This is just a random pet peeve of mine, but I simply don’t believe knowledge workers who claim to work 90 hour work weeks; this includes bankers and lawyers. I say this because I spend a lot of energy and time thinking about how to increase my effective hours worked, and I time myself. When I’m not severely depressed I’m able to do two four hours blocks separated by a break in a day, and maybe squeeze out an extra hour or two on a fantastic day. (But this only includes real work hours, not just being present at the office or sitting unproductively in a meeting.) And this is extremely tiring, and certainly not doable 7 days a week. So when people tell me they’re doing 90 hour work weeks what that tells me is they’re just harming themselves to be in an office for an unhealthy length of time, hoping it translates into something productive. There’s a perverse incentive here to make the hours and pain go up, without tracking productive output.

Now I’m aware that there are exceptionally energetic people who can probably do Einstein level deep thinking for 80 hours some weeks. I just think the average highly qualified and talented knowledge worker probably maxes out around 30-40, and the rest is fumes and cope really.

> When I’m not severely depressed I’m able to do two four hours blocks separated by a break in a day, and maybe squeeze out an extra hour or two on a fantastic day.

I do the same thing, it's always kind of puzzled me how people say they work 10-12 hour days. Realistically, it's probably nowhere close to 12 consecutive hours of deep focus. Sometimes it's easier for me to just take breaks and work whenever I have the motivation. Maybe it stretches into odd hours. Sometimes it's less than expected. Sometimes it's a waste of time because I didn't take the time to step back and gain more perspective. Hours never seemed like a good measurement.

I do think part of it is that when people are in really "high intensity" workplaces, there's social pressure to give the appearance of working hard. That could be part of it. I also think SWE (in SV business culture) tends to be more deliverable oriented as opposed to caring about the hours worked

Even 30 is quite enviable. I can only do focused deep work for 2-3 hours per day at most, the rest is simulating work to get paid - meetings, emails, etc, something you barely need to pay attention to.

I think this is undoubtedly true, but I also think not all knowledge work is created equally. A lawyer spending 80 hours reading case files is not really performing a comparable task to a programmer designing and implementing a program

Spending 90 hours at work doesn't mean you're spending 90 hours doing useful work. Just ask the Japanese.

I've worked on secondment in remote locations and easily passed 80 hours per a week. Four weeks of straight 12-hour shifts + up to 2-hour overtime daily. Probably averaged 70 hours of effective work and genuinely approaching 100 hours in some 7 day stretches. No meals to cook, no chores, no commuting. It was actually far easier to stay motivated and focused, I felt 20 again. I would be lucky to average more than 4-6 hours productivity in my day job though. Don't underestimate the influence of environment and incentives (amortized it was only about 50-60 hours - bankers/lawyers are probably working in bursts too though).

I used to worke 70h/w, did that for a couple years, sometimes going up to 80 or 90h/w. 90h/w isn't tenable for more than a few weeks. 100h/w is bullshit unless you never buy groceries, shower, etc.

> So when people tell me they’re doing 90 hour work weeks what that tells me is they’re just harming themselves to be in an office for an unhealthy length of time, hoping it translates into something productive.

This is exactly what my colleagues thought. And then I left and everybody was distributed overtime work, so the leads left too. Projects that took 2 weeks suddenly took 6 months (or so told me the lead who was taking up my work, giggling out of shame). The company, which thought it could match competition with only 1/5th of human resources, started to do a series of bad investments to occupy the market. Eventually the board poured a couple dozen millions to save the company from the human resource dead-end it put itself into (I was managing 4 "microservices") and went bust a couple years later.

I think those people use drugs

> I just think the average highly qualified and talented knowledge worker probably maxes out around 30-40, and the rest is fumes and cope really

I think a lot of it is just people being at the office for long hours, not really productive work happening