[HN Gopher] Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full ...
___________________________________________________________________
Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work
fewer days
Author : akeck
Score : 134 points
Date : 2022-11-16 14:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm a bit skeptical of the study, however I've long suspected
| that a lot of what happens at work is simply part of a set of
| special social expectations, and actually pretty disconnected
| from productivity.
| stavros wrote:
| I've been working four-day weeks for almost a decade now, and
| it's been amazing. I briefly switched back to a five-day week at
| some point, but I had enough of that after a few months. The
| weekends felt way too short and the workweek way too long.
|
| Four-day weeks are just the right balance, though I wonder if
| I'll like three-day weeks even more.
| philmcp wrote:
| Over 200 companies have now made the switch to a 32hr work week:
| https://4dayweek.io/companies
|
| The benefits for the employee are pretty obvious, but there are
| also many benefits for the company:
|
| - Staff are more productive (for previous pilots: output almost
| always hits 100%)
|
| - Job listings get (way) more applications
|
| - Staff are happier
|
| - Staff are healthier i.e. off sick less
|
| - It's better for the environment
|
| - Staff turnover reduces
|
| - It attracts experienced candidates
|
| - Costs reduce
|
| - It's better for gender equality
|
| Most of these companies on the site offer 100% salary, some offer
| 80% (but I hope to remove these in the future)
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| This is one of those situations where it's a clear documented
| (via study and real world experiment) benefit to both workers
| and employers, so you wonder why it's taking so long to spread.
|
| One problem is I genuinely believe it has to be mandated. Every
| company has people who will take any action purely to make
| themselves look attractive for the next promotion cycle. And if
| even just one person is actually putting in 50/wk at a company
| that's supposed to be 32/wk, everyone else is going to feel
| pressured to work 50.
| kipchak wrote:
| I think to some degree the people making these decisions to
| some extent are more likely to be those who enjoy the
| external approval aspects of work - the "clueless middle
| management" in the Gervais Principle framework, who enjoy
| doing more work and want to see those below them do the same.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > This is one of those situations where it's a clear
| documented (via study and real world experiment) benefit to
| both workers and employers, so you wonder why it's taking so
| long to spread.
|
| Since open floorplans became universal a while ago, and are
| only getting partially replaced by work from home because the
| rent is cheaper, what I wonder is if that is the rule,
| instead of the exception.
| vjk800 wrote:
| I already work (remotely) much less than my contract says. I
| simply can't stay engaged to cognitively demanding tasks for a
| full day. The rest of the time I just feel kinda bad for
| slacking, which increases my stress levels for no good reason. If
| I got the permission to actually work less, I wouldn't feel so
| bad about it, which would probably lead to less stress and higher
| productivity.
|
| I work in finance and I can attest that 90% of the work people do
| in my office could simply be left undone and no harm would come
| to the world or even the company. The industry just has a culture
| of "being very productive" which leads to people doing
| _something_ all of the time, even when they don 't have a clue
| what should be done.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >I already work (remotely) much less than my contract says. I
| simply can't stay engaged to cognitively demanding tasks for a
| full day. The rest of the time I just feel kinda bad for
| slacking, which increases my stress levels for no good reason.
| If I got the permission to actually work less, I wouldn't feel
| so bad about it, which would probably lead to less stress and
| higher productivity.
|
| How do you know it wouldn't just allow you to slack down to
| working 24 hours a week and feeling the same degree of guilt
| you are accustomed to now?
|
| I have no idea. It just reminds me of the saying about lottery
| winners "If you weren't happy before you won, you won't be
| happy afterwards".
| [deleted]
| MEMORYC_RRUPTED wrote:
| This won't be valid for everyone, but I'm getting more and more
| convinced that most (a lot of?) people don't "work" work 40 hours
| anyway. I'm not even mentally capable of doing 40 intense hours
| of focussed work. Not saying I don't have other tasks besides
| coding/thinking in that time, but honestly not for the full slot
| of time.
|
| It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share and
| pretend like it's fine, but being honest and just doing the same
| stuff in say 32 hours and cutting out the cruft in between would
| be great.
|
| Or maybe it's just my add that likes a bit more pressure, I don't
| know. But what I do know is that, even with a very relaxed
| employer that allows you to take your time and chill, go workout
| or play a game for an hour, I can't fully relax or disconnect
| knowing that I'm expected to do those 40 hours, regardless of how
| often they say it's fine.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Cruft will build back up in the 32 hours though. In 10 years
| people will be saying "does anyone else feel like they don't
| work the full 32? We should cut it down to 24!" There is always
| going to be some percentage of working time that isn't fully
| productive.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm not sure what the problem with this is. It sounds like
| utopia.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Eh, diminishing percentages.
|
| 40 -> 32 -> 30 -> 29.5 -> 29.3 -> 29.2 -> really, we are
| talking about minutes(?). Just keep 29-ish and check again in
| a century.
| mc32 wrote:
| I agree we don't put in a full 40 hours. Unless someone is
| working a 1950's style assembly line (meatpacking plant for
| example) few will put in those 40 hours even in manual labor
| ---you're chatting, playing around, etc. for some time.
|
| White collar work, is of course, way worse. There is a lot of
| slack time in between tasks and meetings and so on.
