25 ms·

In Praise of the 5-Hour Workday and Other ‘Radical’ Ideas

540 points by grzm 7y ago

netcan 7y ago
There are a couple of ways of looking at the question of workweeks. One is this, which lends to individual pondering. Could I do as much in half the the me? Would I still get paid as much? Etc. Another is systemic. Could society radically cut hours? Would everyone still get paid? Both really come down to efficiencies, and negotiating who gets rhe returns on these efficiencies. Imagine, for example, that as omnipotent king you clean up patent law such that identical results are achieved with 1/10 as many lawyers. Let's go ahead and do something similar in contract law. I imagine a god-king could reduce the required admin work by >50% in financial services. We could also throw in world peace. That makes all military and adjacent industry obsolete. Other markets do this regularly, often via technology. We need far fewer people that make far more food and clothes, for example. Some of those efficiencies have gone into making more/better stuff. A little has gone towards reduced work hours. Most of this "spare" capacity,though, has gone into other things... often administrative/white-collar. It's notable that healthy economies generally have >90% employment as a stable rule. We, as a society, seem to fill out time with work... and in aggregate it doesn't seem related to the amount of work that needs to be done.
kmlx 7y ago
will 5hour workdays or 4day workweeks in the US be considered more productive than china's 996? since China produces a lot more than the US right now, how will this change once the US produces even less? will 996 be replaced by these new models any time soon? and will this European/American tendency to work less mean that other countries will simply leapfrog them in terms of innovation and productivity?
mikorym 7y ago
Another (psuedoscientific) argument [1] in favour of 30 hour weeks: 30 = (724)/4(5/7) On each day, you should have half the day for "resting porposes". Of the remaining half, you should work only half of that. Finally, you should only apply this to 5 days with the other two reserved for "full day resting and recreational purposes". Of course it could be calculated differently to give 3 or 4 day weeks. [1] I actually did this calculation absent-mindedly through my search box hotkey while reading nbrempel's comment about 30 hour jobs and LOL'd when my independent approach actually came out to 30.
- mikorym 7y ago
  Sorry but I keep forgetting about the damned asterisk: (7 * 24)/4 * (5/7)
matonias 7y ago
Thinking about this, if you work less but by doing that increasing the output you do in 4 days, shouldnt you then be paid for 5 days?
siffland 7y ago
It is interesting, but then you get into jobs where you cannot shorten the work week, such as Police or TSA workers or other such things. There are tons of thankless jobs that pretty much are built around having to work the 40(+) hours, some just require travel, some are hard to get people to apply for (honestly, when was the last time you thanked the TSA people at the airport for making you take your shoes off and scan you, or the cable guy who had to rerun the wire from the pole to your house in the dark at 8:30pm). I would love to work only 5 hours a day, although i might get bored. I guess it might work better with salaried employees.
janandonly 7y ago
I always chuckle when reading articles like this. I have since I was 20 worked only three days a week(Some minor and one time off exceptions excluded). When colleagues would give me questioning Looks I would tell them that I was only available for the company three days a week. thereby hinting I might have another job (which I didn’t). From experience I can tell that the focus, relax-ness in life in general and more time for family, friends and hobbies,is more then worth the lowered income.
Proven 7y ago
The idea to work half a day and demand full day's wage for it is not that radical, you know. If you tax me enough you may be able to make your dreams come true!
Smithalicious 7y ago
I wish we could have a 7 day, 5 hour work week. I guess some other people woud rather see 4 days, 9 hours. I just wish there was more flexibility in general
TheOperator 7y ago
A 5 hour workday is okay if tempting but awful if commuting and the trend is towards larger commutes due to property costs as a percentage of people's total expenditures skyrocketing even beyond transportation costs. The real money is less days at work per week... Not shorter workdays.
jazzdev 7y ago
The crux of the article seems to be: To support this new approach, he has employees leave their phones in their bags at the office and blocks access to social media on the company network. [...] Perhaps most important, his employees now check work email only twice each day. It's not just the reducing the hours, but making those hours more productive.
Robbani 7y ago
I like short working hours. We should have more time to spend with family and friends and more freedom. Life is not like working also you need to enjoy every bit of it. We never get back your life again.
Robbani 7y ago
I like short working hours. We should have more time to spend with family and friends and more freedom. Life is not like working also you need to enjoy every bit of it. We never get back our life again.
PragmaticPulp 7y ago
> Sick of round-the-clock work emails and Slack messages? Here’s some hope. This is exactly why articles about 4-day workweeks, 5-hour workdays, and the idea that productivity is inversely correlated to hours worked are so popular; Many of us are buried under expectations of around-the-clock availability and commitment to our jobs. One of my employers made an official policy banning vacation statuses in Slack because, in their words, it implied that people were off the hook from responding to Slack messages. I was threatened with demotion for taking a 2-day weekend backpacking vacation out of cell phone range once (not an on call job). My management team just couldn't tolerate the idea that one of their employees was out of their control. At this point, I'd gladly take strict 8-hour workdays, 5 days a week. These articles about 5-hour days or 32-hour workweeks feel like a pipedream.
- koonsolo 7y ago
  I don't get this. I'm a software developer in Belgium, and basically all cards are in our hands over here. There is a huge shortage of software developers. If I quit, I can get a job within a month which gives the same or better pay. From the company view, they need to spend several months trying to find a new employee, and then give full pay while that person is still learning the codebase, and other employees wast time getting him/her up to speed. It takes another few months before this person is 100% productive. So as an employer, you are basically pulling on the shorter end of the string. So my question: why is it so much different in the US?
  - unclesams-uncle 7y ago
