The Cult of Overwork is alive and well. Sigh!
European workers don’t work enough hours compared to Americans. That is the message in this article written by a London-based venture capitalist. From the article:
As anyone who’s ever been there or visited will attest, in Silicon Valley everyone is working *all of the time*.
And while this might seem unhealthy, not scalable, obsessive, manic or simply ridiculous, from an ecoystem perspective it’s basically unbeatable. If you want to build companies and ride the wave of innovation, it’s a 24/7 preoccupation — not just a lifestyle business. By contrast, I am in London-based startups’ offices all the time and I am gobsmacked when they are nearly empty by 6:30 PM.
I can see where he’s coming from – I really can. It’s so easy to equate “working long hours” with “commitment” and “success”. When you see the office full of people late at night, you automatically think “WOW, these people are serious – they’re going places.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking so, but you’d be no less wrong. Please show me a single study that demonstrates the link between massive overwork (ie. working 60, 70, 80 or more hours a week for long stretches of time) and increased worker productivity and corporate success.
On the other hand, there’s stuff like this:
In 1991, a client asked me to conduct a study on the effects of work hours on productivity and errors…
My findings were quite simply that mistakes and errors rose by about 10% after an eight-hour day and 28% after a 10-hour day…
I also found that productivity decreased by half after the eighth hour of work. In other words, half of all overtime costs were wasted since it was taking twice as long to complete projects. After the study was done, a concerted effort was made to increase staffing.
(Source)
The cult of overwork is the prevailing belief that the more hours people work, the better for the company. That notion is not only harmful, it is dead wrong, as this story from Arlie Hochschild’s book The Time Bind demonstrates.
One executive, Doug Strain, the vice chairman of ESI, a computer company in Portland Oregon, saw the link between reduced hours for some and more jobs for others. At a 1990 focus group for CEOs and managers, he volunteered the following story:
“When demand for a product is down, normally a company fires some people and makes the rest work twice as hard. So we put it to a vote of everyone in the plant. We asked them what they wanted to do: layoffs for some workers or thirty-two-hour workweeks for everyone. They thought about it and decided they’d rather hold the team together. So we went down to a thirty-two-hour-a-week schedule for everyone furing a down time. We took everybody’s hours and salary down – executives too.”But Strain discovered two surprises.
“First, productivity did not decline. I swear to God we get as much out of them at thirty-two hours as we did at forty. So it’s not a bad business decision. But second, when economic conditions improved, we offered them one hundred percent time again. No one wanted to go back!
Never in our wildest dreams would our managers have designed a four-day week. But it’s endured at the insistence of our employees.”
Interesting, huh? They cut back work-hours but production remains the same.
So where exactly is the evidence (apart from our own unexamined bias) that overwork is a prerequisite for success?
Your take
What’s your take? Would you only invest your money in a company where the parking lot is always full – even on Sundays? What does tons of overtime do to you personally? Do you get twice as much done in an 80-hour week as in a 40-hour week? What does it do to your life outside of work?
Related posts
Mette Weber Said,
November 23, 2009 @ 4:52 pm
I love the picture…
Thank’s God, it is not mee, must be a bit
I love to work and create stuff on my computer, but there is so much more in my life to do besides that. Be with the one you love, going to the movee, travel, sleep, make love, eat interesting food, drink champagne, read a good book, tak to people in the office etc.
I gues I am just a lucky self-employed europeen entrepeneur or what?
Mette
Anne Said,
November 23, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
I’m a Dane currently living in Los Angeles where the ‘must pretend to be busy and work late’ illusion is rampant! I have myself worked for a fashion company where we often needed to stay late because of poor management planning and it always resulted in a poor product and generel dissatisfaction amongst the workers. My husband works for a publishing company where it’s more important to appear to be busy than to actually get any work done. It’s so commen here and is so wasteful, both for the company spirit but also for the individual. It kills the joy of working and producing, because you are being judged on the amount of hours you put in and not the quality of your work in those hours.
