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Poll: How many hours do you work a week?

60 points by InfinityX0 ↗ HN
Sometimes it feels like I work really hard. Other times not hard enough. The Hacker News population seems a relatively hard working group, so I thought it would be informative and interesting to see what the average hours worked is on HN.

65 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] thread
jbhelms
I work 40 at my day job, then I easily put another 40+ into my startup.
Khao
I work 4 days a week so that makes 32 hours and try to fill my friday with small jobs on the side so between 32 and 40, never over that. I cherish my personal life way too much to work more than 40 hours per week. I don't even receive work e-mails on my phone neither do I check them when I'm not at work. I like to keep this separation as clean as possible so that when I'm off work, I don't think about work and / or stress about stuff going on at work.
jcdreads
I reliably put in four or five 50+ hour weeks per year (especially if I'm at a new startup), but I've learned through hard experience that it's unbelievably counterproductive to do that for longer than a week or two at a time. My personal life and ability to stay awake, much less think/code clearly, suffer otherwise.

Of course, if work is sufficiently interesting then I end up spending what free time I have thinking about it, which can make my work time incredibly productive, obviating the need to be "working" too much to begin with.

But most importantly: YMMV.

lsc
yeah. what I find interesting is that while most people seem to claim 40-50 hours, they don't appear to be working as much as people I know who track their hours (and don't count breaks) who have a difficult time reaching 40 hours a week.

I suspect most people inflate the number of hours spent working (or count things like hacker news as work.)

burke
I think most people that have a 9-5 and do a small amount of after-hours contracting, or regularly stay a little bit late to finish something up will be voting 40-50. That's how I voted, even though if you subtract slacking time and lunch, I probably clock in under 40 hours most weeks.

This would seem likely to encompass the majority of HN's readership, startup crowd aside.

veyron
When you bill per hour, its harder to reach that number. This is misleading because salaried employees and equity holders can easily work many hours, but hourly workers are limited by how many hours their employers will allow them to work (or by how many hours contractors can invoice their clients)
garethsprice
40 at day job, 40+ on consulting projects. Finding it harder to keep up the pace and want to reshuffle to find time for my own projects. Hard to get off that consulting gravy train though.
sirrocco
Damn do I know what you mean. I pull 20+ on consulting but it's getting to the point where it's affecting my health.

I'll stop soon, probably go full time consulting so I can actually have a life.

Best of luck.

[dead] phillijw
You probably should have been a little more granular around the 40 hour mark. Perhaps 35-45?
veyron
When you are working on your own startup, you don't see it as work. It's easy to "work" many hours, but it's enjoyable to a great extent.
peteretep
Or even your own projects. I have day job, I'm finding a few hours every day to write open-source, and I'm finding a couple of days of extra time a week to work on my startup. Hard work? Yes... But I only see the day job as actual work, and that's only when I'm not working on something interesting.

Programming is awesome, especially in Perl :D

veyron
I used to perl but now I python :)
joeguilmette
I work 8am to sunset on weekends as a skydiving instructor. During the week I do remote stuff for a few companies for about 4-5 hours a day. I try take off 1 day a week.
drewvs
At the startup I work at, I average around 60 hours a week, with many weeks exceeding 70 hours a week. This is also usually done in a 5-6 day work week.

As a few people have mentioned, this number of hours is rather unsustainable, and I wind up burning out every 2 months or so for a week or two, where I put in a usual 40 hour week.

lionhearted
I checked 80+, but it depends on how you define work. A lot of work is sitting around in an all-night diner drinking coffee and drawing on napkins. It ain't such a bad thing, and is probably less stressful than playing a first person shooter.
katieben
Agreed, it depends on how you define work. I spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer, and a lot of that is building something - though it may not always be paying client work. I really have no idea how many hours I "work".
seagaia
I'd say about 34 right now, once you account for occasional distraction. I usually have trouble focusing (on anything) for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time without a break.
geraldalewis
Most days* :

5:00am - 10:00am

  * OS development
  * puzzles
  * articles
  * work on personal projects
10:00am - 6:00pm

  * coding for my day job
13hr/day * 5 days/week = 65hrs + anything I can sneak in on weekends

I aggressively work on work/life balance and take frequent breaks (a great habit leftover from my days as a smoker), so I don't spend much time staring at the screen -- I use this time fairly efficiently.

