Inside Intel Paul Otellinis plan will send the chipmaker into u.docx

Inside Intel
Paul Otellini's plan will send the chipmaker into uncharted
territory. And founder Andy Grove applauds the shift
COVER STORY PODCAST
Even the gentle clinking of silverware stopped dead. Andrew S.
Grove, the revered former Intel Corp. (INTC ) chief executive
and now a senior adviser, had stepped up to the microphone in a
hotel ballroom down the street from Intel's Santa Clara (Calif.)
headquarters, preparing to respond to a startling presentation by
new Chief Marketing Officer Eric B. Kim. All too familiar with
Grove's legendary wrath, many of the 300 top managers at the
Oct. 20 gathering tensed in their seats as they waited for a
tongue-lashing of epic proportions. "No one knew what to
think," recalls one attendee.
The reason? Kim's plan, cooked up with new CEO Paul S.
Otellini, was a sharp departure from the company Grove had
built. Essentially, they were proposing to blow up Intel's brand,
the fifth-best-known in the world. As Otellini looked on from a
front table, Kim declared that Intel must "clear out the
cobwebs" and kill off many Grove-era creations. Intel Inside?
Dump it, he said. The Pentium brand? Stale. The widely
recognized dropped "e" in Intel's corporate logo? A relic.
Grove's deep baritone, sharpened by the accent of his native
Hungary, pierced the expectant silence. But instead of smiting
the Philistines, Intel's patriarch sprinkled holy water on

Otellini's plan. He understood that it was no repudiation of him,
but rather a recognition that times had changed -- and that Intel
needed to change with them. "I want to say," he boomed, "that
this program strikes me as one of the best manifestations
incorporating Intel values of risk-taking, discipline, and results
orientation I have ever seen here. I, for one, fully support it."
As executives rose to greet him with relieved applause, the
moment signaled an historic shift for one of the world's most
powerful technology companies. The iconic Intel would leave
the Grove era behind and head into uncharted territory. Otellini
will unveil the new strategy and new products on Jan. 5, at the
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Central to the effort
will be the first new corporate logo in more than three decades
and a $2.5 billion advertising and marketing blitz,
BusinessWeek has learned.
The changes go far deeper than the company's brand. Under
Grove and successor Craig R. Barrett, Intel thrived by
concentrating on the microprocessors that power personal
computers. By narrowing the company's focus, the duo buried
the competition. They invested billions in hyperproductive
plants that could crank out more processors in a day than some
rivals did in a year. Meanwhile, they helped give life to the
Information Age, with ever-faster, more powerful chips.
Otellini is tossing out the old model. Instead of remaining
focused on PCs, he's pushing Intel to play a key technological
role in a half-dozen fields, including consumer electronics,
wireless communications, and health care. And rather than just
microprocessors, he wants Intel to create all kinds of chips, as
well as software, and then meld them together into what he calls
"platforms." The idea is to power innovation from the living
room to the emergency room. "This is the right thing for our
company, and to some extent the industry," he says. "All of us
want [technology] to be more powerful and to be simpler, to do

stuff for us without us having to think about it."
Why the shift? Stark necessity. PC growth is slowing, even as
cell phones and handheld devices compete for the numero uno
spot in people's lives. Otellini must reinvent Intel -- or face a
future of creaky maturity. Revenue growth has averaged 13%
for the past three years, but analysts figure Intel will see only
7% growth in 2006, to $42.2 billion. Meantime, profits, which
have surged an average 40% annually over the past three years,
are expected to rise a measly 5%, to $9.5 billion. "It's a race for
Intel and other companies to figure out how fast is revenue
going to come from emerging areas before PC margins begin to
come down sharply," says Ragu Gurumurthy, head of
technology practice for Boston tech consultancy Adventis Corp.
20,000 New Faces
Intel has tried entering new markets in the past, particularly
under Barrett. Yet it always treated them as tangential and never
let them detract from the core processor effort. Not anymore.
Otellini, who took over as CEO in May, has reorganized the
company top to bottom, putting most of its 98,000 employees
into new jobs. He created business units for each product area,
including mobility and digital health, and scattered the
processor experts among them. He has also added 20,000 people
in the past year. The result? Intel is poised to launch more new
products in 2006 than at any time in its history.
Intel's culture is changing, too. Under the charismatic Grove,
who was CEO from 1987 to 1998 and then chairman until 2005,
the company was a rough-and-tumble place. Grove's motto was
"Only the paranoid survive," and managers frequently engaged
in "constructive confrontation," which any outsider would call
shouting. Engineers ruled the roost. Grove and Barrett also
instituted the practice of doling out cash to PC makers for joint
advertising, which Intel rivals have alleged blocks them from
some markets.

Otellini is more diplomatic, partly by nature, partly by
necessity. The intensely private 55-year-old rarely reveals
irritation -- and then, with a slight frown. His management
mantra: "Praise in public, criticize in private."
He's also is the first non-engineer to run the company. Otellini
studied economics in college at the University of San Francisco
and then joined Intel in 1974, straight out of B-school at the
University of California at Berkeley. Many of the new
employees he's bringing on aren't typical Intel hires either. They
include software developers, sociologists, ethnographers, even
doctors to help develop products. He lays particular emphasis
on marketing expertise because he thinks the only way Intel can
succeed in new markets is by communicating more clearly what
the technology can do for customers. "To sell technology now,
you have to do it in a way where it's much more simple," says
Otellini. "You can't talk about the bits and the bytes."
The changes have created some angst among employees. In
particular, many high-level engineers working on PC products
feel they've been stripped of their star status. "The desktop
group used to rule the company, and we liked it that way," says
one former chip designer, adding that some engineers now feel
"directionless." Other employees are simply uncomfortable with
the new emphasis on marketing. "There definitely are people
who are highly skeptical, who think this is all fluff, all just
gloss -- that if you make good technology, you don't need the
glitz," says Genevieve Bell, an in-house ethnographer who
researches how people in emerging markets like China and India
use technology.
Yet Intel and Otellini aren't shying away from glitz these days.
For its bash at the Consumer Electronics Show, the company
has booked the hip-hop band Black Eyed Peas, with its hit Let's
Get It Started. Beforehand, Otellini will unveil the new Intel

during his keynote speech. It starts with a whole new look for
the 37-year-old company. The Intel Inside logo will disappear,
replaced by an updated Intel logo with a swirl around it to
signify movement. For the first time since the early 1990s, the
company will add a tagline: "Leap ahead."
Meantime, the famous Pentium brand will be slowly phased out.
In its place: a troika of brands, two of them freshly minted. Viiv
(rhymes with "alive") is the name of a new chip for home PCS,
designed to replace your TiVo (TIVO ), stereo, and, potentially,
cable or satellite set-top box. It will be able to download first-
run movies, music, and games, and shift them around the home.
Intel also will launch a set of notebook PC chips under the
three-year-old Centrino brand, as well as so-called dual-core
chips, which will put two processor cores on one sliver of
silicon. The new brand "Core" will be put on products that don't
meet the specifications of the Viiv or Centrino platforms. The
effort is winning high-profile support. On Jan. 10, Apple
Computer Inc. (AAPL ), which has never used Intel's chips
before, is expected to be one of the first companies to offer
products with the dual-core chips.
One of Otellini's key steps in all this was hiring Kim away from
Samsung Group a year ago. Kim had led Samsung's marketing
since 1999 and helped build the Korean maker of consumer
electronics, cell phones, and computer chips into a hot global
brand. But Otellini didn't just swipe a major talent away from
the company that's increasingly seen as Intel's prime
competitor. By hiring an outsider who reports directly to the
CEO for the first time in Intel's history, Otellini also got
someone who could play bad cop and push through unpopular
changes when necessary. Rank-and-file employees do grumble
about Kim and what they consider his autocratic style, but he
makes no apologies. "I tell people they're not just about making
silicon. They're helping people's lives improve, and we need to
let the world know that," says Kim.

