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We should kill the 40-hour work week
- dilemma 10y agoLarge corporations need hordes of people doing boring work in a reliable and predictable, easily manageable manner. Society needs what large corporations produce. People need the wages these corporations pay. The 40hr work week is going nowhere.
- nvk 10y ago100% this, most people don't realize a lot of these corps are the "Jobs Programs". They take huge tax breaks to provide these 40/hr week unproductive boring jobs, or no one else will. In Canada we call them Banks and Telcos.
- rmckayfleming 10y agoAnd Bombardier.
- princeb 10y agocorporations need to process work that can manifest in a specific manner, and in non specific manners too. to use an example of a fictional manufacturing company, i'd like to commission a piece of software that can do almost anything- from processing an order from any business, that can come in digital format, scanned, printed, or spoken over the phone, to generating an purchase orders and sales orders to our suppliers and distributors who may have an online interface or who may still use fax or phone and may communicate in english or not english. that is quite a difficult piece of software to build so most companies don't actually build that at all. instead they rely on hordes of people who are configurable in any imaginable way to solve problems that appear in unimaginable forms.
- k__ 10y agoLarge corps are simply small corps that transitioned from innovators to job-generators. The are a bit like the socialism in capitalism. Most of the jobs are redundant and could be done more efficiently by a bunch of small corps instead of one big.
- iamatworknow 10y agoIt's funny that I'm experiencing that exact transition at the company where I work, and it's not even that big yet. When I first started I was getting paid a pretty paltry amount, but there were only 20 or so employees and each of us basically did whatever was required to succeed. Now we're up to almost 100 employees and I still work here, making over double my starting salary, but I do so much less work. I've carved out my little niche in the project pipeline and outside of that I read HN or Reddit. I feel a little guilty but I'm still getting the work done that's asked of me and receiving praise and raises from management, so...
- kawera 10y agoThere are a lot of pointless jobs too. Related: http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/ http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-d...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- treehau5 10y agoDo pointless jobs pay pointless money?
- branchless 10y agoLandlords need us to work all the time so they don't have to. We should move to a 4 day week.
- pc86 10y agoDo you pay your landlord less if you are home more? Is shelter worth less if people have jobs with alternative schedules?
- branchless 10y agoSomeone doesn't know how prices are set!
- pc86 10y agoBuy a house and you won't have a landlord. I'm not sure why living in someone else's home is something you shouldn't have to pay market rate for.
- branchless 10y agoMarket rate is set by wages less other essentials. As is buying rate. Credit issuance against land consumes all surplus value. Hence why not work 4 days en mass.
- aloisdg 10y agoIn France, we have 35 hours work week. It works fine enough. I cant imagine moving to 40 hours.
- pc86 10y agoAn hour a day either direction doesn't make much difference at all; what makes a bigger difference is what time you come or go. I'm very lucky in my current gig that I can come and go as I please provided I get those 40 hours and as a team we cover the business day. I'd much rather work 40 hours or even more, working 6-2 or similar, than work 30 hours a week and have to deal with rush hour traffic.
- clarry 10y ago> An hour a day either direction doesn't make much difference at all; But it can make a big difference. I don't think I can stay productive for 8 hours straight on the average day. So the last 1-2 hours are a miserable grind, effectively wasted time. Add to that, I don't live to work, I work to live. I'd be very happy if I had quite a bit of energy left when I get home so I can live my life too. I think the real problem is the just lack of flexibility. If 40 works for you, why shouldn't you be allowed to work 40. At the same time, that doesn't mean everybody should be working 40. Same for any other number of hours. Same for any the time...
- pc86 10y agoThe problem is twofold (at least) - 1) most people this is relevant to are not paid hourly; 2) most people this is relevant to do not have clearly defined metrics measuring their work product (e.g. number of widgets produced, widgets produced per unit of time, etc). Combine those two and you have a scenario where 40 is the minimum, doing less is seen very negatively, and there's no real way to prove you're producing more or at a higher quality working 30 hours than the guy next to you working 55.
- clarry 10y agoThen maybe they should be paid hourly. I'd be happy to work 30 hours even if that meant I got less done than the other guy working 55 hours. For this, I'd happily trade some salary.
