How many hours a week do you actually work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not believing half of these responses.

Why not? Why lie here? I'm a PP who posted I make $160 and work 5-10 hours per week. I work at a place that is very slow and am basically just "standing by" in case something happens and respond to a couple of emails here and there. I could go work somewhere that is faster paced and perhaps more challenging, but why? I worked really hard earlier in my career and don't feel like doing it again. Ever. So here I am and I'm happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not believing half of these responses.

Why not? Why lie here? I'm a PP who posted I make $160 and work 5-10 hours per week. I work at a place that is very slow and am basically just "standing by" in case something happens and respond to a couple of emails here and there. I could go work somewhere that is faster paced and perhaps more challenging, but why? I worked really hard earlier in my career and don't feel like doing it again. Ever. So here I am and I'm happy.

+1. It's not that hard to understand that there are many people who are not punching clocks and are also not working nonstop. Most office workers have a reasonable amount of downtime compared to other industries, as the high traffic of this website demonstrates. I used to be one of those people. I found this site at work, scrolling the internet when not on client calls or in meetings, which was a large percentage of my day.

My husband was in a job like this PP, making decent money for limited work and the understanding that if something went wrong, he was always available to fix whatever it was. He also said he enjoyed the slow pace, but he eventually got bored and does something else now. It definitely goes both ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow these teachers work so much. WHY? Why is it necessary to work so many hours? Something is wrong with this model. Unfortunately women like to make things more complicated than they need to be and come up with made up work. My guess is it’s a result of being a female-dominated industry.

Scenario:
I collect 150 5-page papers. I am required to leave comments. It takes me 10 minutes per paper, so that’s 25 hours of grading for that assignment alone. I am required to grade two *meaningful* assignments a week.

I get 24 minutes a day that are unstructured and away from other people. That’s 24 minutes a day to grade those papers, grade other assignments, prep my lessons, respond to all emails, etc.

I am sincerely curious: how can I make this job easier? How can I cut hours?

I’m not being snarky. I genuinely would like to know so I don’t quit.

- written on my one 24-minute break today. That’s also my time for lunch and unwinding, which I am doing now before I spend the rest of the time planning.

What does this mean?

“Meaningful assignments” would be ones that show students’ learning in a substantial way. That may be a thorough quiz, test, or writing assignment. There’s a big push in a lot of places to move away from multiple choice, true/false, and matching. Students are writing more. That’s great, but the grading gets exponentially harder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work probably 5 hours a week. I am BORED. I am also underpaid for my role/education but it’s okay because I just had a baby and need to adjust to life with 3 (older two are in elementary).

I want to make more money but boy is this a piece of cake.

Hey are you me?! I have two under three except I could’ve written this.

I am so bored too! But keep reminding myself it’s not all about the hustle.

PP here. To be fair, I probably work 20/week, but I’m forcing that.

PP you responded to and I do a lot of busy work as well. I’m just saying that to complete my deliverables - it only takes about 5 hours a week on average. I always ask others if they need help, check in with my higher ups and try to be as helpful as possible but nothing more is needed from me. I’ll take it (for now).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow these teachers work so much. WHY? Why is it necessary to work so many hours? Something is wrong with this model. Unfortunately women like to make things more complicated than they need to be and come up with made up work. My guess is it’s a result of being a female-dominated industry.

Scenario:
I collect 150 5-page papers. I am required to leave comments. It takes me 10 minutes per paper, so that’s 25 hours of grading for that assignment alone. I am required to grade two *meaningful* assignments a week.

I get 24 minutes a day that are unstructured and away from other people. That’s 24 minutes a day to grade those papers, grade other assignments, prep my lessons, respond to all emails, etc.

I am sincerely curious: how can I make this job easier? How can I cut hours?

I’m not being snarky. I genuinely would like to know so I don’t quit.

- written on my one 24-minute break today. That’s also my time for lunch and unwinding, which I am doing now before I spend the rest of the time planning.

