14 ms·

I've been doing sub-20 hour work weeks for a while now. I'd like to never go back to anywhere near 40. To the workaholics out there I say stop working extra fo

I've been doing sub-20 hour work weeks for a while now. I'd like to never go back to anywhere near 40. To the workaholics out there I say stop working extra for free. Those additional hours are unsolicited gifts to an employer who would fire you if it was possible. Stop giving your labor away, seriously.

branchless 10y ago
People are cornered by high rent/land prices. They understand this and hate it. The whole point behind high land prices is to prevent most people achieving financial independence. At this point the workers call the shots. This is why we are kept wage slaves.
- Ascetik 10y ago
  What does that have to do with working for free? Total non-sequitur.
  - branchless 10y ago
    People are cowed by their employers, with little to no savings they live month to month and dare not say no to extra work tasks such as email in the evening etc. High rents are squeezing all disposable income leaving people with no financial autonomy. For me the american dream was all about financial autonomy. The USA had to have actual slaves because they had no land enclosure. Why work as a wage slave when you can walk up the road and work empty land? Land gives labour the choice. Land enclosure is required for wage slaves.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    I think he's talking about unpaid overtime.
- Retric 10y ago
  In the US farm land averages under 4,500$ per acre. Now there are not a lot of physical jobs in those places, but if you are willing to work remote that's a non issue. On the other hand the median house in Iowa costs $126,300 a but a of cheap housing is less than that and just rented or constructed by the final home owner. In large part people live in city's because they want to live in cities. I pay close to 1/3 of my take home pay in rent because I like where I live.
  - branchless 10y ago
    Get out your bubble, most people cannot work remotely as programmers.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Most 'office' jobs can be worked remotely. A lot of jobs that do require face to face interaction also involve a lot of travel and can therefore be based anywhere near an airport. Right now 20-25% of the US workforce teleworkers some of the time. And up to 50% of US jobs could be worked remotely a significant portion of the time. Further, as people move out of the most in demand city's service jobs will follow.
      - branchless 10y ago
        We've been seeing this for years, yet it's not materialised. In theory yes, in practice no. I'm a dev, my company doesn't like WFH. Many don't. That is the real world. And that is dev which is perfect for WFH. Even the wording "a significant portion of the time". Gotta live near.
        Retric 10y ago
        Having a 1.5-2h commute 5 days a week is soul crushing, having a 1.5-2h commute 2 days a week is not. There is cheap housing within 2h of most locations. My boss lived 230 miles from the office at my last job. He showed up 1-2 days a week for meetings and that's it.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        mod 10y ago
        I'm a dev, I WFH. I live thousands of miles from the office and have never met anyone I work with, nor been to any of our offices. This is my 2nd such job. If it's something you want, I encourage you to shop around.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  The market structure for land and its methods of entitlement are certainly wonky and need reform ... but I'm pretty sure we're "wage slaves" because the labor movement was successfully killed off in the 50s red scare along with the rise of classical liberalism in the 60s which poo-poos collective action, devalues communal capital, and encourages uncoordinated individual action. So when the productivity gains that were promised in the 50s came in the 80s there was no labor movement to force a shorter work week, so instead there were layoffs and bigger profits on top. We never got the promised 20 hour work week of the 50s because collectively we forgot and abandoned the multi-generational labor struggle which got us the 40 hour one. These things aren't going to just get handed out.
  - branchless 10y ago
