You aren't afraid to get fired quickly and be left without any money to pay your bills and rent an accommodation. Unaided estimates of personal workload are very unrealiable. Reliably recorded 48 h/week are far more useful, both as personal feedback and for negotiating conditions. Work Hours Work Hours The Wage and Hour Division enforces federal labor laws pertaining to work hours, such as: Federal minimum wage Overtime pay Recordkeeping Child labor requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Government Contractors The Wage and Hour Division also enforces labor requirements of the following: Has 8 years experience. However 60 hours a week is not normal for the simple reason that very few people can be productive for 60 hours a week on a long term basis. I'm afraid it's hard to change the system without addressing the factors listed above. (And I still hold that living downtown Munich is not a human right. And you don't need to pass numerous interviews and adapt to a new kind of working environment. Yes, it's very typical, and there are quite a few factors that resulted in the system evolving to end up being the way it is. Selected relevant ILO instruments. "This put me in a tricky financial situation, since salaries for PhD students are not terribly high especially" - Your salary is 3/4 of a full position, in public service tariff, taking into account your previous degree (master's? Self-employment however is not for everyone - but if you think this could be an option, I'd like to encourage you to use your time in academia to also gather the relevant knowledge for this (my university had e.g. Non-traditional schedules are gaining traction in places like Spain and Scandinavia. You know what you should expect if you choose that path, because there will always be people who are willing to work cheap in order to take that path. I may add that the professor was himself with the back to the wall with teaching because the budget the university assigned for teaching compared to the number of students and the course requirements was completely impossible (he said when he started, they had twice the number of teaching staff for less than half the number of students) - which makes the action understandable, but no less abuse of power. The workload varies strongly by field, I would also argue that the personality of the supervisor plays a role. It's like CEOs, who tend to average about 65h a week - they're fanatically driven people who are consumed by their work. As previously mentioned, 40 hours per week is the typical expectation for the number of hours a white-collar worker in the United States will work in a week. Astudy from the World Health Organization (WHO)found that working an average of 55 hours or more each week increases your risk of stroke by 35 percent and your risk of dying from heart disease by 17 percent, compared to averaging a 35-40 hour workweek. Oh, snap! Or maybe you are on the other end of the spectrum, chasing the4-hour workweekdream. Look at the rates of your local funding agency. My current role is 50 hours a week but can hit 60-70 at Plan time or quarterly review time including weekends. As a PhD student, you are not a doormat. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. A good goal is to be one of those people. I suppose it was just one angle that was worked that was fruitful, YMMV. Frozen core Stability Calculations in G09? Besides, at least in Germany, local PhD students cost more because the employer (i.e., professor) pays taxes for them, whilst international students get a tax-free stipend. Based on my experience working a CS PhD in a reasonably well known UK university, No, it is not expected to work 60 hours a week. A study from the World Health Organization (WHO) found that working an average of 55 hours or more each week increases your risk of stroke by 35 percent and your risk of dying from heart disease by 17 percent, compared to averaging a 35-40 hour workweek. They'll say you're spoiled, entitled, that you don't have what it takes to be in academia if you feel that way. Moreover, since I dealt with microorganism, I spent a considerable amount of my weekends in the lab and my overall time in the lab amounted more to like 60h+ of which only 30 h were actually paid. They may need to organize meeting their friends back home online or offline due to time shift. This put me in a tricky financial situation, since salaries for PhD students are not terribly high especially if you are only "working" a 30h contract. But even worse, the exam nature of the PhD makes the whole thing far more prone to abuse of power than a normal work contract: a PhD student cancelling their work contract looses far more than just their employment. The critique here was obviously that fully qualified professionals would do research work for free. People may start earlier or later and then, correspondingly, leave earlier or later. Great answer and advice. So that seems a good place to start ;-). Two studies from Germany that are relevant in this context although they are with Bachelor/Master students rather than PhD students are the ongoing Studierendensurveys and the ZeitLast study using online diaries (report, there were also a number of articles in the general of news, often with quite snarky headlines). Exercise helps your body stay healthy while reducing the stress that threatens to harm your future health. Yes, in my experience, people working with organisms, whether rats or micro-, end up getting conscripted into many more hours than their counterparts in other fields. Men worked an average of 40.5 hours per week, while women worked 36.6 hours per week. The upshot is, collective action is perhaps the only path towards forcing institutions to the bargaining table and it does work. This is my first job out of college and im wondering if this is normal. Overwhelming evidence suggests that work weeks of more than 40 hours are harmful not only to employees, but also to the company as a whole. 