|
| So during those 40 hours, let's say a person delivers 100 work
| units. If we were to say, from now on you only have to work 32
| hours, some people will still deliver 100 work units, but many
| will deliver an approximation to 80 work units. Many people
| will automatically adjust. People have a "pace of work" that is
| like breathing.
| asmor wrote:
| My pace of work is burn myself out in the first 1-2 hours of
| every day and then procrastinate / go to meetings.
|
| I'm so happy to be out of the office. Being able to work
| whenever works for me (and my ADHD brain) has probably given
| me at least 50% more output on average. Hours don't mean
| anything to me and nobody has ever complained about my work
| pace (rather the opposite).
|
| Pretending to be busy in an office was torture.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Wife's a teacher. 40-60 hours at school. 10-30 hours outside
| of work doing lesson plans, report card comments etc. Always
| responding to emails from parents.
|
| She Has collapsed before when total was getting above 80 for
| several weeks.
|
| They want to promote her to VP. They work even more hours
| then she does.
|
| I make more then triple what she does.
| soperj wrote:
| > 40-60 hours at school.
|
| This part doesn't make sense to me, can you please explain
| (I'm genuinely asking). My children are in elementary
| school, and the day is from 8:45-2:30. I can understand
| being there at 8am(i definitely have seen teachers showing
| up later than this though), and when I've driven by the
| school at 3pm nearly all the cars are gone from the
| teachers lot (if not all). I can understand that there's a
| lot of work outside of school, but I don't understand how
| you could ever get to 60 hours at school.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Another fascinating thing about teacher claims of working
| hours is how technology apparently hasn't moved the
| needle at all. Lots of schools have moved to more and
| more online assignments that can be in large part
| automatically graded yet the time spend grading remains
| constant, or so they claim.
| toyg wrote:
| That's probably because IT busywork replaces manual
| busywork.
|
| Before: you take a stack of papers, and go through each
| one with a red pen.
|
| Now: you log on a system, wait, click on something, wait,
| click on something else, wait... the stupid tests are
| auto-graded, but chances are there is still something you
| have to grade student-by-student, and that's now slower
| to do. Plus, obviously, the usual annoyances (got to
| update this, got to reboot that, my typing is 5WPM, etc
| etc).
| jerf wrote:
| "you log on a system, wait, click on something, wait,
| click on something else, wait..."
|
| You know, if someone wants to write The Next Great JS
| framework, give me one that above all else prioritizes
| latency and expert-level usage. There's no fundamental
| reason we can't have most of the nice things from the
| modern graphical web, _and_ get to the legendary
| efficiency of those text-based consoles... but it will
| take some work and thought. (For example, you 're going
| to need to insert yourself in between the user and the
| browser's concept of events, so you can buffer up
| commands the user is typing while their target hasn't
| quite loaded yet. This is one of the fundamental reasons
| why GUIs are less efficient than TUIs, though by no means
| the only one.)
|
| This framework won't take over the world, but it sure
| would save a lot of people a lot of time.
|
| Sooooo tiiiiirrrrreeeeed of programs that take seconds to
| do every... little... thing!
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also, the UX is usually awful.
|
| I remember having to use educational software in college
| for a discussion board and it was terrible and sucky. I
| could only imagine what the teacher end of it looked
| like.
|
| ---
|
| For a comedic look at how this affects teaching, the new
| comedy show _Abbott Elentary_ has an episode on this.
| It's like _Parks and Rec_ but at an inner city
| Philadelphia public school.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Ugh, should say Elementary.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| Have you ever worked with education software? I have.
| It's awful.
|
| Until 2011, my local school district was using a DOS-
| based attendance and grading system. No GUI.
|
| In 2011 they switched to an internet-connected system
| that looked like it was built on Windows 3.1. Non-
| resizable text fields. Inability to tab from one field to
| the next. A tiny non-resizable window that you had to
| scroll manually with the scrollbar to enter data in all
| the fields, so to enter attendance for a whole class you
| had to scroll left and right with the mouse for _each
| child_.
|
| It crashed every morning for months. Teachers would
| coordinate with each other to ensure they didn't overload
| the system.
| willcipriano wrote:
| If that's true, person in charge of purchasing is asleep
| at the wheel. With the most politically powerful union in
| the US, teachers could replace them if they wanted too
| (although the same union likely protects the jobs of the
| people who can't buy software).
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I bet most of the software they use just sucks. I've had
| some first hand folks tell me some of the bad stories of
| using various online grade book systems, and years ago I
| built one myself, and the accommodations people were
| requiring were... fairly complex. I suspect that at least
| in some cases I'm aware of, the vendor just lies and says
| "yes, we support X", gets the contract, and the end users
| (teachers) have to deal with the lie.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| My dad and ex-wife were both teachers.
|
| My dad was up at 6 and at school for 7am. Worked 7am-3pm
| (8 hours). He did marking for an hour or two most
| evenings, and a solid chunk on the weekends. Probably 50
| hour weeks. And that's after 20 years of teaching the
| same classes, so he had all the materials.
|
| My ex-wife was brand new to teaching so had to develop
| curriculum on top of this. She worked 7am-5pm every day
| plus weekends.
