James Surowiecki

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環(huán)視現(xiàn)代社會(huì)，不知不覺(jué)中，加班已經(jīng)成為一種“時(shí)尚”。但加班是否就是工作積極、樂(lè)于奉獻(xiàn)的表現(xiàn)？加班跟工作效率的高低是否有一定的關(guān)系？為什么越來(lái)越多的年輕人“熱衷”于加班？

For decades, junior bankers and Wall Street firms had an unspoken pact: in exchange for reasonably high-paying jobs and a shot at obscene wealth, young analysts agreed to work fifteen hours a day,and forgo anything resembling a normal life.2. 幾十年來(lái)，年輕的銀行家和華爾街的公司都有一條心照不宣的潛規(guī)則：為了高薪工作或有可能獲得的極大財(cái)富，年輕分析師們一天要工作15小時(shí)，完全放棄了正常的生活。Wall Street: 華爾街，是紐約市曼哈頓區(qū)南部從百老匯路延伸到東河的一條大街道的名字，以“美國(guó)的金融中心”聞名于世，亦可指對(duì)整個(gè)美國(guó)經(jīng)濟(jì)具有影響力的金融市場(chǎng)和金融機(jī)構(gòu)；pact: 協(xié)定，契約；shot: 企圖，機(jī)會(huì)；obscene:可憎的，令人厭惡的；forgo: 放棄；resemble: 與……相像。But things may be changing.Last October, Goldman Sachs3. Goldman Sachs: 高盛集團(tuán)，一家國(guó)際領(lǐng)先的投資銀行和證券公司，總部設(shè)在紐約。told its junior investment-banking analysts not to work on Saturdays, and it has said that all analysts, on average,should be working no more than seventy to seventy- five hours a week. A couple of weeks ago, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said that analysts are expected to have four weekend days off a month. And, last week, Credit Suisse told its analysts that they should not be in the of fice on Saturdays.

These changes may sound small, but, in the context of the Street, they’re positively radical. Alexandra Michel, a former Goldman associate who is now on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, published a nineyear study of two big investment banks and found that people spent up to a hundred and twenty hours a week on the job. In the pre-cell-phone,pre-e-mail days, it was possible for people to find respite4. respite: 暫息。when they left the of fice. But, as David Solomon, the global co-head of investment banking at Goldman, told me, “Today, technology means that we’re all available 24/7. And, because everyone demands instant grati fication5. grati fication: 滿足，滿意。and instant connectivity, there are no boundaries, no breaks.”

Cry me a river, you might say. But what happened on Wall Street is just an extreme version of what’s happened to so-called knowledge workers in general. Thirty years ago, the best-paid workers in the U.S. were much less likely to6. less likely to: 不太可能。work long days than low-paid workers were. By 2006, the best paid were twice as likely to work long hours as the poorly paid, and the trend seems to be accelerating7. accelerate: 增速。. A 2008 Harvard Business School survey of a thousand professionals found that ninety-four per cent worked fifty hours or more a week, and almost half worked in excess of sixty- five hours a week. Overwork has become a credential8. credential: 資格，證書。of prosperity.

The perplexing thing about the cult of overwork is that, as we’ve known for a while, long hours diminish both productivity and quality.9. 關(guān)于加班熱的一個(gè)令人費(fèi)解的問(wèn)題是，長(zhǎng)時(shí)間的工作會(huì)降低生產(chǎn)率和質(zhì)量，而這個(gè)我們都已經(jīng)知道。perplexing: 令人費(fèi)解的；diminish: 降低，減少。Among industrial workers, overtime raises the rate of mistakes and safety mishaps10. mishap: 災(zāi)禍，不幸事故。; likewise, for knowledge workers fatigue and sleep-deprivation make it hard to perform at a high cognitive level.11. fatigue: 疲憊，疲勞；deprivation: 剝奪，匱乏；cognitive: 認(rèn)知的。As Solomon put it, past a certain point overworked people become “l(fā)ess ef ficient and less effective.” And the effects are cumulative12. cumulative: 累積的，漸增的。. The bankers Michel studied started to break down13. break down: 衰弱下來(lái)，出毛病。in their fourth year on the job. They suffered from depression, anxiety, and immune-system problems, and performance reviews showed that their creativity and judgment declined.14. immune-system: 免疫系統(tǒng)；performance: 表現(xiàn)，業(yè)績(jī)。

