[HN Gopher] Is 40 hours a week too much?
___________________________________________________________________
Is 40 hours a week too much?
Author : mbrodersen
Score : 195 points
Date : 2022-11-17 20:31 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.okta.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.okta.com)
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| Employee? Sure, aim to get your workweek as close to 0 hours as
| possible unless you genuinely love what you are doing, then clamp
| it at 40.
|
| Startup/founder/significant equity holder? Sorry, no -- at least
| in the first year or three. Working 50 hours a week vs. 40 can be
| the difference between success and failure in the first few years
| of a company. I work anywhere between 40 and 60 hours depending
| on how critical a looming deadline is. No platitudes about "oh
| you're more productive < 40" are remotely true. My extra effort
| has translated directly into dodging _many_ snares that would
| have screwed us hard. I do however place 60 as my soft limit,
| beyond that I will pay for it hard after a week or two.
|
| Contrary to the cliches that abound around this topic, I am in
| good shape, healthy, have a rich-enough social life, and am a
| great dad.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Always need to keep in mind value of work.
|
| Working at Joe Widget Co. and get a tight deadline for a new
| feature? Value of the work was already low, value of your extra
| effort is pretty much unknowable, why would anyone work
| overtime?
|
| Early stage startup its much easier to draw a line straight
| from work -> value.
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| Yep, I think this point gets lost in most of these articles.
|
| If someone is used to already working five hours a day and
| surfing Reddit for another three hours as a "break", then
| this less than 40 crap sounds like an obvious no-brainer - I
| can already hear the "but I get my work done in 25 hours for
| the week!" tripe.
|
| For the rest of us who can work without any distractions for
| as many hours as necessary, it's silly.
| sgt101 wrote:
| >HR should define the perfect workweek
|
| wot?
|
| >HR professionals must carry the torch for this issue.
|
| bruv....
| eikenberry wrote:
| For creative positions I don't see hours/week as a useful metric
| for anything. Most of my time 'working' is not sitting at my
| computer typing or whatever.. it's thinking about things while
| laying in bed while I can't sleep or when sitting on the can or
| when taking a walk (etc.). Often my subconscious comes up with
| something while I'm not even thinking about it. So I'm working
| when playing games or reading as well. Working isn't labor, it
| isn't something you do. It is all about how much value you
| create.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Quantization of work is so weird to me in the context of software
| engineering.
|
| Most of the work I do happens passively as I think about some
| problem. Much of this thinking occurs outside of the traditional
| 9-5 window.
|
| "Amount of time spent presiding over a work PC" doesn't count as
| a useful metric in my book. I prefer to measure the quality of
| work via outcomes and customer feedback. Meetings are an unhappy
| exception to all of this, but they are a necessary evil.
| Eliminate unnecessary meetings with prejudice - They will come
| back like zombies if they were really that important to the
| business.
|
| Contributions still need to be mapped to outcomes, but that has
| nothing inherently to do with a time dimension. Non-contributors
| and relative performance should still be quite obvious to
| management, even if you can't say exactly how much time was spent
| by each participant.
| padolsey wrote:
| I've just started a new role as an EM and because of disability
| have been able to reduce my hours (and proportionally my pay)
| down to 20hrs per week. I work only 9am-3pm [minus 1hr for lunch]
| on Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri. It's going well for me so far. My
| cognitive hours are nicely compressed into those time windows, so
| although it's still hard (due to disability stuff) I'm still
| finding it so so much easier and more fulfilling than toiling
| behind a physical desk for 40-60hrs a week, half of which I'd be
| mostly whiling away time or doing performative work. I spent over
| ten years doing just that...
|
| I look back and see so much wasted time, and saw so many
| colleagues who seemed drained and generally rushed to fit in
| 'life' things around work. Family, friends, hobbies, medical
| appointments, enjoying nature [...]. It should be the opposite of
| this. Work should come second to life, especially if we have the
| luxury of making it so. Otherwise, what are we all doing??
| earth2mars wrote:
| Elon says too little
| robswc wrote:
| Figure Little's law may be a bit applicable to the discussion :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law
|
| You never really want "100% utilization" (something I feel a lot
| of managers don't quite understand).
|
| The answers here are very interesting. I work more than 40 hrs
| (my own business stuff) and I always wish there was more time in
| the day, lol. Never worked at a big company but I do imagine if
| people are only "working" 20 hrs that's a sign that they could
| "work-less." IMO as long as stuff gets done (in a timely manner)
| that's all that should matter.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I never realized that Robert Owens' quote codifying eight hours
| of work is from 1817. Good golly.
|
| Our entire industrial mental model of work comes from at least
| two hundred years ago.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That wasn't an industrial mental model, it was a utopian
| socialist proposal that took a century and a lot of blood to
| win.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I mean that the mental model dates from the early Industrial
| Revolution (I previously thought that it wasn't created until
| the Gilded Age or the Victorian era), and is overdue to be
| revised given the rise of white collar work.
| larsonnn wrote:
| I have more of a problem with companies trying to compress
| 80hours of work in 40hours.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| "Finally, when the 40-hour workweek was established, two-income
| households were rare. Only 15.2% of married women were employed
| in 1940. But as of 2012, 60% of households had dual incomes. When
| both members of a couple work, it leaves less time for children,
| chores, errands, food preparation, and everything else that must
| occur outside of working hours."
|
| 40 hour workweek is fine for most people, but I think HR ought to
| be more flexible in working hours and salary employees choose,
| based on their season of life. Because we are dual-income with 3
| young children, I work 32 hrs instead of 40; but it's an odd
| arrangement I had to ask for. I see families in a simliar
| situation struggling, and I think it ought to be more of the norm
| to offer this without a company raising questions about
| productivity/loyalty/laziness/benefits etc.
| patmcc wrote:
| For something I'm passionate about? No.
|
| For what I'm actually doing? Yes.
| aqsheehy wrote:
| I don't think businesses benefit from a 4 day work week but who
| cares, I don't think they benefit necessarily from a weekend
| either and we still do it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's far more than anyone worked before the industrial revolution
| who wasn't enslaved. Subsistence farming or hunting and gathering
| don't take 40 hours a week.
|
| The reason there's a 40 hour workweek is because socialists,
| anarchists, and communists fought for one. It was marketed as
| splitting the day into three even parts, and getting weekends
| off. There's nothing special about it other than it is a round
| number, and far more work than is necessary to produce enough to
| support a family, so it offers ample excess for the owners of
| capital.
|
| The optimal number of hours is the least necessary to have a
| comfortable life.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Subsistence farming or hunting and gathering don't take 40
| hours a week.
|
| It is _extremely_ interesting to see how people lived in a pre-
| industrial era. There is a series of videos about long retired
| german tradesmen, who worked in long dead traditional trades
| (wheel making, woodcuting and many other very fascinating and
| obscure ones). I liked it a lot. The consistent theme there is
| that these people do not have a "work day". There is
| absolutely no seperation between their private life and what
| they do for work. Of course they are not doing high intensity
| work for 16 hours a day, but they are going through a wide
| varity of different activities, some leisure ones like eating
| with their families, but a lot of it directly or indirectly
| related to their work. How much and when they work can be
| dependent on a varity of factors, but their work is completely
| integrated into their lives.
|
| One thing I really dislike about a 40h work week as a person
| living further in the north is that in the winter it is dark
| when I return. The sun rises at around 7:30, long after I need
| to wake up.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Subsistence farming or hunting and gathering don't take 40
| hours a week.
|
| Also people had tons of holidays during the middle age in
| Europe.
|
| Crazy working hours peaked during the industrial revolution
| when workers had life expectations reaching minimums of 20
| years.
|
| Not to mention that in many places men were working and women
| were homemakers some 70 years ago. Now that everybody works we
| spend our evening and weekends doing chores and housekeeping.
| (And no, I'm not saying we should go back to 1950!)
