By Matt Miner
December’s Harvard Business Review (subscription required) contains an article called “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek” (Hewlett and Luce 2006, 49). The article documents a trend amongst the top 6% of earners (> ~$125K/yr nationwide) to work lots of hours with unpredictable work flow, under tight deadlines, managing massive job scope, with no regular hours, 24/7 availability to clients, PnL responsibility, mentoring and recruiting duties, significant travel, big management spans, and physical presence in the office at least ten hours per day. And did the authors find a bunch of embittered, burned out professionals, looking about with blood-shot eyes for the nearest exit?
The study finds that 76% of these extreme workers in multi-national firms “love their jobs”! What can be going on here?
I think we get some clues when we dig into a couple of the other findings. First, 90% of the men and 82% of the women said that what they love most about their work is that it is “stimulating/challenging/gives me an adrenaline rush”. This offers a chicken-or-egg dilemma: Did these extreme workers seek out high-paying jobs that they now love, or have these knowledge workers found a way to deploy their knowledge usefully, which is why they’re being paid well? I think it’s the latter, and I think this is why they are so excited about their work. They have work they value. It plays to their strengths. It offers a legitimate satisfaction. This element of extreme work is a very positive outcome.
There is a negative, too, and I think it outweighs the positive. These extreme workers are so enamored with their jobs because within their personal hierarchy of values, they love their jobs more than anything else (e.g., God, family, friends, recreation, etc.). The article is peppered with anecdotes of missed dates to see elderly parents and children’s birthday parties interrupted by conference calls and Blackberry chimes. Actions speak louder than words, and extreme workers break the date, take the call, and send the e-mail. Valuing work more than anything else is self-perpetuating, likely with a positive slope. The authors note that “returning to a house or apartment with an empty refrigerator and a neglected teenager might prove a little bleak at the end of a long working day – so why not look in on that networking event or put that presentation through one more draft?”
This values-issue cannot be changed quickly; it suggests a shift that has already occurred and whose ramifications will begin to ripple through society when these workers' parents start to require physical assistance in order to live. If these workers did not learn from their parents to value things other than work, if they cannot make time for their own children, then they will certainly have no time to maintain relationships or provide care for the aged parents who taught them these values.
From a positive perspective, I hope the elements that make extreme work so satisfying are increasingly embraced and understood by employers so that every employee might be tempted to work seventy hours cada semana. On the other hand, I hope that parents wise up and begin to instill a better set of values in their children. For my idea about what that means, see my essay on “What matters most to [me] and why?” And get home by six o’clock!