66% say workers should be allowed to do so, while only 25% say they should not. Also, only a small part of PhD students can get a tenure position later in their lives, for there are too few tenure positions available. Or, busy human resources professional might need 40 hours each week to get all their work done, but would benefit from compressing those hours into a 4-day schedule that affords them an extra day off (and keeps burnout at bay). Regarding your first question, as everyone has asserted, yes it's typical. If the salary job offered pays $28 an hour, are you okay with it actually grossing $18.66 an hour. Despite this line, they meanwhile laid claim to literally anything that could be construed as our intellectual property. While a union will not solve the bigger problems with universities, including the disparity between academics (both students and professors) and administration, the slashing of budgets in the name of "austerity," etc., and they can create other problems if they become detached from the students they represent, they are an important line of defense for students, who are essentially workers. The percentage of full-time workers in the U.S. has dwindled since the recession began in 2007, but the number of hours they say they work each week has held steady, at about 47. In general, no, a 9-to-5 schedule does not include a lunch break. The times I've worked 80 hr weeks i've produced much less than working 50 (research that is, admin/teaching is a different matter). I also know the thoroughly exhausting and unsatisfying times where one does measurements or preparation with waiting times that do not allow to do anything sensbile in between. Now that PhD stipends are fixed and can't be negotiated between professors and students, what's left to compensate for the low efficiency is working hours. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Some PhD students become real pain for their mentors, and you never know in advance whether a particular student will be a problem or not. As a result, the 34.6 hours estimate accounts for people who not only work part time or full time but also those who log overtime. Heres the answer: its 38 hours. Salary - is it normal to work 60 plus hours a week? Your opinion may differ.). Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 24% of workers worked from home, while 38% did some work from home in 2021. Be careful, though, as universities, like businesses, have been known to retaliate, and as a student, your individual position is extremely vulnerable. June 22, 2022 Nathaniel There is an official designation for full-time employment. You are paid for doing specific work, and along with that you are given the opportunity to write a thesis. It works best if you don't have to use it, but the employer believes you are willing to and that it would hurt them. Answer (1 of 7): Salary could mean 24/7. As a PhD student, I was given a 30 h/week contract but expected to work loads more, since this was a totally unrealistic workweek if one wants to get ones thesis done while doing all the lab work required to do so. People in Denmark work hard and are just as productive as other workers, but rarely put in more than 37 hours a week, often leaving the office by 4 or 5 PM each day. If you become a PI, remember how horrible it was working ~80 hour weeks for peanuts and try to break the cycle instead of perpetuating the same norms! Its a way of life at Atlassian. Maybe focus on incremental change. 1. . Do the math, figure out the rate of pay if you do work 60 hours a week, every week. The above two conventions set the general standard that workers shall enjoy a rest period of at least 24 . @cinico I added in some more details. After my first glimpses into academic work and contract conditions, I decided that I need to attain a level of financial independence that allows me to negotiate at eye level, and I've let my academic employers know that I got there whenever I thought it would help my negotiation position. But as long as the PhD is an exam, you'll have to compete with students who choose to put in as much effort as they possibly can - and since they are adults it is their right to honestly put in substantially more work than an employer may ask of an employee. I am assuming that by "work," you mean both work for your professor and/or department, and work on your thesis and courses. Working a 60-hour week entails working an extra 20 hours compared to the traditional 40-hour working week. You may be able to improve your work's quality as well by sticking to an unusual schedule. You can start by looking around on the Internet to see if an existing union or other organization would be willing to help organize the students. I wonder about your "tricky financial situation". So a supervisor that demands this is not only exploiting the student, but also mostly likely not getting good science out of it either. Buettner also recommends taking six weeks of vacation per year, which is the optimal amount for happiness. less time and energy to pursue their studies/work since the change in culture and environment