It’s not you. It’s whoever is requiring you to grade 2 meaningful assignments and not have time within the school day to do so. If men were teachers they would not be taking these assignments home to grade. Men love to take advantage of unpaid or lowly female labor.

To be fair though, I thought the school day ended around 2 or 3 PM. I don’t see why 2 more hours a day is sufficient for what needs to get done.

Well, for starters, teachers are not grading during the school day. They are teaching during the school day. For an elementary school teacher, 2 hours at the end of the day MIGHT be sufficient for what they need to do, if they are not participating in other things like supervising extracurricular activities or meeting with parents, both of which are pretty common after hours things for elementary school teachers to do.

For a teacher at my kid's high school, they start work at 9 and school gets out at 4. Depending on the teacher, they have 3-7 classes per day. If my kid's history teacher (5 classes per day this year, last year it was 7) collects one 5-page assignment from all 25ish kids in each class, that is 125 assignments. Each needs to be read and commented on substantively, which as the PP above says takes time. If the PP really just skims and gives generic feedback, call it 5 minutes per assignment instead of 10. That's still over 10 hours of grading for one assignment. If you are giving teachers in this situation 2 hours after school gets out (from 4-6pm), they will need to use that "grading period" all week for this one assignment. That history class has a 5 page paper and 2 shorter assignments this week.

I agree that there is a lot of gendered imbalances in education, but the history teacher I'm describing is male. My dad taught university-level literature classes and he also experienced the long hours of grading outside the hours of teaching.

Some professions just have really different structures that are not responsive to things like "just add 2 hours at the end of the day, easy!"

Sounds like things need to change. Perhaps AI will help.

I wasn't an AI fan until I read some of these responses. Clearly these lazy people don't need these jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:40. Don't understand how some of you get paychecks without doing the work. I also WFH and put my FULL workday in...

I’m a PP who works very few hours a week. I do everything that is required of me and when I ask for additional work am just told to stand by. I would actually be happy with more responsibilities but that requires effort from higher ups (to train, explain, answer questions etc) so I guess my value lies in just doing what’s been established as my responsibilities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow these teachers work so much. WHY? Why is it necessary to work so many hours? Something is wrong with this model. Unfortunately women like to make things more complicated than they need to be and come up with made up work. My guess is it’s a result of being a female-dominated industry.

Scenario:
I collect 150 5-page papers. I am required to leave comments. It takes me 10 minutes per paper, so that’s 25 hours of grading for that assignment alone. I am required to grade two *meaningful* assignments a week.

I get 24 minutes a day that are unstructured and away from other people. That’s 24 minutes a day to grade those papers, grade other assignments, prep my lessons, respond to all emails, etc.

I am sincerely curious: how can I make this job easier? How can I cut hours?

I’m not being snarky. I genuinely would like to know so I don’t quit.

- written on my one 24-minute break today. That’s also my time for lunch and unwinding, which I am doing now before I spend the rest of the time planning.

It’s not you. It’s whoever is requiring you to grade 2 meaningful assignments and not have time within the school day to do so. If men were teachers they would not be taking these assignments home to grade. Men love to take advantage of unpaid or lowly female labor.

To be fair though, I thought the school day ended around 2 or 3 PM. I don’t see why 2 more hours a day is sufficient for what needs to get done.

Well, for starters, teachers are not grading during the school day. They are teaching during the school day. For an elementary school teacher, 2 hours at the end of the day MIGHT be sufficient for what they need to do, if they are not participating in other things like supervising extracurricular activities or meeting with parents, both of which are pretty common after hours things for elementary school teachers to do.