|
| Calling parents, dealing with kids with special needs,
| developing curriculum, marking, department meetings,
| making lesson plans, running extra-curricular activities
| or clubs, private lessons, doing paperwork or
| photocopying, etc etc, it all mounts up. There's a lot of
| behind the scenes work.
|
| Now, some teachers simply don't do this. You can easily
| skate by, work the bare minimum 6 hour days, and not give
| two shits about the kids. But most teachers care about
| children and education (I mean, you don't become a
| teacher for the money).
| bumby wrote:
| Is there a consensus among teachers if year-around
| schooling will help or exacerbate this problem?
| bcassedy wrote:
| I haven't talked to any teachers about this specifically,
| but based on my impression of the school system and
| public philosophy around schools and teaching that I've
| gleaned from my wife and many friends who are teachers, I
| think it might help in the short term but be worse in the
| long term. The one thing that seems nearly constant is
| that expectations of teachers are always increasing. So I
| think eventually we'd end up back in a similar place
| except teachers would have to keep the pace year round
| rather than getting a couple months off in the summer.
| acdha wrote:
| Office hours, tutoring, mandatory training, meetings,
| clubs, etc. can really add up.
|
| My wife's school is big on community, which is great in
| some ways but leads to long days with staff expected to
| attend dances, games, etc.
| devmor wrote:
| > So during those 40 hours, let's say a person delivers 100
| work units. If we were to say, from now on you only have to
| work 32 hours, some people will still deliver 100 work units,
| but many will deliver an approximation to 80 work units. Many
| people will automatically adjust. People have a "pace of
| work" that is like breathing.
|
| Perhaps in manual labor, but I don't think this applies to
| white collar work. The limiting factor in output for this
| line of work seems to be intellectual exhaustion/burnout, not
| pacing.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Exactly. Setting aside the "metabolic drag" of working in a
| company (time spent attending mandatory trainings,
| recurring stand-ups/all-hands, etc), I think everyone
| working in software has more productivity in their 1st hour
| than in their 39th. The question is where does the N * f(N)
| first derivative turn negative. I think it's lower than 32
| hours/week for software development myself.
| devmor wrote:
| I would agree with that figure.
|
| Personally I assign development to more of a "creative"
| role than a lot of people tend to. Your productivity can
| often depend on your inspiration, moreso the more
| senior/architectural your role is.
|
| I've certainly had moments where I accomplished more at
| one 3am moment of clarity than an entire week before -
| and I think most experienced developers can say the same.
| hnews_account_1 wrote:
| White collar work in the modern era is also very
| unrestricted. I can slack off during most of the day if I
| want (and nothing urgent comes up) and my manager will
| neither check nor care. Because of 24/7 systems, I can
| completely bunk fridays while pretending to work from home
| and just staying online from the phone. It is totally
| irrelevant to my job. I hate fridays and usually work
| Sunday to Thursday in reality. Many people I know have this
| level of flexibility in many fields.
|
| My "work hours" in my pay slip say 75.8 for every 2 weeks.
| I work maybe 50 hours in a busy week. It is irrelevant to
| my organization. So we are already there in terms of
| intellectual white collar work.
| sdk16420 wrote:
| I feel that we are employed above of all to be available
| when it matters rather than to do a certain amount of
| work for the hours you are paid for. Compare it to a
| workshop with some tools, you buy a hammer not because
| you use it for 8 hours a day, but because when you need
| it, you can't do without it. If you go a day without
| needing to use the hammer, it doesn't mean that having
| the hammer in your shed is a waste of money.
|
| If the company cared only about getting certain amount of
| work done in the time they paid for, they would hire an
| external. And continuing the analogy, it's usually more
| expensive in the long run to rent a tool even if you use
| it only a couple of times a month, as well as having to
| get used to unfamiliar equipment, having no records of
| how well the rental tool performed earlier.
| newbYhrly wrote:
| Musk posted screens of his Elden Ring progress a couple weeks
| after launch. Given other players had to sink 60-80 hours in to
| get to the same point Musk was broadcasting, he was working 48
| hours a day at his companies and on Elden Ring.
|
| Bezos has given interviews about his habits. He works maybe
| 10-20 hours a week.
|
| Billing 40 hours every week to run scripts that generate a
| Github repo structure in minutes has been profitable for me
| though. Not going to knock Musk and Bezos optimizing for
| themselves by gaming others agency.
| ITB wrote:
| Picasso offered a drawing in a napkin for $1M dollars, even
| though it took him 1 min to draw it. You know the gist. Bezos
| might do 20 hours a week of "work" because he scaffolded a
| giant organization around his brain, so he only needs to
| provide certain input. Besides, much of the non-work time,
| such as public speaking and so forth, is actually work.
|
| Also the ultimate test is whether after confessing to your
| real contribution, people are ok. I don't think any amazon
| employee was annoyed after hearing this so called interview,
| whereas is your company knew what you were charging them for,
| they would fire you.
| newbYhrly wrote:
| He had 50 people invest tens of thousands each to build
| that scaffold.
|
| He's not a genius just well networked.
|
| Idle idolatry of normal human beings with no effort to
| verify their real outputs creates an unfalsifiable truth
| Bezos is a lynchpin to reality.
|
| Ooo oo I heard it through the grapevine, Bezos is not what
| you might call "divine"...
