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Comment by pixelfarmer | Hacker News Reader

40-45 hours of actual work is already very stressful. 40-45 hours of being at work is more than enough and includes all the garbage you have to deal with by "being at work" and somehow getting your actual work done in that time, too.

There is a limit to how long you can focus on a single task for longer periods of time before you need to rest up properly to recharge your batteries. Everything beyond that will lower your productivity, up to a point where you will end up negative due to the mistakes being made. If you are lightweight on useless processes and stuff, a 30 hour week would be way more optimal for a lot of people. Crunch time should be very short and if stuff cannot be "crunched" in a single week it is useless to continue on like that, because everyone involved will be like 50% as effective as someone just working 30h per week (who can focus on the actual work).

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Let’s say the job is trading derivatives, and the more data available, the better the trades.

However, the data is never available until mid-day the day before (it’s all news based). The deadline is next trading day. You have 16hrs to make the new model and data work.

The upside is that you’d be compensated a percentage of the trades. Positive is good(if you’re good, make millions), negative you get nothing.

Is 40hr a hard limit to work now?

My point is if someone was paid high enough, they’d bust that 40hr limit easy. It’s not really a hard limit of any sort. There’s a price for it, that’s for sure.

The answer is still “no”. I make more than enough to meet my short term and long term wants and needs and I’m at about 90% of the compensation of an SDE 2 at BigTech at 49 years old.

I asked in another reply would someone work for Twitter at twice their current compensation. Both of the replies were that wouldn’t.

If I had an opportunity to make twice my current compensation but I had to give up my current lifestyle - working remotely, traveling six months a year, never being on call, doing the work I enjoy, I would say no without thinking twice.

We are all human. There are limits to what we can do, defined by our biology, and there is no way around that, no cheat available. If you can trust the stuff coming from psychology, there are numbers like ~25h/week floating around for being the most efficient when focusing on one task for white collar work. Anything beyond that makes you less efficient, your rate of mistakes increases, and your "batteries" will get drained. You can compensate latter through physical exercise, but I remember reading a headline that even this goes only so far (and I agree, from personal experience). Plus, if you have to do that to stay afloat, shouldn't be the time be accounted as "work" as well?

Thing is, it will damage you, and no amount of money can save your rear end from an early exit out of this world through the accumulated damages.

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