    Unions for sure are part of the picture, but I'd rather take a further step back from this and give people the right to refuse to work. I'm not talking about the right to sit around all day of your life, but the right to say "you are working me too hard, I'm out for a bit". But people cannot do this because we live in a world of very efficient economic rent extraction through land prices. When productivity rises land prices rise, handing over all gains to the banks. Our generation are, thanks to tech, far more efficient than the 1960s. Yet now both parents must work for the same (or worse) house. Computing power brought us many things, it also brought banks, the ability to track vast amounts of electronic debt. At a time when we came off the gold standard allowing unconstrained fiat issuance. I'd like to see the shoe on the other foot - employees who are not under constant financial pressure due to high rents demanding that employers pass on most of their surplus value. edit: cannot reply to your comment as faux hacker news "you're submitting to fast about usury" here it is: The main cost of "housing" in urban areas is the land. Construction has improved massively since 1960s as has materials construction, yet here we are with housing at record of income multiples.
    - bluGill 10y ago
      >Yet now both parents must work for the same (or worse) house. That isn't true. Houses built in the 1960s that have only had basic maintenance done to them are available and they are a lot cheaper than newer houses. It turns out most people don't want to live with a house that looks like the 1960s. People like bigger kitchens and houses when we can afford them. Once the house gets a little bigger we like to see things like brick on the front (I'm not sure if this is styles changing or a longer term pattern of people deciding the houses of 1990 are big enough and now we want pretty not more space). The result is perfectly nice houses in old neighborhoods are available for cheap if you are willing to live in them. Despite the above I recommend you not buy those old houses: they are not energy efficient and so either heating/cooling will eat your paycheck or you will spend a lot fo money in upgrades you won't get back.
- tomcam 10y ago
  So... if your house appreciates it's because you are attempting to prevent others from achieving financial independence? If you earn $50K are you attempting to prevent workers in Mexico from earning $50K?
skizm 10y ago
Why type of job do you have and in what industry?
- kristopolous 10y ago
  I've been a programmer that does startups and early-stage since the 90s.
  - isomorph 10y ago
    Any advice on how to find a part-time programming job?
    - kristopolous 10y ago
      It's 100% negotiation. Nobody is going to give this to you.
    - embwbam 10y ago
      Get to a level of skill and track record where it's easy to find companies willing to hire you. Then, when negotiating, give up significant salary to reduce your time commitment. It works better with smaller companies (Google, etc are not going to go for this)
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - RestlessMind 10y ago
      Join Google - it allows part time work (50%/60%/70%/80%/90%) and people do use it creatively to maximize their convenience. At or above 50%, you also get health insurance. Perks stay the same.
    - sotojuan 10y ago
      The way to get these out-of-the-norm gigs is to get good—so good they can't ignore you (to quote Cal Newport) or in this case that they'll say no because they need your skills. If you get good and are known to be good, you can ask for any kind of work arrangement.
personlurking 10y ago
I've been doing about half your work week for years - and my salary very much reflects it - but I feel it's time to go to at least a 30h work week. Mind you, I think it's okay to be out of step with the way most of the world works. Too far out, however, and one becomes way too used to being solitary, especially in a remote, work-from-home scenario.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  I have found 4-day weeks (32 hours) ideal. The workweek is over before you know it, and the weekend is long enough that you want to go back to work on Monday.
  - detritus 10y ago
