The Fallacy of the 80 Hour Week
Larry Summers famously stated that tenure-track at Harvard requires eighty hour weeks and that’s part of the reason women are not competitive in mathematics disciplines. We hear a lot about it, but does it really mean anything, this spectre of eleven hours a day, seven days a week with an extra hour or two thrown in?
I know it’s the in thing to be over-extended, to complain about never enough time and an office schedule that just won’t quit. With apologies to the few who are actually victims . . .
Those working their way through college while carrying a full credit load
The poor, working days at McDonald’s and cleaning Wal-Mart at night
Single moms with full time jobs and no home help (120 hr. weeks?)
. . . the majority of complaints out there are due more to ‘flying the flag’ than necessity. Those tenure-trackers at Harvard are likely to be watching each other, wandering the halls to see who’s light is on, bullshitting in small clusters and doing most anything except actually working a do…