9 ms·

The 5-day workweek was implemented what, 100 years ago? Are we to believe that a 100 year old bizops practice is the optimal solution? I honestly think that t

The 5-day workweek was implemented what, 100 years ago? Are we to believe that a 100 year old bizops practice is the optimal solution? I honestly think that the main reason it's (nearly) impossible to implement something new, is because the old practice and mentality is so ingrained and etched in management, they'll feel cheated if the need to pay the same for less days (even though hours may be the same). They'd rather have people around for as long as possible, doing 70%, than having them less but delivering 90%. The same type of management that values facetime and butts in seats over nearly anything else.

pault 7y ago
Sure, but if you give them a four day work week, next thing you know they'll be asking for three days! /s
- anticensor 7y ago
  Then they would work for two employers, again getting a 6-days-a-week schedule.
tomxor 7y ago
> Are we to believe that a 100 year old bizops practice is the optimal solution? Over the past 100 years a tiny minority were doing any kind of knowledge work. Do you want to stick with an optimization for manual labor at your tech company? 9-5/5 is less bad for this kind of work than the Chinese 9-9/6... but it's still bad.
- Scapeghost 7y ago
  > 9-5/5 is less bad for this kind of work than the Chinese 9-9/6... but it's still bad. It's the same in the Middle East, often worse (12+ hours for 6 days, maybe a few less on Fridays).
  - bjornjaja 7y ago
    I’m curious why they working so much? Is it because there isn’t much of a talent pool for the jobs? Also curious, what if they weren’t paid salary but paid hourly in this study? Would they be okay with more time off and less money? Digital stuff is weird because the traditional paradigm of work is: someone goes in coal mine and mines C clumps of coal then gets paid for that because the coal had some tangible value. Technology is hard to conceptualise because a lot of it is not tangible or perhaps even wasteful.
    - c0nfused 7y ago
      Anecdotally, It is all culture. I have friends in Asia who try to work for international firms instead of the local ones because they get European style PTO and scheduling. The idea that you should have "you" time is not a cross cultural phenomenon, nor is it universally held even in the west. We pay it lip service and then expect people to put in 60 hours weeks during crunch or if they are gunning for a promotion. I would argue from a management prospective the programmer hours are very much like coal mines, time goes in and features come out. The big difference is that you can sell the software more than once.
    - Scapeghost 7y ago
      > I’m curious why they working so much? Is it because there isn’t much of a talent pool for the jobs? Many social/cultural issues. A background of poverty adds to it. "Idling" at home or not hustling all the time is seen as undesirable or lazy, or even sinful. Spending time with the family is not valued that much, it's a waste of time! It's the wife's job to raise kids at home, and the husband's job to make money for them. If they're living together (as in if the husband's not in another city/country for work) they might go out 1-2 times a week to a shopping mall or KFC/McDonalds or a drive/stroll. Kids and relatives usually go into the same job as each other (inheriting shops or manual labor). White collar/desk job workers also hustle as much as they can, usually working for over 8 hours every day, maybe taking a break on Fridays. Saturdays off are rare, and only in big companies with foreign (Western) employees who will of course not put up with this shit. Only government jobs and banks and big corporations might give a 2 day weekend.
claudeganon 7y ago
The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain level, or organize against their employers. It’s the same reason why most big corps oppose a national healthcare system in the US: it keeps people locked in to their current positions and has the knock-on effect of putting downward pressure on wages and turnover expenses.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  > The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain level, or organize against their employers [Citation needed]
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St...
    - quotemstr 7y ago
      Quote the relevant passage instead of gesturing vaguely at all of labor history. The idea that working hours are set to sap workers of competitive energy is just a weird conspiracy theory. But I guess HN will believe what it wants to believe.
      - lm28469 7y ago
        Do you really believe you can summarize 100 years of labor law in a single quote that somehow will convince you... Read any European socialist work from the 30s to the 70s and you'll have plenty of quotes to work with. Raoul Vaneigem, Guy Debord, &c.
  - lm28469 7y ago
    https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Raoul-Vaneigem-The-Revolution-of-Everyday-Life.pdf https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Raoul...
wongarsu 7y ago
First people wanted 72 hour work weeks, then 60 hours, then 50, then 40, now they want just 32 hours? Outrageous /s Seriously though, while we can run for 12 hours a day it turned out to be detrimental to do repetitive factory work for that long. That's how we eventually settled on a 40 hour week. But for mentally demanding work this doesn't seem to work, we just can't concentrate that long. People distracting each other when one of them reaches their limit, or people doing various unproductive things (including browsing various websites) seems more harmful to productivity than just leaving earlier. Having more time for creative hobbies and creative exploration also seems obviously useful for knowledge workers
- hsitz 7y ago
  A little aside, but nobody can run 12 hours a day for more than a short period of time. Running involves a lot of pounding on the joints, and muscles fatigue. In fact, the best endurance runners in the world (i.e., people who train optimally for maximal results) mostly run for only about 15 hours per /week/, often less.
  - moltar 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete) > In 1983, the 61-year-old potato farmer won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of 875 kilometres (544 mi). The race was run between what were then Australia's two largest Westfield shopping centres: Westfield Parramatta, in Sydney, and Westfield Doncaster, in Melbourne.[4] Young showed up to compete in overalls and work boots, without his dentures (later claiming they rattled when he ran).[5] He ran at a slow, loping pace, and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, however, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by ten hours. Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in gumboots.
hkai 7y ago
I don't see that the age of the practice means we have to arbitrarily change it. On the other hand, I have two concerns: - on the weeks where I took Friday off for travelling, I did not complete as much work as on a normal week. The output was smaller, and I had to squeeze more things into the four days which was just excruciating. - I read about a poll in my home country where 74% of people said they will never work again if they had enough money, and only 16% said they will never quit their job even if they're rich. So perhaps ideas like 4 day work week and UBI works for those 16%, but not for the majority?

pault 7y ago

Sure, but if you give them a four day work week, next thing you know they'll be asking for three days! /s

anticensor 7y ago
Then they would work for two employers, again getting a 6-days-a-week schedule.

tomxor 7y ago

> Are we to believe that a 100 year old bizops practice is the optimal solution? Over the past 100 years a tiny minority were doing any kind of knowledge work. Do you want to stick with an optimization for manual labor at your tech company? 9-5/5 is less bad for this kind of work than the Chinese 9-9/6... but it's still bad.

