[throwaway5752]

"50 hours is completely crazy, and if you're doing it often, you should look for another place ASAP. Fuck, 40 hours is already on the verge of being crazy"

I feel badly for you that you've been at jobs that have made you feel that way. I've worked 50ish hours for a long time, generally in jobs I enjoy and in compensation structures that rewarded me for do intellectually stimulating work.

But 50 hours a week is hardly crazy. Do whatever works for you, but I want to combat this strange myth that nobody can be productive after 35 hours a week. It's obviously false from my experience (and I would guess the experience of many, many people on HN).

[overgard]

35 or 50 hours or whatever is a pretty arbitrary number, I would agree most people have different limits on how long they can work, but I think the larger point is that for intellectual work, more hours don't imply more output. Or at least, not sustainably.

Not at my current employment, but I know there have been jobs where, say, 3:30 would roll around and my brain would pretty much fried for the day, but I felt obligated to stick around for an extra hour and a half because I'd get disapproving stares if I peaced out early. That extra hour and a half the company got of my time as not a useful hour and a half though. Or conversely sometimes I'd stay late because I was engaged with some sort of problem. Either way, the number of hours really had very little to do with my productivity, and trying to "force" it was never particularly useful.

If I were a manager, and I saw a person was treading water, I'd rather them go home and have them come back the next day refreshed, rather then have them stick around being miserable to meet some arbitrary number of hours.

[emperorcezar]

I think 35 hours is a pretty normal limit with the caveat that it only involves one type of work. If I'm programming for 35 hours, I'm done. If you mix that in with meetings, design discussions, etc, you can get more than that.

Some of the people I've seen who can do 50 hours of productive work are in roles that extend beyond programming where there is a good mix of things.

[meddlepal]

Exactly, also some us also enjoy working a lot. I do 60+ hour weeks because the work and results interest me.

That said there is a limit too.