Yet it's a daunting task, especially for a company that has never
had much success outside the computer industry. Companies
that have been good at transforming themselves, from Nissan
(NSANY ) and Apple to Texas Instruments, (TXN )typically
need a crisis to precipitate change, says management expert Jay
R. Galbraith of Galbraith Associates. And although Intel is
facing a possible slowdown, it's still pulling in nearly $1 billion
a month in profits. "Change is really hard when you're solidly
on top," says Galbraith. "He'll have to bring in new people who
have new skill sets."
A Mean Pack
Competitors keep nipping at Intel's flanks. Longtime rival
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD ) in 2003 launched its
Opteron and Athlon 64 chips, outgunning Intel in both raw
power and lower power consumption. AMD's market share rose
to 17.8% last quarter, up from 16.6% in early 2003, and some
analysts predict it will gain more until Intel fields competitive
chips in late 2007. AMD CEO Hector J. de Ruiz equates Intel's
position with that of American auto makers, scrambling to find
innovation even as consumers flock to Japanese rivals. "People
are smart enough to pick quality when given a choice, and
calling something a platform doesn't guarantee quality," Ruiz
says.
In the cell phone market, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm Inc.
(QCOM ) have held fast against Intel's incursions. Intel
Executive Vice-President Sean M. Maloney once wore
snowshoes to a company sales conference to illustrate the deep
slog. In 2006, AMD and TI plan to field their own chip
platforms aimed at capturing some real estate in the digital
home.
So Otellini is shaking things up throughout the company. In
addition to the reorg, he's making big changes in the way

products are developed. While in the past engineers worked on
ever-faster chips and then let marketers try to sell them, there
are now teams of people with a cross-section of skills. Chip
engineers, software developers, marketers, and market
specialists all work together to come up with compelling
products.
One example of the new approach is Bern Shen. A doctor who
practiced internal medicine for 15 years, he joined Intel three
months ago to help develop technologies for digital health. He
works with Intel's ethnographers to figure out which
technologies might help in monitoring the vital signs of the
elderly or tracking the diet of people with Alzheimer's. "The
fact that they hired me is an indication of the new Intel," he
says.
Otellini is convinced such collaboration will lead to
breakthrough innovations. He imagines a day when people will
use Centrino laptops to watch live TV on the subway or when
kids will be able to download Spider-Man 3 to their home
theater on the same day it's released worldwide. Shen's work
could lead to Intel technology that allows the elderly to keep
living at home, even as data on their vital signs are zapped to
doctors several times a day. "This is the right model," Otellini
says. "Now it's just a matter of playing it out."
If the world buys Otellini's ideas, industries from Hollywood to
health care could be turned upside down. Media and
entertainment may be forced to rethink their business models.
The health industry could be transformed, as doctors diagnose
or even treat patients remotely. "The most important thing about
Intel is that they've got the vision," says Russ Bodoff, executive
director of the Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST),
a coalition of 400 companies, universities, and hospitals. "They
are pushing some very innovative approaches, in areas that
relate to dementia, Alzheimer's care, and Parkinson's disease."

The ultimate goal: to provide the manufacturers of everything
from laptops and entertainment PCs to cell phones and hospital
gear with complete packages of chips and software. The
template is Centrino. When Otellini was leading product
planning in the core PC business from 1998 to 2002, he decided
that rather than roll out just another fast processor, he would
bundle it with a relatively new wireless Internet technology
called Wi-Fi. The combo made it a breeze for people to connect
to the Net from airport lounges and coffee shops. Backed with
an initial $300 million marketing campaign, Centrino notebooks
became an instant hit, revitalizing the PC market and
persuading consumers to snap up the higher-margin products.
Now, a Giant Step
Still, Intel's first big success in diversification was only a half-
step away from the core PC market. Will it be able to do as well
in other areas? Consider Viiv. In the consumer electronics
market where Viiv devices will be positioned as an all-in-one
DVD player, game console, TiVo, and music jukebox, it faces
plenty of big-name competitors. Meanwhile, brand-new
challengers are appearing on the horizon. Sony Corp. (SNE ),
with its PlayStation 3 due out in just a few months, aims to
offer games, movies, and music on the device, which uses chips
from IBM (IBM ). Cable and satellite providers such as
Comcast Corp. (CMCSA ) and DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV ) are
adding more features and services to their set-top boxes, such as
on-demand television shows and XM satellite radio.
Cutting through the clutter of competitive activity is why
Otellini and Kim have lifted branding to new heights at Intel.
But for a huge company like Intel, it will be especially tough.
"In many ways, it's like trying to change the engines on an
airplane when you're flying it," says Russ Meyer, chief strategy
officer for branding consultancy Landor Associates. Companies
must try not only to differentiate themselves from competitors

but also to align internally to make sure the same message is
clear to employees. For an "ingredient" brand like Intel with no
products that a consumer actually can pick up from the local
Best Buy (BBY ) or Wal-Mart, (WMT ) the trick also is to
convince new customers of the value of using its products.
With that in mind, Otellini's Digital Home team has struck some
of the biggest content deals to date with major Hollywood
players and music services to entice both customers and
consumers to the Viiv platform. The hundreds of millions it will
dole out for marketing Viiv has partners like Sony and Philips
Electronics (PHG ) salivating. They also seem to be genuinely
impressed with the new attitude at Otellini's Intel. "I have seen
more flexibility, more of an open mindset than in years past,"
says Sony Vice-President Mike Abary, who heads the company's
Vaio PC business. "They realize that times have changed, that
they don't have all the answers. So it has been much more
collaborative working with them."
Otellini also has gone to great lengths to win over marketing
maestro Steve Jobs. It's quite a reversal. For years, Grove and
Barrett pooh-poohed Apple as a niche company whose products
had sleek form, but nowhere near the function of computers
with Intel's chips. Yet Otellini set about wooing Jobs almost
from the start. In June, a month after Otellini took over, the two
companies announced Apple would begin shipping Macs and
other products with Intel chips inside in 2006. Otellini aims to
use the Apple relationship to force PC makers to step up their
innovation. "They've always been a front-runner in design," he
says. "As they start taking advantage of some of our lower-
power products, that form factor will improve significantly. I
think it will help drive a trend toward smaller, cheaper, cooler."
Jobs's influence extends beyond design. At Otellini's urging,
Apple's "Think Different" vernacular is beginning to take root
inside Intel. The two chief executives also appear to be

