[mattmanser]

The quote accompanying those figures:

the majority based on 10-hour workdays and an overtime schedule of four consecutive weeks

FOUR WEEKS. Did you read that bit? Productivity continues to drop after 4 weeks (with some parts of it suggesting the productivity drop stops around week 16ish).

You're a lost cause.

[shrughes]

You're the one claiming there's a huge body of research disproving his claims. Your link upthread points to stuff that supports his argument and other stuff that counts as weak evidence against. Nowhere is there anything remotely like disproof. You can also find evidence (e.g. in http://cmdept.unl.edu/drb/Reading/overtime2.htm from the link above) that how you structure your work and rest periods can improve your production. After all, somebody doing office work 60 hours a week with some regular exercise is probably going to outperform somebody like me, who's fat and doesn't exercise. I certainly outperform myself on days that I walk to the office instead of driving. There's clearly some variance involved in individual employees' age, health, height, diet, and attitude, so it should be obvious that you can't just talk about averages over the construction industry and apply them to programming, and to all programmers, with the degree of certainty that you hold.

[yummyfajitas]

Yes, most of this data is short term because it's for the construction industry which works on projects. Depending on how long the recovery period is, it could easily be the case that the long term maxima is achieved by long hours + short recovery periods. (I.e., 7 65 hour weeks + 1 30 hour week.)

And again, basically all the research either you or I have found is in construction. Construction != Programming.