* I'm getting back on track after my wedding and honeymoon, so I'm not yet completely back in the groove yet.

sukuriant
But you listed "puzzles' in your work, and you included your lunch and co-worker conversation time, unless you're always in front of your screen, zero distractions. If we're all counting all that time, then that changes these numbers a lot. We really need to clarify what 'work' is for these numbers to be useful, at all.
geraldalewis
There was an episode of 'The Office' where Jim took note of any time Dwight wasn't working. Dwight stops using the restroom in favor of a bottle beneath his desk. He keeps his eyes open while sneezing to keep them focused on his computer screen.

How granular do we get in defining what qualifies as a "work hour"? Do we not count bathroom breaks? The time it takes the computer to warm up? The milliseconds between keystrokes? "Work hours" will always be an issue of semantics. Here's my definition: any time I'm not dragging my feet about accomplishing a work task. Here's my tautological definition of a "work task": a task I perform for work.

jongreenlee
What time do you go to bed?

Do you ever drink, go out, etc?

I'm asking because I'm a morning person, but I doubt I would enjoy 'getting to it' at 5am everyday. Although there is allure to that amount of focused 'personal time'. Doing all that after day job would not appeal to me as much.

This thread has taught me more about how different lifestyles are than anything. I think the actual hourly rate of many people in IT roles might be in a tight band (until you've 'made it'). This would mean the biggest differentiator would be # of hours one puts in, with more hours typically being rewarded, either through higher salary or side job payments (tax benefit?).

I put in an average of 50 hours per week first half of the year and earned enough to make an average rate of $45 per hour.

Do you all consider it part of your job to listen to what's happening in the tech world, learn about personal productivity, etc? If these times were taken out and only time producing tangible output were measured, my average rate would go up, maybe to $70 per hour.

There's also cost of living. I'm not in the bay area, but in another pretty fun and techy place. According to bankrate I would have to make 2.2x to have the same quality of life in The Bay.

My free time is not (currently) consumed with projects. It's consumed by my GF, running, going out, casual reading, a couple TV shows. All this I think is a worthwhile tradeoff. And I need to be away from computer screens after a while!

It would be very interesting to gather people's net pay, hours worked for that pay, and MBTI (ENTJ here), to see what types cluster around what effective hourly rates, what types cluster in terms of total hours, etc.

geraldalewis
> What time do you go to bed?

10pm, usually, and asleep before 10:30 (I've been using the K&R C book + melatonin as a sleep aid recently). 6.5 - 7 hours of sleep seems to be enough for me at the moment.

> Do you ever drink, go out, etc?

Yes, at least once a week I'll see friends and twice a week I'll go out with my wife. If I'm not careful, I can get off schedule, and it often takes quite some time to get back (as in weeks). Those periods when I'm off schedule precipitate bursts of intense productivity (maybe I'm more rested; maybe I'm more motivated).

> I'm asking because I'm a morning person, but I doubt I would enjoy 'getting to it' at 5am everyday.

You nailed it with 'personal time' and a disinclination to work after work hours. I have a few hours of personal time before my wife wakes up where I get to enjoy an activity (coding) that I can't share with her. Any time I spend coding after work hours is time I can't spend with my wife and friends. That time is necessary for me as a human being, and for my work: socializing is good for my brain (promotion of neuronal plasticity and neurogenesis), and breaks are important (recharging and subconscious synthesis + assimilation).

> Do you all consider it part of your job to listen to what's happening in the tech world, learn about personal productivity, etc? If these times were taken out and only time producing tangible output were measured, my average rate would go up, maybe to $70 per hour.

I'm now salaried, and I've stopped thinking in terms of $/hr, and that helps work/life balance, productivity, and attitude.

It's not necessary to learn what other coders are doing, unless I want to be good. Isolation is a straight path to mediocrity.

> It's consumed by my GF, running, going out, casual reading, a couple TV shows. All this I think is a worthwhile tradeoff.

I wouldn't even consider it a tradeoff. Eating isn't a tradeoff to work time -- it's necessary for function. Rest and socializing, too.

mkramlich
define "work" for purposes of this poll. work at job? work at job + side projects? work around the house? does commute time count? any hours inside an office as an employee, including reading email or chatting at coffee machine? time spent fleshing out ideas in the shower or mulling over difficult problems on a walk?