- barnacs 10y ago> Large corporations need hordes of people doing boring work in a reliable and predictable, easily manageable manner. That's what machines are for. We need to embrace automation. > Society needs what large corporations produce Nope. Large corporations spend loads of money and manpower to make people think they need what they produce. > People need the wages these corporations pay. Not if they resist the manipulation to buy all the useless stuff. Not if automation makes everything cheaper. > The 40hr work week is going nowhere. Oh, but it is going. The sooner we realize this, the easier the transition will be.
- joosters 10y agoWe've had the concept of 'flexi-time' for decades, where people can start and finish work at different times, so they can work at the time of day that best suits them.
- codingdave 10y agoWhile I love my flexible, remote schedule... and I loved alternative schedules when I was in my 20s and had no children. The standard 40 hour week offers a stable schedule to the large population that does have children, and needs to both work a full time job to collect a paycheck while also knowing they can be home almost every hour their child is out of school. I'm not arguing against flexible scheduling -- I live that life, and I will proclaim its benefits as much as anyone. But to really engage in a meaningful discussion about it, we need to realize that different people have different needs. And for much of the working population, the primary need is about providing for their family, not self-fulfillment in their own work.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y agobut with flexible scheduling, people can still choose to voluntarily follow the current 40-hour week schedule. So what you are saying is not actually an argument.
- flippyhead 10y agoI think the problem arrises when we "kill the 40-hour work week" _fully_: there's no consensus on working hours so it creates the problem he's describing; "the world is ruled by morning people" and all that.
- qntty 10y agoIf it's true that so many people depend on the 40 hour workweek being the norm, then no amount of added flexibility will fully kill it.
- ryanSrich 10y agoThe argument should be for a 4 hour standard working day. This gives the freedom to flex another 4 hours whenever is most convenient.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
- GoToRO 10y agoMy proposal: 3 days work week. 3 days works the father, 3 days the mother, one day free for the whole family. Import taxes for all goods that come from countries that don't implement this. As for the article, yes, it's true. But you need to have a "results based environment". This further needs that your manager can do your work. This means it will not work in most companies.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y agothis penalizes individual workers (and even entire countries) who wish to work more.
- GoToRO 10y agoYou can work more for your own thing...
- mcjiggerlog 10y agoI'm single - now what?
- GoToRO 10y agoDate :)
- snug 10y agoWhy should parents get special privilege? Because I don't have kids, I should work a full week?
- GoToRO 10y agoThere is life outside work, for sure. The problem is that we are not used to it because after work, even if there is some time left in the day, you have no energy left. Of course there will be a lot of details to be sorted, like what you said; I don't claim to have it all figured out.
- darkstar999 10y ago
- Longhanks 10y agoNo, we shouldn't. Most people are totally fine with it, me included. Why change something that works? There are always people not satisfied with the current system, but for the majority of our society, the 40 hours a week model is fine. And if it isn't, there are plenty of other options - maybe you have to look harder for them, but it's definitly possible to work on different schedules, too.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y agoit "works" is a very subjective and low threshold of efficiency. It works in that people struggle to deal with it. The average american has to commute 5 days a week through horrendous traffic (which saturates the traffic grid), because of people who insist that we need to obey the 40-hour week because "it works".
- maxerickson 10y agoWe absolutely should get rid of the idea that a "full time" job has benefits and stuff. Compensation should stay about the same, it just shouldn't come in the form of benefits.
- aero142 10y agoJust to be clear. The reason this happens is because insurers like groups that don't have terrible self selection biases towards sick people. Buying insurance as an individual means the insurance company is worried you are a soon to be expense.
- maxerickson 10y agoThere are also tax advantages. And it makes overtime cheaper by moving some of the base compensation out of the hourly wage.
- cr1895 10y ago>Buying insurance as an individual means the insurance company is worried you are a soon to be expense. Really worth noting that this is a non-issue in many (most?) countries with healthcare systems that function differently from that in the US.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago> So the 8-hour work day, 5-day workweek wasn’t chosen as the way to work for scientific reasons; instead, it was partly driven by the goal of increasing consumption. Money doesn't really work like that, unless you A. Saddle employees with debt or B. Boost short-term revenue so the company looks more attractive to investors. Or is the idea that Ford would set an example so that the entire industry would start doing this, which benefits him more? Keep in mind Ford also hired investigators to check up on his employees' morality: > To qualify for his doubled salary, the worker had to be thrifty and continent. He had to keep his home neat and his children healthy, and, if he were below the age of twenty-two, to be married. You could argue that Ford wanted model Protestants as employees because they increased productivity, but it's a more elaborate argument that just picking a quote or two. He may have done it for religious reasons.