Scapeghost 7y ago
> 9-5/5 is less bad for this kind of work than the Chinese 9-9/6... but it's still bad. It's the same in the Middle East, often worse (12+ hours for 6 days, maybe a few less on Fridays).
- bjornjaja 7y ago
  I’m curious why they working so much? Is it because there isn’t much of a talent pool for the jobs? Also curious, what if they weren’t paid salary but paid hourly in this study? Would they be okay with more time off and less money? Digital stuff is weird because the traditional paradigm of work is: someone goes in coal mine and mines C clumps of coal then gets paid for that because the coal had some tangible value. Technology is hard to conceptualise because a lot of it is not tangible or perhaps even wasteful.
  - c0nfused 7y ago
    Anecdotally, It is all culture. I have friends in Asia who try to work for international firms instead of the local ones because they get European style PTO and scheduling. The idea that you should have "you" time is not a cross cultural phenomenon, nor is it universally held even in the west. We pay it lip service and then expect people to put in 60 hours weeks during crunch or if they are gunning for a promotion. I would argue from a management prospective the programmer hours are very much like coal mines, time goes in and features come out. The big difference is that you can sell the software more than once.
  - Scapeghost 7y ago
    > I’m curious why they working so much? Is it because there isn’t much of a talent pool for the jobs? Many social/cultural issues. A background of poverty adds to it. "Idling" at home or not hustling all the time is seen as undesirable or lazy, or even sinful. Spending time with the family is not valued that much, it's a waste of time! It's the wife's job to raise kids at home, and the husband's job to make money for them. If they're living together (as in if the husband's not in another city/country for work) they might go out 1-2 times a week to a shopping mall or KFC/McDonalds or a drive/stroll. Kids and relatives usually go into the same job as each other (inheriting shops or manual labor). White collar/desk job workers also hustle as much as they can, usually working for over 8 hours every day, maybe taking a break on Fridays. Saturdays off are rare, and only in big companies with foreign (Western) employees who will of course not put up with this shit. Only government jobs and banks and big corporations might give a 2 day weekend.

claudeganon 7y ago

The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain level, or organize against their employers. It’s the same reason why most big corps oppose a national healthcare system in the US: it keeps people locked in to their current positions and has the knock-on effect of putting downward pressure on wages and turnover expenses.

quotemstr 7y ago
> The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain level, or organize against their employers [Citation needed]
- claudeganon 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St...
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    Quote the relevant passage instead of gesturing vaguely at all of labor history. The idea that working hours are set to sap workers of competitive energy is just a weird conspiracy theory. But I guess HN will believe what it wants to believe.
    - lm28469 7y ago
      Do you really believe you can summarize 100 years of labor law in a single quote that somehow will convince you... Read any European socialist work from the 30s to the 70s and you'll have plenty of quotes to work with. Raoul Vaneigem, Guy Debord, &c.
- lm28469 7y ago
  https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Raoul-Vaneigem-The-Revolution-of-Everyday-Life.pdf https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Raoul...

wongarsu 7y ago

First people wanted 72 hour work weeks, then 60 hours, then 50, then 40, now they want just 32 hours? Outrageous /s Seriously though, while we can run for 12 hours a day it turned out to be detrimental to do repetitive factory work for that long. That's how we eventually settled on a 40 hour week. But for mentally demanding work this doesn't seem to work, we just can't concentrate that long. People distracting each other when one of them reaches their limit, or people doing various unproductive things (including browsing various websites) seems more harmful to productivity than just leaving earlier. Having more time for creative hobbies and creative exploration also seems obviously useful for knowledge workers

hsitz 7y ago
A little aside, but nobody can run 12 hours a day for more than a short period of time. Running involves a lot of pounding on the joints, and muscles fatigue. In fact, the best endurance runners in the world (i.e., people who train optimally for maximal results) mostly run for only about 15 hours per /week/, often less.
- moltar 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete) > In 1983, the 61-year-old potato farmer won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of 875 kilometres (544 mi). The race was run between what were then Australia's two largest Westfield shopping centres: Westfield Parramatta, in Sydney, and Westfield Doncaster, in Melbourne.[4] Young showed up to compete in overalls and work boots, without his dentures (later claiming they rattled when he ran).[5] He ran at a slow, loping pace, and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, however, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by ten hours. Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in gumboots.

hkai 7y ago

I don't see that the age of the practice means we have to arbitrarily change it. On the other hand, I have two concerns: - on the weeks where I took Friday off for travelling, I did not complete as much work as on a normal week. The output was smaller, and I had to squeeze more things into the four days which was just excruciating. - I read about a poll in my home country where 74% of people said they will never work again if they had enough money, and only 16% said they will never quit their job even if they're rich. So perhaps ideas like 4 day work week and UBI works for those 16%, but not for the majority?