Those kind of jobs seem to be somewhat self selecting anyway. Plenty of Type As.
There’s a wealth of data showing people aren’t productive when they’re sleep deprived. 80 hours a week is about the most that’s sustainable and still leaves time for a commute, cooking and eating, showering and getting dressed, and 7-8 hours of sleep a night.
@saillakeerie It’s great when different people make different choices. I’m not so happy when choices of some people become expectations for everyone else in the industry. This works both ways.
@saillakeerie I agree different things work for different people, but how does it work, having a life - while working 90 hours a week (half way between 80-100)? That’s 13 hours a day, 7 days a week. Add in 2-3 hours a day for commute and personal hygiene. Then there is eating and sleeping… What’s left - 7 DAYS A WEEK - for life?
Wouldn’t that be an easy definition of crazy work hours?
crazy hours to us= 90-100 hrs/week
I agree with you, but since this is the way of life with certain jobs overall and in other places some jobs in certain areas it’s something I caution students to look at before they choose that plan for their life. We all know becoming a doctor takes long years of schooling, a lot of money, and a hectic life during training plus many times on the job afterward. When a student (including my own lad) tells me this is what they want to do, I caution them to shadow and think of all that means bringing up family life and similar things for them to consider. Go in with eyes wide open.
Many opt against those jobs or those locations when they think about the realities of it. Some take it on and thrive.
Humans are built differently. It makes our world go around.
Solid Type B here. A hectic life would be my nightmare and I see no point or positive coming from it. H is/was Solid Type A and would happily be a workaholic working 23/7 if I hadn’t corrupted him by showing him other things to enjoy in life. Now he’s an A-/B+. It suits us both.
So much of one’s personal contentment in life depends upon getting a reasonable fit for their personality. This isn’t just for selecting colleges.
@roethlisburger There is a lot of variance with the factors you note. Some people have much longer commutes than others. Depending on the job, you can also get work done during commutes. That will vary by job and location. Don’t want to review docs necessarily on NYC or Chicago trains during rush hour but not an issue at all around where I live. You can also make work calls while driving. Cooking and eating? We typically had lunch brought in and ordered carry out for dinner so we didn’t cook. And time needed to eat was less than 30 mins combined. Showering and getting dressed is 20 mins. I can’t sleep 7-8 hours. Ever. Function totally fine on 3-5. 6 is max.
Issue with saying x hours is a max is people and jobs are different. I know a lot of people who need downtime (to just decompress before they can really do anything with family, household tasks, etc) when they work more than 4 hours in a day. Working more than 40-50 hours a week will be huge challenge for them and the likely will lose productivity. But not everyone is like that. Helps if you enjoy your job. Not everyone does. As the saying goes, do what you like and you will never work a day in your life. Or something like that.
@my3girls Given that your post implies that I am lying about the hours I work, I have to respond. I haven’t and don’t. Have to keep track of time in 0.1 hour increments (was easier as an accountant as we kept them in 1/4 hour increments and I think they may now have gone to full hour increments). Subject to sanctions, fines and loss of meal ticket. Not worth it. Are there people who do? Sure. You can read about them in state supreme court discipline reports (back in the day when paper reporters went out weekly, we used to read them to see what people were willing to do that caused them to lose their ticket). If someone has a salaried job and has to report hours internally, I can understand instances of overreporting time worked.
@yucca10 Its great when different people make different choices about high school and college. I am not so happy when choices some people make (you know those smart, talented, well rounded kids getting into “elite” schools) become expectations for everyone else. This works both ways.
Different companies/industries operate differently. There are posts here with employers who operate differently. Doesn’t mean all will. As I tell our associates, if you think we are paying you the salary we are (and our clients are paying our hourly rates) for you to work 9-5 with a full hour for lunch everyday, no weekends and an expectation you will respond whenever it works for you, you are wrong and won’t last long. A lot of people don’t. And given pyramid structures of staffing at firms, attrition is fine (and actually necessary). Not all jobs are for everyone. There are a lot of different ones out there so that works too.
Big-time academia is just as “greedy” . Lots of over qualified female faculty at my regional public 4year uni.because they sought more work-life balance. Big time academia (if lucky enough to get a TT position at an R1) is worse than big Law or Big Accounting because the pay is not enough to afford a full time nanny etc. Now that greed is seeping into the smaller institutions as well, due to the oversupply of PhD’s from highly regarded institutions. The attitude is:“Hey look, this person’ s got a PhD from Harvard- he/she can start our new [insert some humanities specialty] program from scratch and teach 4 classes a semester and mentor undergrads and …” This is not hypothetical - we have a few humanities PhD’s from H and P on tenure track / tenured faculty at my directional uni.
