How Does a 9/80 Work Schedule Work Out? 1055
cellocgw writes "My company is in the process of implementing a version of '9/80,' a work schedule that squeezes 80 hours' labor time into 9 business days and provides every other Friday off. I was wondering how this has been implemented in other companies, and how it's worked out for other Slashdot readers. Is your system flexible? Do you find time to get personal stuff done during the week? Is Friday good for anything other than catching up on lost sleep? And perhaps most important, do your managers respect the off-Fridays, or do they pull people in on a regular basis to handle 'crises?'"
4/10 is easier (Score:5, Insightful)
You get every friday or monday off depending on the stagger. The idea of 9/80 bothers me. There is a point of no return for employees. If you are going to work like that, you should make sure and take two one hour breaks a day.
Crises (Score:5, Insightful)
If your manager pulls you in to cover a crisis, you need to demand flex time (a different day off next week) or overtime.
Or, send them an invoice from your consulting firm for about six times whatever your daily rate is.
Get out now (Score:4, Insightful)
While it is not a bad idea in and of itself, changing work schedules to some bizarre non-standard system is usually a sign that the company management is trying to squeeze more work out of you. First they change the schedule to give you more work per day, then they will ask you to work more days.
In this economy, they know you don't have anywhere to go, so unless you fight back against this or leave for a new job altogether, you're going to get screwed. Ask them if they've been considering offshoring the IT department. I'd be willing to bet that within the next year they are looking to thin the local IT staff to a skeleton crew and then migrate the servers over to India where they can do your job for a third of the cost.
Lobby for 10 hour days (Score:2, Insightful)
With 4 tens, I get every friday off. As far as being pulled in on other days, it depends on whether your manager is an ethical person who respects their employees or not. You are the only one who knows enough to tell that, and a bunch of slashdot pundits won't help.
Sound better then 5/80 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:it sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
A half day Friday defeats the purpose for me. If I have a Friday off, I can leave on Thursday night and actually go somewhere interesting, be there for Friday morning, return Sunday night, and it's like a vacation. But then I'm pretty spoiled. I can pretty much take off whenever I want at my current job. I'm thinking about going to a new job as a contractor, for a really good rate, but I'm worried about the shock when I find out I have to actually work hours that someone else specifies. I have not had an experience like that since the mid 90s.
I work 9/80 (Score:5, Insightful)
Pros:
Cons:
9/80 is best when paired with a flex time schedule so that you can move around hours when you need to. The off friday gives you an option to tell your boss "i'll work more these days or just come in friday" if you want to take a different day off instead of the off friday. Coming in on the off friday usually means the office is dead. That can be good and bad. Some people like not having anyone around because they normally get interrupted too much when people are at the office. Other people hate it because there's nobody else to kick the bucket with.
If you find you are normally working more than 8 hours everyday, 9/80 is actually a good option because you will have a decent excuse for not coming in on the off fridays and you will have to work 9 hours most days anyway. If you find you are working even on the weekends, 9/80 will have no impact on your hours.
As a single guy, I prefer 9/80. But I do know some family types that prefer the 5/40 since they really need the consistent 8 hour days to keep their family schedules synced. At first you will loath the 9 hour days because that extra hour is bigger than it looks. After a while though 9 hours will seem like nothing and the working fridays will seem really short.
Re:I worked 9/80 for 4 summers (Score:2, Insightful)
I worked 9/80 for several years (Score:2, Insightful)
It was great. I usually put in 10 hour days anyway, so someone telling me that I was to get every other Friday off was great! Not only do you get the occasional 3 day weekend, but you will probably find that the Fridays that you do work are really quiet - assuming not everyone in the office is on the same 9/80 schedule. If you are in a "meeting rich" environment, you are spared on Fridays because half the people aren't there.
After I got into middle management, 9/80 basically meant that I didn't feel guilty for taking a Friday off, but often-times I was working those days as well.
In big companies where folks that work a normal 8 hour day are treated like slackers, it's a good way to actually get some benefit for those 8+ hour days. Also, remember that 5 days of vacation turns into 10 days off! Bonus!
Re:Sound better then 5/80 (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, your job sucks.
Re:Just a second, here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
That's nice for everyone who's not already working two or even three jobs just to make ends meet. And, surprise, surprise, most of the layoffs are also in the fields where you have unqualified people (who just happen to be also the ones that earn the least).
