Straight Truth: Long hours expectations are here to stay

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May 16, 2023

Straight Truth: Long hours, overwork, and workaholism will persist because they “work” within limits and are highly visible signs of commitment. This post is about why this is and what to do about it.

As always, my Straight Truth posts are about the world as it is and are not an endorsement of what I describe or that this is how it “should be.” Instead, the point is to arm you with the truth so that you can deal with it effectively.

Appetite for work hours varies, like height and weight. Some people can work longer effectively. Due to life stages, goals, and circumstances some people wish to work longer than others.

For bosses and owners, employees who can work longer hours effectively, and who are willing to travel and be “road warriors,” are valuable, particularly in certain roles (operations, field engineers, sales, etc.). Since such employees are valuable, they will be sought after. Companies will attempt to make them the standard because superficially it benefits them to do so.

For less discerning bosses, when work output is complex to measure, long hours at the desk or online are an easy visible sign of apparent work. Similarly, shorter hours or less immediate responses to emails are easy to suspect as signs of low performance.

We all know this, so why state it? 2 reasons.

First, if you can work long hours and you are able / willing to do so, you will almost always benefit (in terms of how you are perceived) from working somewhat longer, more visible hours given our societal bias towards such behavior. Again, not saying you “should” do this; saying that if you do, you will get certain benefits perhaps at the cost of your health.

Second, if you cannot work such hours or you do not wish to, you should face straight up that the workaholic bias will persist for many more years. At this point, someone will likely wish to comment about societies around the world that seem to do a better job with work-life balance than we do in the US. Those societies, I would argue, have collectively made a number of tradeoffs that we do not see in the US society today — we can strive to change US norms but I doubt they will change quickly. Long hours are also revered in much of India, China, and other countries.

What you can do:

Accept the reality of this expectation, even if people deny it.
Choose managers, companies, and careers or roles that have more balance. I wrote an article on how to find a great manager.
Set your own boundaries. Most companies will take and even reward all you will give them. Few companies will help you set boundaries. You must do this, and you may have to accept job consequences if you do so. You may need to change jobs to keep boundaries.
Be so good that they accept your boundaries and hours. See the books by Cal Newport on this topic.
Be efficient. Most of us waste large amounts of possible work time chatting, socializing, web surfing, or working on low-impact work. If you want shorter hours, you must cut this stuff out. I wrote about why context switching costs time and impact and how to focus.

I want to comment clearly, right away, that I understand all the problems with long work hours. I understand that efficiency and quality drop. I understand that good managers do not lead this way. I understand that long hours expectations are unfair to many people and groups. Again, in no way am I arguing that long work hours are either “good” management or “something you should do.”

What I *am* arguing is that many, many, many bosses and workplaces want to see very long hours. They see it as commitment, as startup culture, as dedication, and as many other things. In the presence of this very common view, which is extremely common in both startups and high tech, if you wish to be different you had best have a plan to do so.

Audience Insights

As will be the case with all posts in this series, I first post my answer, above, on LinkedIn, and then my audience comments. I have consolidated additional ideas worth considering, including:

In the end, impact (delivering results) matters more than raw hours. In addition to delivering results, it is equally important to publish your work to ensure stakeholders are aware. Frequent and short is best; do not wait until you have “big news.”
Ruthlessly prioritize what you work on. I find the following matrix helpful:
Important and Urgent = do it.
Important and Not Urgent = schedule it.
Not Important and Urgent = delegate it.
Not Important and Not Urgent = eliminate it.

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