RE: 40-hour weeks (was Re: FWD: Lack...)

["Jim Morgan" <Jim -dot- Morgan -at- jdsu -dot- com>]

Yet again I agree with you, Gene. :-)

I'd still be willing to bet that a case study would prove the extra
hours could be eliminated through best practices (if allowed by those
upper managers) without effecting quality/quantity. If not, given that
the original poster had 10 people in the group, the math indicates their
extra hours allowed the company to save one FTE with no return to those
among the 10 who did not wish to work that long or failed my earlier
checklist.

Regards,
Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Gene Kim-Eng [mailto:techwr -at- genek -dot- com] 
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 11:29 AM
To: Jim Morgan; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: 40-hour weeks (was Re: FWD: Lack...) 

My real-world experience has been that upper management will usually do
something *else* that stupidly upsets the applecart of people happily
working longer hours and propels those people into looking for new jobs
well before they hit any physiological mind and body limits.  The
ability of bad management to ruin something before it runs out on its
own should never be underestimated.

It is also probably worth remembering that the original poster was in a
snit partly because the person in question put in 40 hour weeks while
the rest of the team was putting in *45* hour weeks.  If we were talking
about a 60-hour-per-week boiler room operation I'd be right with you,
but I've yet to see anyone crumble under the pressure of being in a
decently- managed office for nine hours a day.

Gene Kim-Eng

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