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| >In the 1800s, it was common for people in manufacturing to work
| nearly 100 hours per week: between 10- and 16-hour shifts over
| six-day workweeks. >By the early 1900s, many industries had
| adopted the eight-hour workday, but most people were still
| working six days a week.
|
| If these figures are true, it helps me to understand why so many
| people in the 19th and early 20th century were huge advocates of
| socialism and communism. Even though, having read about the
| history of the last 100 or so years, I think that communism is a
| relatively inefficient and often brutally murderous form of
| government, even I feel that it might be better to launch a
| revolution to overthrow the rich and take their stuff than to put
| up with working so much that there is essentially no time in
| one's life to do anything other than work, all just to be able to
| live in some cramped apartment in a dirty industrial city.
| johnthuss wrote:
| There is so much variability in the kind of work people do it's
| hard to make a rule that fits everyone. For knowledge workers I
| think 40 hours is near the top of productive time you are able to
| wring from people. Certainly some individuals could work much
| more if engaged, but on the whole, without a strong incentive
| otherwise, I think 40 hours is a maximum limit.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Most doctors, lawyers and investment bankers all work well over
| 40 hours.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| I agree with you on this. It is not only task based but
| individual based. When I am at my desk doing tech type work I
| max out 'productively' at about 30 hours +/- depending on what
| I'm doing. But when I'm out doing farm stuff I can run 60 or 70
| hours without much trouble when on the tractor etc., or a bit
| less when stacking hay bales.
|
| Mentally tired, for me, is much harder to recover from than
| physically tired. I'm not saying I want to work 70 or 80 hours
| a week lifting heavy things, but this type of hourly rating
| system can be very subjective by the individual.
| nkozyra wrote:
| I think if there were more variability in scheduling a lot of
| people would exceed 40 hours _on average_ without much issue.
|
| If office workers had the ability to have more relaxed PTO I
| think it would alleviate a lot of that. But even in places
| where that's possible via the type of work, it's still
| culturally not acceptable to just take a day off here or there
| without a "reason."
| Frost1x wrote:
| From my personal experience it's closer to 30, sometimes less
| depending on the level of creativity and number of independent
| disciplines/specialized knowledge bases I need to draw upon and
| unify for a solution. After that I'll happily welcome the most
| mundane, repetitive and simple tasks.
| davesque wrote:
| I've always felt a bit like an alien from outer space when trying
| to understand the work habits of modern humans. It seems we spend
| enough time doing what we think we have to do to survive that it
| feels like the only thing we actually do. Everything else in our
| life feels secondary. I'm not sure this is even normal in nature.
| Seems like a lot of animals spend much of their time just sort of
| hanging out. Does it honestly take so much time to cover your
| bases? I think not.
|
| It feels as though the modern 9-5 lifestyle is a lie that no one
| questions. I just can't get behind it as long as I feel like our
| society doesn't actually require that much constant effort to
| maintain or even to keep pointed in the right direction.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| Here's what I believe : the fraternizing and huddling around the
| break room during coffee breaks and distracting leisurely talks
| with coworkers at their desk, which all contribute to wasted time
| at the office would still happen in a 30 hour work week.
|
| Except, Workers would be demanding overtime pay to finish the
| work they have normally been doing in a 40 hour work week and
| employers would have to pay premium compensation for the same
| level of work they used to be getting at 40 hours a week.
| notacop31337 wrote:
| I find it curious that you point out regular social interaction
| as a major culprit of lost time here but not the 4 different
| communication mediums that every workplace uses, or the
| egregious levels of ritualistic meetings, or the expectation of
| travel being on employee time, or the lessening of the value of
| our dollar resulting in multiple people having to work full
| time jobs in a single household to provide the same as
| generations ago.
|
| If you don't want people to interact in normal ways, why have a
| business, would business outcomes not be improved by humans
| interacting and forming social bonds within their workplace, a
| place that by current standards, we spend 50% of our awake
| hours?
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| I didn't point out meetings because they are required by the
| company therefore the company deems them valuable enough to
| consider work time. So it stands to reason those meetings you
| think are useless will still exist In a 30 hour work week.
|
| As opposed to fraternizing at a person's desk, which is not
| considered work time. Generally speaking. I'm sure there
| exists companies that encourage fraternization as part of
| work but they are definitely the minority.
| Chinjut wrote:
| There is a frequent pattern which concerns me of primarily
| justifying the desire for reduced work hours in terms of the
| alleged increase in productivity this will bring about (by
| allowing recharging, preventing burnout, etc.). I worry that this
| already concedes too much. This allows for just as much stressful
| dominance of work over the rest of life, and shame over any
| deviation from this script, as maximizes productivity.
|
| Even if my shorter-work-hours productivity doesn't match my
| longer-work-hours productivity, I'd still prefer shorter-work-
| hours, with no guilt over having those preferences. My goal in
| life is not to optimize everything I do for maximum benefit of my
| employer; I have my own priorities and trade-offs to worry about.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Right, for me it'd ideally be zero, so i can spend some of the
| free time doing productive, socially constructive work, that I
| consent to do without threats, inducements, or coercion.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > There is a frequent pattern which concerns me of primarily
| justifying the desire for reduced work hours in terms of the
| alleged increase in productivity this will bring about
|
| Usually in the form of conflating diminishing returns with less
| absolute productivity.
| ScottStevenson wrote:
| Great article on this, advocating for 40+ hours a week of _real_
| work:
|
| http://bookofhook.blogspot.com/2013/03/smart-guy-productivit...