- maxerickson 10y agoThe easy way to implement this is to place enormous taxes on benefits. Companies aren't going to cut hours much when it drives up the effective cost of benefit packages.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y agoor better yet, just have include benefits in total income when calculating taxes.
- nol13 10y agoor better yet, fix the system where affordable health care is tied to corporate employment
- em3rgent0rdr 10y agoWell a primary reason why health care has been tied to corporate employment in the US is because benefits are not taxed. Tax benefits at the marginal tax rate, and you'll discover that health care won't be quite as tied to employment.
- jozzz 10y agoNo one's genetically a 'night owl'. Stop drinking caffeine.
- GoToRO 10y agoHard to believe it when you are young but I was a 'night owl" that wakes up early now. 'night owl' for me now means just that the person doesn't know how the body works and/or doesn't take care of themselves.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoWell yeah, people tend to wake up earlier as they get older, its just part of aging.
- GoToRO 10y agoOr yeah, aging. Unfortunately I can't go back in time to test it :)
- philbarr 10y agoI have one cup of tea in the morning, drink water the rest of the time, and still struggle to get to sleep before 1am. Edit: own stupidity.
- richmarr 10y ago> I have one cup of tea in the morning, drink water the rest of the time, and still struggle to get to sleep before 1pm. Try waiting until about 2pm or 3pm when your lunch has properly settled. Then find a comfy chair and change into your slippers. You should have no problems nodding off. ;)
- bpicolo 10y agoWell there's your problem, 1pm is way too early to go to sleep.
- mooseburger 10y ago
- minikites 10y agoAs long as the USA is still a nation that takes pride in the sort of values shown in this infuriating Cadillac advertisement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WKgSCPqY4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WKgSCPqY4M), working long (unproductive) hours isn't going away any time soon.
- danielschonfeld 10y agothis!
- pcmonk 10y ago> Give yourself one day with no work If killing the 40-hour work week means I'm now working six days a week instead of five, then long live the 40-hour work week. Some people (myself included) need two days per week off work, except in special circumstances. We also need to be able to clock out of work and not feel bad about doing so just because we still have work. The worst thing about university to me was the feeling of always having more work to do. I understand avoiding the "I'm just working until the clock hand turns a little further" state, but often the cumulative effects of the proposed alternative are worse.
- helthanatos 10y agoWhat about a 40 hour week working just 4 days?
- MiddleEndian 10y agoWhat about not working so much? You can get a programming job that pays you $200k/year for 40 hours, plenty of which you spend blocked anyway, but for whatever reason no one will pay you $100k/year for 20 hours.
- falcolas 10y agoPart time work, in my experience, is never paid out on a linear scale. The exception is when you're working for yourself as a consultant. However, with consulting, for every billable hour, there's typically another unbillable hour of work which still needs to be done.
- brianwawok 10y agoDo you still want full health insurance benefits, a full laptop, and a full vacation policy? I think the breakeven for a 200k full time employee would be maybe 80-85k for a 20h a week. Which is still enough to get by in many places. Why do employers not want this? I can think of a few reason. Knowledge transfer is hard. Adding workers to a project always makes it slow down by a fair bit (as in less than linear scaling). So a project that has 1 40h person right now. How many 20h employees would it take to replace him? 3? 4? 5? Perhaps 5 20h employees could do a programming project to the level of 1 dedicated 40h employee. Which then means the actual "equal" pay for your 20h employee is more like 35k per year, not the 85k mentioned above.
- lsy 10y agoIn its history of the 40-hour week, the article omits the substantial contribution of organized labor to fighting for shorter hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day Keeping this history in mind might allow us to determine other reasons and means for improving on the workweek than pure business interest.
- ue_ 10y agoIn my opinion, no consideration should be given to 'business interest' over the interests of the workers. The idea that the workers ought to just settle for compromises is rubbish.
- pc86 10y agoWell life is about compromise, so there's that. A 100% pro-worker, anti-employer solution would not work, just like a 100% pro-employer, anti-worker rights solution wouldn't either.