For a teacher at my kid's high school, they start work at 9 and school gets out at 4. Depending on the teacher, they have 3-7 classes per day. If my kid's history teacher (5 classes per day this year, last year it was 7) collects one 5-page assignment from all 25ish kids in each class, that is 125 assignments. Each needs to be read and commented on substantively, which as the PP above says takes time. If the PP really just skims and gives generic feedback, call it 5 minutes per assignment instead of 10. That's still over 10 hours of grading for one assignment. If you are giving teachers in this situation 2 hours after school gets out (from 4-6pm), they will need to use that "grading period" all week for this one assignment. That history class has a 5 page paper and 2 shorter assignments this week.

I agree that there is a lot of gendered imbalances in education, but the history teacher I'm describing is male. My dad taught university-level literature classes and he also experienced the long hours of grading outside the hours of teaching.

Some professions just have really different structures that are not responsive to things like "just add 2 hours at the end of the day, easy!"

Sounds like things need to change. Perhaps AI will help.

I wasn't an AI fan until I read some of these responses. Clearly these lazy people don't need these jobs.

Very true. If I were paid what I make for 10hrs a week with my employer under the assumption that I was to be working 40, I’d have no self esteem or self worth left. At least I have skills and can keep them sharp via by job.

I hate to say it but I’m glad my company has actual software that measures metrics. Not much dead weight around here with all the visibility they have into our work flow.

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand people who care how little anyone else is working. Employees are hired to perform a particular task and if their work is getting done and getting done well (and they’re not foisting stuff on other people who are working more), they can do it in as little or as much time as they want. Their employer can give them more or lay them off if they don’t think the value is there, but presumably they do for some of these jobs. What’s it to anyone else?

[Anonymous]

$250k. My weekly workload can really range from 20 hours a week to 60. It really just depends on the time of year and the project I’m working on.

Over the year, it probably averages out to about 40 hours a week, and for the most part, I feel really balanced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow these teachers work so much. WHY? Why is it necessary to work so many hours? Something is wrong with this model. Unfortunately women like to make things more complicated than they need to be and come up with made up work. My guess is it’s a result of being a female-dominated industry.

Scenario:
I collect 150 5-page papers. I am required to leave comments. It takes me 10 minutes per paper, so that’s 25 hours of grading for that assignment alone. I am required to grade two *meaningful* assignments a week.

I get 24 minutes a day that are unstructured and away from other people. That’s 24 minutes a day to grade those papers, grade other assignments, prep my lessons, respond to all emails, etc.

I am sincerely curious: how can I make this job easier? How can I cut hours?

I’m not being snarky. I genuinely would like to know so I don’t quit.

- written on my one 24-minute break today. That’s also my time for lunch and unwinding, which I am doing now before I spend the rest of the time planning.

It’s not you. It’s whoever is requiring you to grade 2 meaningful assignments and not have time within the school day to do so. If men were teachers they would not be taking these assignments home to grade. Men love to take advantage of unpaid or lowly female labor.

To be fair though, I thought the school day ended around 2 or 3 PM. I don’t see why 2 more hours a day is sufficient for what needs to get done.

Well, for starters, teachers are not grading during the school day. They are teaching during the school day. For an elementary school teacher, 2 hours at the end of the day MIGHT be sufficient for what they need to do, if they are not participating in other things like supervising extracurricular activities or meeting with parents, both of which are pretty common after hours things for elementary school teachers to do.

For a teacher at my kid's high school, they start work at 9 and school gets out at 4. Depending on the teacher, they have 3-7 classes per day. If my kid's history teacher (5 classes per day this year, last year it was 7) collects one 5-page assignment from all 25ish kids in each class, that is 125 assignments. Each needs to be read and commented on substantively, which as the PP above says takes time. If the PP really just skims and gives generic feedback, call it 5 minutes per assignment instead of 10. That's still over 10 hours of grading for one assignment. If you are giving teachers in this situation 2 hours after school gets out (from 4-6pm), they will need to use that "grading period" all week for this one assignment. That history class has a 5 page paper and 2 shorter assignments this week.

I agree that there is a lot of gendered imbalances in education, but the history teacher I'm describing is male. My dad taught university-level literature classes and he also experienced the long hours of grading outside the hours of teaching.

