[HN Gopher] Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek...
___________________________________________________________________
Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts
split
Author : m3at
Score : 849 points
Date : 2021-06-21 02:03 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mainichi.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (mainichi.jp)
| post_break wrote:
| Will this be one of those Japanese quirks just like 5pm, where
| they say 4 day work week, but then still work 5-6 work weeks?
| Like sure, you can leave at 5, but do you want to be the person
| to leave at 5?
| Proven wrote:
| If any of the so called "experts" who support this had any clue,
| they could have been leading most successful Japan companies.
|
| But they aren't. Because they are merely just academics with
| socialist leanings.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Why does the government need to be involved if employers actually
| get better productivity in the first place? Let employers
| experiment by themselves and see what works best. Another typical
| example of top-to-bottom leadership in Japan.
| culopatin wrote:
| Perhaps because without the intervention, they weren't doing
| it.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Then you probably need to ask why.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| If the government doesn't make laws that define broad
| principles, capitalism will eat you alive.
|
| Employers are greedy and evil. Their focus is profit
| maximization. Not employee well being.
|
| Given the chance, do you really think employers will even give
| vacation days to employees? No way. They will want you to work
| 24/7 if the govt. is ok with it.
| throw123123123 wrote:
| Where do you think the salary comes from in the beginning?
| kumarvvr wrote:
| At the beginning of civilized society? From the government
| itself. Then it slowly evolves into capital flow to people
| closely connected to the government (aristocrats, royalty,
| etc) and then to common people through banks.
|
| You seem to imply that for any entrepreneurship, you need
| to have no worker protections at all. But that is simply
| false.
| [deleted]
| ekianjo wrote:
| > At the beginning of civilized society? From the
| government itself.
|
| You seem to have no understanding that powerful states is
| a VERY recent invention in History.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > If the government doesn't make laws that define broad
| principles, capitalism will eat you alive.
|
| Has it? Levels of life of the whole world are on the rise for
| the past 20 years at least - if you want to make that
| argument the current data does not support that at all.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| Look up the industrial revolution and labor laws. Y'know,
| when things like child labor were outlawed. Good things, I
| hope you will agree.
| kwere wrote:
| ford & Westinghouse disagree with you, but that is possible
| only in non-feudalistic sectors and benevolent masters
| rvba wrote:
| Then you end up with 996 system that is good for employers but
| not for employees or society.
| dsq wrote:
| The main driver for this may be Japan's demographic implosion, as
| stated in the first paragraph:
|
| "...improve the balance between work and life...family care".
|
| A three day weekend would give the salaryman/person some time
| with family.
|
| Other countries are making policy changes as well. China is also
| planning to remove all caps on births to combat what they see as
| problematic demographics.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| I worked in Japan for a while. My contract was saying 28.5 hours
| per week, but I was expected to work 40 hours+. This is where I
| went into discussions with my boss who was very angry at me and
| fired me on the same say I told him that I was expecting to work
| the hours that were mentioned in the contract. I had to clean up
| the desk and leave immediatly after that meeting.
|
| Then I got in touch with the officials and lawyers. Labor law IS
| already strong in Japan, but it is the employees who do not
| demand it and the employers who do not follow it. The officials
| are running many campaigns to advertise equality and proper
| working hours. Just nobody cares.
|
| Long story short - I got my salary paid ouf for a couple of
| months and could stay in Japan. Best time of my life and this is
| the way you should experience Japan: live there, DO NOT work,
| have enough money to support a certain lifestyle.
|
| Now I am back to Germany and I am happy that I have a decently
| paid, low stress 40 hours work week, 100% home office, many
| perks, I am practially unfireable, 32 holidays per year and a
| worker friendly corporate culture.
| 41209 wrote:
| I strongly suspect this has to do with Japan's low birth rate.
| But I would love a society where you only need to work three or
| four days a week. As they always say no one says on their
| deathbed I wish I spent more time at the office
| skhr0680 wrote:
| The social contract in Japan was that you'd give your life to
| your employer in exchange for a fair wage and stable employment
| until you retired. Neither of those things are true now. Wages
| are low and companies either ignore their legal obligations or
| hire people as contractors, who have less rights than full time
| "employees".
|
| Now, many people, especially women* and young people are finding
| that it's possible to run a small business for 3-4 days a week
| and make more money than an entry or even mid-level full time
| office job.
|
| So, I think Japan finally enforcing rules against abusive
| behavior at the workplace and pushing for a 4-day week, if it
| really happens, is a reflection of where society is at right now.
|
| *Women have a low wage ceiling because they are expected to quit
| and have children at any time.
| nkssy wrote:
| I think it says a lot about Japanese workplace pay if a small
| business at 3-4 days per week can outperform it. Not that I
| doubt it in any way: I've just started my own sideline and I'm
| already at 25% of my job income yet only putting in 5 hours of
| effort to do so.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Yes, but for how long though.
|
| Many of these Japanese firms are many _hundreds_ of years
| old, and will probably stick around for some hundred more
| years.
|
| Being able to run a small business for 5-10 years is very
| possible, but there's no guarantee you'll be able to do that
| for 20-30-40 years.
|
| We often hear about the success stories, when it comes to
| small businesses and startups, but there are unfortunately
| those that will fail after N years, even if they had some
| pretty good years.
| draw_down wrote:
| It doesn't have to be the same small business across all
| those years, right? I don't think anyone is saying these
| small businesses are trying to become hundred-year firms.
| suls wrote:
| Entry-level to mid-level is about 15-35Mo Yuan /month. I am
| really curious what sort of SMEs you are talking about. Mind
| giving some examples?
| nextstep wrote:
| This erosion of the collective belief in this social contract
| is true for much of the western world as well, where wages have
| been flat for 40+ years while productivity skyrocketed.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Tangential, but how many of us need a dedicated work time period
| at all?
|
| I have a 15 minute standup every day, an hour long 1 on 1 once
| every two weeks, and the occasional meeting where I am genuinely
| needed and maybe 3 hours talking to another developer.
|
| I would love to convert my job into a purely objectives driven
| thing with the only requirement being that I am online/in the
| office for those specific 5 or so hours a week.
|
| I will take the risk that what I think takes a week of work runs
| over (forcing me to work on weekends) in exchange for that kind
| of flexibility.
| hypnoscripto wrote:
| That's basically my life and it's fantastic. I work 12
| timezones away from my colleagues. Get real work done while
| they are asleep, stay up for occasional meetings, scheduled in
| advance. I usually take two tickets at once, so if I get stuck
| and need help, I can switch to the other ticket until someone
| who can help me is awake.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I admittedly did this a few weeks during the pandemic. Worked
| through the night, attended standup, and then slept and went
| about my day, answering Slack stuff in the late afternoon. So
| productive.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| On the other hand, I have 4-5 hours of meetings a day, often in
| scarce overlap hours between timezones. Having to take 10
| different random schedules into account would be hell.
|
| Sure, people could just work flexibly to accommodate the
| necessary meetings, but I'm my experience, that just leads to
| people being on call for 10-12 hours a day with no regular
| schedule.
|
| In every company I have been part of, workers who didn't need
| dedicated work times simply didn't keep them. It is only
| becomes an issue if it doesn't work.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Of all places, that this is coming from Japan is astounding. The
| culture of "company man" in Japan is notorious for essentially
| absorbing and erasing the line between family life and company
| life for an employee.
|
| There are horror stories floating around on the internet that
| explain how many stay in office, often later than their boss,
| just to look like they are working hard.
|
| And I have experienced it first hand. Went to Mitsubishi factory
| in Takasago on a company visit. I asked the employees there, why
| do you stay late, and they answered, everyone has to stay late.
|
| I genuinely believe that an alternative to the 4-day week, is to
| allow employees to switch off their work emails and phone calls
| on Friday evening. No use in having a 4 day week, when your mind-
| share is extended to a 6 day week.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > There are horror stories floating around on the internet that
| explain how many stay in office, often later than their boss,
| just to look like they are working hard.
|
| The horror story there is in how late that takes them to in
| many cases. A friend spent a year in Japan. Leaving by 8 was
| apparently a good day.
| etempleton wrote:
| It does seem like Japan starts their day a bit later than the
| US. Perhaps more similar to some businesses in New York where
| you might roll into the office between 10 and 11, but then
| stay until 8 or 9 pm. Still a very long day. It is so
| ingrained in their work culture that closing the office one
| additional day a week may be the only way to give some time
| back to employees.
| SilverRed wrote:
| I have heard that this is somewhat offset by rolling up a lot
| of social/etc time in to work. So they will have dinner at
| work with the other employees. Still horrible but it helps to
| understand how they even manage to live while working that
| long.
| erikerikson wrote:
| There was a recent study at Microsoft Japan if I recall
| correctly. There have been rigorous studies throughout the
| works for some time before that.
| brbrodude wrote:
| Would this have something to do with improving natality rates?
| ksec wrote:
| Well surely that is the only reason why they are pushing for
| it. And yet most of the discussions seems to be missing the
| point. ( Discussing Work hours without Japanese in the context
| )
|
| I am not entirely sure if this will help though. Birth Rate in
| Japan, ( or in any nation ) is a complex issues. Both cultural
| and economics. Why would anyone want a baby when they can
| barely afford themselves decent standard of living? ( Standard
| being different from person to person )
| alephnan wrote:
| > when they can barely afford themselves decent standard of
| living
|
| Rent and food even in Tokyo is much cheaper than even medium
| sized cities in the states.
|
| People might not be able to afford a luxurious lifestyle in
| Japan, and economists standard of living models may tell you
| otherwise, but the standard of living for a typical person in
| Japan is high
| ksec wrote:
| Which is why I said ( Standard being different from person
| to person ).
|
| Once it becomes a norm, people want more.
| alephnan wrote:
| You originally argued Japan has low birthrate because
| people can't afford it.
|
| There are macro and microeconomic reasons , but not being
| able to afford to raise a child is not one of them. Most
| of the reasons are social.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| Shouldn't the benefit of all our technology be the gaining of
| time for leisure and non-work pursuits?
| deevolution wrote:
| "Those who want more days off for such purposes as acquiring new
| skills and taking side jobs are not eligible for the program, he
| said."
|
| Of course - why would a company want their employees to learn new
| skills on the side that could potentially lead to greater
| personal fulfillment -.-
| Aeolun wrote:
| My guess is they'll ask employees to work 4 10 hour days, and ask
| them to come in for extra work on Friday and Saturday as a
| 'special exception'. Of course, now the 10 hour workday is
| normalized, so you can extract extra time on the other days too.
| misterremote wrote:
| > For employers, while people working four days a week may become
| more motivated, this may not improve their productivity enough to
| compensate for the lost workday.
|
| But why do we have to "compensate for the lost workday"? Let's
| just say that at this point in history we appreciate work-life
| balance more than before and we'll switch to 4-day weeks with the
| same paycheck.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I read hopeful and idealistic (I've the same wish and hope, by
| the way) comments on HN and contrast it by thinking of CEOs and
| CTOs not even giving this news another second; laughing at it
| would mean it affected them in unimaginable ways.
|
| Most of these "leaders", especially in "startups", have very
| short term goals - exit, acquisition, insane funding and
| valuations etc.
|
| It's not that they don't think about employees burning out or
| lack of their well-being. They count on it. They know exactly
| what's happening and they know that that 2<x> year old burning
| out (literally falling ill mentally and physically) after 7 month
| of hell, but wrote y number of functioning APIs, was a great
| success!
|
| And that's just software.
| meerita wrote:
| Correct me, but they want to cheapen the labor by adding more
| people do to the same job on a week timeline?
| eucryphia wrote:
| Same government that runs a debt to GDP ratio of 266%
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/15/spain-to-launc...
| (Spain to launch trial of four-day working week) 120% debt to
| GDP
|
| For fun, the US is at 127%. Equity, debt, fiat, just rows in a
| database. If it doesn't work out, what's the worst that
| happens? We go back to few more hours a week? But if it _does_
| work, it's time work evolves further.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Say you loan someone some money, and they just... don't pay
| it back. Well, who cares right? After all, it's just a number
| in your bank account.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Nation state finances are not the same as household
| finances.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| This meme is just foolish and overly repeated. If we just
| printed money forever we'd be like Germany or Venezuela.
|
| Do you really think that at large scales the need to
| watch spending just dissolves? Why do you think nations
| have budgets? Do you think it's all a fun game?
|
| If what you're suggesting doesn't work, people don't just
| go back to work longer hours.
|
| Some people die, some people lose their homes.
| Incredible.
|
| But hey, just rows in a database. Tell that to families
| scraping by.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to iterate and experiment with
| policy without devolving to extreme positions such as
| your comment.
|
| We've forgiven $3 billion in student loan debt in the US,
| for various legitimate reasons, without consequence for
| example. Yes, the US has more power to do this because
| it's a reserve currency, and no you can't do it forever,
| but there is room to experiment when you're a nation
| state.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2021/06/16/bide
| n-h...
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| There really isn't a consequence here, it's just
| taxpayers paying off other people's student loans.
| misterremote wrote:
| > Takuya Hoshino, an economist at the Dai-ichi Life Research
| Institute, says simply introducing a four-day workweek may not
| necessarily encourage employees to use their time off in a way
| that benefits their careers or contributes to the economy.
|
| The idea shouldn't be how this benefits their career and
| contributes to the economy, but how the individual can live a
| more balanced and healthy life.
| mc32 wrote:
| Will they let/make people to leave the office at "5PM"? and force
| them to take earned holidays?
|
| Might as well do something about nomikai[1] while they are at it.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomikai
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If not these are great ideas! And compliance can be measured
| and actioned (turn off lights automatically, lock out logins
| and emails on holidays).
| derefr wrote:
| I feel like anything the Japanese government does that only
| disincentivizes _employees_ from overwork, without
| disincentivizing _employers_ from _expecting_ overwork, will
| only result in employees finding new and creative ways to
| overwork to appease their employers.
| lkois wrote:
| I worked in a couple of Japanese tech offices. Contracts
| and salary included prepaid overtime, to get around the
| government saying ALL overtime should be paid. But they
| must have also allowed up to 40 hours per month to be
| considered "reasonable", so that number was in the
| contract, and I'd only get overtime if I went over it. Felt
| like a shitty loophole to agree to, but luckily both
| companies were super cool and overtime was uncommon, but
| happened sometimes. So it felt like they'd just put it in
| as a convenience, like saying "there might be some
| overtime, but let's not deal with paperwork unless it gets
| out of hand". And the "40 hours" was paid regardless.
|
| It would definitely be a convenient loophole for companies
| to continue shitty practices, so I think I just lucked out
| with the places I worked at.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| At the end of the day all that matters is how much one
| makes for when working full-time. I find it insulting
| that the employer acts like it is already paying you for
| a 2 hour per day overtime schedule on a salary that is
| already bad. To be clear Japanese salaries, in my
| experience, are bad. Slicing out some of the already low
| salary and claiming it is there just in case one does
| work overtime is not ok.
| lmm wrote:
| They're trying; they already punish employers whose reported
| timesheets show employees working above 40 hours/month
| overtime, and/or whose employees don't report taking off at
| least 5 days/year. This has certainly reduced reported
| overtime; the extent to which it has reduced actual overtime is
| disputed.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| I think people might be a little confused about what the
| government is telegraphing here.
|
| Japanese labour regulations are very strict, in particular around
| hours worked. Basically all employees (yes, including engineers)
| need to clock in and out, the concept of a "salaried worker"
| doesn't really exist, although normally engineers are paid for a
| certain number of hours regardless if they are actually worked.
| Primarily it is to make sure that overtime is paid and not
| excessive, but I believe there are also some related to the
| definition of what a "full time" job is.
|
| So, it sounds to me like the government is considering relaxing
| those definitions on minimum hours worked to make it easier for
| firms to adopt 4 day work week if they so choose.
| [deleted]
| totetsu wrote:
| I wonder what this will mean for all those teaching contracts
| that come in at 30mins short of a "full time" job, for the
| purposes of the company not having to pay benefits..
| amake wrote:
| > Basically all employees (yes, including engineers) need to
| clock in and out, the concept of a "salaried worker" doesn't
| really exist
|
| Cai Liang Lao Dong Zhi certainly meets the spirit of "salaried
| worker" if not the letter ("need" to clock in for at least 1
| minute to be counted as working for the day).
| loosetypes wrote:
| > the concept of a "salaried worker" doesn't really exist
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaryman
| eric4smith wrote:
| Big mistake. It was the 5-6 day week that built modern Japan.
|
| A lot of people are talking about cutting back on days
| everywhere.
|
| But now, more than ever, is when we need to be working harder to
| get back to where we were before.
|
| (Of course, my attitude to these things is shaped by being a
| business owner -- not an employee. So take with that point of
| view)
| kwere wrote:
| human labour is becoming less and less relevant in production
| of goods & services, society must find a balance between an
| everdominant capital and diminuishing labour value (as a
| whole), keeping busy all hours in bullshit jobs is not the same
| as 50 years ago (from a global perspective)
| kumarvvr wrote:
| > It was the 5-6 day week that built modern Japan
|
| Are you sure that is because of employees slogging in
| factories?
|
| Productive people outside of work will develop and nurture
| their passions. That is a net positive effect on the economy.
| This leads to new innovations, companies and benefit to the
| economy.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| The objective of work is not "to work", its to be productive.
| If a 4 day week is more productive than a 5 day, why wouldn't
| you support it as a business owner?
| tasogare wrote:
| > The objective of work is not "to work", its to be
| productive.
|
| Exactly. Which is why of all governments the Japanese one is
| pushing the 4 day week is really surprising. Here the
| mentality is really to work for the show, even if resulting
| in no increase of production whatsoever.
| echelon wrote:
| Only an owner would feel that way. Without significant equity,
| what's the point?
|
| The worker gets nothing except less life and more stress. The
| owner sucks up all the benefit.
| burlesona wrote:
| Perhaps society would be better off if more of us were
| owners?
| echelon wrote:
| That's what the creator economy is!
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Not really possible. If everyone is an owner, no one is an
| owner. You can try completely abolishing the worker/owner
| dichotomy though, which is very difficult but probably
| possible.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| You need a healthy mix of workers and owners. Those owners
| need incentives, and workers need protection.
|
| Money is a powerful drug and society needs to tame the
| habit. Otherwise, you will end up with conditions equal to
| slavery for the workers and royalty for the capital owners.
|
| All this will lead to is revolutions and bloodshed.
|
| Its ok to sacrifice rapid growth, in cycles, to steady but
| slower growth that has none.
| [deleted]
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Distributism?
| rataata_jr wrote:
| Small businesses?
