If that's what it takes, so be it

I found this article funny; here's an excerpt:

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently set off quite a debate in the tech world when she told an interviewer that she works a 9-to-5 schedule:

"I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I'm home for dinner with my kids at 6, and interestingly, I've been doing that since I had kids," Sandberg said in a video posted on Makers.com. "I did that when I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it's not until the last year, two years that I'm brave enough to talk about it publicly. Now I certainly wouldn't lie, but I wasn't running around giving speeches on it."

Here's the essential questions raised by the tech executive's comments and the debate that followed: In a competitive industry where your work is never truly complete, has it become socially awkward to leave work at a time that used to be the standard?

5 PM is "the standard"? In whose world?

That wasn't "the standard" in the rabbinate for me, and it isn't the standard for any synagogue rabbi I know. Even in a hypothetical, most accomodating congregation, where family dinner is respected and rabbis are encouraged to use their vacation days to recharge, I can't see anyone exempting the rabbi from nightly meetings and/or shiurim, from late night and early morning calls, and from the type of schedule which requires that he work well into the night to keep up the pace of classes and speeches.

It's not only the rabbinate, of course; other professions also demand absurd hours. Politicians. Young associates at law firms. Teachers. Plumbers. Medical residents. Accountants, in tax season. Professional sports. Private detectives. And, it appears, the tech industry.

Why should it be the standard, anyway? If you enter a profession then you accept the rules of the game, which need no justification other than, "This is the way the game is played." If you don't like it, get out of the field, but this is part of the job description, because that's what it takes to get the job done in the way the employers want it done.

To take my own former field: Looking after the spiritual needs of hundreds of families, teaching classes, researching halachic questions, functioning as administrator and officiant and publicist for the Jewish community, these take that kind of time, and that's just the way it is.

Frankly, the same is true in my current field; there is no way to do my job without investing 13-16 hours each day; it's just not possible.

And if the same is true in politics, law, or a start-up business, so be it.

Which is why I found that article funny; why should tech be any different?