10 ms·

Start with universal basic income and a 15-hour work week

82 points by edward 10y ago

forgotpwtomain 10y ago
I don't see any supporting evidence in this article which suggests that people working 15 hours are happier than those working say 35 hours. It's also hard for me to imagine that 15 hours is enough to sustain a level of productive output requiring intellectual work and extensive knowledge of a subject matter - unused skills rust and 15 hours seems like some kind of bare minimum level just to sustain rudimentary skill, let alone develop it. > A recent poll among Brits revealed that as many as 37 per cent think they have a job that doesn’t even need to exist. I'm not going to deliberate on the prevalence of bullshit jobs and their impact on quality of life (which seems to be where the article takes it's main pitch), but given that - I rather disagree that not working is the solution that obviously follows.
- AndrewDucker 10y ago
  Yeah. There are lots of useful things people could be doing, and largely I think that doing productive things is good for people.
- cujo 10y ago
  I get the feeling that 15 hours is a ballpark number and there are certain occupations that do require more time "in the seat" to make good progress. It's probably also true that if you're putting in only ~15 hours of productivity, you're probably going to dedicate some extra time to learning new things, advancing skills, etc. My experience tells me that, as a developer, an awful lot of what I do could definitely fit in that 15 hour window if there are 2 other people also doing "my" job. Splitting up my week's tasks with the 3 of us putting in 45 hours would result in much more productivity, in my opinion. I'd then have much more time to do things I wanted to do, and experiment with new tech for shits and giggles. That often gets pushed back in favor of other life experiences these days.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  >unused skills rust and 15 hours seems like some kind of bare minimum level just to sustain rudimentary skill Eh I think skills are stickier than that. FWIW, I spent about 6 months doing almost no programming, but I didn't feel particularly unproductive when I started again. Besides which, there's no reason people can't be continuing developing their skills in the remaining hours anyway. The 15 hours is just how much time you have to spend doing what you're told. And you can likely learn much more efficiently if you work with that intent instead of acquiring skills incidentally as your job requires.
  - stuaxo 10y ago
    Exactly, when it frees up time you can be productive doing your own things. Having 2 days off a week, really is only enough time to do chores, not enough to spend on your own skills or do anything productive for yourself. As a contractor, I tend to take 1-3 months off between contracts + it seems to help, not hinder. I'm much fresher when I go into the next contract.
    - aaron-lebo 10y ago
      For many people "doing their own things" is gonna be playing more Counter-Strike. Of course, that's their right, but whether you can make a sustainable economy out of subsidizing that is another question...a question that is much more pressing than "wouldn't that be better?" and one the article doesn't even attempt to answer, probably because it is largely impossible and anything like it is speculation akin to religion.
      - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
        > For many people "doing their own things" is gonna be playing more Counter-Strike. Also is "more Counter-Strike" at all correlated with a quality of life increase? 45 free minutes you wouldn't have had to get rid of some stress shooting things - probably yes? 5 hours a day - probably not?
      - thehardsphere 10y ago
        > For many people "doing their own things" is gonna be playing more Counter-Strike. Or worse, shooting heroin.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  He's literally selling a book called UTOPIA. There's a reason he cites a survey as one of his main pieces of evidence - he doesn't have any. It's pie in the sky feel good that doesn't have any evidence. You don't start with universal basic income and a 15-hour work week when the current baseline is 40 hours and a lack of decent health insurance.
  - markvdb 10y ago
    To be fair, he seems to be speaking about the socially developed part of the western world. Fairly decent to very good quality universal healthcare is available in large parts of western Europe, Japan, Canada... Even large parts of eastern Europe have (the remains of) somewhat decent universal healthcare thanks to their socialist past. It's fairly clear that there isn't even support in the current US ruling class for universal healthcare. That makes anything even remotely like basic income largely irrelevant there.
- dahart 10y ago
  > 15 hours seems like some kind of bare minimum level just to sustain rudimentary skill, let alone develop it I've been programming professionally, and developing my skills at a medium pace for a couple of decades. After a few years now of actually tracking my time to the minute, I often get less than 15 hours of programming in a 40 hour work week. Meetings, chat & email, lunches & breaks, and sooner or later some degree of management, these things add up to a majority of your time. If you filled a 15 hour work week with meetings and included a lunch hour, then yeah, there's no coding getting done. But I would hope spending less time working means and implies to a greater degree shedding all the time we spend at work not working.
  - valuearb 10y ago
    As much as i hate to say it, meetings and planning matter. blindly programming isn't work.
    - gregmac 10y ago
      The key is having productive meetings. If a meeting ends with no action items (assigned to specific people) and no decisions made, it was a useless meeting, and you should stop having it. Status updates can be written down and emailed, or better, posted to a wiki.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    Does it scale like that though? If you do 15 hours of work over a 40 hour week, do you still do 15 hours of work over a 15 hour week, or do people end up doing 5 hours of work? Is there any evidence either way? These discussions always bring out the anecdotes, but we need hard stats to show whether this is even doable.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      I have worked in at least one organization where the meetings were likely there to prevent work from being done too quickly with an activity that still counted as billable hours. Just before I left, the "daily stand-up" included the entire development team and testing team, and lasted a minimum of 45 minutes. That was nearly 20 people, packed into one office, justifying their existence on a daily basis. So some people would actually dedicate that 15 hours to getting things done, and some people would still fill it up with bullshit and game the management metrics to maximize pay per unit of effort.
- karmajunkie 10y ago
  Anecdata, but I'm MUCH happier when working 15 instead of 35 and certainly 40-50 hours a week, provided I'm making the same money (or more to the point, keeping the same'ish lifestyle, albeit with more free time.) That doesn't mean I'm unoccupied an additional 20 hours a week, but being occupied with my choice of activities is way better.
  - glenneroo 10y ago
    Contributing my own anecdata: I'm in a similar situation - I voluntarily started working 20 hours/week for the last 9 years. In my spare time I've taken up multiple new hobbies and cultivated older hobbies into semi-part-time jobs (a few hours a month). I can't ever imagine the torture of working 40+ hours/week ever again.