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| It would definitely be better off if more people felt they
| were participating in economic growth. Over the last few
| decades most growth has gone to a small number of people
| and the rest didn't really benefit. This leads to a very
| cynical and resigned attitude.
| axaxs wrote:
| I find the whole balance rather interesting.
|
| The worker thinks 'without my work, the owner would have
| nothing!'
|
| The owner thinks 'without my business, the worker would have
| nothing.'
|
| The truth is, both are right, to different degrees depending
| on the circumstances. A good owner should make workers feel
| they have a stake, whether by salary or ownership. A good
| worker should make the owner believe they are making a good
| decision by paying them.
|
| I have no answer to the debate in the title, I just find this
| little sub-argument fascinating.
| whatever_dude wrote:
| Different times. There was a time you needed hands on deck; you
| needed many many people doing hard, mechanic work.
|
| This is a time where you need minds on deck. The "knowledge
| worker" as some places call it. You stretch them too thin and
| you get less for you money and time.
|
| Is a 4 day week better? I don't know. But I know it's not the
| same context as it was too years ago.
| lxe wrote:
| Not a business owner, but I have a household.
|
| There's always more stuff to be done and it needs to be done
| faster to keep up.
|
| However I can't just expect everyone to keep "working harder"
| without sacrificing the household itself.
|
| Just letting things lapse, optimizing for speed through
| technology, and lowering expectations (un)surprisingly end up
| with a healthy household.
|
| Business can be run the same way.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| In the short-term, overwork provides a productivity boost. But
| in the long-term, makes people less productive, people waste
| their time more... and the worst part: they neglect activities
| outside work. Like being with their families, or starting a
| family, or looking for a partner.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| So how do you explain the last thirty years in Japan? Was there
| a decrease in work ethic?
| echelon wrote:
| Furthermore, people are so worked to the bone that they
| forgot about having kids and raising families.
| cableshaft wrote:
| What's with this obsession to 'get back to where we were
| before'?
|
| Where we were before was broken, and the pandemic helped reveal
| that. Poor work/life balance, income inequality, industries
| built on JIT processes which fail spectacularly when the
| unexpected happens (see lumber, shipping containers,
| semiconductors, etc), an unfortunate wake-up call that even
| with entire industries shut down and almost no flights and cars
| on the road we only reduced emissions by 13% so we're going to
| need to make incredible sacrifices and green-tech investments
| if we even want to hope at our promised 50% reduction by 2030.
|
| We shouldn't hope to get to where we were before. We should try
| to be better, and perhaps learn to live with less, because on a
| global scale we're not going to have a choice before too long
| whether we do it consciously or have it forced on us.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What's with this obsession to 'get back to where we were
| before'?
|
| > Where we were before was broken,
|
| Not for the people with dominant power over society,
| including over the media organizations that write the
| narratives fed to the masses.
|
| And that's the answer to your question.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Good point, fair enough. We should push back against that
| narrative, then, I guess is my point.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Green Tech isn't the savior we need. Flat out there needs to
| be a consumption revolution worldwide. Even if say we were
| all driving electric cars, on top of the energy required for
| normal everyday life now, you're also adding powering those
| cars. The necessary "reliable" green energy generation for
| that to happen is nothing short of trillions of dollars (when
| I say reliable, I mean exactly as you use it today). Yes I'm
| pulling that number out of my butt, although I'm in major
| power company in the country. Over 85% of our power
| generation is from non-renewables like natural gas and coal.
| Why? Well for one thing Natural resource departments don't
| like us damming up rivers as well as Joe "Second Home"
| Schmoe. On top of that, wind is unreliable or if it's too
| windy we can't use them so the turbine doesn't obliterate
| from too much torque. Sun? Where is the sun in winter?
|
| I get so upset about people who think green energy is the
| answer when they don't realize it's not feasible if you want
| your current lifestyle. People altogether need to stop
| driving so much, spending so much, and living more modestly.
| I guarantee you without even switching to green energy we'd
| see a higher drop in non-renewable usage.
| SilverRed wrote:
| I think what gets people so stuck on this problem is that
| nothing solves it. Everything is only x% of the problem,
| everyone is only a tiny contributor. We need to solve
| everything and all the percents add up to solving it.
|
| Green energy is not the end of the solution but it is part
| of it. It's also quite a big part of it.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| It is not unless we can reliably store energy, which we
| still can't. If there was some way we could store
| megawatts of power on reserve, it would offset the
| unreliability. But when you have 7 billion + people in
| the world, you can't stop what's already in motion.
| cableshaft wrote:
| > People altogether need to stop driving so much, spending
| so much, and living more modestly.
|
| Yeah I believe I said that when I said we need to make
| large sacrifices, I just didn't specify what those
| sacrifices were exactly.
|
| I don't think green tech is the end-all be-all. I honestly
| think we're kind of fucked either way (if anything I was
| holding back, I've been reading some pretty bleak shit
| about how impossible this task will be and how bad things
| can get, but this is Hacker News and most people here don't
| seem to be receptive to that). Clean tech is just part of
| reducing the degree of how fucked we are, at least
| slightly.
|
| And I also think nuclear energy needs to be part of that
| solution to bring down emissions as well, at least for now.
| I haven't been against nuclear power for a long time, and
| was disappointed how people shunned it again after
| Fukushima.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| One reason we don't do nuclear is not enough people are
| skilled in it, we don't want to invest in building them
| after just having decommissioned two, and they are the
| ultimate NIMBY powerplant. Tell people there's a coal
| plant and they may get upset. Tell them there's a nuclear
| power plant after just having seen the HBO series
| Chernobyl and guess how fast they'll be knocking down the
| city governments door to not allow it. You're spot on
| really. People just don't trust it and there's nothing we
| can do about it.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| Honestly, I can only imagine this is informed by a relatively
| privileged place in society.
|
| First of all, your focus on this boogeyman of work/life
| balance assumes that all but a small percent of the global
| population even has enough autonomy in their employment to
| enjoy any balance whatsoever. Most everyone in the world is
| at sustenance levels of labor, "work/life balance" is the
| work of being alive. Secondly, JIT everything worked for the
| past 100 years, failed during an unprecedented in history
| event (we've had pandemics, but we've never "shut down"
| society) and will probably recover to do well until the next
| once-in-a-century event. Solving the global emissions crises
| isn't going to occur via the wealthiest working remotely or
| "learning to live with less". Population growth is far and
| away the biggest contributor to global climate change. Not
| your commute to the office, but growing enough food, building
| enough homes and providing for nearly 10 billion people and
| counting. Again, most of these people don't have anywhere
| near the luxury of bemoaning a poor work/life balance.
|
| It is so telling that the answer you see to solve the woes of
| modern society -- which as you are commenting on HN, you and
| me and the rest of us are beneficiaries of -- is to work less
| and remotely. What sacrifice you make for the good of the
| world!
|
| I am sorry I just am beyond over the sanctimony and self-
| importance of everyone. Now that _you_ have _yours_ and can
| relax in relative comfort, lets call it a day and cut off the
| engine that rose you and yours out of poverty for those poor
| schmucks still dreaming of the comfort of a 40-hour work
| week.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I mean, this is Hacker News, most people here are in a
| privileged place compared to the rest of the world. That's
| kind of the audience.
|
| I'm fully aware not everyone is in this position to request
| or push for work/life balance. I've worked a decent amount
| of shitty jobs in my day, in fast food, retail,
| shipping/receiving, warehouse work. I've gone through
| periods where I was so physically exhausted after work I
| didn't do much more than go home and pass out and wake up
| and go back to work again. It sucks. And I don't know what
| they can do exactly, I'm too far removed from that now.
|
| I believe I did say that shutting down and working remotely
| brought our emissions down only 13%, not "solving the
| global emissions crisis". I said it was a painful wake-up
| call that even with all that happened last year, it wasn't
| anywhere near enough. So we need to try to do as much of
| that as possible _and a lot, lot more_ if we are to get
| anywhere close.
|
| I don't know what that might be. I was listening to Bill
| Gates' 'How to Avoid a Climate Catastrophe' and he thinks
| there's several technologies that can possibly get our
| emissions to zero in the next decade or two. But after
| listening to that book I'm more dubious than he is. It
| sounded like even with his optimism he just inadvertently
| kept making a case for how fucking hard it is, how every
| piece of the solution has downsides and problems to
| overcome to work at scale, and how there's no way we're
| going to change enough hearts and minds or provide enough
| incentives to do enough to get us to 50% reduction in the
| next decade, or all the way down to zero by 2050.
|
| I don't think just staying home means we solved it, not by
| a long shot. We (and I mean corporations in this too,
| they're the bigger culprits than individuals) need to be
| doing all the things and a whole lot more, _if possible_ ,
| and even then I don't see it being enough totally avert
| catastrophe. I'm just hoping instead of like, 4-8 degrees
| warming (and likely human extinction or near extinction),
| maybe we'll somehow bring it down to _only_ 2-3 degrees of
| warming. And that will still lead to terrible things.
|
| And it'll be hard to give up creature comforts. I'm failing
| pretty hard at this more than I'd like to myself right now.
| I'm trying to get better, though, but even if I do, it's
| going to make such a tiny, unnoticeable difference by
| itself.
|
| We can expect things to get fucking bad regardless, I
| think, I'm just hoping we can make things slightly less bad
| instead of everyone just shrugging our shoulders and
| accelerating and steering directly into the iceberg.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| My main thesis is that this is almost purely a population
| problem. The developed world can give up all their
| creature comforts and it would still not nearly be enough
| to even put a dent in anything.
|
| We are already dealing with famine and disease in many
| places of the world. Independent of whether or not this
| is climate caused, we can't solve it without expending
| large resources and using the industrial might that we've
| built.
|
| The conundrum is that the place with massive population
| growth aren't really the places with the resources to
| implement green energy solutions. Coal is easier, coal is
| cheaper. Yes, the developed world's love of meat is a
| major source of deforestation, but so is the need to grow
| the food to feed 10 billion people.
|
| Retarding population growth is _the_ single biggest thing
| we can do as a species to reduce climate damage. This is
| one of the reasons I am not planning to have kids, when I
| die the relative population to my existence drops by one.
| Even if my kid rode their bike their whole life, lived in
| a climate friendly passive heating/cooling house and ate
| locally sourced food, their existence would produce more
| climate gasses than my ICE could ever dream of producing.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Retarding population growth is _the_ single biggest
| thing we can do as a species to reduce climate damage
|
| Retarding economic growth is, a better candidate, if you
| limit it to "retarding growth"; you'd need substantial
| and rapid population reduction (not just "retarding
| growth") to offset the expected effects of near term
| economic development outside of the West.
|
| Obviously, the _biggest_ thing we could do to end
| anthropogenic clomate change is species-scale mass
| suicide. No anthropos, no anthropogenic climate change.
|
| OTOH, most people who want to address that problem
| _don't_ actually think that doing the most we can on that
| unconditionally overrides all other concerns.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| That is sort-of the subtext of my thinking on this whole
| thing. Want to limit famine? You will warm the globe.
| Want to cool the planet? Production and industrialization
| needs to halt which will increase famine.
|
| It is all a balancing act and I am not convinced any
| balance we find won't result in massive suffering and
| loss of life somewhere.
| 73gfg wrote:
| Only given highly parallelizable tasks wherein input linearly
| maps to output, e.g. picking corn, laying train tracks,
| chopping trees, etc.
|
| Technology increases leverage allowing exponential outputs
| given the right inputs.
|
| Overworking employees ceases to be a viable strategy for high
| tech industries.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "But now, more than ever, is when we need to be working harder
| to get back to where we were before."
|
| the question is whether working more really leads to working
| harder and more output. From what I see most people just go
| through the motion after a certain amount of work per week.
| They look busy and feel busy but I am not sure the output is
| there. I personally I am most productive if I work around 32
| hours per week with some spurts of much more work in between.
| tus89 wrote:
| Maybe they should start with 8-hour days, then do a 4-day
| workweek XD
| trixie_ wrote:
| Wouldn't it be cool if in addition to a 4 day work week, that
| those days could be flexible. It could actually benefit the both
| society and the company, as in the company is operating in some
| form 7 days a week for customers. And for society the 'weekend'
| is more flexible which improves traffic during the week and the
| overcrowding you typically find on saturday/sunday.
| koch wrote:
| This could make it a little more difficult to keep track of
| companies that have a 4 day week[0], but a good problem to have I
| guess!
|
| [0] https://thelistofcompanies.com
| polm23 wrote:
| I'm skeptical this will actually see wide adoption.
|
| I don't mean to suggest this is a universal trend, but I remember
| being surprised to see that Tora no Ana, a comic book shop with
| tech company aspirations, advertised "super engineer" positions
| that let you work four days a week. But it turned out this was a
| position with higher qualifications than a normal engineer that
| just gave you the option of working four ten hour days instead of
| five eight hour ones.
|
| https://www.toranoana.jp/recruit/super-engineer/
|
| While the suggested four day work week here sounds like a real
| four days and not longer hours, I do think that managing company
| expectations will be difficult.
| ineedasername wrote:
| While I would like it, unfortunately it wouldn't work for things
| like customer-facing positions. If the business is open from 9am
| to 9pm then it still needs the same level of staff coverage. The
| company could either reduce pay proportionately, or keep paying
| the same salaries (and increase hourly workers' pay
| proportionately) and hire more people, incurring a 20% increase
| in labor costs.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| I think more companies should (and probably will consider) 4-day
| maybe even 3-day workweeks as technology makes us more
| productive. Especially in industries that require deep thinking,
| the output doesn't necessarily scale with # of hours a worker
| puts in, not every hour is the same. I think 10 hours of highly
| productive work is much better than 40 hours of busy work.
|
| Anecdotally, I managed to accumulate almost 300 hours of vacation
| time and now switched over to 3-day weeks at a big tech company
| for a while and even though I really enjoy my work, I feel much
| better this way and roughly at the same productivity, but a lot
| happier.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Especially in industries that require deep thinking, the
| output doesn't necessarily scale with # of hours a worker puts
| in, not every hour is the same.
|
| Its not about the number of days per week, it's also about the
| frequency of the thinking you put into it. If you do a 4 days
| break between two work days, I'd be very surprised if you
| remember anything in detail of your previous work period.
| _delirium wrote:
| This is part of why I prefer the opposite of the 4-day
| workweek trend. I typically do _some_ work 6 or 7 days a
| week, but a workday might be only 2 or 3 hours, on some of
| those days. I don 't feel like a workaholic, and am not doing
| 60-hour weeks or anything. I average maybe 30-35 hours
| depending on the week, but those hours are spread over more
| days. Outside of the occasional "in the zone" hacking session
| or paper deadline a handful of times a year, there's no way I
| can work 8 hours in a single day on a regular basis! But
| working on a problem for a few hours a day in a regular
| cadence, not long enough each day to get burned out, but
| frequently enough that I still remember what I'm doing - that
| I like.
| dragonsky67 wrote:
| I think this could be a very effective use of your time. I
| always find the break from Friday to Monday very disruptive
| if I've got to carry work across, especially if I've had a
| busy/fun weekend. Being able to do 3-4 hours per day for a
| 7 or 8 day week, then taking 4 -5 days off would make for
| very effective work focus.
| xmprt wrote:
| Not all "weekends" have to be at the end of the week. You can
| have a weekend Wednesday and be able to recharge every 2 days
| without having to wait for 4 full days before your next
| weekend.
| user123456780 wrote:
| This is the way. I did this for a few months to burn
| through some of my leave budget. It was great Wednesday
| became my chores day. Get the house in order, go to the
| bank whatever. Then the weekend was entirely spent on
| luxury and entertainment.
|
| My overall output was reasonably similar to that of a 5 day
| week because I came at work with a waay better attitude. It
| also made it easier to plan 2 days of work instead of 5. I
| also spent a chunk of my Wednesday thinking about work and
| how to tackle the next two days.
|
| That meant I could without guilt take the weekend entirely
| off and not even think about work at all.
| dnate wrote:
| I get what you are saying.
|
| Just want to point out that Ideally you shouldn't feel
| the need to think about work on either of your free days.
| Wednesday or weekend.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Then it should not be called a 4-days week in the first
| place. It's confusing.
| golergka wrote:
| Many companies would agree if you offered them to work 3 days a
| week for 60% of your salary. I've done it.
| stubish wrote:
| Heh. I did it too, as 'transition to retirement'. Liked it so
| much the transition bit didn't last too long.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| You're getting shafted
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| > Many companies would agree if you offered them to work 3
| days a week for 60% of your salary. I've done it.
|
| My last employer refused to even accept 4 days a week for
| 80%. Manager brought up how much the company had invested in
| training me as a grad (which, to be fair, they did), and that
| cutting my hours would have meant that investment had gone to
| waste.
|
| I now work for them 0 days a week. Funny how that works.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I'll never understand that concept that certain management
| types think they can keep you perpetually under a feeling
| of obligation alone.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Knowing the manager, he was extremely devoted to his
| work, the company and the craft. He was just holding
| holding me to his own standards.
|
| I'm assuming this is a problem in a lot of organisations;
| the people who rise to the top are the ones who lean more
| towards work on the work-life balance scale.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > Knowing the manager, he was extremely devoted to his
| work, the company and the craft. He was just holding
| holding me to his own standards.
|
| He doesn't seem to have attained a high level of
| proficiency in the craft of people management and
| employee retention, though :)
| etempleton wrote:
| It can also just be an HR challenge in some
| organizations. It shouldn't be, but sometimes
| organizations can get pretty rigid on how they define
| jobs and roles.
| wincy wrote:
| It is weird sometimes. Took me about ten recruiters
| reaching out before I finally found a company that was
| even willing to negotiate on vacation days. I have 23
| vacation days a year, no thanks, I'm not going back to 15
| until I work at your company for five years. Just
| accepted a new position with a 15% pay raise and 20 days,
| which when I do the math 23x=20x*1.15, which is funny
| because I came up with the number right on the spot and
| somehow did the math so I'd be getting equivalent
| monetary value benefits for my PTO.
| dnate wrote:
| And I am here complaining about my 30 vacation days. Good
| to get some perspective sometimes.
| SilverRed wrote:
| I'm sure mine would too but whenever I think about the trade,
| I'd rather have more money and work the full time. Then I can
| buy an investment property and relax on the gains on the
| land.
| falcolas wrote:
| Just remember: having a "later" is not guaranteed. Too much
| can happen between now and then.
|
| My advice is to _also_ enjoy the time you know you have:
| now. Even if it postpones the "later" for a bit.
| version_five wrote:
| I'm quoting the GP:
|
| > Especially in industries that require deep thinking, the
| output doesn't necessarily scale with # of hours a worker
| puts in, not every hour is the same. I think 10 hours of
| highly productive work is much better than 40 hours of busy
| work.
|
| I absolutely agree with this, but I'm skeptical of a model
| that allows someone to come to work for only 10 hours and
| have _those_ hours be the productive time. _Especially_ for
| deep thinking work. My experience is that to push forward in
| work that requires creativity and deep thought, one needs to
| be immersed in it, while at the same time not pressured to
| come up with something on the spot. The immersion (often)
| requires a full time commitment to the work, even if some of
| that time is actually spent chatting with colleagues or
| wasting time on HN or whatever. Providing the needed freedom
| from pressure, but still enough pressure to get results, is a
| question of management, either personal or from good manager.
| tartoran wrote:
| I so agree with your point but I don't see this ever
| happening in a corp type of employment. Maybe in a
| tightknit smallish company, working alongside likeminded
| people that could be the norm.
| skinpop wrote:
| here in japan where I live 5 day work weeks are unheard of.
| everyone is working monday to saturday.
| [deleted]
| supernova87a wrote:
| How about they first do away with the culture of "have to show
| your face in the office until 7pm and then go drinking with your
| colleagues until midnight, or your wife will ask why you're home
| so early"?
