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Comment by jraines | Hacker News Reader

Are programmers doing 60 hrs of work a week? Yes, if you count planning, talking about work to be done, thinking about work to be done, commuting (s/buying groceries, shuttling kids), mentoring, dealing with other people’s complaints & personal issues, dealing with red tape (forms to be signed, reports to review & give feedback on), etc, etc, etc

You can say those analogues fall outside of “housework” ... sure, but then it’s like “hey programmer, you’ve got 60 hours in the week, why isn’t that feature done yet?”

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So basically: if you totally redefine the definition of the word work than it's true.

I'm going to second that I'm incredulous.

If only I could bill for thinking about work.

Also if raising your own family is "work" what isn't work? Yeah and me going snowboarding is just emotional labor to prepare for the work week so let's call that work.

I’m just gonna pass on the family comment, but I’ll just say if you bill by the hour and don’t bill for time thinking about the (programming) work, then you’re playing yourself

I mean, I don't bill per second of keyboard contact. If I'm at my computer focused on the project then I'm billing.

But if I'm in the bathroom at night and something clicks or I'm thinking about a problem during a meal, I'm not gonna bill for that.

> Are programmers doing 60 hrs of work a week? Yes, if you count planning, talking about work to be done, thinking about work to be done, commuting (s/buying groceries, shuttling kids), mentoring, dealing with other people’s complaints & personal issues, dealing with red tape (forms to be signed, reports to review & give feedback on), etc, etc, etc

So, no then.

So, yes.

Unless you are very junior, you

1) have to do those things

2) are paid for the time spent doing them

3) will not keep your job long if you simply neglect them or refuse to do them

I'm honestly baffled by these responses.

I'm pretty senior and I barely think about work outside my forty hours a week of in-office time. An hour or two a week, most weeks, I'd guess. Maybe your experience is just different from other people?

I find the 8 1/2 hours a day statistic to be perhaps true, since some types of work expand to fill the time allotted. I don't believe the 5.7 hrs a day statistic for working moms, though. That would imply that a working mom spends essentially every waking, non-commuting hour working on housework during the week, then six hours each day on the weekend.

40 vs 60 hours isn't really the issue. It's: what counts as "work" to be included in the total, and more narrowly, what counts as "housework"?

My whole argument is that just as cooking, cleaning, and laundry shouldn't be all that's considered "housework"; coding, deploying, etc aren't all there is to "work" as a programmer.

I think "homemaking" makes the distinction clearer in the narrow case. In the larger sense, I'm just saying that "work" isn't just what's on your job title or how you'd describe yourself, e.g. "coder", but "all of that which is necessary to fulfill your duty".

I think there are a large number of working moms who'd agree with the statement, taken not literally but also not hyperbolically: "I spend essentially all my waking non-work time on homemaking (housework + parenting)"

I'm not making a squishy argument about "emotional labor" either, but if it means anything at all, it definitely includes attending to the emotional needs of your children & partner

At a certain point people are voluntarily choosing to take on certain responsibilities and workloads. Why is society supposed to care that people are choosing a particular labor intensive standard of living?

I'm very senior and I only work about 30-40 hours a week max. It's called work/life balance.

I do the same thing. I work 4 days a week, to spend one weekday (as well as the weekend, of course) with the kids.

Still, my wife regularly points out that I again forgot to do the laundry on that day off, and most of the time she still cooks that day. I want to, but still haven't fully picked up my share of the household work. And the worst part is that she still has to point this out to me.

I do better than most men and am still falling short.

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