The Speculist

In a comment on my recent entry on the advantages of being able to control the human sleep cycle, M104 stalwart Karl Hallowell writes:

...[O]f trends to more time in the workplace, the universal presence of caffeine and the prevalence of stimulants like amphetamines and cocaine in the workplace, long hours in the high tech industry, catered meals at work (so you don't have to leave the workplace to find food), some sort of onsite sleeping room where you can take a quick nap rather than go home to sleep, etc. And of course, the two income family.

The point is that there are already many ways businesses at the cutting edge of employment are making the labor of their workers more productive or making the companies more attractive to employees. Among these innovations is a subset that prolongs the amount of time that a worker actually works in a week. I see it as reasonable that a number of employers will actually use such technology on their employees.

I've worked in and out of tech for many years now and have seen a good deal of variation -- both what management expects and what employees expect of themselves -- where length of workday is concerned. The most demanding environments I've worked in did not have official policies requiring 60, 70, 80 hours per week. There was just a culture of expectation that this would happen. The employees helped bring it about, whether willingly or not.

Workaholism as a mass or social phenomenon is something that needs to be looked at. You see one flavor of it in cultish tech companies and quite another in the US work force overall. I've heard more than one pundit talk approvingly about how the US isn't lazy like those shiftless Europeans with their short work weeks and many vacation days.

I think a healthier approach to these issues lies in the phenomenon which I have dubbed de-industrialization and which Glenn Reynolds writes extensively about in An Army of Davids: a mass movement away from industrial era notions of "job" and "workplace." People are taking control of their work lives as never before -- calling the shots as to when, where, and how hard they work according to their own personal criteria, not some corporate agenda or peer-induced guilt trip.

But it's worth noting that this healthier approach is one manifestation of post-industrial work life. The cultish, 90 hours a week and loving it approach to work is another. The thing is, I guess 90 hours a week is fine as long as you are loving it. (And aren't deserting your family, ruining your health, etc.) Work can be an incredibly addictive thing. But pity the employee of such an organization who doesn't share the addiction, and who wants to do other things in the evenings.

And, no -- unfortunately -- "90 hours a week and loving it" was not limited just to that time and place. There's a major tech company located here in the Denver area where it is widely reported that anyone putting in less than a 12-hour day is considered to be some kind of slacker, and shouldn't expect his or her employment to go anywhere -- or even last.

So I think Karl is correct to point out the dangers of potential exploitation of these kinds of capabilities. People may end up working even harder and longer than they already do, although I think it's more likely to be at their own instigation than through any corporate mandate.

But my original point, perhaps awkwardly expressed, was this:

I can see this having a lot of appeal. Sleeping only four hours per night could add an entire half workday of productive time to every day of your life. What would we do with the time if we had it?

Although it is one possible answer, the last thing in the world that I had in mind was "put in some more time for The Man." Give me four extra hours a day, and I'm likely to do a lot more blogging or make headway with some other projects.

I don't know if I'll ever want to put in 90 hours a week on anything, but if I do, I sure hope I'm loving it.