developing a real friendship. Intel insiders say they talk
regularly. And when Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla,
visited Silicon Valley in late November, Jobs and Otellini were
side by side, hobnobbing with the royals.
The Apple relationship could create some strain with Intel's two
old compadres in the PC business, Dell (DELL ) and Microsoft.
(MSFT ) Dell has been one of Intel's most loyal customers: It's
the only major U.S. maker of PCs that hasn't come out with
boxes powered by AMD chips. So if Intel provides strong
support for Apple in the PC business, it could prompt Dell to do
business with AMD'S Ruiz. Dell is going after more consumer
business, Apple's primary turf. In late 2005, Dell introduced a
higher-end XPS line and it plans to ship Viiv PCs.
Meantime, Intel execs seem open to easing their once ironclad
ties to Microsoft. At the start, PC makers will have to use
Microsoft's Windows Media Center Edition operating system to
earn the Viiv brand -- and Intel's co-marketing dollars. But Intel
says this may not continue, opening the door to Viiv machines
with the Linux open-source operating system or even Apple's.
Indeed, Kim says he expects some PC companies to ship Viiv
boxes, without Windows.
Another budding relationship in Intel's march on new markets is
with Google (GOOG ). Otellini joined the search company's
board in April, 2004, and has found a few areas of joint interest.
For one, Otellini heard that Google's energy bill for its servers
now exceeds the cost of the equipment. (With 100,000 servers,
Google's electricity bill probably tops $50 million a year.) That
prompted Otellini to explore the prospects for energy-efficient
chips. In August, Intel announced it would dump its old
architecture in favor of lower-power chips in 2006.
The two companies also have a shared interest in wireless
broadband. Google is exploring whether to set up free Wi-Fi

"hot spots" in San Francisco and other cities. Footing the bill
for Net access may make sense for Google, since it allows the
company to show digital ads to any Web surfers who use the
service. Intel would benefit because free Wi-Fi could further
sales of Centrino laptops. Google execs have also said they're
interested in WiMax, another wireless technology Intel is
backing. Intel plans to imbed WiMax, which is similar to Wi-Fi
but works over greater distances, into PC chips late this year.
Outsiders Welcome
To bolster the push, Otellini is looking to recruit more execs
from outside the company. In the past year, Maloney hired
Nokia Corp. (NOK ) veteran Steven Gray as a key member of
the cellular team. And Maloney is turning more often to Intel
Vice-President Sam Arditi, a cellular industry veteran with
experience in radio chips and processors -- key ingredients in
handsets.
The result: closer ties with Nokia and Samsung, which are both
collaborating with Intel on WiMax. In September, Maloney also
announced a deal with Research In Motion Ltd., (RIMM )
making it the first major name to use its cellular platform of
radio, processors, and memory. "The relationship is going to be
very important to RIM," says co-CEO Jim Basillie.
For all that, Otellini's internal challenges may prove more
daunting than the external ones. For one, PC chip development
still casts a long shadow at the company. During Grove's and
Barrett's tenures, anyone not producing for the core PC business
was considered a second-class citizen. Barrett described the
problem as akin to the creosote bush, a tall desert plant that
drips poisonous oil, killing off all vegetation that tries to grow
nearby. Microprocessors so dominated the company's strategy,
he says, that other businesses could not sprout around it. That
was one reason Otellini reorganized into product areas.

The shake-up hasn't helped company morale, though. Especially
hard-hit were the engineering teams in California and Texas,
which had been working on the Pentium 4 until Otellini
canceled it. Some of the design specialists have quit for new
jobs, often with AMD or TI. To smooth over the troubles,
Otellini has toured the chipmaker's outposts, talking with
engineers and others without their managers around. "A lot of
what he heard was pent-up frustration, no doubt," says one
engineer. "But you appreciate the fact that he's listening."
Intel's attrition in 2005 was 4%, about average for the tech
industry.
Sniping about the rise of marketers such as Kim continues. Says
Schmuel "Mooly" Eden, an Israeli engineer who helped
spearhead the Centrino launch and now heads marketing for the
Mobility Group: "When I went back to Israel to talk to some of
the engineers, they said: 'You're only one year in marketing, and
already you're brain-damaged."'
As Intel gears up for its big bang of product launches, there's no
doubt the mantle of leadership has shifted. This year, Otellini,
for the first time, will write a performance review for Grove. In
his advisory role, Grove sits in on important meetings,
particularly in digital health, and gives his thoughts. Asked
about the prospects of critiquing the company legend, Otellini
just laughs. Reviewing Grove will be a breeze next to the
challenge of remaking the world's largest chipmaker.
BIG PICTURE
Certain industries breed a type of professional for whom get-a-
life dedication is a badge of honor. The phenomenon is on the
rise, but is it sustainable?
Extreme Jobs The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek

by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce
Afinancial analyst we’ll call Sudhir emigrated five years ago
from Mumbai, India. He works at a major commercial bank in
New York. Sum- mertime, when he puts in 90 hours a week, is
his “light” season. The rest of the year, he works upwards of
120 hours per week – leaving only 48 hours for sleeping, eating,
entertaining, and (he smiles) bathing. Sudhir stays late in the
office even when he has nothing particularly pressing to do.
His get-a-life existence is a hazard of the profession – but worth
it: As a 23-year-old with a first job, he is in the top 6% of
earners in America.
Higher up the totem pole, Joe (not his real name) has risen
through the corporate ranks to become a managing director at a
major bank. Joe thought his workload would become lighter as
he moved up, but the opposite has oc- curred: He now works six
or seven days a week, from multiple locations. He keeps an
apartment in New York, where he works two days, and is on the
road another three or four days. Only on weekends does he see
his wife and three children – who live in Connecticut. Even
then, he gets calls in the middle of the night on Saturdays and
Sundays, and flies out to see clients on a moment’s
december 2006
49
PJ LOUGHRAN
BIG PICTURE • The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour
Workweek
Researching Extreme Jobs
In 2004 the Center for Work-Life Policy launched a private-
sector task force consisting of 33 global companies devoted to

stemming attrition in their female executive ranks – a problem
referred to as the “hidden brain drain.” Task force discussions
and survey data showed that one challenge facing women was a
trend toward more extreme work in corporate mana- gerial
positions. In 2005 and 2006, we focused specifically on that
issue. This research consists of two surveys – one of high
earners across various professions in the U.S. and the other of
high-earning managers in large multinational corporations – as
well as 14 focus groups and 35 one-on-one interviews. The
survey of U.S. workers targeted the top 6% of earners in the
country and garnered responses from 1,564 full-time employees
(844 men, 720 women) ages 25 to 60. The survey of managers at
global companies included 652 men and 323 women, ages 25
to 60, at the director level or above; 54% were from the United
States or Canada, and 46% were from Europe, the Middle East,
or Africa. Survey statistics cited throughout this article refer to
the U.S. high earners unless specifically attributed to the
multinational management population. The surveys were
conducted online by Harris Interactive from November 1, 2005,
through April 6, 2006.
notice.“Thefirstyearweweremarried,” Joe’s wife recalls, “we
had to rearrange my grandmother’s funeral so that he wouldn’t
miss a meeting.”
Ming Mei is a managing director and a member of the executive
commit- tee at ProLogis, a fast-growing real estate investment
trust with extensive operations in Asia. Mei is in charge of
expansion in China, where he’s built ProLogis’s portfolio base
from zero to 10 million square feet of properties over the past
three years. The demands of his job are immense. Negotiating
with Chinese government officials, he routinely packs five
cities into six-day business trips. These trips can be grueling –
back-to-back meetings spill over into late dinners where key
relationships are cultivated and cemented. Despite the pressure
and the pace, Mei describes his job in glowing terms: “Build-