Some professions just have really different structures that are not responsive to things like "just add 2 hours at the end of the day, easy!"

Sounds like things need to change. Perhaps AI will help.

I wasn't an AI fan until I read some of these responses. Clearly these lazy people don't need these jobs.

Very true. If I were paid what I make for 10hrs a week with my employer under the assumption that I was to be working 40, I’d have no self esteem or self worth left. At least I have skills and can keep them sharp via by job.

I hate to say it but I’m glad my company has actual software that measures metrics. Not much dead weight around here with all the visibility they have into our work flow.

Are you able to imagine a scenario where you’re asked to perform a very difficult task with a bunch of new concepts and reaching out to people you’ve never met?

Now imagine someone who has performed this same task for 10 years and knows all of the people to contact for assistance.

Person A might perform the task in 25 hours. Person B needs 5 hours.

Is it really a bad thing that person B takes 5 hours?

You seem to really view work as being paid for a number of hours but many employees especially subject matter experts are being compensated for knowledge and contacts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow these teachers work so much. WHY? Why is it necessary to work so many hours? Something is wrong with this model. Unfortunately women like to make things more complicated than they need to be and come up with made up work. My guess is it’s a result of being a female-dominated industry.

Scenario:
I collect 150 5-page papers. I am required to leave comments. It takes me 10 minutes per paper, so that’s 25 hours of grading for that assignment alone. I am required to grade two *meaningful* assignments a week.

I get 24 minutes a day that are unstructured and away from other people. That’s 24 minutes a day to grade those papers, grade other assignments, prep my lessons, respond to all emails, etc.

I am sincerely curious: how can I make this job easier? How can I cut hours?

I’m not being snarky. I genuinely would like to know so I don’t quit.

- written on my one 24-minute break today. That’s also my time for lunch and unwinding, which I am doing now before I spend the rest of the time planning.

It’s not you. It’s whoever is requiring you to grade 2 meaningful assignments and not have time within the school day to do so. If men were teachers they would not be taking these assignments home to grade. Men love to take advantage of unpaid or lowly female labor.

To be fair though, I thought the school day ended around 2 or 3 PM. I don’t see why 2 more hours a day is sufficient for what needs to get done.

Well, for starters, teachers are not grading during the school day. They are teaching during the school day. For an elementary school teacher, 2 hours at the end of the day MIGHT be sufficient for what they need to do, if they are not participating in other things like supervising extracurricular activities or meeting with parents, both of which are pretty common after hours things for elementary school teachers to do.

For a teacher at my kid's high school, they start work at 9 and school gets out at 4. Depending on the teacher, they have 3-7 classes per day. If my kid's history teacher (5 classes per day this year, last year it was 7) collects one 5-page assignment from all 25ish kids in each class, that is 125 assignments. Each needs to be read and commented on substantively, which as the PP above says takes time. If the PP really just skims and gives generic feedback, call it 5 minutes per assignment instead of 10. That's still over 10 hours of grading for one assignment. If you are giving teachers in this situation 2 hours after school gets out (from 4-6pm), they will need to use that "grading period" all week for this one assignment. That history class has a 5 page paper and 2 shorter assignments this week.

I agree that there is a lot of gendered imbalances in education, but the history teacher I'm describing is male. My dad taught university-level literature classes and he also experienced the long hours of grading outside the hours of teaching.

Some professions just have really different structures that are not responsive to things like "just add 2 hours at the end of the day, easy!"

Sounds like things need to change. Perhaps AI will help.

I wasn't an AI fan until I read some of these responses. Clearly these lazy people don't need these jobs.

Im not paid to generate things that AI can do right now. Im paid for expertise AI doesn't have and i use AI in my job now but someone has to write the prompt for it to spit out the report and to make sure the report is accurate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow these teachers work so much. WHY? Why is it necessary to work so many hours? Something is wrong with this model. Unfortunately women like to make things more complicated than they need to be and come up with made up work. My guess is it’s a result of being a female-dominated industry.

