5 ms·

The common sentiment in articles like these is to try to appease to the owner; "look, the productivity!". We seem so subjugated by this state of affairs that wo

by jahaja 10y ago

The common sentiment in articles like these is to try to appease to the owner; "look, the productivity!". We seem so subjugated by this state of affairs that worker happiness and health is not allowed to be an end in itself.

leereeves 10y ago
Workers don't seem particularly eager to fight for shorter work weeks right now. "Appeasing the owner" with promises of higher productivity might be the best strategy for passing these changes.
- ctack 10y ago
  Exactly that. Bringing it up in any other way would likely paint you as a trouble starter!
- philipov 10y ago
  I don't think most workers have the liberty to fight for their interests due to the double threat of being fired and not having a safety net to fall back on.
  - aianus 10y ago
    Most tech workers could easily work fewer hours for less money in second-year cities or take months-long sabbaticals but choose to do the opposite. When given a choice between more money and more free time everyone around me chooses money and prestige.
    - xxs 10y ago
      >>everyone around me chooses... I guess it's quite a biased (limited) view.
    - dv_dt 10y ago
      It's typically not an accepted proposition to offer to work 4 days for proportionally less pay (even if one does the math to fix the ratio for benefits). So it's not really a sliding scale for less time for less money, the choice is predominantly full time for more money or full time for less money. So this idea that people always choose more time and more money is a red herring.
      - aianus 10y ago
        There's full time and then there's full time. You can certainly choose to work for a 40h company instead of a 60h company but the latter type of company doesn't seem to have any problems recruiting.
        dv_dt 10y ago
        That's on the other side of the issue. My point was that there isn't anything like a 'proportional electiveness function' for the hours of work people are able to get with employment agreements. I think it looks like this for salaried professional employment: anything less than 40 is very low probability, 40-45 is very typical, and decreasing popularity in bins afterwards 50-60, 60+ etc. Given that's the distribution, you can't say people won't don't want to elect for <40 for less pay, it's not a really a choice in the current environment.
        user5994461 10y ago
        > anything less than 40 is very low probability, 40-45 is very typical, and decreasing popularity in bins afterwards 50-60, 60+ etc. Oh god. America is even worse than I thought.
      - mason240 10y ago
        There certianly is when choosing where to work. >It's typically not an accepted proposition to offer to work 4 days for proportionally less pay I currently have a 40 hour work where I can set my own hours and earn "flex time" (future PTO) for any hours over 40. I am paid well now, but I could certainly earn more by switching to company that would expect me to work more than 40 hours. The people complaining about working extra are absolutely choosing more time and more money.
    - patricklynch 10y ago
      I'm going to guess that you don't spend many hours 9-5 Monday through Friday at a beach or on a golf course. If you're in the right places, you'll definitely see people who value free time over money and prestige.
      - aianus 10y ago
        I spent three years making the other choice and working remotely from various beaches. I had to stop because of how lonely and isolating it was and how I couldn't maintain any relationships with my girlfriends and the 99% of my peers that were back home working 60h a week.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Most tech workers could easily work fewer hours by simply leaving the office when their time is done. Look around you and count how many people are working overtime on their own, sacrificing their life for free food, a fuzzball table, the expectations of 0.1% equity down the road, the hope of giving a good impression to their manager, the expectations of a raise later for hard work, or the pressure to work night and week-end unpaid on-call. When not thinking about it, people choose neither money not free time :D
      - matwood 10y ago
        If someone is eating and playing fuzzball then I'm not sure I would count that as working overtime. In tech companies in particular at work does not necessarily equate to working.
        Bartweiss 10y ago
        I'm always confused by the hatred for people staying late at tech companies doing not-work. It's described like some elaborate anti-worker scam, but a lot of people I know are genuinely friends with coworkers (and often pretty introverted outside of that) and just enjoy doing that after work. I suppose I can understand the conspiracy theory of "they want you to only have work friends", but I really don't understand "they're replacing a good raise with a $100 ping-pong table". It's just not a sane model of what's happening, keeping employees in the building is not inherently profitable.
        user5994461 10y ago