ing this business in markets where no one has done anything
like this before is enormously exciting. And important. We’ve
built distribution centers that are vital for China’s growth – they
contribute to the overall prospects of the economy.”
Jonelle Salter is similarly enthusiastic about her job. An
offshore installation manager (OIM) at BP, Jonelle knows what
it’s like to be in charge of the health and safety of 80 workers
on an oil platform in the North Sea. On top of pressures that
would face anyone in this job, she has some unique management
challenges. As the first black woman to become an OIM at
BP, Jonelle has some- times had to go to extra lengths to
establish her authority in this male- dominated environment.
But she loves being a pioneer and credits BP for going out on a
limb and finding a female mentor (Gro Kielland, a managing
director for BP Norway) to help her through the rough patches.
Jonelle talks eloquently about the thrill that comes with the
challenges of her job. “You train and train, but you still don’t
know whether you’ll come through when
an emergency happens – and whether you can conjure up the
right kind of leadership,” she says.“It’s a kind of test. And
when you pass, you feel quite wonderful.”
Sudhir, Joe, Mei, and Jonelle are suc- ceeding in what we have
come to term “extreme jobs,” and they’re not alone. Across the
economy, there are high- earning professionals whose work has
become all consuming. The outrageous hours they put into their
careers are matched only by the over-the-top rewards they
receive.
Do these professionals constitute a new breed? Not entirely.
Highly demanding and important jobs have always been
around – along with the workaholics who created them where
they didn’t need to exist. Yet there is a difference. No longer
the pitiable drones and graspers of society, today’s

overachieving professionals are recast as road warriors and
masters of the universe. They labor longer, take on more
responsibility, and earn more ex-
travagantly than ever before – and their numbers are growing.
Our research on extreme jobs is a project of the Hidden Brain
Drain Task Force, which we launched in February 2004 and now
head up. In late 2005, four of the task force’s member compa-
nies – American Express, BP, ProLogis, and UBS – sponsored
two large surveys with the intent of “mapping” the shape and
scope of high-level, high-impact jobs these days. We also
conducted in- depth
qualitative
research – focus
groups and interviews – to get at the attitudes and motivations
that lie behind the extreme-work model (the sidebar “Re-
searching Extreme Jobs” provides more detail). We then
considered the data in relation to the large-scale structural
shifts that have made high-stakes em- ployment a more
prominent feature of the U.S. economy and culture. What
emerges from this inquiry is a complex picture of the all-
consuming career – rewarding in many ways, but not without
danger to individuals and society.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett is the president of the Center for Work-Life
Policy, a New York–based nonprofit organization. She also
heads the Gender and Policy Program at Columbia University’s
School of International and Public Affairs, in New York.
Carolyn Buck Luce is the chair of the Hidden Brain Drain Task
Force and the global pharmaceutical sector leader at Ernst &
Young, in New York.
50
harvard business review | hbr.org

The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek • BIG
PICTURE
The Elements of Extremity
How do we define extreme jobs? For the purposes of data
analysis, we’ve said that survey respondents have such jobs if
they work 60 hours or more per week, are high earners, and hold
positions with at least five of these characteristics:
• Unpredictable flow of work • Fast-paced work under tight
deadlines • Inordinate scope of responsibility that amounts to
more than one job • Work-related events outside regular work
hours • Availability to clients 24/7 • Responsibility for profit
and loss • Responsibility for mentoring and recruiting • Large
amount of travel • Large number of direct reports • Physical
presence at workplace at least ten hours a day Our two surveys
of high-earning professionals have revealed the four charac-
teristics thought to create the most intensity and pressure:
unpredictability (cited by 91% of respondents), fast pace with
tight deadlines (86%), work- related events outside business
hours (66%), and 24/7 client demands (61%).
The American Dream on Steroids The first thing that becomes
clear is that successful professionals are working harder than
ever. The 40-hour workweek, it seems, is a thing of the past.
Even the 60-hour workweek, once the path to the top, is now
practically considered part-time, as a recent Fortune magazine
article put it. Our data reveal that 62% of high-earning
individuals work more than 50 hours a week, 35% work more
than 60 hours a week, and 10% work more than 80 hours a
week. Add in a typical one-hour commute, and a 60-hour
workweek translates into leaving the house at 7 am and getting
homeat9pmfivedaysaweek.Ifwe focus on the subset of those
workers who hold what we consider extreme jobs (a designation
based on responsibilities and other attributes beyond pay), the

hours are even more punishing. The majority of them (56%)
work 70 hours or more a week, and 9% work 100 hours or more.
How dramatic a jump is this from the past? Without longitudinal
data on ac-
tual behavior, we must rely on our respondents to gauge the
increase. Of the extreme jobholders, 48% say they are working
an average of 16.6 more hours per week than they did five years
ago. That finding is consistent with other studies of the
expanding workweek, including, most recently, one by Peter
Kuhn and Fernando Lozano of the Na- tional Bureau of
Economic Research. (Among college-educated men working
full-time in the United States, Kuhn and Lozano report, those
putting in 50-hour weeks rose from 22.2% to 30.5% between
1980 and 2001.)
Vacations, meanwhile, seem to be shrinking. Among the
extreme-jobs crowd, 42% take ten or fewer vacation days
per
year – far
less
time
off
than
they are officially entitled to – and 55% claim they have had to
cancel vacation plans “regularly.” Moreover, they say no one is
forcing them to do this. The long hours and months without
breaks are discretionary. Jay (not his real name), a creative
executive at a major entertainment company, is a case in point.
He can’t remember the last time he
had a vacation, and he has all but dele- gated his social life to
handlers. He is driven by a vision of taking his company into a
new creative space – video games – and his heart and soul are
wrapped up in this mission, which has become the defining

element of his identity. “If I can get this to work for the
studio,” he told us with unalloyed enthusiasm,“I’ll be the first
guy to figure it out. Everyone else who has tried has failed. It’s
my Everest.”
Let us back up for a moment and clar- ify the distinction we are
making between run-of-the-mill long-hours jobs and extreme
jobs. Our definition, which grew out of extended focus group
discussions, takes into account not just hours (and, of course,
pay) but also the pressures that make these positions
particularly stressful. We identified ten common characteristics
of extreme jobs and decided to classify a respondent as an
extreme jobholder if he or she is confronted by at least five of
them, on top of working 60 hours or more per week (see the
sidebar “The Elements of Extremity”). By this standard, 21% of
the high earners in the U.S. whom we surveyed have extreme
jobs. (In our separate survey of professionals working in
global companies, this figure rises to 45%.)
The fact is, extreme jobs are no longer a rarity. Our data reveal
an enormous increase in work pressure for high-caliber
professionals across ages, genders, sec- tors, and continents.
Extreme jobs, we’ve found, are distributed across the economy
– in
large
manufacturing
companies as well as on Wall Street, in entertainment and
media, in medicine and law, in consulting and accounting.
Given this increasingly extreme work model, one might imagine
that our study has also uncovered a great many burned out and
bitter professionals. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The over-
whelming majority of extreme jobholders in our U.S. sample
(66%) say they love their jobs – and in the global companies
survey, this figure rises to 76%. Far from seeing themselves as
workaholics in need of rescuing, extreme workers wear their

commitments like
december 2006
51
Workweek
Why Do You Do It?
Holders of extreme jobs indicated what motivates them to work
long, stressful hours. They answered the question “What are the
main reasons you love your job?” Multiple responses were
allowed.
90%
82%
52%
43%
43%
37% 42%
Receive recognition for work
Women
28%
23% 30%
Power/ status