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| My impression is that the men are abandoning their wives to
| manage the ids, their own careers, and housework, not
| pressuring the men to stay away.
| youeseh wrote:
| How would the government of Japan do away with this? If it was
| more important than backing the 4 day work week, why don't you
| think it happened first?
| supernova87a wrote:
| It was kind of a snarky joke/commentary, I guess it was hard
| to convey the sentiment over text.
| dzaragozar wrote:
| It is important to note that this announcement means that
| employers can opt to work for 4 days a week, with the
| corresponding reduction in salary. It is not reducing work week
| to 32h with the same salary! A similar scheme exists in the
| Netherlands, you are allowed to work 4 days a week AND you get
| paid for 4 days of work, so 80% salary.
| mjcohen wrote:
| Amazon supports the 8-day workweek for its warehouse workers.
| paxys wrote:
| It's an open secret at least in the tech world that absolutely no
| one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a week. This was
| true well before the pandemic and is more pronounced than ever
| now. Everyone needs to be "present" for 8 hours a day 5 days a
| week, but spends their time in pointless meetings, preparing
| documents and powerpoints that no one will read, faux
| social/teambuilding events, hour long lunches, goofing off on the
| internet, all to maintain the pretense of office culture.
|
| Companies that shuffle things up to prioritize productivity over
| simply showing up will be set to succeed over the next
| generation.
| ggm wrote:
| Australia calling: 37.5hr week please. It be law.
| dtn wrote:
| It's law, but it still gets abused quite frequently (outside
| of tech, at least).
|
| Anecdotally speaking, all my mates who work in private
| construction office jobs regularly do quite a bit of unpaid
| overtime. It's very much a combined cultural and managerial
| issue, clocking off at the correct hours gets you the stink-
| eye, and the volume of work assigned necessitates overtime.
| nkssy wrote:
| I bet you're envious of the typical US 2 weeks vacation
| allowance.
| ggm wrote:
| 20 years in with two rounds of long service leave that
| would be "no"
| nkssy wrote:
| I sense there are colorful words before that word "No".
| yskchu wrote:
| One of the things I love most about Australia (New South
| Wales at least) is the mandatory 2 months long service leave
| after 10 years of service
|
| https://www.industrialrelations.nsw.gov.au/employers/nsw-
| emp...
| irrational wrote:
| Still way too long.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I wonder if this is related to the fact that my computer seems
| to have more bugs in it than a hive of angry bees.
| blindmute wrote:
| Yep, I've had full time six figure jobs where I was literally
| working 5 hours per week including meetings. I've never had a
| job where I worked more than 20 hours a week, including a
| hectic 7-employee startup.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| > Companies that shuffle things up to prioritize productivity
| over simply showing up will be set to succeed over the next
| generation.
|
| I tend to disagree, but don't argue either way for four or five
| day weeks, but because it seems success and productivity are
| only loosely coupled.
|
| Company financial success, and / or long term viability, I
| believe, is largely random. Large, already successful companies
| will, largely, continue to be so, small to medium enterprises
| will survive the next five years at about the same rate they
| historically have. Small business will continue to fail all
| over the place.
|
| People will continue to be super intelligent, flawed and
| incompetent, easily distracted, lack focus, and easily
| corrupted by power and vice.
|
| And start ups, to anyone who's been paying attention, is almost
| entirely a branch of gambling for a specific type of whale.
|
| I predict that on the whole the next decade will be largely
| like the last ten years, and there's approximately nothing to
| be gained from chasing tiny productivity gains.
| arvinsim wrote:
| At least WFH would be normalized which is a big win
| alexashka wrote:
| I wonder if it's also an open secret that 99% of office jobs
| today are typewriter jobs of a few decades ago - soon to be
| gone.
|
| Good riddance if people with a working brain were given any
| power, we'd all be at 2-3 hours of work per day with robots
| doing the rest by now.
| justicezyx wrote:
| I spend 2-3 hours working, and 3-4 hours commuting, and other
| time in staring each other and rumbling in some meeting, and
| have a rather relaxed lunch with friends talking nonsense...
|
| This was when I was in Google
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > It's an open secret at least in the tech world that
| absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a
| week.
|
| Is this true only in the US? What percentage of companies is
| this true for? How many jobs will tolerate this reality?
| GhostVII wrote:
| I feel like I generally am reasonably productive for 40 hours.
| Of course I'm not constantly super focused, but if I were to
| work fewer hours I would get less done. Every once in a while
| you have a meeting that isn't totally necessary, but reducing
| working hours wouldn't get rid of those.
| flexie wrote:
| I work as a lawyer. When I do brain work such as research,
| contracts or court meetings, I believe 3-4 hours a day is the
| max I do continuously. If I have more phone calls, client
| meetings etc., it's easier to do the 8 hours.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| We did this at my new company. One 30 minute scheduled standup.
| That's the only meeting we have all week. Of course people are
| free to jump on a video call to work through stuff, but
| scheduled meetings are generally discouraged, and to date we
| only have the one.
|
| Since everyone is contract, we're seeing an average of about 26
| hours per week. It's by far the most productive team I've ever
| been on or have built. We ship new features weekly. It's truly
| an incredible pace, but doesn't feel hectic like you might
| think.
|
| I think the contract only + no meetings + no HR (no culture
| bullshit, no "get to know people" social events, no bullshit)
| company setup is going to be the future. If you give people the
| opportunity to work on things they like working on, and don't
| make work about anything other than work, you get amazing
| results.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| So not an hourly contract? but a per deliverable contract?
| How do you figure out what's a deliverable in the time - if
| thats what you're doing.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| > I think the contract only + no meetings + no HR (no culture
| bullshit, no "get to know people" social events, no bullshit)
| company setup is going to be the future.
|
| But in the US you see the opposite happening at a lot of
| large companies. I think what you described would be the
| future of a company with a homogeneous type of worker.
| However, we are humans we are not machines ignoring that we
| are humans can be detrimental. Not to mention worker equality
| is becoming important to be a stable work environment. It's
| important to forget you have other roles and industries that
| simply cannot function the way you described (doctors,
| nurses, flight attendants, pilots, plumbers, etc.)
|
| Also, I want I'm not saying the current technology corporate
| environment doesn't need optimizing. It certainly does but it
| seems that we are moving towards that and trying to focus on
| what matter in HR as well.
| [deleted]
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| This sounds great. I don't want to have to pretend to care
| about my company or it's "culture". I just want to do some
| work and get paid for it.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Well the point isn't to not care. We want devs that care
| about the quality of their code and genuinely want to focus
| on _just_ that. I get some people want more out of a job,
| and that's totally fine. But I think there's a good portion
| of people that just want to do work and spend the rest of
| their time with their family, or hobbies or whatever.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| Not everyone is an autist.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Why is contract important to this?
| danielheath wrote:
| I think it's a confusing way to say "hourly and work as
| many or few hours as they feel like".
| ryanSrich wrote:
| At this point is mostly a filtering mechanism for me. The
| types of people that want contract are typically more used
| to (and want) an environment without the HR bullshit.
|
| Some, not all, but certainly some people use work as their
| only form of social life and interaction. Which leads to a
| lot of time not working. I'm not saying this is inherently
| bad. It's just not the type of company we're building.
| Filtering for contract work has taken care of this so far.
| Will continue to evaluate as we scale up.
| achow wrote:
| Contract means no perf eval, no 'culture' events
| participation, no leadership trainings etc., what OP
| classified as HR bullshit (true).
| mjcohen wrote:
| How about benefits such as health insurance, vacation days,
| sick days?
| ryanSrich wrote:
| We offer equity comp, health stipend, and equipment stipend
| for anyone contracted on a 20 hour per week minimum.
|
| Sick/vacation days are harder because we pay for whatever I
| get an invoice for. Since we don't track what people do on
| a day by day basis (I often don't even know if someone is
| working that day until I reach out to them or slack, or
| vice versa), there's nothing stopping them for billing me
| for extra hours. And to be honest I really wouldn't care. I
| just care about output and quality of that output.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > I often don't even know if someone is working that day
| until I reach out to them or slack
|
| If you don't know if they're working, don't fucking slack
| them. How about you check their calendar or send an
| email.
|
| Slack is not for asynchronous communication.
|
| It's amazing how high and mighty people can be and then
| they ping people for non-emergencies while they're on
| vacation.
| jlokier wrote:
| > Slack is not for asynchronous communication.
|
| Depends on the organisation.
|
| Where I'm currently working, we use Discord. Discord is
| similar to Slack.
|
| It is _explicitly_ for asynchronous communication. We are
| supposed to not expect immediate replies to questions and
| comments on Discord, especially as other teammates are in
| different timezones. Sometimes there 's real time chat,
| but it depends who is on at the time.
|
| I posted some comments yesterday. There was one reply
| within a few hours, and two more this morning.
|
| Email is pretty much deprecated. Nobody uses it, except
| to set up calendar entries for meetings, and formal
| things like HR and invoices.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Why don't you just not check your Slack messages when
| you're on holiday?
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I miss vacation so much.
|
| I just fly home from the US. And ... I still have to work
| instead of just spending time with my parents that I
| haven't seen in years.
|
| I earn more than 200k. ( not west coast ) it's a decent
| salary right? Why can't I have vacation, too? I asked and
| putted and asked again...
|
| All that will accomplish one thing: one day in the next 2
| years I will wake up, look at my bank account. And quit. To
| have actual free time.
|
| I told that to my boss in those term, we have a decent
| relationship. But ... he gave me some HR bullshit.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| If your job is getting in the way of your life goals, why
| don't you find one that doesn't?
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Oh. Thanks, never thought about it that way. Sarcasm
| aside yes: I'm not gonna keep working in the US for that
| specific reason.
| aix1 wrote:
| I could be wrong, but it seems that there's no great
| shortage of companies offering 4+ weeks of PTO per year
| in the US. Or are you expecting more vacation than that?
| (Or are perhaps otherwise constrained as to the choice of
| employers?)
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| I've got 4 weeks paid vacation. It really doesn't feel
| like much. That's only 1/13th of your weeks being work-
| free per year. I personally would like more. I think
| something like a 20-25 hour workweek plus 8-12 weeks of
| vacation would be good enough that I would stay in the
| workforce long term. As it stands today, it seems more
| feasible to continue working full time, hit FI in a few
| years and retire early rather than find such a good work-
| life balance.
| nickff wrote:
| How much were you willing to sacrifice in salary in
| exchange for additional vacation? Was it a net-positive
| deal for your counter party (employer)? I ask because I
| hear this kind of thing all the time who want to make the
| same money, for less time at work.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Most people need spare time to be happy, productive, not
| burn out. And as a company or society, you don't want to
| encourage people to work too hard for money because most
| people are stupid and will actually work too hard for
| money, and not be happy, become less productive, and
| burnout.
|
| That's how it works in Europe. It's common that a boss
| will ask an employee to work less, because the amount of
| time they work is not even legal sometimes, or to force
| people to go on vacation for weeks to use their vacation
| days. It's also more fair and don't put pressure for
| other employees that value their life outside work.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Forcing employees to take a holiday is often done purely
| out of the company's self-interest, as accrued leave is a
| liability on the books.
| selectodude wrote:
| Also, at least in finance, they force you to take a
| couple weeks off once in awhile to make sure you're not
| up to anything illegal.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Of course I would be willing to reduce my yearly salary
| for 2 or 3 weeks of extra time. Should not be that hard.
|
| It's worth more than the proportional time I would take
| off. It's very valuable to me. Like 5k / week would be a
| good price tag. I have no debt and more stuff than I
| need. Now let's me enjoy life while I still can ( and
| keep working on that job that I actually enjoy )
|
| I'm not sure to understand about the net positive. The
| response I got was that taking time off without pay would
| 1) set a bad << example >> or something of that sort and
| 2) make it hard to plan for resource availability.
|
| Does that answer your question?
| jstummbillig wrote:
| The crux here is, of course, that one week of your time
| is a _lot_ more valuable than 5k to your employer if they
| pay you 3.7k per week, and probably a lot more than you
| would be willing to part with or find reasonable (think
| 20k+ a week)
|
| It's a pretty infuriating setup. From the employers
| perspective, the amount of money you lose by having
| someone not work is so obscene, so quickly, that you have
| to fight your monkey brain pretty hard to not be a total
| asshole about it.
|
| Even in this well paying industry, you could give
| everyone obscene raises, before time off makes any
| financial sense for the average employer. I don't think
| enough employees realise this.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I would love to understand that better to negotiate my
| next job better on that specific issue.
|
| There is something that make me think something is fishy
| in that approach : why are more and more places switch to
| unlimited PTO if it's that costly to give folks time off?
|
| I had unlimited PTO a couple of times, it can sucks (
| pressure NOT to take any PTO for the company sake ) Or he
| just fine.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > There is something that make me think something is
| fishy in that approach : why are more and more places
| switch to unlimited PTO if it's that costly to give folks
| time off
|
| "Why do people get more time off now than ever before in
| human history (which they do)?"
|
| There are now more forces than ever, that work against
| unlimited exploitation of human labor. For example, human
| beings in most countries have enforceable rights and they
| _want_ time off, and the market that has to compete for
| those people. Humans are shitty machines. If you piss
| them off, they do shitty work. If you treat them poorly
| they leave. (In reality, "treating them poorly"
| translates to "treating them slightly less good then
| someone else") Since having someone quit working for you
| is pretty fucking expensive (assuming, of course, that
| they are actually being productive), you better make sure
| they do want to continue working for you and so you make
| it worth their while.
|
| Another important example would be worker protection
| laws, that simply dictate certain amenities.
|
| "Why is everyone doing unlimited PTO, specifically?"
|
| Less clear on that one. Part of it is certainly it being
| a trend. If other people do it and employees want it,
| then you might have to go along, again, to not get pushed
| out of the market.
|
| But since it clearly does not ever _actually_ mean
| "unlimited PTO" (you'd be out of a job pretty quickly if
| you tried), an interesting followup question might be
| what the fuck it _actually_ means and who benefits? Maybe
| employees are a little confused about how much time off
| to take and take less than before? Or maybe they feel
| pressured to underbid each other? Maybe it 's also just
| that the flexibility it adds to the job leads to more
| loyal employers, which is pretty nifty in a market
| starved for workers.
| egman_ekki wrote:
| Even if their time was 5 times as valuable to the company
| as their pay, it seems very unfair to pay someone 3.7k
| per week, but require 20k from them if they want to take
| a week off? That basically means that if you took 3
| months sabbatical, and worked the rest of the year, you
| would actually pay your employer 100k for working those 9
| months...
| jstummbillig wrote:
| A system, where other people make more off your work than
| you do has pretty intrinsic problems.
| nickff wrote:
| Customers and clients of all sorts obtain consumer
| surpluses; if they were indifferent, they would not make
| purchases... Employers are just a different sort of
| customer.
| andyferris wrote:
| Honest question: why does it "cost" the employer so much
| to have you on leave?
|
| I heard this argument in North America but not here in
| Australia. I mean, small businesses might require
| critical people at critical times, but generally in
| larger orgs this shouldn't be too hard.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Say your employer makes 20k a week of the produce of your
| work. This means you having a single, unpaid week off
| will directly cost your employer 20k. Even if you would
| willingly take a (from your perspective) pretty hefty pay
| cut of 4k for that week off, the employer would still be
| down 16k compared to before.
|
| This is the weird and intuitively wrong stuff that
| happens, when employers make more through their employees
| work than their employees do, even after factoring in
| their salary.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Is your employer going to write down a loss of $20k on
| the books when you take a week off work? Probably not,
| because opportunity cost isn't actually an expense.
| nickff wrote:
| By 'net positive' I mean willing to take a cut larger
| than is directly proportional to the reduction in hours
| worked. The reality is that reducing each person's annual
| work will increase costs for the company overall, as it
| needs to pay additional overhead and benefits, which are
| related to employee count, rather than hours worked.
|
| I think that everyone is a bit wary of setting difficult
| precedents in employment situations, as well as the
| possibility of creating rifts between people with
| different 'deals'. That said, I think we should all place
| a higher priority on coming up with mutually beneficial
| arrangements.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I see : yes, I'm compensated roughly $3000 / week. I
| don't know how much I do cost per week but probably
| around $4000 ? Idk.
|
| As I stated it's easily worth 5k for me. ( 7 days, 5 days
| would be $3500 )
|
| That negociation did not go well. I got 2 extra day off
| and was told to stop making noise.
|
| Oh. well.
| jobigoud wrote:
| Except that it increases employees morale and motivation
| and thus productivity, and reduces chances of burnout.
| There are benefits for the company too.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Exactly. I stay longer in a previous company with
| unlimited PTO ( real one ) for that reason.
|
| It's crazy how they don't realize it's just alienate
| workers.
| prawn wrote:
| This blows my mind. Throwing your prime (or prime-st
| remaining years) at an office. Can you put your foot down
| and take unpaid leave whether they like it or not? Come
| up with an excuse if you have to. They will always try to
| push you to follow their line but will you regret that
| later in life?