tends to be strenuous in the sense that the life there cannot be managed with the same ease one does in familiar surroundings (burocratic requirements, learning language &culture, ). The first factor is that many PhD students are little use in research. Such people can own a field working 8 hours a day. Widen your horizon to adjust your expectations. You can decide put in your best effort, to aim at a sweet spot between workload and resulting grade, or to go for pass with low effort. How to professionally decline nightlife drinking with colleagues on international trip to Japan? "This is not your grandfather's submersible," Rush said. They often mandate the part-time positions (50%, 65%) for more popular and in-demand fields. As a student, I assumed that my professor was using me as a workhorse while he just sat around reaping the benefits. If you do want to do something for yourself, then my advise is to accept that the rules will not change, but you can choose to play a different game. You don't need to acquire new skills to get that job, and you don't need to send out your CV to hundreds of companies. So a supervisor that demands this is not only exploiting the student, but also mostly likely not getting good science out of it either. These above two instruments set out the principle of the 40-hour workweek. Does the debt snowball outperform avalanche if you put the freed cash flow towards debt? On top of it, you only get a contract for a limited amount of time after which you likely have to relocate to another city or country if you want to stay in academia. There were a number of factors that helped me a lot with this: e.g. Often, this does not exceed a 45 or 50-hour work week. I've talked with my friends in other orgs (PXT, Retail, Ads) and many of them say similar things about their work hours. 6.2 to 6.6 are based on international labour standards. Should your team set aside time for virtual hangs? Let people know how things are in academia. Let me add: (1) "not paid for writing a thesis" -- this is not neccearlily clear (especially for phd researcher positions it is expected that the person does a phd and writes a thesis". And here comes the expectation of long working hours: Otherwise why would a professor hire you, a local, if he can instead hire someone from abroad who will happily work hard 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, for the same stipend? My experience as a graduate student also gave me a decent sense of what can be done about this, at least in the short term. About 20 percent of responding physicians aged 60 to 69 work fewer than 40 hours per week. It's the norm in the US. Also, in the US, if you're a student funded by an NIH grant you're restricted from working any more that 10 additional hours per week, which similarly limits your ability to work a side job, especially if the rate is hourly. The average isn't exactly 40 hours because the calculation divides the total number of hours employees work by the total number of employees. The idea is that you present all arguments that benefit your case and weaken theirs, but how that leverage gets translated into a contract depends on the priorities that your union has set. I did notice, though that it was a new experience for my supervisor when I told them after the probationary period of my TA contract ended that I was very much aware of the fact that this means I cannot just cancel the contract anymore. It's def not the same in Canada 4 feckdech 4 mo. And I guess there is a third factor, albeit it's debatable. Similarly, one could ask why profs spend time teaching and preparing for teaching when they rather could use it for research. Updated 23 January 2023 Finding a work-life balance is essential when you have a job that involves working long hours, more than the standard eight-hour working day. They consider a PhD student position at a Western university as a stepping stone and are happy to work in this stage just for food and a shared room. See: Why do the moderators move comments to chat and how should I behave afterwards? If you consistently work more than 40 hours a week (or are the manager of employees that do), it's probably time for you to make a change. Recommendation: start a personal work time diary. As to which format might suit you best, its really a matter of your personal responsibilities, your job responsibilities, and your employers willingness to be flexible. ago ellewoods_89 4 mo. Standard working hours (or normal working hours) refers to the legislation to limit the working hours per day, per week, per month or per year. eti base code Base code clause 6: Working hours are not excessive 6.1 Working hours must comply with national laws, collective agreements, and the provisions of 6.2 to 6.6 below, whichever affords the greater protection for workers. Register to Comment Heres what were sharing with our investors and stakeholders each quarter. This sub will be private for at least a week from June 12th. Business, Economics, and Finance. So in what cases would companies see 8-5 as being more acceptable than 9-5 to be "regular" (in their words) full-time? In addition, international students (which are the majority in many fields, especially in STEM) by visa requirements are not legally allowed to be employed over 20 hours/week or off campus, so there is no possibility to get a side job or tutoring or anything to make up for the very scarce salary that one gets with a teaching or research position at 20 hours/week.
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