    I'm particularly upvoting the second half of your sentence as it resonates personally — but moreso that I entertain a hope that such a mentality underscores the benefit and potential of Universal Basic Income, if and where economically plausible.
baursak 10y ago
I'm not sure I understand your first paragraph coupled with the second one. Do you get paid to work 40 hours, but only work 20? Or do you get paid for only 20 hours of work? If it's latter, then the problem is that not many salaried jobs can offer such an arrangement without major caveats. Even if you have a formal agreement with your employer for 20 hours of work, the deadlines and expectations from customers and "business" in general will not care if you are only signed up for 20 hours, when the project needs to be delivered by Monday.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  It's full-time pay and yes you need to know how to pace things and schedule. Getting better at estimates go a long way. The "20 minute" task at the end of the work day that ends up taking 2 hours ... either stop doing that or start being honest that 20 minutes meant 2 hours. Also know what "corporate time" means. Usually the monday deadlines are dependent on a bunch of other things that are rarely if ever done on that monday. Almost universally things are days if not weeks later than scheduled. Have something to go for the monday, but anticipate the reality based on the client relations ... Also position yourself from a business perspective. The company is doing X to make a profit. You are there to help fix a problem in achieving X. Orient all your goals only to that - not in fixing any adjacent problems - your customers ultimately don't care, your boss ultimately doesn't care, and if you did that, you just worked for free.
  - baursak 10y ago
    Can you give some more details on how you do it? Do you go to work 5 days and leave office after 4 hours, or do you just work 3 days a week? Are you subjected to daily scrum status reports requirements? Etc.
    - kristopolous 10y ago
      yes to all those. Sometimes I'm there 3 days, sometimes its 2 ... sometimes I'm doing an 8 hour day but only 2 that week, sometimes I'm writing and responding to emails. Sometimes I wake up for scrums then go back to bed for a few hours... There's something called the pace of business. I'm sure there's been slow times when business is moving fine and not much is changing. Instead of finding work, say to the boss, "I'm not going to waste your money in something that doesn't need to be done. everything is fine, here's the semi vacation I'm doing." It may come at a pay cut, but it should work in your favor and improve your trust and relationship with your superiors because you're taking responsibility for not just the work but the amount of it. From a business owner you're essentially saying "I achieved the tasks, things are stable. Now pay me less and I'll go do other things" Sounds like a better deal then "now I shall fill up the time with tasks I claim are important that you don't understand but must pay for." From a non tech perspective, this makes you sound like a bozo who doesn't understand business. Knowing how to negotiate and manage your own labor, especially with respect to business risk and your added value, and if you're expensive is important. Really, it's one of the primary ways you get to be expensive in the first place.
pjc50 10y ago
I keep meaning to write up my experiences with chronic fatigue. I spent a couple of years as a developer working 25-hour weeks because I couldn't manage any more. It's interesting to consider that while few people would ever be hired on such an arrangement, smart employers realise that it can be better to retain part of a person on partial wages than lose them altogether. And obviously people should realise that the lack of hour restriction on salaried work can be used against them. Stick, on average, to your contracted hours; crunch time may occasionally be necessary but it should be compensated and never normalised.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Off topic, but: It sounds like you recovered from the chronic fatigue. Did anything in particular cause (or even help with) the recovery? Or did it just go away with time? Or do you still wrestle with it?
  - pjc50 10y ago
    I never had a diagnosis and it eventually mostly went away with time and rest - I still tire easily, but can work a 37.5 hour week.