| nkssy wrote:
| Yeah if a boss said I couldn't have 4 weeks off per year
| I'd probably tell them they're functionally incompetant.
|
| Its always interesting to see how other people live.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Good for you! I will cash a few years more of that sweat
| US money and go back retire at home. Where every gas
| station attendant has 5 weeks of PTO.
| ddnb wrote:
| Don't forget to live your life now as well. All fine and
| dandy to save for 'later', but if you keep going until
| you burn out you won't be enjoying your later that much.
| That or if you get run over by a bus tomorrow it was all
| for nothing.
| nkssy wrote:
| You be you. May you have interesting times in early
| retirement.
| comrad wrote:
| I've rejected some jobs that offered less than 30 days
| (in a 5 day workweek) vacation per year.
| postmeta wrote:
| do employees get equity?
| felipellrocha wrote:
| > If you give people the opportunity to work on things they
| like working on, and don't make work about anything other
| than work, you get amazing results.
|
| That line started off well, but ended off terrible. I really
| don't want to be working in a place where I'm treated like a
| replaceable machine. You do you, man.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > I really don't want to be working in a place where I'm
| treated like a replaceable machine.
|
| This seems like a leap. Where did I insinuate that anyone
| is a cog in a machine? Just because I said work should be
| about work? Why does it have to be about anything else? If
| you need your job to provide a social aspect to your life
| that's completely fine. It's just not a part of the
| business I'm building. It's why I think having options is
| great. Everyone works differently.
| dlkmp wrote:
| You're getting a lot of negative feedback so I just want
| to say I can relate a lot to the model you're proposing
| (and practicing).
|
| I interview fairly often with potential employers,
| sometimes just for the experience and insights. Never
| once did I consider taking a job for other reasons than
| the type of work and its pay (commuting time and factors
| not directly in control of the company aside).
|
| I'm not even the type of person who hates team events and
| the like, at least at the companies I have been working
| at these usually were a lot of fun. It's just nothing
| that keeps me from moving on from or motivates me to take
| some job.
| yakireev wrote:
| > I think the contract only + no meetings + no HR (no culture
| bullshit, no "get to know people" social events)
|
| So, gig economy. Or, at best, hourly wage at Amazon
| warehouse, but for developers. I heard those warehouses are
| super extra no-bullshit efficient.
| xf1cf wrote:
| You missed the OPs point in all your heavily laden snark.
|
| There are (sad, imo) people whose entire lives revolve
| around work. Their friends are there, and they enjoy social
| outings with their work colleagues.
|
| To me, social outings are just an unnecessary risk. I do
| not talk to my coworkers like I talk to my friends, I do
| not want my coworkers knowing too much about my personal
| life, and especially when booze is involved it's too easy
| to find yourself on the receiving end of something awkward,
| or witness to something awkward.
|
| Meetings are simple: if it's important enough to take an
| hour of my day it's important enough to count as seat time.
| When my productivity drops and my manager asks why I tell
| them that meetings are taking up too much time. It's their
| job to make sure I have what I need to do my best work. If
| they tell me to work later I start looking for other jobs.
| It's so easy to get a senior developer job now, and there's
| really no long term benefit staying anywhere, that I'm not
| exactly sorry for leaving in this case.
|
| I have literally zero interest in "culture". I wouldn't
| even work for a company if I didnt need the money to live.
| I don't understand how you've derived the dichotomy that
| you can either have mindless time sink "culture" bullshit
| OR an amazon warehouse slaveshop.
|
| Call me a pessimist. I think people obsessed with "work
| culture" are sad. You shouldn't hate the 8 hours of work
| you do, but you also shouldn't center your entire life on
| it. Afterall, it could be taken away from you with a
| penstroke the next time the CEO needs to make room in the
| budget for their salary.
| vincnetas wrote:
| If you would treat devs like warehouse workers right
| now,all devs would run away. I mean force them to be 100%
| effective all the 8 hours and track every move they make.
| On the other hand allow warehouse workers flexible schedule
| and decent pay so they could live decent life by puting in
| 20 hours a week (even while measuring every move they make)
| and i bet there would be devs who would convert to
| warehouse workers.
| Animats wrote:
| _If you would treat devs like warehouse workers right
| now,all devs would run away. I mean force them to be 100%
| effective all the 8 hours and track every move they
| make._
|
| CleverControl employee monitoring pitch: "This software
| offers powerful features: keylogging, screen recording,
| live viewing, remote settings, clipboard control, Skype
| monitoring, and more. The software records time that was
| spent on this or that activity and shows you stats in
| graphs. Besides, the app captures screenshots at all
| important events like right-clicking and window change,
| and it can record activity near the device with the help
| of a webcam and microphone. Moreover, CleverControl
| records employees' active and inactive time, letting you
| detect lazybones and reward hard work."
| nsonha wrote:
| can they already do this with all the data they have in
| github? Not that I would endorse it, but that sounds like
| better data for tracking. Instead of enforcing time you
| enforce activities.
| rtkwe wrote:
| No this is massively more invasive than checking your
| commit history. Github doesn't know moment to moment what
| you're doing while these invasive tracking programs do.
| nsonha wrote:
| my point is that they can already do this with commit
| history (and more), while this is an inferior way of
| tracking, regardless of privacy concerns.
| gombosg wrote:
| I heard about these tracking software and I sincerely
| hope they won't get any more prevalent. As I see they are
| somewhat present in the contracting world.
|
| I treat it as a total, humiliating devaluation of
| creative engineering work (and thus their identity!) to
| that of unskilled factory workers.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Eventually, maybe developers will realize that they have
| a lot more in common with those "unskilled" workers they
| disdain than they do with their capitalist owners.
|
| Unions would be helpful for both, in my view.
| ikrenji wrote:
| anyone employed anywhere should be unionized, thats just
| common sense
| vincnetas wrote:
| This would trigger Italian strike in me (as a dev)
| immediately :)
|
| "Another unconventional tactic is work-to-rule (also
| known as an Italian strike, in Italian: Sciopero bianco),
| in which workers perform their tasks exactly as they are
| required to but no better."
| rvba wrote:
| Put so much demands that they work for 12 hours per day 6
| days per week, while nominal time is 8 hours and 4 days -
| rest is unpaid overtime.
|
| This is how it works already in many companies, also
| infamous 996
| ryanSrich wrote:
| It's certainly not perfect, but I genuinely think it's much
| better than being an FTE anywhere else. Of course I'm
| biased.
|
| I mentioned benefits in another post, so I wouldn't say
| it's gig economy.
|
| What other environment could give a developer $100+/hr,
| ability to make their own schedule, and essentially all
| legal protections to work on side projects, work for other
| companies, etc. at the same time?
|
| Is it for everyone? No. But we've had more quality devs
| interested than we can employ at this point, so I'd say
| it's attractive to a good portion of the market.
| yakireev wrote:
| I did not imply that _your_ company is an Amazon
| warehouse, I 'm sorry if it sounded like that.
|
| But if this "hourly wage for hourly work and nothing
| else" becomes a norm, that's what we'll eventually get,
| I'm afraid.
| [deleted]
| emteycz wrote:
| It's what we want. I wouldn't work any other way ever
| again. I don't think FTE jobs are going anywhere
| (companies always push to have us as FTE, not the other
| way around), let us be.
| jasonzemos wrote:
| You've forgotten the core tenet of every engineering
| discipline is the master-apprentice relationship. The
| reason why what you describe is really the gig economy is
| because you've turned contractors into autodidacts to cut
| costs. You're not only expecting engineers to work for
| you, you're expecting them to learn their craft without
| capitalizing that yourself. Someone has to pay for that
| too; it probably won't be your other contractors --
| otherwise you'd be something like a real company again.
|
| Your success in this direction to turn software
| development into some kind of cattle feedlot is only a
| mirage. Let me make it clear in economic terms: you're up
| a few chips at the casino, for now, because the market
| allows you to be. In the long run it's not sustainable,
| and won't yield any major feats of engineering with any
| level of competence.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| I really don't understand this comment.
|
| At what point did I say or lead anyone to believe that we
| 1.) expect developers to be autodidacts? Because we don't
| have meetings? Seems an odd way to measure engineering
| culture and 2.) this had anything to do with cutting
| cost? Our hourly wages are high enough to where the cost
| savings is negligible compared to fully loaded salaries.
| I'd be happy to share the numbers over email.
|
| Your idea of the master-apprentice relationship seems
| overtly romantic. I never said we don't train staff, or
| haven't brought on younger engineers. I literally
| onboarded an intern last week. They'll likely make more
| working less than any intern at any FAANG is making this
| summer.
|
| > Your success in this direction to turn software
| development into some kind of cattle feedlot is only a
| mirage.
|
| I have to straight up disagree on the premise that it's a
| mirage. Nevertheless, this is certainly an experiment,
| and one where we'll adapt as needed.
|
| I feel as if you're focusing too much on the contractor
| concept. Would you be as opposed to this model if say I
| hired FTEs at 20 hours per week? So essentially half
| salary. How is this any different (note my previous
| comments about benefits).
| op00to wrote:
| You pay for employee training. You don't pay for
| contractor training.
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| What training? I had to pay for my own college degree, my
| employer didn't pay for that, but they do require it.
| mulmen wrote:
| College is not job training. I'm not sure why this
| misconception is so widespread. I have a degree but my
| employers do pay for relevant training for my job. It's
| not like the industry stopped evolving 10 years ago.
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| College is not job training and yet it's training that
| most jobs require. Hmmmmm....sounds like BS.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It is an open secret that people who are productive only 2/3 of
| the time in 40 hours/week would be productive only 2/3 of the
| time in 32 hours/week as well.
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| That's patently untrue: most of my colleague working 3 or 4
| days a week are more focused their days in.
|
| The invert is true though: a task will evolve to take the
| time alloted to it, I see that regularly with "unconstrained"
| project running amok. Those with fixed time are way more
| efficient and finish with a minimum of overtime.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Every lazy slacker tells this same old story. I believe
| that most IT professionals don't even know what it means to
| work really hard. _Oh, I worked producing lines of code 4
| hours today, of which 25 minutes were spent compiling. I am
| sooo tired, my job is so difficult, it is the hardest job
| in the world, I need a rest and a 2 days work week!_.
| rainonmoon wrote:
| I hear what you're saying, but anecdotally I just cut my days
| back and find myself a lot more energised and engaged when
| actually at work. I haven't really compared my degree of
| output yet, but I can at least say I'm a lot more emotionally
| invested in the results of my work and my job satisfaction is
| higher. One's mileage may vary.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| > hour long lunches
|
| Are one hour lunches not the norm? I've always worked
| 0900-1730, with an hour long lunch.
| formatjam wrote:
| meanwhile, China is doing 996 - 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
|
| Obviously people hated it. But it is happening and no wonder
| China tech is catching up fast / winning in some areas already.
| Kalleklovn wrote:
| It is normal for Chinese to sleep/take a nap by the desk
| during the day.. Pretty sure they are catching up because of
| other reasons than being most of their waking hours at work..
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Winning what? A totalitarian government where the people are
| all treated like shit? They may be winning the GDP game but
| that's not translating to any improvements for their citizens
| or the world.
|
| The only people winning in China are the people at the top of
| the communist party.
| kwere wrote:
| or maybe they are faking their gdp numbers with reckless real
| estate ponzi schemes
| refactor_master wrote:
| From my experience with Chinese working culture, half of that
| time is most definitely spent not working.
|
| I'd bet the factors are much more political in nature than
| productivity on the individual level.
| reidjs wrote:
| I think it makes sense to have people available for regular
| hours, just so that if I ask someone a question I can expect a
| response today-ish. But, I agree that a lot of meetings should
| be emails, teambuilding events are usually poorly done, and
| procrastination is hard to avoid when you've got access to the
| internet.
|
| Minor nitpick: Is an hour long lunch really that bad?
| agency wrote:
| I think the point is not that there's something wrong with
| hour long lunches, but that people have to find ways to fill
| up their day if they're expected to be "at work" for 8 hours
| a day and can only be productive for a fraction of that.
|
| As a "productive" software engineer, in the sense that I have
| gotten positive feedback in my career and never had a problem
| "getting enough done" to satisfy my superiors, it took me a
| long time to come to terms with the fact that I cannot
| productively apply myself to work for 40 hours a week. When I
| have to be in the office for that long, I end up slacking off
| for hours and hours (like reading HN). I thought for a long
| time that maybe I was just flying under the radar and I would
| eventually "get caught" but at this point I've made peace
| with the fact that my productivity comes in bursts and as
| long as my employer is happy with my output I don't sweat it
| too much.
| 8note wrote:
| I learn lots of valuable stuff from hn. Its onepadt
| slacking, one part continuous learning
| a_t48 wrote:
| I'm the same way. I'm very efficient - when I get in an
| actual full day of coding it's amazingly productive, but my
| usual output is still enough to satisfy my manager.
| Akronymus wrote:
| Over here lunch time is not part of worktime. Per law we need
| to have at least half an hour for lunch, but we can take
| however long (if the company allows). Dunno how it is in
| other countries. (I am from austria, europe)
| hn8788 wrote:
| Yeah, and hour long lunch is pretty long. Most people I know
| take less time than that to eat at a restaurant, let alone
| just grabbing your sandwich from the fridge.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Have you ever been to Central/South America or Europe? ;-)
| jobigoud wrote:
| > grabbing your sandwich from the fridge
|
| Get out of the building, take the bicycle to a park to eat,
| take a small nap and read a book, come back to the office
| fresh and mind reset.
|
| This was my routine before I switched to WFH. Official
| hours where 9h to 12h, then 14h to 18h. 35h workweek, 2h
| lunch break, (France).
| aix1 wrote:
| 35h workweek is absolutely great, but I personally
| wouldn't fancy a two-hour lunch break. Would _much_
| rather take a shorter lunch and get out of the office
| earlier.
|
| (Just highlighting that different people have different
| preferences. :))
| 8note wrote:
| When I started, my team took two hour lunches
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Lunch isn't just about refuelling, I can eat at my desk and
| keep working if that was the case. It's about taking a
| break.
|
| Also, for some of us it's normal to go to a restaurant or
| to the pub for lunch. It's been years since I've eaten a
| packed lunch.
| 73gfg wrote:
| Most developed countries have enforced hour long lunch
| breaks. Grabbing your sandwich from the fridge and eating
| at your desk is shunned.
| aix1 wrote:
| I can't speak for other developed countries but here in
| the UK it is very much company- and industry-dependent.
| At my first 4-5 jobs (mostly in the finance sector),
| everyone ate at their desks. At my current employer
| (FAANG), no one does.
| isatty wrote:
| What's wrong with an hour long lunch? Isn't that normal?
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Yea, I haven't heard of a job that wouldn't have an hour long
| lunch. It's a part of labor laws at least in Illinois.
| posguy wrote:
| This appears to be incorrect. Illinois only requires a 20+
| minute lunch at or before 5 hours into a shift of 7 and 1/2
| hours or more:
| https://www2.illinois.gov/idol/FAQs/Pages/meals-breaks-
| faq.a...
| RikNieu wrote:
| No, you're expected to eat at your desk and type while
| chewing.
| Svperstar wrote:
| No lie my first job out of college expected you to eat at
| your desk and not leave for your lunch break.
| mstuyt wrote:
| An insurance company I did some work for had a bell go
| off for your two coffee breaks and lunchtime. You spent
| half of your lunchtime waiting for elevators.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Whaaaat? What year, country, and/or location was this?
| Call center?
| aix1 wrote:
| I saw something similar in Tokyo. It was at a telco
| office. A bell would ring (at 1pm IIRC) and an entire
| skyscraper's worth of office workers would get up and try
| to get to street level. Every day.
|
| I was visiting a Western company that was renting a small
| space in the same building. Their routine was to never
| get caught up in the great migration (in either
| direction).
| stopnamingnuts wrote:
| That was the routine at Safeco in Seattle well into the
| 90s. My wife temped there over summers during grad
| school. Although she says they played Muzak instead of
| bells. So, in fact, it was much worse.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| D: What slave-drivers.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Once upon a time, I worked at a nuclear engineering
| consultancy. One engineer ate a hamburger and french fries
| over his keyboard, using it as a placemat, and never
| cleaned it up. In order to fix his computer, I first used a
| bottle of alcohol to clean the brown and black muck and
| hunks from the keycaps. It honestly smelled like a
| dumpster.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I would just toss that
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| It was his favorite keyboard. He would've cried, TBH.
|
| Consider it was a place where one guy hoarded 15 years of
| WSJ in his office.
|
| When staff are excellent professionals in the field, they
| get to do all sort of weird things.
| vxNsr wrote:
| In that case whenever I need to do anything on his
| machine I would just bring my own keyboard. Regardless
| that's gross and unsanitary, probably attracted all sorts
| of pests.
| square_usual wrote:
| Weekly Shounen Jump or Wall Street Journal?
| syockit wrote:
| This question comes to my mind as well everytime I see
| that abbreviation.
| SilverRed wrote:
| From what I have seen 30 mins is standard but some companies
| have an hour lunch and ask you to start 30 minutes sooner.
| lehi wrote:
| If I ate lunch I was expected to stay from 9 to 6.
| kevstev wrote:
| I have never ever worked a job where 9-6 was not the
| standard, and I don't really know anyone who took an entire
| hour for lunch either, at least not as a regular thing.
| This is in NYC. Do 9-5 jobs really exist these days?