- karmajunkie 10y ago
  Anecdata, but I'm MUCH happier when working 15 instead of 35 and certainly 40-50 hours a week, provided I'm making the same money (or more to the point, keeping the same'ish lifestyle, albeit with more free time.) That doesn't mean I'm unoccupied an additional 20 hours a week, but being occupied with my choice of activities is way better.
- alexc05 10y ago
  So a few years ago I read Tim Ferriss' "the four hour work week" - and while I will not go on a screed about the part that I find ridiculous, I do think the chapter (and recurring thread) about "what do you do with when you work 4 hours a week" is entirely relevant here. The summary / thesis of life-after-work is that we must "find a muse" - which is to say, since you no longer must work your entire life away, you may now re-allocate those same hours doing something that you love. Even something that you are wildly, obsessively, passionate about. A small portion of the current policy research around AI & Automation is how do we deal with the emotional fallout among people who feel they've lost their purpose. How do we convince people that it is OK to "take a handout"? There are really deep cultural implications to that idea. There are people who believe "there's no such thing as a free lunch" - consider the Georgia representative who very specifically floated the idea of making poor children sweep floors in schools in exchange for meals "in order to teach them the important life lesson that there is no such thing as a free lunch" http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-rep-suggests-kids-clean-schools-in-exchange-for-lunch http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-rep-suggests-kids-... ... like that is someone who really believes in that as a principle as opposed to just a colloquialism. What would it do to their self esteem if they were suddenly taking free money? How many parents would be happy to spend an extra hour with their kids in the morning? A couple of extra hours at night? A few extra hours to learn guitar or beat that next level of super-mario?
  - Taylor_OD 10y ago
    I've move from a company where I had to be there 9-5:30+ to a company with flex hours. Earlier in the week I leave around 3-4 somewhat regularly because on other days I have to be at work until 8:30+. Even with a couple extra hours at home a week it's hard to find exactly what I should be doing. I tried to put together a schedule of taking some online classes I've watched to for a while, writing, spending 30-1 hour playing games I've been meaning to play, and generally calling / talking to friends and family more. However I still find myself in a loop of checking reddit, youtube, facebook, and hackernews over and over around 7PM. I understand its a problem born from extreme privilege but if the future is filled with more free time it's a problem that many will run into.
rodionos 10y ago
I'm trying to reconcile how these utopian ideas should work in globally competitive industries where companies need to win revenue and customers on a daily basis. I can see this working in protected environments but how is this going to work out for companies in industries where only the paranoid survive.
justaman 10y ago
I don't know if a universal "BASIC" income is something that will make people happy if that person can only afford the -basics-. There was a study done a few years ago that claimed happiness increased in tandem with salary up until ~$80,000(depends on where you live). Then anything above $80k saw a negligible increase in happiness. This article states that many people feel that their job is pointless and doesnt really contribute any great benefit to society. These people are therefore working only for the money, which, the article claims they may not need otherwise. I think many people who already work menial jobs that are threatened by automation lack a certain drive for self-improvment that would need to be a required aspect of their lives if they otherwise have an extra 25-30 hours a week. Would these menial workers improve other aspects of their lives or simply watch more Netflix? I think anti-depressant use in a 15-hour\UBI world will increase.
- stuaxo 10y ago
  Doing low paid work, for many hours will make it hard to be motivated. When you are tired and scraping by it's hard to find the energy for things like self improvement. When your concentrating on getting food on the table + getting enough sleep. The times I've had the most time for self improvement have been when there's been a combination of time off + money. I've found, after a job finishes (e.g. company folds), or just between contracts, you need a while to decompress. But then after a while you get a lot more energy for stuff. WRT programming projects - it takes mental effort, I can't do a huge amount of it outside of hours when I'm working 5 days a week. When I take a break for a month or two I have energy for any project I like.
- amelius 10y ago
  Perhaps people will need to work on spirituality (e.g. Buddhism, meditation), in order to appreciate the BI and be happy.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  Not to be mean, but I use to be one of those menial workers (I've worked as a janitor, factor assembly, plastics, etc) and most folks were very much motivated but they weren't able to take aim at careers when they have children or relatives to care for. Also, not everything one may do for work includes what they truly aspire to do. Just because the work seems menial to you doesn't mean it's not a challenge for them. There's plenty of explanations but none of them fit with the narrative of listless proles.
jrlocke 10y ago
My archaeology professor: "Paleolithic peoples 'worked' roughly 15 hours a week, are we really so advanced now?"
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I had a surgery 20 years ago that probably saved my life (I say probably because I never tried surviving without it). I'm pretty down with all the complications we've layered over the paleolithic lifestyle.
  - jrlocke 10y ago
    I'm a t1 diabetic; I of course share your feelings on progress. That said, I'm unconvinced that technological progress is necessarily dependent on long work weeks (to start, most people working long weeks are totally uninvolved with this sort of innovation).
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Sure, but at least over medium to long periods of recent history there is a pretty direct relationship between work and economic productivity (productivity which is required to have the resources to do things like training doctors and building hospitals). It's also not true that labor is uninvolved with technology. If people are busy with the hum drum details of survival they have less time to try new ideas and the like.
  - DickingAround 10y ago
    Yea. For example median lifespan, childbirth, rule of law, the potential to expand to new galaxies. And the simple fact that if we chose to stay in the stone age some more advanced predator would kill us like we've been killing all other advanced predators. Nature tolerates no mediocrity.
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    Is it possible that our modern lifestyles are at least partially to blame for getting these diseases that need medical treatment in the first place? I.e. sitting in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day might lead to us developing these medical conditions that we must then spend thousands of dollars "fixing" (i.e. often treating the symptoms or temporarily improvement) these things that our work environment caused in the first place? Granted, yes, some things existed before this became the norm, like plagues and whatnot, but I think part of the reason we all need to be treated for medical problems is because of the nature of modern work being incompatible with human biology.