Stimulating/ challenging/ gives me an adrenaline rush
High-quality colleagues
High compensation
Men
badges of honor. To use the words of the cultural critic
Catherine Orenstein, these jobs constitute “the American Dream
on steroids.” There is very little sense of victimization. Almost
two- thirds (64%) of extreme workers admit that the pressure
and the pace are self- inflicted – a function of a type A person-
ality. By and large, extreme professionals don’t feel exploited;
they feel exalted.
Why the Rise in Extreme Work? Every extreme worker has his
or her own reasons for putting in the effort. Many people love
the intellectual challenge and the thrill of achieving some-
thing big. Others are turned on by the oversize compensation
packages, bril- liant colleagues, and recognition and respect that
come with the territory. When we asked our survey respon-
dents what motivated them, most cited a number of factors. (See
the exhibit “Why Do You Do It?”)
Note how gendered the responses are. For men, compensation
comes in third on the list of motivators, after
stimulation/challenge and high-quality colleagues. For women,
compensation comes in fifth, or last. The following comments
by Debra Langford are typical of what we heard in interviews:
“It’s not that compensation isn’t a top pri- ority – it clearly is
important. As an African-American single woman with financial
responsibilities, I must be stra- tegic in my career choices.
When I ac- cepted this position with Time Warner, in which I
am responsible for identify- ing diverse candidates for high-

level positions at the company, I knew the benefits would be
beyond the purely financial. This is an important position
because of the value of what I do – and the recognition and
support I receive for my efforts are incredibly rewarding.”
Similarly, Susan Sobbott, president of the OPEN division of
American Ex- press, chose AmEx because she wanted to be part
of a mission she believed in–and part of a dedicated team.“I
used to be a financial analyst on Wall Street,” she said. “After
my MBA, I weighed going back into investment banking and
considered consulting. I thought about the big paycheck that
typically comes with working in these fields. But for me, the
most important thing in choos- ing a path – more important than
zeros after a dollar sign – was to find an organization where I
could work with talented people to create leading business
strategies that further a great brand.”
Interesting as these motivations are, it should be pointed out
that individual decisions about work are not made in a vacuum.
At a macro level, the reasons behind the rise of the extreme job
are structural; it’s the outcome of sweeping changes in the
global economic environment. These changes – which include
increased competitive pressures, vastly improved
communication technology, and cultural shifts – intersect in
powerful ways.
Competitive pressures. To begin with, competition has become
more intense, both at the level of the individual professional
and at the level of the cor- poration. Within companies, the
com- bined effect of merger mania and sub- stantially flattened
hierarchies has been to pit a bigger pool of workers against one
another for any given promotion. Catalyst reported that in 2005
there were 368 fewer corporate officer posi-
tions in the Fortune 500 than there had been ten years earlier

(the number de- clined from 11,241 to 10,873) – which means
the competition for high-level positions has become that much
fiercer. Add to this the influx of talent that has come about
through women’s large- scale movement into the workforce and
companies’ ongoing diversity efforts. Both factors heighten the
level of competition. As companies grow leaner and meaner,
we see the declining job secu- rity that Louis Uchitelle
describes in The Disposable American. Meanwhile, more
responsibility falls on the shoulders of fewer individuals. Paul,
a vice chairman at one of the big four accounting firms, told us
his job has gotten so huge that each day more things are left
undone. “The clincher,” he said, “is that the importance of the
things I’m not getting to is greater than it used to be.”
The economists Robert Frank and Philip Cook have argued that,
more and more, our economy operates by “winner take all”
rules. This is the kind of dynamic that exists in flatter hier-
archies. Because a slight performance edge yields outsize
rewards (culminat- ing in the gargantuan salaries awarded to
CEOs these days), there is a powerful incentive to work
incrementally more
52
PICTURE
than one’s rivals. Hours and effort ratchet up accordingly.
Consider how different this is from the days of TV shows like
Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet, when a professional
man who was rea- sonably productive between the hours of 9
and 5 could count on a steady if un- spectacular ascent through
the ranks. The 1950s professional model was in many ways
kinder and gentler, but for any young turk willing to work
harder and eager to be rewarded, it was a source of intense

frustration. Today’s model operates by the young turks’ rules:
The American Dream isn’t about being Ozzie Nelson. It’s about
being Donald Trump.
Increasingly, the young turks are actually young Indians or
young Chinese– or whatever smart and hardworking population
offers a labor cost advantage. The threat of losing jobs to out-
sourcing arrangements is another driver in the rise of extreme
work. Finally, the climbing costs of health care insurance and
other benefits – and the fact that “nonexempt” professionals do
not earn overtime pay in the U.S.–make companies eager to
squeeze as many hours of work as possible out of their
employees before springing for another fully loaded salary.
The “extreme” ethos. While competitive pressures in
corporations are making extreme jobs more necessary, other
changes in the broader society are making them more
attractive. Orenstein points to signs in the popular culture of the
widespread embrace of the “extreme” ethos. Extreme sports in
particular have become wildly popular – they have their own
version of the Olympics, known simply as the X Games, created
in 1995 by ESPN. The reality TV show Fear Factor gives couch
potatoes vicari- ous thrills by putting ordinary people to the test
in extreme stunts. Neighbor- hood health clubs now offer rock-
climbing walls and kickboxing classes for those who abhor the
dull routine of exercise.
We first heard the word “extreme” ap- plied to white-collar
work four years ago in an interview with Marilyn, a senior
banker at a London-based investment
bank. Marilyn was captivated by extreme sports: skydiving,
snowboarding, triathlons, bungee jumping, surfing,
mountaineering – anything that pro- vided a rush of adrenaline
and an element of danger. She eagerly recommended Jon
Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (an account of an ill-fated trip by

amateur mountain climbers) as a window into why people push
themselves to the limits of their physical endurance. Marilyn
saw parallels between extreme sports and her life as an
investment banker. First, there were the extraordinary time
demands and performance stressors. Seventy-hour workweeks,
grueling travel requirements, and relentless bottom-line
pressures constantly pushed her to her limits – both physically
and intellectually. Second, there was the allure of the job.
Much like extreme sports, investment banking was
exhilarating and se- ductive. Marilyn told us,“It gives me this
rush. Like a drug, it’s addictive.”
In the world of extreme sports, the more daring, demanding, and
– this is
telling – gratuitous the feat, the greater our awe of the athlete.
We appreciate the extreme athlete’s talent, skill, and courage,
but also the hubris that sets him or her apart from the crowd.
High stakes and danger define the extreme- sports challenge,
which in the end is less about the physical than about the exis-
tential – less about mountain peaks or big waves than about
inner strength and testing one’s limits. In a popular culture that
lionizes such athletes, it is not sur- prising that the extreme
ethos has worked its way into other endeavors. And so, our most
intense jobs are seen not as exploitative but, rather, as glam-
orous, desirable, and virtuous. (Witness The Apprentice.) From
ER doctors to tax lawyers to management consultants to hedge
fund salespeople, many professionals are wearing their outsize
work commitments on their sleeves; they consider their over-
the-top efforts – and often voluntary sacrifices and risks – a
reflection of character. They brag about pulling all-nighters and
about flying
december 2006
53