- mtw 10y agoGood article but in essence, it only works for freelancers, especially the 20 something kind who programs or designs and interacts with his customer through skype. Modern society has conventions that makes it work well. Like the expectation that the delivery guy will work from 9-to-5, instead of trying to deliver at 2am or in a Sunday morning, because that's optimal for his circadian rhytm. Same for the bank or the library or Starbucks open during the day. This convention lets us help plan our day. Without these you will have to plan for contingencies. These can be acute when you have a chronic disease, disabled or have babies/children. You just wish that everyone works 9 to 5 just so you can go through the day.
- SketchySeaBeast 10y ago> Good article but in essence, it only works for freelancers, especially the 20 something kind who programs or designs and interacts with his customer through skype. That's exactly my thoughts. I provide analysis & design work for government - even the fact that I'm an early riser is an issue, as leaving the office that 1-2 hours before the government mandated 4:30 end time causes them to be partially without the instant support and feedback they expect.
- pcmonk 10y agoSite's down for me. Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RzYQ6Q-_W00J:https://crew.co/blog/why-you-shouldnt-work-set-hours/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RzYQ6Q...
- TurboHaskal 10y agoHaving a bit of experience and knowing what "result oriented with flexible schedule" actually stands for, I think I'll keep my 40 hour week. Thanks.
- peterwwillis 10y agoMan I hate pretentious privileged startup people who try to apply their incredibly rare circumstances to the entire society. Most people I know would kill to work only 40 hours. Only one had so much free time that he quit to freelance, and he was an IT worker. Now he's constantly busy.
- MarkCole 10y agoReally? In my experience the people who work in startups are the ones overworked and working 60-80 hours a week. Where as those of us at profitable established companies can check in, do our 8 hours of work and then go home and usually not think about work.
- partycoder 10y agoI am more against open office plans than 40 hours weeks. I also think people should be allowed to take naps rather than coffee breaks.
- koolba 10y agoThe best part of a 9-5/40-hour work week are the hours where everybody else is gone. That's when you get the real work done.
- codr4life 10y agoWe should kill work, period. This is not the way it always was, and it's not the way it always will be. This is a brief moment in evolution, a learning experience. If some didn't insist on having plenty more than others, there would be enough for everyone without anyone working for anyone; and once you have everything provided, helping out is the natural thing to do.
- koonsolo 10y agoSounds a bit like communism, but without anyone having any job. So yes, this should probably work out just fine.
- codr4life 10y agoWhere is your trust in basic human values? The behavior you see around you is an effect of pressure from a completely artificial and destructive environment, regardless of what it's called. Using communism as some kind of crucifix for killing every suggestion of change is not working any more; change is coming, like it or not.
- koonsolo 10y agoI think my environment is pretty good, optimistic and nice. People don't kill other people around here. We have a social support system. When times get though, and this environment is gone, bad stuff happens. Culture is only a small thin layer, that is gone the moment real problems arise. Just take a look at history, and you event don't have to go too far back. Look what's happening in the middle east right now.
- PublicFace 10y agoKill the "work week" concept too while we're at it. Are we seriously going to continue the fallacy that humans only work on specific religiously appointed days? Just start moving to results only work environments.
- jacquesm 10y agoThe only effect that will have is that you'll be working 7 days per week. That religious influence is - for once - actually a positive one. Quite a few bits of our social contracts have their root in ancient history and religion played a larger part back then then it does today (for most people, anyway). That does not make them bad per-se, they should be looked at independent of their roots. Just like 'thou shalt not kill' isn't a bad idea just because it happens to be in the bible.
- ashark 10y agoRemoving well-defined restrictions on work usually results in an explicit or implicit negotiation for working conditions, which usually results in less favorable conditions for the party with the weaker negotiating position (workers).
- jacquesm 10y agoBesides all the scheduling trouble that would cause, what will you replace it with? The 40 hour work week is an achievement, and if it is to be killed I would propose replacing it with the 32 hour workweek or a 24 hour one. Definitely not with a lack of structure. I've worked for some companies long ago that did not adhere to the 40 hour workweek. Let's just say I would have been much happier if they had and that's not because they decided to go for 32 hours or 40 hours whenever I wanted to work them if you thought that was the case.
- simplehuman 10y agoWhy do I feel all alone in loving the 40 hour week :) realistically this is 35 hours a week after the commute. And I like my 2 days off where I can ignore work issues completely. And personally for me working in an office is more attractive than flexible remote work.
- achr2 10y agoWhat job do you work where you get paid to commute and it counts towards your 8 hour day? This is definitely not the norm.