Re:it sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
If you let your boss walk all over your schedule, he's just going to assume you don't mind and keep doing it.
If I had this arrangement and my boss pulled this, I'd start looking for a new job, while cutting back my hours in general so losing the day off doesn't give the company more of my time than I'm supposed to be giving.
But anyway, I question how this works if you're salaried. At my company we're just expected to get our work done, and for many people here that means working 9- or 10-hour days as a matter of course with a normal 5-day work week. I guess in a company where you -- for example -- do a lot of government contracts this might work, since you're usually expected to account for the time that you've worked on various projects for billing purposes.
Re:Lost sleep? (Score:5, Insightful)
not baffling, depressing. That working through lunch has become a standard...
Re:I worked 9/80 for 4 summers (Score:1, Insightful)
I've never worked a 9/80, but I have worked nights and am currently a stay-at-home dad/aspiring novelist. Having free time during the weekdays is awesome.
-One less commute. Saves a little gas, but can help immensely with sanity.
-Less traffic/people when doing errands like grocery shopping.
-Can get out earlier than everybody else for holiday travel (possibly cheaper fares, less traffic getting out of town, etc.)
-Good for making dates with the missus while kids are in school.
-Alone time in house (away from kids, wife) to work on hobbies, to do lists, etc.
Honestly, if I were back to working 9-to-5, I can't think of anything (legal) that would improve my moral better than having every other (or every) Friday off.
Re:Seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
Under!? Over! It's closer and easier to get to! When it's under, it's right against the wall and harder to grab at. Plus, it's easier to roll down than up, so if you can't see the end, you can get it easier.
Seriously, what's this world coming to?
Re:Get out now (Score:3, Insightful)
...and then migrate the servers over to India where they can do your job for a third of the cost.
And where they burn 4x as many hours in the process ;)
Re:Getting Customers to leave you alone Fridays (Score:5, Insightful)
Leave the computer and phone off, if you're going to take the day off, especially if you've notified people in advance. I say if you're taking the day off, take the day off.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of people don't "get" the idea that we don't "need" a lifestyle supported by huge mountains of debt. That's what started this whole problem - people (and countries) piling on more and more debt as they over-leveraged themselves. If you have no debts, and your work hours and pay are both cut 10%, you'll probably be okay. If debt payments represent half your net income, a 10% pay and hours cut is going to mean you don't "make your nut" each month. It's not the lower income, but the high debt level that leaves NO room to maneuver.
When you take into account that as many as 1 in 2 mortgages (and even the most conservative estimate now puts it at 1 in 4) will be under-water over the next 5 years, now is the time to be shedding debt, not taking on more.
The debt that is being incurred in everyone's name for all the bailouts isn't free money - every $ the government borrows is one buck less that consumers can borrow (or, if the government just revs up the printing presses, the excess currency forces the value of the consumers' dollars down by an equal amount).
Depending on who you talk to, the dollar has lost between 93% and 97% of its' value in 40 years - the typical "generation". Why should anyone lend you money for 40 years if history shows that in terms of real purchasing power, it's worth less? The answer is, they won't lend, so watch for the US Dollar to continue to fall in value.
Propping up the banks pretty much guaranteed a Japan-style "lost decade", unfortunately. Bail-outs don't put money in the consumers' pocket - they suck it out to prop up an inefficient system or create an artificially-high floor price.
But that's another story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pduy96-kES4&NR=1 [youtube.com]
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:4, Insightful)
You are correct. That's why they're called *marginal* tax rates. This lack of understanding, along with the inability to understand that businesses are taxed on net profit, not revenue, is why Joe The Plumber was such a target of mocking, and such a totem of economically-illiterate America.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm self employed and have often worked 12 hours / day. While the idea of taking 3 days / week off is appealing (and I've done it), I find that when I work 12 hours / day my productivity goes down the drain incrementally with each hour. I get extremely tired by the end of the shift and my brain turns to mush.
I get way more work done doing a standard 8 hour work day with weekends off. Of course that's just me, though.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
A large number of people seem to be confused on this issue. For some reason people think a bracketed tax screws over the people making more money, when in actuality it is designed based on the idea of decreasing returns on income utility.