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| Get a new job? Do they actually pay attention to when you
| show up and leave, or do they treat you like an adult?
| xf1cf wrote:
| At least in the states most places require you to "make up"
| your lunch. So normally you'd show up at 8 and work until 5
| to make up for an hour lunch. This is true for both hourly
| and salary.
| _delirium wrote:
| True in a lot of places, e.g. even in pretty labor-friendly
| Denmark, most union agreements in the private sector call
| for a 37-hour work week, but with lunch not counted as
| working time. So workers typically take short 30-minute
| lunches to avoid extending the day more. The public-sector
| unions have managed to get 37 hours _with_ a 30-minute
| lunch counted though.
| viceroyalbean wrote:
| I think the question is whether that "make up" time is
| always 1 hour or can be adjusted. At my previous job I
| would regularly take 15 minute lunch breaks and leave 45
| minutes early (compared to a 1 hour lunch).
|
| Where I work now local laws require taking at least 1 hours
| of breaktime per day so I can technically not do that.
| xf1cf wrote:
| I think this is based on local laws, yeah. Where I am at
| you're required to take a 30 minute break for 6 hours of
| work. The stipulation is that 30 minutes must be a
| continuous 30 minutes.
|
| I'm not aware of any law anywhere that says you can't
| just make your last 30 minutes of the day "lunch" but
| every company I've ever worked at has frowned upon or
| discouraged this. Usually by "forced clockouts"
| ostensibly for legal protection. My salary career has
| been more lenient but when I was an hourly employee if we
| ran over the 6 hours we'd get yelled at by HR and/or
| force clocked out (and told to go to lunch). Labor laws
| in the states are quite precarious for employers so it's
| semi-understandable why they do this.
| irrational wrote:
| That's insane. I'm in the states, but my company treats us
| like adults. I roll in when I want, work out in the gym for
| 2 hours during the day, leave whenever I want. I can't
| imagine working for a place that tracked my hours.
| ghshephard wrote:
| You've never worked at a job where you had to submit time
| sheets at the end of each week? Lots of "professional"
| gigs where people have to do that in order to accurately
| track time to customers - particularly when they are
| billing you out at $500/hour on the contract.
| irrational wrote:
| Nope. Never. I guess I've been lucky, but now that I know
| how pleasant work can be, I don't think I'd ever stay
| with a job that was that way.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Most software employers I've worked for had us fill out
| time sheets, and they didn't do hourly consulting so no
| need to calculate hours for clients. I only recently
| found an employer who does not require a time sheet. I
| thought this was pretty standard, at least in the USA.
| There will definitely be someone who replies to this
| comment and says "I've been working 20 years and never
| had to fill out a time sheet." So it's probably not
| universal.
| MereInterest wrote:
| "Billable hours" != "Working hours". A lawyer may work 70
| hours/week to produce 40 billable hours/week. That
| doesn't mean that they aren't working for 70 hours per
| week. It just means that the "8 for what we will" and "8
| for sleep" have been shaved thin and added to the "8 for
| work" by shady accounting of time.
| Sanguinaire wrote:
| Yup - I stumbled into consulting in my first job and
| carried on doing it in my second, timesheets are the main
| source of misery/annoyance for me. Non-consultant, non-
| sales roles are hard to find for people who are
| technically focused but not actual software developers.
| bjustin wrote:
| Lucky for me, I've had the same experience at multiple
| jobs. I've kept these kinds of "lax" habits at places
| where other people spend 9+ hours at their desks every
| day. I always thought it was a waste for other people to
| work long hours when it wasn't even a company policy and
| I never got flak for my hours. Maybe more people at
| bigcorps can do this if they explain it and show they can
| still be productive.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It is normal, but if you think about it, it doesn't really
| take an hour to eat lunch - and sometimes it would be
| preferable to eat in 5 minutes and leave at 4:05 instead of
| taking an hour to sit around the office. Every reasonable
| employer would permit this but I have learned from reading HN
| comments that not every employer is reasonable.
| millirem wrote:
| Break times also tend to be regulated in most countries I
| believe. I.e. here in Japan 60 minutes break time is
| required if you work for more than I think about 6ish
| hours.
| tmmx wrote:
| When I used to work in Japan I hated that rule. One day I
| feeling not so great, so I took the morning off. But we
| had an important release, so I still went to the office
| in the afternoon. The release ran into few issues, so I
| had to stay past the regular finish time of 6pm. I
| started to feel no so great again, so I wanted to finish
| the release and head home as soon as possible. But at
| 7pm, my boss came running towards me and forced me to
| take one hour break. I tried to explained to them
| (unsuccessfully) I only have about 5-10mins to finish the
| release. So I spent another one hour with watering eyes,
| massive headache, and chills, just to finish 5mins of
| work.
| kyleee wrote:
| I mean, it's a sensible regulation but there should be
| some leeway for edge case situations like yours (if there
| aren't already - since you were actually sick that should
| make it OK for you to leave ASAP one would hope)
| vadym909 wrote:
| it easily does- 20-30 min to walk/bike/drive back and forth
| to cafe / restaurant- 5-10 min to order/get food, 15-20 min
| to eat.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| In my state 30 minutes has been the standard for a long time.
| Usually in the service industry they don't even give you a
| lunch break.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| If and when companies stop treating employees like children
| and more like adults who can decide for themselves when to
| take breaks, work, and take vacations, they might just watch
| productivity and morale soar. Netflix generally has the right
| idea on this.
| aix1 wrote:
| Can also highly recommend Google (from first-hand
| experience). While there are pockets where this isn't 100%
| true, internal mobility is first-class so it's easy to
| improve things if you don't land well.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| These kinds of rules are usually put in place because
| without them, companies treat their employees like slaves.
| xwdv wrote:
| Indeed, there's a sort of Moneyball aspect here. Companies that
| can accurately pay out only for productive time instead of
| assuming all 40 hours of a work week are spent producing will
| make huge savings in payroll, increasing cost efficiency and
| making it feasible to hire larger cross functional teams. A
| software engineer probably only really works about 20 hours a
| week. That's a 50% savings right there.
| tapvt wrote:
| What's the definition of "really working?"
|
| I once told a freelance client (hourly) that I solved most of
| the tough problems while I thought about things in the
| shower. On that project, very little of my time was spent
| coding. Client then said I ought to pad my hours by 5 per
| week. He "got it."
|
| If simply "coding" is what constitutes "really working," that
| seems problematic.
| ddoolin wrote:
| They're not assuming/under the impression that all 40 hours
| are spent working. This wouldn't work because this type of
| tacit admission works for everyone when they need it, even if
| that happens to be continuously.
| arvinsim wrote:
| I would take a paycut to have much less work hours. Could be
| a win-win but maybe a lot of people prefer to earn more.
| whateveracct wrote:
| You can't actually enforce that. The standard is salaried,
| at-will employment. The savvy, skilled remote worker is going
| to be able to put 20-30 hours in - literally just take off
| 1-2 days a week. But get paid for the "40hrs."
|
| Basically, the rules of the game mean a salaried, remote
| employee can easily work half time at full pay - gg
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Equally speaking, if I realise how to fix that bug when I'm
| out with friends one night, should I present my employer with
| an extra bill for those hours spent drinking and relaxing,
| putting my mind in a state where it could fix the issue?
| xwdv wrote:
| Should a factory worker be paid for resting their body to
| get ready for the next day of work?
| opportune wrote:
| Why would any software engineer take an equivalent paying job
| that micromanages their every minute to make sure the company
| gets a full 40 hrs out of them, unless the pay were much
| better than what they'd get otherwise (eating in to that 50%)
| or they were desperate?
|
| This would be a huge mis-optimization IMO. Good luck
| attracting "top" workers and retaining them with this model.
| It's just "butts in seats" taken to an extreme.
| xwdv wrote:
| I mean what you're basically saying is you want to work at
| inefficient companies that pay more than they actually need
| to.
|
| If you're not working, you shouldn't be paid. Fair is fair.
|
| Perhaps instead of paying per hour a company should offer
| pay per week, and it's up to the developer to decide how
| many hours they will end up actually working that week and
| if the offered pay is worth it.
| eunos wrote:
| what's wrong with hour long lunches?
| irrational wrote:
| I work at a company where it is encouraged to use the fitness
| facilities during work hours. 15 minutes walking to one of the
| gyms, 5 minutes changing, an hour working out, 10 minutes in
| the sauna, 10 minute shower, 5 minutes getting dressed, 15
| minutes walking back. That is 2 hours of my work day right
| there ;-)
| tartoran wrote:
| They are smart, the employees are likely to be more
| productive if they are healthy. Many companies squeeze up
| employees like tubes of toothpaste then discard them and hire
| a younger gen. It is sometimes not intentional, just create a
| stresful environment and dont allow enough time to employees
| to catch their breath so to speak
| tapland wrote:
| I felt pretty wrecked when I, mostly because of lack of
| affordable housing, moved to a team in a location near my
| home town, and found out every single employee aged <35 had
| ended up on sick leave. Didn't have any choise but I wish I
| could have just gotten out of there as fast as I ended up
| in it.
| 6f8986c3 wrote:
| Why? It'd be helpful to get some idea what workplace
| factors led to such a negative outcome.
| 8note wrote:
| Thinking is work too, and you can think from anywhere
| anitil wrote:
| That sounds marvelous! I'm looking at a job at the moment
| that is mostly WFH and working out during the day is
| something I'm looking forward to most of all.
| malux85 wrote:
| This has changed me - I WFH, but every 2 days I take a 2
| hour walk, I walk about 7.5KM to the beach and back and
| while I'm tired at the end of the walk, it's hugely
| invigorating and I often end up coding until well after
| midnight on my own projects with all the extra energy I
| have.
|
| Have lost quite a lot of weight too ... and it's only been
| a couple of months. Go for it! Can't recommend it enough.
| anitil wrote:
| Living close enough to the beach to be able to walk is
| one of my life goals!
| Joakal wrote:
| Name and promote them. They deserve the extra labour supply.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| Very smart company. May I know the name?
|
| For intellectual work like we what we do, the brain doesn't
| just stop "working". I tend to be able to come up with good
| solution while driving/working out/taking a walk/drinking
| tea...
|
| Only at low levels that I see time-at-keyboard important. Now
| it's all ambiguous/large scale problems that spending time at
| the keyboard is a very small portion of my time. It's more
| productive to keep the problems in mind, then let my mind
| wandering and arrive at the solutions later. After you
| design/test/run the solutions in your mind, it only takes a
| small amount of time to write it out (design doc or code).
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| It's not just tech, it's office jobs in general. People doing
| 40 hours of actual, necessary work in that environment are the
| exception.
| bsder wrote:
| > It's an open secret at least in the tech world that
| absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a
| week.
|
| Be grateful for your privilege. Most employees aren't tech.
|
| The workers at companies that schlep things around are working
| a real, non-stop 8 hours. This is why Amazon warehouse jobs are
| so shitty.
|
| Teachers are pretty much non-stop as well. This is why so many
| of them have medical issues with their bladders.
|
| The vast majority of workers are in positions that really do
| put in 40 hours of hard work a week--and they don't get paid
| anywhere near as much as tech.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work
| a week
|
| You are being a little broad with this statement. One can
| easily put in 60+ hours for weeks on end and be incredibly
| productive while doing it. Its all circumstantial. If you have
| no family, are the sole founder in the company, and really
| enjoy what you are doing, why the fuck would you stop at a 40
| hour work week?
|
| Not all of us loathe the thing we do for the majority of our
| waking hours.
| impostir wrote:
| I would just say that choosing to work more than 40 hrs per
| week is very different to being forced to work 40 hrs per
| week. Simply because someone can happily choose more work
| hours does not mean that the de facto standard should be that
| high or even at 40 hrs.
| lmm wrote:
| > One can easily put in 60+ hours for weeks on end and be
| incredibly productive while doing it.
|
| Do you have an objective measure of that? I've worked with
| plenty of people who thought they were being productive for
| 60+ hours/week, but none of their productivity actually
| stacked up. Founder/CTO types were the worst, they'd bypass
| process and cause outages but because of their position
| everyone had to coddle their ego and pretend that they were
| doing good work and the trouble wasn't their fault.
| nrdvana wrote:
| I can do 60s in bursts, and the bursts have lasted as long
| as 2 months before. I usually burn out as soon as we hit
| the finish line, and work 10-20 hour weeks for a while
| until all the comp-time is used up. But I can really do a
| fantastic amount of programming when I dedicate my entire
| brain to the project and completely exclude all other
| thoughts. OTOH I have to admit that both of the biggest
| production screwups I ever made happened in those crunch
| times. But seeing myself hit those levels of productivity
| actually gives me a ton of satisfaction. Some of my normal
| 40 hour weeks when my head isn't in the game are so un-
| productive that it depresses me.
|
| You asked about objective measures, but I'm not sure how
| programming can really be quantified. All I can say is my
| "hyper-mode" has caused projects to reach deadlines that
| others on the team thought were unlikely.
| JesseMReeves wrote:
| Can you give us some advice on how you recharge
| effectively between such bursts? Since starting receiving
| salaries I am staying within 40+ hours work weeks but it
| does depress me because indeed my head is not always in
| the game. I thought about only doing the necessary
| busywork for some weeks because I want to get difficult
| projects done that just won't work out if I'm not full-
| in. But I get feelings of guilt whenever I do that, and
| that prohibits recharging.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| I read it more as "no one is having 40 hours per week of
| productive work _continuously_ ".
|
| Even in your example, being productive for 60+ hours is
| possible, but for how long? There might be extreme (extreme!)
| outliers, but I think it's fair to say that at some point you
| will increase your productivity by putting in less hours.
| etempleton wrote:
| In the marketing agency world 50-60 hour weeks are the norm
| and 70 hour weeks occur once a month or so. It isn't really
| sustainable. Most people burn out and leave the agency
| world within three years. Those that stay often make work
| their life or have a way where they can set their own
| schedules, which is usually because they have reached
| marketing executive level and the work becomes different.
|
| It is a very unhealthy industry. I am not sure if it can be
| sustained in it's current form, but I don't ever see the
| hours being reduced either. 4 day work weeks would just
| mean 12+ hour days and you would have to hope your clients
| aren't open on Fridays or whatever day you decided to make
| your company day off. Staggering days wouldn't work that
| well as most agencies have little to no redundancy by
| design.
| MereInterest wrote:
| How much of that is working time, and how much of it is
| sitting in a room not being productive? Every
| productivity study I've read finds that per-week
| productivity drops off tremendously with that level of
| overwork.
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| I can work 55 hours a week in perpetuity as a founder, with
| the exception of four off grid, week long vacations a year.
| Even two weeks over 60 hours (e.g. fundraising across
| timezones) and I rapidly lose it.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| But is your overall productivity higher with 55 hours
| than it would be with less hours?
|
| It's the kind of question where I wouldn't really believe
| your answer, unless you've actually tried to experiment
| yourself where is the cutoff (for your specific
| situation) between hours / productivity.
|
| Not because I think you would answer in bad faith, but
| because it's a really complex question. What if working
| less hours over multiple years would let you pursue some
| hobby, turn you more sociable and thus a better
| leader/CEO?
|
| Or maybe it would make you just very slightly better at
| decision making. You would have less time to manage your
| company, maybe relying more on others, but in exchange
| you would have more energy for the really crucial
| decisions. Or enough energy for extending that 2-weeks
| international crowdfunding effort into a 3-weeks.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| Yes, if you're starting your own business then it could help
| you to work as much as you can.
|
| However, most people do not run their own business. Most
| people are low-level code monkeys in large firms where
| individual efforts aren't business critical. When your
| project gets cancelled for the 3rd time and you still get a
| raise, it finally clicks that your work doesn't really
| matter. This takes a psychological toll. As a result, most
| people I know in FAANG who are 28+ years old will sheepishly
| admit that they do very little actual work (30 hours max per
| week). That's the whole point of hiring people straight out
| of college: you get ~5 years out of them before they realize
| what the game is. The ones who are happy with the "truth"
| become managers, and the ones who aren't opt to keep their
| head down and coast, or just quit from "burnout".
| DSingularity wrote:
| Yeah, or you can avoid all that by going to startups.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| And do a lot more work for way less money? Your work will
| have more impact, that's for sure. But at some point
| you'll have a higher-level realization that you're still
| working in a capitalist hellhole and you're not being
| fairly compensated for the risk compared to the VCs or
| the founders. If I was going to work in a startup or
| FAANG from 22-30, I'd pick FAANG for the guaranteed
| million dollars in the bank.
|
| The only exception I'd personally make is to found a
| startup with people I enjoy on a problem that I'm
| personally motivated by. This is basically a band for
| capitalistic nerds. Even then, you still have to allow
| VCs to suck out your soul.
| y2bd wrote:
| And given what kinds of products and services the vast
| majority of startups out there provide, even "impact" is
| questionable.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Working 60hr/week for a startup is completely illogical.
| It's the sort of thing you only do drunk on kool-aid.
| ghshephard wrote:
| I would say the opposite - the _only_ job I can imagine
| (outside of the first two years of investment banking)
| working 60+ hours /week would be a startup - where each
| and every hour in those first 2-3 years can make the
| difference between building a Billion dollar company or
| just getting left behind.
| 8note wrote:
| The only time _id_ do that is if I was the founder.
|
| Employees are too likely to be screwed over, even if the
| company is successful
| DSingularity wrote:
| Define screwed over? Because in my view getting screwed
| over is joining the industry on promise of working on
| deep tech and ending up a tiny cog in a machine.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Most startups aren't engineering-bound though
|
| Amdahl's Law
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It 's the sort of thing you only do drunk on kool-aid_
|
| Did not realise believing in a mission is akin to joining
| a suicide cult.
|
| Work doesn't have to suck. It doesn't have to be
| everyone's calling. But it is for some of us, and sixty+
| hours a week can be time well spent. My time at start-ups
| has been time around colleagues I love, work I enjoy and
| a mission I believe in. (I was also decently compensated
| while there and exorbitantly so on the upside.)
|
| There are countless public servants, non-profit
| employees, artists and public-company workers putting in
| those hours and more finding reward in their work. No
| need to deem everyone who doesn't fit your lifestyle an
| idiot.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| There's a balance between passionate hustle and diving
| into burnout. Some people can do more than others. etc
| etc. It's more sustainable for mental health to not make
| every waking minute about work, and take breaks and
| vacations. If you don't have a life, there's no point to
| working.
| XorNot wrote:
| It doesn't have to, but the most likely outcome in a
| startup is it goes bankrupt, what you did disappears into
| the dark hole of failed ideas, and no one sees it.
|
| It's a suckers game: the default behavior needs to be
| "when the founders get greedy and kick me out...what will
| I do then? How will I feel about that time?"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what you did disappears into the dark hole of failed
| ideas_
|
| If the work is for financing a life outside it, yes. But
| if the work is rewarding in itself, then said failure is
| --while highly disappointing--balanced by the
| relationships, stories and skills gained therefrom.
|
| This is absolutely a risk tolerance and personality
| matrix thing. I just want to push back against this
| recently-popular philosophy which idealises the Western
| European work ethic and lifestyle. It is one among many
| local optima.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Working 60 hours a week probably leaves you with less
| relationships+stories+skills than working 40 hours a
| week.
| whateveracct wrote:
| I mean - feel free if you actually think your job is
| aligned with your life's goal.
|
| Me? I'd rather do what I can to make Art. So it's nice
| that I can get a software company to subsidize it
| thoroughly.
|
| I'm just glad I can get paid effectively for being
| Skilled instead of laboring with my Skill. Availability
| is the best ability after all.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > are the sole founder in the company
|
| yeah in this case, if its really your dream, go right ahead.
|
| most workers aren't the founders of the company.