tiredofspam 10y ago
I was thinking how there are many useless jobs just because the system was so inefficient, but never stopped to think that this might be by accidental design of our economy. Take any internal team in a big company/government entity. Sure we will agree that the interest of the company is the most efficient allocation of resources to solve a problem. However the interest of the team is getting the largest budget. One sure way to do this is to need the biggest budget. While a the department N has cut costs 30% while keeping the same services would do wonders, it would totally make for a surreal headline. Why say that? That would mean less money for the next quarter. Surely you can use the spare money for better equipment/hires/N, right? I saw that in Japan, where they boast about their really low unemployment rates while in the convinis (convenience stores, similar to 7/11) there are people who are doing absolutely nothing for hours. I am sure those people's lives could be better spent otherwise.
padobson 10y ago
It seems like the big question that YC is trying to answer, but few articles like this seem to touch on, is what will a person's economic output look like when they have tons of free time? I think if you asked enough people about the things they aspire to, the things they dream about, the things that drive their ambitions, almost all of their responses would include something at least related to increased income. So it seems to me that society-wide goals should include decreasing our collective risk aversion. If you can do that with 15hr/week jobs and basic income, then it's worth trying.
anovikov 10y ago
15 work week is not possible, because nearly every job that requires any degree of thinking requires immersion. That's why programmers work 70 hour weeks - not because they hurry too much, or their employers can't afford hiring more people - but because it means being most productive when you live your work.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  Even if it were true that 70(!) hour weeks were necessary (and I'm very sceptical of that), we could still work fewer of them than we do at the moment.
- amelius 10y ago
  Some people I know had a programming side-job for 2 days/week during college. So it is possible.
- trendia 10y ago
  Programmers will still work 70 hours a week (or more). How else would we get the money to pay for basic income?!
- daleharvey 10y ago
  Programmers who do work 70 hour weeks do not do it for various reasons, because they dont have any other responsibilities, because they really love their job, because they want to get more money / success, because they are being pressured into it by an immoral employer / industry. But they do not do it because it requires that amount of time to immerse yourself in a problem, I work pretty close to half that at most and do completely fine.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  > That's why programmers work 70 hour weeks Huh? I've worked my share of 70-hour weeks, but none of them have been as a developer. In my experience productivity tends to go negative after a certain point.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
almonj 10y ago
All of these articles about how "we" should adopt the "x hours a week" working schedule assume that we are all cattle looking for instructions from out master (the state) to dictate to us how we should behave. Some people want to work more, some less. This is just more creeping authoritarianism, getting people used to the idea that your time and energy aren't YOURS but something owned by bureaucrats. I can already work any hours I want and I live the consequences with respect to how much money I make. This isn't about "free" time or solving inequality, its about getting guys with guns to steal money out of "compassion". It's a scam and it will never work.
- sitkack 10y ago
  How did we arrive at the current solution of a 5 days 40 hrs work week. It sure wasn't the state. Your statement comes off like a humble brag about how much money you make. UBI is about society as a whole, not you specifically.
  - dispo001 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    >How did we arrive at the current solution of a 5 days 40 hrs work week. It sure wasn't the state. Uh, yes it was? The modern 40 hour working week is a direct result of legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act
- cableshaft 10y ago
  > I can already work any hours I want and I live the consequences with respect to how much money I make. Well bully for you. If I want to keep my current job, I'm expected to be here from 8:30 to 5:30pm, except a lunch break. Of all the recruiters that contacted me in the past month (and there were 7 or 8 of them), every single one of those companies expected at least 8 hours of work, and probably more (games industry). There was one probable exception, a consulting company, but I have no desire to live out of a hotel 4+ days a week. I have done Freelance in the past, but hunting down work is something I'm not very good at, as I'm not really the type that can put myself out there and cold call people very easily, so I had difficulty finding enough work to keep me going. But if I could get away with working 30 hour weeks and make about 20% less than I normally would, and with full benefits, I'd be much happier, and probably more productive. Very few companies would agree to such a deal, though.
DickingAround 10y ago
Another article that confuses majority opinion with facts. Sure, 37% of people might think their job needs to exist but why do we think they would know? It presumes they can design an economy top down that doesn't need it. But it evolved and was designed by the people that own those companies. How many company execs would say they're just employing 37% of people for the no reason? And are there any economists out there foolish enough to think they could top-down design an economy that could cut out those jobs? As long as those jobs exist, we have no choice but to assume they include needed work.
- Kadin 10y ago
  I've worked some bullshit jobs from time to time. It's pretty easy to tell that you could disappear and nothing would effectively change. But at the same time, it's also generally pretty easy to justify your existence if you need the paycheck, too. The existence of most of those jobs relies on the risk intolerance of executives. They don't know for certain which people in their organization are basically bullshitting and could be fired tomorrow, and they're not willing to take the risk of firing the wrong person and screwing the entire company/team/organization. So they let things go, as long as they're making money (or, really, as long as their neck isn't personally in a noose for not making money). Periodically, companies will try to determine which employees can really be cut when money is tight, but it's surprisingly hard to determine even from one or two management levels above a particular employee whether they are really adding value or just creating the appearance of it. All you really need to do as an employee in a "bullshit job" is create just enough doubt as to whether or not you're somehow important, on some level or in some situation, so that nobody is willing to take the risk of firing you. That's it. I'm glad I don't have one of those jobs right now, but if push came to shove and it was between collecting a paycheck for a bullshit job or getting my house foreclosed on, I'd do it again. As I suspect most people would, and probably will depending on how many of the "everything will get automated" predictions come true. In a workplace with a lot of opaque automation, it wouldn't be especially hard to create the appearance of adding value just by not screwing anything up, and/or occasionally screwing something up on purpose only to "fix" it and demonstrate value (or give an implied threat of what might happen if you were fired).
