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> The Economic Policy Institute shows that productivity increased by 21.6%, yet wages grew by only 1.8% during this time period. > Companies need to do somethi

by saboot 10y ago

> The Economic Policy Institute shows that productivity increased by 21.6%, yet wages grew by only 1.8% during this time period. > Companies need to do something about this burnout crisis now because otherwise, they will pay the high price of turnover. Hm, what on earth could they possibly do? It's a mystery shrouded in an enigma!

digitalsushi 10y ago
I want a job where I pick my next promotion between salary raise and more time off. I dont want a 10k raise. I want a halfday friday from now on.
- rubicon33 10y ago
  I know someone who negotiated a 4 day work week as part of a new job. He took less salary but, in the end, the time was far more valuable. If you're a software engineer, now is the time to start asking for things like that. If you don't think you'll ever get it at your current job, start looking elsewhere. It's possible, albeit, unlikely.
  - jharger 10y ago
    This sounds amazing, but it also kind of scares me. How do you enforce your employment agreement so that they don't just eventually increase your work week to 5 days and keep you at the same lower salary?
    - xyzzyz 10y ago
      You put it into the employment contract, and in any case, you can always leave.
      - pc86 10y ago
        Most places don't have employment contracts. The short answer is you can't. Your boss is always within his or her right to tell you that you have to stay. You're 100% within your right to say "no" and walk out of the door.
        xyzzyz 10y ago
        By "you can leave" I mean you can quit and find new employment.
        pdeuchler 10y ago
        >> Most places don't have employment contracts. Wait, what?! I'm on the younger side, even for a forum like this, and I've had an employment contract for every job I've ever had... even as an intern, short term contractor, or just summer jobs in high school. I'd immediately walk away from any offer that didn't include an employment contract. Not putting your terms of employment in writing can only result in you, the employee, getting exploited. There are no positives.
        phil21 10y ago
        He means an actual contract, not the US 'contract' which is just the equivalent of you signing a bunch of click-through EULAs stating they have the right to fire you for any reason at any time. I've worked a job with a real contract once in my career. I'm not sure I would do it again. Not being able to quit is a strange feeling, even though there is quite a lot of consideration in return. In the end I opted to not renew and go back to a simple at-will agreement, since I kind of resented the lack of freedom it gave me. A real contract actually means they must pay the full length regardless of if they fire you, save of course for specific "for cause" reasons outlined in the agreement.
    - tokai 10y ago
      >How do you enforce your employment agreement so that they don't just eventually increase your work week to 5 days and keep you at the same lower salary? Through unions and collective bargaining.
  - soulnothing 10y ago
    I tried this back in Philly. I asked for 3 13s or 4 10s. With 75% of the discussed salary, I was fully expecting to go down to 70%. If I'm left the hell alone, I get a majority of my sprint work done in the first few days. Barring tedium, like upgrading network vendor devices. The most common answer was click. They just hung up on me. I burned several recruiting firms. Telling me I was not passionate about this career choice. I was also told about several companies. How dare I think I was special, and that I didn't commit to the team culture. My explanation was that to fully exercise my mind I have a variety of hobbies that eat up time. I'm working on a novel, acting, etc. They're not competing, but they provide benefit to the company. Nope. I approach this one with real caution now.
    - ianleeclark 10y ago
      Just curious, but why would you expect lower salary for essentially the same time being worked?
      - soulnothing 10y ago
        I've found something has got to give. Asking for a WFH day, or working a special schedule. Because you're not a team player, not willing to work with everyone else. You're viewed from the get go as a problem. In turn since your not the ideal candidate, you'll be paid less. I started asking for 90% of base comp, and that actually resulted in some yelling. I view this all as bupkus. But so many companies want 40 hours a butt in a seat, in case something is on fire.
        mjevans 10y ago
        That is what they /say/ isn't it, but what they actually want is the thought of someone being "full time" as if they can use that person 24/7 by paying for them "full time". They're misunderstanding the meaning of the phrase. Real //coverage// requires shifts of multiple people for the same job. "Being reachable", used to involve special extra pay just for the option of being called in (actual pay).
  - pc86 10y ago
    I wouldn't even say it's unlikely as long as you're an asset to the company. But keep in mind even a half day off every week at the same rate is approximately the same as a 10% raise. How often to companies give out 10% raises? And negotiating from 4.5 to 4 is certainly going to be even harder. However if your boss offers you a 5% raise and you counter with a 5% pay cut and you're out the door at noon every on the last work day of every week, you'd be surprised how willing they would be do to that.
  - mysterydip 10y ago
