this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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[–] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 48 points 2 weeks ago (14 children)

There's no fucking chance people are actually effective at their job that long day after day after week

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (12 children)

I'm Portuguese, working in IT.

Started my career in Portugal, were in Service domains it's so common for people to work 10h/day (with no overtime pay) that it's just seen as "the way thing are".

From Greek friends and colleagues I've had over the years, I've heard that Greek work culture is pretty similar to the Portuguese one.

After my first job, I moved to The Netherlands to work in the same area, were people have way better work-life balance, working longer hours is actually seen as a reflection of management incompetence (it means management is bad at planning and resourcing) and people tend to be strict about doing precisely 8h a day (to the point of me, working as a freelancer in Banking - which from my experience in several countries tends to fall towards working long hours - being told by a manager at 6:05 PM on a Friday whilst staying there of my own initiative to just finish something, to "go home, you're not supposed to be here").

Anyway, my weekly productivity measured in terms of actual results (software requirements implemented that actually worked as specified) in The Netherlands working 8h/day completelly blew out of the water my productivity in Portugal working 10h/day.

Even better, some years later I moved to Finance in Britain (typically a long-hours environment) and kept working like in The Netherlands (both in terms of doing exactly 8h/day and of the way I worked) and my productivity was well above that of my colleagues doing the whole long hours thing, plus I was way more reliable in terms of the quality of deliverables and fullfilling estimated deadlines.

At least in areas where you have to actually use your brain a lot to do your work, long hours is about the most idiotic thing imaginable and, IMHO, a reflection of a management culture were incompetence is a systemic problem.

I bet that in Greece, like in my own country, Politicians are the worst of all managers (sales-oriented people tend to be horrible managers, and politicians are ideas salesmen) from a management culture which itself is already total crap, hence it makes absolute sense for them to think that 13h work days is a good thing.

[–] sadfitzy@ttrpg.network 7 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Anyway, my weekly productivity measured in terms of actual results (software requirements implemented that actually worked as specified) in The Netherlands working 8h/day completelly blew out of the water my productivity in Portugal working 10h/day.

I don't really like this rhetoric.

It frames time off as something that should only be given so that it makes workers more productive.

[–] arendjr@programming.dev 4 points 2 weeks ago

I’m Dutch too, and I used to work 8h/day 4 days a week. And my productivity became even better than when I worked 5 days a week. I could kill it those 4 days, and be rested enough the next week so I could kill it again. It worked wonders.

I like the rhetoric, because it means that my employer got something out of it too. But I don’t think it implies that was the only reason it should be given. I obviously enjoyed the time off for my own reasons.

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