danbruc 10y ago
A recent poll among Brits revealed that as many as 37 per cent think they have a job that doesn’t even need to exist. What is the incentive for companies to throw a third of their labor costs out of the window? I surely agree that it at least seems to be the case that some people are doing work that seems to serve no purpose besides getting the worker a paycheck. But it can not be 37% bad, can it? Companies should be eager to get rid of those jobs, lower prices, increase market share and capture some sweet additional profits. Why don't they? Is corruption within companies so prevalent and working so well? Or are bullshit jobs simply more of a myth, there are some but most only look useless but are actually not?
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  In my company there is this whole layer of middle management that mainly does meetings and adds their name to other people's work but don't do much else. Their main skill is to look good to their managers. Bullshit jobs are definitely not a myth. They exist and grow.
- panic 10y ago
  There's a difference between jobs that yield profit for a company and jobs that need to exist. Say you're a life insurance salesperson for a company that sells life insurance to young, healthy people who don't actually need it. The company is making money from your labor, but the job itself doesn't need to exist.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    You need life insurance if you have dependents (partner, children) regardless of age.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
mbroncano 10y ago
Software developer, 20 years experience, expat for 10 years in four different countries, mostly working for start-up companies. Without taking everything to the extreme of comparing 100 vs. 15 hours a week, and of course out of my own experience, it seems that companies with 'lenient' schedules (say regular 4-6 hours work days) tend to deliver better products (as in quality, customer acceptance, even financially) but also portrait better working environments, suffering far less employee turnover, resulting in an overall win-win. Arguably it might be rather a consequence than a cause of having good, empathetic management, final success etc., but the point stands: with all the caveats, longer working hours have early diminishing returns, my own experience as both employee and contractor dismisses the whole 'you lose skills working three days a week' idea, and the secondary outcomes of it (better products, happier customers, less turnover, etc.) are indeed worth the investment. Edit: grammar
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  The problem is that the only easy to measure number is the number of hours worked. In the end you can't really measure output or quality so management will resort to the only concrete number they have. My output is highest when I work around 4-5 hours a day with occasional 24 hours marathons when things really flow. But I can see how this would make managers nervous because they can't really tell if I am just lazy or working at peak performance.
  - notheguyouthink 10y ago
    I also imagine it would change workflows a lot for many companies. For example, my current company is very small and young (in experience). We're only now implementing meaningful workflows of builds, deploys, ci, etc... hell, even version control as previously an after thought. With that said, trying to increase staff heavily to compensate for 15h work weeks would mean a lack of workflows would impact us greatly, imo. Ie, some people here don't document their in progress work, and barely commit. How is someone else supposed to pick that up mid way through? Ie, the project still needs to get done in say, 2 weeks, but the original 40h/week dev will not be able to finish it in 2 weeks, so other people have to join in and work on it together. I'm not arguing against 15h weeks, just that it would mean single developers can't deliver the same product in the same timeframe most likely. So documentation, testing, and team communication would have to pick up the slack i imagine.
ThomPete 10y ago
15 work week only make sense in those jobs where you can actually measure that. In most modern jobs you can't as they are project based. I am a proponent of UBI as I believe it's the only sane way to deal with the coming wave of unemployment in a number of categories.
hectorperez 10y ago
Interesting list of who does and who does not support universal basic income https://goo.gl/VxKSdN https://goo.gl/VxKSdN
HalfwayToDice 10y ago
Basic Income is Utopianism. It's appeal is a populist reaction to the uncertain times we live in. No different from rightwing populism such as Trump.
berkay 10y ago
I feel most of the discussions on this topic miss the fact that the most critical challenge is not what will happen when machines will be able to do all the work, rather it's whether we'll survive the transition. Even a small increase in unemployment can cause significant social unrest, all kinds of dangerous politics, trigger wars, etc.
- ythn 10y ago
  Not this apocalyptic rhetoric again. This is reminiscent of Steven Hawking warning us that we might not survive the transition to artificial superintelligences (ASI). The problem is that ASIs are fictional. Is there significant evidence that automation is stripping us of jobs at an unsustainable rate (i.e. we are losing jobs faster than new jobs are being created)? I am optimistic that there will be work enough to do for everyone, even with mass automation.
  - sitkack 10y ago
    Optimism isn't science and at the scale of the problem it is a mistake that gets to happen only once.
    - ythn 10y ago
      > Optimism isn't science Pessimism isn't science either. > and at the scale of the problem it is a mistake that gets to happen only once. The problem doesn't even exist yet. It's a potential problem. We are speculating on potential solutions to a potential problem. There are an infinite number of potential problems. I think it's a waste to start solving them until it becomes abundantly clear there is a problem. I don't see science happening at any level here.
the-dude 10y ago
On the one hand, I feel positive about UBI. On the other hand I doubt if it would have worked for me: I have been building my 'smallest hardware startup in NL' over the last 3+ years. There were two summers which were really bad: some days it was unclear where the next hot meal would come from. I wonder if I had pulled through if there would have been UBI.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  I'm confused. It sounds like you're saying the "really bad" part was not knowing where your food was coming from. But UBI would make that a non-issue, so how would that have made setting up the startup harder?
  - the-dude 10y ago
    Sure, I see that part too. But would I have been as motivated?
didibus 10y ago
For me, it's simple, I'd love to work less, or even not have to work at all, and just be able to spend my time doing what I want and love. It's pure selfishness, but I'd move to whichever country makes this possible and sustainable for its citizens.