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| > If you have no family
|
| So that's... maybe 20% of the workforce?
|
| > are the sole founder in the company
|
| And with this we narrow it down to maybe 1% or less of the
| workforce.
|
| He can be broad because your conditions don't apply to the
| overwhelming majority of workers. Statistically, your
| conditions cover an insignificant group.
| bob1029 wrote:
| "Absolutely no one" and "1%" have entirely different
| meanings to me. I thought it important to highlight the
| "insignificant" case (of which I am a member) to avoid some
| notion that this applies to 100% of people in reality. The
| way we usually go on about work around here concerns me,
| and I fear we risk alienating a very energetic and well-
| meaning segment of the community.
| oblio wrote:
| HN comments (and in general, forum comments) are not PhD
| theses, they're generic, casual comments that in many
| cases try to tell a story.
|
| Hyperbole is to be expected.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Hyperbole or not it has an impact when repeated like some
| religion. This comment thread is making me not want to
| participate on hackernews.
| oblio wrote:
| I think (I don't know you) that I wouldn't want you to do
| that, but to each their own.
|
| You sound like you're having a bad day outside of HN, as
| this has been just a regular and might I say, civil,
| chat, otherwise.
|
| A temporary break from HN (or social media in general),
| might not be a bad idea :-)
| raister wrote:
| Uruguay they tried that: people ended up working two jobs and
| feeling/looking tired on both! People will find a way, always.
| Just keep 40h - at least they won't try to find a 2nd job
| elsewhere...
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| I think we eventually have to move to a 4 day work week because
| of employment. Switching to a 4 day work week creates jobs. The
| work will not be less when you switch to 4 days and to
| compensate you have to hire more people.
|
| Even in Europe we have countries with a high rate of
| unemployment among young people.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Do they get paid the same though? I mean where I live, as an
| employee you have the RIGHT to work part-time if you want to - 40
| hours is the norm, 36 is common (either one day off every two
| weeks or some manage to work 10h 4 days/week), some work 32
| hours. But they get paid, vacation time, bonuses etc accordingly.
|
| I went to 36 hours when I started my new job, but went back to 40
| this year because I can manage with working from home, and
| because of the pandemic there were no pay raises last year -
| while cost of living is spiraling upwards because of rapidly
| increasing housing prices.
| perfunctory wrote:
| I have been working 4 days a week or less for about a decade by
| now. It's been the single best improvement to my quality of life.
| I've got to spend more time with my family, hobby projects,
| learning new things and simply chilling out. I will never ever
| ever ever work 5 days again.
| jdshaffer wrote:
| And yet most kids here (Japan) go to school nearly every day --
| some classes on alternating Saturdays and have mandatory "club
| activities" nearly EVERY day including Saturdays and Sundays.
| Seems a bit of a mixed message going on...
| kwere wrote:
| japanese collectivism
| Iv wrote:
| Start by giving them holidays. Even US companies give more
| holidays to their employees.
| [deleted]
| onion2k wrote:
| I think a lot of the replies in the thread so far have focused on
| tech (understandably, this is HN after all) but that's missing
| something obvious - the 4 day week would apply to everyone.
|
| In tech it's very likely someone going from 5 days to 4 days
| could still achieve the same amount of actual work. As other
| commenters have said, many tech workers don't do productive work
| all the time they're present. Retail workers, factory workers,
| people who fill in the holes in roads, telephone support people,
| etc aren't contending with pointless meetings and busy work
| though. They can't do 40 hours of work in 32 hours by removing
| some of the hours they're not really working. What they do
| doesn't compress like that.
|
| Consequently looking at this from the context of tech workers is
| far less interesting. The Japanese government isn't saying "Let's
| get rid of pointless meetings and busy work!" In tech removing
| the pointless nonsense isn't actually reducing the amount of real
| work people do. Instead, Japan is saying "Our country is wealthy
| enough and advanced enough that our people can _actually_ do less
| work. " That's fascinating.
|
| If you see this as "removing the wasteful time spent on things
| that aren't useful like meetinga" then you've missed the point.
| It is that, but it's much, much more than that too.
| brigandish wrote:
| > The Japanese government isn't saying "Let's get rid of
| pointless meetings and busy work!"
|
| Maybe, but if you've worked in Japan, or even just living here,
| you know about the long, pointless meetings, desk warming and
| busy work. Thus, it's highly possible the government _is_
| saying "let's get rid of pointless meetings and busy work".
| Things are that top-down here that often companies won't do
| anything _unless_ the government has said something (and it 's
| likely that it was the big companies that control the
| politicians that told them to say it).
|
| There are plenty of examples of this kind of thing, one is when
| the government had to do the same to force companies to let/get
| employees to use their holiday entitlements. Western principles
| such as truth, innocence and self-reliance aren't foundational
| here - the moment you accept that you understand so much more
| about the culture, in much the same way you won't understand
| Buddhism if you use a mental model constructed out of your
| understanding of Christianity.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Western principles such as truth, innocence and self-
| reliance aren 't foundational here_
|
| ... nor in the West, to be fair. Lies and cheats are
| commonplace in any Western workplace.
|
| I think you are over-generalizing. Self-reliance is big in
| Japan too, even while egoism is not - it's drilled into
| people basically from birth, with things like students
| cleaning their own schools. Innocence is always politely
| expected until openly questioned, at which point it turns
| almost automatically into guilt; but it doesn't mean it's not
| "foundational" - in fact, it's much more entrenched, it's
| just that the act of questioning it carries so much more
| weight on all sides (an unfair accusation, if determined,
| would be _extremely_ shameful) that nobody wants to go there
| until absolutely necessary.
|
| They just play the game with a slightly different set of
| practical rules.
| brigandish wrote:
| Perhaps I should've used the word _ideals_ instead of
| _principles_ , as you're right, plenty of liars and cheats
| around (we're all human). Aside from that I'm happy with
| what I wrote. You can't have innocence and truth as
| fundamental _ideals_ of a shame culture.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Western principles such as truth, innocence and self-
| reliance aren't foundational here
|
| Then what is?
| vict00ms wrote:
| I'm 4th generation Japanese-American, and in no way
| whatsoever qualified to answer your question, but I'll
| gladly do it nonetheless: they prioritize the collective
| over the individual.
| brigandish wrote:
| This is entirely correct, it seems you are displaying the
| kind of humility that would make your ancestors proud!
| myspy wrote:
| Grinding everyone done in a 40 hour work week is a bigger
| problem though. And it's not like you work highly efficiently
| in a 40 hour work week. Or if management did enforce that all
| 40 hours are busy time, the people burn out.
|
| I've worked a factory job and have seen it there, I work in
| white collar now and it's the same.
|
| If you say 40 hours you'll only get around 30 because workers
| have to bounce between working and getting down a little or
| else they burn out.
| gdubs wrote:
| There was another thread on 4 day workweeks, and I'll reiterate
| what I wrote there: people had the same concerns when society
| shifted to a 40 hour workweek and productive actually _went
| up_. Fewer injuries and illness, etc.
|
| 1: "The Rise and Fall of American Growth"
| greyman wrote:
| What I find fascinating is why government should have such an
| authority to be able to mandate this.
| [deleted]
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Why shouldn't a government have the authority to mandate the
| working conditions for its citizens?
| garden_hermit wrote:
| "encourage"
| greyman wrote:
| That's the title says, but we see similar initiatives in EU
| as well, and it would basically mean that the employee can
| choose that he wants to work only 4 days. Of course, even
| now anyone can also have 4 days workweek, if employer
| agrees to it. But in this case it is something mandatory.
| kube-system wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > The government included the promotion of an optional
| four-day workweek in its annual economic policy guideline
| finalized Friday
|
| But even if it wasn't optional, the idea of mandatory
| labor laws is hardly groundbreaking anyway. The US has
| many regulations regarding working hours.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Completely true. Working has become a race to the bottom. For
| substanance, we should today be able to work three days for
| that matter. Volunteers for more are fine too. Problem is, that
| all economies must find common ground, or you will indeed get
| behind.
| legulere wrote:
| People are still going to work more efficient when they work 32
| instead of 40 hours in many jobs as fatigue sets in at some
| point.
| hulitu wrote:
| No because they will change the number of days not of working
| hours.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Sometime I don't get enough sleep when I start at 8am. It
| makes the result of work so much worse when you aren't
| rested. Sure, I could make sure to go to bed earlier, but
| life happens and honestly I don't live for work.
| kortilla wrote:
| No, there are jobs where you do rote things on demand or at
| particular intervals with no fatigue at 40 hours per week.
|
| Examples from my own employment experience:
|
| - front desk clerk at a hotel
|
| - fuel pump operator
|
| Both of these are pretty dull work that doesn't exhaust you
| at all at the 40 hour work week. Most of the time is spent
| idle and the time spent working doesn't require much going on
| upstairs.
| fy20 wrote:
| Most of these customer facing jobs will be abandoned or
| optimised away in the next few decades.
|
| Front desk work could be done away with mostly by
| electronic systems (most of the time when I "check in" it's
| just picking up a ready made room card as I checked in
| online). You could even centralise the "talking to a human"
| part in a call center operating a number of hotels, who
| delegate to staff on the premises (house keeping,
| maintenance, room service, etc). Of course luxury hotels
| will still have humans.
|
| Fuel pump operator hasn't been a job in most Western
| countries for decades, as you just pump fuel yourself (and
| often even pay at the pump). Is "EV charger operator" a
| job?
| SilverRed wrote:
| As far as I can see. These front desk jobs exist as
| theft/crime deterrent and to handle edge cases. Sure you
| could fully automate fuel stations but who is going to
| call the police when kids start spray painting the
| windows unless you have someone sitting at a desk
| watching cctv all day. And who is going to deal with
| customers who are trying to report something is wrong
| with a pump. These jobs have already been automated to
| the point that one person can handle a large store/hotel.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I kinda feel some countries care a lot about full
| employment. How they can afford it is beyond me though.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| If we can afford to keep people alive surely we can
| arrange for them to do something useful too. Unless we
| intend to condemn large numbers of people to chronic
| poverty we have to pay more than starvation wages even to
| those who do nothing.
|
| It seems to me that the question to be answered is: how
| can we afford to not have full employment?
| ratww wrote:
| It's quite simple: they can afford it by having full
| employment.
|
| Full employment means lots of good things: a population
| that's richer per-capita and spends more, less expenses
| on welfare, less poverty, less crime, less billionaires,
| etc.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > but who is going to call the police when kids start
| spray painting the windows unless you have someone
| sitting at a desk watching cctv all day.
|
| A neural network trained to classify spray-painting kids?
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| The deterrent effect is less because clerks are more
| effective than cameras at detecting crime, and more
| because people don't like committing crimes when there
| are other people nearby.
|
| Obviously that's not an absolute statement, especially
| considering that armed robbery is a thing. But in general
| humans are better crime deterrents than security cameras
| or robots.
|
| In a lot of cases, that's the sole reason for employing
| security guards, since the only thing they're actually
| allowed to do when they encounter crimes in progress is
| ring the police.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I can't wait until short window-washers start getting
| arrested.
| maeln wrote:
| There is a lot of 24h/24h fuel station here in France
| with no staff and it is working out.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Here in Finland even the full-service 24h stations have
| automated self-service and that might even be most used
| option.
| Kiro wrote:
| > Sure you could fully automate fuel stations
|
| Where are you from? I thought fuel stations in most
| Western countries were fully automated already. In Sweden
| there are loads with no people at all but even the ones
| with a store you just pay at the pump. You only go inside
| if you need to buy something else.
|
| Very strange example to use and kind of invalidates your
| whole point.
| Twisol wrote:
| Apparently, it's illegal to pump your own gas in New
| Jersey. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/74549/why-cant-
| you-pump-...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| From NJ, wouldn't change it.
|
| No need to get out of your car and deal with a dirty
| pump. You can also get out to go in the store while they
| fill your tank, or some smaller places you can buy stuff
| right from the attendant. Gas doesn't cost any extra
| because of it either. We used to have some of the
| cheapest gas in the country before a recent tax hike.
| Basically a free service, no tipping either.
|
| One downside is that if it is busy you might have to
| wait, but the guys are usually pretty quick.
| someguy321 wrote:
| You pay for that service whether you realize it or not.
| savingsPossible wrote:
| Apparently not?
|
| The cost can come from the margin for the gas station,
| not the consumer
| someguy321 wrote:
| Gas stations are a notoriously low-margin business.
| Realistically costs get passed on to the consumer.
| namdnay wrote:
| These jobs are disappearing as part of the constant search
| for productivity increases. A front desk clerk will now
| spend their "down" time doing admin work for example
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Since we are on the topic of Japan and hotel front desk,
| this video shows an example day of a Japanese hotel staff
| who does a whole bunch of multi-tasking:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZsdm0RZ18k
| ddnb wrote:
| I have done a job that was 80% dull work. I can guarantee
| you I have never been more exhausted when I came home from
| work. Don't ask me how it works, but doing 'nothing' can be
| extremely tiring. And this was a desk job.
| legulere wrote:
| I agree that not all jobs are like that, but the comment I
| was replying to was talking about retail workers, factory
| workers and people who fill in the holes in roads, which do
| suffer from fatigue.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Idling at work is one of the most exhausting "occupations".
| Noos wrote:
| I don't think it's true though. A lot of jobs you simply can't
| reduce the hours no matter how advanced you are without
| corresponding loss in service. There's also serious staffing
| issues in many blue collar jobs which simply won't be able to
| be filled by enforcing them to work less hours; there isn't a
| huge supply of people wanting to do menial labor to pop up to
| work part time and pick up the slack.
|
| Retail and factory work already has low wages and high
| turnover, forcing them to try and make up a 20% loss in
| staffing hours is probably not going to happen over just
| cutting operating hours and shifting to models designed to work
| with less staff; retail stores for example may just be open 20%
| less or be constantly understaffed and understocked.
|
| Or eventually a lot of them just close and the bigger ones
| absorb the surplus workers to keep full hours.
| e12e wrote:
| Tine's Heimdal factory in Norway did do 30 hour work week for a
| while - with good results in efficiency (and employee
| happiness). It was unfortunately scrapped due to cost concerns
| (workers kept same pay as for 37.5h work week).
|
| Its not clear if the change back to "normal" week was entirely
| rational - there were other suggestions to make the cited
| target of 80M NOK/year savings.
| franciscop wrote:
| I fully agree with your comment overall, but as someone who
| lives in Japan I'd like to point out that specifically "people
| who fill in the holes in roads" is a running joke in Japan
| since small street constructions always seem way over-staffed.
|
| It's amazing because they do finish a lot faster than in
| western countries, but you can definitely remove 20% of the
| people in street-level construction and would see little
| difference. An example: they hire 2 people on every sidewalk
| _just_ to tell people to continue walking the way they are
| walking and make sure they don 't fall into a pit while looking
| at their phones[1].
|
| From what I've learned, this specific job is normally filled by
| people who have already retired but don't have enough to live,
| so they are paid peanuts (I believe they might also be paid a
| bit extra by gvmt to go back to work, but I'm not sure I
| understood this point properly). They have started to be
| replaced by "robots" though [2].
|
| Edit: in general _everything_ in Japan seems overstaffed
| compared to the western counterparts, not just road
| construction. I believe this is how they can maintain very low
| levels of unemployment here, but I don 't yet know how the
| incentives work to make it possible.
|
| [1] The guys with the blue shirt, notice one on each side
| https://c8.alamy.com/comp/HBJ2K1/japanese-people-in-construc...
|
| [2] https://japangasm.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/rwintro-
| swing0...
| ratww wrote:
| _> It 's amazing because they do finish a lot faster than in
| western countries, but you can definitely remove 20% of the
| people in street-level construction and would see little
| difference._
|
| Maybe the 20% extra people is the reason they always finish a
| lot faster.
| franciscop wrote:
| So there's normally 2x-3x people working in construction
| compared to western countries. I'm saying 20% of those
| workhours _are_ not needed, but that 'd still leave quite a
| lot more workers there compared to western countries and
| why they finish early. An example is that they normally
| work around the clock (24/7, but fairly quietly at night).
| toyg wrote:
| Or the reason everything in Japan is so clean and actually
| efficient and reliable. You won't see the casual litter and
| degraded infrastructure that is commonplace in US and
| Western Europe - everything is kept in tip-top shape,
| because why not? When you have the wealth and workforce to
| spare, in practical terms it's just better to allocate
| capacity for this sort of tasks in quantities that might
| look sub-optimal on a spreadsheet.
| ratww wrote:
| Yep, exactly. I completely agree with you.
| nsonha wrote:
| wow is that 8 people for painting a line?
| blarg1 wrote:
| 1 to paint the line and 7 to make sure it's straight
| ratww wrote:
| So it's like a code review, but for lines on the road.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| Some notably low-staffed places in Japan are Yoshinoya and
| Sukiyaki (beef bowel fast food, often 24/7). It seems there
| usually just one person working there at a time.
| innocenat wrote:
| You probably went during off time? It's usually more than 1
| during busy time. (And it's Sukiya, not Sukiyaki)
|
| And it's also probably not for wanting just 1 staff -- it's
| probably because no one want to work at those place.
| hderms wrote:
| I went once at about 3-4PM and also came away feeling
| like it was a bit understaffed. One worker and about 8
| people in there eating. I didn't have to wait a crazy
| amount of time so maybe it's fine though, gyudon doesn't
| take a long time to prepare if some ingredients are
| prepped
| franciscop wrote:
| By low-staffed, do you mean that you had to wait long time
| to get your order? These places are highly automated so
| they don't need as many staff, sure there's few people
| working there but usually more than enough for serving the
| orders that come through in just few minutes.
| asah wrote:
| Um, actually construction appears to lay people as
| "overstaffed" due to safety, breaks, inspections and
| synchronization of people, tools and materials.
|
| https://qr.ae/pGFloE
| franciscop wrote:
| Yes, I understand _some_ people that seem to not be doing
| much are actually safety people, or taking a normal break,
| but in the case of Japan it 's quite extreme and that's why
| I pointed it out.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| They even have signs that look like people that day watch out
| for the sidewalk that stand next to the guy that says watch
| out for the sidewalk. But everyone who wants to work should
| have a job.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| I don't know if Japanese construction projects are
| overstaffed or not, but if they are, do you think that would
| change? My guess is that they would continue the same
| staffing arrangement and get less construction work done.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Japan on paper is the wealthiest (non-microstate) Asian
| country GDP per capita, but if you compare by PPP it's
| actually not great because of meh economic
| productivity/import tariffs, and slips behind South Korea and
| Taiwan.
| kqr wrote:
| Sometimes I think what passes for appropriately staffed in
| the West is actually understaffed. What's called optimal
| staffing in the West is just at capacity, which is a nice way
| of saying "with no spare capacity."
|
| Of course, with Japan being the land of just-in-time, one
| could argue that spare capacity is bad -- but that's an
| oversimplification. Necessary spare capacity is good. What's
| bad is not being able to address the reasons the spare
| capacity is needed. Maybe when it comes to humans doing road
| work there's no way around the need for spare capacity?