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Yes, why is this still a question? Look at how productivity
| relates to wages after inflation adjustment. We have all been
| robbed for decades.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| _Relative_ wages have not risen, but standard of life _really_
| has. For a week of work at minimum wage, I can buy a _lot_ more
| cool stuff than anyone from 100 years ago.
|
| Things have gotten so good, that almost everyone has riches
| beyond the wildest dreams of someone from 1850, it's just that
| we _all_ have it, so it doesn 't _feel_ like we 've gotten much
| more from our productivity.
| alex_young wrote:
| Well, for the most part you can't compare the minimum wage of
| 100 years ago since it didn't exist, and subsequently
| excluded most workers until much later.
|
| In 1966 the federal minimum wage was amended to include most
| workers, so a comparison at that point can be made.
|
| In 1967 the minimum wage was $1.40, or $10.92 adjusted for
| inflation. The current minimum wage is $7.25, so in dollar
| terms the cost of goods, especially housing, really is much
| higher in minimum wage terms.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| What I'm saying is comparing wages is meaningless. If you
| compare what a month of work gets you in USA, it's
| _astounding_ compared to what it go you 150 years ago.
| Imagine buying a beat up car, internet connected computer,
| cell phone, refrigerator, etc. _That 's_ where the
| productivity growth went: Into better stuff, not into
| bigger piles of shells.
| vlunkr wrote:
| This is an easy question for a bunch of people who are supposed
| to be writing code right now.
| alexashka wrote:
| Having dummies in charge is too much. Why do we need to dance
| around discussing work from home, 40 hours, wages, etc.
|
| Just address the root problem.
| eweise wrote:
| Yes, 40 hours is too much. 16 is perfect. Tuesday and Wednesday
| please, working from home of course.
| Euphorbium wrote:
| Usually when there is a question in the title, the answer is no.
| Not this time. But 35h is also ridiculously too much. It needs to
| be 20h max, just because households are dual income, and personal
| work needed to be done did not disappear.
| hu3 wrote:
| Can relate. I've been splitting household chores 50/50 and
| there's barely any time to do anythying else.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| "Cut the workweek back to 35 hours"
|
| I feel like that's been the standard in a lot of industries - 9-5
| with an hour for lunch - for a long time.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Yes it is. I have a job like that now that I got out of school.
| I've been working at it for 5 years and honestly it sucks all of
| my life away. Basically the week is all work with evenings being
| too tired to enjoy life and the weekends being about recovery for
| the next work week.
|
| Luckily it's a tech job pays well, so I saved up enough so that I
| can quit. I'm doing that in a couple months, and after I'll just
| enjoy life and support myself with freelance work that I enjoy a
| lot more. F** the system, I couldn't care less about the success
| of any company or the products they produce.
| daneel_w wrote:
| In my early 20s when I worked as an electrician I never felt that
| 40 hour long weeks were too much. Working as a programmer I
| definitely feel that it is way too much. The head (mine at least)
| really needs a lot more time to recuperate.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Yeah, 40/week in restaurants or a trade really was a breeze.
| Most of the time you _wanted_ to put in minimum 40 to get
| benefits.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Working construction, when I was wasn't there I wasn't
| thinking about my job at all. Once I left the jobsite I was
| free.
|
| I know it is different if you are managing a job, but as an
| average worker it was not too bad.
| datavirtue wrote:
| They are so cute! Acting like HR cares or can do anything about
| this. Seriously? They avoid work and controversy like the black
| plague.
| edwnj wrote:
| The real question is how can I short okta.. Some person or group
| in this company was paid to do this..
| edwnj wrote:
| actually found it (Nasdaq: OKTA)..
|
| The company lost an insane amount of money each quarter (-46%
| margin).. The are worth almost 8 billion, 1.3 billion in
| revenue to net -850m in revenue..
|
| If it wasn't for their balance sheet (pretty strong) and gamble
| short this crap.. I might still, im gonna wait a few months for
| the woke communists in the org to drain money then short..
|
| I'm almost 100% certain these people are gonna drain the
| balance sheet whilst their revenue gonna collapse next year.
| martin1975 wrote:
| I spend 40 hours at work. Doesn't mean I am productive for all
| those hours. My productivity may be 20-30 hrs/week between
| meetings.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| Interesting to see such articles, when I heard from some people
| on HN that it's ok and healthy to have two contracts at the same
| time. Which one is it then?
| BonitaPersona wrote:
| Different people think different things.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Some people have the energy to do two jobs at once even if they
| don't strictly need the money to survive (like many minimum
| wage workers do); if they can keep themselves in check, that's
| a great way to make more money and build up a comfortable life
| or prepare for an early retirement.
|
| It's not for everyone and it's certainly not the standard.
| There are also people who work themselves to death and pretend
| to be fine. I'm sure it _can_ be healthy and fine if that is
| what you want; it just shouldn't be expected of people.
| rr888 wrote:
| Plus a side project.
| sbf501 wrote:
| 8-to-5 is 45 hours a week. I'm still in the office, even for
| lunch.
|
| Considering travel, it bumps up to 50 hrs/week.
|
| I hate how this 10-hour "work tax" is always dismissed as part of
| 40 hour work week.
| notacop31337 wrote:
| I'm at the stage now where if a company required me in the
| office, the surcharge I'd be asking on top of my wage (30%
| would do it) would be so hilarious that it would be insulting,
| but in my mind, that's kinda the point.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Do you go to the office because you need to or want to? Seems
| there is some difference there.
| sbf501 wrote:
| Why does that even matter? Or do you just assume everyone is
| a Javascript programmer?
|
| If I say "need" people will tell me it's my fault and to
| change jobs.
|
| If I say "want" people will tell me it's my fault and to
| change jobs.
| snu wrote:
| This is a great point that too few people think about. I like
| to take travel time and mandatory lunch breaks into account
| when I'm figuring out my 'adjusted' wage, and I use that number
| when thinking about getting a different job or taking time off.
| Your time isn't ACTUALLY worth $20/hr (or whatever), its more
| like 16, or less if you factor in taxes.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| This is why I will only take remote jobs. I got sick of
| spending two hours a day in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
| tacheiordache wrote:
| It depends on the type of work. 40 hours of deep work isn't
| sustainable for too long without breaks and leads to mental
| health issues.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Great blog post. Does Okta have a four day work week yet?
|
| https://www.4dayweek.com/
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/business/four-day-work-we...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/four-day-workweek-is-new-sta...
| swyx wrote:
| yeah i was very surprised to see this on an okta domain. you
| probably shouldn't be putting out posts like these unless
| you're literally announcing a 4 day work week
| thakoppno wrote:
| okta may have among the best datasets to measure work at tech
| cos.
|
| some days it seems like my job at tech co is to authenticate.
| swyx wrote:
| "what is my purpose?"
|
| "you SSO into b2b saas and send a few kb's around every
| day"
|
| "oh my god"
| epaulson wrote:
| At the beginning of the pandemic, as a cost-saving measure my
| company did furloughs, which for most of us were mandatory unpaid
| days off two days a week for 6 weeks. We could take off Sun/Mon,
| Mon/Tues, Thurs/Fri, Fri/Sun, or Mon/Friday, depending on
| coverage and what made sense regionally. (Our middle east offices
| worked Sun-Thu normally, the Islamic weekend is Fri/Sat)
|
| I have to say, only 3 days "at work" in a week felt just a bit
| too few, and I was often rushing to get everything done that had
| to get done that week.