Workweek
Something’s Gotta Give
Extreme jobs may be deeply alluring, but they are certainly
not cost free. Our data show that the extreme-work model is
wreaking havoc on private lives and taking a toll on health and
well-being.
Housework and home care seem to be among the first things to
go. Over three-quarters (77%) of the women we surveyed and
two-thirds
extreme jobs said their work interferes with their ability to
have strong relationships
with
their
children – compared with one-third (33%) of women. In a focus
group targeting the teenage children of extreme workers, a
fresh-faced 16-year-old we’ll call Ellen said her dad had
promised he’d work less when he made partner at a major
accounting
firm. “But
instead,
Repercussions of Extreme Jobs for Family, Home, and Intimate
Life
U.S. Survey Extreme Jobholders Saying Job Interferes with the
Following
77%
66%

65%
33%
46% 46%
Having a strong relationship with my spouse/partner
Women
49% 53%
Having a satisfying sex life
Being able to maintain my home
Having a strong relationship with my children
Men
(66%) of the men said they can’t properly maintain their homes.
One executive in a London-based focus group told us that
although he had lived in his South Kensington flat for two
years, a mattress and a sleeping bag were the sum total of his
furnish- ings. His schedule was such that he hadn’t been able to
make a commit- ment to be home to accept a delivery.
Health is also an issue. More than two-thirds of professionals
we surveyed don’t get enough sleep; half don’t get enough
exercise; and a sig- nificant number overeat, consume too much
alcohol, or rely on medica- tions to relieve insomnia or anxiety.
Moms with extreme jobs tend to do better than dads in terms of
coming through for their children. Almost two-thirds (65%) of
men with

he works more....My dad’s always exhausted. He’s gone when I
get up, and not back when I go to sleep.” But her father’s
absentee parenting seemed normal to her since, in her world, all
the fathers she knew worked such long hours.
Spouses and partners also suffer from the extreme-work model.
Ex- treme workers dramatically under- invest in intimate
relationships. Some of the data are quite startling. For example,
at the end of a 12-hour or longer workday, 45% of all respon-
dents in our global companies survey are too tired to say
anything at all to their spouses or partners. Focus group
conversations were sprinkled with half-joking references to four
in bed these days: oneself, one’s partner, and two BlackBerrys
or Treos.
300,000 miles in a year. To them, a 70- hour workweek is about
proving their worth. It’s akin to going up against the elements.
New levels of connectivity. Extreme work is also the result of
the key technologies that facilitate it. Modern com-
munication devices have prompted a shift in expectations and
behavior. We see it all around us: people glued to their cell
phones or BlackBerrys, no matter the day, time, or occasion.
Profes- sionals tap so incessantly at their wireless devices that
a new medical ailment has arisen – “BlackBerry thumb” – and
Hyatt hotel spas now offer a “Black- Berry Balm hand
massage.”
Communication technology seems to have both liberated and
shackled extreme professionals. In our U.S. survey, 67% of
people with extreme jobs said that being available for clients
24/7 is a critical part of being successful. According to one
young investment banker, “When you’re an analyst, even when
you’re in a meeting, waiting an hour to respond to an e-mail is
just not acceptable.” This kind of availability, not possible
before the advent of Black- Berrys and cell phones, is a curse as

well as a blessing. A Dallas-based accountant in one of our
focus groups described how her boss had tracked her down at a
five-year-old’s birthday party the pre- vious weekend and
insisted she join a 90-minute conference call because something
had blown up with a client. Of the U.S. survey respondents,
72% said that technology helps them do their jobs well, 59%
said that it lengthens their working day, and 64% noted its
encroachment on family time.
The workplace as social center. Per- haps most profound among
the cultural shifts we’ve been describing is the fact that the
workplace is now the center and source of many people’s social
lives. When one’s best friends and most stimulating
encounters are at the office – as is increasingly the case – the
prospect of working late into the evening becomes less onerous.
Robert Putnam famously decried the loss of social capital in
American cities as more people “bowled alone.” But it can be
argued that the
54
kinds of personal connections once made through civic
organizations are now made in workplaces. In a far less positive
light, this is a theme that Arlie Russell Hochschild has explored
in her book The Time Bind, which gets inside the relationships
of some dual-career couples and reveals how home life can
become seriously depleted when both men and women work
long hours. As households and families are starved of time, they
become progressively less ap- pealing, and both men and
women begin to avoid going home. Returning to a house or an
apartment with an empty refrigerator and a neglected teenager
might prove to be a little bleak at the
the hours. It is probably not wrong to assume that more
knowledge work means that people simply like their jobs more.

This surely seems true of Alex, a fed- eral prosecutor who
focuses on securi- ties fraud. He works long hours, typically
arriving home around 11 pm and routinely skipping meals.
Instead of eating dinner, he will have a PowerBar at his desk –
or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when he gets home late at
night. He never makes it home before his two young children
are in bed, although he does make a point of taking his
daughter to preschool in the morning. He laments that in
trying to salvage
Professionals tap so incessantly at their wireless
devices that a new medical ailment has arisen – “BlackBerry
thumb.”
end of a long working day – so why not look in on that
networking event or put that presentation through one more
draft? Hochschild shows that for many professionals, “home”
and “work” have reversed roles. Home is the source of stress
and guilt, while work has become the “haven in a heartless
world” – the place where successful professionals get strokes,
admiration, and respect.
More knowledge-based work. Part of the reason that workplaces
have become more sociable is that the nature of work has
undergone a transforma- tion. “Knowledge work” is
increasingly important, and corporations are now full of people
employing their brains more than their brawn. One thing’s for
sure: There’s no need to lay down tools at the end of a shift; to
the extent that knowledge work requires capital equipment, the
equipment is highly portable communications devices rather
than plant machinery. Knowledge-based en- terprises also tend
to attract employees who are on a par intellectually. The
exchange of ideas and knowledge that now characterizes most
workplaces is without doubt a source of stimulation – again,

making it less painful to put in
as much family time as possible, he is neglecting his
relationship with his wife. On a rare recent “date,” the couple
went to a jazz club, only to have Alex doze off after one drink.
It’s not hard to imagine why: His average workweek is 75 hours
– and in the midst of a trial, he can put in 95 hours.
Nevertheless, Alex derives enormous satisfaction from his
work. Last year, for example, he prosecuted an accounting fraud
case.“Enron writ small,” he calls it. For him, the case
exemplifies what motivates him to work so hard. He not only
made sure a criminal was punished for breaking the law; he also
helped secure compensation for those who were wronged. The
problem with this great job is its size. “In a nutshell, it’s un-
doable,” says Alex. “We’re underfunded and painfully
understaffed....Over the last five years, I’ve built up some great
relationships with our FBI agents, who often bring me
compelling cases – but the fact of the matter is, I can only take
a small proportion of them. It’s disap- pointing and frustrating,
but I just can’t drive myself any harder.”
Global operations. As companies gain global spans of operation,
there are continued on page 58
december 2006
Workweek
Is There a Gender Issue Here?
behaviors in their children. As the research literature attests,
it’s extremely rare for parents to admit to having problems with
their children. (There are serious problems in society, but never
in one’s own home.) Thus, the data in the exhibit “Extreme Jobs