    I'm an American who lived in Belgium for 15 years, first to study then for work. I always told people that the difference between the US and Belgium is that you "live to work" in the former and "work to live" in the latter. Belgian labor laws are much more enforced than they are in the US. The unions in Belgium have a lot of sway in big companies and employers tend to respond positively to work-life balance. In the US, there's the expectation that if you're hired for a role, you should be able to onboard as quickly as possible. There's no 6 month trial period or even the concept of an indefinite contract (CDI in French, I forgot the acronym in Dutch) (EDIT: in the private sector). Likewise, an American employer can get rid of an employee (and likewise hire one) in less time and with less cost than a Belgian one. That flexibility drives a lot of the business decisions in a way that would never translate in Belgium (or much of Western Europe, for that matter). On the other hand, if you're in a situation where your employer goes over the line (like the person at the top of the thread describes), you can generally just walk away from the job. There's no 6-week notice. There's for sure a lot more to it, but that's mainly where I see the difference between the two countries.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
> Sick of round-the-clock work emails and Slack messages? Here’s some hope. I leave my laptop in office and don't even want to think about work the instant I walk past the door.
- greggman2 7y ago
  I take mine home so if I want to work from home the next day I can
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    Yeah that's always the dilemma at the end of the day...
- foxrob92 7y ago
  Yep, same. I'm glad I'm not important enough to have to think about work when I'm not being paid.
40acres 7y ago
I work about 5 hours a day and love it. I've left work multiple days at 2-3pm and that's okay because on those days I'm usually in the office at 7-8. Scrum allows my teammates to know what I'm up to and as long as work isn't being pushed and communication is robust everything is fine. To be honest I couldn't really program for more than 6 hours a day anyway. It's mentally draining and I can't sit that long.
- marcusverus 7y ago
  How did you land this gig? Did you negotiate a 25 hour work week, or was it a part-time job from the get-go?
sloopy543 7y ago
I don't have any of these concerns. I just don't answer emails or Slack messages right way. Nobody has fired me for it yet because I am there when it matters, I consistently provide value, and I show up to all meetings scheduled in advance. Just get a big ball o' FU money and let the good times roll. You're the one who decides if you need to be "always on," and guess what, you don't. The world can learn learn to wait like 30 minutes or a few hours if you're really far away from tech. I routinely leave my place in the middle of the day to ride my bike, climb, or whatever and I have suffered minimal repercussions. It's all in your mind
- MS90 7y ago
  > Just get a big ball o' FU money and let the good times roll. I wish someone had told me it was that easy sooner!
  - sloopy543 7y ago
    If you're in software, it's easy. You just have to learn how to control your spending and save the rest. Get comfortable living at about $30K per year
    - MS90 7y ago
      I do work in software, and I do save my money. However, unless I'm suddenly given a massive raise it's going to take 5 or more years until I have what I consider "FU money" saved up. I wouldn't really consider saving up money over years and years as "just getting it"
      - sloopy543 7y ago
        Semantics. It obviously takes time to build independence, but you can do it. It is in your power. Nobody really has to tolerate micromanagement unless they're just starting out
        MS90 7y ago
nkozyra 7y ago
Employers and managers seem incapable of understanding the cost these conditions impart. I understand it: morale is hard to put a dollar amount next to. But most tech companies don't need everyone 24/7. They just don't. They should condition employees to value their free time, it will pay off in a lot of ways. Unless it's an absolute emergency I don't send emails past five. People are conditioned to respond to them. Same with slack messages. There's this belief that being available 24/7 is a positive attribute in employees and we really need to squash that. It's unhealthy for everyone.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
  We’ve reached total work[0] globally. The world is a heterotopia, particularly for those who are in low skilled service sector jobs. This will not change, it will only get worse. [0] https://medium.com/the-ascent/is-total-work-taking-over-our-lives-84192b1246e0 https://medium.com/the-ascent/is-total-work-taking-over-our-...
  - jhoechtl 7y ago
    Until war reboots to a level playfield.
- weberc2 7y ago
  > There's this belief that being available 24/7 is a positive attribute in employees and we really need to squash that. It's unhealthy for everyone. For whatever reason, employers seem to value this for certain roles, and they often pay a premium for it. This is a Good Thing for people who value money over flexibility; why lock them out of a natural fit? Perhaps you would argue that this isn't good for them, but surely they should be free to make the choice? For those who value flexibility over money, they shouldn't take those jobs. As long as expectations are communicated, there shouldn't be a problem. Maybe this isn't a real problem, but I want to address it just in case: I'm concerned that some people may feel entitled to a high low-flexibility salary _and_ high flexibility. This sort of entitlement comes up often, and as far as I can tell, it fundamentally ignores economic realities. In other words, if these things are compatible, then proponents need to explain themselves (and provide a lot of support for their arguments) because it's far from obvious.
eagsalazar2 7y ago
This premise doesn't jibe with products that are "always on". Support 5hrs/day? I hope "great support" isn't part of your value prop. Devs can't even be reached because they log out of slack, etc at 1pm and over the weekend? I hope "uptime" (riiight) isn't part of your value prop. As a consultant we do lots of new product development for clients where uptime and support are a big deal, especially during rollouts/launches where we're encountering a flood of new issues (UX and technical), going totally dark after 1pm weekdays isn't a remote possibility. Having said that, we very rarely actually work more than 35hr/week or on weekends. But we do put my personal phone number in our SOW for CRITICAL issues (haven't been called yet). So yeah maintaining a sane work culture is critical but telling everyone to completely unplug at 1pm is nuts IMO. This article isn't outlining every details obviously and maybe the example company really doesn't care about uptime or quick support (desktop app for enterprise??). And maybe they are glossing over the fact that every week there actually is someone on call but most people unplug at 1pm. If so, that sounds pretty reasonable!
- aaomidi 7y ago
  You could hire another shift of support engineers for those times...
  - stuff4ben 7y ago
