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Comment by scroot | Hacker News Reader

The future struggle for people in these kinds of jobs is to get the wider culture to admit to itself that the latter 4 hours are unnecessary and even detrimental to workers.

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I think it's rougher for people to understand that aren't in this industry, and there are so many jobs that _do_ benefit from this in a numerical way, i.e. more parts per hour, more accounts created, sales made, etc.

Can't deny that there are some industries where more hours are better and that beyond the 4-5 hour range they don't suffer from diminishing returns. But I'd point to David Graeber here and just say that there seem to be a lot of people out there making themselves look busy for much of the day, and in the process wasting a lot of their lives and needlessly taxing their own emotional states. And together we've tacitly made a decision that this is all OK and normal.

Yup, it's certainly a punchline in seemingly every office job I've ever worked. I've worked a lot of retail and cooking jobs though too, and I think a lot of people come from these fields as well and have trouble distinguishing intellectual work from physical, utilitarian work.

It's not just software and tech, though. It's almost every 'professional white collar' job.

I work in higher education, and it's exactly the same experience for me. 4-5 hours of productivity a day, at best, and 2-3 hours of just generally wasting time and trying to look busy/meetings/e-mails.

I don't know if they are unnecessary, but they do not require me to be in the office. I usually end up reading up on things, or responding to emails when I am in those latter 4 hours. Those tasks can be done just as effectively at home.

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