- Nadya 10y agoBecause the amount of productive work hours most people get per week is realistically closer to 20-30. The rest of the time they are being paid for their presence. If the day's work is done at 11am, I hope you enjoy twiddling your thumbs until 5pm hoping something comes up for you to do. There's only so much of tomorrow's work that you can finish ahead of schedule (esp. if most of it is waiting on clients to get back to you at a later date). Every individual in my department could work a 20 hour week and just as much work would be done. I know this because of the 1 hour smoke breaks that happen every-other-hour. They're already working 4 hour days, why not just make it official? I'm sure the employees would love having an additional 4 hours of personal time each day.
- minimuffins 10y agoWe should absolutely kill the 40 hour week and replace it with a 30 hour week. > the 40-hour work week doesn’t work anymore Doesn’t work for who? What does “works” mean anyway? Maximizes efficiency for our employers? Why is that the question? What works for you? Why not ask what works to maximize your happiness and flourishing? What works for me is fewer working hours in the week (doesn’t matter what time of day it was that I logged them) and more time to do whatever I want, whether that's coding, walking a dog, reading or doing absolutely nothing. We went from 80 hour to 40 hour weeks 100 years ago, why is 40 to 30 such a stretch today? > During the Industrial Revolution, factories needed to be running around the clock so employees during this era frequently worked between 10-16 hour days. In the 1920s however, Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, decided to try something different: His workers would only work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. That is completely ahistorical! The 8 hour day was carved out from the 16 hour day and paid for in blood by a militant labor movement over several decades, not granted magnanimously by Henry Ford. You don’t have to consult obscure labor history to find that out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- zobzu 10y agoin france there were the 35h weeks by law. result... everyone mocked the country and employers gave everyone a manager title which has no 35h restriction. good luck
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoThat experiment started in February 2000, a time where telework and work from home and other policies were much less common. Automation in the past 17 years have invalidated a lot of 'work' people do as well. The idea that 40-50 is some magic number is the more ridicouls claim imo. If anything, progress, technology, and automation should naturally drive down hours needed per week. No one at my job does nearly the same amount of work we did 10-15 years ago. Our Fridays are all 'work from home' which is code for 'maybe check your email or finish up something.' Our work world is only changing. Rolling with the changes makes sense to me and 35 hour or 4 day work-weeks seem like the a rational change. We should be benefiting from automation, not punished by it by pretending to be busy or working at much slower paces in fear of layoffs. Also French experiemnt only lasted until 2004, when reforms were put in to raise the maximum amount of work allowable per month. I think its disingenuous to say that it 'failed.' It had a short 4 year run almost two decades ago. The world of 2017 is very different from the world of 2000-2004.
- beat 10y agoCrediting the 40 hour week to Henry Ford's business acumen is a common mistake. The call for eight hour workdays was over a century old by the time Henry Ford implemented it. It was a major point of discussion for Karl Marx. Forty years before Henry Ford's supposedly brilliant insight, in the Bay View Labor Riot of 1886, the Wisconsin state militia opened fire on labor activists protesting for an eight hour workday, killing seven. None of this is new. This is a battle labor has been fighting for two centuries now.
- deedubaya 10y agoEveryone here seems to be thinking in hours, like they actually equate to produced product. I don't think that's really the case. It's more like working 8 hours a day so you can find that productive 2 hours in the middle somewhere where things get done. As a manager, I don't care at all if my employees work 40 hours or 4 hours. I care about what they get done regardless of the time it takes or when they do it (to some degree). This requires _active_ management in their day-to-day with the domain knowledge to call bullshit when things aren't getting done. This management style doesn't scale to large teams, but I find it very effective.
- laughfactory 10y agoYou sound like an excellent manager to work for. And you're right, it requires that people be adults and actively work together, make agreements, manage expectations and all that.
- thatfrenchguy 10y ago"On days where I put in less than 8 or 10 hours of work, I feel a bit guilty" You need workaholism consulting. Repeat after me: more hours do not mean higher throughput.
- Entangled 10y agoI, as an independent coder, enjoy my 90 hour work week. And I am in my 50s.
- dontyouremember 10y agohttp://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/?single=1 http://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/?si... "But what will happen when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable without working long hours? In the West we have various ways of dealing with this problem. We have no attempt at economic justice, so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do no work at all. Owing to the absence of any central control over production, we produce hosts of things that are not wanted. We keep a large percentage of the working population idle because we can dispense with their labor by making others overwork. When all these methods prove inadequate we have a war: we cause a number of people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them, as if we were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a great deal of manual work must be the lot of the average man."
