Insane work hours hurt everyone

[LWYRUP]

@raincoast  -- I will say that 8 years of private practice made me better at my government job than if I had left earlier.  So there's that.  But realistically, if I found a suitable exit that I was excited about earlier, I would have left earlier.  There were a few years in there where I was too busy to look for a new job, oddly enough. 

[ShastaFire]

Get in, make money, get out. 

Saul Goodman would approve.

[Wrenchturner]

I've been laid off for a month now.  A coworker of mine has been officially fired although that might be because he was failing his technical exams(tradesmen exams).  My layoff has been extended up to four months.  ff I face termination, I could offer to work three days a week--we should be into our busiest season by then, I can work days and times when more manpower is useful, and I can afford the difference and it would be great for my work/life balance.  Might be an option my employer would consider.

I guess I'm just posting to state my agreement with work/life balance and the benefits of not buying useless crap that forces you to work a ton.  I'm open to working longer in my life if it's in semi-retirement; it's been something I've thought about for a while now.

[clarkfan1979]

I have a very close friend that did not get tenure because they took family leave for the birth of their child (as a male).

The expectation is that males do not take family leave for child birth, even though it is covered in the collective bargaining agreement.

They consulted a lawyer and the only way they can collect damages is through proof of loss of income. Because they got another job right away they didn't have any monetary losses. It sucks that they do not value the 200-300 hours of time they spent on finding a new job and moving their family to another state.

[eyesonthehorizon]

I have a very close friend that did not get tenure because they took family leave for the birth of their child (as a male).

This is vile and should be allowed to reflect on the institution publicly. Were there enough parties privy to the situation that the details could come out? I can imagine that in the academic world that might be regarded as something of a warning sign about their culture as an employer, as well as an undesirably archaic culture for students to contend with - if they punish male educators for prioritizing their families, will they also discourage students from equal, meritocratic opportunity-seeking?

[clarkfan1979]

Based on what he has said, there is enough evidence for a case, which is why he consulted a lawyer. However, with no potential for monetary gain for his time, it is simply not worth it to him. I personally think it would be a risk to his career if he officially sued a previous employer. He didn't seem worried about that part. He was more focused on being compensated for his time. Yes, in a perfect world, the institution would get punished. However, we do not live in perfect world. I think we all have experienced something similar to this in our lives.

At my previous job, we had a faculty member leave during the first week of classes. He was on a two year visiting appointment and starting his 2nd year. They gave him his schedule and on Tuesdays/Thursdays he taught class from 8:00 a.m.- 9:15 a.m. and 5:00 p.m to 6:15 p.m. He claims this was punishment for filing a complaint during the previous semester. I do not know the details of his complaint. He went out with a blaze of glory. He sent an email out to everyone telling administration to go fuck themselves. It was pretty awesome. 

[eyesonthehorizon]

I suppose what I'm wondering is whether - without the effort, expense, or exhaustion of pursuing a suit - the story might become circulated, by parties other than himself, of course, as a warning to prospective employees, affiliates, and students. There are still arenas in which a black mark on one's reputation means something and academia is exactly the sort of sphere where it could effect some change.

Brilliant to hear about the other faculty member's exercise of just that sort of social disincentive, though.

[mbk]

I am in academic research. Over the years, I had very demanding to laid-back bosses. I was productive and produced high quality research papers when working with laid back bosses. The demanding bosses work themselves very hard and expect new results/findings every week without allowing for downtime. My current boss is a workaholic who drives all of his students and support staff crazy with his insane expectations of work hours and productivity. I am glad I am leaving the job soon.   

[Kyle Schuant]

I'm reminded, MBK, of reading about education. Here schools have been closed so that students have been doing "remote learning" - because it's been put in place hastily and ad hoc, it's really not remote learning, but state-supported homeschooling. Anyway, people were concerned about the performance of children with time away from formal schooling.