    which costs more money. Getting more work out of fewer people thereby cutting costs and increasing shareholder value is the capitalist thing to do. Not saying it's right or wrong.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      No, that's like saying cheating people or killing them is the capitalist thing to do. Defending capitalism becomes indistinguishable from attacking it; either way, the assertion is false. A market economy is a way of optimizing welfare through profit-seeking, but it has no meaning or existence or justification without constraints and boundary conditions. What constraints we should have is a political question completely separate from whether we should have private ownership of capital and free markets.
lalos 7y ago
What will stop people from working two jobs? I feel like this is the 'uberization' of work, salary will go down and people will have to work 2-3 jobs on multiple days. For example 3 days doing one job, another 3 days another job and 1 day weekend or mornings at one job and afternoons at another totaling 10 hours per day worked. This has to be tightly regulated if not it will regress and only profit making will be optimized.
- sloopy543 7y ago
  Umm... nothing and that's the point. It's free market capitalism. People should be free to do whatever they want with their time. So long as the value they provide is greater than their cost, the deal is good for both parties Ideally people would only work 30 hours but get paid for the full week. Hourly billing is bullshit anyway. The natural cadence of work doesn't map to always being able to extract value from every single hour. Sometimes the value is in being more or less available for that week. It's astonishing how many developers can't grasp that concept and insist on being super strict about hourly work
  - lalos 7y ago
    History says otherwise, unless you mean people should be free to abuse of others lack of judgement when their survival is on the line. That's why they started to cap working hours and protecting children from being part of the workforce. Also, you don't have to go that far into history. Some uber drivers I've talked to want to get out of that business but can't because they were bamboozled into signing a car loan they can't pay without working for Uber and they mention that when they signed it they had an expectation of earnings that has been steadily going down. No comment on your assumption that I'm a developer unless you meant it as a standalone fact.
- Forge36 7y ago
  Perhaps nothing, the major way health insurance is required today is by number of hours (30 per week). To avoid this cost companies reduce hours. Overtime hours apply only to hourly and non-exempt employees today and only for hours over 40. Thus a change to the work week might start with a cap on salaried employees hours and required overtime for hours over 40. With fewer exceptions would a 4 day work week might result from working 4 10's first. If overtime is set at 32 hours as well this would push down hours per day. I can't foresee a cap on hours per day so this could be instituted by companies requiring 4 days in office. If the U.S. with a mine to universal healthcare I'm worried the wage decline would happen naturally anyway. However that may lead to more flexibility in hours with companies opting to allow more control over number of hours as extra costs more scale more slowly
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/QpjJc http://archive.is/QpjJc
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
marmaduke 7y ago
I work for 3.5h/day and the free time is worth the loss of pay.
- sylk 7y ago
  How do you even do this? Is it all remote?
  - marmaduke 7y ago
    No I work in an office 9h to 12h30, officially at half time (with half pay). I'm not particularly efficient after lunch anyway, so it's better to just go home, in my case.
3u8Gf 7y ago
My cofounder and I switched to working 4 hours of "productive" work per day and it is pretty awesome. I use RescueTime to track what app is in front and when it ticks over to 4 hours I generally call it quits unless I am in the middle something I want to wrap up. I really like this because it incentivizes productivity over hours in seat. IE, right now this comment is being added to my "non productive" time and I am making no progress on getting my workday done. (I have 15m left at the moment) I am generally pretty focused, but sometimes that wanes and I find this keeps me on task. On the best of days I start around 7am and call it quits by noon, but occasionally that stretches into 2pm. I do occasionally hop on a bit in the evening and we are all basically all on call but our stack is pretty stable so that doesn't come up often. Has been absolutely awesome, I don't think I could ever go back. I am far happier, spend far more time outdoors and I honestly do not think my productivity has dropped much at all. I think it is far too easy to just use wall clock as a measure of working and fool ourselves that we are doing more than 4 hours of real work in an 8 hour day. Throwaway because I'm not sure my clients are ready to hear this.
- sloopy543 7y ago
  Yup. I suspect this sort of thing is going on all over the place but most people don't speak openly of it. All work is value-based. Never forget that. No clients care if you spent 80 hours a week not solving their problem, so why would they care if you spent 20 solving it?
  - 3u8Gf 7y ago
    > No clients care if you spent 80 hours a week not solving their problem, so why would they care if you spent 20 solving it? This has not been my experience at all. It's a different subject entirely, but it is very common for clients to be much happier to pay for 20 days at $550 a day than 5 days at $2,200 a day, even if they got it two weeks earlier. People are not rational.
    - sloopy543 7y ago
      Right right. They have other weird concepts like "market rates" and average timeframe lodged in their heads. It's complicated and pardon me if I have glossed over the details somewhat. If you're smart, you get all of the work done in advance, then stage it over the course the next few days, providing a steady trickle to create the perception of steady progress and to have something to mention at the standup meetings. I suspect a good percentage of experienced developers with good customer management skills do something akin to this.
mig4ng 7y ago
I worked this schedule while I was studying, 5-hours a day 5 days a week (part-time) and to be honest my productivity was around 85/90% compared to working 8-hours a day 5 days a week. I would have the stand-up as 10/15 minutes after arriving, and then I would most of the times enter flow and work for 1h30 to 2h, make a break and work for more 1h to 1h30, sometimes longer if I got distracted with time. On those flow blocks I would only pause in intervals of 2-3 minutes for filling the water bottle or going to bathroom. Between those flow blocks I usually had a longer break to talk with my colleagues (work related or not), sometimes play a bit foosball or board/card games and eat. It was great, except when we had bigger meetings/workshops and other time consuming events. When those occured I had troubles getting into flow. In those days I managed to do it I would often get distracted with time and work 5h30 to 6h unintentionally. It worked really well, I think the lunch break has a large context switching cost, making it hard to have productive 8h. Making it feel like either the morning or the afternoon short on time. I would also love to try 8-9h (getting more hours after the context switch of lunch) a day 4 days a week. Getting 3 days to focus on you (your hobbies, chores, friends, family, whatever) and 4 days to focus on work might be a great alternative as well. I might suggest and negotiate it in the near future.
