Oct 032012
In this episode, I rant about 40 hour work weeks and how they are bad.
I’ve got a video AND a podcast for this one! Consume the content either way!
Video via Youtube:
Audio Only via Hello World:
And here’s a link to the content RSS feed for the cast.
13 Responses to “The 40 Hour Work Week”
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To clarify, I’m talking about standard office environments here. I’m not sure how this applies to work-from-home indies, and I’ll explore that a bit in tomorrow’s Hello World podcast.
This was really cool! I’ve always felt this way myself, so hearing facts was nice. (Un)coincidentally enough, I’ve tended towards a 4~6 hour day of work for quite a while.
However I also do have those times where I can work 10~16 hours in a day(and sometimes this lasts across many days) without a blip so there’s something–I don’t really feel that ever when I’m working a “job” in an office environment.
Yes. It is amazing. In a bad way. My office environment experience was at EA on teams where they PLAN to take advantage of the fact that short-term, you can get gains by working longer.
But then they ALSO plan poorly and refuse to adjust the scope of the
game to meet deadlines so they make you work longer. All this DESPITE
the fact that their own studies of how projects have gone shows that it
backfires. They do know better! But they do it anyway! Like… it takes
something worse than just incompetence for that to happen, right?
Oh jeez. What is that, *planned* incompetence? That is terrifying! I guess the corporate incentives for management aren’t lined up to prevent that behaviour…
Does this mean people can be paid less since they are required to work less? If so, I think employers would be more willing to do something like this or at least try it.
I think if it’s phrased as “take a pay cut or work stupid hours!” people will choose to work stupid hours. Because humans are stupid! (See Mike’s response below for proof of that…)
I guess the best solution is to pay the same as a 40-hour week and put people on 30-hour shifts. But yeah, your solution is entirely plausible!
ok , this make sense . nevertheless as a knowledge workers we want increase our knowlage .so how do you think is reading book about openGL after six hour work day is great idea ?
Thanks for sharing this research. Thinking about my own productivity now and in the past as a developer working severe crunch vs much shorter hours more recently, this really rings true to me. I now realise that it has taken me years for my productivity levels to recover after crunching on game projects. It really breaks people on a semi-permanent basis – ie the effects on your ability and output aren’t just affected during crunch, but for a long period afterwards too.
Do you have links to the research you mention? I found this, but is there anything else? http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons
Yep, that was my starting point, check out the references at the bottom of that article – tons of stuff there.