    My previous job I was working 5 days a week plus some nights and many weekends because they didn't have the staff for an actual functional on-call rotation. My current job is a compressed work shedule: 9hr days but every other friday off. The friday I do work is 8hrs. And no on-call. I can actually do errands and appointments and spend time with family without taking a vacation day. I love it.
cookiecaper 10y ago
I don't think a pay bump is the right prescription for burnout. In fact, it may contribute to it, because the recipient may feel that they need to work harder to justify the additional income. Increased spending may further strain finances despite the raise, also causing a jump in stress. The best way for a company to keep an employee trapped is to grossly overpay them. People quickly scale their obligations up to meet their income, and that usually means that employees will not have the option to go somewhere else if they are paid well above market. As the employee seeks a new position on the open market and becomes aware of their predicament, the stress they experience goes up, not down. "More money, more problems", as they say. This is not to justify wage slavery or underpaid workforces, but only to indicate the solution to every problem is not "throw money at it". We should recognize that the industrialized working habits are unnatural and not necessarily something that maintains its own homeostasis with humanity. There's no guarantee that we'll be able sustain this lifestyle, on either a personal or social scale.
- harrumph 10y ago
  >This is not to justify wage slavery or underpaid workforces [...] I grant this is not your intent, but it is nonetheless exactly the effect of the line of thought. For me, the core of the burnout problem is non-cooperative ownership of the means of production, aka capitalism. The working persons who create all the value in an enterprise are not the persons who make the governance decisions nor the persons who realize full profit from that work. These conflicts of interest are what lie at the root of burnout at least to my eyes.
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    I'd argue that the working people make the ultimate governance decision. Whether or not to come in tomorrow. They are the means of production. Witness the comedy of the failing business where 10 middle managers have endless meetings about what the last remaining builder should build.
    - dasil003 10y ago
      Only a union can actually coalesce all that agency into an actual decision that affects production though. Otherwise the individuals who opt out are just statistical noise on the spreadsheet.
ryangittins 10y ago
I'm a little ignorant on this subject so please forgive me, but does the measurement of productivity account for advances in technology? With modern software I can produce the output of hundreds of people from the 1960s orders of magnitude faster. Does that make me more productive? I mean, it does in terms of output, but not input. I'm not really working harder. I'm not really even working smarter. I'm just working on the shoulders of giants. If I hired a guy to paint a room and gave him a 1-inch wide paintbrush it would take him significantly longer than a guy with a 2-foot wide paint roller. Is the second guy more productive? He does the same thing in less time. If you pay him hourly, you pay him less. You pay less for the same output. He's not working harder. He's just using better tools. Again, I'm totally ignorant on what exactly "productivity" means in this context. Perhaps this is a well-understood facet of the problem and it is accounted for.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- pc2g4d 10y ago
  It's an economics term. Basically, how much output to you get for a given amount of input. It's more about the market value of the components than about how much physical stuff was produced.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Productivity is kinda like GDP normalized against how many people were actually working. So if global war or famine destroyed your working population but your GDP stayed the same afterwards, that would represent an increased productivity. From [1], "... labor productivity measures the amount of real gross domestic product (GDP) produced by an hour of labor" [1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-productivity.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-productivity.asp
  - VLM 10y ago
    The problem with that is labor is moving out of the economic system. Much more at the bottom than near the top where programmer laborers work, but it'll get here. For example, walmart doesn't pay for employees food anymore because food stamps/EBT aka taxpayers pay for their employees food. Their labor no longer has a dollar value of food or their labor no longer pays for food, sorta. Their employees have left the legacy dollar based food marketplace. Similar things go on with medical care and no bennie jobs. If you believe in the new urbanism religion then people no longer own cars anymore, cars are certainly very expensive and basically unaffordable to the working poor, and someone else is funding the unprofitable mass transit systems... for now. Certainly people who can't afford cars are no longer part of the car economy. The ultimate extreme of income inequality would be something like the last two unmerged corporations in the USA merge, creating trillions in merger fees as part of the GDP, which divided across many McJob hours would appear to make us all fabulously wealthy, but all the money is located somewhere else, and we all get our food from EBT and health care from medicare and housing has govt assistance leading to most people not really being involved in the legacy economy anymore. Its not as far fetched as you'd think. There's only 100M full time jobs for 320M people. Two thirds of people live off one third of the people still working. That ratio will increase with automation.