|
| On the other hand, on US holiday weeks with Monday offs, are
| fantastic feelings work-wise. I feel like I get basically the
| same amount done in the week, and the weekend is considerably
| more relaxing- still tired Friday night, but Sunday afternoon and
| night isn't a mad dash of "finish all chores that need to be done
| before the weekend wraps up"
|
| Things would be different if my job was something more service-
| focused, like a doctor or dentist or hair stylist, where by
| definition they're going to be at 20% less productive if they're
| only seeing clients/patients/etc for 4 days a week instead of 5,
| so I'm not quite sure how as a society we balance that out, but I
| really wish 4 day weeks were much more the norm, and if I ever
| run my own company, that's what we're going to aim for.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I agree about the 4 day week. During Covid may company reduced
| work hours to 32 and we took off Friday. I definitely felt that
| people were actually working these hours and meetings were way
| more focused. Overall i don't think our release schedule got
| hurt at all by being less hours at work
| tschellenbach wrote:
| If you want to find the optimal number look at how many hours
| startup founders put in. Incentives are 100% aligned in how they
| benefit from their work. They have no incentive to work less or
| more than the optimal number of hours.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| They're also solving a somewhat different problem, namely "make
| it to the next funding round without thinking more than a year
| into the future". A company which already has solid funding may
| well have plans on the multi-year timeframe, and should
| probably try to avoid burning out its people.
| blue039 wrote:
| [deleted]
| jzb wrote:
| There's nothing magical about startup founders, nor anything to
| suggest they're any better about figuring out the right number
| of hours to work than the rest of the world.
|
| Nor are their incentives necessarily aligned properly - if you
| assume a startup founder is trying to start a business that
| will make them wealthy, then they may be operating under the
| assumption that more hours now == fewer later. So a founder may
| happily push themselves to pull 80 hour weeks thinking that a
| few years of that pace will pay off so they can coast later.
|
| Most startups fail, and I'd imagine most founders ultimately
| wind up working for other people. So they'll never get back
| that additional time + they'll have to keep putting in hours on
| someone else's behalf.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Incentives are 100% aligned in how they benefit from their
| work.
|
| Exactly. The reason the rank and file don't put that kind of
| time is they aren't given nearly as generous terms.
|
| This isn't really a discussion of what people can do, people
| can do much more than they are in general, but instead the
| problem is how much of the fruits of the effort is willing to
| be shared.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Hmm feels like the myth of the rational actor, while the
| incentivized may not be there, individual differences likely
| are.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Indeed. Not to mention that such assumption ignores the risks
| for personal health.
|
| Plenty of startups go bankrupt and plenty of founders
| experience burnout, back pain, RSI etc.
|
| Very few people can work 40+ full hours hunched on a keyboard
| for 3-4 decades.
| adwn wrote:
| This assumes that 1) _they themselves_ know how many hours of
| work leads to optimal productivity [1], and 2) there are no
| external factors that incentivize them to work fewer or more
| hours for appearances ' sake.
|
| [1] If startup founders know their optimal number of hours, why
| wouldn't regular employees also know this? Why do you think
| that startup founders have privileged knowledge in this regard?
| unixhero wrote:
| It is too much
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think the most important step towards flexible work hours in
| the US is decoupling health benefits from employers. Currently
| these benefits are essentially a flat cost per worker, and an
| incentive to squeeze the most out of each person.
|
| If the two were decoupled, employees would more easily be able to
| adjust their work hours to their personal desires. If you want to
| work 20 hours per half pay, great. If you want to work 60 hours
| for 50% more, great.
|
| Individual desires and needs very greatly among people, so such a
| system would allow a wider variety of people too meet their needs
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Too much for whom? For businesses, definitely not too much; if
| you're awake you could be working. For workers? We worked less
| when we were hunter-gatherers, and even peasants up to the
| industrial revolution worked seasonally and thus had an average
| of 20 hours a week. Now we work 40 hours a week for 44-48 weeks a
| year. And for what? To pay too much for health care, be stressed
| out constantly, sit in traffic commuting, and waste away sitting
| in a chair ruining our eyes staring at screens.
| kneebonian wrote:
| You know I hear this repeated about how people who did
| substance farming supposedly did less but that just doesn't
| seem to square with my experiences. Two examples I'll cite are
| the first is the experience recorded by my great great
| grandfather, he grew up on a farm in central Utah and when he
| was 14 years old his dad told him to take the sheep and go up
| into the mountains and don't come back until it snowed. I guess
| you could count it different but I think we'd be hard pressed
| to say that wasn't full time 24/7 work for 3 straight months,
| then when he got home he would have to work the harvest, repair
| the fences, etc.
|
| Another more modern example is the Amish, I don't know if
| you've had a lot of experience with the Amish but they know how
| to work, they start before sunup and push through to sundown,
| taking a short break for lunch and then back at it for hours on
| end, I definitely wouldn't say they average 20 hours a week
| over the year.
|
| I just see this claim repeated over and over and it feels like
| it doesn't make sense and is pushed more because those
| repeating it like it than any substantial basis in reality.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Your great great grandfather from your anecdote worked
| during/after the Industrial Revolution.
|
| Historical evidence shows that people worked much less than
| they did during and after the Industrial Revolution[1].
|
| [1] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hou
| rs_...
| varjag wrote:
| Herding sheep didn't change dramatically with Industrial
| Revolution.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It did, considering much of the pasture lands and commons
| traditionally used by herders were enclosed, along with
| economics changing in order for people to afford things
| like taxes, rents/mortgages, and goods that were once
| made at home, or by craftsmen, that were now factory-
| produced and sold via commodity markets. Those economic
| changes necessitate the creation of surplus value to be
| sold in markets for money versus doing just enough work
| for subsistence.
|
| You can see this change with the tenant farmer model.
| Traditional use of the commons was eliminated by
| privatization, and farmers then had to rent back smaller
| plots of land to sustain themselves. Tenant farmers now
| had rents to pay, so they had to create a surplus of
| value in order to afford that rent, and could no longer
| just engage in the subsistence farming they had done in
| the past, which meant doing more work.
| yboris wrote:
| _4DWW_ - Four Day Work Week is the future. So many benefits for
| workers _and_ the company! It 's a win-win for many types of
| companies. Even if it's not a win for all companies, society
| would benefit greatly by mandating 4 days of 8 hours with no loss
| of pay as the standard.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/11/15/1136039542/the...
| feoren wrote:
| I wish I lived in the world where "obviously beneficial to
| everyone" implied "it will be the future!" Plenty of things
| just get worse, just because. People are fucking awful. I look
| forward to the day when AGI takes over the world.
| ok_dad wrote:
| If I buckle down I can do 10 hours a day 3 days a week for a few
| months, then I burn out four a while. If I do 4 to 6 hours a day
| of low to medium intensity work (focused debugging with
| interspersed Google searches and occasional HN breaks) 4 days a
| week, I'm able to keep it up forever. I don't think I'll ever be
| able to do 9-5x5 ever again, especially having to go into an
| office.