- taken__-- 10y agoOh man, people work 12 hours a day (like me) and you complain about a 40-hour week??
- aecorredor 10y agoThere's a book called "The Power of When" which I hear talks about how every person is different, and how depending on what type you are your day should be structured differently. Could be an interesting read when deciding if the 40 hour work week is appropriate or not.
- kilroy123 10y agoI was lucky enough to work for a "technical" non-profit for a few years. We worked 7 hours a day instead of a full 8. It was absolutely amazing. It was the perfect amount of time I felt. I noticed I slacked off less to get everything done in a day. Honestly, if we worked that extra hour each day, it would of have been spent surfing the internet. Spending more time making coffee, chatting, lunch etc.
- Chinjut 10y agoThere 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.
- throwaway420 10y ago* The article makes some great observations about energy levels. I think you can definitely run a company more productively if employees had more leeway about picking their own hours as long as the job gets done. Anecdotally, I'd get far more work done if I set aside just around 9-midnight every night for coding from home rather than waking up early and slogging to an office. * The article presents some opinions without really justifying them. According to who exactly does the 40-hour work week not work anymore? It works great for some folks, it works badly for others. Personally, I'd rather see more people working less, and I think more jobs should be more flexible about things like remote working and letting people pick their hours when possible. * This article also erroneously gets some history wrong. People like to cite some of Ford's management innovations as some magnanimous gesture on his part to give employees enough cash to buy more products. The reality is that he was initially having a problem keeping employees because assembly-line work is so monotonous and doesn't leave much room for human contact and many employees would quit or inconsistently show up to work after a while. He was trying to make working conditions as good as possible to reduce employee turnover/absenteeism, greatly reducing his recruiting/training expenses in the long run and making things run smoother on a daily basis. It was in his self-interest to do this because once you got a great Ford job you wouldn't quit or just not show up to go to a baseball game or whatever people did back in those days. I believe some people erroneously got this part of history wrong because there's a narrative out there that the free market is some kind of predatory exploitative thing that needs to be completely controlled or it will work to destroy people. To me, that's incorrect because employers also need to compete for employees' labor. Going forward, innovative and smart companies will increasingly offer things like remote working, picking your own hours, limited work week, etc to compete for the most talented employees. Some companies might want butts in seats at 9AM and will compete by offering cash. That's fine too, let people have a choice.
- johnb777 10y agoSweden tested a 30 hour work-week and found it to be too costly. For some professions it just isn't realistic (e.g. supply chain/logistics industry). For the professions where it is more realistic, maybe give them the option of finishing up the week at 30 hours but don't set a hard cut-off. I've found that the more work-hour freedom people are given, the better quality work ends up getting done.
- rolodato 10y agoIf you're working alone or completely asynchronously sure, that makes sense. But how do you account for collaborative work that needs to be done in a group?
- petergatsby 10y agoInformative piece on circadian rhythm -- not sure how it justifies getting rid of the 40-hour work week.
- geodel 10y ago40 hr /week is anyway going to die due to massive lack of jobs. Governments/businesses will get forced to either layoff people or reduce hours. Till now layoffs seems cleaner solution to tackle less work/more productivity scenario. In first world tech sector where where 6 figure dollar salaries are common, less work even with lesser pay may be manageable scenario. For the poorer and heavily populated 3rd world productivity gains will increasingly cause massive rupture in social stability. Just today I read in India increasing automation is causing either major layoffs or no new jobs in sectors as diverse as mining, banking, IT, manufacturing etc.
- st3v3r 10y agoThis is just awful. Only one night a week where you don't work? "Try removing work completely for a day". I do it for two days: the weekend. This article is basically arguing that you should spend all your time working, without being bold enough to come out and say it.
- JDiculous 10y agoYou guys are all totally missing the point. The whole concept of an X hour work week is stupid for most of us on HN in knowledge intensive industries. It makes sense if the work you're doing is a direct function of time - think receptionists, cashiers, phone customer service, assembly line workers. If the work is knowledge intensive, then your output is generally not a mere function of hours worked. In software engineering, productivity can vary enormously when you're "in-the-zone" vs. feeling tired and sluggish. I'm not talking about a mere 15% difference in peak productivity vs. least productive, I'm talking multiples (short example I wrote http://www.jbernier.com/how-to-work-efficiently-and-stop-wasting-your-time http://www.jbernier.com/how-to-work-efficiently-and-stop-was...). Judging an employee by "hours of ass in chair in office staring at computer screen" in a knowledge intensive field is an extremely inaccurate and lazy metric, used by non-technical managers who can't think of better ways to gauge the output of their employees.