        It's not hatred. It's about running a business efficiently, while the employees don't even realize it. 1) Keeping tech employees in the building is profitable. 2) In tech companies in particular, you don't have to be at work behind a computer to be productive. Once you both understand that these things are true and correct, you can begin to understand the business of the SV and why these perks come to be. While people are in the office, they are with co-worker, thinking about work, talking about work, progressing on their work. And the magic thing is you don't have to pay them for it, because they ain't working officially. A bad thing happen in production late? Fine, they're already there and they won't even think that fixing it is doing actual work because they are already there. That foosball table was way cheaper than paying overtime. How about serving breakfast at 9 am and dinner at 19? Then people who wants both will stay. Most likely, people who are a bit close to one or the other might extend their schedule slightly just to grab it. But no way they think of it as extra work.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      >Most tech workers could easily work fewer hours for less money in second-year cities or take months-long sabbaticals but choose to do the opposite. What universe do you live in? In my universe, this is simply not true. No tech company is going to allow you to work, say, 30 hours a week for 75% of your salary, plus full health benefits. And taking a months-long sabbatical means you don't keep your job, and you have a hard time getting a new one because of a resume gap, which employers absolutely hate.
      - aianus 10y ago
        You obviously have to be in a field like software engineering where there's a shortage of employees and employers can't get too picky about things like that. I did it myself for years modulo the health insurance part (we have universal healthcare in my country).
      - amag 10y ago
        I just negotiated the option to work 80%-100% (in ~5% intervals) at my own discretion. Basically I'm allowed to take up to one day/week off. I'm a software engineer working in tech.
      - stuaxo 10y ago
        You can negotiate all sorts of things when you join a company. Previously I've worked every 4th week off. These days I do contracts which provides some nice gaps if you don't try and line something up before the current one finished. It's been possible to take a year off - I was using that to work on my own projects, so that went on my c.v.
      - robotresearcher 10y ago
        For someone straight out of school, that's pretty much true. After a while, if your CV is strong enough, your universe gets more flexible.
    - amag 10y ago
      I actually negotiated the possibility to take one day off per week at my own discretion, thus working flexibly between 80%-100% in ~5% steps. In my mind this is a compromise with my dream of early retirement "Mr Money Mustache"-style. Early retirement is just something I don't see happening for a salaried worker in Sweden. Comparatively low salaries (for developers), high real estate prices and high taxes makes that pretty impossible. But now I have the choice of either taking a day off or pay 61% of my salary for that day to the government.
- tombone12 10y ago
  Workers aren't eager to fight for their rights at all right now, most unions in Sweden struggle just to maintain membership numbers. That is the most exceptional thing about the trial: that it happened at all in a climate where collective bargaining is declining and the decline of the concept of a stable job.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    > Workers aren't eager to fight for their rights at all right now, most unions in Sweden struggle just to maintain membership numbers. Well, sounds like Swedish unions need to show what they're for and get more forward-thinking.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    When I talk to Swedes they seem to be way ahead of the curve on the idea that total employment is unsustainable. I wonder if maybe they'll approach this problem from a different angle?
- jahaja 10y ago
  Make sure to separate the eagerness to fight and the support for less working hours. A subjugated workforce with a weak or non-existing labor movement will not fight much. However I'm sure that an overwhelming majority of workers would answer yes to "Would you like to work less hours with the same pay?". Furthermore, there's basically no historical basis for increased workers rights/benefits coming from business owners.
- suchajoke333 10y ago
  Feelings of worker insecurity helps the economy. It reduces our ability to shop around, and ask for higher wages. Job losses from automation, or really just the simple idea that there isn't enough truly valuable industrial work for 7 billion+ people, help keep the employed in line.
philh 10y ago
It's not being used as a bargaining chip, but that doesn't mean it's not a goal.
diminoten 10y ago
It does make intuitive sense that a person (employer) wouldn't want to pay for what amounts to nothing (employee not providing productivity). So the argument commonly takes the form of, "Well you're actually paying for something when an employee doesn't seem to be doing anything."
stuaxo 10y ago
Yup, I'm amazed I had to scroll this down before seeing some advocacy for less working hours.