| wenbin wrote:
| Future of knowledge work [0]:
|
| 1. 5-hour work day, not pretending busy work for 8 or even 12
| full hours (eg, 996 in China tech corps)
|
| Knowledge work, especially creative work, is just different from
| hard manual labor. More work hours won't necessarily produce more
| value
|
| For some people / jobs, maybe 2-hour work day is enough.
|
| @tobi says it well [1]: "For creative work, you can't cheat. My
| believe is that there are 5 creative hours in everyone's day. All
| I ask of people at Shopify is that 4 of those are channeled into
| the company."
|
| 2. One or multiple part-time jobs
|
| For some part-time jobs, you work for money; for others, you work
| for fun/impact.
|
| See how @gumroad works [2]: No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-
| Time Employees
|
| 3. Streaming income in real time, rather than bulk income once or
| twice per month
|
| You have a stream of small incomes 24/7. Some are passive
| incomes, while others are active incomes. You get paid directly
| from customers you serve, not from a proxy (eg HR in big corp).
| Anytime during the day, you know how much you've made so far
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/wenbinf/status/1472356359953809409
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1210242188870930433
|
| [2] https://sahillavingia.com/work
| mkl95 wrote:
| Many companies think their employees are being productive for 40
| hours a week, while it's actually somewhere between 10 and 20,
| with the rest being a big void. If you are _actually_ doing 40
| hours a week you are productive as hell.
| CallMeJim wrote:
| On the flip side; no one is productive 100% of the time.
|
| If people worked 20 hours per week, the actual productive time
| would likely be between 5 and 10 hours per week.
| manmal wrote:
| No, people would cut the unnecessary BS in order to get
| things done. Most people can't concentrate 40h/week, so the
| BS serves to fill up the remaining time.
| CallMeJim wrote:
| Do you think people would be able to maintain 100%
| productivity when working 20 hours/week?
| manmal wrote:
| With adequate breaks (that don't count against the 20h),
| yes.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| There are different types of voids.
|
| 1. Non work social media. 2. Work socializing (water cooler).
| 3. External support/collaboration/reviews. 4. Day dreaming not
| about work. 5. Thinking about work while not "producing" maybe
| not even at computer.
|
| I can work 40 hours where it feels like 10-20 hours are
| actually working on my "planned" work, but the other time is on
| #3 and #5 which "feels" like a void but is actually critical
| and valuable to business.
|
| I'm not saying you are but some people categorize this sort of
| work as BS or not work and that's totally wrong IMO.
| TylerE wrote:
| 5 is a big one.!I've solved more problems playing guitar or
| in the shower than I ever have banging my head against the
| keyboard
| noncoml wrote:
| In that sense coding is like writing a book. Are you only
| productive when you actually type the words?
| DesiLurker wrote:
| most of my coding time is actually figuring out the right
| way to do something. breaking the problem down right and
| then another big chunk is identifying (& 'fixing')
| interactions with external components. I know those are
| important things but at some level it feels as if I am
| not being productive. still I justify it by thinking
| about the opportunity cost of doing it the wrong way.
| mikrl wrote:
| 6. Spiralling
|
| ;)
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| My thinking time doesn't compute into my company's KPIs but it
| definitely is an essential part of my job.
|
| The thing is that many modern jobs don't fit a taylorist model
| where you can measure worker performance precisely.
|
| Not to mention that many variables that affect worker
| performance are out of control of companies.
| shagie wrote:
| While the "I'm sitting down and writing things that are going
| to be productive" is likely in the 10-20h/week range, there is
| _still_ a lot of * Meetings * Mentoring
| * Answering random questions * Continuing education (Hey,
| Spring 6.0 was just released, what's in that?) * Support
| (and being available for support)
|
| Those can easily fill in a lot of the 'void'.
|
| I can point to 5h/week that are standing 'meetings' where it is
| often 'me helping out someone with a git or jira or GitHub
| issue' and it is that time that is designated each day (to try
| to avoid having the 'answering random questions' become too
| disruptive).
|
| I am certainly not '40h/w, butt in seat, head down coding' and
| even though I may be only "productive" 10-20h/week, I'm
| certainly busy with work stuff to fill up the rest of my day.
| It's never "do an hour or two of work in the morning and day
| dream for the remaining six hours."
| babypuncher wrote:
| This is my experience. I spend 10-20 hours a week doing work
| that fits my job description. The rest is learning,
| mentoring, and organizing with other parts of the business to
| better enable me in those 10-20 hours of "real" work.
|
| That said, I feel you could cut my time on the clock from 40
| hours a week to 32 with minimal-to-no impact on my total
| productivity.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| What is the definition of Productive here?
|
| Is it lines of code or reasoning about lines which lines of
| code to write/adjust and everything else is not?
|
| My definition would encompass all of the stuff you mentioned
| as ancillary. In some cases, it's even _more_ Productive than
| the actual code writing.
| phphphphp wrote:
| You're describing what I'd understand as productive time: if
| someone says they're not being productive, I interpret it to
| mean there's zero value to be derived for their employer from
| their activities. For example, being asleep or browsing
| Reddit or watching YouTube videos...
|
| When I say I've only been productive for 20 hours in a week,
| I don't mean I spent 20 hours programming and 20 hours in
| meetings, I mean I spent 10 hours programming and 10 hours in
| meetings. I'd be surprised if most people only count
| programming time as productive time! If you're doing 40 hours
| a week of programming + meetings + support + any other
| needle-moving things, you're more productive than I've ever
| been in a job.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Most of these conversations seem to come down to weird
| definitions of "productive time".
|
| Most of us managers would consider meetings, mentoring, work-
| related Slack conversations to be productive time. Yet I read
| a lot of the comments here where people don't consider
| anything to be productive time unless they're actively
| writing code, which ignores the realities of working in a
| team environment.
|
| A better metric might be tracking the amount of non-work
| time: Time spent on HN, social media, reading news articles,
| running errands. Again, us managers are realistic that
| everyone can (and should!) take small breaks throughout the
| day. However, if those breaks expand to fill 20-30 hours of
| the supposed 40-hour workweek, something has gone very wrong.
| That's certainly not normal at any well managed company.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| I think it's just a matter of perspective.
|
| Your point of view makes sense if you're thinking of a
| bigger cooperation.
|
| That's however probably not the lenses they're looking
| through. Scaling software development teams is notoriously
| hard, because the productivity (shipped features without
| bugs) drops as you increase the headcount. It's precisely
| for the reason you've outlined: working together with lots
| of people comes with a shitton of caveats.
|
| I think you'd be surprised about both the code quality and
| speed of development if you have a small team of seasoned
| software engineers that have learned to work well with each
| other... and have build the codebase together, so everyone
| knows how it works, basically.
|
| Nonetheless, that kind of setup is rare for a reason. It's
| much less risky to scale your development team up, so that
| the corporation isn't fucked if the experienced devs leave
| LightG wrote:
| But those weird definitions of productive almost never get
| spoken of or considered when it comes to timelining a
| project or KPI, etc
|
| So while it may be important, it's just wasted time for
| many.
|
| Says more about the organisation than the definitions, but
| still.