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| My pet conspiracy theory is that Toyota's liberal knowledge
| sharing with competitors is really a psy-op to keep the
| competitors perpetually on the edge of ruin while they
| laugh all the way to the bank.
|
| They don't even have to be deceptive about it. Just in time
| is obviously about not having undue spare capacity, not
| about not having any spare capacity at all. But Toyota
| knows this nuance is going to be lost on buzzword-loving
| PHBs and greedy management consultant firms. You see the
| same thing happening with corporate Agile.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| I've heard recently (in a video that I don't know how to
| find again) that that's exactly what happened with the
| automotive industry's chip shortage: Toyota was the only
| one that built a stock of chips in advance, and now are
| the only ones that can keep producing cars without being
| limited by the shortage.
|
| Edit: found the video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1JlYZQG3lI&t=804s
|
| At 13 min. 24 seconds:
|
| > Just in time is such a simple principle, but the
| pursuit of the elimination of waste is now the central
| mission of any major manufacturer.
|
| > However, most did it wrong. Manufacturers globally saw
| the headline "elimination of inventory leads to massive
| efficiency gains" and jumped on that without actually
| determining what made it work for Toyota.
|
| > They ignored that Japan's small physical size made for
| short domestic supply chains, less vulnerable to things
| going wrong.
|
| > They ignored the company's production leveling: finding
| the average daily demand and producing that regardless of
| short-term changes and demands.
|
| > They ignored the fact that eliminating excess inventory
| is different from eliminating _all_ inventory.
|
| > They ignored the principle of growing strong teams of
| cross-functional workers predicated on respecting people.
|
| > They ignored the culture of stopping and fixing
| problems to get things right the first time.
|
| > They ignored huge swaths of the Toyota Way and created
| a system that's less effective and less resilient but can
| impress shareholders through short-term savings.
|
| > How Toyota has effectively implemented this system
| fills books but many are just reading the covers.
|
| > Even Toyota though is not perfect.
|
| > In 2011 japan was rocked by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake
| the fourth strongest ever recorded anywhere. Not only did
| this cause immense destruction to life and property but
| it also led Toyota to recognize a flaw in its own system.
|
| > As japan recovered some supply chains were quick to as
| well. For example, securing plastic resin for door panel
| production is not difficult: there are plenty of
| manufacturers globally creating easily substitutable
| alternatives.
|
| > That's not the case with, say, semiconductors: the
| hugely expensive facilities that create these chips
| require years to construct and after the 2011 earthquake
| it took many months to mend them back to operating
| status.
|
| > This surfaced a truth that had never been fully
| considered: not all supply chains are made equal. Plastic
| resin can handle supply chain disruption, semiconductors
| cannot. Therefore Toyota made changes: all along, their
| mission was not to eliminate inventory full stop; it was
| to eliminate _excess_ inventory.
|
| > Supply chain disruption is inevitable. It's inevitable
| in the same way that Titanic's flawed design would
| eventually encounter an iceberg, or the structural
| economic vulnerabilities of 2008 would eventually collide
| with a market panic. Therefore semiconductor inventory is
| not excess because inevitably, due to the inevitability
| of disruption, excess semiconductor inventory will
| eventually become necessary.
|
| > Recognizing this, Toyota in recent years has started to
| build up a stockpile of two to six months worth of chips
| and that's why the company is the _only_ major vehicle
| manufacturer that is unfazed by the semiconductor
| shortage.
|
| > Toyota followed its own principles. It did not stray
| from them, and it did not reinvent them. It's no surprise
| that Toyota excels at implementing its own system, but it
| is a surprise that the entire manufacturing world has so
| wholeheartedly embraced _flawed_ implementation of the
| system.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| I thought I'd rather watch the video than read your long
| transcript, I clicked it, it's Wendover with his weird
| speech pattern (some syllables loud, some syllables he
| runs through, but some vowels he drawls on...).
|
| > Just IN tiime, is such a SIMple principlee, but the
| purSUIT of the ELIMination of waste...
|
| Tab closed, thanks for the transcript.
| ant6n wrote:
| Did the speaker on wendover change like 1~2 years ago? I
| feel like the voice used to be more, uh, geeky sounding.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| He probably got some sort of speech coaching because he
| didn't like the way he sounded. A bad one, I would say. I
| looked up a video from 2017, he sounded ok, I could hear
| some long syllables but they weren't as long as they are
| now. It also sounds like he got a different mic.
| hvidgaard wrote:
| What is amazing about this is that it is a super simple
| game of "what if?". What if our current supply of chips
| are disrupted? It would mean production halts, there is a
| non negligible risk and we cannot source new chips in
| less than 6 months, so stockpile that to keep
| uninterrupted service. That conclusion probably take
| quite a while to get to, but the kick off question is
| really simple.
| kqr wrote:
| It's not that simple, though. "What if our supply chain
| of X is disrupted?" always leads to a problem where one
| of the most obvious solutions is "Stockpile huge
| inventories of X!"
|
| That's what manufacturers had done ever since Ford tried
| to scale up his initial (very Toyota-esque) operation,
| and scaled it incorrectly but managed to inspire hordes
| of other manufacturers to repeat his mistakes.
|
| The novelty of Toyota et al. was not that they asked the
| what if question, but that they answered it
| unconventionally: they worked on making the supply chains
| more reliable instead of adding buffers.
|
| That's what makes this next move counter-intuitive to so
| many people: when Toyota encountered a supply chain that
| couldn't be made more reliable, they chose the
| previously-conventional response, apparently in defiance
| of their whole thing. Except it wasn't.
|
| You're right in that it is simple, but in trying to show
| that you're making it too simple.
| NGRhodes wrote:
| Toyota knows it competitive edge is its culture. Culture
| to change, to be retrospective, to improve. Lean, JIT,
| Kanban etc were derived from a culture of striving for
| perfection and to develop the optimal processes for a
| specific company is something that takes decades and is
| never ending, not something that can be read in a book,
| taught on a course in a short period of time.
| kqr wrote:
| There's also that story from back when Toyoda was making
| sewing machines or whatever it was, and a competitor
| stole copies of the engineering drawings for their latest
| model. Toyoda shrugged and said something to the effect
| of "So what? The really valuable knowledge are the
| mistakes we made coming up with those drawings, and
| that's not in the drawings. By the time our competitors
| have managed to get their copy of our machine to the
| market, we will have innovated away from that for our
| next model. And that innovation is informed not by what
| our current model looks like, but by the exploration we
| did to get there. None of that was stolen, so after this
| model, they will just keep repeating the mistakes we
| made."
|
| I have no idea of whether this is true at all, but I
| really like the story anyway.
|
| ----
|
| What I do know is true is that modern day Toyota doesn't
| mind sharing the solutions they have come up with to
| various problems, because they think the real value is in
| the people and processes to (a) identify the problems in
| the first place, and (b) come up with solutions suited to
| those specific problems.
|
| Blindly applying Toyota's solutions to Toyota's problems
| to your organisation, just hoping that you have the same
| problems as Toyota and that their solutions will work
| also for you is a recipe for confusion, and not what
| matters. (Yet virtually every "development methodology"
| is a specific solution to a specific problem blindly
| applied to an organisation.)
| mywittyname wrote:
| > None of that was stolen, so after this model, they will
| just keep repeating the mistakes we made.
|
| The competitor probably could have purchased a sewing
| machine and replicated the engineering drawings
| themselves. Teardowns of competitor products is common
| today, and I'm sure it was back then as well.
|
| I think Toyota's "helpful" attitude comes from the
| Western paranoia in the 70-90s that Japan was going to
| completely dominate worldwide manufacturing. After all,
| their rise was fast: in the mid 60s, Japanese
| manufactures were practically begging to sell rudimentary
| formed metal components in the USA, but by the early 80s,
| they were a leader in the high-tech manufacturing. That
| rise caught many people off guard and I've heard it said
| that the "lost decade" in Japan was the result of
| American trade policy specifically designed to curtail
| Japan's growth in manufacturing.
|
| Viewed in that light, it makes sense that Japanese
| companies would appear "helpful" to American ones. Why
| else would Toyota co-build a plant with GM in order to
| teach GM their Kaizen philosophy for manufacturing?
| philwelch wrote:
| According to the book _The Toyota Way: 14 Management
| Principles from the World 's Greatest Manufacturer_ by
| Jeffrey Liker, one of the motivations for Toyota was to
| repay the debt to American manufacturers who participated
| in the postwar rebuilding of Japan and taught American
| manufacturing techniques to Toyota and other Japanese
| manufacturers.
| dragonelite wrote:
| You see this a lot in IT companies if it works for
| google, Amazon and Microsoft, It will work for us while
| we have like a millionth their load or complexity.
| kqr wrote:
| > Just in time is obviously about not having undue spare
| capacity,
|
| Also about making spare capacity undue. The lazy solution
| to unreliable delivery is inventory. The efficient
| solution is working with the supplier to make delivery
| more reliable.
| ehnto wrote:
| From my experience visiting, there were lots of jobs that
| were "nice to have". Like the man making sure people don't
| fall in the hole, or the person standing by the carpark
| exit making sure the way is clear. You could probably do
| without them, but it's a nice thing to have.
|
| There's lots of examples of that, people doing things that
| you would see brutally optimized out of western city and
| those cities I feel are worse off for that optimization.
|
| One way to look at it is that with their wealth they've
| decided to employ more people and do more good, versus
| pocketing the profit and calling it efficiency.
|
| The famous railway networks in Japan are actually
| privatized rail companies which was very surprising to me.
| When the rail companies privatized in my country they
| immediately became worse, as they were suddenly serving a
| very different purpose. Staff were let go, the trains are
| cleaned less often, services were cut. That kind of thing.
| iso1631 wrote:
| In my country the government used to run the railways,
| but it had been run down for decades and was at the verge
| of closing all but the busiest commuter lines into the
| capital. It was privatized, and since then usage has
| skyrocketed (well pre covid) to over twice the level pre-
| privatization, so clearly something's gone well.
|
| The privitization is split into different companies, the
| best having had a 30 year contract to revitilise their
| line, and they've done wonders with it, while one of the
| worst was (pre covid) run to the exact orders of the
| government
| selimnairb wrote:
| Case in point: I saw once an older man washing traffic
| cones in Japan. I don't think traffic cones get washed in
| the US.
| robocat wrote:
| I found this patent for "Apparatus for cleaning a traffic
| cone" : https://patents.google.com/patent/GB2434970A/en
|
| It references other patents (prior and subsequent).
| akiselev wrote:
| _> From my experience visiting, there were lots of jobs
| that were "nice to have". Like the man making sure
| people don't fall in the hole, or the person standing by
| the carpark exit making sure the way is clear. You could
| probably do without them, but it's a nice thing to have._
|
| How would liability play out for the construction company
| in a Japanese court? It's already a low margin
| competitive industry so passing risk management costs
| onto customers (the cost of the people monitoring the
| holes) is likely more practical than risking all profits
| evaporating and years of litigation, especially if
| insurance has anything to say about it.
| ehnto wrote:
| I don't know the answer to that sorry, you're right to
| point it out though. Perhaps there is actually some prior
| court case that defined a liability to make those
| individuals necessary to be compliant.
|
| In Australia we certainly don't have those people,
| construction companies just use a few signs, some cones
| and barricades and that's all that is required to be
| compliant. If someone falls in the hole they shouldn't
| have walked past the cones!
| nsonha wrote:
| We definitely do, and I'm not against having extra people
| when it comes to safety. Simply putting on some signs is
| not enough, what about children?
| franciscop wrote:
| How many people? The more people you put (let's say
| fixing a pothole) the safer it is. Would you put 1 extra?
| 10? 100? 1000? At what point do you stop?
|
| There's absolutely a limit where adding another person
| only adds marginal safety. For instance, children who
| don't know they should not jump to jump a barrier and
| then go into a pothole should not be allowed alone on the
| streets. We are not talking about a random hole in the
| street, these things are already heavily warded in Japan
| with barriers and signs AND on top of it there's also
| workers AND on top of it the mentioned security guards.
| My argument is, many or all of these security guards are
| not needed.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| > In Australia we certainly don't have those people
|
| Not the case in Victoria. Pretty normal to see a couple
| of workers standing near the site entrance making sure
| pedestrians don't get run over by a truck. Or standing in
| front of a closed footpath, directing pedestrians to
| cross the road.
|
| There's pretty strict rules around keeping the public out
| of construction sites and excavations. Putting a couple
| of cones around a hole is definitely not all that's
| required.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| "versus pocketing the profit and calling it efficiency."
|
| You mean vs allowing those people to spend their time on
| something that might instead be more productive for
| society?
|
| If that person is going to spend an hour doing something,
| is that truly the greatest contribution they can make?
| Maybe it is! Then again, maybe not.
| franciscop wrote:
| It's what the market demands in the end of the day and why
| I don't understand Japan too much (yet). If a company hires
| 4 people just for road signaling, and another 0, I'd hire
| the second one since it's going to be cheaper.
|
| That's why I believe these market forces push to at-
| capacity, because if someone has spare capacity or a lot of
| profit another company is going to come in at a lower
| margin and win the market. Yes this leads to breaking at
| some situations that happen once every 20 years, but
| otherwise you die from competition so that's what we are
| stuck with.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > I'd hire the second one since it's going to be cheaper.
|
| You would. But the guy doing the hiring is just giving
| the job to his drinking buddy, sure that the favor will
| come back in some way or the other.
|
| There's also the social factor to consider. These extra
| people could be superfluous, but if they're not there
| everyone walking past will condemn that construction site
| as being unsafe.
| franciscop wrote:
| Definitely not (except for the most egregious cases),
| long-term construction sites in Japan are already fully
| covered by white panels that don't even let you see
| inside and short-term ones have at least two barriers and
| lots of signals. While them not being there does not mark
| "dangerous", I do think them being there could mark them
| as "extra-safe".
| adamlett wrote:
| Isn't it oversimplifying it to suggest that all "the
| market" rewards is low prices? Doesn't the market also
| sometimes reward quality and timeliness?
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Companies like Action, IKEA and Amazon thrive on low
| prices and efficiency.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Manufacturing and construction are pretty different
| segments. When manufacturing, it's very easy to optimize
| for cost because you know exactly how much material is
| required and how much time, probably to the second, it
| takes to process such material into the final form. Even
| shipping prices are pretty well known and can be
| optimized for through effective packaging.
|
| Construction isn't like that. Companies aren't cranking
| out a million buildings a day, so they can't remove every
| ounce of unnecessary materials; they don't control the
| environment, making delays a fact of life; they don't
| control all of the companies and people involved; etc.
| There's just so much unknown when it comes to
| construction. Like software, it can be difficult to
| figure out how much padding to put into estimates. It's a
| good bit easier when it comes to things like roads, but
| companies still need to contend with unexpected delays a
| lot.
| unishark wrote:
| If you can provide a product with those features at lower
| cost the market would still reward you.
|
| But yes any description of economics is necessarily a
| simplification. For example market segments where people
| intentionally pay more for the exclusivity that comes
| with being charged more.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I think you're right, I went through a E40m construction
| project once and the leaders kept saying how they have to
| chose the lowest bidder. But that was actually a
| convenient lie they did to avoid having to do due
| diligence on the bidders.
|
| Mid and long term cost actually turned out a lot higher
| than if they had chosen the better slightly more
| expensive bids.
| mianas wrote:
| I've seen this turn out the other way on a road contract
| near my house. (rural Ireland)
|
| Some Italian construction company underbid, and slightly
| later went bankrupt after finishing some of the work.
| They just about missed the contract milestones for
| payment too, and got nothing out of it. Then, the
| contract went to someone else who bid, with expected
| costs adjusted. Think there was an 8-ish month delay.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| The way I see the successful low bids happen is usually
| the following:
|
| 1. Submit a low bid for EXACTLY what's written in the RFP
|
| 2. Submit contract delay notifications with contract
| amendment offers, explaining that the original bid was
| incorrect and therefore if the amendment is not accepted
| the project can't continue.
|
| 3. rinse and repeat
|
| No. 2 is basically legal speak to make sure you get
| paid(or win a lawsuit in the event that you don't) even
| though you can't continue construction.
|
| It's basically saying, you made a mistake in your
| original RFP, therefore nobody could have continued the
| construction anyway and therefore you have to accept my
| amendment.
|
| Good bidders will actually tell you that your RFP was
| wrong. As an example in the construction project I was in
| the main architect requested custom spliced decades
| outdated Fiber wiring, when I finally got a hold of the
| wiring company and asked them why didn't just do MTP,
| they mentioned that a) they mentioned to the architect
| that the request wiring makes no sense and b) they were
| not allowed to talk to us(the engineering department)
| directly. Same happened with the fire protection rules
| from anything like stair handles to the garage.
|
| That's also why I don't think the Airport delays in
| Berlin were engineering mistakes but rather gross
| mismanagement.
|
| Also, while in this whole project there is a lot of
| physical work that you can't optimize away, a lot of the
| physical work delays and do-overs were also due to gross
| mismanagement, which is something the toplevel comment
| completely ignores in his assessment of the 4 day
| workweek.
| yodelshady wrote:
| "get three quotes and take the middle" is a common
| heuristic in my locale - for any work you're going to be
| living in, under or on, at any rate.
| corty wrote:
| I would do some nitpicking here: The market _rewards_ low
| prices. But the market _punishes_ low quality and
| untimeliness.