Academic administration is even more “greedy” - a 5 to 9 job is what I call it, with less flexibility in hours than in teaching. Some women faculty I know move into administration after the kids are out of school. Others take on more more service roles at their colleges and outside. It’s hard, if not impossible, to get back into the research stream after being on the mommy track at a teaching focused university.
There’s study after study showing anyone who thinks they function just fine on 4 hours of sleep a night is lying to themselves. Medical residencies figured this out when they capped work weeks at 80 hours. No one is born with the super power of not needing sleep.
You shouldn’t do this. Even with Bluetooth, this distracted driving is putting other’s lives at risk.
That makes you an extreme outlier. Lots of research has been done on sleep requirements/sleep deprivation and the outlook for people who get that kind of sleep is not good.
Take your outside number of 100 hours a week and that doesn’t leave much time for anything else. Come on, there are only 24 hours in a day no matter who you are, and surely you have to admit that for the average person (probably even for many outliers), working 14 hours or more a day 7 days a week (or 20 hours a day five days a week) is asking for trouble in the realm of health, physical fitness, and relationships. That’s why some of these types of careers are rife with substance abuse, mental health struggles like anxiety and depression, and relationship trouble. “Laugh out loud” if you will, but the damage that the schedule you present does for most mortals is significant and not sustainable for most.
Exactly. It sounds great to say “we all have choices,” but our society seems to be imposing these kinds of schedules on more and more people in more and more and more industries to get out of hiring more people to make the hours more “sane.” Yes, I said that word again. Americans have been noted to work longer hours, survive on less and less sleep, and take far less vacation time (some would call it “mental health days”) than anyone else on the planet. I’m seeing this in my industry (healthcare) with mandatory overtime, purposely insufficient staffing-therefore higher and higher nurse to patient ratio-and thus, burnout and a higher than average substance abuse rate. This isn’t going in a good direction.
@yourmomma are you hiring??? : )
Distracted driving + habitual 3.5 hours of sleep per day = ???
Again, might be some who could handle this, but the majority of non super human beings doing this would be on a very dangerous trajectory.
Yes and people making 500k and more per year are also extreme outliers. People choosing to go into corporate law and stick it out are not the ones causing hospitals to overwork nurses. These are different issues. I am squarely type B. I’m happy with my choices. I don’t expect type A pay nor do I begrudge it to people who are.
^^^^Nurses don’t get type A pay either but are over time being expected to work like someone who IS by corporate interests. That was the point that was being made-that the philosophy of the Type A employers are being assimilated in more and more industries.
Hence a healthy ex-pat community of those who see there can be other options out there. I was just talking yesterday after school with one of the chaperones on the student foreign trip I mentioned previously - sharing my info on other places to live. We could end up as neighbors in a few years! Meanwhile we buck the “American” trend and enjoy our Type B (or B+) lifestyle here while we arrange finances and take care of parent health needs while letting others run in the rat race. If they enjoy it or need money that badly, let them run. If they don’t enjoy/need it, hopefully they have other options if they look around.
A ton of my Harvard Law friends, like me, started out at power firms and are now self-employed, either as lawyers or something else. This is the best way to get, or approach, the best of both worlds. I’m not making what I would had I stuck it out and made partner at the firm, but I bill out my time at roughly the rate my peers command, with near-total control over how much, when, and where I work. And I love my work! My friends who started their own small firms have a lot of the same advantages.
Some of my friends who are partners at big firms have worked out systems that work for them and their clients that make their lifestyles much more sustainable — for example, they work 12+ hours in person M-Th every week, but their Friday night-Sunday night time is sacrosanct and they will answer only the most urgent emails or calls. They delegate more junior lawyers to take weekend client contacts and only involve them on matters that cannot wait and that no one else on the team can handle. This would still be too much for me, but it’s great for them (and allows them to afford a gorgeous weekend home that they enjoy year-round).
Japanese also have ridiculous work hours, which are well known to be inefficient and unproductive.
@Hanna, your post gives me hope for D2. She just graduated from law school last weekend (has another year though to get her MBA as part of a dual program). She has a tentative verbal offer from the firm she clerked for last summer, but isn’t counting on it yet and isn’t sure she would commit even if it were firm. But I know she does want children some day, and though she has a type A work ethic, she does sometimes cave under too much pressure. I would hate to see her caught up in something she didn’t feel she could get out of or feel that not wanting to get caught up in it makes her lesser in terms of value.
I don’t know what her future holds, but I hope it involves some kind of satisfying work/life balance.
@Creekland said:
Ha ha. DH has probably dialed it back to Type A-, but I have dialed it down to Type C- 
Parent health needs/handling parent finances has taken over some of my extremely discretionary down time, but I still have a LOT of free time.