I have no idea how many hours a week I "work" for most definitions. About the most I can do is say how many hours I bill a contract client, which is, I hope, ostensibly/approximately how much I work for them. But even then it's not an exact science. I try, but it is arguably impossible to measure with perfect accuracy.

drivebyacct2
I hope I have a project some day where I find myself wanting to work anything more than 40 hours a week. I have very modest living requirements and would be more than happy on whatever I could make working 25-35 hours a week. Of course, I'm not counting personal projects, my own learning or whatever. But 80 hours? That sounds (in a non-judgmental way), depressing.
SoftwareMaven
Working full time at a startup and doing part time contract work to help cover the bills.

Anybody need some part time product management help? ;)

jarin
My brain works about 80 hours a week, but my fingers work about 30.
gte910h
When I really want to be productive 20-40. When I really need to get something done which requires too much stupid human time, 50-60.
gregpilling
What gets defined as work? That is where it gets fuzzy for me. First thinking about work related issues starts at 6am, is interrupted for a couple hours with getting kids to school, then back at it until 6pm, break for dinner and spending time with the family, and then back to work thinking until bed - about 10pm. I have been self employed most of my life and all of my children's lives. So this fragmented work schedule is normal to me. I generally work 6 days a week, sometimes only 5, and have noticed that if I work more than about 17 days straight I start to get really grumpy.

I have selected 50-60 since I would guess that I end up in the high 50s as an average.

pathik
I currently work about 20 hours a week on my day job, 10 hours a week freelancing, another 20 hours day-dreaming about my own startup and reading Hacker News/Techmeme/Reddit.
jeffem
If you asked me a few months ago I would've said 60-70 but since I started time tracking I've found it's only 40-50 hours on average. This is with being strict about what's considered work time (meals, "general research", etc. are all off the clock)
rdl
As a startup co-founder do about 10h/week doing stuff I wouldn't otherwise do for free (mainly, recruiting, admin, contracts, and driving to meetings). I spent about 100h/week doing stuff which is fun and which I'd do for free (hacking on stuff, talking to people about stuff, reading and learning about what I'm working on, etc.)
archangel_one
Officially 40 (slightly more if reading HN at work counts) until the end of tomorrow. After that, 0 until I've moved and found a new job etc.
yason
I work 27 hours a week, at home. I usually make a full day when I go grab some coffee at the office and talk to my colleagues, because otherwise I wouldn't get anything done on those days. So effectively that's about 4 hours a day. Of course I can just squeeze in more hours if I have an interesting task at hand; then I can just keep the following day off (except checking email occasionally, that's no problem).
onan_barbarian
It'd be interesting to cross-reference this with number of posts and hours spent opining about every goddamn thing on HN.

Just sayin'.

bedris
That would be a great little data mining project!
jstephens
Since I use the RSS I only spend an hour at most a day reading stuff on here, but I work a ~40 hour week usually.
shin_lao
My own experience is that above 50 hours you start destructing value, not creating some.

Examples: writing code filled of bugs you have to fix later, getting upset on a problem you cannot find a solution for while you could be resting, taking the wrong decision, being cranky, etc.

Agreed, sometimes you have to go beyond the limit, but it's not sustainable.

chunkyslink
I only agree with you if you so the same work for those 50 hours. If you work for 80, but this is split between marketing, coding, networking and strategy then its not the same thing.

When I'm feeling the pressure, I just switch to another role.

shin_lao
I see what you mean, but 80 hours means more than 11 / day without any rest. Not sustainable.

Try doing smaller weeks, you might be surprised by the result.

chunkyslink
Like that idea, but I'm working a day job and then my business. Not sure I can !
alnayyir
Your body and psyche don't care what sort of excuses or goals you have for it.
tensor
Yes, but networking and marketing is not even close to as taxing as coding or solving mathematical problems. This is so much the case, that I generally discount business dinners as not work.
bedris
That depends on your proclivities and the natural bent of your personality. Networking and marketing may not be as intellectually taxing as coding, but they can be physically and emotionally taxing when done in person for significant amounts of time. Of course, if you regard business dinners and networking as enjoyable, they won't seem as taxing!
[dead] forgotmyuser
I'm working on a startup and working 80+ hrs per week..