|
| The rich did not invent science, engineering, and economic
| activity. Human behavior gives rise to those things
| organically. The rich are merely playing information
| awareness constraint games; a man named Farmer is a farmer,
| an engineer is an engineer, and there's no reason to allow
| them agency to learn other things.
|
| His value is rooted in traditions of political correctness
| to buy into that narrative, not immutable laws of nature.
|
| Every worker faces the risk of their livelihood vanishing
| tomorrow. One slip of the tongue costing their job. Why are
| these guys insulated from the same?
| somenameforme wrote:
| Bezos parents were teenagers of no significant means.
| After they divorced, his mother married an "uneducated"
| (in the sense he had not attended college) Cuban
| immigrant, Miguel Bezos, again of no significant means.
| After Miguel graduated from the elite University of New
| Mexico, they moved to Houston so he could work for Exxon.
| During high school Jeff took on an elite internship
| working the morning shift at McDonalds.
|
| It's not entirely rags to rich because gramps indeed did
| well for himself and had a nice big ranch out in the
| middle of Nowhere, Texas. But it's pretty close to it,
| and overall a pretty cool story.
| newbYhrly wrote:
| You stopped short of detailing the well documented part
| of 50 people chipping in 25k.
|
| That alone is a testament to how the country has changed.
| How many McDonalds burger flippers have that social
| network now?
|
| His childhood and his family greatly benefited from pre-
| Reagan social programs.
|
| How sad if the mega-mega-billionaires were mega-mega-
| millionaires. The rich of their childhood got through
| high taxes ok.
|
| If such taxation is immoral, let's discuss then the
| advantages immoral taxation in the past provided them and
| accept them as less uniquely gifted and successful on
| their own then.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I'm at least online 40 hours. Actively doing effort is harder
| but it's easier if I'm doing something interesting. I try to
| not beat myself up if I'm having trouble focusing some days.
| Some days it just ain't happening. Get a coffee read a magazine
| and try again a little later.
| willio58 wrote:
| This is why Remote is great. You have the flexibility, and as
| long as you get the work you say you'll get done done, who
| cares if you're literally sitting in a chair from 9-5?
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Which is exactly how salaried work was supposed to work, not
| "40 hours is the minimum and we won't pay you if we pile so
| much work on that you need to work 60 hours instead."
| thenerdhead wrote:
| You're probably not wrong. The data supports it.
|
| > In October, the average workweek for all employees on private
| nonfarm payrolls was 34.5 hours for the fifth month in a row.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
|
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm
| Arrath wrote:
| The pessimist in me has to wonder how much of this is
| employers manipulating schedules to keep employees from
| classifying as full time?
|
| I see the report calls out part time workers at 3.7m yet
| still I wonder.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| That's a great point. I interpret that there's a difference
| of "assigned 40 hours" and "works 40 hours" that is being
| called out in this data.
| vjk800 wrote:
| And this is the time they at least pretend to be working. The
| amount of hours they actually do something productive is
| going to be much less.
| gilbert_vanova wrote:
| The more your work is in creative output, the more likely you
| are to be working 100% of the time you're on the clock.
| Cognition is complex and most of it happens under the covers.
| Once you wake up, you load up your brains with concerns and
| don't stop thinking about it just because you aren't in
| meetings or actively coding. Your conscious thoughts are only
| one layer in a dense system.
|
| Arguably, you can't turn it off when you clock out either. It's
| why I argue for a retainer model on intellectual workers.
| jghn wrote:
| My most recent job is billable and time is tracked in tight
| increments. Because I now pay much more attention to when I am
| and am not 100% engaged, it's been eye opening how much 40
| hours _really_ is. I 've found that I'm about 2/3 efficient. So
| if I designate 6 hours for "work", I'm _really_ working (and
| thus billing) for about 4 hours.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I would bet those 2 hours you aren't billing for are still
| actual work. You are available, you are probably thinking
| about the company/the job/the work. That is all WORK, and
| should be billed.
|
| I used to do a lot of walks (before I moved from Upstate NY
| to Houston) where I would escape the code and think about the
| product. That was all billed time, and understood by my
| clients. Just because my fingers are not furiously typing,
| doesn't mean I'm not actively engaged in my work.
| jghn wrote:
| Sometimes. And in past jobs that's how I justified myself,
| sure I'm not hands on keyboard all the time but I'm "on"
| 95+% of my awake time.
|
| This company's policy is the clock is only running if
| you're 100% engaged. I try to stick with that. As time has
| gone on I've gotten better about mentally turning the
| switch more all the way on/all the way off. There's some
| grey area on both sides that I figure comes out in the
| wash. And if I have a serendipitous moment, it's not hard
| to turn the clock back on and have at it.
|
| It'd also look more different if the billing increment was
| wider. In a very past life I billed at 15 minute intervals.
| So if I was "on" for 12 minutes but stepped away to clear
| my head, the full 15 was billed.
| elvis10ten wrote:
| I disagree based on personal (anecdotal) data.
|
| When I get into a "flow" on a project I can work 12+ hour days.
| My productivity dwindles as the day gets old for sure, but I
| don't think it ever gets to zero or close. I dream/think about
| the project and the first thing on my mind in the morning is
| the next step on the project.