by jahaja 10y ago

leereeves 10y ago

Workers don't seem particularly eager to fight for shorter work weeks right now. "Appeasing the owner" with promises of higher productivity might be the best strategy for passing these changes.

ctack 10y ago
Exactly that. Bringing it up in any other way would likely paint you as a trouble starter!
philipov 10y ago
I don't think most workers have the liberty to fight for their interests due to the double threat of being fired and not having a safety net to fall back on.
- aianus 10y ago
  Most tech workers could easily work fewer hours for less money in second-year cities or take months-long sabbaticals but choose to do the opposite. When given a choice between more money and more free time everyone around me chooses money and prestige.
  - xxs 10y ago
    >>everyone around me chooses... I guess it's quite a biased (limited) view.
  - dv_dt 10y ago
    It's typically not an accepted proposition to offer to work 4 days for proportionally less pay (even if one does the math to fix the ratio for benefits). So it's not really a sliding scale for less time for less money, the choice is predominantly full time for more money or full time for less money. So this idea that people always choose more time and more money is a red herring.
    - aianus 10y ago
      There's full time and then there's full time. You can certainly choose to work for a 40h company instead of a 60h company but the latter type of company doesn't seem to have any problems recruiting.
      - dv_dt 10y ago
        That's on the other side of the issue. My point was that there isn't anything like a 'proportional electiveness function' for the hours of work people are able to get with employment agreements. I think it looks like this for salaried professional employment: anything less than 40 is very low probability, 40-45 is very typical, and decreasing popularity in bins afterwards 50-60, 60+ etc. Given that's the distribution, you can't say people won't don't want to elect for <40 for less pay, it's not a really a choice in the current environment.
        user5994461 10y ago
        > anything less than 40 is very low probability, 40-45 is very typical, and decreasing popularity in bins afterwards 50-60, 60+ etc. Oh god. America is even worse than I thought.
    - mason240 10y ago
      There certianly is when choosing where to work. >It's typically not an accepted proposition to offer to work 4 days for proportionally less pay I currently have a 40 hour work where I can set my own hours and earn "flex time" (future PTO) for any hours over 40. I am paid well now, but I could certainly earn more by switching to company that would expect me to work more than 40 hours. The people complaining about working extra are absolutely choosing more time and more money.
  - patricklynch 10y ago
    I'm going to guess that you don't spend many hours 9-5 Monday through Friday at a beach or on a golf course. If you're in the right places, you'll definitely see people who value free time over money and prestige.
    - aianus 10y ago
      I spent three years making the other choice and working remotely from various beaches. I had to stop because of how lonely and isolating it was and how I couldn't maintain any relationships with my girlfriends and the 99% of my peers that were back home working 60h a week.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Most tech workers could easily work fewer hours by simply leaving the office when their time is done. Look around you and count how many people are working overtime on their own, sacrificing their life for free food, a fuzzball table, the expectations of 0.1% equity down the road, the hope of giving a good impression to their manager, the expectations of a raise later for hard work, or the pressure to work night and week-end unpaid on-call. When not thinking about it, people choose neither money not free time :D
    - matwood 10y ago
      If someone is eating and playing fuzzball then I'm not sure I would count that as working overtime. In tech companies in particular at work does not necessarily equate to working.
      - Bartweiss 10y ago
        I'm always confused by the hatred for people staying late at tech companies doing not-work. It's described like some elaborate anti-worker scam, but a lot of people I know are genuinely friends with coworkers (and often pretty introverted outside of that) and just enjoy doing that after work. I suppose I can understand the conspiracy theory of "they want you to only have work friends", but I really don't understand "they're replacing a good raise with a $100 ping-pong table". It's just not a sane model of what's happening, keeping employees in the building is not inherently profitable.
        user5994461 10y ago