branchless 10y ago

People are cornered by high rent/land prices. They understand this and hate it. The whole point behind high land prices is to prevent most people achieving financial independence. At this point the workers call the shots. This is why we are kept wage slaves.

Ascetik 10y ago
What does that have to do with working for free? Total non-sequitur.
- branchless 10y ago
  People are cowed by their employers, with little to no savings they live month to month and dare not say no to extra work tasks such as email in the evening etc. High rents are squeezing all disposable income leaving people with no financial autonomy. For me the american dream was all about financial autonomy. The USA had to have actual slaves because they had no land enclosure. Why work as a wage slave when you can walk up the road and work empty land? Land gives labour the choice. Land enclosure is required for wage slaves.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  I think he's talking about unpaid overtime.
Retric 10y ago
In the US farm land averages under 4,500$ per acre. Now there are not a lot of physical jobs in those places, but if you are willing to work remote that's a non issue. On the other hand the median house in Iowa costs $126,300 a but a of cheap housing is less than that and just rented or constructed by the final home owner. In large part people live in city's because they want to live in cities. I pay close to 1/3 of my take home pay in rent because I like where I live.
- branchless 10y ago
  Get out your bubble, most people cannot work remotely as programmers.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Most 'office' jobs can be worked remotely. A lot of jobs that do require face to face interaction also involve a lot of travel and can therefore be based anywhere near an airport. Right now 20-25% of the US workforce teleworkers some of the time. And up to 50% of US jobs could be worked remotely a significant portion of the time. Further, as people move out of the most in demand city's service jobs will follow.
    - branchless 10y ago
      We've been seeing this for years, yet it's not materialised. In theory yes, in practice no. I'm a dev, my company doesn't like WFH. Many don't. That is the real world. And that is dev which is perfect for WFH. Even the wording "a significant portion of the time". Gotta live near.
      - Retric 10y ago
        Having a 1.5-2h commute 5 days a week is soul crushing, having a 1.5-2h commute 2 days a week is not. There is cheap housing within 2h of most locations. My boss lived 230 miles from the office at my last job. He showed up 1-2 days a week for meetings and that's it.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - mod 10y ago
        I'm a dev, I WFH. I live thousands of miles from the office and have never met anyone I work with, nor been to any of our offices. This is my 2nd such job. If it's something you want, I encourage you to shop around.
kristopolous 10y ago
The market structure for land and its methods of entitlement are certainly wonky and need reform ... but I'm pretty sure we're "wage slaves" because the labor movement was successfully killed off in the 50s red scare along with the rise of classical liberalism in the 60s which poo-poos collective action, devalues communal capital, and encourages uncoordinated individual action. So when the productivity gains that were promised in the 50s came in the 80s there was no labor movement to force a shorter work week, so instead there were layoffs and bigger profits on top. We never got the promised 20 hour work week of the 50s because collectively we forgot and abandoned the multi-generational labor struggle which got us the 40 hour one. These things aren't going to just get handed out.
- branchless 10y ago
  Unions for sure are part of the picture, but I'd rather take a further step back from this and give people the right to refuse to work. I'm not talking about the right to sit around all day of your life, but the right to say "you are working me too hard, I'm out for a bit". But people cannot do this because we live in a world of very efficient economic rent extraction through land prices. When productivity rises land prices rise, handing over all gains to the banks. Our generation are, thanks to tech, far more efficient than the 1960s. Yet now both parents must work for the same (or worse) house. Computing power brought us many things, it also brought banks, the ability to track vast amounts of electronic debt. At a time when we came off the gold standard allowing unconstrained fiat issuance. I'd like to see the shoe on the other foot - employees who are not under constant financial pressure due to high rents demanding that employers pass on most of their surplus value. edit: cannot reply to your comment as faux hacker news "you're submitting to fast about usury" here it is: The main cost of "housing" in urban areas is the land. Construction has improved massively since 1960s as has materials construction, yet here we are with housing at record of income multiples.
  - bluGill 10y ago
    >Yet now both parents must work for the same (or worse) house. That isn't true. Houses built in the 1960s that have only had basic maintenance done to them are available and they are a lot cheaper than newer houses. It turns out most people don't want to live with a house that looks like the 1960s. People like bigger kitchens and houses when we can afford them. Once the house gets a little bigger we like to see things like brick on the front (I'm not sure if this is styles changing or a longer term pattern of people deciding the houses of 1990 are big enough and now we want pretty not more space). The result is perfectly nice houses in old neighborhoods are available for cheap if you are willing to live in them. Despite the above I recommend you not buy those old houses: they are not energy efficient and so either heating/cooling will eat your paycheck or you will spend a lot fo money in upgrades you won't get back.
tomcam 10y ago
So... if your house appreciates it's because you are attempting to prevent others from achieving financial independence? If you earn $50K are you attempting to prevent workers in Mexico from earning $50K?

skizm 10y ago

Why type of job do you have and in what industry?

kristopolous 10y ago
I've been a programmer that does startups and early-stage since the 90s.
- isomorph 10y ago
  Any advice on how to find a part-time programming job?
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    It's 100% negotiation. Nobody is going to give this to you.
  - embwbam 10y ago
    Get to a level of skill and track record where it's easy to find companies willing to hire you. Then, when negotiating, give up significant salary to reduce your time commitment. It works better with smaller companies (Google, etc are not going to go for this)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - RestlessMind 10y ago
    Join Google - it allows part time work (50%/60%/70%/80%/90%) and people do use it creatively to maximize their convenience. At or above 50%, you also get health insurance. Perks stay the same.
  - sotojuan 10y ago
    The way to get these out-of-the-norm gigs is to get good—so good they can't ignore you (to quote Cal Newport) or in this case that they'll say no because they need your skills. If you get good and are known to be good, you can ask for any kind of work arrangement.

personlurking 10y ago

I've been doing about half your work week for years - and my salary very much reflects it - but I feel it's time to go to at least a 30h work week. Mind you, I think it's okay to be out of step with the way most of the world works. Too far out, however, and one becomes way too used to being solitary, especially in a remote, work-from-home scenario.

