How Many Hours per Week on Average do you put in for your Workplace?

Question

I'd love to see a wide sampling of StackOverflow users as I feel that you all tend to represent developers with higher than average passion for your craft. Thanks!

Answer 1

40-45 at work, another 5-10 on my own projects at home.

Although I am just an intern and I don't get paid overtime. I do software development because I like it, but if I'm not into the project (like now), I won't give extra. At my last dev job, I worked 50+ hours a week without overtime because I loved the project.

Answer 2

55-60 on a busy (normal) week. 10-15 of those might be working from home though.

Answer 3

40-45 hours at work , 10-20 on my own fun at home.

Answer 4

45-50 hours at work, some more at home but not with a predictable pattern - can be either on extra work or on my own projects.

Answer 5

45-55 per week at the workplace, and typically 1 hour per night at home (wrapping things up, doing tasks that must be done during non-peak hours). During times of crisis or special circumstances, up to 70 at work, and sometimes 18 hours a day (typically only for massive deadlines, and only for the last few days).

I feel like my co-workers and myself balance well the ease of coming and going as you please with the need to get things accomplished in the timeframe that they should be. Leaving early, coming late, and taking long lunches is well offset by willingness to stay late, come in early, and do whatever it takes to get the special cases worked out.

Answer 6

For my employer, about 45 hours a week. For myself, it used to be an additional 15 or so.

Ever since we had our first baby, 2 mos ago, it has been basically zero for myself. I expect it to pick up again in a few months though. I have several projects that I'm itching to start, along with several books I want to read.

Answer 7

40-5, like most people. I'm lazy, so I try not to do anything stupid that will require me to go much over 40...

Answer 8

About 45+ hours a week. Because I work for my own company, I work both from home and a clients office. I seem to have figured out how to make all the programming work related to my business, and most of it billable.

Answer 9

40 hours a week on average at work. I then spend 10-20 hours a week messing around and reading in my spare time. I occasionally use work projects in my personal time efforts, but I don't consider myself to be on the clock.

Answer 10

Almost exactly 40. We don't get overtime, and I don't work for free.

I do work on some stuff at home, but that is for me, and more fun than work.

Answer 11

In the past, working for startups I worked anything from 50 to 85 hours a week. I made it into a rule on this job to work only what I am paid for. Good planing and good project management enable our team never to be pressed in time and never to be late for a dead line. The book "Getting things done" was an eye opener in that regard.

Answer 12

About 84. But then I work for an early stage startup.

Answer 13

I am expected to put in 35 (union rules) We also get overtime

Answer 14

37.5 because unless requested to work overtime I don't get paid at all for anything extra. The CEO doesn't want anyone working overtime on a regular basis so we don't.

At home I spend another 10 - 15 hours a week practicing languages that we don't use at work by tooling around with ideas or things like project euler.

Answer 15

40, and I put 5-10 hours into my own interests at home. I have a 1 year old so had to cut back on the excessive work hours.

Answer 16

too much!!

if(!self.isAtWork()) {
    goto: WORK;
}

Answer 17

Depends. During the technically satisfying times I'll put in 50+ per week without really thinking about, but during the more mundane support-oriented times I'll put in a long 40 with some time at home for satisfying work.

Answer 18

36 in the office, my boss kicks us out at 5 makes me so mad.

about 20-30 at home.

Answer 19

Preparing for launch the last three weeks, about 100hr/wk. We're very close though and it's all very exciting :D

Answer 20

Yeah, 40-45 right now, a little more when I'm on Technical Support (irate E-Mails from customers). As many of the respondents have indicated, 10-20 more hours on stuff at home (openSolaris with ZFS pool acting as my new NFS server, memory upgrades, network upgrades (yay Gigabit), finally upgrading my main box to F9 from F7 .. and list goes on).

My time may creep up in the future when I start to do more support, but it will also more around to the Somewhat More Inconvenient section of the clock, like the part where I'm normally sleeping.

Answer 21

Being stuck on a fairly interesting project for some time it is something like 50-55 hours on average. That's time sitting in front of the work PC - so it includes certain procrastination. I constantly fight with it ...

Answer 22

I'm still in college, so only 15-20 hours a week at work.

Answer 23

I've put in up to 100/hrs a week, though I average around 50.

And I'm salaried :(

Answer 24

Right now I am averaging right around 41 hours a week. When a major project deployment was being done I was averaging 48 hours, peaking at 60 hours.

As for the employer - it is a major company so the "spikes" due to a project being deployed tend to be minimized a lot more than smaller companies.

Answer 25

I don't go over 40. Balance in life is important.