On the other hand, businesses do come out ahead (tax-wise) for making less money. If they put all their profits back into the business, they pay fewer taxes. Kinda odd if you think about it, but it has the benefit of promoting growth.
Re:80 hours (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell me about it.
80 on a usual week, 100 on a bad week and 60 on a good week.
80 hours for nine days? Slackers.
Re:80 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:80 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
80 on a usual week, 100 on a bad week and 60 on a good week.
80 hours for nine days? Slackers."
OUCH!! Why would you (or anyone else) do that to themselves? I hope, at least, you are getting paid at least straight time for every one of those OT hours...??
If not, you are just killing yourself and robbing yourself of valuable hours of your life.
That's why I will ONLY work hourly....put it in a contract, I will work when needed...but, I will not work an hour for free. My time is valuable, and I will get my bill rate for every hour worked wherever I work. Doing this way...makes them also think twice about asking if they need you or not for OT. This way...I also don't have a problem with working hours around personal time off. Even if W2 hourly, you just usually have to get avg. 8 hours a day for the pay period, so if you need a day off...swing hours around the rest of the days in the billing period.
The best is when doing corp to corp 1099...where you work as you wish generally. Don't wanna work 40 hours that week? Don't. Want to work 60 the next...ok.
Seriously...I just have to believe salary is for suckers. They expect you to work over if 'needed'...but, do they happily let you leave early when your work is done? Hmm....I didn't think so.
And you can do it W2 too....with benefits if you just know to negotiate it up front with them...if that is the route you'd rather go.
I'll never work for free again...
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:5, Insightful)
You have absolutely no idea how the US tax code works.
Nobody knows how the US tax code works.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:5, Insightful)
This is simple.
Person A makes $50k a year. Let's say they pay 15%. They pay $7.5k per year.
Their apartment costs $800 per month. Their car costs $400 per month. Their food costs $300 per month.
At the end of every month they have about $500 left over for spending money.
Person A gets a 50% raise. They now make $75k. Let's say their total tax burder is now 20%. They now pay $15k in taxes a year.
They buy a house with their new found fortunes with a $1800 a month mortage. They ea tout more and their food costs $500 a month. They get a nicer car and their lease is now $500. Now they have a net debt of $200 a month.
Suddenly they're broke. Obviously the government is holding them down. Before their raise they had money to spare. After their raise they are out of money. Taxes are to blame.
salary (Score:3, Insightful)
isn't for suckers, theoretically... It's supposed to mean you work whatever damn hours you like and they judge the result, not your exact attendance.
I know things rarely work that way though.
Re:80 hours (Score:4, Insightful)
They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
- Kahlil Gibran
Re:80 hours (Score:0, Insightful)
What's so magic about 40 hours? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's interesting that everyone is implicitly assuming that keeping a 40-hour work week makes sense when it's divided into a different number of days. This almost certainly isn't true, because people's productivity drops after a certain amount of time at work in a single shift. Companies like Ford did a lot of research into this a long time ago, which is why we all work 40-hour weeks now. (Of course, these days, managers who naively assume that extra hours = extra work getting done have pushed it to 40 hours plus breaks, when it often used to be 40 hours including breaks, hence the expression "9–5".) And Ford's people were doing manual work, not jobs that depend primarily on thinking, where the number of productive hours per week, averaged over the long term, is lower for most people.
I think it's both sad and quite telling that no-one seems to be considering that those extra few hours might not really be worth anything anyway, but employees who get an extra day off every couple of weeks are likely to be both better rested/more productive while at work and more loyal to the company. Businesses that have tried radically different working practices have sometimes seen counter-intuitive results, particularly when it came to working much lower hours. I'd like to see a company suck it up and have all their employees working only 9/10 Monday-Fridays over a two-week period without expecting them to turn up for an extra hour on most of those days, and see whether it made things more or less productive.
Re:Getting Customers to leave you alone Fridays (Score:4, Insightful)
exactly, they wouldn't let you beer it up during work ours, so don't let them put your work during your beer hours!
Re:80 hours (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
Come up to Kanuckistan and you'll see just how much higher your marginal tax rate is on the last few hours income each week.
Unless the tax rate is greater than or equal to 100%, you're wrong--it will always benefit you to work more hours than fewer. Yes, the per-hour benefit will decrease at higher brackets but the benefit will never completely go away.