by saboot 10y ago

digitalsushi 10y ago

I want a job where I pick my next promotion between salary raise and more time off. I dont want a 10k raise. I want a halfday friday from now on.

rubicon33 10y ago
I know someone who negotiated a 4 day work week as part of a new job. He took less salary but, in the end, the time was far more valuable. If you're a software engineer, now is the time to start asking for things like that. If you don't think you'll ever get it at your current job, start looking elsewhere. It's possible, albeit, unlikely.
- jharger 10y ago
  This sounds amazing, but it also kind of scares me. How do you enforce your employment agreement so that they don't just eventually increase your work week to 5 days and keep you at the same lower salary?
  - xyzzyz 10y ago
    You put it into the employment contract, and in any case, you can always leave.
    - pc86 10y ago
      Most places don't have employment contracts. The short answer is you can't. Your boss is always within his or her right to tell you that you have to stay. You're 100% within your right to say "no" and walk out of the door.
      - xyzzyz 10y ago
        By "you can leave" I mean you can quit and find new employment.
      - pdeuchler 10y ago
        >> Most places don't have employment contracts. Wait, what?! I'm on the younger side, even for a forum like this, and I've had an employment contract for every job I've ever had... even as an intern, short term contractor, or just summer jobs in high school. I'd immediately walk away from any offer that didn't include an employment contract. Not putting your terms of employment in writing can only result in you, the employee, getting exploited. There are no positives.
        phil21 10y ago
        He means an actual contract, not the US 'contract' which is just the equivalent of you signing a bunch of click-through EULAs stating they have the right to fire you for any reason at any time. I've worked a job with a real contract once in my career. I'm not sure I would do it again. Not being able to quit is a strange feeling, even though there is quite a lot of consideration in return. In the end I opted to not renew and go back to a simple at-will agreement, since I kind of resented the lack of freedom it gave me. A real contract actually means they must pay the full length regardless of if they fire you, save of course for specific "for cause" reasons outlined in the agreement.
  - tokai 10y ago
    >How do you enforce your employment agreement so that they don't just eventually increase your work week to 5 days and keep you at the same lower salary? Through unions and collective bargaining.
- soulnothing 10y ago
  I tried this back in Philly. I asked for 3 13s or 4 10s. With 75% of the discussed salary, I was fully expecting to go down to 70%. If I'm left the hell alone, I get a majority of my sprint work done in the first few days. Barring tedium, like upgrading network vendor devices. The most common answer was click. They just hung up on me. I burned several recruiting firms. Telling me I was not passionate about this career choice. I was also told about several companies. How dare I think I was special, and that I didn't commit to the team culture. My explanation was that to fully exercise my mind I have a variety of hobbies that eat up time. I'm working on a novel, acting, etc. They're not competing, but they provide benefit to the company. Nope. I approach this one with real caution now.
  - ianleeclark 10y ago
    Just curious, but why would you expect lower salary for essentially the same time being worked?
    - soulnothing 10y ago
      I've found something has got to give. Asking for a WFH day, or working a special schedule. Because you're not a team player, not willing to work with everyone else. You're viewed from the get go as a problem. In turn since your not the ideal candidate, you'll be paid less. I started asking for 90% of base comp, and that actually resulted in some yelling. I view this all as bupkus. But so many companies want 40 hours a butt in a seat, in case something is on fire.
      - mjevans 10y ago
        That is what they /say/ isn't it, but what they actually want is the thought of someone being "full time" as if they can use that person 24/7 by paying for them "full time". They're misunderstanding the meaning of the phrase. Real //coverage// requires shifts of multiple people for the same job. "Being reachable", used to involve special extra pay just for the option of being called in (actual pay).
- pc86 10y ago
  I wouldn't even say it's unlikely as long as you're an asset to the company. But keep in mind even a half day off every week at the same rate is approximately the same as a 10% raise. How often to companies give out 10% raises? And negotiating from 4.5 to 4 is certainly going to be even harder. However if your boss offers you a 5% raise and you counter with a 5% pay cut and you're out the door at noon every on the last work day of every week, you'd be surprised how willing they would be do to that.
- mysterydip 10y ago
  My previous job I was working 5 days a week plus some nights and many weekends because they didn't have the staff for an actual functional on-call rotation. My current job is a compressed work shedule: 9hr days but every other friday off. The friday I do work is 8hrs. And no on-call. I can actually do errands and appointments and spend time with family without taking a vacation day. I love it.