|
| Why do I phrase it this way? Because the only market
| mechanism is a sale, you either buy or you don't. Low
| price is visible before a sale, so a new sale is reward
| for the low price offered. Quality and timeliness are
| only apparent after a sale, so can only be punished
| retroactively by not buying again.
|
| The punishment signal is also far weaker than the reward
| signal, lots of goods are not bought too often and
| problems get forgotten by customers, alternatives may
| have their own problems, etc. And prices can be compared
| objectively for standardized goods, and at least easily
| for other goods. Quality and timeliness are often in the
| eye of the beholder, subject to variation. Comparisons in
| those areas are also systematically prevented by most
| vendors.
| ehnto wrote:
| > Why do I phrase it this way? Because the only market
| mechanism is a sale, you either buy or you don't.
|
| That's not always true. When a rail network gets
| privatized, the argument is that the market will make
| sure it's a good service still. But they are usually paid
| by the government, not the patrons. The commuters vote
| becomes negligible, and the rail network has every
| incentive to optimize for a minimum viable network that
| meets their government set targets while the service gets
| worse and worse in all other metrics. Seats are shittier,
| service is less clean, graffiti stacks up, railstock gets
| rickety etc.
| corty wrote:
| That railway example is just a plain market failure, and
| an uncorrectable one at that. Markets only work under
| certain conditions, very important among those: absence
| of monopoly, monopsony and limitations that work to the
| same effects. A privatized rail network is still the only
| rail network in the country or region, so still a
| monopoly. If you hack it to bits and split it up too
| much, it will be useless, connectivity is paramount in
| that business. If you leave it as a large network (or
| several large networks) it will be a national or regional
| monopoly. Having only the government pay is a monopsony.
| Limiting building new stations and tracks (which the
| government will have to do at some point, if real estate
| prices don't) will also prevent competition. So having a
| functioning rail market is impossible, therefore any
| argument about market mechanisms involving railways (or
| roads, water, gas and electricity distribution) is
| nonsense: Those can never be proper free markets.
| bane wrote:
| The West seems to target a "skeleton" staff for nearly
| everything these days. Management theory piles it as a best
| practice under "just in time delivery", but the reality is
| that there no longer is the distinction between fully
| staffed and skeleton.
|
| I spent some time in Belgium a few years ago and was amazed
| to see that the two people on road projects who turn the
| "slow/stop" signs to control traffic on single-lanes were
| replaced with robots. So the EU has managed to figure out
| how to go under skeleton at least.
|
| Meanwhile, when I was in Japan, there were indeed lots of
| seemingly "useless" people doing "useless" jobs on similar
| sized projects.
| varjag wrote:
| No it's not just that.
|
| The minute we got off the plane in Tokyo we were met by a
| greeter pointing people to the escalator. Not that you
| could miss it, that was the only exit.
|
| In the city you could see people guarding potholes. Bus
| stations (not particularly busy) would have a couple men at
| each station that would help arrange the passenger luggage:
| something usually helped by the driver in the West.
|
| Once we took a night stroll in the city, meeting a roadwork
| on a deserted street. There were 3 men along the fenced dig
| basically showing us to walk around it.
|
| Can't see any of that sustainable if you pay people full
| wages.
| gjhh244 wrote:
| The alternative is to pay people for doing nothing, like
| many EU countries do. In the end it's not cheaper.
| handrous wrote:
| The US provides EU-level social safety net benefits
| (healthcare, housing) to the lower classes--via
| employment in the military, which is in part a stealth
| jobs program that _both_ major political parties support
| paying for.
|
| We provide a jobs program for white-collar folks through
| our excessively-large and exceptionally expensive
| healthcare system. We pay for whole categories of jobs
| that don't need to exist and are only adding costs. A
| double-digit percentage of our healthcare costs are a
| white-collar jobs program paying people to do _nothing
| useful whatsoever_ , and we spend a _lot_ on healthcare
| so even 10% makes it a fairly big program.
| ajuc wrote:
| There are similar measures in many EU countries. For
| example hiring unemployed people to help kids pass
| particularly busy streets near primary schools.
|
| https://d-pt.ppstatic.pl/k/r/1/6c/83/5b7d5e3b2b9de_p.jpg?
| 153...
| varjag wrote:
| That's called welfare, which has an advantage of not
| masking unemployment. (but to be fair am unsure if people
| doing traffic cone jobs in Japan are considered employed)
|
| Anyhow my point is it has little to do with system
| redundancy.
| tristor wrote:
| Welfare / UBI ignores that one of the realities of the
| human condition is that we are social creatures that have
| a desire for purpose and utility to those around us, and
| having that purposes in a society that recognizes us
| helps give us dignity and a place in society.
|
| It's not important that all jobs are high value, it is
| important that we as a society have a way to create and
| recognize purpose for individuals to support their mental
| and personal wellbeing. While welfare / UBI may ensure
| they have basic needs met to sustain life, it does
| nothing to support their mental and personal wellbeing,
| which is why these systems often results in the creation
| of delinquent behaviors that are mostly absent in a
| system like that in Japan.
|
| It may be the the same economically, but socially it is
| much better to have someone doing an "unnecessary" job
| that is recognize as valued by society vs simply
| collecting a check.
| varjag wrote:
| Standing there in place of a traffic cone is not much of
| a dignity IMO, but it certainly could be cultural.
| tristor wrote:
| There's definitely a cultural element. I made the point
| that these jobs must be recognized as valuable by society
| for a reason.
|
| You say they're standing there in place of a traffic
| cone, Japanese society instead says that they're there to
| provide a friendly face ensuring safety of passersby
| around the dangers of construction work. A traffic cone
| cannot assist someone who has trouble walking to traverse
| rough ground because of the work being done. A traffic
| cone doesn't smile or acknowledge your presence.
|
| That sociocultural element is what has value, and as long
| as it has value, the job is valuable.
| handrous wrote:
| This is why I support forcing the idle rich to work
| retail or construction. Otherwise their mental well-being
| will be at risk.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Does it make sense from an economics standpoint? Perhaps
| not. But there are benefits to society as a whole. Quite
| often the people doing those sorts of jobs are getting on
| in life, if having that job means the person can stay
| active that could represent a few additional years where
| they won't be a burden on the health system.
| jason0597 wrote:
| Honestly, giving people these unproductive jobs seems to
| me like a way of giving out UBI without people even
| realising it. Because at the end of the day, these jobs
| are just UBI. They don't add much to the economy.
| loonster wrote:
| It promotes a better culture. I would support this system
| over USA's welfare.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Why is it unsustainable? The money they take home gets
| spent thus supporting other people.
| varjag wrote:
| The overhead of employing properly compensated people
| instead of signage and traffic cones is fairly high,
| while the work they do is not necessary in any meaningful
| sense. Which is moot anyway as apparently these folks are
| paid a pittance.
| Iv wrote:
| Living in Japan also, the rumor I heard was that these
| additional workers actually work as a shadow force for
| political parties during elections.
|
| To circumvent strict donation laws, the idea is that these
| people will be "lended" as administrative staff and door-
| knockers during elections, in exchange of juicy contracts.
|
| And let's be real, that linked in [2] does not point to a job
| that requires automation, a blinking panel is enough. Often I
| have seen the sad spectacle of one mannequin handling a
| signal on the end and a human on the other end. It is totally
| a bullshit job.
| nirui wrote:
| > Retail workers, factory workers, people who fill in the holes
| in roads, telephone support people, etc aren't contending with
| pointless meetings and busy work though. They can't do 40 hours
| of work in 32 hours by removing some of the hours they're not
| really working. What they do doesn't compress like that.
|
| It depends.
|
| In China, the tech companies are testing AI telephone support.
| My banks uses it, JD.com uses it, China UNICOM use it. If you
| dial to those companies, an AI will take the call and guide you
| through the process, no human interaction needed. Not only
| that, some AI will even call you to schedule appointments etc.
|
| Another example is the supermarkets. Almost all supermarket in
| our city has deployed self-checkout stations, and some of them
| even laid off almost all but 1 or 2 of their checkout workers.
|
| I assume this trend will eventually expand to other labor
| types, so the workload of those workers will be lighten as
| result. (But of course, we can keep the load the same, but laid
| off unnecessary people instead, which is more likely if the
| government don't intervene)
| Noos wrote:
| That doesn't change the principle though; the actual workers
| need to do 40 hours or even more; it just means there are
| less of them.
|
| And really, people need to be wary with automation. What
| people don't realize is that relying on it utterly paralyzes
| you when it goes down, because its a higher order fault than
| most staff need to handle.
|
| If the AI telephone support breaks during an update, you've
| just sidelined your entire operation. If you only have a few
| checkout employees, and your POS service needs to connect to
| the internet, and it goes down, you have virtually no one to
| reply to it.
|
| By reducing headcount you really run the risk of what were
| tolerant faults becoming critical. My own job has been
| running on a skeleton crew, and thank god one of us hasn't
| become sick or left yet. Eventually relying on automation and
| minimum staffing may bite you hard. A lot of retail stores
| would be up the creek if the store manager up and quit or was
| sick for multiple weeks.
| emidln wrote:
| Another way of looking at it is efficiency hasn't changed and
| need stays constant, you need 20% more people to do the same
| work. This is an interesting way of affecting mass employment.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > In tech it's very likely someone going from 5 days to 4 days
| could still achieve the same amount of actual work. As other
| commenters have said, many tech workers don't do productive
| work all the time they're present. Retail workers, factory
| workers, people who fill in the holes in roads, telephone
| support people, etc aren't contending with pointless meetings
| and busy work though. They can't do 40 hours of work in 32
| hours by removing some of the hours they're not really working.
| What they do doesn't compress like that.
|
| Indeed, but going to 4 day weeks will require employers to hire
| more people then to fulfill the same work.
|
| It's absurd that even with all the gains in productivity we're
| still stuck since decades at the 5x8=40 week. Time to
| redistribute the producitvity profits towards the workers.
| Chyzwar wrote:
| It is more like: our people are overworking themselves to death
| and taking holidays is not socially acceptable. Let's force
| everyone to work less, and hopefully they will have time to
| make more babies.
| lumost wrote:
| This is also a curious method for opening more employment and
| reducing potential income inequality. If a factory needs to
| produce X things, and each worker produces Y things per hour
| you will always need X/Y working hours. If workers reduce
| working hours by 20% then you'll need to hire 20% more workers
| or improve Y (productivity) by 20%.
|
| If the majority of the economy follows a linear production
| curve in hours worked, then this opens many jobs. Not a bad
| deal for a mature economy like JP, but will be interesting to
| see what un-forseen dynamics emerge.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In tech it's very likely someone going from 5 days to 4 days
| could still achieve the same amount of actual work. As other
| commenters have said, many tech workers don't do productive
| work all the time they're present.
|
| While someone working a reduced schedule in an office where
| other people are working a full schedule may be able to set a
| schedule that misses some of the things they consider
| nonproductive (and may actually be more productive/hour for
| doing so), I don't think that actually is likely to scale to
| the whole office switching schedules. If the people in
| authority that think that the meetings you feel are
| nonproductive are essential are still in the same positions of
| authority, they'll still have the same meetings at least the
| same share of working hours, though there is a substantial risk
| that some of them will instead take the same number of hours
| per calendar week, regardless of the reduction in working
| hours.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _Our country is wealthy enough_
|
| That's really going to depend on the business. Plenty of
| businesses-- specifically ones with a lot of customer-facing
| staff-- would not be able to sustain labor cost increases up to
| 20%.
|
| To take an easy example where I already know the #'s in the US,
| labor costs at a fast-food restaurant are around 25% of costs.
| Net profit margins range from 5% up to around 20%, but that top
| end is for McDonalds, the rest are on that lower end.
|
| Increasing labor costs by 20% means a 5% increase in absolute
| operating costs. Sure, McDonalds may still run at 15%, but
| other places that increase for many others would erase
| profitability.
|
| Even with a McDonalds, those franchises don't go for less than
| $1million each, often a lot more, and 20% profit on them seems
| to be about $150,000/year. So an owner is already looking at 7+
| years to recoup their investment, and that's before accounting
| for any additional capex costs McDonalds may require when they
| roll out mandatory renovations.
|
| Certainly there are many more businesses than fast food, so the
| above equation won't hold for every thing. But any low margin
| business with moderate customer-facing labor costs won't be
| able to manage this without raising prices, and then we're just
| shifting the money around to different piles. In fact as a
| result of those increased prices, the lower paid workers, while
| they may be able to work less hours and may work for a business
| that didn't cut their pay, they're still paying the price for
| that decision in their overall increase in cost of living.
| namdnay wrote:
| Keep in mind that if the additional costs are applied to
| everyone, prices can increase without one restaurant in
| particular being penalised
|
| Demand is probably slightly elastic, but not that much (there
| are plenty of restaurants in France, despite very high cost
| of employment)
| ineedasername wrote:
| If we're just talking about restaurants in France, at least
| part of the higher employment costs are cancelled out--
| relative to the US-- by not having to tip 20%, so the menu
| prices can be higher without actually passing all of that
| increase on to the customer.[1]
|
| As for demand, it is always elastic. A lot of people eat
| fast food, and a lot of those people are going to be in a
| position where they're just barely fitting it into they're
| budget. Raise prices, and they're gone. That's not even
| getting to the actual elastic part where people actually
| have the money to decide either way if they're willing to
| pay at one price but not another-- that bottom group is
| simply gone.
|
| Also you shouldn't focus just on the one example I chose. I
| happened to choose a discretionary spending activity
| because I knew fast food #'s off the top of my head, but
| the same thing applies to every single business with low
| margins and moderate labor costs. Even if you were right
| and every single one of them could raise prices without
| losing customers, that would also mean that the exact
| people we're trying to pay a living wage then have
| significant increases in their cost of living as everything
| around them raises prices.
|
| [1] France may also not be the best example to compare to
| the US. Despite staggeringly astronomical wealth inequality
| in the US, it still has a lower poverty rate than France.
| Canada would probably be a better example. https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentag...
| jpetso wrote:
| On the other hand, if you work fewer days, there's more
| time for home cooking :P
| namdnay wrote:
| Careful, that table does not use a unified definition of
| poverty... so someone making 80USD a day with no health
| insurance is not considered "poor" in the US
|
| And the French definition of poverty is equally useless,
| it's just a percentage of the median income
| SilverRed wrote:
| It doesn't matter as long as all competitors have to do the
| same. The price of a burger could go up and it wouldn't
| matter as long as every other burger goes up the same amount.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| So consumers end up paying more for goods, while salaries
| remain the same.
|
| Surely you appreciate how that's a problem?
| ineedasername wrote:
| Don't focus on burgers. That is a specific example. This
| dynamic would play out with countless other items, raising
| the cost of living and partially if not fully cancelling
| out the increased wages of the people we're trying to help.
| deepsun wrote:
| Low margins are indication of saturated supply. If _everyone_
| raise their prices, consumers would likely eat that, in my
| opinion, because people who really count food money usually
| don't go to restaurants anyway.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Fast food was what I knew off the top of my head, but this
| applies to _all_ businesses with low margins and moderate
| customer-facing labor costs. They can 't all just raise
| their prices to pay higher labor costs, because then the
| people getting paid more just have to pay more for
| everything as well, at least partially if not fully
| cancelling out the benefits.
|
| Then there's the fact that raising prices will still lose
| fast food places customers: For every person not buying it
| because it doesn't fit their budget, there's someone who
| just barely fits it into their budget that will stop buying
| it when prices rise.
|
| This isn't theoretical: Companies analyze the price
| elasticity of their customers and understand roughly how
| raising prices X% will lose them Y% customers, and the
| amount of revenue Y customers represent, and whether that
| is higher or lower than the revenue generated by X. I don't
| work in the food industry or retail, but I _have_ run that
| analysis myself in my own field.
|
| I'm all for a living wage, but simply paying low paid
| workers more & raising prices to cover it is by no means a
| complete solution. Raising minimum wages is a bandaid
| solution. (And I'm not saying we shouldn't do that-- only
| that it's short term, and we need more comprehensive
| answers)
| ajmadesc wrote:
| Yeah but why not just have literal slaves and not require
| that people have health insurance.
|
| The reductive "race to the bottom" can go both directions
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure what you mean by this comment. I used
| a real world example of businesses with high customer-
| facing labor costs relative to their net profit margins.
|
| If you're getting into the everyone-deserves-a-living-wage
| side of things, that's a different conversation, one I tend
| to agree with, but is much more complex than the current
| discussion about whether current business could manage this
| if they operate with low margins and moderate customer-
| facing labor costs.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| Excellent retort, I didn't read anything else from your
| original comment.
|
| The amount of low-effort populistic comments on HN starts
| to be worrying.
| JetSpiegel wrote:
| If the business is not sustainable without living wages,
| it doesn't deserve to exist, just like there's no more
| chattel slaves picking cotton.
|
| I'm sure the economics of paying for work on plantations
| also did not add up.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Then roughly 4,500,000 fast food workers lose their jobs
| and have no income. As relatively low-skilled workers
| flooding the labor market, their job prospects are not
| very good. Many go from poorly paid and over worked to
| penniless and homeless.
|
| I think these are useful conversations to have, but this
| is not a problem that submits to easy one-size-fits-all
| solutions. I'm all for a living wage, but simply raising
| minimum wages without doing anything else is a short term
| solution that will bring things back to roughly where
| they are now over a period of time as prices for people
| with newly increased hourly pay rise to the point where
| it is, once again, no longer a living wage. Sure, go
| ahead and do that anyway, but only if you have other
| plans in the works to stop that cycle.
|
| As a side not, emotional appeals to slavery do not help
| promote a reasonable conversation either. Having to work
| two jobs to make ends meet is a far cry from slavery. We
| don't need to look far in the world to find people living
| in conditions that are actually identical to or not far
| different from _actual_ slavery. A person in the US
| working a low paying job 60 hours a week that can barely
| pay there rent or afford unexpected expenses is nowhere
| close to those conditions, especially when "barely
| getting by" in the US still mostly includes the bare
| bones amenities of living in a modern western country
| that are significantly better than conditions in many
| developing nations. Comparisons of this sort simply
| inflame tensions instead of conversation.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| We post scarcity now.
| diminish wrote:
| I wonder if it would boost productivity - to move to a 5-day
| week, instead of 7 by - abolishing saturday and sunday - We can
| have 3 days of work - thursday & friday as weekend
| qaid wrote:
| Hopefully a move like this will help with their declining
| birthrate problem
| ekianjo wrote:
| It's not overtime/overwork that causes declining birthrates in
| Japan.
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