Some possibilities:

1) Responsibility. To your co-workers who are also working long hours, or to your customers.

2) Satisfaction in your work. If the job simply cannot be done in less than 40 hours per week (for whatever reason) then perhaps you'd feel like a failure if you either didn't get the job done, or leave to do something else.

 

As a business owner, there are sacrifices that have to be made. I don't always work long hours, but there are times when I must in order to get a new project going or handle a problem. I suppose I could hire more people, but keeping my employees at a minimum keeps overheads low and more profit in the long run so that eventually I won't have to work long hours.

That's my reasoning anyway.

 

Yeah, owning your own business is a completely different situation from, say, being a programmer at EA working to get NHL 08 finished. Makes lots of sense to me to work long hours if you're your own employer. When all that matters is if little Johnny gets his new game on time and somebody's stock options increase in value - well, I don't understand sacrificing your personal life for that.

 

Working for yourself is a completely different situation. Besides, you can usually at least be at home for some of the time when you're working for yourself.

Mark, that's an interesting point about responsibility to co-workers who are putting in longer hours. Personally, if we're all working on our own projects, I don't worry about the hours they're putting in. As long as I'm getting my stuff done, I'm good to go.

There are times where I've helped a junior engineer finish a task because he wasn't going to finish on time and I'd already finished what I had to do. That's partially because they're my responsibility and also because I like to get people out of a jam. Still, I'm not going to work longer just to appear to work as hard as someone that is less effective, efficient, or hard-working than I am.

 

That's for sure.

We used to have four people in my department. One was not that technical and went out on permanent disability two years ago.

Another was the slowest worker I've ever seen, and usually worked 10 hour days. When he left, they didn't replace him and I took over his work.

My final co-worker has all sorts of health problems, and has been out on disability for the past six weeks. He's coming back two days a week starting next week.

The point is, I'm currently doing all the work that these people used to do, plus the work I did while they were still here. It all gets done in 40 hours a week. Ok, last week I worked 41 hours, but that was an exception!

Because of that, I feel no responsibilty to hang around for more than 8 hours a day, no matter what anyone else is doing.

At my last job, I had a manager say something snotty about my leaving on time every day, and he compared me to 'Tom', who stayed late every day. I thought I should fill him in on Tom's schedule:

9:00am: Arrive at work, go downstairs for coffee.
9:15am: Check football/baseball scores, go to fantasy football/baseball websites.
10:30am: Start working
12:00pm: lunch
1:00pm: Post-lunch chat with co-worker
2:30pm: Post-lunch chat with manager
3:00pm: Coffee break
3:30pm: Start working
6:30pm: Go home to empty house, watch sports, drink beer and fall asleep on couch.

 

Some people work late because the don't want to go home to the wife.

People seem to be getting mixed up between why work hard and why miss out on the family/social side of life for work.

Personally, I don't take my work home with me - I get it done and if I have to stay late during the normal work week, no biggie. A 12 hour day is nothing as I like what I do and don't have anything particularly pressing to do.

Staying late during the week is not the same as going into work on Thanksgiving Day or the Day after Christmas however. Sometimes that's required for work, but work pretty much comes to a halt in December no matter where you work unless its retail or the Post Office.

People who miss out on family events and holidays for work have a problem imo.

 

you know what, I should be out partying and looking for a sugar momma. damn, I've had it all wrong all this time.

 

or finance trying to pull your end-of-the-year numbers together.

 

God, that ep was awesome. They took it off youtube though

 

Or trying to reduce excess inventory from the prior year so you don't get taxed at 51%.