In a recent post on the Extreme Pro­gram­ming mail­ing list, June Kim describes a pro­duc­tive Korean soft­ware devel­op­ment work­place that empha­sizes “human­ity”, and points out that the aver­age devel­oper effort is about 16 hours per week. As opposed to the national aver­age of 50–60 hours per week.

This nom­i­nal effi­ciency is com­pared, favor­ably, to this graph of hours worked annu­ally vs. GNP, iden­ti­fied by nation.

I won­der what might hap­pen if we sub­di­vided the national “dots” into com­po­nents. In par­tic­u­lar, where would US grad­u­ate stu­dents end up? Faculty?

I do won­der whether pro­duc­tiv­ity, esti­mated by GNP, is the right thing to be mea­sur­ing here. In some sense, per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion might be more telling in my exper­i­ment, less for June’s.…