Re:80 hours (Score:4, Insightful)
Ya I guess, but I dare you to try and keep that up for another 15 years. Or try and have a significant personal relationship working like that...
There is no life to be head with 66% of your time at work.
So, unless that is *literally* the only thing you like... do yourself a favor and find some balance.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, yes people are really that stupid.
This is pretty much how the tax system works in AU. You have to pay a certain amount based on the minimum of the tax bracket and then a percentage of each dollar after that. they only way you possibly end up worse off is if you move tax brackets and end up at the top end of the next lowest bracket or at the bottom end of the next bracket up (and I think this is exclusive to Australia's screwed up tax code).
I'm not a taxation expert but I have enough brains to keep my semi-formed ideas to myself and ask someone who fucking knows.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish I had mod points so I could mod you "+5, Comic Genius." Also, I wish we could mod people "Comic Genius."
The real trick is to look at the marginal take-home wage per hour if you happen to be on the edge of jumping tax brackets. Essentially, determine how much you're currently bringing home per hour worked, and comparing that to how much you'd be bringing home per EXTRA hour you worked to get the bump in income. At some point you're going to have to determine if that extra $100 in take home pay is worth the extra 10 hours you worked to get it.
At some point, quality-of-life needs to enter the equation.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:1, Insightful)
*past tense, as all 5 US investment banks either went bankrupt or were folded into retail banks during the financial collapse.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
I have worked 10 hrs. and four day systems and that isn't the best way to work at all. In many trades that last two hours drains a worker too much.Every work day seems like life is suspended as it is filled with nothing but work.
Re:80 hours (Score:2, Insightful)
So true, but you are forgetting something. Most people on Slashdot are generally quite young, under 30. To many of these people, the amount of time you spend on work is actually something to be proud of.
Take Sfing_ter here. Half-jesting, he's complaining about his 70+ hour work week, but inside, he *likes* being required to work that much, makes him feel important.
So to Sfing_ter and others, I was as delusional as you in my youth for a couple of years until I got my senses back. Or rather, I started a family and realized it's more to life than working.
Posting as AC because I don't feel like taking a Flamebait hit, but you all know this is true.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
That's interesting. I'm also self employed and I've found that usually I get more productive towards the end of a 12 hour day.
I find the same thing, but (at its worst) I think it functions more along the lines of "holy shit -- I have gotten hardly anything done and it's 6pm".
Though there's also the factor of thinking more clearly when it's dark out and quiet, and all of those other things I know I should do before stores close/etc. can be forgotten.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. That worked so well in France.
There's something to be said for putting some focus on quality of life as opposed to simply maximizing income.
It's kind of nice to notice in France that grocery stores aren't normally open 24/7 (more like 10/6 or less), so no one has to work those shitty shifts. I moved to France a few years ago; I never noticed how weird the US was until I was back on business and managed to get a haircut at 10pm on a Sunday night. WTF, America? Yay, jobs created. But they are so shitty and so poorly paid that mostly they just prevent the employees from having the time for education, family, friends, or even searching for a better job.
Not that France had the ideal balance at all (or even that they took the best approach to "enforcing" quality of life) but I think the base idea is a very good thing.
Re:80 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I don't believe you.
Telecommuters like to count as work every minute they have their PC.
Executives count in any minute they're awake, cause even running around with a cup of coffee or having a chat on the toilet is "work".
Regular employees count the sheer presence, regardless of standing outside smoking, drinking coffee with others (that's called meeting), or just browsing slashdot (called recherche).
If you start logging what you really do in those 60/80/100 hrs you most likely will notice that you get done no more than the average worker, eventually even less.
The only people I believe being truly working those insane hours are doctorate candidates in their final year and/or before conference deadlines.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:5, Insightful)
This highlights an unfortunate truth. Employers have an economic incentive to decrease the quality of their employees' lives. I could come up with a dozen different plans involving scheduling, benefits, and workplace amenities that would help to make employees happier and foster a richer national culture. Each and every one of them, however, can and would be countered by businesses as promoting inefficiency. As a society, we've decided that being being productive and successful is all the culture that we need. That makes me pretty sad.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:80 hours (Score:3, Insightful)
lol thast bullshit.
at a previous job I occasionally worked 100 hours a week (thats insane though, only allowed by a crisis allowing you to give up sleep).