- habnds 7y ago
  I had a similar schedule studying. It works really well to focus productivity in the morning. In particular I found that It was very difficult to focus after lunch for a few hours. I stopped fighting this and embraced that it was a good time to exercise, socialize or get random stuff done that didn't involve focus. If necessary I could work for a few more hours between 4 and 10.
perl4ever 7y ago
I don't know, possibly I would rather work 10 hours four days a week. It's hard to say, but some days I don't feel really focused and others I have all sorts of ideas at 5 PM that I could stay and work on for hours more.
nbrempel 7y ago
I’m a really big fan of this movement towards shorter workweeks. Personally, I enjoy working hard - usually more than 40 hours per week. But we should distinguish between working for others and working for oneself. Working for oneself can be education, passion work, or anything that energizes you. Working for others is also necessary for most people but reducing the weekly commitment gives people more freedom in their lives and makes them happier and more productive. For some, the extra time away from work gives them the freedom to spend more time with their family or children, or spend more time on their hobbies. But ultimately it makes these people better contributing members of society. One belief I certainly don’t agree with is the idea that working less for others makes you a lazy person or a less contributing member of society. People need free time to care for themselves and others, vote and participate in democracy, and do their laundry. We will be better off with less time committed to working for others. And of course I cant help but plug 30 Hour Jobs here since it’s very much relevant: https://30hourjobs.com https://30hourjobs.com
- newswasboring 7y ago
  > Personally, I enjoy working hard - usually more than 40 hours per week. The very first thing that needs to go is this glorification of working hours. Nobody should care how long you work. Time doesn't have any inherent value in a knowledge industry.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Contributing to society shouldn't even be the desired metric. With freedom it often comes as a byproduct.
  - tripzilch 7y ago
    If you don't care about contributing to society, then: "shouldn't" -- according to who? "desired" -- by who? "freedom" -- with regards to what exactly? I guess ... enjoy your old age when you're unable to work but not part of any society you contributed to, I hope people will care enough to spare some "freedom byproduct" for you.
dclowd9901 7y ago
The simple fact is this: My company is not getting 8 hours of me a day. They just aren't. I'm not thinking about my job all day, I'm not working all day. About 3-4 hours of my day is spent dicking around online, eating lunch, having silly conversations on slack or texting my girlfriend. I would bet that this is the norm, not just in my job, but most jobs where it's not very simple to tell if someone's "working" or not (essentially all non-labor jobs). So they can either roll with it and just give me that time free, or I can sit there and pretend to be working with just as much effect, only I'm less happy because I have to sit in a chair for 3-4 hours a day just to warm it. I don't have the mental capacity or the patience or the energy to sit and think through difficult problems all day. I don't have any of that for meetings, for decision making, for groom sessions or anything else that requires that much extra attention. It's exhausting and pointless, as, even if I'm there, I'm at a diminished capacity for productivity. So, just agree that you're not going to get me to work those extra hours, give me that time back, take it yourself, and let's all just be happy and die someday.
andy_ppp 7y ago
I think this is fine for computer programmers but being a nurse or a policeman or even a founder requires a lot more than 25h per week unfortunately. I can't see a way to suddenly find nearly 40% more staff in these kinds of industries?
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  I can't see a problem with it?
BlameKaneda 7y ago
I work for about 8 hours every M-F. If there's something that I want to check out or do (except for meeting up with friends after work), then it's easier on the weekends. For instance, there's a world music store that I've been dying to check out. Since it's closed on Sundays, Saturday's the absolute best day for me to go. If I had to I could go after work, but I'm typically pretty tired by that time (not to mention the fact that it's in the opposite direction from my apartment). If I had an extra day off during the week then I could check it out sooner.
anm89 7y ago
I feel like there is this enormous fallacy baked into the attempt to make this some kind of movement which is that all of these specific proposals for how to do work need to be structural and enforced via laws or labor agreements. I am a huge supporter of an individual business opting for a 5 hour workday and if the reality is that this turns out to be the way to maximize productivity (I hear this argument all the time) then they are going to do it anyway. But it's not like the US (or anywhere else) needs to enforce this across the board in one big yes or no decision. Like this doesn't need to be advocated for at all at some grand political level or as a movement. If you want 5 hour workdays either convince your company to give it to you or find another company that will. It's the logical equivalent of having a political movement to ask for better snacks in the kitchen. It's an individual decision between you and your employer, no one else needs to care. I understand historically that it was important to have organized labor fighting against unhealthy/ unsafe/ or broadly manipulative labor practices but those days are long gone and there is no big ethical or human rights issues here, just personal preferences.
- jimbob45 7y ago
  The main barrier is the full time/part time barrier which is enforced in a way.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "It's the logical equivalent of having a political movement to ask for better snacks in the kitchen." But if that mattered, you would need a political movement, because anyone reasonable is not going to make snacks a dealbreaker for accepting a job offer. Where's the mechanism for companies to compete? People imagine competition exists much more broadly, but you only get to choose between jobs as a package, and only when you have multiple offers in a brief window.
