You can also get hours like that by working multiple low-level service or industrial jobs, or working a lot of overtime at a job that pays overtime. I have known people to do both, and the only thing that really limits it is the cost to your personal life and basic maintenance (relationships, health, home repair, that kind of stuff.) Men with a stay at home wife who is good at managing the home and keeping up relationships can really push it for long periods of time and come out fine in the end, but it's becoming increasingly rare for families to be able to get by with only one person working.
My parents were living this lifestyle. My dad routinely worked 100+ hour weeks, often sleeping on job sites and very often traveling for work. It kinda makes me chuckle a bit when I hear people say that 'nobody can do 80 hours!' when I spent my entire formative years watching my dad and everyone he knew doing exactly that but doing much harder labor.
It really feels to me like people who say this stuff are either very young, or have had extremely limited exposure to the world outside of their bubble.
Being at work for 100 hours is different from actually putting in 100 hours of work. I have worked with people that stayed 80 hours a week, but only really worked around 20 hours on average.
If your putting around while a 4 hour script runs, you’re there but not actually working during that time.
I understand your point, but it definitely doesn't apply to the situation I was talking about. When a steel mill or nuclear test facility has to go up by a certain date, the work doesn't stop. They just cut bigger overtime checks and keep people going until the job is done. And there isn't any 'hiding' at your desk, you're either visibly working on the job site or you're not.
That's now hot manual labor works. This is the bubble described by the parent comment. You'd be very surprised by how many continuous hours people work globally.
I have done construction work. There is a lot of standing around especially with manual labor positions. Even when there are hours of pure manual labor to do that’s relative. Nobody can work full out for 8hours so you either pace yourself or swap out and take breaks.
At the extreme edge you get long haul truckers who continuously work for as long as physically possible. But, on a second by second basis it’s not particularly demanding.
I worked in restaurants and bars when I was younger, and pulled in 80-100 hours every week for a few years. When I got my first engineering job I did the same thing, trying (successfully) to learn and develop my career as quickly as I could. I’ve also gone through phases of working 60+ hours as a contractor, trying to save as much money as possible.
For me at least, doing that much productive work in a week was never very difficult, but it was only possible because I had no real responsibilities at home. I had friends, but barely spent any time with them, and I once went 5 years without taking a holiday. I wouldn’t do that again today, but for a young person trying to set themselves up in life, it makes perfect sense.
I did this when I was young, and I don't think it got me anywhere. I should have spent my 20s doing a lot surfing or something, anything really other than what I did. I should have got home at 5, and if that got me fired, whatever, got another job.
I get what you're saying, and I respect 20 year olds who want to live that way, but I personally disagree.
I had to work to support myself during college, so I was already used to the "grind". So I decided to keep up the high effort and accelerate my career while I was young.
You can have fun at any age. But investments pay off over time, so it made sense to invest in myself early. Now that I have a good career and don't have to prove myself, I can take things a little slower and have fun "surfing or something". Plus, now I have the money to actually fund my hobbies.
Pretty much the same story for me (though I dropped out of college after 3 years, and wasn’t studying anything related to my career anyhow). I also moved out of home when I was 16, and had to work evening jobs to finish high school.
But as the above commenter points out, toil by itself is useless. I found an job which gave me the opportunity to learn, so all of my toil was ultimately improving my marketable skills. I also had to use initiative to create all of my own learning opportunities in this job. When I started in that job the pay was very low, it gradually improved over a few years, but I honestly would have been fine even if it didn’t. Because when I left that company I nearly tripled my salary, and it’s been going up steadily ever since.
That’s also not to say that any of that was necessary. None of the peers I had who were around the same age as me in the beginning worked anywhere near the same amount I did. They all have comfortable careers now, and are absolutely successful. However I can now demand much more from my employers than any of them can (salary, working conditions, perks...). I simply wanted more from my career, so I invested more into it, and got a greater return.
I've seen too many people happy about overtime... I dunno, I worked 12 hour days for weeks and it was hell. Doing something on the side, anything that makes some extra cash, seems better than straight up overtime.
You usually make more per hour working overtime than you would working at a second job. 1.5x is a typical multiplier, which is not a small raise! It's also worth pointing out that not every hourly job is equally mind-numbing.
You cut out all of the overhead: no new processes, policies, and personalities to learn; the work environment is already setup, as is billing; and there’s no chance of conflict of interest concerns.
There’s also no expectation of it continuing, which is good if you don’t want to have to deal with a side project running longer than expected. That’s bad if you’re looking for a true second job but I’ve known plenty of, say, young non-Christians who happily worked on Christmas at a healthy bonus.
Overtime is a far better deal. You don't have to commute or switch environments, just continue doing what you're doing (which may not be all that bad) and make a multiplier based on far you go overtime.
Add in holidays and other shifts and some people can double their income doing overtime which would be impossible to pull off with a second job.
