Just a couple of days ago, Elon Musk said ‘’Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.’’ When I first read this, I thought It made perfect sense. On the second thought, however, I realized that there was no correlation between working longer hours and getting a job done.
I believe that one of the most important things, when an employee, either blue collar or white collar, works on a managerial or a labour intensive job, is this job to become effective, efficient and innovative. I do not think working longer hours does not necessarily make a job effective, efficient or innovative. Therefore, I believe that each job should be analyzed to come up with an optimum way for it to be finished. The first thing to be done before getting started is to analyze that job and come up with an optimum way to get this job done. Secondly, it must be improved continuously. One of the crucial indicators of an optimum way to do a job is to reduce the total time it takes to finish it. So, this is contrary to what Mr. Musk said.
I also believe that working longer hours may jeopardize one’s family life, which may impact the quality of life in society negatively. What I mean by that each family member needs some free time to support each other. If Mr. Musk’s idea is implemented, I think nobody is able to find sufficient time to help their family members. So, to me, this is a recipe for a society’s deterioration. There is another argument I can introduce against Elon Musk’s statement. If people are to work 80 to 100 hours, the question is how they will be able to come with a time to improve themselves in areas other than work, such as art, literary, music and so on.
To sum up, I really disagree with Mr Musk’s statement about expanding working hours. I don’t believe that he can capture the big picture with respect to people’s daily lives.