> I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but is it strictly work?
If I'm someplace other than where I want to be, it's work.
A lot of comments in this thread don't seem to understand - even if you're free to read HN during downtime, if I need to be in by 9am and am unable to leave until 7pm, the period in between was work. If I would have suffered professionally if I'd left at 5 regardless of how much "work" was done, the performative behavior is also "work".
Labor law in the states uses "engaged to work" and similar language often, mostly in the context of hourly employees. You can't tell someone "you must show up to the jobsite and wait to see if you're needed" under threat of no future work... that's being engaged to work.
The confusion is because many of us work many days remote, and/or have flexible hours. For many of us, our entire existence is oriented around improving a bottom line...so when we have down time, we are recreationally reading about how to do that better, whether we are on the clock or not. So, if you are a remote worker, and you produce 3 proof of concepts for your company for fun, and none of them pan out, how many hours did you work? Nobody knows, including you.
Why does the concept of being salary always seem to go one way (more than 40)?
I worked in a place where people "worked long hours".
A typical day would go like this: around 4pm they'd declare they had a "conference call" and call a friend from a meeting room. Then they'd watch some Netflix til 7ish, then go out to dinner (probably with the friend they called), where they'd fire off several drafted emails. If someone actually responds, they'd draft a reply then send it while getting ready for bed.
When the definition of "good work" becomes subjective, "work" becomes art, specifically performance art.
I didn’t think I suggested this necessarily went “more than 40,” only that “on” time might be hard to differentiate from “off” time, and that some activities that look like “off” (having dinner with teammates) might have real value while others that look like “on” (researching some tech framework that is irrelevant to the problem you are trying to solve) might be worthless.
If I'm someplace other than where I want to be, it's work.
A lot of comments in this thread don't seem to understand - even if you're free to read HN during downtime, if I need to be in by 9am and am unable to leave until 7pm, the period in between was work. If I would have suffered professionally if I'd left at 5 regardless of how much "work" was done, the performative behavior is also "work".
Labor law in the states uses "engaged to work" and similar language often, mostly in the context of hourly employees. You can't tell someone "you must show up to the jobsite and wait to see if you're needed" under threat of no future work... that's being engaged to work.