82 points by edward 10y ago

I don't see any supporting evidence in this article which suggests that people working 15 hours are happier than those working say 35 hours. It's also hard for me to imagine that 15 hours is enough to sustain a level of productive output requiring intellectual work and extensive knowledge of a subject matter - unused skills rust and 15 hours seems like some kind of bare minimum level just to sustain rudimentary skill, let alone develop it. > A recent poll among Brits revealed that as many as 37 per cent think they have a job that doesn’t even need to exist. I'm not going to deliberate on the prevalence of bullshit jobs and their impact on quality of life (which seems to be where the article takes it's main pitch), but given that - I rather disagree that not working is the solution that obviously follows.

AndrewDucker 10y ago
Yeah. There are lots of useful things people could be doing, and largely I think that doing productive things is good for people.
cujo 10y ago
I get the feeling that 15 hours is a ballpark number and there are certain occupations that do require more time "in the seat" to make good progress. It's probably also true that if you're putting in only ~15 hours of productivity, you're probably going to dedicate some extra time to learning new things, advancing skills, etc. My experience tells me that, as a developer, an awful lot of what I do could definitely fit in that 15 hour window if there are 2 other people also doing "my" job. Splitting up my week's tasks with the 3 of us putting in 45 hours would result in much more productivity, in my opinion. I'd then have much more time to do things I wanted to do, and experiment with new tech for shits and giggles. That often gets pushed back in favor of other life experiences these days.
aninhumer 10y ago
>unused skills rust and 15 hours seems like some kind of bare minimum level just to sustain rudimentary skill Eh I think skills are stickier than that. FWIW, I spent about 6 months doing almost no programming, but I didn't feel particularly unproductive when I started again. Besides which, there's no reason people can't be continuing developing their skills in the remaining hours anyway. The 15 hours is just how much time you have to spend doing what you're told. And you can likely learn much more efficiently if you work with that intent instead of acquiring skills incidentally as your job requires.
- stuaxo 10y ago
  Exactly, when it frees up time you can be productive doing your own things. Having 2 days off a week, really is only enough time to do chores, not enough to spend on your own skills or do anything productive for yourself. As a contractor, I tend to take 1-3 months off between contracts + it seems to help, not hinder. I'm much fresher when I go into the next contract.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    For many people "doing their own things" is gonna be playing more Counter-Strike. Of course, that's their right, but whether you can make a sustainable economy out of subsidizing that is another question...a question that is much more pressing than "wouldn't that be better?" and one the article doesn't even attempt to answer, probably because it is largely impossible and anything like it is speculation akin to religion.
    - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
      > For many people "doing their own things" is gonna be playing more Counter-Strike. Also is "more Counter-Strike" at all correlated with a quality of life increase? 45 free minutes you wouldn't have had to get rid of some stress shooting things - probably yes? 5 hours a day - probably not?
    - thehardsphere 10y ago
      > For many people "doing their own things" is gonna be playing more Counter-Strike. Or worse, shooting heroin.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
He's literally selling a book called UTOPIA. There's a reason he cites a survey as one of his main pieces of evidence - he doesn't have any. It's pie in the sky feel good that doesn't have any evidence. You don't start with universal basic income and a 15-hour work week when the current baseline is 40 hours and a lack of decent health insurance.
- markvdb 10y ago
  To be fair, he seems to be speaking about the socially developed part of the western world. Fairly decent to very good quality universal healthcare is available in large parts of western Europe, Japan, Canada... Even large parts of eastern Europe have (the remains of) somewhat decent universal healthcare thanks to their socialist past. It's fairly clear that there isn't even support in the current US ruling class for universal healthcare. That makes anything even remotely like basic income largely irrelevant there.
dahart 10y ago
> 15 hours seems like some kind of bare minimum level just to sustain rudimentary skill, let alone develop it I've been programming professionally, and developing my skills at a medium pace for a couple of decades. After a few years now of actually tracking my time to the minute, I often get less than 15 hours of programming in a 40 hour work week. Meetings, chat & email, lunches & breaks, and sooner or later some degree of management, these things add up to a majority of your time. If you filled a 15 hour work week with meetings and included a lunch hour, then yeah, there's no coding getting done. But I would hope spending less time working means and implies to a greater degree shedding all the time we spend at work not working.
- valuearb 10y ago
  As much as i hate to say it, meetings and planning matter. blindly programming isn't work.
  - gregmac 10y ago
    The key is having productive meetings. If a meeting ends with no action items (assigned to specific people) and no decisions made, it was a useless meeting, and you should stop having it. Status updates can be written down and emailed, or better, posted to a wiki.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Does it scale like that though? If you do 15 hours of work over a 40 hour week, do you still do 15 hours of work over a 15 hour week, or do people end up doing 5 hours of work? Is there any evidence either way? These discussions always bring out the anecdotes, but we need hard stats to show whether this is even doable.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I have worked in at least one organization where the meetings were likely there to prevent work from being done too quickly with an activity that still counted as billable hours. Just before I left, the "daily stand-up" included the entire development team and testing team, and lasted a minimum of 45 minutes. That was nearly 20 people, packed into one office, justifying their existence on a daily basis. So some people would actually dedicate that 15 hours to getting things done, and some people would still fill it up with bullshit and game the management metrics to maximize pay per unit of effort.
karmajunkie 10y ago
Anecdata, but I'm MUCH happier when working 15 instead of 35 and certainly 40-50 hours a week, provided I'm making the same money (or more to the point, keeping the same'ish lifestyle, albeit with more free time.) That doesn't mean I'm unoccupied an additional 20 hours a week, but being occupied with my choice of activities is way better.
- glenneroo 10y ago
  Contributing my own anecdata: I'm in a similar situation - I voluntarily started working 20 hours/week for the last 9 years. In my spare time I've taken up multiple new hobbies and cultivated older hobbies into semi-part-time jobs (a few hours a month). I can't ever imagine the torture of working 40+ hours/week ever again.
karmajunkie 10y ago
Anecdata, but I'm MUCH happier when working 15 instead of 35 and certainly 40-50 hours a week, provided I'm making the same money (or more to the point, keeping the same'ish lifestyle, albeit with more free time.) That doesn't mean I'm unoccupied an additional 20 hours a week, but being occupied with my choice of activities is way better.
alexc05 10y ago
So a few years ago I read Tim Ferriss' "the four hour work week" - and while I will not go on a screed about the part that I find ridiculous, I do think the chapter (and recurring thread) about "what do you do with when you work 4 hours a week" is entirely relevant here. The summary / thesis of life-after-work is that we must "find a muse" - which is to say, since you no longer must work your entire life away, you may now re-allocate those same hours doing something that you love. Even something that you are wildly, obsessively, passionate about. A small portion of the current policy research around AI & Automation is how do we deal with the emotional fallout among people who feel they've lost their purpose. How do we convince people that it is OK to "take a handout"? There are really deep cultural implications to that idea. There are people who believe "there's no such thing as a free lunch" - consider the Georgia representative who very specifically floated the idea of making poor children sweep floors in schools in exchange for meals "in order to teach them the important life lesson that there is no such thing as a free lunch" http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-rep-suggests-kids-clean-schools-in-exchange-for-lunch http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-rep-suggests-kids-... ... like that is someone who really believes in that as a principle as opposed to just a colloquialism. What would it do to their self esteem if they were suddenly taking free money? How many parents would be happy to spend an extra hour with their kids in the morning? A couple of extra hours at night? A few extra hours to learn guitar or beat that next level of super-mario?
- Taylor_OD 10y ago
  I've move from a company where I had to be there 9-5:30+ to a company with flex hours. Earlier in the week I leave around 3-4 somewhat regularly because on other days I have to be at work until 8:30+. Even with a couple extra hours at home a week it's hard to find exactly what I should be doing. I tried to put together a schedule of taking some online classes I've watched to for a while, writing, spending 30-1 hour playing games I've been meaning to play, and generally calling / talking to friends and family more. However I still find myself in a loop of checking reddit, youtube, facebook, and hackernews over and over around 7PM. I understand its a problem born from extreme privilege but if the future is filled with more free time it's a problem that many will run into.