Answer 26

40-45 at work

+15 or so learning on my own time at home

+5-10 Other projects

Answer 27

Exactly 40, and I wouldn't stay anywhere that expected more unless I received some kind of royalties or owned part of the company. :)

Answer 28

I average around 50 hours per week, but it does vary greatly from week to week.

As a senior manager, the developers who work for me put in at least 5 hours more than they are contracted to each week, many put in an extra 10 or so. And, I wish they didn't. Some of them put in extra time because they are stimulated by their jobs, and I am glad that is the case. However, others put in extra time because they perceive that they have to "keep up appearances". But, they don't need to.

1. From time-to-time, a few extra hours are needed to meet deadlines or fix serious problems, but if everyone is already working as many hours as possible, then they don't have further free time to "donate" to the company. It is more important to me that developers are flexible than to be found at the office all hours of the day.
2. Doing a couple of extra hours doesn't greatly impact the amount of productive work that is done. I strongly believe that developers are only highly productive for three or four hours of the day, Joel had a post about being unproductive. But I think it goes beyond this. Someone just can't concentrate on hard tasks for more than a few hours a day (well, I can't!) and writing good code is hard.

In my mind, the perfect developer would never routinely work longer than their contracted hours. If they have free time and enthusiasm then, great, they can work on a personal project and become a better developer as a result. That would be the win-win scenario.

Answer 29

Love this question!

I put in exactly 40 most weeks, which includes 5 hours of lunch :) On weeks when a deadline is coming and im worried about it, I wont hesitate to go 50+, but so far this has rarely happened...

Answer 30

"If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life."

I am not sure I agree hours you work equate to passion, but if you're going to do over 40 per week I suggest the following.

Never clock watch.
Never stop yourself if you are "in the zone" (if you can help it).
Never drink a Diet Monster right before you're wrapping-up and think you are going straight to bed, or you'll dream in an infinite loop.

Personally, I work enough that if I replaced writing code with drinking alcohol my friends and family would put me on that Intervention show. If I don't have an IDE in front of me, I am sketching in pseudo-code on napkins at dinner.

Answer 31

Some weeks I put in just 40, but most of the time I get in more like 45. In very busy weeks I have put in over 60 -- something my boss frowns on, as he is a stickler for getting what needs to be done in 40 hours.

Answer 32

38 hours at work and about 15 to 20 hours doing consulting at home.

Answer 33

192 hours. Yeah, that's eight days a week. That's how much I love programming and the Beatles.

Answer 34

~43 where we have a policy about getting an earned day off each month if one works an average of 42.5 hours a week. Course there are more hours spent in the office as there are breaks and lunch to factor in.

Answer 35

I average 32 to 38 hours a week. My company used to call itself Agile, but has executed it so poorly it can only be described as Dilbert Incarnate. I can rarely motivate myself to stay there the full 8 "net hours".

• "Net Hours" refers to ((Gross Hours) - breaks), as they don't let contractors charge their break time. Thus I end up being there for an extra 5-10% uncharged time.

Answer 36

My contracted hours are 37.5 and I pretty much keep to that. I have a family that I don't want to neglect.

Answer 37

Between 50 - 60 hours a week, not including the 2 1/2 hours of travel (42 miles each way). Hey.. that might be an interesting follow up; how far do you travel to work!

Answer 38

37.5 officially, but 40 or 41 since I accepted a special extra side project.

Answer 39

40hrs. They don't pay me for any more than that :)

Answer 40

I usually put in between 40-45. I generally think that having to work more than that is caused by either poor estimation skills of the developer or a manager with a lack of cajones. If I already have tasks on my plate for a certain week that I estimate will take me 32 hours to complete (20% for support), my manager should be able to push back on any additional work (or re-prioritize). Now, if it is something I am really enjoying, that is a different story...

Answer 41

35-55 of actual work

I've using pomodoro technique to time box my work to 25mins and I'm logging what I do each day

I average 35h-55h for 6 days of actual work with sunday off

this includes

1. starting at 530am
2. finishing at 10pm

this excludes

1. breaks, meals, twitter, stackoverflow, blog reading etc..
2. 2h commute 5d/week

I've had weeks of 65h's but I burn out and follow it up with an <35h week. It means that I can gain 10h one week but have to pay it back with at least 20h the next week.

My context is

1. I contract during the day
2. I work on a startup mornings,evenings and weekends

My goal is to trend my productivity so I can find a sweet spot between the hours I sit at a desk and ammount of work I get done.

Answer 42

42 (hours a week)

Answer 43

40 h/week. I do not want be a foreigner to my kids.