|
| Last time I was in flow, I single handedly built the next
| generation of a tool in 2 months. It's currently taking the
| other team about 6 months to do the same but for another
| platform. The complexity is roughly the same and I think the
| engineers are as smart, if not smarter than me. I think the
| difference was that I did 12-16 hours for 2 month (including
| weekends).
|
| This is not sustainable of course. I developed my back and
| wrist pain at the end of the 2 months. This is something I
| consciously stop myself from doing ever again because health is
| all you got at the end of the day.
| suralind wrote:
| Very realistic, I one had a different idea of how we would
| build a retool-like tool for a company I worked at. I spent 4
| days to reimplement our app from scratch, I didn't include
| even 10% of what we had, but the framework was much more
| powerful.
|
| I typically code for like 3-4 hours a day, maybe 6-7 when I'm
| super into what I'm doing. BUT, I very frequently think about
| my work when I'm not working.
| badrabbit wrote:
| People don't work for 40 hours but they are available for 40
| hours, being available is also "work".
| vlunkr wrote:
| > It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share
|
| Yeah this is a pretty interesting phenomenon. I feel like as a
| kid I had no idea it would be this way, but every job I've
| worked, blue and white collar, has involved a lot of "time
| wasting." It's very surprising at first.
| Tyrek wrote:
| If we "actually work" 32 hours out of 40 (80%), what is the
| likelihood that if we shift to a 32 hour max week, that the
| average person will only "actually work" ~26 hours (80% of 32)
| in this hypothetical future?
|
| What if at least part of the 20% is spent doing social
| activities, water cooler conversations, etc. that enable the
| remaining 80% to flow more efficiently?
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Because burn-out is the main driving factor behind the
| productivity changes, not the hypotheticals you are talking
| about. In engineering, people are burned out by friday, and
| even outside of engineering, people tend to phone it in by
| that point in the week because they are just done. They are
| operating at less than 50% mental or physical capacity. If
| you instead just give them that time to recharge, they'll get
| that much more done early in the week the following week.
| They'll also be in a better headspace because although you
| are only decreasing the days they work by 1/5th, you are
| increasing their uninterrupted weekend/family time by 1/3rd.
| In a more egalitarian society, you might imagine that ratio
| to be more like 1:1 to be fair.
|
| At my previous startup we saw an 8% productivity _increase_
| from moving to a 4-day work week, and this was across a
| variety of metrics like issues closed, lines of code, etc. We
| don't even know if 4 is optimal, it could be 3. Only way to
| find out is to try it.
| bumby wrote:
| My anecdotal experience doesn't support this. I worked in
| an org that shifted to a 9/80 schedule with a three day
| weekend every other week. Prior to this, Fridays always
| seemed to be the days where people coasted...they would
| come in kinda late, have a coffee break, then have a
| breakfast break, then an extended bathroom break, maybe get
| an hour of stuff done before an extended lunch. And of
| course, Friday afternoon meetings were frowned upon. After
| the change, this same behavior shifted to Thursdays, which
| used to be normally productive day.
|
| Maybe they were burned out from the extra hour of the
| previous days, but considering the Thursdays of the
| remaining 5 day weeks didn't display this behavior, I doubt
| it. Now there was the complication that once management saw
| a dip in productivity, there was a near mutiny at the mere
| suggestion of going back to a normal workweek.
|
| The implication is no matter how long/short the work week
| is, people will adjust to make the end a slack day.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| About 0% probability.
|
| They will work more than 80%, less than 100%, say 87%. And
| that is what you want: keep some off time for conversation,
| recovery, etc..
|
| You don't want 100% (very short hours) and you don't want too
| low a percentage (long hours). There is some balance in
| between and no slippery slope.
| wil421 wrote:
| Because I'll have a week day to do everything I need to do.
| Also I would push back or not attend meetings where I'm not
| needed. Team meetings and collaboration would still happen. A
| lot of people have to do late or weekend deployments and it
| would take the stress off of a lot of IT workers in all
| areas.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Exactly. The whole modern trend of working less hours will
| somehow equate to more work being done is ridiculous.
| Zircom wrote:
| I don't think anyone is necessarily saying more work will
| get done although that's possible I guess, my understanding
| is that in a humanitarian sense cutting down expected
| working hours would increase employee
| satisfaction/happiness without affecting productivity much
| if at all and that's the main draw of the movement.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| The only thing that's ridiculous is a simplistic sweeping
| statement like that. For one thing, no one even said "more
| work" necessarily, although that is absolutely perfectly
| possible and valid, but better work, and better overall
| performance as in morale, loyalty, effectiveness (better
| imagination and problem solving), longevity (less turnover,
| more return on training investment, better institutional
| knowledge retention), etc.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I mean someone could gather this info, the average working
| hours in China are ~10 more than the US and some European
| countries average lower.
|
| Given humans are highly adaptable I imagine we will adjust to
| the new normal and keep finding time to mess around at work.
| bumby wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_
| a...
| tnel77 wrote:
| I'm all for a shorter workweek, but I definitely expect that
| the social aspect of a job is good for overall productivity.
| Maybe I'm weird, but I enjoy asking my coworkers how their
| weekend was prior to a meeting starting or (back when I was
| in the office) as we ran into each other in the hallway.