rodionos 10y ago

I'm trying to reconcile how these utopian ideas should work in globally competitive industries where companies need to win revenue and customers on a daily basis. I can see this working in protected environments but how is this going to work out for companies in industries where only the paranoid survive.

justaman 10y ago

I don't know if a universal "BASIC" income is something that will make people happy if that person can only afford the -basics-. There was a study done a few years ago that claimed happiness increased in tandem with salary up until ~$80,000(depends on where you live). Then anything above $80k saw a negligible increase in happiness. This article states that many people feel that their job is pointless and doesnt really contribute any great benefit to society. These people are therefore working only for the money, which, the article claims they may not need otherwise. I think many people who already work menial jobs that are threatened by automation lack a certain drive for self-improvment that would need to be a required aspect of their lives if they otherwise have an extra 25-30 hours a week. Would these menial workers improve other aspects of their lives or simply watch more Netflix? I think anti-depressant use in a 15-hour\UBI world will increase.

stuaxo 10y ago
Doing low paid work, for many hours will make it hard to be motivated. When you are tired and scraping by it's hard to find the energy for things like self improvement. When your concentrating on getting food on the table + getting enough sleep. The times I've had the most time for self improvement have been when there's been a combination of time off + money. I've found, after a job finishes (e.g. company folds), or just between contracts, you need a while to decompress. But then after a while you get a lot more energy for stuff. WRT programming projects - it takes mental effort, I can't do a huge amount of it outside of hours when I'm working 5 days a week. When I take a break for a month or two I have energy for any project I like.
amelius 10y ago
Perhaps people will need to work on spirituality (e.g. Buddhism, meditation), in order to appreciate the BI and be happy.
norea-armozel 10y ago
Not to be mean, but I use to be one of those menial workers (I've worked as a janitor, factor assembly, plastics, etc) and most folks were very much motivated but they weren't able to take aim at careers when they have children or relatives to care for. Also, not everything one may do for work includes what they truly aspire to do. Just because the work seems menial to you doesn't mean it's not a challenge for them. There's plenty of explanations but none of them fit with the narrative of listless proles.

jrlocke 10y ago

My archaeology professor: "Paleolithic peoples 'worked' roughly 15 hours a week, are we really so advanced now?"

maxerickson 10y ago
I had a surgery 20 years ago that probably saved my life (I say probably because I never tried surviving without it). I'm pretty down with all the complications we've layered over the paleolithic lifestyle.
- jrlocke 10y ago
  I'm a t1 diabetic; I of course share your feelings on progress. That said, I'm unconvinced that technological progress is necessarily dependent on long work weeks (to start, most people working long weeks are totally uninvolved with this sort of innovation).
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Sure, but at least over medium to long periods of recent history there is a pretty direct relationship between work and economic productivity (productivity which is required to have the resources to do things like training doctors and building hospitals). It's also not true that labor is uninvolved with technology. If people are busy with the hum drum details of survival they have less time to try new ideas and the like.
- DickingAround 10y ago
  Yea. For example median lifespan, childbirth, rule of law, the potential to expand to new galaxies. And the simple fact that if we chose to stay in the stone age some more advanced predator would kill us like we've been killing all other advanced predators. Nature tolerates no mediocrity.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  Is it possible that our modern lifestyles are at least partially to blame for getting these diseases that need medical treatment in the first place? I.e. sitting in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day might lead to us developing these medical conditions that we must then spend thousands of dollars "fixing" (i.e. often treating the symptoms or temporarily improvement) these things that our work environment caused in the first place? Granted, yes, some things existed before this became the norm, like plagues and whatnot, but I think part of the reason we all need to be treated for medical problems is because of the nature of modern work being incompatible with human biology.