| version_five wrote:
| There is a framework that we used to use for tim
| classification in manufacturing that was based around
| adding value to the product - in software that would be
| coding, testing, etc. Then there is necessary non-value
| add, like meetings and slack, that are needed (so are work
| as you say) but don't in themselves make the product
| directly, so you want to minimize time spent on them while
| still accomplishing whatever is needed (obviously easier
| said then done). Same goes for admin stuff. And then there
| is non-value add, like HN or whatever.
|
| Personally, I think the non-value add category doesn't
| translate from a factory to coding. If your job is putting
| boxes on a pallet, when you're browsing HN instead you
| probably don't do it faster later. When coding, at least
| for me, I take breaks to think or clear my mind, and I'm
| not swapping productive coding for online time wasting,
| browsing HN (or taking a walk or coffee) is a necessary
| part of the work that improves productivity.
|
| All that to say, meetings and other management stuff can
| and should be streamlined as much as possible, small
| breaks, not necessarily. If someone is actually typing code
| (or an equivalent activity) 25% of their time sitting at
| the computer, I'd consider that e extremely productive.
| brookst wrote:
| The value-add model is interesting. How would you
| characterize:
|
| 1. An hour-long meeting where architecture is decided
|
| 2. Doing investigation/documentation of RCA for an
| incident
|
| 3. Spec reviews with stakeholders who will have to use
| the product
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| This is very dependent on the industry. My friend does tech
| support for field technicians at a major alarm company. When he
| is working he is really working. The calls/paperwork are
| constant.
|
| Conversely, many gigs I've had there was multiple hours per day
| of mindless web surfing because there just wasn't work to do.
| danabrams wrote:
| My fear is that if you're being productive 20 hours and
| unproductive 20 hours a week and the work week is reduced, how
| do we know you won't just end up being productive 10 hours and
| unproductive 20.
|
| That said, we should definitely be experimenting. If people are
| equally productive at 40 hours and 20 hours, we shouldn't keep
| them in the office just for aesthetics.
| cmh89 wrote:
| >My fear is that if you're being productive 20 hours and
| unproductive 20 hours a week and the work week is reduced,
| how do we know you won't just end up being productive 10
| hours and unproductive 20.
|
| Unless you are a cashier or some other customer service
| position, the time you spend working should be matter very
| little compared to your output.
|
| If you a job that takes you 20 hours, you can either do it in
| 20 hours and get a huge chunk of your life back, or you can
| do it in 40 hours and spend a lot of time chatting with your
| coworkers making them unproductive.
|
| It's up to management to understand how much time it takes to
| complete tasks and to staff accordingly.
| chefandy wrote:
| The article cites several instances that indicate that
| wouldn't be the case.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| I'll go a step further. If you're productive 40 hours a week,
| then you're a tool, in the pure sense of that word.
|
| You'll be passed over for promotions because you're so good in
| your current position!
|
| You'll be praised and then one day you'll get a new boss when
| your old boss moves on. And your new boss will have this need
| to prove themselves to their boss. And they'll do this by
| turning your 40 hour week into a 60 hour week. Why? Because
| you're a tool!
|
| Don't be a tool. Do what your boss does - spend time talking to
| people around the company - thats what lunch meetings are all
| about - figure out how to get those expensed! Get to know
| everyone and follow up with them frequently. Invite them to
| non-work things. Go home early because you have a life.
|
| Unless, of course, your work is your life. In which case,
| you're leaving the dream, bud!
| conductr wrote:
| They also have different definitions of what productive means.
| For example, employees may view meetings and such as
| unproductive whereas the company may view it as a productive
| part of the decision making process. Organizational &
| communication overhead is required for working in coordination
| with large numbers of people in multiple disciplines. However,
| from the IC employee's perspective it's mostly a distraction
| and counter productive towards their outputs.
| wellareyousure wrote:
| wellareyousure wrote:
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > with the rest being a big void.
|
| There shouldn't be a 20-30 hour "void" in people's work week.
|
| If people are meeting, discussing work, building relationships
| within the company, or otherwise doing things around their
| work, I still consider that to be productive time. Nobody
| _actually_ expects programmers to be writing code 40 hours a
| week. We know this.
|
| On the other hand, if people are spending 30 hours per week
| messing around on the internet, browsing social media, chatting
| in social Discords, or other activities that are clearly not
| work related, that's not normal at all at well managed
| companies.
|
| There are a lot of companies where people can get away with
| working 2 hours per day and then ignoring work for the other 6
| hours of their supposed 40-hour work week, of course. I think a
| lot of people have experienced these companies somewhere in
| their career and concluded that _everyone, everywhere_ is
| actually only expected to do 2 hours of work-related things per
| day. It 's not true at all, and I've met a lot of people who
| really struggle to adapt once they finally end up on a well-
| managed team that expects people to put in more than a couple
| hours of work-related effort per day.
|
| I suspect we'll see a lot of companies clamping down on these
| low-productivity pockets now that the easy money has run out
| and we're all forced to examine personnel costs very closely. I
| know I've had a few coworkers who curiously never seem to do
| much of anything. They've always been first to go when the
| layoffs arrive and their managers are forced to choose who
| stays and who goes.
| mdkfkfid wrote:
| > On the other hand, if people are spending 30 hours per week
| messing around on the internet, browsing social media,
| chatting in social Discords, or other activities that are
| clearly not work related, that's not normal at all at well
| managed companies.
|
| It all just depends on how much ambition you have my friend,
| you too can slack off for 3/4 of your workday if you don't
| take on more responsibility than you can do in 1/4 of your
| time lolololol
| sokoloff wrote:
| I agree with most of what you say, but it still leaves room
| for efficiency gains if there's 15 hours a week of meetings
| and building relationships that could be done in half that
| time, leaving an entire workday freed up.
|
| I've worked on plenty of teams where nebulous "team building"
| was an entirely enjoyable and majority unnecessary excess way
| to spend time at work. Loved those teams, but we could have
| worked a 4 day week, still had a tight team, and gotten just
| as much done for the business.
| dinkblam wrote:
| > while it's actually somewhere between 10 and 20, with the
| rest being a big void.
|
| are you joking? 2 hours a day is nothing.
|
| > actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell.
|
| i've easily topped 100 hours a week for prolonged periods. i'd
| guess it is the same for _any_ founder.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yeah, I think there is a pretty big culture bubble, and know
| people on both sides.
|
| Some people spend most of their life working 60 real hours
| weeks, especially blue collar work.
|
| I have a white collar workplace, and there is a big spread.
| There are people that do 20 hours of real work and those with
| a 60+ hour average.
|
| I have done 100+ hour weeks of real heads down work & all
| nighters , but can't/wont do it prolonged.
|
| As skeptical as some people are of merit based compensation,
| I'm confident that the willingness to pull out the stops and
| get it done has lead to promotions, raises, and freedom to
| scale down my workload during slow times.
|
| I think it is interesting that some people simply don't
| believe that high volume work happens, is productive, or is
| even possible.
