[Sigia-l] So, how long do you work?

[Samantha Bailey]

Over the past 10 years my work hours have tended to range about 45-55 hours
with occasional spikes to 60+ for project-specific "sprints." My last job
was at a company that was very 40 hours-a-week oriented, meaning that the
office cleared out at 5 sharp. In that role I found that I could get most of
the core work for my job done in about 35 hours a week and I'd then work
about 10 more hours a week on professional development type activities,
which was a really nice balance/workload. In my current role the job itself
takes 50-55 hours before the professional development piece kicks in.

I am finding myself less and less satisfied with the 45+ hour work week,
particularly when you factor in commuting and corporate "face time" type
issues. Additionally the environments that I've been working in have tended
to have a lot of "waste" built into the system--e.g., refusal to implement
project management or documentation standards leading to endless meetings
covering the same ground and/or political in fighting leading to the same
thing. It seems like a lot of people have little control over their time and
can't get a solid day's work done in 8 hours but instead of trying to
address the underlying issues people put in longer hours and get into
pissing contests about who toughs out more time at the office (or who is
most willing to neglect their families/personal lives). I find this
distasteful (and it certainly doesn't improve the quality of the core work I
do), but it's hard not to get sucked in even if you are only a little bit
competitive or ambitious.

Additionally, I've struggled with the fact that it often seems like having
access to the most interesting work and challenging projects seems to come
with the tradeoff that the idea of a 40 hour week week is laughable.

Related:
http://biz.yahoo.com/special/workhard05.html


Samantha Bailey

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donna" <donna at maadmob.net>
To: <sigia-l at asis.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2005 8:32 AM
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] So, how long do you work?


> The thing I find hard about this is defining where work ends.
>
> So I sit at a desk for around 38 hours a week. But then I do stuff
> for my business, read, study, discuss, write articles, workshops
> etc - all of which are directly related to work. If I didn't do
> them I'd be less good at my job. In some places, some of these
> would be part of the work week (eg the Australian public service
> permanent staff have study leave for university; I freelance, so I
> don't).
>
> The thing that has changed over time isn't the hours, it's the
> nature of work
>
> Donna
>
>
> On Wed Dec 07 16:34:58 PST 2005, Listera <listera at rcn.com> wrote:
>
>> Do women work fewer hours?
>> How many hours a week do you put in?
>> Up or down compared to, say, 3 or 5 years ago?
>> More work for in-housers or consultants?
>> Non-Americans work less?
>>
>> (Where would you want to retire? Just kiddin'. :-)
>>
>
>
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