--- Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > A lot of well-run companies put those > sorts of demands on their employees. Every > consulting > company (not just us), every investment bank, every > venture capital fund, every hedge fund - and that's > just in the financial sector. I've seen our clients > in the pharma sector routinely do 80 hour weeks. > Pretty much every CEO in America does that. Time > and motion study of Congressmen and Senators suggest > that > 80 hours is a _light_ week for them. Anecdotally > Cabinet Members say the same thing -I don't know that > a formal study has ever been done, but that's how > they > describe their lives. In the military I know that > junior officers in combat zones routinely work those > types of hours for months - or even years - on end. > My old boss was a platoon commander in Vietnam, and > he worked 100 hour weeks for two years. So the > argument > that a well-run organization doesn't ask its people >to do that is empirically contradicted - any number of > well-run (and highly successful) organizations _do_, > in fact, run at that sort of tempo. It's true that > _pilots_ in particular are prohibited from doing so, > but that's because the fine motor skills that pilots > require are the first thing affected by fatigue. I > can stumble over door sills and still build > financial models quite effectively.
I'm just commenting on the work-hours and their potential fall-out: while many individuals can and do 'burn the candle at both ends' for extended periods of time, the vast majority of humans make more mistakes, and more serious mistakes, as stress and fatigue mount. And while maybe financial decisions are OK to make at that point (although I wouldn't want such a person in charge of *my* money), it's dangerous to habitually make decisions that involves life and death under those conditions. That's when the incompletely-hidden tripwire is overlooked, or the wrong body part is amputated, or one assumes that somebody else checked for the proper blood type. That's why laws have been enacted to limit the number of hours an intern or resident works. Having personally put in a few 90-100hr weeks, I can tell you that discrimination and critical thinking are adversely affected to a large degree. I was lucky nothing horrible happened, but I know those who frex dropped babies on their heads because their judgement and reflexes were shot after multiple cycles of 36+hour "days." When you had RNs and pharmacists (who were not themselves over-worked) backing you, most errors were caught before they ever involved a patient; tired "medical assistants" and pharmacy techs, however, provide a poor safety net. I tell all my friends/family/aquaintances who have to go into the hospital that they need to watch out for themselves, question the doc or nurse if a procedure/pill/injection seems at all odd or out-of-place; and that actually applies to medications at home as well as outpatient procedures. I think that operating in a hostile country within a radically different culture requires fine judgement and fast critical thinking, to decide frex whether that enrobed figure is a suicide bomber needing to be shot or just a woman carrying her toddler; those faculties will be impaired in the perpetually fatigued. Debbi __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