  - anm89 7y ago
    Your missing the point. There is no correct answer to the question. Some people like brownies. Some people like chips. The idea that there is one correct answer that needs to be enforced on everyone is not only silly but inherently tyrannical. Turns out people don't need to pay people to organize votes and collect pensions for every decision in their lives. Sometimes you just need to knock on your bosses door and tell them what snacks you want. People are capable of dealing with problems without government
aaron695 7y ago
This is just pure garbage. We've been working for thousands of years. No culture or company has made this stupid meme work. Oh, there's heaps of pilots that ALLWAYS revert back. Microsoft killed a day and got 40% rise? Lol. No they obviously didn't. You can work 5 hours a day however and have double what your grandparents had if you just want less stuff.
mesozoic 7y ago
Wow I've been ahead of the curve here!
macawfish 7y ago
I hope people can see that this is intimately related to the issue of inequality. They are essentially the same issue. Wealth redistribution is about allowing people the freedom to do locally valued work.
tr3ndyBEAR 7y ago
In 1966, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, in the famous "Man the Hunter" symposium coined the term "the original affluent" society which he ascribed to the hunter-gatherer peoples. His argument largely rested on studies conducted on the !Kung people of Southern Africa which found that the !Kung only needed to work about 15-20 hours a week to meet their daily needs. When compared to the 40 hour workweeks that (some) industrial nations enjoy (and have fought to achieve), they do indeed seem affluent However, a mistake in this analysis was quickly pointed out. That 15-20 hours figure only represented the time necessary to gather food. It ignored the time necessary to gather firewood, take care of children, prepare food, etc. So Sahlins went back to his analysis and took those factors into account. When taking those factors into account, the !Kung (and most San peoples that have maintained their traditional foraging societies) worked 40 hours to meet all their basic needs. However, when looking at the time spent by Western peoples outside of formal work doing informal work (laundry, cooking, etc), their workweek shot up to 80 hours. In the end, the San (and likely most foraging societies) worked half as much as us, enjoyed great health [1], and even had better food security [2] (contrary to common assumptions about foraging societies). The questions this opens up, in my view, are: 1) If our society is so much more efficient now than societies were before civilization, why is it that we have to work so much harder to meet our basic needs? 2) If it's not the majority benefiting from this increased efficiency, who is? 3) Is our industrial society more efficient after all? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30511505 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30511505 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917328/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917328/ edit: 15-20 hours a week not a day
- McWobbleston 7y ago
  In regards to number 2, it's those who do not need to sell their labor and instead purchase others. There is a power imbalance in the negotiation between those who sell labor and those who employ where those who sell their labor typically need employment to survive, but employers can survive without working. Because of this, those who employ are more likely able to set the terms where an employee produces more value than they personally need at a wage lower than the true value of the work. On a macro scale this means most of us are pushed towards working more than necessary at a lower pay while others accumulate the surplus
buboard 7y ago
The shortest work week is the remote one.
- discordance 7y ago
  Only when it’s done right. It can be easy to fall into bad habits like mixing work and non-work hours.
blackflame 7y ago
I'd much rather work fewer days with longer hours. This seems like it would introduce too much overhead in picking up where I left off each day
flukus 7y ago
I've had a 5 hour working day for my entire career. It's the 8 hour sitting day I've never been able to break free from.
madprops 7y ago
If you consider a work day as a movie, and say you go there 4 days a week, that's watching a 5 hour movie, 4 days in a row.
aaaronic 7y ago
I thought the title here read: "In praise of the 5-day Workweek and other 'radical' ideas" and I just assumed it was from the 1890s...
homerhomer 7y ago
I'm convinced that this will happen one year before I retire.
andrei_says_ 7y ago
I reread Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness annually and maybe you should, too. https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/
glenvdb 7y ago
One of the best working periods of my life was when I was studying part time and working full time. I'd take one day a week to attend lectures/practicals, go to my day job the rest of the week, and study at home nights and weekends. I didn't have much free time, but that one day a week at university broke up the work week and made me more productive in both activities. Now that I've had a taste of it, I want to recreate it for the rest of my working life.
ltbarcly3 7y ago
Why stop there? Lets get it down to a 15 minute workday. Sure, you'll spend less time working, but you'll be so much more productive you'll actually get more done.
SlackThrowAway 7y ago
Throwaway here, some clients may not like it. I am having basically a 3-4 hours workday and have had for a few years now. As a freelancer doing most work remotely, I can easily set my schedule. I charge clients per day, and so far I have never had a complaint about being too slow or too unproductive. I seem to very often be more productive than "full-time" employees. A few years ago I was almost depressed because I thought I was very bad at work ethics. Doing other things during the day, spending some days as little as one or two hours on the client's project. Then I realized that the days where I would force myself to work 8 or 9 hours on a project usually end up with me staring at the screen and doing useless or even counter-productive things for hours. I then switched into accepting it. My quality of life improved, the quality of my work seemed to not have changed or even improved a bit (I spend more time improving myself actually, learning new things) and I managed to raise my rates. So technically, I raised my yearly productivity by halving my workday. Obviously, that's not the case for all jobs, but for software developers, I think I am not alone in that case: I can be productive 3 or 4 hours per day. After that, I can convincingly pretend to be productive but with very low value and probably a toll on my productive time on the next day.
- fergie 7y ago
  For sure- There is already a massive tech culture of working say 20-30 hours a week. Particularly in management and consulting. Its just that its kind of taboo to acknowledge it.

