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Complain about 60 hours/week? Rarely. Work 60 hours/week? Rarely.

Professors tend to put in roughly 40 to 80 hours depending on their scientific and organisational workload, but most others hardly ever work 60 hours/week with an average of 40-ish. But then, nobody really measures how much time they put in, and you have to keep in mind that in science, the ‘passive work’ done sort-of in the background while doing something else plays a larger role than in programming (at least that’s my impression).

That said, 40 hours is not entirely unjustified, given that 8 hours/day is relatively practical if you want to have both breakfast and dinner at home with an 2hours/day commute and that at least most universities are relatively closed-down on weekends (though some enjoy the much more quiet environment…).



>Work 60 hours/week? Rarely.

Do you have any data on this? Some quick data points that I found :

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06302/nsf06302.pdf

http://www.stthomas.edu/media/hollorancenter/pdf/Should-We-B...

http://arthropodecology.com/2012/10/25/the-work-life-balance...

A lot of people seem to work more than 40 hours per week. I'm sure some of them do complain. Maybe devs are just more likely to blog about it.


Not really data in any sense justifying the plural use of the word, merely a look down the hallway of the chair where I work – nobody comes in before 8:30 and most people have left by 18:30, averaging a nice-ish 40h/week, given that those who come in early will leave early, too, there are extensive lunch and coffee breaks and most people keep their evenings and weekends work-free (though, of course, not all of them).




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