life a lot more and be a better overall worker with five 6's, no lunch, 1 break. I could get nearly the same done, and I'd take that bet.
I can absolutely tell my focus goes bad after lunch break (5.5 hours in) and my overall speed and efficiency goes down exponentially over time. I start making mistakes more often and that slows me more. This leeches into the later half of the week's mornings, and I get slower and worse overall.
40 hours is too much in my opinion. Also, ftr I've done 50s before for years at an old job, it's awful and permanently made me resent working. Still, with that, I don't hate my time here, but by ~5/6 hours in I'm done and getting miserable. I think I'd enjoy life a lot more and be a better overall worker with five 6's, no lunch, 1 break. I could get nearly the same done, and I'd take that bet.
OP
OP
Well, he used to have everyone work 32 hours, so he wasn't a slave driver. It's not like he started at crazy hours. He just said it was not sustainable for his company.
I brought it up because the 32-hour week experiment is something many are experimenting with. So have been positive, others have not.
Also, while he does work 65 hours, I don't think he expects his reports to work so much. He's a CEO. He has different priorities. However, he still needs his team and if he's coming to work on Friday, he won't be able to get much stuff on his own.
I would like to have the option of either 8hrs/5 or 10hrs/4 any given week. Having a long weekend is great, but working 10 hours a day plus an hour of commute and throwing in any other bullshit you gotta do means you pretty much don't have any of the day to yourself. 4 straight days of that, every week, and I'd probably get depressed.
It's probably true that 8 hour work days are a bit too long for constant work, even with breaks, but do we really think if we reduced it to 6 hour work days we'd get full productivity for all 6 hours? I somehow doubt it, but maybe someone with experience can give some anecdotes.
Honestly, you couldn't pay me enough to work 50+ hour weeks these days.
I studied and worked my ass off (including 60+ hour weeks) just to try and get a position in life where I can work 4 days a week and still make plenty of money. Sure I could work more but what the fuck do I need the money for if i'm drained all the time. It's never worth it, and fortunately the medical field is slowly realizing this with people getting burnt out, depressed and/or unhappy left and right.
Like the old saying, no-one on their deathbed wishes they spent more time working. No, they wish they spent more time with family, exploring hobbies and experiencing life outside of work. To me, time and freedom is more precious than any additional salary.
I studied and worked my ass off (including 60+ hour weeks) just to try and get a position in life where I can work 4 days a week and still make plenty of money. Sure I could work more but what the fuck do I need the money for if i'm drained all the time. It's never worth it, and fortunately the medical field is slowly realizing this with people getting burnt out, depressed and/or unhappy left and right.
Like the old saying, no-one on their deathbed wishes they spent more time working. No, they wish they spent more time with family, exploring hobbies and experiencing life outside of work. To me, time and freedom is more precious than any additional salary.
I think four 8-hour days a week is doable for a lot of professions. You just have to employ people who are going to come in and get it done. If this guy's employees weren't getting the work done then management failed. I personally feel like 10 hour days are a waste for certain professions. Your brain is just done after a while.
I think George Jetson worked 4 hours per week. He called his boss a slave-driver.
There was no management. He set up the company to be 32 hours/week, no management. That was a big part of the problem. Another problem was the guy's own work ethic, which really had nothing to do with the hours, he just needed to realize that as a company founder he needed to work hard to make it work. And I would bet since he wasn't working hard (and there were no managers), his employees didn't think they needed to either.
I mean, without the overtime you could probably do that right now in a ton of hourly jobs, it's the lack of pay that's going to get you.
He might be a workaholic, but the problem when you're at the top is that there isn't someone else to share the workload with. You don't have two CEOs. If you need to make 1,000 widgets a week and you're only making 500, then maybe you need to double your staff numbers. If, though, five people need to have a meeting with the CEO, you can't necessarily arrange them all such that you're not working a long day. If you need to do a bunch of analysis about a new acquisition or senior hire, you can't get someone more junior to delegate it to and just trust they get it right.
This is especially the case with startups where often you don't have the capital to have all the staff you actually need.
I work 9 hour days (9.5 with lunch) and can't imagine adding another hour to that. Even with a 25 minute commute I still feel like I barely have time to cook, exercise and have leisure time, and I don't even have any excess responsibilities like a kid or pet. Maybe five 7-hour days is a better solution?
The CEO of my rather large company appears to work 30 hours a week. The one before him, the same. They were basically just going to lunches and events. The CEO of my old company literally only showed up once or twice a week. The guy who succeeded him would show up, get someone from IT to copy movies from old Zip drive or something to a laptop he wanted, then leave to do god knows what. Also at that old company I was basically the CTO personal helper, so I got to come into contact with the CEO a lot. Even the days he managed to show up he was gone by 4PM.
I know there are some CEO's that work insane hours, but I think they're the outlier. In my experience the average CEO does fuck all.
I'm sure they both exist. I'm sure there are bar tenders who don't do much, too, if the bar isn't busy. My point was really that, if the boss finds himself or herself in a position where s/he has more work to do than they're able to do in 40 hours, the choices are either working more than 40 hours or it doesn't get done. This isn't the case for most other levels of the job, where there's a third option: Hire more staff.
I'm a big fan of 4x10 work week but I feel the only way it works is if you break them up in 2 day chunks, so Monday-Tuesday, Thursday-Friday.
Is overwork just inherent to software development? Never worked close to 100 hours but had a couple 12 hour days over the past months. Anything over 9 and I find my brain just goes to mush. In general I like working in IT but shit like this makes me want to leave.
As someone who regularly works about 60 hours a week for very moderate pay this thread is depressing. Should've stayed in college...
It's a mix of poor time management from either the employer or employee with a mix of some employers not giving a ***k that you're working more hours than they scoped/billed the client.
You can build amazing complex things with zero overtime and on time when things are properly scoped out.
32 hour work weeks and 3 day weekends will not be enough. You can't expect to make tons of profits without exploitation in this world. Just the way capitalism is designed
What are the work weeks like in communist countries (I honestly have no idea)?
Depends on the company I guess, my current one dislikes it if you work over 40, unless there is a valid reason.
I imagine when a company becomes a certain size the nature of work changes. Lots of flying around, keeping up with the status if various things, and just high level decision making. And a lot of mixing of buisiness and leisure. Schmoozing politicians, judges, and general networking over golf, at fancy resorts, or debauchery filled party trips lol.