tiredofspam 10y ago

I was thinking how there are many useless jobs just because the system was so inefficient, but never stopped to think that this might be by accidental design of our economy. Take any internal team in a big company/government entity. Sure we will agree that the interest of the company is the most efficient allocation of resources to solve a problem. However the interest of the team is getting the largest budget. One sure way to do this is to need the biggest budget. While a the department N has cut costs 30% while keeping the same services would do wonders, it would totally make for a surreal headline. Why say that? That would mean less money for the next quarter. Surely you can use the spare money for better equipment/hires/N, right? I saw that in Japan, where they boast about their really low unemployment rates while in the convinis (convenience stores, similar to 7/11) there are people who are doing absolutely nothing for hours. I am sure those people's lives could be better spent otherwise.

padobson 10y ago

It seems like the big question that YC is trying to answer, but few articles like this seem to touch on, is what will a person's economic output look like when they have tons of free time? I think if you asked enough people about the things they aspire to, the things they dream about, the things that drive their ambitions, almost all of their responses would include something at least related to increased income. So it seems to me that society-wide goals should include decreasing our collective risk aversion. If you can do that with 15hr/week jobs and basic income, then it's worth trying.

anovikov 10y ago

15 work week is not possible, because nearly every job that requires any degree of thinking requires immersion. That's why programmers work 70 hour weeks - not because they hurry too much, or their employers can't afford hiring more people - but because it means being most productive when you live your work.

aninhumer 10y ago
Even if it were true that 70(!) hour weeks were necessary (and I'm very sceptical of that), we could still work fewer of them than we do at the moment.
amelius 10y ago
Some people I know had a programming side-job for 2 days/week during college. So it is possible.
trendia 10y ago
Programmers will still work 70 hours a week (or more). How else would we get the money to pay for basic income?!
daleharvey 10y ago
Programmers who do work 70 hour weeks do not do it for various reasons, because they dont have any other responsibilities, because they really love their job, because they want to get more money / success, because they are being pressured into it by an immoral employer / industry. But they do not do it because it requires that amount of time to immerse yourself in a problem, I work pretty close to half that at most and do completely fine.
LyndsySimon 10y ago
> That's why programmers work 70 hour weeks Huh? I've worked my share of 70-hour weeks, but none of them have been as a developer. In my experience productivity tends to go negative after a certain point.
- logfromblammo 10y ago

almonj 10y ago

All of these articles about how "we" should adopt the "x hours a week" working schedule assume that we are all cattle looking for instructions from out master (the state) to dictate to us how we should behave. Some people want to work more, some less. This is just more creeping authoritarianism, getting people used to the idea that your time and energy aren't YOURS but something owned by bureaucrats. I can already work any hours I want and I live the consequences with respect to how much money I make. This isn't about "free" time or solving inequality, its about getting guys with guns to steal money out of "compassion". It's a scam and it will never work.

sitkack 10y ago
How did we arrive at the current solution of a 5 days 40 hrs work week. It sure wasn't the state. Your statement comes off like a humble brag about how much money you make. UBI is about society as a whole, not you specifically.
- dispo001 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
- aninhumer 10y ago
  >How did we arrive at the current solution of a 5 days 40 hrs work week. It sure wasn't the state. Uh, yes it was? The modern 40 hour working week is a direct result of legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act
cableshaft 10y ago
> I can already work any hours I want and I live the consequences with respect to how much money I make. Well bully for you. If I want to keep my current job, I'm expected to be here from 8:30 to 5:30pm, except a lunch break. Of all the recruiters that contacted me in the past month (and there were 7 or 8 of them), every single one of those companies expected at least 8 hours of work, and probably more (games industry). There was one probable exception, a consulting company, but I have no desire to live out of a hotel 4+ days a week. I have done Freelance in the past, but hunting down work is something I'm not very good at, as I'm not really the type that can put myself out there and cold call people very easily, so I had difficulty finding enough work to keep me going. But if I could get away with working 30 hour weeks and make about 20% less than I normally would, and with full benefits, I'd be much happier, and probably more productive. Very few companies would agree to such a deal, though.

DickingAround 10y ago

Another article that confuses majority opinion with facts. Sure, 37% of people might think their job needs to exist but why do we think they would know? It presumes they can design an economy top down that doesn't need it. But it evolved and was designed by the people that own those companies. How many company execs would say they're just employing 37% of people for the no reason? And are there any economists out there foolish enough to think they could top-down design an economy that could cut out those jobs? As long as those jobs exist, we have no choice but to assume they include needed work.

Kadin 10y ago
I've worked some bullshit jobs from time to time. It's pretty easy to tell that you could disappear and nothing would effectively change. But at the same time, it's also generally pretty easy to justify your existence if you need the paycheck, too. The existence of most of those jobs relies on the risk intolerance of executives. They don't know for certain which people in their organization are basically bullshitting and could be fired tomorrow, and they're not willing to take the risk of firing the wrong person and screwing the entire company/team/organization. So they let things go, as long as they're making money (or, really, as long as their neck isn't personally in a noose for not making money). Periodically, companies will try to determine which employees can really be cut when money is tight, but it's surprisingly hard to determine even from one or two management levels above a particular employee whether they are really adding value or just creating the appearance of it. All you really need to do as an employee in a "bullshit job" is create just enough doubt as to whether or not you're somehow important, on some level or in some situation, so that nobody is willing to take the risk of firing you. That's it. I'm glad I don't have one of those jobs right now, but if push came to shove and it was between collecting a paycheck for a bullshit job or getting my house foreclosed on, I'd do it again. As I suspect most people would, and probably will depending on how many of the "everything will get automated" predictions come true. In a workplace with a lot of opaque automation, it wouldn't be especially hard to create the appearance of adding value just by not screwing anything up, and/or occasionally screwing something up on purpose only to "fix" it and demonstrate value (or give an implied threat of what might happen if you were fired).

