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What is work anyway? If you are a programmer then work is different. Sure you are not on your feet all day at the beck and call of customers, however, if you a

What is work anyway? If you are a programmer then work is different. Sure you are not on your feet all day at the beck and call of customers, however, if you are not working then your computer is. Waiting is not supposed to be part of the job. Learning on the job is also verboten. Very little time that is on the company clock is spent travelling. I have colleagues in sales that do lots of travel, then, when they are back in the office they spend the morning filling in expenses. Sure this is all work that the company needs someone to do and someone has got to go on those planes. I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but is it strictly work? On the plane they could have the laptop out and be working on spreadsheets. Or they could be playing Angry Birds. Would one activity count as working and the other not? If you are a security guard and are mostly monitoring the TV and kettle, how does that compare to the secretary that occupies the same desk by day, juggling phone calls with a constant stream of people needing assistance? Or if you are a taxi driver working with half the day spent waiting for a fare. You could easily put in long hours doing that but how much of this work is actual work and how much of it is reading the newspaper? With every long hours job in the Western world there are these job-specific factors to consider. If someone is doing extra shifts in a factory where there is a production line then I am far more willing to believe claims of long hours worked.

badpun 8y ago
Work is every activity you take to further the goals of your employer. So, traveling is work, waiting for a build is work, learning new tech required for the job is work etc. The caveat is that not all work is equally demanding and tiring - so, if for example your job consists of a lot of travel, you could negotiate a lower hourly rate for the time you spend traveling.
- FiddlyPack 8y ago
  I think this is a pretty good definition, except that in creative work (like developing a novel application), sleeping often produces some of the best epiphanies/solutions. The truth is this: we have patrons, and our value is not calculable by the hour.
Scoundreller 8y ago
Meanwhile, every day someone goes to work in an office, sharpens their pencils, and finds ways to eliminate those waiting times (unless they have a powerful union of course). The taxi driver is replaced with a rideshare with none of that aimless driving looking for an uncalled fare. The security guard has more cameras to review, or has more walkabouts that are tracked with their fob. Or replaced with remote monitoring of the camera feeds. But has to deal with a million Amazon packages (I wish they consolidated better...). I don’t know why there isn’t a locker where I scan my fob and the right door opens...
clubm8 8y ago
> I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but is it strictly work? If I'm someplace other than where I want to be, it's work. A lot of comments in this thread don't seem to understand - even if you're free to read HN during downtime, if I need to be in by 9am and am unable to leave until 7pm, the period in between was work. If I would have suffered professionally if I'd left at 5 regardless of how much "work" was done, the performative behavior is also "work". Labor law in the states uses "engaged to work" and similar language often, mostly in the context of hourly employees. You can't tell someone "you must show up to the jobsite and wait to see if you're needed" under threat of no future work... that's being engaged to work.
- FiddlyPack 8y ago
  The confusion is because many of us work many days remote, and/or have flexible hours. For many of us, our entire existence is oriented around improving a bottom line...so when we have down time, we are recreationally reading about how to do that better, whether we are on the clock or not. So, if you are a remote worker, and you produce 3 proof of concepts for your company for fun, and none of them pan out, how many hours did you work? Nobody knows, including you.
  - clubm8 8y ago
    Why does the concept of being salary always seem to go one way (more than 40)? I worked in a place where people "worked long hours". A typical day would go like this: around 4pm they'd declare they had a "conference call" and call a friend from a meeting room. Then they'd watch some Netflix til 7ish, then go out to dinner (probably with the friend they called), where they'd fire off several drafted emails. If someone actually responds, they'd draft a reply then send it while getting ready for bed. When the definition of "good work" becomes subjective, "work" becomes art, specifically performance art.
    - FiddlyPack 8y ago
      I didn’t think I suggested this necessarily went “more than 40,” only that “on” time might be hard to differentiate from “off” time, and that some activities that look like “off” (having dinner with teammates) might have real value while others that look like “on” (researching some tech framework that is irrelevant to the problem you are trying to solve) might be worthless.
microwavecamera 8y ago
[upper management typing detected]
mrweasel 8y ago
>What is work anyway? I had a co-worker who negotiated having his commute home be counted as work. His reasoning was that he did a lot of thinking and problem solving during the drive. Working as a developer it was kinda hard for the company to argue that thinking wasn't in fact a large part of his job.
- praneshp 8y ago
  Did he drive himself? Maybe the company should ask him to stop thinking and focus on driving.
  - nn3 8y ago
    One of my old professors had an interesting story about this. He had an management job at an larger European company and actually had a driver for his company car. He complained to his boss that he doesn't need a driver, he could drive himself. The boss told him: you're not supposed to drive, you're supposed to be in the back and work. After this experience he realized the management job wasn't for him and switched to a university career.
vlehto 8y ago
The old school "production lines" are pretty much automated away these days. Most production requiring human labor is custom or small batch jobs. And as a result the real amount of work done is relatively small.
iagooar 8y ago
> I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but is it strictly work? > On the plane they could have the laptop out and be working on spreadsheets. Or they could be playing Angry Birds. Would one activity count as working and the other not? If the company put me in that plane, I can do whatever I want and it'll still count as work. I wouldn't be in that plane if it wasn't for the company. The time I'm in that plane, my little kid is not with his father and my wife needs to work extra hard to keep up with her job and then take care of the kid all by herself. It's so simple I even wonder people would ask themselves questions like this.
- hycaria 8y ago
  Or you do your taxes, respond to emails, call friends/family, plan your next family trip, all that stuff that can be done remotely and that you otherwise would've done on sunny sundays and whatever and come back fully available ? Doesn't sound that simple to me.
  - iagooar 8y ago
    It doesn't matter! I could be doing anything, ANYTHING, and it'd still count as working hours. If the company doesn't want you to waste time traveling, you shouldn't be traveling.
perfunctory 8y ago
> Or if you are a taxi driver working with half the day spent waiting for a fare. This is a good example. Suppose the driver spends 4 hours waiting for a fare out of total 8 hours working day. Now, they obviously cannot reschedule their time as to drive 4 hours non-stop and then take 4 hours off. In that sense waiting for a fare is also work. I would define work as everything that holds you back from doing non-work.