But often 80 hours a week. The reason it was ok was I could work from home or work, as I pleased. Also, my job was crossing various duties. So while I couldnt sustainably code 80 hours a week, at least not in a productive way. I can do some db work, work on some web statistics, review some servers, view some feedback from our site easily. Its the monotony that kills your ability to be productive for long periods.
If you happen to have a job you enjoy, and you have the ability to do various tasks its very possible. However no person believes you, im unsure why, they start making claims you arent really working all that time.. but to be honest, get fucked, do you only count the time your fingers are striking the keyboard as working? The idea you can only work 40 hours a week and the rest is just wasted is crap, sure, some people fluff some hours where they have already clocked off well before they have left the office, but its not always true.
Re:80 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
The key word here is occasionally. I'm fully aware that there are situations where you just have to kick in the overdrive and get something by insane working hours. BTDT, and more than once. It usually is, however, a sign of bad company management because they either have too much work for too few people or acquired a too big project. Bad planning in both cases. Only emergency situations justify such insane overload.
If you continue that overdrive you'll sooner or later burn out and/or start doing nonsense. Especially sleep deprivation is not exactly known for improving your work performance. Raised stress levels may lead to a temporary productivity boost, but that boost comes at a price.
Unless, of course, your job has a recreational effect on you, which is probably anything but the norm. I know a lot of people who really like their jobs (being one of them myself), but doing some hobbyist stuff, even if somewhat work-related, is something completely different than work. And neither is a replacement for sleep.
It indeed is. Usually the quote of productive work per day is much lower, about the range of 5h.
You mentioned that it's the monotony that kills concentration. True. Zombie work kills. On the other hand, you also need a certain time to adjust to a new task and get that going smoothly. Too frequent task changes (being the norm today with telephone, email, and slashdot interrupts...) will make you feel utterly busy, but in the end being highly unproductive.
Re:80 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone needs to work 80 hours a week on average then I would say that their life doesn't have much quality to begin with. Unless by "maintain our quality of living" you mean "paying off the luxury goods and services you've purchased". But then again, as your work load stops you from benefiting from them, I seriously doubt that they do much good.
Materialism and all that keeping up with the joneses is a bitch, isn't it?
Re:80 hours (Score:2, Insightful)
However all too often, what 'salary' translates to, is 'you must be in the office in normal business hours, overtime doesn't get paid, but your future prospects will be directly correlated to how long you spend looking like you're working'.
It's ironic really. Henry Ford did actually study the subject of working hours, and realised he got the same productivity when he went from 6 days/week, 12 hours shifts, to 5 days a week 8 hours shifts. He also had a workforce which didn't burn out as quickly.
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:80 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you're one of the most unproductive workers I can imagine.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear about people working these long hours is that they're wasting a lot of time.
Re:80 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't agree more. A solid day's work is a noble thing but this "80 on a usual week, 100 on a bad week" is for the birds. I have no pity whatsoever unless it truly is the only job you can get or you absolutely have to have it (pays the extra $5k you need for your kids' medicine).
I've as much sympathy for the OP as I do for lawyers who put in similar hours for 10 years in order to make partner. Enjoy the $$.. you'll have no soul at the end... huh, that explains a lot.
Re:80 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, some of us [work 80-hour weeks] to maintain our quality of life in these wonderful times.
I hate to break it to you, but if you're working 80- or 100-hour weeks, you don't have any quality of life.
Re:80 hours (Score:4, Insightful)
And you see the contradiction to my posting exactly *where*?
Excuse my frank words, but what you cited here are exactly those jobs which either create one huge pile of cow manure after the other (which is left for others to clean up), or where every food and drink intake becomes a "work meeting". Mostly both.
I do have relatives working at McK and I do know how McK sucks the life out of them, with them finding each and every excuse for why that is good. For *that*, the paycheck is not even remotely big enough. Besides, consulting firms like these are responsible for any major business fuckup: We need to outsource. No, outsourcing is wrong, we need to be fully self-supplying. We need to concentrate the company to its core business and sell everything else. No, we need to amalgamate to acquire a wide, solid base.
Not to mention those financial firms who seeingly created the current world-wide mess.
Thank you, but if that is your point pro 80-100hrs of work per week, I rest my case...
