4 ms·

> For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity. It's

> For one thing, it's highly convenient that the standard US work-week happens to be the exact "correct" amount of hours to work to maximize productivity. It's not in the slightest bit down to convenience. It's because 40 hours was quite simply discovered to be a more productive length of day, well over a century ago, back in the later stages of the industrial revolution. In the US, if memory serves, the move to a 40 hour working week largely started out at the Ford Motor company back in the early 1900s, after Henry Ford experimented reducing hours and discovered that the number of mistakes made by workers went down drastically, and productivity increased. This swept across the industry because the improvements were impossible to deny. Slowly but surely that spread across other industries until it became the staple. 40 hours isn't done by custom, it's done because it's proven to be the most productive working week. This isn't a case of scientists discovering that "what people are used to is what they're most productive at". For most of the industrial revolution people worked 12hr+ days, and that was considered, even by the labour force, to be perfectly acceptable. Hauling that back to 8 hour days was a herculean task that no major factory owner was going to do without damn good evidence that it would improve things.

dagw 9y ago
It's because 40 hours was quite simply discovered to be a more productive length of day That was true when most of the workforce was doing manual and factory style labour. To the best of my knowledge it hasn't been rigorously reproduced for works that spend their days staring at a screen thinking.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  And if it's not been rigorously tested, then there doesn't seem to be any strong case to assume that the ideal number for office work is higher, rather than lower, than 40. I'm also wondering how commute time (and method of commute) factors into this. Does 30 minutes of physically strenuous cycling before/after work have a positive or negative impact on office workers? Does the same time spent in a car navigating stop'n'go traffic have a different effect? Both involve some element of mental effort, but both are quite different from the rest of the days tasks. Certainly in my experience one helped my mental state and one didn't.
  - dagw 9y ago
    there doesn't seem to be any strong case to assume that the ideal number for office work is higher, rather than lower, than 40. Absolutely. I'm at least as convinced that 35 hours is optimal time as I am that 45 is. I also agree with your point about commutes. Instead of looking at time in the office it probably makes more sense to look at the time from when one leaves home to when one leaves the office. And speaking only for myself, having to drive 30 minutes to work each morning would be a pretty major deal-breaker for any job I'd consider.
  - steventhedev 9y ago
    I recall reading somewhere that one of the best predictors of employee turnover is commute length. But that was for call center employees, and I can't recall where I read that, so take it with a grain of salt. Anecdotally, I once moved from having an hour long commute to a 5 minutes walk from work. I did end up leaving, but I feel that I enjoyed life much more living close to the office. Getting an extra two hours every day allowed me to enjoy life much more.
    - dx034 9y ago
      I guess commute doesn't need to be minimized, it just shouldn't be too long. I cycle to work which takes me 20-25 minutes and I enjoy it. It gives me a break between work and home so that I can separate the two.
- dclowd9901 9y ago
  Hadn't really thought of it before, but there's a compelling amount of evidence out there that sitting down for long periods of a day is very bad for your health, which can only be bad for your overall functionality. Definitely something that should be re-examined... My supposition is that companies know this and won't re-examine because they're afraid of the outcome: paying more for less butts-in-the-seat (the only metric management understands).
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  Pay hasn't changed, either. So if companies want to claim that more hours is more productive, they should back it up by increasing pay per hour.
ikeyany 9y ago
It seems odd to cling to 100 year old data. Just run a few studies today and see what produces 'optimal' work weeks.
dogruck 9y ago
Ah, Henry Ford experimented? That's just good science. Hehe. Seriously though -- I'd like to read more about that. Do you have a source?
- dogruck 9y ago
  Also, worth pointing out that Henry Ford was an enthusiastic Nazi supporter. https://www.thenation.com/article/ford-and-fuhrer/ https://www.thenation.com/article/ford-and-fuhrer/ Relevant in case you think "Henry Ford thought of the idea, therefore it is correct."
srtjstjsj 9y ago
He didn't "experiment". The decision was part of Ford's moral philosophy. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-workers-get-40-hour-week http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-work... If you think Ford ran the best scientific business, you'd have to include this as well: http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-police-ruled-his-wo-1549625731 http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-polic... "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. What started out as a team of 50 “Investigators” eventually morphed into a team of 200 people who probed every aspect of their employees lives. And I mean every aspect. Investigators would show up unannounced at your home, just to make sure it was being kept clean. They’d ask questions that were less appropriate of a car company, than they were for the modern-day CIA. They’d query you about your spending habits, your alcohol consumption, even your marital relationships. They’d ask what you were buying, and they’d check on your children to make sure they were in school. Women weren’t eligible, unless they were single and had to support children. Men weren’t eligible unless the only work their wives did was in the home. .... spiritual smelting process where the impurities of foreignness were burnt off as slag to be tossed away leaving a new 100% American. you needed the company’s permission if you wanted to buy a car, which included a requirement to be married and have children. " and Ford himself retracted the whole philosophy: "It was also highly controversial, and because of the competing economic, and ironically, societal factors, it was slowly wound down. Even Henry Ford himself found that he was against many of the program’s aspects, writing in his 1922 autobiography: “paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees’ private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, often special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency’s sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment.”
jahaja 9y ago
I'm afraid this is a case of when the winners rewrite history. Unfortunately the 40-hour week seems to have been among the last big wins of the US labor movement. Hence the popular (on HN at least) idea that this win was the result of Ford's top-down pioneering.
mancerayder 9y ago
40 hours isn't done by custom, it's done because it's proven to be the most productive working week. This isn't a case of scientists discovering that "what people are used to is what they're most productive at". For most of the industrial revolution people worked 12hr+ days, and that was considered, even by the labour force, to be perfectly acceptable. Hauling that back to 8 hour days was a herculean task that no major factory owner was going to do without damn good evidence that it would improve things. That's a relatively biased misreading of the history of the 8 hour day. You're implying that science and factory owners decided on it. Yet the labor movement, industrial action and strife played an outsized role. The 8 hour day movement is an old one (http://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html http://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html), and the call for 8 hours was echoed by the labor movement for decades after.

