I’m seeing a lot of things claiming that over the long run, people can’t increase their output by working much more than 40 hours per week. It might (so the claim goes) work for a couple weeks of rushing to meet deadline, but if you try to keep up such long hours long-term your hourly productivity will drop to the point that your total output will be no higher than what you’d get working ~40 hour weeks.
There seem to be studies supporting this claim, and I haven’t been able to find any studies contradicting it. On the other hand, it seems like something that’s worth being suspicious of simply because of course people would want it to be true. Also, I’ve heard that the studies supporting this claim weren’t performed until after the 40 hour work week had become entrenched for other reasons, which seems suspicious. Finally, if (salaried) employees working long hours is just them trying to signal how hard working they are, at the expense of real productivity, it’s a bit surprising managers haven’t clamped down on that kind of wasteful signaling more.
(EDIT: Actually, failure of managers to clamp down on something is probably pretty weak evidence of it not being wasteful signaling, see here.)
This seems like a question of great practical importance, so I’m really eager to hear what other people here think about it.
Well, it’s quite unlikely that 40 hours/week is exactly the right value. I’d expect that what’s going on involves researchers comparing the cultural default to a grab-bag of longer hours, probably with fairly coarse granularity, and concluding that the cultural default works better even though it might not be an absolute optimal.
There’s also cultural factors to take into account, both local to the company and general to the society. If we’ve habituated ourselves to thinking that 40 hours/week is normal for people in general, it wouldn’t be surprising to me if working longer hours acted as a stressor purely by comparison with others. Similarly, among companies, expecting employees to work longer hours than the default would probably correlate with putting high pressure on them in other ways, and this would probably be very hard to untangle from the productivity statistics.
Finally, if (salaried) employees working long hours is just them trying to signal how hard working they are, at the expense of real productivity, it’s a bit surprising managers haven’t clamped down on that kind of wasteful signaling more.
I’m not sure that “X is wasteful signaling and hurts productivity” is very strong evidence for “managers would minimize X”.
One manager I used to work for got in some social trouble with his peers (other managers in the same organization) for tolerating staff publicly disagreeing with him on technical issues. In a different workplace and industry, I’ve heard managers explicitly discuss the conflicts between “managing up” (convincing your boss that your group do good work) and “managing down” (actually helping your group do good work) — with the understanding that if you do not manage up, you will not have the opportunity to manage down.
A lot of the role of managers seems to be best explained as ape behavior, not agent behavior.
A lot of the role of managers seems to be best explained as ape behavior, not agent behavior.
Localized context warning needed missing here.
There’s also other warnings that need to be thrown in: People who only care about the social-ape aspects are more likely to seek the position. People in general do social-ape stuff, at every level, not just manager level, with the aforementioned selection effect only increasing the apparent ratio. On top of that, instances of social-ape behavior are more salient and, usually, more narratively impactful, both because of how “special” they seem and because the human brain is fine-tuned to pick up on them.
Another unstudied aspect, which I suspect is significant but don’t have much solid evidence about, is that IMO good exec and managerial types seem to snatch up and keep all the “decent” non-ape managers, which would make all the remaining ape dregs look even more predominant in the places that don’t have those snatchers.
But anyway, if you model the “team” as an independent unit acting “against” outside forces or “other tribes” which exert social-ape-type pressures and requirements on the Team’s “tribe”, then the manager’s behavior is much more logical in agent terms: One member of the team is sacrificed to “social-ape concerns”, a maintenance or upkeep cost to pay of sorts, for the rest of the team to do useful and productive things without having the entire group’s productivity smashed to bits by external social-ape pressures.
I find that in relatively-sane (i.e. no VPs coming to look over the shoulder of individual employees or poring over Internet logs and demanding answers and justifications for every little thing) environments with above-average managers, this is usually the case.
I’m seeing a lot of things claiming that over the long run, people can’t increase their output by working much more than 40 hours per week.
I think this is just false. It seems to me that lots of people work long hours throughout their entire career, with output much higher than if they only worked 40 hrs/wk. But I haven’t looked into studies.
However, I worry that while there seem to be lots of people who work long hours throughout their career and are much more successful than most people are as a result, I wonder how much of this is those people having higher output, and how much is those people becoming successful through signaling.
In accordance with what others say, I have seen plenty of smart managers who inexplicably value longer hours over better work output. My guess is that someone going home earlier offends their internal concept of fairness. That’s one reason productive people do better on fixed price contracts than on a salary.
Based on personal experience AKA anecdotal evidence w/o even quantitative verification, for what it’s worth:
I think the optimal point depends (significantly) on the person, the job and the work environment
For me, 45-50 hours a week seems efficient, most of the time
Regarding managers not clamping down on wasteful signaling: I don’t think it’s strong evidence, because of course managers would want the opposite to be true. For them making employees work more hours feels like the simplest way to get the project back on schedule (and the project is always behind schedule).
The answer hugely depends on how intensely you work. Using hours as a measure of your productivity is a bit pointless I think. It also matters how the work is distributed in time and what kind of work we’re talking about.
