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Ask HN: How many hours do you work per week?

4 points by jsattler ↗ HN
Germany is currently debating part-time work and whether we need longer hours overall. I do 40h/week and it feels sustainable. I don't think the hours I put in are proportional to the value/output I produce.

When people bring up the 996 model, I genuinely don't get it. How does anyone sustain that? I get that sometimes you need to push harder for a few weeks. That's normal. But longer than a few weeks does not seem healthy at all - neither for the person nor for the business.

Here's what I'm actually curious about: how does the hours-to-value ratio change as you work more? Where would you say is the sweet spot? With 996, you're getting almost 2x the hours, but what's the actual increase in value/output? Would be interesting to hear from people who actually did this 996 thing for longer and share your experience.

2 comments

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jmclnx
Trick question ?

Real work was about 8 hours per week, the rest of the week was in meetings, of which 80% of the meetings were nothing but a big waste of time.

Total per week average was maybe 42 -- 44 hours. Some periods of time was much more than 40 hours depending on how close we were to the imposed delivery date imposed on us by management.

jll29
Let's see:

  do {
    4 h HN;
    4 h family;
    4 h coding;
    4 h sleep;
    4 h emails;
    4 h meetings;
    4 h teaching/supervisions;
    4 h grant/paper writing;
    4 h reading;
  }
  while (breathing);
  //
  // ----------
  // 36 h / day
  // ==========
But only some of the meetings and grant writing feels like real "work"; the rest feels more like "I'm getting paid for my hobby" (including for reading HN, no kidding), and if it wasn't my job I would be paying money to be allowed to do it.