In many professional jobs, expectations that one be an “ideal worker”—fully devoted to and available for the job, with no personal responsibilities or interests that interfere with this commitment to work—are widespread. We often think of problems with these expectations as women’s problems. But men too may struggle with them: my research at a top strategy consulting firm, first published in Organization Science, revealed that many men experienced these expectations as difficult to fulfill or even distasteful. To be sure, some men seemed to happily comply with the firm’s expectations, working long hours and traveling constantly, but a majority were dissatisfied. They complained to me of children crying when they missed their soccer games, of poor health and substance addictions caused by how they worked, and of a general sense of feeling “overworked and underfamilied.”
Why Some Men Pretend to Work 80-Hour Weeks
In many professional jobs, there is an expectation that one be an “ideal worker” – fully devoted to and available for the job, with no personal responsibilities getting in the way. While women struggle with this standard more overtly, in disputes over maternity leaves and childcare, many men struggle with this expectation as well. They may resist it by pulling back their workload, while still “passing” as the workaholic superhero their company values. Other men are more direct about their difficulties with their employer, which can result in harsh penalties and marginalization. A critical implication of this research is that high quality work does not necessarily require working long hours. The men who “pass” at their jobs by pretending to work more than they actually do show that it’s possible to reorganize work so that it takes up fewer hours of the day.