Elon Musk claims he works 120 hours per week and has called for his employees at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to do the same as they fan out across the federal government. His team, which appears to rely heavily on enthusiastic young men, may share his conviction that long hours are always better. Musk has gone even further than late nights: He recently claimed he was sleeping at DOGE headquarters in Washington, D.C., a habit he may have picked up from his days at Tesla.
This is concerning no matter what job you’re doing, but it may be of special concern for the Musk team.
There’s just one problem: Musk and his team are wrong. The idea that working extremely long hours leads to increased productivity and positive results is not only outdated, but unfounded. Instead, research clearly shows that working long hours doesn’t make you a better employee. In fact, it can lead employees to struggle or even make catastrophic mistakes. This is concerning no matter what job you’re doing, but it may be of special concern for the Musk team handling sensitive data systems that touch the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans.
Research has shown the damaging effects of this grind ethos on the physical and emotional well-being of employees. In studies by professors Phyllis Moen, Erin Kelly and colleagues, data from professionals revealed that rising time demands led to increased stress and work-life conflict. Further, they found that organizational interventions aiming to increase flexibility and schedule control by focusing on results rather than long hours reduced turnover intentions and work-family conflict while increasing employee satisfaction, health and well-being. Long, inflexible work hours can lead to high turnover, dissatisfaction and negative health outcomes. In extreme cases, it may even lead to suicide.
But what about productivity? Are long hours and the collapse of work-life balance just the necessary cost of work success? Here, too, research suggests the answer is no.
According to one 2024 study published in Nature, employees who work from home two days per week are just as productive as those who work full time in the office. Professor Nicholas Bloom has found that, far from inhibiting productivity, remote work often improves organizational outcomes. Leaders may fear compromising client or patient satisfaction, but studies have shown that flexibility can actually improve client service and create better long-term outcomes. For example, in her book “Sleeping with Your Smartphone,” professor Leslie Perlow found that when the Boston Consulting Group countered their prevailing 24/7 work culture by offering employees “predicted time off,” not only did employee satisfaction and retention increase, but clients also benefitted from increased team communication and coordination.
In my own research, I’ve found that employees will sometimes grind long hours in the office not because it’s required for a good work product, but because this “performance” makes them appear productive. For example, Alyssa, a single 22-year-old management consultant, told me how expectations for excessive in-person work contradict productivity: “Sometimes it’s frustrating too because sometimes your work is done, and then you want to be a productive person at the firm, but you’re kind of sitting around like, ‘Oh, what do I do? Maybe I’ll make work up.’”
By valuing long hours and face time, organizations incentivize counterproductive behaviors that symbolize “good” work without necessarily producing high-quality work products. In fact, these performances of appropriate work behavior can actually inhibit productivity and make it more difficult for employees to do their jobs well. Along these lines, professor Erin Reid found through over 100 interviews in a global strategy consulting firm that many professionals — particularly men — “passed” as workaholic superheroes while pretending to work more hours than they actually did. This pervasive assumption could be tied to outdated ideals of a masculine “breadwinner” who spends long hours in the office while his wife tends the home. So why are people like Musk so tied to this idea of long in-person hours? This pervasive assumption could be tied to outdated ideals of a masculine “breadwinner” who spends long hours in the office while his wife tends the home. This enduring industrial-era concept relies on an assumption of separate spheres, where workplaces demand excessive hours from their male employees presuming the wives can handle the family’s personal affairs. These norms persist today, even though our workforce has changed dramatically. Because actual work quality can be difficult to measure in the knowledge and service industries, some leaders rely on long hours in the office as the “appropriate” way to measure work quality. This emphasis on process can actually eclipse the emphasis on product; leaders like Musk risk valuing long hours at the expense of work quality. Let’s hope Musk realizes his mistake quickly enough to fix it.
Alison T. Wynn
Alison T. Wynn is a senior research scholar with the Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab. Her research examines strategic organizational culture change, and she has also worked as a consultant with Exponential Talent LLC, Forshay Inc., Illuceo Inc., and Deloitte Consulting. 