| [deleted]
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Despite what people think, coding 100% is not necessary most
| productive. Those meetings and social intersection are more
| useful than people would guess, it is hard to measure team
| cohesion and the power of good decisions like lines of code.
| RajT88 wrote:
| If you are _actually_ doing 40 hours a week, you 're probably
| working at least 60 hours.
| wizofaus wrote:
| "If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive
| as hell."
|
| That's assuming that the work you've been set to do is
| productive, and you're doing it in a productive manner. For
| instance, I've spent weeks grinding away on features that never
| get used by customers. Is that productive? I've also spent
| hours trying to fix a bug because of
| infrastructure/platform/tooling constraints that means the
| code/compile/debug cycle is stupidly slow. Is that productive?
|
| I don't have the slightest doubt I could be a lot more
| productive than I am now while working less hours. But it's
| often down to factors that are more or less out of my control.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive
| as hell.
|
| I disagree. But I think what we qualify as "work" is more rigid
| than it needs to be. Is spending 5 minutes looking at HN every
| few hours work? Most people would say no, but it absolutely
| helps developers to know what's going on or new or what other
| devs outside their company are saying.
|
| If I spend 20 minutes reading about a language/app that my
| company doesn't use is that work? I think a lot of the "yes"
| answers would be accompanied by rolling eyes.
| [deleted]
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Also, there is an assumption that everyone can be productive
| for any length of time without some form of intermission to
| break it up. What if most people need a 5-10 minute break for
| every 30 minutes work? You might not be able to get around
| that by just making the daily or weekly work hours shorter.
| You'd just be applying the productivity factor to fewer total
| hours.
|
| I doubt we've found the optimal work to rest ratio, but a lot
| of these assumptions go unchallenged in these discussions.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Ok but can you write an OKR for reading HN?
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Best not forget to groom that ticket as well
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Cue people reading HN for exactly 1200 seconds per day then
| overflow onto r/hackernews
| hulitu wrote:
| I heard Elon does 120 hours a week. /s
|
| I haven't seen anyone doing 40 hours a week. At least not more
| than a week.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I've seen tons of people doing it for extended periods of
| time. I can think of - ambitious people working in
| competitive environments (research, corporations, students) -
| doctors/dentists/nurses, lot of them work long hours and
| their job require focus - small business owners
| dahdum wrote:
| > I heard Elon does 120 hours a week. /s
|
| It's not exactly hard at his level. He can delegate
| absolutely everything and cannot be obliged to _do_ anything.
| He can pick who is around him at all times, and they are
| usually obligated to cater to his wishes. 120 hours of casual
| chats, meetings, presentations, shared meals, and travel
| count as long as it 's related to any of his 3 major
| businesses.
| kolbe wrote:
| Lawyers and bankers regularly do 4000 hour years. Doctors
| often average 60 hour weeks for extended periods of time.
| What are you talking about?
| rodgerd wrote:
| Yeah, and the survival rate from cardiac arrest increases
| when cardiologists are away at a conference, too.
|
| Wonder if the two things could be related.
| shishy wrote:
| Medical residents work 80 hours a week. And that's an average
| over 4 weeks, so they could work 90 easily one week.
|
| 40 is nothing...
| janef0421 wrote:
| Medical residents tend to be highly stressed, and these
| practices were apparently originated by a man who used
| cocaine in the same manner as coffee.
| manmal wrote:
| I once worked real 60-70h weeks, ca 4 weeks nonstop in order
| to meet a critical deadline. Probably took three days off in
| that timeframe. I basically slouched in the living room all
| day and hacked away, surviving on chocolate and nootropics.
| Can't recommend this, at all! My body tenses whenever I think
| about that, three years later, and I never wanna do that
| again.
| bitL wrote:
| There are companies in the SW industry that require 40h/week
| and actually monitor that (e.g. collecting metrics in 10-minute
| intervals and rejecting intervals with low intensity levels).
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That might be Twitter ... by Monday morning
| bitL wrote:
| Twitter will get 12-hour shifts common in Tesla instead...
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| In the US? That sounds bananas to me.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Not to mention illegal in the EU.
| bitL wrote:
| Not if they only do business in the EU with legal
| entities like freelancers or small limited-liability
| pass-through companies where there is no weekly time
| limit for the owner nor the "no monitoring" requirement.
| [deleted]
| bitL wrote:
| BTW, most FAANG companies monitor and record everything you
| are doing, you just don't hear about it because they are
| smart about it. But when SHTF, you learn very quickly. Also
| ask Meta devs about their typical workload if they want to
| keep their jobs (they actually have to work).
| dbetteridge wrote:
| Got a list? Just so I know which companies to avoid like the
| plague.
|
| Sometimes I'll wander round the house and read docs or make
| notes on my tablet while doing housework, still contributing
| to future work/planning but definitely would show as
| 'inactive'.
| bitL wrote:
| I am sure those companies won't pop on your radar but they
| will for Indians and other foreigners that want to earn
| average US salary in their own countries. And yes, you
| should completely avoid them, they have typically terrible
| reviews and treat devs as machines.
|
| I know one UK dev who took a job in one of those, moved
| there from some hotel booking company, earned $200k, lasted
| almost 2 years and then got unceremoniously sacked right
| when one of his close family members passed away due to
| missing required metrics.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| There is one that advertises heavily and comes up on job
| searches. I don't recall the name, but you can tell
| because of the weird range of salaries, like $50k for a
| developer while paying $300k for the manager. When I dug
| in I saw they use this kind of tracking software.
| bitL wrote:
| Yeah, could be one of those. Anyway, the rule is to stay
| away even if they offer $400k/year ;-)
| interstice wrote:
| Freelance web developer background currently developer /
| business owner - my achievable baseline is 30 hours of billed
| out time and around 10 hours of admin/emails/meetings etc.
| Keeping the emails from eating the rest is an ongoing battle
| though.
| orblivion wrote:
| Do you not charge for meetings? And what about emails where
| you're hashing out something clearly in the domain of what
| you're working on?
| sarchertech wrote:
| When I'm consulting the only meetings I don't bill for are
| meetings with prospects.
| interstice wrote:
| It depends on the meetings (and the email), if its directly
| related to a project it can fall under project management
| but a lot of them end up being internal comms or estimating
| for minor jobs that might not be approved etc.
| adultSwim wrote:
| Yes
| spencerchubb wrote:
| For those of us in university, 40 hours a week is laughable.
| Especially since I work while in school
| wizofaus wrote:
| The question is with all these trial projects where organisations
| and even apparently entire countries experimented with shorter
| working weeks, is that despite the results consistently
| demonstrating the benefits, why in no case did it stick? (*) How
| long did it take for the 40-hour week to become almost
| universally established after the initial trials? I'm definitely
| in favour of a trend towards a 4 day week (or even a 9 day
| fortnight), but I don't think I could ever be totally comfortable
| being the only guy in the office to do so (esp. if I expected to
| be paid the same amount!).
|
| (*) I'm similarly curious about UBI pilots!