Seija Said,
November 23, 2009 @ 9:05 pm
Mette, I love your list, these indeed are the good things in life.
I know for a fact I can’t be productive the 8 hours a day I’m required to hang around at the office. I’m a “resident statistician” in a research center and constantly learning, thinking, figuring things out, tapping to the knowledge of my field I’ve accumulated. There is no way I’m doing that for more than, in fact, 3-4 hours a day. I can force it, at least for a short while, but it makes me so exhausted in the evening my free time is completely spent on just recovering – effectively making my free time not so free after all.
Some days I know I’ve given my share already – but the clock says I have to stay in for another 2 hours or what ever. So I fill out sudokus and read the newspaper and surf the net… which are kinda ok, but I’d appreciate a wider range of choices which would include stuff outside the office. Stuff on Mette’s list.
But I can’t do those since my employee wants me to stay in even though I’m no use to them anymore that day. No one wins. (In their defense, no one personally requires, it’s just the “system”.)
Monica Said,
November 24, 2009 @ 4:29 am
Mette – i envy you!! i am working toward self employment so i can have more time for friends and loved ones and reading in the middle of the day, not to mention creating fun gifts!
Anne – being a native Angeleno, i know EXACTLY what you’re talking about! i’ve spent time in creative fields (costuming for stage/film) and working in regular 9-5 office environments and both seem to have the same amount of poor planning resulting in last minute work producing poor results and it seems that NO ONE really understands what the phrase “cost effective” truly means, because all last minute work is wasteful and usually requires a do-over =-(
and in the office environments, many people do what Seija does if they can not leave the office after accomplishing the bulk of their work – surf the net, play games, do Facebook updates; if only we could have ROWE: Results Oriented Work Environment where you can go home if you’ve accomplished what needs to be done in just a few hours instead of a long drawn-out 8-hour day, it would be a great work world!!
Thankfully, Alex is doing his part to help change the work world by bringing light to the fact these tired old practices are just not effective anymore – GO ALEX!!
Benjamin Arie Said,
November 24, 2009 @ 5:02 am
Matt, Seija, Monica — you’re on to something!
I’ve realized that the MAXIMUM length of constant attention span is about four hours. Maybe five, but after that — the brain HAS to shift gears, or it’s just wasted time.
And a “fifteen minute” break isn’t enough. It has to be a shift to a different project, something requiring less focus. For decades people have worked against the way our minds operate, and it’s a problem.
Human Resources College Said,
November 24, 2009 @ 12:18 pm
Hi,
I like that picture. Very nice picture. I think lot of pressure in today’s corporate world. But we will try to manage our work without stress.
DH Said,
November 25, 2009 @ 12:21 am
I often find that if I stay late, then the first thing I have to do the next morning is correct my mistakes. I am now trying to leave on time .. it’s hard when you are conscientious, like the work and have a lot to do but,, when the chips are down, no one even considers how many extra hours you have done,,,,,
Unless there is a formalised flexi working system in place, it is often hard to take time off in lieu of extra hours worked and you end up being ‘owed’ lots of hours and end up resenting having to do so much work and not be paid. I once had a therapist ask me” So why do you do these extra hours, was anyone asking you to do it,,, and if not, why did you do them?’ I realised that I couldn’t give a good answer and it was of my own doing!
So now,if I work overtime, it is because I choose to do so, not because it is expected of me . That makes it feel less of a burden somehow.
Jorge Bernal Said,
November 25, 2009 @ 1:24 am
Actually, I read another presentation *against* it
http://lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html
Quoting:
“In a 60hour crunch people have a vague sense that they are doing worse, but never
think that they should stop crunching. They imagine that working 40 hours a week
will decrease their productivity. In fact, it will let them rest and increase their
productivity.
This behavior is fascinating to observe. Zombies stumble over to their desk every
morning. Temper flare. Bugs pour in. Yet to turn back would be a betrayal.”