Affect Well-Being of Children” constitute
a veritable portrait of guilt. That women
Who Has Extreme Jobs?
Our research shows that extreme jobs are much more common
among men than among women. The exhibit “Who Has Extreme
Jobs?” tells the tale. Among high earners in the United States,
21% hold such jobs, and less than a fifth of those are women.
Among high earners at global companies, 45% are working
extremely, and women make up a third of that group.
Why aren’t more extreme workers women? Part of the answer
emerges from finer cuts of the data. In the global companies
survey, we found that young, talented women are well
represented in jobs that have reasonable hours (fewer than 60 a
week) but high performance requirements (fast pace with tight
deadlines, 24/7 client demands, and so on). Of the respondents
holding these jobs, 39% are women. By contrast, of those
meeting high performance requirements and putting in longer
hours, only 30% are women. The data sug- gest that women are
not afraid of the
pressure or responsibility of extreme jobs – they just can’t pony
up the hours.
The U.S. survey, too, demonstrates that the number of hours
worked is where women fall short. Consider the exhibit “How
Many Hours and How Much Responsibility?”– which divides
the high earners we surveyed into four quadrants, according to
the length of the workweek and the demands of the job.
Positions that involve long hours but little in the way of
performance pressure are particularly shunned by women:
Only 2% of the women in our sample work long hours in
positions with few extreme-job responsibilities. Men are

somewhat more tolerant of such jobs.
Perhaps women are less tolerant of high-hours, low-impact work
because they are more aware of the “opportunity costs.” They
seem particularly tuned into – and pained by – the fallout on
their children. They see a direct link between their long
workweeks and a variety of distressing
How Many Hours and How Much Responsibility?
4% 17%
U.S. Survey Men
15% 30%
Global Survey Women
Extreme jobs demand a high number of responsibilities (five or
more out of ten specific challenges, such as tight deadlines and
24/7 availability to clients) as well as a high number of work
hours (60 or more a week). The matrix below illustrates where
the men and women in our U.S. survey fall. Each figure
represents 1% of the total population of high earners surveyed.
High
Low
Men=15%
Men= 33%
QUADRANT IV
Women= 4%

Women= 12%
QUADRANT III
Men=17%
Men=12%
Number of Hours Worked
QUADRANT I
Women= 4%
Women= 2%
QUADRANT II
High
56
Number of Extreme- Job Characteristics
PICTURE
worry about the implications for their children is probably not
because mothers are more caring than fathers but because, as
our survey data show, more men in extreme jobs (25%) than
women (12%) have the support of an at-home spouse or partner.
These dynamics play out in homes around the world every day.

In a focus group held at Canary Wharf in London, a woman
lawyer put it succinctly: “When I walk out the door in the
morning, leaving my two-year-old with the nanny, there’s
usually a bit of a scene. Tommy clings, pouts, and whips up the
guilt. Now, I know it’s not serious – he’s a happy kid, and he
likes his nanny. But it sure makes me think about why I go to
work – and why I put in a ten-hour day. It’s as though every day
I make this calculation: Do the satisfactions I derive from my
job (efficacy, recognition, a sense of stretch- ing my mind)
justify leaving Tommy? Some days it’s a close run.”
Indeed, for many women, the equation is not balancing out. A
clear majority (57%) of the women in extreme jobs in the
United States told us they don’t want to continue working at
this pace for more than a year. Less than half the men (48%)
felt the same way. Only 13% of the women (versus 27% of the
men) want to be working at this pace in five years. The
numbers were far more dramatic in our global companies
survey, in which 80% of the women (versus 58% of the men)
said they don’t want to keep working this many hours for more
than a year, and only 5% of the women (and 12% of the men)
said they want to do so for the next five years.
The key question, of course, is whether all this creates a barrier
for ambitious women and for companies that want to achieve
more gender diversity in their upper ranks. The answer is yes to
the extent that extreme workers constitute the talent pool from
which top leadership will be drawn. If this group of high-octane
workers represents
the “A team”–and we think it does –it’s very disturbing to see
so few women in it.
The silver lining is that employers face a real opportunity here.
We know of several companies that are beginning to tap into the
talents of women who are willing to commit to hard work and

take on responsibility but cannot do the long hours. For
“new compass” for returning women, show- ing them a way
back into their careers.
Heidi Yang, an investment banker in Hong Kong, illustrates the
edge some global companies are developing as employers of
choice for young, talented women. Heidi is definitely a “high-
potential manager.” During her three and a half years in the
Extreme Jobs Affect Well-Being of Children
Global Survey
Respondents answered the question “Has your child ever
experienced any of the following because of the number of
hours you work?”
49%
35%
38%
34%
18%
22%
22%
12%
14%

13%
Watching too much television
Acting out/ discipline issues due to lack of attention
Eating too much junk food
Having too little adult supervision
Men
Underachieving in school
Women
example, Booz Allen Hamilton and Ameri- can Express are
beginning to “chunk out” work in different ways. AmEx has
created an internal consulting pool that provides flexible career
paths for high-performing employees. A working mom, for
instance, might choose to arrange her workday so that she’s able
to pick her children up from school. “We’re sharpening our
approach
to creating flexible work models,” says L. Kevin Cox, executive
vice president of human resources at American Express. In a
similar vein, Lehman Brothers and Gold- man Sachs are
beginning to create flexibility over the arc of a career.
Lehman’s En- core program welcomes talented women who
have off-ramped and are looking for a road back into the
financial sector – reaching out with networks, mentors, and
flexibility. Goldman Sachs’s New Direc- tions program provides
reskilling and a
investment division of UBS in Hong Kong, she has been
promoted twice; she now runs a team of 25. When we first met

with her in November 2005, she was pregnant with her first
child and pleased with UBS’s parent-friendly policies – which
she considered as generous as any “on the street”– but she
worried about whether those policies were “for real.” If, for
instance, she availed herself of her full maternity leave, would
she be seen as not serious, and sub- tly derailed from the fast
track? Happily, when we last interviewed her, in July 2006, her
fears had not been realized. “There’s been a real change at this
firm,” she ob- served. “The culture is shifting. They’re allowing
me to work flexibly. As long as
I come through for my clients, I can work wherever I want.
There’s none of this face- time stuff. My bosses seem to
understand the importance of keeping women.”
december 2006
57
Workweek
additional reasons for jobs to become extreme. The need to
oversee work in multiple time zones increases not only the
travel requirements of a job but also the length of the workday.
One oil company executive we interviewed ran a global team
composed of colleagues in Angola, the United States, and
China. As he put it, this “did a number” on his working day.
Other professionals in our focus groups told anecdotes about
pulling all-nighters and defying jet lag to attend back-to-back
meetings in Sin- gapore and New York. The difficulty of
waking up to participate in global
We believe that these are the key trends underlying the rise in
extreme work. There may be others. The point, however, is that
they represent a mix of positive and negative pressures. Long
workweeks cannot simply be chalked up to the crushing effects

