I would never claim that I work harder than average for people on my experiment, but I do think I work stranger hours. I’m likely to check my email first thing in the morning, rather than waiting to get to work, or before I go to bed when I come home exhausted from a Friday night party. And, if there’s something quick that needs to be done, I generally do it immediately.
What could persuade me to do work at such odd hours? Well, remember, ATLAS is a world-spanning collaboration. My collaborators may be working at any time, whether it’s day or night for me, and we have computers doing testing, simulation, and analysis for us continuously. A colleague of mine might need help before he can continue his work; one of the professors I’m working with back in Berkeley might have some time to investigate a problem I found, if only I’ll give her more information about it; the disk that stores the results for a software testing suite might be about to fill up. If I update myself at the right time and take action, my colleagues can get their work done (or help me), the software tests can proceed without problems, and so on.
I would almost never miss a dinner with friends, a hike, or a weekend trip to do work. But between those things, a quick email check and a little effort on my part can make a larger difference in the work done by the collaboration as a whole. Nothing I can do will make a big difference for the experiment, but when others do the same, it adds up.