| BryantD wrote:
| You're not weird. I am not like you, but as a manager it's
| been important for me to recognize that this isn't at all
| uncommon.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| Same! You're definitely not alone, even if I do feel like a
| rare species these days. I really wish we were all going in
| two or three days a week. This constant wfh is driving me
| crazy.
| vonseel wrote:
| People will tell you only lonely people think that way,
| but I think office socialization is a different kind of
| thing. At the office you meet and chat with people of all
| ages and different types. When you're with friends,
| you're probably hanging with a bunch of people more like
| yourself.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > I enjoy asking my coworkers how their weekend was prior
| to a meeting starting
|
| It's foreplay but for work. Forework?
| dustedcodes wrote:
| Reduce the hours in the day.
|
| Most people structure their days based on what they want to
| accomplish (goal driven), rather than how to spread out work
| evenly across a fixed number of hours (time driven). So if
| someone knows that they are expected to deliver task A + B in
| one day then they will do it. If they have a 4 hour work day
| they'll do it in 4 hours and then happily clock off. If they
| have to do it in an 8 hour work day they'll do it in 4 hours
| and then waste time for the remaining 4 hours.
| bumby wrote:
| How does this align with the near-ubiquitous feelings that
| people generally feel overwhelmed? I.e., they have more
| goals then they have time
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| I don't think that would happen if there is actually a job to
| be done.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Most remote jobs I've worked at, I can't reach anyone on
| Friday. Probably not a coincidence.
|
| Even years ago when I was in the office, everyone would go on
| insanely long lunch breaks on Friday instead. If you work an
| office job, I can assure you that the number of people actually
| working on Friday is statistically irrelevant.
| vidanay wrote:
| "Never buy a car built on a Friday or a Monday."
| ShaneMcGowan wrote:
| From my personal experience Stress free 5 days > Fire fighting
| for 4 days
| ntp85 wrote:
| Yeah, but Fire fighting for 4 days > Fire fighting for 5 days.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Also stress free for 4 days > stress free for 5 days.
| TrueGeek wrote:
| Yeah, if you have 32 hours of fire fighting every week then
| you either love fighting fires or you need to find
| something that you do love.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Talk to an ER nurse. One of the ones who hasn't
| left...yet.
| mouzogu wrote:
| why would a company agree to pay the same salary for fewer hours
| of custody?
|
| it reminds me of the macchiavelli quote:
|
| > "How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he
| who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will
| learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation."
|
| productivity study is interesting but that's not how the real
| world incentives are aligned.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Attitudes towards ownership of one's employees is why people
| recommend violence towards said employers via jokes like "these
| people have addresses".
|
| You're essentially saying "the company prefers social control
| over productivity, and lets just let that go"
| mouzogu wrote:
| > You're essentially saying "the company prefers social
| control over productivity, and lets just let that go"
|
| yes, that is exactly what i'm saying :)
| pwinnski wrote:
| Why do companies pay for people to work "only" five days each
| week? Or "only" 40 hours? Why not seven days, and 84 hours each
| week? Surely there are people willing to work those hours for
| even less than companies are paying now, eliminating the
| deadweight loss.
|
| Once you have the answer to that question, the answer to your
| question seems very straightforward.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The answer is that both parties have agreed that 40 hours of
| work a week is worth that much money. And if there are people
| already willing to work 84 hours for less money then they
| would be employed already for less at 40 hours.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > 40 hours of work a week
|
| The concept of hours per week is shaped by it's origin in
| production manufacturing.
|
| Most people who are in a position to discuss 4 day weeks
| are in the Service Sector or otherwise 'creative roles'.
|
| This is analogue to the argument of why do we not pay
| developers by lines of code. Both time and LOCs are not
| necessarily linear with productivity and delivery of
| function.
|
| Arguing for pay to be linked to time is in my view an
| artefact of the production & manufacturing origins of
| modern work.
|
| So to come back to your point. Previously both parties
| agreed that 40 hour week was worth this much money. Now
| both parties agree that this link with time is a bad metric
| and that pay is provided for the realization of certain
| function or deliverable.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's not a bad metric. It's just not a perfect metric.
| And, more importantly, paying for time isn't a metric at
| all. It's just one of the legal ways to employ people.
| Paying for deliverables, which you describe, is another
| legal way to employ people.
|
| Here are some downsides to paying for deliverables:
|
| Any job that requires talking to other people will
| suffer, as they won't work at the same time. Some jobs
| this is okay (e.g. open source development is very
| asynchronous) but many are not.
|
| If you move to deliverables, what happens if you don't
| deliver on time? Do you not get paid?
|
| Who sets the deliverables? How are they paid, if they are
| the ones creating a nice deliverable structure for others
| to get paid for delivering bits of?
|
| How do we measure the value of each deliverable, to pay
| accordingly?
|
| How do we measure if you really delivered?
|
| If the company decides the deliverable is no longer
| valuable and stops it halfway, do you not get paid? Do
| you get paid based on the estimated value (at the time
| the work was agreed) of the bits you did do? Do you have
| to negotiate that?
|
| If you go on leave, should you not get paid?
|
| If you deliver twice as fast, do you get paid faster?
|
| How does "realisation of a function" work except based on
| time? If I'm at a service desk, should I be paid nothing
| if no tickets come in? Or should I be paid for... my
| time?