- watwut 10y agoJudging an employee by "hours of ass in chair in office staring at computer screen is the most common startup metric. I dislike it as much as you, but that won't change anything on it.
- JDiculous 10y agoJust because it's common doesn't mean it's going to remain. The status quo is already changing with the rise of companies offering flexible hours and remote work.
- Apocryphon 10y agoMet a former Solyndra employee. He said they used to have 12-hour days, but the tradeoff is that they had four days weekends. Sounds amazing for the employee.
- carapace 10y agoBucky Fuller determined that, by some time in the 1970's, we could provide a high standard of living for everyone on Earth while only working a few hours a week. IIRC, he postulated that most people would have to work for about two years and then they could retire. All we have to do is apply the technology we already have in a sensible manner to meet our needs. In other words, all our problems now are psychological, not physical.
- koonsolo 10y agoHe probably didn't consider that there are always scarce resources where the one who has the most money gets it. Simply said, the one who can buy the biggest diamond also gets the prettiest girl, and that's what life is all about, no? ;).
- carapace 10y ago(Okay, but, uh, we can manufacture diamond now, you know that right? ;-)
- dlwj 10y agoThis article is mostly about scheduling, but a bigger issues is actually amount of actual work. (Ignoring cases where amount of perceived work is important like in Japan) A “reasonable” amount of work basically always comes down to what someone is willing to sacrifice. A cushy work week is basically always subsidized by other people. It’s often very indirect, like a factory in China. When this information is forcefully shoved in a person’s face, their moral compass gives them no other choice but to protest against the Foxconns of the world. Unions formally define what is reasonable, but there is also a cultural form of unionization. In the U.S. H1B’s implicitly acknowledge this possibility. They look to join teams that have this cultural unionization. If half of the non-H1B’s go home at 5, management cannot force overtime from everyone else without it being egregious. This disappears when the team is mostly H1B’s or even if the manager him/herself went through this process. (Startups, rather than look for H1B’s, look for “culture fit”) Cultural homogenization allows a shared definition of reasonable-ness without needing formal structures. With a non-homongenous culture, the “lazier” cultures lose out to the more “hardworking” cultures. The “lazier” cultures would like a rule that says “You must eat out at least one a week, and enjoy a movie, and NOT let your money compound for your children.” Otherwise, the culture that is more willing to work hard effectively undermines the desire to live comfortably of other cultures. In the Bay Area, western culture simply cannot compete with Chinese culture when it comes to housing bids. It’s 1 couple vs an entire family of savers. There should obviously be a law to prevent Olympic athletes from taking a super-drug that will allow them to win a gold medal and then drop dead afterwards. But should there be one to prevent parents from overworking for their children? IMO, when the amount of wealth in the world reaches the point where everyone can live comfortably if it were evenly divided, a casual lifestyle will naturally emerge. Prior to that though, there will always be people more willing to work hard. In order for a cushy lifestyle to be sustained, there must be an explicit border or wall (physical or otherwise) that divides people into homogenous cultures. People in each group must be willing to work around the same. In the U.S. sweatshop and factory conditions are protested against, but in those same countries, they are prestigious jobs that can lift a family out of an agrarian lifestyle into technical or knowledge work. The willingness to fight over pennies subsidizes the casual picking of dollars. With China moving towards picking up dollars, there is no longer a large enough penniy-picking population to sustain it. (Which is why China internally subdivides into a 1st world portion and a 3rd world subsidizing population). With globalization comes cultural mixing. A large portion of Trump voters realize this threat to their lifestyle (and many have probably already been affected and have trouble making ends meet) and think that re-establizing cultural zones will fix the issue (with a literal wall…) but it won’t. Solutions to questions about how to work and live comfortably without solving the global wealth distribution problem basically are all forms of indirect subsidization, making it zero sum. (Aside, religion can actually be used as a force to sub-divide a population into a culture that desires less, allow them to subsidize a smaller population that want to live more comfortably)
- PatentTroll 10y agoWhat should we do about the 70 hour work week? Somewhat sarcastic, but mostly serious.