danbruc 10y ago

A recent poll among Brits revealed that as many as 37 per cent think they have a job that doesn’t even need to exist. What is the incentive for companies to throw a third of their labor costs out of the window? I surely agree that it at least seems to be the case that some people are doing work that seems to serve no purpose besides getting the worker a paycheck. But it can not be 37% bad, can it? Companies should be eager to get rid of those jobs, lower prices, increase market share and capture some sweet additional profits. Why don't they? Is corruption within companies so prevalent and working so well? Or are bullshit jobs simply more of a myth, there are some but most only look useless but are actually not?

maxxxxx 10y ago
In my company there is this whole layer of middle management that mainly does meetings and adds their name to other people's work but don't do much else. Their main skill is to look good to their managers. Bullshit jobs are definitely not a myth. They exist and grow.
panic 10y ago
There's a difference between jobs that yield profit for a company and jobs that need to exist. Say you're a life insurance salesperson for a company that sells life insurance to young, healthy people who don't actually need it. The company is making money from your labor, but the job itself doesn't need to exist.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  You need life insurance if you have dependents (partner, children) regardless of age.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

mbroncano 10y ago

Software developer, 20 years experience, expat for 10 years in four different countries, mostly working for start-up companies. Without taking everything to the extreme of comparing 100 vs. 15 hours a week, and of course out of my own experience, it seems that companies with 'lenient' schedules (say regular 4-6 hours work days) tend to deliver better products (as in quality, customer acceptance, even financially) but also portrait better working environments, suffering far less employee turnover, resulting in an overall win-win. Arguably it might be rather a consequence than a cause of having good, empathetic management, final success etc., but the point stands: with all the caveats, longer working hours have early diminishing returns, my own experience as both employee and contractor dismisses the whole 'you lose skills working three days a week' idea, and the secondary outcomes of it (better products, happier customers, less turnover, etc.) are indeed worth the investment. Edit: grammar

maxxxxx 10y ago
The problem is that the only easy to measure number is the number of hours worked. In the end you can't really measure output or quality so management will resort to the only concrete number they have. My output is highest when I work around 4-5 hours a day with occasional 24 hours marathons when things really flow. But I can see how this would make managers nervous because they can't really tell if I am just lazy or working at peak performance.
- notheguyouthink 10y ago
  I also imagine it would change workflows a lot for many companies. For example, my current company is very small and young (in experience). We're only now implementing meaningful workflows of builds, deploys, ci, etc... hell, even version control as previously an after thought. With that said, trying to increase staff heavily to compensate for 15h work weeks would mean a lack of workflows would impact us greatly, imo. Ie, some people here don't document their in progress work, and barely commit. How is someone else supposed to pick that up mid way through? Ie, the project still needs to get done in say, 2 weeks, but the original 40h/week dev will not be able to finish it in 2 weeks, so other people have to join in and work on it together. I'm not arguing against 15h weeks, just that it would mean single developers can't deliver the same product in the same timeframe most likely. So documentation, testing, and team communication would have to pick up the slack i imagine.

ThomPete 10y ago

15 work week only make sense in those jobs where you can actually measure that. In most modern jobs you can't as they are project based. I am a proponent of UBI as I believe it's the only sane way to deal with the coming wave of unemployment in a number of categories.

hectorperez 10y ago

Interesting list of who does and who does not support universal basic income https://goo.gl/VxKSdN https://goo.gl/VxKSdN

HalfwayToDice 10y ago

Basic Income is Utopianism. It's appeal is a populist reaction to the uncertain times we live in. No different from rightwing populism such as Trump.

berkay 10y ago

I feel most of the discussions on this topic miss the fact that the most critical challenge is not what will happen when machines will be able to do all the work, rather it's whether we'll survive the transition. Even a small increase in unemployment can cause significant social unrest, all kinds of dangerous politics, trigger wars, etc.

ythn 10y ago
Not this apocalyptic rhetoric again. This is reminiscent of Steven Hawking warning us that we might not survive the transition to artificial superintelligences (ASI). The problem is that ASIs are fictional. Is there significant evidence that automation is stripping us of jobs at an unsustainable rate (i.e. we are losing jobs faster than new jobs are being created)? I am optimistic that there will be work enough to do for everyone, even with mass automation.
- sitkack 10y ago
  Optimism isn't science and at the scale of the problem it is a mistake that gets to happen only once.
  - ythn 10y ago
    > Optimism isn't science Pessimism isn't science either. > and at the scale of the problem it is a mistake that gets to happen only once. The problem doesn't even exist yet. It's a potential problem. We are speculating on potential solutions to a potential problem. There are an infinite number of potential problems. I think it's a waste to start solving them until it becomes abundantly clear there is a problem. I don't see science happening at any level here.

the-dude 10y ago

On the one hand, I feel positive about UBI. On the other hand I doubt if it would have worked for me: I have been building my 'smallest hardware startup in NL' over the last 3+ years. There were two summers which were really bad: some days it was unclear where the next hot meal would come from. I wonder if I had pulled through if there would have been UBI.

aninhumer 10y ago
I'm confused. It sounds like you're saying the "really bad" part was not knowing where your food was coming from. But UBI would make that a non-issue, so how would that have made setting up the startup harder?
- the-dude 10y ago
  Sure, I see that part too. But would I have been as motivated?

didibus 10y ago

For me, it's simple, I'd love to work less, or even not have to work at all, and just be able to spend my time doing what I want and love. It's pure selfishness, but I'd move to whichever country makes this possible and sustainable for its citizens.