Re:I'd rather have 4/36 (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd definitely take a 4-5% pay cut to get 4 weeks of vacation time rather than the standard 2.
Hell, give me a 15% cut and put me on a completely continental European work schedule--4 or 5 weeks vacation, extra holidays, and occasionally some "faire le pont" when a holiday falls only one day from a weekend. That'd be more than a fair cut for that.
Barring legislation mandating such things, it'll never be a realistic desire for someone who doesn't wish to be stuck at the bottom of their career's pecking order for eternity... but I can dream!
Re:80 hours (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. Yes, there are times in some industries, such as our tech industry, wherein we have emergencies to answer to, but I find regular hours are enough to get my work done. Otherwise, I would consider myself unfit for duty and find a new career. I understand that some, few, places push hard and require more (push back and demand better treatment).
As for working a 9/80 work schedule, it works best when the off days are respected. Much of my team works a 9/80 and on the rare occasion their off Friday is interrupted, they get the time back. Staffing prevents us from having the entire team on the 9/80 schedule, so it's granted to those listed as 'managers'. (If you're truly familiar with IT, you realize that, somehow, many of us are listed as such.) I wish I had a 9/80, though a 7/80 would be even better for me (one week of three 12-hour days and one week of three 12-hour days and one 8-hour day).
Re:80 hours (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:80 hours (Score:2, Insightful)
No but working 16 hrs, 7 days a week, WILL.
I had a few coworkers who were like the OP. They'd willingly work ridiculously long hours just because they liked what they were doing.
Problem was, management came to depend on their crazy schedules. Which meant when crunch time came, they had nothing more to give. A few times we'd come in to work the next morning, only to find one or both of them literally passed out on their keyboards after working 36+ hours straight. It wasn't healthy, and basically anything they did in those last 12 hours wasn't very useful, or even coherent, for that matter.
Re:80 hours (Score:3, Insightful)
In an "up or out" organization, employees are also highly inclined to inflate the number of hours they claim to be working. Since a tremendous amount of one-upsmanship is present in these organizations, one person's inflated claims forces a colleague to inflate his hours worked even more, which forces another colleague to top that, and so on. Eventually, an equillibrium is reached, which represents the maximum believable number of hours one can work while still taking time to eat a hot pocket and and grab a couple hours of sleep. This is how one arrives at the mythical 80-hour week.
I don't think anyone here doubts that you work quite a lot. However, your claims of an 80-hour week on a regular basis are most likely false. I've seen you claim in other posts that you work out regularly and read quite a lot of books. There's not a lot of time to do those things when you have a 12-16 hour workday, especially when you tack on additional time for meals and commuting. So you're either lying about how you spend your free time, or you're exaggerating how much time you spend at work. I'm inclined to believe the latter.
But we get it. That's the world in which you live. Many of your peers are likely to read Slashdot as well, so you're forced to perpetuate the illusion here as well as in your workplace. Just don't kid yourself into thinking people believe it.
Re:80 hours (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called working your way through school.
Re:80 hours (Score:4, Insightful)
At many companies, these fixed costs are over 50% of total compensation cost. If employers stopped offering these large fixed-cost benefit packages, they could afford to hire enough workers to get the job done (and as a side benefit, their employees would be free to choose how to spend their money).
You think management wants the situation to be this way? Management wants the situation to be like the one you describe as well, as that would make planning hiring and firing much easier. Its just that, if you stop offering things like health care and 401(k) and other side benefits, the people that apply for your open positions are the bottom of the barrel dregs that you don't want to hire.
Frankly, we're all just tiptoeing around the true elephant in the room - the fact that health care costs have grown unsustainably. If health care costs are passed to the employers, we end up with the present situation - employers are afraid to hire for fear of taking the health care costs, and ask more of their existing workforce. If we pass those costs to the employees, we'll see a dramatic rise in bankruptcies and uncollectable emergency room visits as people put off getting medical treatment until their diseases are nigh-incurable. If the costs are passed to the government, we'll either see massive tax increases, or a rise in the public debt (and a corresponding rise in interest rates).
The only real way to ensure continued economic growth (past the end of the current crisis) is to deflate this health-care bubble in a controlled fashion. What the best way is to do that is still not clear, but it is clear that something must be done before the health care industry bankrupts the rest of the economy.