Scenario:
I collect 150 5-page papers. I am required to leave comments. It takes me 10 minutes per paper, so that’s 25 hours of grading for that assignment alone. I am required to grade two *meaningful* assignments a week.

I get 24 minutes a day that are unstructured and away from other people. That’s 24 minutes a day to grade those papers, grade other assignments, prep my lessons, respond to all emails, etc.

I am sincerely curious: how can I make this job easier? How can I cut hours?

I’m not being snarky. I genuinely would like to know so I don’t quit.

- written on my one 24-minute break today. That’s also my time for lunch and unwinding, which I am doing now before I spend the rest of the time planning.

It’s not you. It’s whoever is requiring you to grade 2 meaningful assignments and not have time within the school day to do so. If men were teachers they would not be taking these assignments home to grade. Men love to take advantage of unpaid or lowly female labor.

To be fair though, I thought the school day ended around 2 or 3 PM. I don’t see why 2 more hours a day is sufficient for what needs to get done.

Well, for starters, teachers are not grading during the school day. They are teaching during the school day. For an elementary school teacher, 2 hours at the end of the day MIGHT be sufficient for what they need to do, if they are not participating in other things like supervising extracurricular activities or meeting with parents, both of which are pretty common after hours things for elementary school teachers to do.

For a teacher at my kid's high school, they start work at 9 and school gets out at 4. Depending on the teacher, they have 3-7 classes per day. If my kid's history teacher (5 classes per day this year, last year it was 7) collects one 5-page assignment from all 25ish kids in each class, that is 125 assignments. Each needs to be read and commented on substantively, which as the PP above says takes time. If the PP really just skims and gives generic feedback, call it 5 minutes per assignment instead of 10. That's still over 10 hours of grading for one assignment. If you are giving teachers in this situation 2 hours after school gets out (from 4-6pm), they will need to use that "grading period" all week for this one assignment. That history class has a 5 page paper and 2 shorter assignments this week.

I agree that there is a lot of gendered imbalances in education, but the history teacher I'm describing is male. My dad taught university-level literature classes and he also experienced the long hours of grading outside the hours of teaching.

Some professions just have really different structures that are not responsive to things like "just add 2 hours at the end of the day, easy!"

Sounds like things need to change. Perhaps AI will help.

I wasn't an AI fan until I read some of these responses. Clearly these lazy people don't need these jobs.

Very true. If I were paid what I make for 10hrs a week with my employer under the assumption that I was to be working 40, I’d have no self esteem or self worth left. At least I have skills and can keep them sharp via by job.

I hate to say it but I’m glad my company has actual software that measures metrics. Not much dead weight around here with all the visibility they have into our work flow.

Are you able to imagine a scenario where you’re asked to perform a very difficult task with a bunch of new concepts and reaching out to people you’ve never met?

Now imagine someone who has performed this same task for 10 years and knows all of the people to contact for assistance.

Person A might perform the task in 25 hours. Person B needs 5 hours.

Is it really a bad thing that person B takes 5 hours?

You seem to really view work as being paid for a number of hours but many employees especially subject matter experts are being compensated for knowledge and contacts.

This. People who do work in 5 hrs and get more work added get resentful fast of the people who do just the first task in the same amount. There are certainly self motivated people out there and the companies that retain them pay a premium.

[Anonymous]

Self-employed. Work 5-10 hours a week. Make 125k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Self-employed. Work 5-10 hours a week. Make 125k.

I also have 4 kids and DH works long hours and makes much much more. So I like the balance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5-10 hours; Make $160k

What kind of job?

Attorney

Sounds like an attorney at a federal financial regulator. They’re pretty lazy. Their knee-jerk response is they’re “too busy” or “that can’t be done”. The only ones that can get them to work is the higher ups who basically demand cooperation.