of a heartless and unchecked capitalist system, as some
commentators have argued. The extreme professionals who find
their work enormously alluring are not de- luded. Recognizing
trends like the rise in knowledge work and society’s general
embrace of the extreme ethos makes it easier to understand the
attitudes of
the way of strong relationships with their children; 46% think it
gets in the way of good relationships with their spouses; and
50% say their jobs make it impossible to have a satisfying sex
life. (For more data on the personal costs of extreme work, see
the sidebar “Some- thing’s Gotta Give.”)
These statistics are underscored by the stories shared by focus
group participants. In one session, which took place at a
financial services company, an executive described how he
had lost all cred- ibility with his elderly wheelchair- bound
father by canceling so many promised weekend visits. Another
executive, striking a more positive note, described the
transformative recent experience of taking, for the first time in
his 14-year career, two consecutive weeks of vacation: “It was a
revelation. I had no idea I even had it in me to enter into this
other zone, where I was able to focus on my nine-year-old son,
and I mean really focus. By the second week, I was listening to
meandering stories of a tiff he’d had with a best friend and his
description of what had hap- pened in the last episode of his
favorite TV show without urging him to get to the point, or
wrap it up. And we spent hours playing Ping-Pong – a game he
loves but I generally have no patience for.” The other
participants listened in- tently, clearly trying to wrap their
minds around what a two-week vacation would be like.
These are poignant examples of the costs of extreme work to
individuals, but there can be costs at the company level, as well
– for instance, when burn- out occurs. Half of our extreme
jobholders don’t want to continue working under this kind of

pressure for more than a year. Moreover, the next genera- tions
of management–the so-called Gen X and Gen Y cohorts – seem
less enam- ored of their jobs than baby boomers. In the 45-to-60
age group, only 19% of extreme jobholders say they are likely
to leave their jobs within two years; this figure rises to 30% in
the 35-to-44 age group and to 36% in the 25-to-34 age group.
The ultimate price may be paid in succession planning if maxed-
out
Long workweeks cannot simply be chalked up to the crushing
effects of a heartless and unchecked capitalist system.
conference calls in the middle of the night was a common
refrain.
Because many companies are expanding globally, senior
managers have a larger scope of responsibility. Take Gwen (not
her real name), who manages a supply chain for a large DIY
retailer. The pressures of her job are enormous – involving
quick decisions on inventory levels that can have huge
consequences for her company’s bottom line. Just three years
ago, most of her suppliers were in South Carolina and Georgia;
now her supply chain reaches to East- ern Europe and China.
Gwen operates in three different time zones and seven different
countries. She says,“The challenges are intense – and I like
that. But being away from home half the time – and I mean
away away – is really hard on my ten-year-old.” Compounding
the overload problem is the fact that managers these days are
less able to dele- gate low-value but necessary tasks (like
compiling the expense reports for all that travel Gwen does).
Secretaries seem to have been replaced by do-it-yourself
technology – 71% of extreme workers have no dedicated
administrative assistant, and more than a third (37%) don’t
even have a shared assistant.
people like Madeleine (not her real name), the chief operating

officer of a major global bank. As she detailed the demands of
her job for us, we found her to be downright exuberant. She had
recently transferred from the bank’s New York headquarters to
London, where her responsibilities were ex- panded tenfold: She
now travels between three time zones. The pressure is
undeniable, but we heard no complaint. Instead, Madeleine
described the thrill of managing a large international business
and being “a global player on top of my game.”
Life on the Edge
If people in extreme jobs are uncom- plaining and their
employers are happy to have their services, is it reasonable to
claim there is a problem? Arguably, the trend toward more
extreme work is a boon to national competitiveness.
Yet there are, even in the responses to our survey, hints of the
dangers afoot. Asked about the effects of their extreme jobs on
their health and relationships, most respondents readily noted
the downsides. More than 69% believe they would be healthier
if they worked less extremely; 58% think their work gets in
58
professionals stop striving for top jobs. In our survey, 65% said
they would de- cline a promotion if it were even more
demanding of their energy.
Beyond the level of any single company, the costs of the
extreme-job phenomenon become far more troubling. The
common observation about a job category that is demanding to
the point of exhaustion is that it is“a young man’s game.” But
more jobs are falling into this category – and more than young
men need to be in the game. The societal costs of income
disparity and winner-take-all economics are huge, as many

before us have argued.
Women in particular stand to lose from the extreme-work
model. Our research finds that while women don’t shirk the
pressure or responsibility of extreme work, they are not
matching the hours logged by their male colleagues. This is
especially true of mothers, who are also dealing with an in-
creasingly extreme parenting model; they simply can’t – or
don’t choose to – work exceedingly long hours. Of all the high
earners we classified as extreme jobholders, only 20% are
women. The women who do hold extreme jobs, meanwhile, are
somewhat less likely than the men to love their work. (The
sidebar “Is There a Gender Issue Here?” offers an extensive
analysis of the implications for women executives and the
companies that strive to re- tain them.)
Cultures of Midnight Oil
Of all the high earners we surveyed (not just the extreme-job
subset), 44% feel that the pace of their work is extreme.
Professionals these days are putting in longer hours, taking on
more responsibility, and facing more pressure than ever
before. Their intensity and investment may serve companies
well in the short run but will pose risks in the long run. The
extreme-work model threat- ens to cull real talent, particularly
female talent, that otherwise could have reached the top.
It’s hard to offer solutions. Many companies are encouraging
more work/life balance; a few go to some lengths to
ensure that the policies they’ve put on paper are reflected in
reality. For every company that does so, however, there are
others afraid of creating a work at- mosphere that is unattractive
to “A players.” If an effort to establish a more measured work
style means that extreme achievement will no longer be
rewarded, they reason, then some extreme workers will seek

opportunities with firms more likely to appreciate their outsize
contributions. Colleagues may be happy to see extreme workers
go; workaholics can be highly demanding and critical of their
less dedicated coworkers. But some management teams think
there are worse things than having an ultraperformer around –
like
having
that
person
join
the competition.
Indeed, some organizations – certain management-consulting
and investment-banking firms come to mind – attract talent in
the first place with their famously tough environments. The
importance of company culture in setting the pace of work was
strongly affirmed by our survey, in which 74% of respondents
agreed that extreme jobs emerge from companies’ particular
value sets. Shane, a young man who partici- pated in a focus
group, put his finger on it. Having spent his weekend jumping
through hoops for a demanding boss, only to discover that he’d
wasted his time, he pinned the problem on the “tone at the top.”
Senior leadership of organizations should take note: The
attributes that give a workplace an advantage in recruiting and
retention can change dramatically over time. The culture that
celebrates the extreme ethos today may tire of it – quite literally
– tomorrow. At a minimum, senior executives should think
carefully about the work behaviors they are rewarding,
encouraging, or requiring. More than anything, the signals they
send will determine whether jobs become extreme–and if so,
whether those jobs remain exhilarating or simply become
exhausting.
Reprint R0612B; HBR OnPoint 1685

To order, see page 165.
www.HBSPress.org
Open up to great ideas
“An engaging guide to stoking creativity.”
The Boston Globe
“I strongly recommend it.”
Clayton M. Christensen, author, The Innovator’s Dilemma and
The Innovator’s
Solution
“This masterful study is destined to be a landmark.” David
Gergen, Center for Public Leadership, Harvard’s John F.
Kennedy School of Government
In association with the Strategy Planning Society, Europe
www.sps.org.uk
Available wherever books are sold.
december 2006

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