cookiecaper 10y ago

I don't think a pay bump is the right prescription for burnout. In fact, it may contribute to it, because the recipient may feel that they need to work harder to justify the additional income. Increased spending may further strain finances despite the raise, also causing a jump in stress. The best way for a company to keep an employee trapped is to grossly overpay them. People quickly scale their obligations up to meet their income, and that usually means that employees will not have the option to go somewhere else if they are paid well above market. As the employee seeks a new position on the open market and becomes aware of their predicament, the stress they experience goes up, not down. "More money, more problems", as they say. This is not to justify wage slavery or underpaid workforces, but only to indicate the solution to every problem is not "throw money at it". We should recognize that the industrialized working habits are unnatural and not necessarily something that maintains its own homeostasis with humanity. There's no guarantee that we'll be able sustain this lifestyle, on either a personal or social scale.

harrumph 10y ago
>This is not to justify wage slavery or underpaid workforces [...] I grant this is not your intent, but it is nonetheless exactly the effect of the line of thought. For me, the core of the burnout problem is non-cooperative ownership of the means of production, aka capitalism. The working persons who create all the value in an enterprise are not the persons who make the governance decisions nor the persons who realize full profit from that work. These conflicts of interest are what lie at the root of burnout at least to my eyes.
- noonespecial 10y ago
  I'd argue that the working people make the ultimate governance decision. Whether or not to come in tomorrow. They are the means of production. Witness the comedy of the failing business where 10 middle managers have endless meetings about what the last remaining builder should build.
  - dasil003 10y ago
    Only a union can actually coalesce all that agency into an actual decision that affects production though. Otherwise the individuals who opt out are just statistical noise on the spreadsheet.

ryangittins 10y ago

I'm a little ignorant on this subject so please forgive me, but does the measurement of productivity account for advances in technology? With modern software I can produce the output of hundreds of people from the 1960s orders of magnitude faster. Does that make me more productive? I mean, it does in terms of output, but not input. I'm not really working harder. I'm not really even working smarter. I'm just working on the shoulders of giants. If I hired a guy to paint a room and gave him a 1-inch wide paintbrush it would take him significantly longer than a guy with a 2-foot wide paint roller. Is the second guy more productive? He does the same thing in less time. If you pay him hourly, you pay him less. You pay less for the same output. He's not working harder. He's just using better tools. Again, I'm totally ignorant on what exactly "productivity" means in this context. Perhaps this is a well-understood facet of the problem and it is accounted for.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pc2g4d 10y ago
It's an economics term. Basically, how much output to you get for a given amount of input. It's more about the market value of the components than about how much physical stuff was produced.
wyldfire 10y ago
Productivity is kinda like GDP normalized against how many people were actually working. So if global war or famine destroyed your working population but your GDP stayed the same afterwards, that would represent an increased productivity. From [1], "... labor productivity measures the amount of real gross domestic product (GDP) produced by an hour of labor" [1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-productivity.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-productivity.asp
- VLM 10y ago
  The problem with that is labor is moving out of the economic system. Much more at the bottom than near the top where programmer laborers work, but it'll get here. For example, walmart doesn't pay for employees food anymore because food stamps/EBT aka taxpayers pay for their employees food. Their labor no longer has a dollar value of food or their labor no longer pays for food, sorta. Their employees have left the legacy dollar based food marketplace. Similar things go on with medical care and no bennie jobs. If you believe in the new urbanism religion then people no longer own cars anymore, cars are certainly very expensive and basically unaffordable to the working poor, and someone else is funding the unprofitable mass transit systems... for now. Certainly people who can't afford cars are no longer part of the car economy. The ultimate extreme of income inequality would be something like the last two unmerged corporations in the USA merge, creating trillions in merger fees as part of the GDP, which divided across many McJob hours would appear to make us all fabulously wealthy, but all the money is located somewhere else, and we all get our food from EBT and health care from medicare and housing has govt assistance leading to most people not really being involved in the legacy economy anymore. Its not as far fetched as you'd think. There's only 100M full time jobs for 320M people. Two thirds of people live off one third of the people still working. That ratio will increase with automation.