|
| What I'm driving at is you've invented something that
| already exists: the fixed-price contract. Scope is
| agreed, lawyers get involved to approve it, and finance
| for its budget, you do the work, the scope slips in a way
| that the customer believes was implied all along, you
| bring in lawyers to fight, and you get paid at the end,
| or not, and the work at the end probably suffers quality-
| wise because you had a fixed-price deliverable, and the
| faster you do it the more money you get. I don't think
| many people are up for that; nor are many companies going
| to go through that pain per-employee.
| idontpost wrote:
| kalcode wrote:
| I get it is a strange idea. But putting a quote that doesn't
| really have any substance isn't really an argument nor adding
| value against it.
|
| I think the idea of 4 days work week is asking to work outside
| the box for a moment on what benefits this could entail for
| different industry.
|
| > To work all week is to surrender your will, working less is
| the core of motivating man
|
| (see this quote disagrees!)
| socialismisok wrote:
| Because the workers produce as much (or more) in that
| arrangement.
| mouzogu wrote:
| more is never enough in the capitalist system
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| And there is never enough food or liberty in socialist
| systems. What is your point?
| socialismisok wrote:
| This is objectively false. Did you mean to say under
| Stalinist systems?
| shkkmo wrote:
| If you have two equivalent competing companies, both paying
| the same salaries to the same number of employees, and one
| company accomplishes more by asking their workers to 4 day
| weeks, then that company will be more successful and can
| put the other one out of business.
|
| Thus the key measure that this study would need to
| demonstrate would be not that the productivity/worker-hour
| ratio goes up but that also the productivity/worker-dollar
| goes up. If the latter is true, a lot of companies are
| going to take a close look at this because more is more.
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| but more is still, well, more. So, it's still a better deal
| for the company. Maybe we haven't found the optimal point,
| but it definitely doesn't appear to be 40hours (or at
| least, not 8 * 5).
| erinaceousjones wrote:
| This makes the assumption that capitalism exists in a
| vacuum: It doesn't. Companies aren't *always* trying to
| simply optimise for financial growth at all times. They're
| made of humans, some of whom aren't necessarily
| megacapitalists.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Most companies in my country pays developers by days and not
| hours and this contract situation means that by law you have no
| fixed schedule and can do the hours you want as long as you
| deliver.
|
| Of course, it means that you are actually working more hours
| than what hourly workers do but on the flip side no one can
| tell you anything if you disconnect for an hour in the middle.
| joeman1000 wrote:
| That's not an experiment, that's a rise in pay-rate... it's very
| much past due in a lot of countries for a lot of job categories.
| ITB wrote:
| A lot of people have a goal to minimize work and maximize income,
| and for those people, no matter what flexibility they are given,
| they will continue to minimize productive work. It's sad in my
| opinion, and it leads to hedonic pursuits instead of the
| intrinsic satisfaction that comes from doing good work. But for
| too many people work is about man vs "the man", instead of our
| individual quest to do something interesting.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you keep people stressed, they become useless. Stressed
| people get no intrinsic satisfaction from working, or almost
| anything really.
| vsareto wrote:
| It's hard for a stoic mindset to pave over the fact that you're
| only working a job because you have to. You'd see less of that
| if we have a society that gives a decent standard of living
| without having to work (ever), but even then, there will always
| be people looking to game any system for the thrill of it.
| That's the intrinsic satisfaction they get.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| A lot of businesses have a goal to maximize work and minimize
| wages, and for those businesses...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| "Darling I told you several times before. I have no dream job,
| I do not dream of labor." -- James Baldwin
|
| Not everyone wants interesting work. That's just a hobby you
| get paid for.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| What's interesting to me is that I've seen many colleagues and
| general sentiment towards using your own time off to make work
| sustainable in this fashion of 4 day work weeks. They sacrifice
| the ability to disconnect from work with regular 1-2 week
| vacations however.
|
| Also the increase of sabbatical years tends to show just how
| unsustainable this can be over a long period. Especially in a
| stressful position.
|
| I don't think productivity is the right word to use. I would say
| efficiency is better. Output vs outcome is important in knowledge
| work.
| mike503 wrote:
| Compensation should be based on output. If hours translates to
| more output (like an assembly line worker or something) - great.
| Simply pay hourly and require minimum amount of hours (like 40)
| with options for "go-getters" to work more if they want.
|
| Plenty of jobs (like a lot of tech) should be based on "if you're
| producing what we need from you (or more if you want) we're
| happy" regardless of the hours.
| yrgulation wrote:
| I am always fascinated by people who want to earn less, pay
| more in tax, have less rights, etc.
|
| Curious, why would want to be paid by the hour instead of
| getting the same pay for less hours as this experiment would
| want to do? Technically thats a pay raise and better for your
| quality of life.
| cdkmoose wrote:
| How would you measure output? How do you measure "what we need
| from you"? As a software engineer a fair percent of my time was
| spent in collaboration that sometimes manifested itself in
| someone else's "output". Not advocating that hours are the best
| measure, but there does need to be an accounting of my time
| being available for others and not focused on my "output"
| zach_garwood wrote:
| I'm reminded of Parkinsons Law:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I think I personally know many people that will simply use the
| extra time to work another job, thus erasing the intended benefit
| to the generous company.
