There have been many posts about academic work hours lately. EcoGeoFemme, ScienceGirl and Jennie have all written about it. And one thing that keeps cropping up in these discussions is the 40-hour work week.
I've been puzzling over this all day. I've never worked 40-hour weeks. Not as a grad student, not as a postdoc, and not as faculty. Among my friends, there are doctors, lawyers, human resources managers, programmers/software developers, engineers, teachers, accountants, and business consultants. None of them work 40-hour weeks. None of the grad students, postdocs, or other faculty in my department work 40-hour weeks. Even the technicians in my lab work slightly more than 40 hours a week. Hell, even the contractor who remodelled our house worked more than 40 hours a week.
So who are the people working 40-hour weeks? The only people I know who work those hours are secretaries, clerks, and some lab techs. My labmate, D, knows some people in his neighborhood who work 40-hour weeks in mostly low-paying labor-intensive jobs. Between the two of us and another labmate, we couldn't come up with a single job that only requires 40 hours a week that any of us would find intellectually satisfying and would want to have.
Granted, the three of us are comprised of one PhD and two MD/PhDs...probably not your average population. And one could argue that all of my friends are non-representative as well because I've preferentially associated myself with other Type A workaholics. But I have to say I'm extremely skeptical of the existence of jobs that are intellectually challenging and that pay decently, in which someone could work 40 hours a week and still be competitive. And the reason, of course, is because intellectually challenging, decent-paying jobs attract people who are ambitious and driven.
So while I agree there are academics who work obscene hours and that there is constant pressure to work longer hours, I'm not at all convinced that academic work hours diverge significantly from that of any other highly competitive profession. Where academia does diverge, unfortunately, is in the amount of compensation for the hours worked. But that's fodder for another post.
What 40 hours-a-week jobs would you enjoy and want to have?
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7 hours ago
15 comments:
I just wish we could re-structure the workplace so that we weren't all trapped in this prisoner's dilemma, where everyone thinks they have to work more than 40 hours a week. Working more than that just seems unhealthy, but we all end up being forced to do it anyway. I mean really - what's going to happen with the rest of one's life when all there is is work?
I agree, but I don't really see how that restructuring can be effected unless we create a system in which there are no avenues for advancement and there is 100% job security. Because as long as there is incentive for people to work harder, some people will. And everyone else will feel the pressure, real or imagined, to keep pace. The problem is that such a system will end up populated with unmotivated people who don't care about their work, which isn't good either.
I don't count how many hours I work. Its just pointless. Some weeks I work a minimum, some too much, others an OK amount.
The important part is that academics choose to work long weeks whether they believe it is a choice or not. They could select a less demanding department to work in, one with lower criteria for advancement, and lower salary. Many other professions are the same, but few other professions tie their hobbies and work together in quite the way academics do! Academia attracts chronic overachievers who will do anything to keep ahead of the pack.
I agree with you, MH. I don't see how scientists will ever work 40 hours/ week considering that we are competing with the scientists from the rest of the world.
I have never worked 40 hours/ week either unless I'd gotten sick that week. Ever.
I guess the key is enjoying what you do and finding some work-life balance. As a high school teacher, I consistently worked 80-100 hours per week. That was too much. I did some temp work at one point where I worked 40 hours per week. It was not intellectually stimulating, but more to the point, my days felt empty. However much you're working, it's important to have hours in the day where you're not.
I wish I worked 40 hours a week! But one of my biggest beefs is that after 8 hours, most people start becoming way less productive. And I'm an efficient worker so I can finish in 6 hours what takes others 8. So it's frustrating to me that then I have to stay 9-10 hours to "look good."
I think we can be competitive and work fewer hours. Look at countries like France, which is much maligned, but actually has one of the strongest economies in the EU. And when you look at their salaries, and you adjust for the fact that college, daycare, healthcare, etc are subsidized I believe the median income is just as high or slightly higher than in the US.
I guess I strive for a 40 hour week for the reason Arduous gave -- that I become very inefficient after about 8 hours and I dislike feeling like I need to stay longer just to look good.
My parents were both hourly workers, so I grew up in a 40-hour-week household. My dad often moonlighted in his skilled, blue collar job, but then he got more pay.
Where I work, almost everybody is present 9-5. I think many of them do extra work at home, but nobody works long hours at the lab.
What I find sad is how scientists have to work such long hours to be competitive, yet so many more people want to be scientists. We could divide up that time among more people, which would make more jobs that are less demanding. Of course that would be more expensive, since everyone's pay rate would go way up.
arduous, I was just going to say that I bet they have 40-hour weeks in France! Many continental Europeans (NOT Brits - although we're better than Americans I think) seem to have a very healthy attitude to work!
Aside from being ineffective if working around the clock, I am trying to be realistic about the fact that if I do not find a job where I can be competitive working 40-50 hours a week, I am likely to quit altogether to manage to raise kids. So even though I work way more now, I have to be realistic about the fact that this is only a temporary "luxury."
Well, actually, in France the work week is 36 or 37-hours (don't remember exactly). Many companies, including my research institute, have 38-hour weeks but give their employees an extra day off per month. So in addition to the around 30 days (6 weeks) of conventional holiday, we have another 12 days/year off. Pretty good in my situation. That being said, most researchers in my institute work more than 38 hour weeks.
Hypoglycemiagirl--A 36-hour work week sounds good. But I suspect that even if US institutions were to announce that the work week is officially 36 hours, most people would still work more like the researchers at your institution.
The working week in France is 35 hours. You also have the possibility of working 39 hours (which was the previous working week, something like 10 years ago), and "storing" your extra hours either for them to be paid as over-time of for you to take as days off later on (actually, in most of these cases, people use them to retire earlier...).
As far as I can tell, lots of people work way more than that without any sort of compensation. Engineers might get over-time paid. Researchers and professors will not. People like my mother, who works in a hospital, will receive compensation for being called in the middle of the night, but not for stretching their days for the simple reason that treating patients cannot always end just because the clock strikes 5.
Which brings me to another point: working extra hours is not always only about being ambitious, competitive or an overachiever. Sometimes it is just professionalism - some jobs can't just be left hanging because your work day is theoretically over, especially when other people are involved (whether it is collaborators you cannot let down before a deadline, patients needing your care, or students whose papers you need to grade). Then maybe we all need a good psychoanalysis to help us understand that the world is not going to fall apart without our constant presence in the trenches...
Ginger Peach--Thanks for visiting! You make an excellent point about professionalism, and I completely agree. I wonder if people from countries with shorter work weeks are actually happier with their lives and careers than those from countries with long work weeks?
It wouldn't be surprising if these people had more balanced, less hectic and therefore happier lives... One thing in France for instance is that working this kind of week allow for people to take a day off on Wednesday, which is the day off for school (children go to school 9-5 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and 9-12 some Saturdays, and not at all on Wednesday, were they can have all kind of other activities -- details depends on schools, but that's roughly the pattern), and it seems that it is way easier to take care of your kids in this situation.
I think it's probably true that people with more balanced lives are happier. What I was wondering was what role perception plays in happiness. For example, I used to work 80 hours a week. Now, I work 50-60 hours a week and am blissfully happy with my "relaxing" schedule even though it is obviously well over a "normal" work week.
So the question is whether people in France who work 45-hour weeks (130% of normal) feel as overworked as people in the US who also work 130% of normal, which would be 52 hours a week. Maybe how happy people are with their work hours has less to do with actual hours worked than with how hard they perceive they are working relative to the average. Just a thought.
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