dagw 9y ago

It's because 40 hours was quite simply discovered to be a more productive length of day That was true when most of the workforce was doing manual and factory style labour. To the best of my knowledge it hasn't been rigorously reproduced for works that spend their days staring at a screen thinking.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
And if it's not been rigorously tested, then there doesn't seem to be any strong case to assume that the ideal number for office work is higher, rather than lower, than 40. I'm also wondering how commute time (and method of commute) factors into this. Does 30 minutes of physically strenuous cycling before/after work have a positive or negative impact on office workers? Does the same time spent in a car navigating stop'n'go traffic have a different effect? Both involve some element of mental effort, but both are quite different from the rest of the days tasks. Certainly in my experience one helped my mental state and one didn't.
- dagw 9y ago
  there doesn't seem to be any strong case to assume that the ideal number for office work is higher, rather than lower, than 40. Absolutely. I'm at least as convinced that 35 hours is optimal time as I am that 45 is. I also agree with your point about commutes. Instead of looking at time in the office it probably makes more sense to look at the time from when one leaves home to when one leaves the office. And speaking only for myself, having to drive 30 minutes to work each morning would be a pretty major deal-breaker for any job I'd consider.
- steventhedev 9y ago
  I recall reading somewhere that one of the best predictors of employee turnover is commute length. But that was for call center employees, and I can't recall where I read that, so take it with a grain of salt. Anecdotally, I once moved from having an hour long commute to a 5 minutes walk from work. I did end up leaving, but I feel that I enjoyed life much more living close to the office. Getting an extra two hours every day allowed me to enjoy life much more.
  - dx034 9y ago
    I guess commute doesn't need to be minimized, it just shouldn't be too long. I cycle to work which takes me 20-25 minutes and I enjoy it. It gives me a break between work and home so that I can separate the two.
dclowd9901 9y ago
Hadn't really thought of it before, but there's a compelling amount of evidence out there that sitting down for long periods of a day is very bad for your health, which can only be bad for your overall functionality. Definitely something that should be re-examined... My supposition is that companies know this and won't re-examine because they're afraid of the outcome: paying more for less butts-in-the-seat (the only metric management understands).
s73ver_ 9y ago
Pay hasn't changed, either. So if companies want to claim that more hours is more productive, they should back it up by increasing pay per hour.

ikeyany 9y ago

It seems odd to cling to 100 year old data. Just run a few studies today and see what produces 'optimal' work weeks.

dogruck 9y ago

Ah, Henry Ford experimented? That's just good science. Hehe. Seriously though -- I'd like to read more about that. Do you have a source?

dogruck 9y ago
Also, worth pointing out that Henry Ford was an enthusiastic Nazi supporter. https://www.thenation.com/article/ford-and-fuhrer/ https://www.thenation.com/article/ford-and-fuhrer/ Relevant in case you think "Henry Ford thought of the idea, therefore it is correct."

srtjstjsj 9y ago

He didn't "experiment". The decision was part of Ford's moral philosophy. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-workers-get-40-hour-week http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-work... If you think Ford ran the best scientific business, you'd have to include this as well: http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-police-ruled-his-wo-1549625731 http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-polic... "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. What started out as a team of 50 “Investigators” eventually morphed into a team of 200 people who probed every aspect of their employees lives. And I mean every aspect. Investigators would show up unannounced at your home, just to make sure it was being kept clean. They’d ask questions that were less appropriate of a car company, than they were for the modern-day CIA. They’d query you about your spending habits, your alcohol consumption, even your marital relationships. They’d ask what you were buying, and they’d check on your children to make sure they were in school. Women weren’t eligible, unless they were single and had to support children. Men weren’t eligible unless the only work their wives did was in the home. .... spiritual smelting process where the impurities of foreignness were burnt off as slag to be tossed away leaving a new 100% American. you needed the company’s permission if you wanted to buy a car, which included a requirement to be married and have children. " and Ford himself retracted the whole philosophy: "It was also highly controversial, and because of the competing economic, and ironically, societal factors, it was slowly wound down. Even Henry Ford himself found that he was against many of the program’s aspects, writing in his 1922 autobiography: “paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees’ private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, often special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency’s sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment.”

jahaja 9y ago

I'm afraid this is a case of when the winners rewrite history. Unfortunately the 40-hour week seems to have been among the last big wins of the US labor movement. Hence the popular (on HN at least) idea that this win was the result of Ford's top-down pioneering.

mancerayder 9y ago

40 hours isn't done by custom, it's done because it's proven to be the most productive working week. This isn't a case of scientists discovering that "what people are used to is what they're most productive at". For most of the industrial revolution people worked 12hr+ days, and that was considered, even by the labour force, to be perfectly acceptable. Hauling that back to 8 hour days was a herculean task that no major factory owner was going to do without damn good evidence that it would improve things. That's a relatively biased misreading of the history of the 8 hour day. You're implying that science and factory owners decided on it. Yet the labor movement, industrial action and strife played an outsized role. The 8 hour day movement is an old one (http://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html http://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html), and the call for 8 hours was echoed by the labor movement for decades after.