540 points by grzm 7y ago

There are a couple of ways of looking at the question of workweeks. One is this, which lends to individual pondering. Could I do as much in half the the me? Would I still get paid as much? Etc. Another is systemic. Could society radically cut hours? Would everyone still get paid? Both really come down to efficiencies, and negotiating who gets rhe returns on these efficiencies. Imagine, for example, that as omnipotent king you clean up patent law such that identical results are achieved with 1/10 as many lawyers. Let's go ahead and do something similar in contract law. I imagine a god-king could reduce the required admin work by >50% in financial services. We could also throw in world peace. That makes all military and adjacent industry obsolete. Other markets do this regularly, often via technology. We need far fewer people that make far more food and clothes, for example. Some of those efficiencies have gone into making more/better stuff. A little has gone towards reduced work hours. Most of this "spare" capacity,though, has gone into other things... often administrative/white-collar. It's notable that healthy economies generally have >90% employment as a stable rule. We, as a society, seem to fill out time with work... and in aggregate it doesn't seem related to the amount of work that needs to be done.

kmlx 7y ago

will 5hour workdays or 4day workweeks in the US be considered more productive than china's 996? since China produces a lot more than the US right now, how will this change once the US produces even less? will 996 be replaced by these new models any time soon? and will this European/American tendency to work less mean that other countries will simply leapfrog them in terms of innovation and productivity?

mikorym 7y ago

Another (psuedoscientific) argument [1] in favour of 30 hour weeks: 30 = (724)/4(5/7) On each day, you should have half the day for "resting porposes". Of the remaining half, you should work only half of that. Finally, you should only apply this to 5 days with the other two reserved for "full day resting and recreational purposes". Of course it could be calculated differently to give 3 or 4 day weeks. [1] I actually did this calculation absent-mindedly through my search box hotkey while reading nbrempel's comment about 30 hour jobs and LOL'd when my independent approach actually came out to 30.

mikorym 7y ago
Sorry but I keep forgetting about the damned asterisk: (7 * 24)/4 * (5/7)

matonias 7y ago

Thinking about this, if you work less but by doing that increasing the output you do in 4 days, shouldnt you then be paid for 5 days?

siffland 7y ago

It is interesting, but then you get into jobs where you cannot shorten the work week, such as Police or TSA workers or other such things. There are tons of thankless jobs that pretty much are built around having to work the 40(+) hours, some just require travel, some are hard to get people to apply for (honestly, when was the last time you thanked the TSA people at the airport for making you take your shoes off and scan you, or the cable guy who had to rerun the wire from the pole to your house in the dark at 8:30pm). I would love to work only 5 hours a day, although i might get bored. I guess it might work better with salaried employees.

janandonly 7y ago

I always chuckle when reading articles like this. I have since I was 20 worked only three days a week(Some minor and one time off exceptions excluded). When colleagues would give me questioning Looks I would tell them that I was only available for the company three days a week. thereby hinting I might have another job (which I didn’t). From experience I can tell that the focus, relax-ness in life in general and more time for family, friends and hobbies,is more then worth the lowered income.

