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Comment by mi100hael | Hacker News Reader

At the same time, the point of college for most kids is to prepare them for a white collar job. If there's a huge client meeting at 10am and there's still 3 hours of preparation to do before they arrive, no one's going to be very sympathetic to the excuse that you have "social jet lag." Expecting college adults to get out of bed before 10 is hardly a substantial burden.

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If it's Monday afternoon, you know you have a big meeting at 10AM Tuesday, you know you have 3 hours more of prep to do, and you know you're ineffective in the early morning, why not work later to cover that prep? This sounds like a procrastination problem more than a night owl problem.

Except there's no reason to prepare anything here because the problem is biological. It's simply easier to wake up early as an adult. Just like many others things are easier for physical reasons that society keeps trying to "teach".

Adolescence is not permanent. Adolescents require significantly more sleep than any other age group, so the jet lag would be substantially reduced for adults.

There's a difference between the occasional early start to prepare for a meeting and a default schedule that is just stupid.

To some extent you can choose the kind of job you want. Maybe the night owl would work at one of those 10-late start ups.

If you have a huge meeting at 10am and three hours of prep - then work late the previous day.

The real question here is, why do Americans still start working so early? I mean, that's so XX century. I come to office at noon at all four of jobs that I have/had.

Come to think of it, maybe it's weather-dependent.

This really depends on the firm. If important aspects of the business take place early, then sure you have to be there early. If not, you might have to be there early anyway because reasons, but then again you might not.

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