        It's not hatred. It's about running a business efficiently, while the employees don't even realize it. 1) Keeping tech employees in the building is profitable. 2) In tech companies in particular, you don't have to be at work behind a computer to be productive. Once you both understand that these things are true and correct, you can begin to understand the business of the SV and why these perks come to be. While people are in the office, they are with co-worker, thinking about work, talking about work, progressing on their work. And the magic thing is you don't have to pay them for it, because they ain't working officially. A bad thing happen in production late? Fine, they're already there and they won't even think that fixing it is doing actual work because they are already there. That foosball table was way cheaper than paying overtime. How about serving breakfast at 9 am and dinner at 19? Then people who wants both will stay. Most likely, people who are a bit close to one or the other might extend their schedule slightly just to grab it. But no way they think of it as extra work.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    >Most tech workers could easily work fewer hours for less money in second-year cities or take months-long sabbaticals but choose to do the opposite. What universe do you live in? In my universe, this is simply not true. No tech company is going to allow you to work, say, 30 hours a week for 75% of your salary, plus full health benefits. And taking a months-long sabbatical means you don't keep your job, and you have a hard time getting a new one because of a resume gap, which employers absolutely hate.
    - aianus 10y ago
      You obviously have to be in a field like software engineering where there's a shortage of employees and employers can't get too picky about things like that. I did it myself for years modulo the health insurance part (we have universal healthcare in my country).
    - amag 10y ago
      I just negotiated the option to work 80%-100% (in ~5% intervals) at my own discretion. Basically I'm allowed to take up to one day/week off. I'm a software engineer working in tech.
    - stuaxo 10y ago
      You can negotiate all sorts of things when you join a company. Previously I've worked every 4th week off. These days I do contracts which provides some nice gaps if you don't try and line something up before the current one finished. It's been possible to take a year off - I was using that to work on my own projects, so that went on my c.v.
    - robotresearcher 10y ago
      For someone straight out of school, that's pretty much true. After a while, if your CV is strong enough, your universe gets more flexible.
  - amag 10y ago
    I actually negotiated the possibility to take one day off per week at my own discretion, thus working flexibly between 80%-100% in ~5% steps. In my mind this is a compromise with my dream of early retirement "Mr Money Mustache"-style. Early retirement is just something I don't see happening for a salaried worker in Sweden. Comparatively low salaries (for developers), high real estate prices and high taxes makes that pretty impossible. But now I have the choice of either taking a day off or pay 61% of my salary for that day to the government.
tombone12 10y ago
Workers aren't eager to fight for their rights at all right now, most unions in Sweden struggle just to maintain membership numbers. That is the most exceptional thing about the trial: that it happened at all in a climate where collective bargaining is declining and the decline of the concept of a stable job.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  > Workers aren't eager to fight for their rights at all right now, most unions in Sweden struggle just to maintain membership numbers. Well, sounds like Swedish unions need to show what they're for and get more forward-thinking.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  When I talk to Swedes they seem to be way ahead of the curve on the idea that total employment is unsustainable. I wonder if maybe they'll approach this problem from a different angle?
jahaja 10y ago
Make sure to separate the eagerness to fight and the support for less working hours. A subjugated workforce with a weak or non-existing labor movement will not fight much. However I'm sure that an overwhelming majority of workers would answer yes to "Would you like to work less hours with the same pay?". Furthermore, there's basically no historical basis for increased workers rights/benefits coming from business owners.
suchajoke333 10y ago
Feelings of worker insecurity helps the economy. It reduces our ability to shop around, and ask for higher wages. Job losses from automation, or really just the simple idea that there isn't enough truly valuable industrial work for 7 billion+ people, help keep the employed in line.

philh 10y ago

It's not being used as a bargaining chip, but that doesn't mean it's not a goal.

diminoten 10y ago

It does make intuitive sense that a person (employer) wouldn't want to pay for what amounts to nothing (employee not providing productivity). So the argument commonly takes the form of, "Well you're actually paying for something when an employee doesn't seem to be doing anything."

stuaxo 10y ago

Yup, I'm amazed I had to scroll this down before seeing some advocacy for less working hours.