If the bene fits of working fewer hours are this clear, why has it been so hard for businesses to embrace the idea? Simple economics certainly plays a role: in some cases, such as law firms that bill by the hour, the system can reward you for working longer, not smarter.15. bill: 給……開賬單；by the hour: 按小時(shí)；reward: 回報(bào)，獎(jiǎng)賞。And even if a person pulling all-nighters is less productive than a well-rested substitute would be, it’s still cheaper to pay one person to work a hundred hours a week than two people to work fifty hours apiece.16. 而且，即使一個(gè)通宵熬夜的人比一個(gè)得到充分休息的人效率低，給一個(gè)人工作100小時(shí)付的工資還是要比給兩個(gè)人各工作50小時(shí)付得少。pull all-nighters: 通宵熬夜；substitute: 代替者；apiece: 每人，各自地。(In the case of medicine,residents work long hours not just because it’s good training but also because they’re a cheap source of labor.) On top of this, the productivity of most knowledge workers is much harder to quantify than that of, say, an assembly-line worker.17. quantify: 量化，用數(shù)量來(lái)表示；assembly-line: 裝配線，流水線。So, as Bob Pozen, a former president of Fidelity Management and the author ofExtreme Productivity, a book on slashing work hours, told me, “Time becomes an easy metric to measure how productive someone is,even though it doesn’t have any necessary connection to what they achieve.”18. 鮑勃·博森是富達(dá)管理的前總裁，也是提倡減少工作時(shí)長(zhǎng)的書《極端生產(chǎn)力》的作者，他曾告訴我：“時(shí)間成為衡量一個(gè)人工作能力的簡(jiǎn)單標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，雖然它跟人們的工作成效沒(méi)有任何必然聯(lián)系?！眘lash: 嚴(yán)厲批評(píng)，大幅削減；metric: 度量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。

Habit, too, is powerful: things are done a certain way because that’s how they’ve been done before, and because that’s the way the people in charge19. in charge: 負(fù)責(zé)，主管。were trained. When new regulations limited medical residents’ working hours to eighty a week, many doctors complained of declining standards and mollycoddling20. mollycoddle: 溺愛(ài)，縱容。, and said that it would have a disastrous effect on training, even though residents in Europe work many fewer hours, without harming the quality of medical care. “I went through it, so you should” is a dif ficult impulse to resist.

To make these new policies stick21. stick: 產(chǎn)生作用。, then, banks have to change not just rules but expectations. Indeed, as Michel told me, “it isn’t really external rules that force bankers to work the way they do. It’s an entire cultural system.”She cites the example of a consulting firm that mandated that people stay out of the of fice on weekends, only to discover that they were working secretly from home.22. cite: 引用，提及；mandate: 強(qiáng)制執(zhí)行，批準(zhǔn)。In a culture that venerates overwork, people internalize crazy hours as the norm.23. venerate: 崇敬，尊敬；internalize:使內(nèi)在化。As the anthropologist Karen Ho writes in her bookLiquidated, “On Wall Street, hard work is always overwork.” Grinding out hundred-hour weeks for years helps bankers think of themselves as tougher and more dedicated than everyone else. And working fifteen hours a day doesn’t just demonstrate your commitment to a company; it also reinforces that commitment. Over time, the simple fact that you work so much becomes proof that the job is worthwhile, and being in the of fice day and night becomes a kind of permanent initiation ritual. The challenge for Wall Street is: can it still get bankers to run with the pack if it stops treating them like dogs?