|
| They work you less so that you will have better morale and energy
| and loyalty while you are there. But you use the time to collect
| a 2nd paycheck, and the gets the same tired employee they would
| have had if they just worked you fully the old way.
|
| I don't know what could practically be done about that.
|
| It also seems like a 6 month trial where the participants are
| still the exception not the rule, doesn't really predict what
| would happen if it became the rule. If most companies adopted
| this as a norm, surely simply the average salery would just inch
| down over time until it became essentially necessary and the norm
| to work 2 jobs, since the 4-day job won't actually be enough by
| itself except in theory, like how minimun wage is supposed to be
| enough in theory.
|
| There will always be huslters aggressively trying to maximize
| every minute, and they will always set, or at least perturb, the
| going rates for things. I think this experiment can only really
| exist as a special bubble experiment where the ceos just wanted
| to do it, and all employees were convinced to voluntarily play
| along and not just fill the gap with a side job. Maybe there can
| always be some few companies that can do it as their particular
| distinctive policy just like there already are different
| companies with different cultures and norms. But across the
| board? I think the hustlers and hungry scrappers will just set
| the going rates.
| christkv wrote:
| This mentality is less prevela t in Europe so that might be a
| factor to keep in mind.
| rr888 wrote:
| Even with 5-day weeks lots of colleagues were running side
| projects. Honestly a 4-day a week job WFH I'd probably try to run
| two jobs at a time. I'm here to work and get paid, not have a
| good balance.
| lapser wrote:
| The arguments against 4-day work weeks are slowly eroding, and
| I'm here for it.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| At my previous startup we tried this with engineering and
| actually saw a productivity _increase_ from 4-day work-week.
| Arrath wrote:
| I will say the morale improvement on my team when we switched
| to 4/10s was worth it alone. We couldn't swing the reduction in
| hours unfortunately.
| Maxburn wrote:
| This is a bit different from a 32 hour week.
|
| But yes you will see productivity go UP with 4 10s. That's a
| full days worth of break and lunch interruptions that isn't
| there.
|
| I switched to 4 10s a couple years back and it's nice, but
| the days are quite long so anything else you plan to do
| probably isn't happening. Like gym time, which is going to
| cost long term.
| Arrath wrote:
| To be fair this was heavy construction, so a baseline of
| physical activity was there. Out-of-town work as well, so
| longer days were a bonus since off-duty time would be sent
| sitting in your trailer or at the bar. An extra day to
| travel and spend with the family at home was huge for the
| guys.
|
| > That's a full days worth of break and lunch interruptions
| that isn't there.
|
| A constant battle I've seen between superintendents and
| schedulers/penny pincher types. "oh no we can't pay any
| over time!" without realizing the productivity gains the
| superintendent is chasing from the extra working time
| unencumbered by extra breaks.
| kazanz wrote:
| Curious, was this increased productivity sustained? If so, for
| how long?
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| For me the real productivity benefit would be the 5th day when
| nobody is "working" but I log in and have an entire full day to
| focus without interruption.
| kingofheroes wrote:
| We tried this several times, specifically banning meetings on
| Friday, and it never sticks. Some manager or executive always
| winds up ignoring the rule and setting a meeting anyway, which
| throws the whole thing out.
| kwindla wrote:
| We try to nudge towards making this possible by having a "soft
| rule" discouraging scheduling any standing or cross-team
| meetings on Fridays.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| boc wrote:
| NPR is not funded in a significant way by the government. Only
| about 4% of their annual funding is from government sources.
| [1]
|
| [1] https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-public-
| ra...
| PubliusMI wrote:
| viscountchocula wrote:
| What news source would you take seriously?
| crdrost wrote:
| You are failing to engage with the content here.
|
| Work itself is behaving like a complex system with bottlenecks
| and constraints and all that. The deadlines are being shown to
| expand to the time allotted, in a similar fashion to how
| opening a new lane on a highway often does not improve traffic
| and might even make it worse.
|
| In complex systems, the "greedy algorithm" (gradient descent)
| fails. For example, you might see some welders playing cards,
| and yell at them to go be doing work, (greedy algorithm: any
| inefficiency you see, correct it immediately) but this might
| cause huge delays for your customers rather than making things
| faster. How? Well it comes down to why were they playing cards.
| If it truly had to do with them being lazy, that's one thing.
| The Union rep might even back you up and yell at them for you.
| But they might also be implementing a low-latency subunit. They
| don't have work to do right now and it's important that the
| moment they have work to do, they can start it in an instant.
| You send them all to look productive God knows where, then when
| work comes in folks have to hunt them down and get them back
| here. Or, the card playing could implement a backpressure
| mechanism, "yeah we know the QC folks who will handle these are
| still pretty swamped with the backlog..."
|
| So if you give me a linear circuit comprised of resistors and
| capacitors and inductors, and you propose increasing the
| voltage on the lines that feed it, I know that other voltages
| seen across the circuit will scale proportionately--this is
| your "20% more." and same with "if I reduce this resistor's
| resistance, more current will flow over there" etc. But once
| you throw a diode or transistor in there, all bets are off!
| "No, when you tweak this the diode goes from being forward
| biased to being reverse biased and NO current flows over
| there."
|
| So it matters terribly much whether work is a simple linear
| system or a complex of feedback loops.
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