90 hour a week means that the person is either not sleeping enough. Sleep deprivation means you cant be performant fully. Or the person did not had a single free day in weeks while working 12 hours a day. There are the people who do stupid decision just out of being tired.
Just about the only way I have seen people work this much and not be overly tired drag was when significant bulk of time was spent socializing and playing around. Otherwise said, it was not actually work, but it was clocked in as work.
And at this point, there is enough evidence that crunch is productive for few weeks and then productivity fails.
Not sure where these numbers come from. I come from acadrmia. The expectation (and for the most part, reality) for someone in track to become a successful tenured professor is to maintain 80 hr weeks for a couple of decades if not longer. My professors maintain this still, it's how they live now. They have kids, but they had them when they're in their 40s after getting tenure. And they are not working below optimal intellectual abilities.
You would be surprised at what your mind can do if you want it to. I made the jump to tech from academia because while I was ready to do that insane work ethic I wasn't convinced that academia as it is today was worth it.
Turns out I can't just switch off this style of working though, and hence I end up working harder than I should. I'm not wasting my time though.
What I have observed though is when engineers who are in their twenties just Naturally go into an insane work ethic without mentoring on focus and time management typically waste their time. But it is possible to be 2-3x more efficient by increasing the hours you put in as long as you are smart about it. Many of the smartest people in the world do. Of course this should be a personal choice. 90 hours is a bit much though. 80 is probably the sustainable maximum for any normal human.
> 80 is probably the sustainable maximum for any normal human.
Not according to research. I know that academia features long hours. I never heard of academia as an example of efficiency through. Game industry is another hours high occupation (and the studies about crunch are from there).
Also, having kids after 40 is not exactly advisable for women. You are getting into risk category health vise.
People who work 80 hours a week and have children simply have spouse who does all childcare related work and career sacrifice (if they had career).
This was a couple lab, both professors were intense, but yes once they had a kid the husband started working from home more. But that didn't mean he worked fewer hours. We would typically take turns being on phone with him till 10 pm every day.
I'm not advocating it to anyone who hates this. I just want to say that I didn't mind it, I liked it as long as I was working on exciting things, and so did my professors and most other professors that I knew for that matter. My professors didn't have burnout or mental breakdowns, I didnt. Some of my labmates did though, and they quit.
I do not condone how my professors did things, they were abusive for sure. But that was fairly independent of the work ethic if you ask me. Most biology labs that went on to produce Nobel laureates or path breaking vaccines are similar.
Also please go revisit your literature on women having kids after 40. It's not nearly as bad as you might think it is.
It's possible they could have been more efficient, but given what seemed to be their upper ceiling of intellectual abilities they seemed to be quite close to it. Conjecture of course.
Just about the only way I have seen people work this much and not be overly tired drag was when significant bulk of time was spent socializing and playing around. Otherwise said, it was not actually work, but it was clocked in as work.
And at this point, there is enough evidence that crunch is productive for few weeks and then productivity fails.