I can work all day without my productivity suffering if I take it easy enough, but I can exhaust myself in a few hours too if I work super intensely. Increasing work intensity produces diminishing marginal utility for me. Also the fact that I’ve accomplished much in the few hours isn’t much solace if I’m too exhausted to enjoy anything for the rest of the day.
I’m seeing a lot of things claiming that over the long run, people can’t increase their output by working much more than 40 hours per week. It might (so the claim goes) work for a couple weeks of rushing to meet deadline, but if you try to keep up such long hours long-term your hourly productivity will drop to the point that your total output will be no higher than what you’d get working ~40 hour weeks.
There seem to be studies supporting this claim, and I haven’t been able to find any studies contradicting it. On the other hand, it seems like something that’s worth being suspicious of simply because of course people would want it to be true. Also, I’ve heard that the studies supporting this claim weren’t performed until after the 40 hour work week had become entrenched for other reasons, which seems suspicious. Finally, if (salaried) employees working long hours is just them trying to signal how hard working they are, at the expense of real productivity, it’s a bit surprising managers haven’t clamped down on that kind of wasteful signaling more.
(EDIT: Actually, failure of managers to clamp down on something is probably pretty weak evidence of it not being wasteful signaling, see here.)
This seems like a question of great practical importance, so I’m really eager to hear what other people here think about it.
Well, it’s quite unlikely that 40 hours/week is exactly the right value. I’d expect that what’s going on involves researchers comparing the cultural default to a grab-bag of longer hours, probably with fairly coarse granularity, and concluding that the cultural default works better even though it might not be an absolute optimal.
There’s also cultural factors to take into account, both local to the company and general to the society. If we’ve habituated ourselves to thinking that 40 hours/week is normal for people in general, it wouldn’t be surprising to me if working longer hours acted as a stressor purely by comparison with others. Similarly, among companies, expecting employees to work longer hours than the default would probably correlate with putting high pressure on them in other ways, and this would probably be very hard to untangle from the productivity statistics.
I’m not sure that “X is wasteful signaling and hurts productivity” is very strong evidence for “managers would minimize X”.
One manager I used to work for got in some social trouble with his peers (other managers in the same organization) for tolerating staff publicly disagreeing with him on technical issues. In a different workplace and industry, I’ve heard managers explicitly discuss the conflicts between “managing up” (convincing your boss that your group do good work) and “managing down” (actually helping your group do good work) — with the understanding that if you do not manage up, you will not have the opportunity to manage down.
A lot of the role of managers seems to be best explained as ape behavior, not agent behavior.
Localized context warning needed missing here.
There’s also other warnings that need to be thrown in:
People who only care about the social-ape aspects are more likely to seek the position. People in general do social-ape stuff, at every level, not just manager level, with the aforementioned selection effect only increasing the apparent ratio. On top of that, instances of social-ape behavior are more salient and, usually, more narratively impactful, both because of how “special” they seem and because the human brain is fine-tuned to pick up on them.
Another unstudied aspect, which I suspect is significant but don’t have much solid evidence about, is that IMO good exec and managerial types seem to snatch up and keep all the “decent” non-ape managers, which would make all the remaining ape dregs look even more predominant in the places that don’t have those snatchers.
But anyway, if you model the “team” as an independent unit acting “against” outside forces or “other tribes” which exert social-ape-type pressures and requirements on the Team’s “tribe”, then the manager’s behavior is much more logical in agent terms: One member of the team is sacrificed to “social-ape concerns”, a maintenance or upkeep cost to pay of sorts, for the rest of the team to do useful and productive things without having the entire group’s productivity smashed to bits by external social-ape pressures.
I find that in relatively-sane (i.e. no VPs coming to look over the shoulder of individual employees or poring over Internet logs and demanding answers and justifications for every little thing) environments with above-average managers, this is usually the case.
I think this is just false. It seems to me that lots of people work long hours throughout their entire career, with output much higher than if they only worked 40 hrs/wk. But I haven’t looked into studies.
Thanks, Luke. Updating in this direction.
However, I worry that while there seem to be lots of people who work long hours throughout their career and are much more successful than most people are as a result, I wonder how much of this is those people having higher output, and how much is those people becoming successful through signaling.
In accordance with what others say, I have seen plenty of smart managers who inexplicably value longer hours over better work output. My guess is that someone going home earlier offends their internal concept of fairness. That’s one reason productive people do better on fixed price contracts than on a salary.
Based on personal experience AKA anecdotal evidence w/o even quantitative verification, for what it’s worth:
I think the optimal point depends (significantly) on the person, the job and the work environment
For me, 45-50 hours a week seems efficient, most of the time
Regarding managers not clamping down on wasteful signaling: I don’t think it’s strong evidence, because of course managers would want the opposite to be true. For them making employees work more hours feels like the simplest way to get the project back on schedule (and the project is always behind schedule).
The answer hugely depends on how intensely you work. Using hours as a measure of your productivity is a bit pointless I think. It also matters how the work is distributed in time and what kind of work we’re talking about.
I can work all day without my productivity suffering if I take it easy enough, but I can exhaust myself in a few hours too if I work super intensely. Increasing work intensity produces diminishing marginal utility for me. Also the fact that I’ve accomplished much in the few hours isn’t much solace if I’m too exhausted to enjoy anything for the rest of the day.