Monica Said,
November 25, 2009 @ 6:40 pm
DH – i’m glad you have a great therapist who pointed out that the chioce has been yours all along whether to stay late at work or not =-)
and good for you for realizing that you have mistakes to correct the next day if you stay late – you’re well on the way to taking care of yourself, which really means doing better work!
i know the feeling of doing too much work, no one noticing and feeling resentful, not to mention burned out. you are quite correct when you say “when the chips are down, no one even considers how many extra hours you have done”. now i do a level of work that works best for me and keep the resentful feelings to a minimum – not always easy in the non-profit environment i work in where many people are pretty good at moving their work onto others =-(
emily Said,
November 26, 2009 @ 6:53 am
Yeah well when there are no jobs, and your boss tells you that your reward for all your hard work over the past year is that you get to keep your job (thanks, boss), and when you live in a society where job security is at a premium, you are constantly under pressure.
At the same time, when you get no raise for more than 2 years, you kinda get turned off to wanting to do any kind of overtime for your boss.
The rules of productivity presentation Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 9:21 am
[...] for all the great comments on my last post on The Cult of [...]
Kevin Carson Said,
November 30, 2009 @ 7:50 am
In many cases, senior management is so out of touch with the production side of things they don’t have any “productivity” metrics that aren’t completely worthless. As Paul Goodman put it 45 years ago, “they don’t know what a good job of work is.” So they wind up using “face time” as a proxy for productivity. The other side of it is that most of the extra time spent in the office by people competing to be seen as last out is probably devoted to “reverse telecommuting”: paying bills, surfing the web, shopping, talking on the phone, personal email, etc.
In other words, that venture capitalist is stoopid.
Carlos Said,
November 30, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
I live in Mexico city and just got a new job in which people work from 8 am to 730 almost everyday. I really think people is not working well and most of them are really unhappy with this situation but they still work that way everyday and think that people who just work 8 hours a day are not doing things right.
This article is really true, but I wish there was a sugestion about how to make an organisational/cultural change over this matter.
links for 2009-11-30 « Boskabout Said,
November 30, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
[...] The Cult of Overwork is alive and well. Sigh! It’s so easy to equate “working long hours” with “commitment” and “success”. When you see the office full of people late at night, you automatically think “WOW, these people are serious – they’re going places.” (tags: management work business productivity) [...]
js Said,
November 30, 2009 @ 9:13 pm
“And while this might seem unhealthy, not scalable, obsessive, manic or simply ridiculous, from an ecosystem perspective it’s basically unbeatable.”
I think he basically nailed it there, although I don’t get the last part. Unhealthy and not scalable is right. What happens to society if EVERYONE is working 12 hour days? Who raises the kids (or is this stuff only for people in their early 20s)? And if the answer is noone, what happens to society in the long run? Who thinks about broader community issues, or thinks about much of anything at all if they spent all their time working?
Because that is how I would understand “from an ecosystem perspective”. Is that ecosystem profitable short term for a company (possibly although I know it the point of this post is to contest that). Is that ecosystem sustainable long term as a way to run a society? No way!
deano Said,
December 9, 2009 @ 12:36 am
I briefly worked in the US a few years ago and noticed a contrast with working here in australia. In the US, everyone turns up for work early in the morning, and stays in the office until later at night, but they just don’t do as much actual work. In the states, my colleagues didn’t seem to have as many productive hours in the day; they spent a time blogging or reading the news or whatever which doesn’t happen as much at home.
TheGuilty Said,
December 16, 2009 @ 6:54 pm
I have been doing some soul searching myself lately about all the overtime I am spending at the office. I have realized I am really NOT producing work for those entire 10-11 hours that I am here, which is in addition to the 2-4 more hours I work on my own business when I get home. Additionally I feel perpetually overworked and burned out and oftentimes just kind of blah/not happy. I, just this morning before reading this article, made a pact with myself to get back to an 8 hour office day and start rebuilding my life.
Mette Said,
December 16, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
Well done Guilty … the first step is taken go for it