“Most of the Macintosh software team members were between twenty and thirty years old, and ***with few family obligations to distract us***, we were used to working long hours.”

If work is more important than family (they are a ‘distraction’ after all) it is easy to put in 90 hours a week because work clearly is the most important thing in your life.

If you work long hours for an extended period of time you will have problems maintaining relationships and friendships outside of work. Unless you are very committed (i.e. up at 5am every morning for a run) your physical fitness and health will suffer (due to the sitting and snacking for The Simpsons fans out there ), as well as the opportunity to be involved with the community through clubs and other organizations.

The story of the Electronic Arts spouse is a very poignant and relevant reminder of the cost of long working hours on others – http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

It’s not. The point of all these studies is that evenually – inevitably – productivity not only drops to 40 hr week levels, it often plunges below that. Burning brightly is one thing, burn out is another.

As for hurting the French Software Industry, any studies, evidence of this?

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=90_Hours_A_Week_And_Loving_It.txt

They claimed working 90 hours and loving it.

If the Mac team did sticked to a 40 hours schedule, I’m pretty sure that 1984 would never have been like 1984

I believe there should be a certain of degree of flexibility in this, I guess it’s fine to stick to a 40 hours schedule per week as the norm, but if the business requires it we must be willing to work a little more when needed (crunch time, bug resolution …)

I live in France and 35 hours is the norm,
Overall it allows you to have a nicer social life, the flip side of the coin is that it hurts the French Software Industry …