Proven 7y ago

The idea to work half a day and demand full day's wage for it is not that radical, you know. If you tax me enough you may be able to make your dreams come true!

Smithalicious 7y ago

I wish we could have a 7 day, 5 hour work week. I guess some other people woud rather see 4 days, 9 hours. I just wish there was more flexibility in general

TheOperator 7y ago

A 5 hour workday is okay if tempting but awful if commuting and the trend is towards larger commutes due to property costs as a percentage of people's total expenditures skyrocketing even beyond transportation costs. The real money is less days at work per week... Not shorter workdays.

jazzdev 7y ago

The crux of the article seems to be: To support this new approach, he has employees leave their phones in their bags at the office and blocks access to social media on the company network. [...] Perhaps most important, his employees now check work email only twice each day. It's not just the reducing the hours, but making those hours more productive.

Robbani 7y ago

I like short working hours. We should have more time to spend with family and friends and more freedom. Life is not like working also you need to enjoy every bit of it. We never get back your life again.

Robbani 7y ago

PragmaticPulp 7y ago

> Sick of round-the-clock work emails and Slack messages? Here’s some hope. This is exactly why articles about 4-day workweeks, 5-hour workdays, and the idea that productivity is inversely correlated to hours worked are so popular; Many of us are buried under expectations of around-the-clock availability and commitment to our jobs. One of my employers made an official policy banning vacation statuses in Slack because, in their words, it implied that people were off the hook from responding to Slack messages. I was threatened with demotion for taking a 2-day weekend backpacking vacation out of cell phone range once (not an on call job). My management team just couldn't tolerate the idea that one of their employees was out of their control. At this point, I'd gladly take strict 8-hour workdays, 5 days a week. These articles about 5-hour days or 32-hour workweeks feel like a pipedream.

koonsolo 7y ago
I don't get this. I'm a software developer in Belgium, and basically all cards are in our hands over here. There is a huge shortage of software developers. If I quit, I can get a job within a month which gives the same or better pay. From the company view, they need to spend several months trying to find a new employee, and then give full pay while that person is still learning the codebase, and other employees wast time getting him/her up to speed. It takes another few months before this person is 100% productive. So as an employer, you are basically pulling on the shorter end of the string. So my question: why is it so much different in the US?
- unclesams-uncle 7y ago
  I'm an American who lived in Belgium for 15 years, first to study then for work. I always told people that the difference between the US and Belgium is that you "live to work" in the former and "work to live" in the latter. Belgian labor laws are much more enforced than they are in the US. The unions in Belgium have a lot of sway in big companies and employers tend to respond positively to work-life balance. In the US, there's the expectation that if you're hired for a role, you should be able to onboard as quickly as possible. There's no 6 month trial period or even the concept of an indefinite contract (CDI in French, I forgot the acronym in Dutch) (EDIT: in the private sector). Likewise, an American employer can get rid of an employee (and likewise hire one) in less time and with less cost than a Belgian one. That flexibility drives a lot of the business decisions in a way that would never translate in Belgium (or much of Western Europe, for that matter). On the other hand, if you're in a situation where your employer goes over the line (like the person at the top of the thread describes), you can generally just walk away from the job. There's no 6-week notice. There's for sure a lot more to it, but that's mainly where I see the difference between the two countries.

mytailorisrich 7y ago

> Sick of round-the-clock work emails and Slack messages? Here’s some hope. I leave my laptop in office and don't even want to think about work the instant I walk past the door.

greggman2 7y ago
I take mine home so if I want to work from home the next day I can
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  Yeah that's always the dilemma at the end of the day...
foxrob92 7y ago
Yep, same. I'm glad I'm not important enough to have to think about work when I'm not being paid.

40acres 7y ago

I work about 5 hours a day and love it. I've left work multiple days at 2-3pm and that's okay because on those days I'm usually in the office at 7-8. Scrum allows my teammates to know what I'm up to and as long as work isn't being pushed and communication is robust everything is fine. To be honest I couldn't really program for more than 6 hours a day anyway. It's mentally draining and I can't sit that long.

marcusverus 7y ago
How did you land this gig? Did you negotiate a 25 hour work week, or was it a part-time job from the get-go?

sloopy543 7y ago

I don't have any of these concerns. I just don't answer emails or Slack messages right way. Nobody has fired me for it yet because I am there when it matters, I consistently provide value, and I show up to all meetings scheduled in advance. Just get a big ball o' FU money and let the good times roll. You're the one who decides if you need to be "always on," and guess what, you don't. The world can learn learn to wait like 30 minutes or a few hours if you're really far away from tech. I routinely leave my place in the middle of the day to ride my bike, climb, or whatever and I have suffered minimal repercussions. It's all in your mind

MS90 7y ago
> Just get a big ball o' FU money and let the good times roll. I wish someone had told me it was that easy sooner!
- sloopy543 7y ago
  If you're in software, it's easy. You just have to learn how to control your spending and save the rest. Get comfortable living at about $30K per year
  - MS90 7y ago
    I do work in software, and I do save my money. However, unless I'm suddenly given a massive raise it's going to take 5 or more years until I have what I consider "FU money" saved up. I wouldn't really consider saving up money over years and years as "just getting it"
    - sloopy543 7y ago
      Semantics. It obviously takes time to build independence, but you can do it. It is in your power. Nobody really has to tolerate micromanagement unless they're just starting out
      - MS90 7y ago

nkozyra 7y ago

Employers and managers seem incapable of understanding the cost these conditions impart. I understand it: morale is hard to put a dollar amount next to. But most tech companies don't need everyone 24/7. They just don't. They should condition employees to value their free time, it will pay off in a lot of ways. Unless it's an absolute emergency I don't send emails past five. People are conditioned to respond to them. Same with slack messages. There's this belief that being available 24/7 is a positive attribute in employees and we really need to squash that. It's unhealthy for everyone.