StavrosK 10y ago
I have found 4-day weeks (32 hours) ideal. The workweek is over before you know it, and the weekend is long enough that you want to go back to work on Monday.
- detritus 10y ago
  I'm particularly upvoting the second half of your sentence as it resonates personally — but moreso that I entertain a hope that such a mentality underscores the benefit and potential of Universal Basic Income, if and where economically plausible.

baursak 10y ago

I'm not sure I understand your first paragraph coupled with the second one. Do you get paid to work 40 hours, but only work 20? Or do you get paid for only 20 hours of work? If it's latter, then the problem is that not many salaried jobs can offer such an arrangement without major caveats. Even if you have a formal agreement with your employer for 20 hours of work, the deadlines and expectations from customers and "business" in general will not care if you are only signed up for 20 hours, when the project needs to be delivered by Monday.

kristopolous 10y ago
It's full-time pay and yes you need to know how to pace things and schedule. Getting better at estimates go a long way. The "20 minute" task at the end of the work day that ends up taking 2 hours ... either stop doing that or start being honest that 20 minutes meant 2 hours. Also know what "corporate time" means. Usually the monday deadlines are dependent on a bunch of other things that are rarely if ever done on that monday. Almost universally things are days if not weeks later than scheduled. Have something to go for the monday, but anticipate the reality based on the client relations ... Also position yourself from a business perspective. The company is doing X to make a profit. You are there to help fix a problem in achieving X. Orient all your goals only to that - not in fixing any adjacent problems - your customers ultimately don't care, your boss ultimately doesn't care, and if you did that, you just worked for free.
- baursak 10y ago
  Can you give some more details on how you do it? Do you go to work 5 days and leave office after 4 hours, or do you just work 3 days a week? Are you subjected to daily scrum status reports requirements? Etc.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    yes to all those. Sometimes I'm there 3 days, sometimes its 2 ... sometimes I'm doing an 8 hour day but only 2 that week, sometimes I'm writing and responding to emails. Sometimes I wake up for scrums then go back to bed for a few hours... There's something called the pace of business. I'm sure there's been slow times when business is moving fine and not much is changing. Instead of finding work, say to the boss, "I'm not going to waste your money in something that doesn't need to be done. everything is fine, here's the semi vacation I'm doing." It may come at a pay cut, but it should work in your favor and improve your trust and relationship with your superiors because you're taking responsibility for not just the work but the amount of it. From a business owner you're essentially saying "I achieved the tasks, things are stable. Now pay me less and I'll go do other things" Sounds like a better deal then "now I shall fill up the time with tasks I claim are important that you don't understand but must pay for." From a non tech perspective, this makes you sound like a bozo who doesn't understand business. Knowing how to negotiate and manage your own labor, especially with respect to business risk and your added value, and if you're expensive is important. Really, it's one of the primary ways you get to be expensive in the first place.

pjc50 10y ago

I keep meaning to write up my experiences with chronic fatigue. I spent a couple of years as a developer working 25-hour weeks because I couldn't manage any more. It's interesting to consider that while few people would ever be hired on such an arrangement, smart employers realise that it can be better to retain part of a person on partial wages than lose them altogether. And obviously people should realise that the lack of hour restriction on salaried work can be used against them. Stick, on average, to your contracted hours; crunch time may occasionally be necessary but it should be compensated and never normalised.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
Off topic, but: It sounds like you recovered from the chronic fatigue. Did anything in particular cause (or even help with) the recovery? Or did it just go away with time? Or do you still wrestle with it?
- pjc50 10y ago
  I never had a diagnosis and it eventually mostly went away with time and rest - I still tire easily, but can work a 37.5 hour week.