badpun 8y ago

Work is every activity you take to further the goals of your employer. So, traveling is work, waiting for a build is work, learning new tech required for the job is work etc. The caveat is that not all work is equally demanding and tiring - so, if for example your job consists of a lot of travel, you could negotiate a lower hourly rate for the time you spend traveling.

FiddlyPack 8y ago
I think this is a pretty good definition, except that in creative work (like developing a novel application), sleeping often produces some of the best epiphanies/solutions. The truth is this: we have patrons, and our value is not calculable by the hour.

Scoundreller 8y ago

Meanwhile, every day someone goes to work in an office, sharpens their pencils, and finds ways to eliminate those waiting times (unless they have a powerful union of course). The taxi driver is replaced with a rideshare with none of that aimless driving looking for an uncalled fare. The security guard has more cameras to review, or has more walkabouts that are tracked with their fob. Or replaced with remote monitoring of the camera feeds. But has to deal with a million Amazon packages (I wish they consolidated better...). I don’t know why there isn’t a locker where I scan my fob and the right door opens...

clubm8 8y ago

> I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but is it strictly work? If I'm someplace other than where I want to be, it's work. A lot of comments in this thread don't seem to understand - even if you're free to read HN during downtime, if I need to be in by 9am and am unable to leave until 7pm, the period in between was work. If I would have suffered professionally if I'd left at 5 regardless of how much "work" was done, the performative behavior is also "work". Labor law in the states uses "engaged to work" and similar language often, mostly in the context of hourly employees. You can't tell someone "you must show up to the jobsite and wait to see if you're needed" under threat of no future work... that's being engaged to work.

FiddlyPack 8y ago
The confusion is because many of us work many days remote, and/or have flexible hours. For many of us, our entire existence is oriented around improving a bottom line...so when we have down time, we are recreationally reading about how to do that better, whether we are on the clock or not. So, if you are a remote worker, and you produce 3 proof of concepts for your company for fun, and none of them pan out, how many hours did you work? Nobody knows, including you.
- clubm8 8y ago
  Why does the concept of being salary always seem to go one way (more than 40)? I worked in a place where people "worked long hours". A typical day would go like this: around 4pm they'd declare they had a "conference call" and call a friend from a meeting room. Then they'd watch some Netflix til 7ish, then go out to dinner (probably with the friend they called), where they'd fire off several drafted emails. If someone actually responds, they'd draft a reply then send it while getting ready for bed. When the definition of "good work" becomes subjective, "work" becomes art, specifically performance art.
  - FiddlyPack 8y ago
    I didn’t think I suggested this necessarily went “more than 40,” only that “on” time might be hard to differentiate from “off” time, and that some activities that look like “off” (having dinner with teammates) might have real value while others that look like “on” (researching some tech framework that is irrelevant to the problem you are trying to solve) might be worthless.

microwavecamera 8y ago

[upper management typing detected]

mrweasel 8y ago

>What is work anyway? I had a co-worker who negotiated having his commute home be counted as work. His reasoning was that he did a lot of thinking and problem solving during the drive. Working as a developer it was kinda hard for the company to argue that thinking wasn't in fact a large part of his job.

praneshp 8y ago
Did he drive himself? Maybe the company should ask him to stop thinking and focus on driving.
- nn3 8y ago
  One of my old professors had an interesting story about this. He had an management job at an larger European company and actually had a driver for his company car. He complained to his boss that he doesn't need a driver, he could drive himself. The boss told him: you're not supposed to drive, you're supposed to be in the back and work. After this experience he realized the management job wasn't for him and switched to a university career.

vlehto 8y ago

The old school "production lines" are pretty much automated away these days. Most production requiring human labor is custom or small batch jobs. And as a result the real amount of work done is relatively small.

iagooar 8y ago

> I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but is it strictly work? > On the plane they could have the laptop out and be working on spreadsheets. Or they could be playing Angry Birds. Would one activity count as working and the other not? If the company put me in that plane, I can do whatever I want and it'll still count as work. I wouldn't be in that plane if it wasn't for the company. The time I'm in that plane, my little kid is not with his father and my wife needs to work extra hard to keep up with her job and then take care of the kid all by herself. It's so simple I even wonder people would ask themselves questions like this.

hycaria 8y ago
Or you do your taxes, respond to emails, call friends/family, plan your next family trip, all that stuff that can be done remotely and that you otherwise would've done on sunny sundays and whatever and come back fully available ? Doesn't sound that simple to me.
- iagooar 8y ago
  It doesn't matter! I could be doing anything, ANYTHING, and it'd still count as working hours. If the company doesn't want you to waste time traveling, you shouldn't be traveling.

perfunctory 8y ago

> Or if you are a taxi driver working with half the day spent waiting for a fare. This is a good example. Suppose the driver spends 4 hours waiting for a fare out of total 8 hours working day. Now, they obviously cannot reschedule their time as to drive 4 hours non-stop and then take 4 hours off. In that sense waiting for a fare is also work. I would define work as everything that holds you back from doing non-work.