The problem with work ethic

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Started by the-pi-guy, Aug 10, 2019, 04:54 PM

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the-pi-guy

Wasn't sure what to call this.  

Something that we struggle a lot with in American work culture is working more than full time.  We see issues like crunch in video games, and a lot of companies love seeing their employees working as much as they can.  Elon Musk even made comments  along the lines of "working 80 hours a week means we can finish twice as much as our competition can get done in 40.".

American culture, as well as some other countries take a lot of pride in working. People take pride in working 80 hours a week.  

The problem is, this is all wrong.  There are decades and decades of research showing that working more than 40 hours a week actually leads to less productivity.  

If you work a lot, you start to get fatigue.  You start to work slower, and make more mistakes.  The effects are so large, that if you worked 80 hours a week for a year, you actually would have gotten more done if you had only worked 40 hours a week.  Working around 60 hours leads to short term gains, but month over month, you'd actually be better off only working 40 hours.  

There are a few problems:

1.) People don't realize how fatigue affects them.  If you're sleeping well, you feel fine and you don't realize how much your fatigue is affecting you.

This is something that I've personally struggled with.  While working on projects, I often find myself thinking that I need to work another hour because I am really close to being done.  And several hours later of the same problem, I start to wonder if I would have been better off going to bed.  Maybe I would have finished it faster, even including the time to sleep.  

One time I did make that decision, and finished it in about 20 minutes the next day.  It's really hard to know how fatigue is affecting you, unless you're really exhausted.  

2.) The second issue is that a lot of cultures really pride themselves in their work ethic.  Japanese and American cultures are practically famous for it.  

I have literally seen Tesla employees say they are proud of their work hours, "because they are a different breed that can handle it".  


3.) People don't realize these effects.  I regularly hear people talk about gaming crunch being an issue that we have to put up with because otherwise we will have less games or smaller games.  And again, all the evidence from tons of research suggests the opposite.  Most games would actually be done quicker without crunch.  


Overall the issue is that most people, consumers, management are worried about how it'll affect them.