[itsdrewmiller]

The author addresses that and suggests that 40 hours is generally the right number there - productivity on a units per hour basis is maximized. For salaried employees though employers rationally care more about units per week, which continues to increase as hours per week go to 50 and beyond. Of course this is all research of factory work, so its application to software development is questionable.

[divenorth]

Obviously the more you work the you produce. From his graph the best productivity is less than 40 hours but he thinks 40 is a good trade off between production and productivity. I disagree. In my ideal world we would be working less and still earning a good wage. I hope to see that in my lifetime but probably unlikely.

[reificator]

> Obviously the more you work the you produce.

That's not so obvious in software development, where mistakes from yesterday or 5 years ago can mire you in unproductive work for hours or days.

But then I look at lines of code not as value produced but as a resource spent.