It was pointed out that after the Christchurch earthquake, children had 7-10 weeks off school - and there was no remote learning or homeschooling at all. And the results of the high schools on exam were... better! Likewise, our own children could miss an entire semester, and still get more total hours with a teacher than Finnish schoolchildren do - and they do better than ours.


In my own (now suspended) work as a fitness instructor, I see this all the time. People think that if one hour of endurance work or a set of 10 is good, then two hours or a set of 20 must be better. And it's just not so. As you add work you get diminishing returns, and then eventually negative returns - the person becomes weaker, dumber and so on.


It is of course the same with work. Unfortunately some people are locked in an unproductive mentality. In my experience it's usually the less-skilled managers who think like this. They're dimly aware of how unproductive they are, and try to compensate by working more - and working everyone else more.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Based on what he has said, there is enough evidence for a case, which is why he consulted a lawyer. However, with no potential for monetary gain for his time, it is simply not worth it to him. I personally think it would be a risk to his career if he officially sued a previous employer. He didn't seem worried about that part. He was more focused on being compensated for his time. Yes, in a perfect world, the institution would get punished. However, we do not live in perfect world. I think we all have experienced something similar to this in our lives.

At my previous job, we had a faculty member leave during the first week of classes. He was on a two year visiting appointment and starting his 2nd year. They gave him his schedule and on Tuesdays/Thursdays he taught class from 8:00 a.m.- 9:15 a.m. and 5:00 p.m to 6:15 p.m. He claims this was punishment for filing a complaint during the previous semester. I do not know the details of his complaint. He went out with a blaze of glory. He sent an email out to everyone telling administration to go fuck themselves. It was pretty awesome.

Well, schedules like that are deemed OK when it comes to mandatory classes for students. It's one of the things that makes it very hard to hold down a job while in post-secondary school. Most of the mandatory classes feature make-work and remedial skills that should have been acquired in junior high school. The students also pay exorbitant costs for tuition for the dubious privilege of maintaining that schedule. The high tuition rates are necessary to pay for all the landscaping, the high-consuming departments such as athletics and fine arts, the exorbitant salaries of the athletics coaches, and all the jock development facilities the cash cows aren't allowed to actually use. I'd say, under the circumstances, that if it is awesome for a faculty member to object to the same nonsense (while being paid for their time) it ought to be equally awesome for a student to refuse to do so.

[Travis]

“Nobody ever had a good idea after 5:00 PM”.  George C Marshall

Funny you should mention him. His work habits during the war are mentioned as an example to follow in this article.

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/may/no-time-victory?fbclid=IwAR3dEmv6wM8USnXwHFx7sk9qly551Hh9F7Ki2cqUg9J0pOv5UDkZ5CfsxUA


Workaholics end up getting the job done and expect the next generation to bust their asses as much as they did. We hold meetings that can be solved by email, and if we're not working until midnight, well then clearly we're not putting in maximum effort.  The military is a great place to be if you want to learn how to wreck your marriage, relationship with your children, and your own health via self-inflicted wounds.  I knew of a general in Iraq who insisted on being on the road every day, living off of one meal, dip, coffee, and four hours of sleep. He dragged his aide-de-camp around on this insane schedule as well. The aide would crash in my office when they came to my base for meetings and it was clear each time that she hadn't slept in days.  After four months of this the general was medically evacuated back home for having some kind of breakdown.

My last boss where I worked in recruiting made it clear to everyone on day 1 of his time in command that there were particular hours that he should be notified of specific things via specific forms of communication.  If needed an answer within 24 hours, email him. If a couple hours, text. If an emergency, call him. Nothing after 7pm unless it was an emergency and he'd get to the rest the following morning.  He held himself to the same rules.  Aside from wanting to enjoy his own family time, he acknowledged that Army Recruiting Command breaks a lot of people with some unavoidable long hours/days/weeks. My current boss goes door to door at 5:30 and kicks everyone out of the building who might still be here. If he calls me on the weekend, the first words out of his mouth are "sorry to bother you."  Both have been exceptions in my experience.