| randomdata wrote:
| Back in the golden age of working from home, when internet
| service wasn't sufficient for for the barrage of pointless
| meetings, I was working no more than two hours per day. My
| coworkers and employers, who all worked in the office at the
| time, used to joke that I must be an entire team of people.
|
| I still only get time for no more than two hours of actual work
| each day, but now that so many think they should expand to
| consume all the capabilities of the modern network by having
| endless meetings for no good reason, I'm much more exhausted when
| it comes to getting anything done during these two hours and
| productivity suffers as a result.
|
| It is devastating how much less productive I've become spending
| more time working. I _want_ to get things done.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| It is also very difficult to define "work" and the various
| definitions contradict each other. I've met programmers who
| start coding as soon as they hear about a requirement and then
| spend weeks untangling the web of spaghetti code they have
| previously written down.
|
| I tend to sit down and think before I write even a single line
| of code. In the office, I used to stare at my screen with
| headphones on to "look like I was working". Now that I work
| from home, I usually spend that time walking around the house,
| doing mindless chores, and sometimes lying down on my bed in
| the dark.
|
| I would say that the time spent lying in my bed is my most
| productive time. Someone else might say I steal billable hours.
| charles_f wrote:
| tl;dr
|
| Yes
| frank_bb wrote:
| ladyattis wrote:
| For me, the 40 hour work week is okay but I think the problem at
| least for development is getting non-technical people to be
| responsive or provide the necessary input to keep me busy. When
| I'm support duty for a sprint, I find myself twiddling my thumbs
| sometimes awaiting a response to a question on a ticket from a
| user to confirm or get more context for the issue so I can do my
| work as there's only so much looking at logs, source code, and
| the like to tease out the cause of the issue.
|
| If anything, I think companies who have more knowledge and
| process based workers should look to use the free time for
| learning/studying. Maybe give funds to take courses whether
| they're online or offline to help such workers (myself included)
| improve our skill set. I'm not against more free time off for the
| same pay but I just think there can be more uses of the time than
| just being off the clock is what I guess I'm saying.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Personally, I feel that it's too little.
|
| No one is perfectly productive. If you devote 40 hours to
| something, you're going to spend at least 10-15 hours out of that
| on non-productive busywork.
|
| There are also some tasks that just require extended periods of
| focus before something "clicks". No way I could write or code if
| I was told to pack up and leave after a fixed amount of time.
|
| Also, I've always found that when I'm working hard, I'm more
| creative in my hobbies as well. I make music as a hobby and
| whenever I've taken a break from work, the music just doesn't
| flow.
|
| Caveat: I work for myself so the work is both important and
| enjoyable to me, and I don't have to deal with office
| bureaucracies. If I was working for someone else, I might have
| different views.
| kebman wrote:
| I think people conflate "being productive" with "work."
|
| The work is simply the contractual agreement between you and your
| employer. He or it has a notion about how long it's supposed to
| take, and you do too. And so on your end, you have to be willing
| to give up a certain amount of freedom in order to stay
| productive enough for the workplace to want to award you for the
| time spent in their service, whether that time is productive or
| not.
|
| On their end, they of course want you to be as productive as
| possible, but they also know that it's not possible 100% of the
| time. And so that is the basis for the contract.
|
| Then there are ways around it. Say you can make a hack that'll
| make you able to complete the job in half that time, or less.
| Lots of people get paid obscene amounts of money for very little
| "work" but the value of that work is simply that high, and so
| that's what they're paid for it.
|
| So instead in thinking in terms of hours or work, I tend to want
| to think in terms of how much time I need to provide value. And
| the less time that is, the better - for both parties. They get
| better value for money, and I get more time to dream up better
| ways of creating value.
| rr888 wrote:
| Reading the comments it seems like we need a recession. The job
| market of the last few years is not normal, people's expectations
| are way too high.
| notacop31337 wrote:
| Can you explain more what you mean? I'm unsure where you're
| making your point from.
| SCdF wrote:
| To add my anecdata to the pile, if I "live right"[1] and ignore
| the pressure to work work work, I naturally have about 6hrs "bum
| on seat" work time per day, give or take. And that's without a
| commute. Or kids.
|
| I haven't personally noticed being at the computer for 2hrs less
| a day causing me to be less productive.
|
| What noticably makes me more productive:
|
| - Not feeling exhausted, depressed, shitty, or feeling like I
| never have time for anything
|
| - Working bum on seat until I feel like I'm not productive, then
| taking a break (go for a walk, empty the dishwasher) and let my
| brain solve the problem for me.
|
| - If I really want to get more done and focus, and I have a clear
| goal, rounds of pomodoros
|
| [1] get enough sleep; exercise each day; cook healthy meals;
| spend time with my partner; have time to myself; have time to
| perform daily chores and errands, etc
| thot_experiment wrote:
| It's complicated. I would never want to work for 40 hours/wk
| (honestly 20 is about my limit) in a hierarchy, but I could
| easily see myself doing more than that in a partnership.
|
| Yes, you get diminishing returns on work if you're working a lot
| of hours, but you can still get more done per day even if it's
| not as efficient. Also, constant immersion in a domain causes
| acceleration/synergies that you don't get with a more "healthy"
| work-life balance. That being said I think chasing this is never
| worth it unless you're getting the same share of the loot as
| everyone else. (Or if you're the one who's disproportionately set
| up to benefit from the group's success, but I generally consider
| that to be immoral)
| fleddr wrote:
| Reasoned from an employer, the economic optimum consist of two
| parts:
|
| 1) The time you work is spent doing meaningful things.
|
| 2) The amount of hours equals the point where if you'd add hours,
| the negatives outweigh the positives.
|
| In that sense it's bizarre how both parameters don't seem much of
| a priority. Entire armies of office workers are stuck in zoom
| meetings and email, seeing most of their day cut up into tiny
| slices where you can't do focused work. It's quite common to hear
| that people do about 2 hours of actual work per day.
|
| Rather than obsessing over some ancient number of hours
| "present", shouldn't effectiveness be an absolute top priority?
| Not only do managers not seem to care that their employees do
| little real work, they actually believe that those small blanks
| in your calendar means you're not busy enough. Have some more
| meetings. Let's collaborate more!
|
| Here's my "CEO for a day" solution:
|
| A system will for each meeting calculate its cost, which would be
| the amount of participants multiplied by their hourly rate. Since
| a 1 hour meeting really costs about 2 hours of productivity (just
| before and after meetings, nobody does work), the sum would be
| multiplied by 2, or 1.5 at least.
|
| Once per month or so, you check the aggregates, starting with the
| worst offenders. It looks like Tom organized about 30K worth of
| meetings last month. Now Tom is going to tell the company what
| tangible value he produced in these meetings to offset this.
|
| You'll soon find that it's all power laws. A small group of
| people responsible for flooding people with meetings.
|
| And you can do the same with email. Efficient workers sent
| perhaps a handful of emails per day, yet Tom seems to be sending
| 50-100, all day and night.
|
| Perhaps Tom should shut the fuck up and not mistake his joy in
| communicating with people for work.
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