0x8BADF00D 7y ago
We’ve reached total work[0] globally. The world is a heterotopia, particularly for those who are in low skilled service sector jobs. This will not change, it will only get worse. [0] https://medium.com/the-ascent/is-total-work-taking-over-our-lives-84192b1246e0 https://medium.com/the-ascent/is-total-work-taking-over-our-...
- jhoechtl 7y ago
  Until war reboots to a level playfield.
weberc2 7y ago
> There's this belief that being available 24/7 is a positive attribute in employees and we really need to squash that. It's unhealthy for everyone. For whatever reason, employers seem to value this for certain roles, and they often pay a premium for it. This is a Good Thing for people who value money over flexibility; why lock them out of a natural fit? Perhaps you would argue that this isn't good for them, but surely they should be free to make the choice? For those who value flexibility over money, they shouldn't take those jobs. As long as expectations are communicated, there shouldn't be a problem. Maybe this isn't a real problem, but I want to address it just in case: I'm concerned that some people may feel entitled to a high low-flexibility salary _and_ high flexibility. This sort of entitlement comes up often, and as far as I can tell, it fundamentally ignores economic realities. In other words, if these things are compatible, then proponents need to explain themselves (and provide a lot of support for their arguments) because it's far from obvious.

eagsalazar2 7y ago

This premise doesn't jibe with products that are "always on". Support 5hrs/day? I hope "great support" isn't part of your value prop. Devs can't even be reached because they log out of slack, etc at 1pm and over the weekend? I hope "uptime" (riiight) isn't part of your value prop. As a consultant we do lots of new product development for clients where uptime and support are a big deal, especially during rollouts/launches where we're encountering a flood of new issues (UX and technical), going totally dark after 1pm weekdays isn't a remote possibility. Having said that, we very rarely actually work more than 35hr/week or on weekends. But we do put my personal phone number in our SOW for CRITICAL issues (haven't been called yet). So yeah maintaining a sane work culture is critical but telling everyone to completely unplug at 1pm is nuts IMO. This article isn't outlining every details obviously and maybe the example company really doesn't care about uptime or quick support (desktop app for enterprise??). And maybe they are glossing over the fact that every week there actually is someone on call but most people unplug at 1pm. If so, that sounds pretty reasonable!

aaomidi 7y ago
You could hire another shift of support engineers for those times...
- stuff4ben 7y ago
  which costs more money. Getting more work out of fewer people thereby cutting costs and increasing shareholder value is the capitalist thing to do. Not saying it's right or wrong.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    No, that's like saying cheating people or killing them is the capitalist thing to do. Defending capitalism becomes indistinguishable from attacking it; either way, the assertion is false. A market economy is a way of optimizing welfare through profit-seeking, but it has no meaning or existence or justification without constraints and boundary conditions. What constraints we should have is a political question completely separate from whether we should have private ownership of capital and free markets.

lalos 7y ago

What will stop people from working two jobs? I feel like this is the 'uberization' of work, salary will go down and people will have to work 2-3 jobs on multiple days. For example 3 days doing one job, another 3 days another job and 1 day weekend or mornings at one job and afternoons at another totaling 10 hours per day worked. This has to be tightly regulated if not it will regress and only profit making will be optimized.

sloopy543 7y ago
Umm... nothing and that's the point. It's free market capitalism. People should be free to do whatever they want with their time. So long as the value they provide is greater than their cost, the deal is good for both parties Ideally people would only work 30 hours but get paid for the full week. Hourly billing is bullshit anyway. The natural cadence of work doesn't map to always being able to extract value from every single hour. Sometimes the value is in being more or less available for that week. It's astonishing how many developers can't grasp that concept and insist on being super strict about hourly work
- lalos 7y ago
  History says otherwise, unless you mean people should be free to abuse of others lack of judgement when their survival is on the line. That's why they started to cap working hours and protecting children from being part of the workforce. Also, you don't have to go that far into history. Some uber drivers I've talked to want to get out of that business but can't because they were bamboozled into signing a car loan they can't pay without working for Uber and they mention that when they signed it they had an expectation of earnings that has been steadily going down. No comment on your assumption that I'm a developer unless you meant it as a standalone fact.
Forge36 7y ago
Perhaps nothing, the major way health insurance is required today is by number of hours (30 per week). To avoid this cost companies reduce hours. Overtime hours apply only to hourly and non-exempt employees today and only for hours over 40. Thus a change to the work week might start with a cap on salaried employees hours and required overtime for hours over 40. With fewer exceptions would a 4 day work week might result from working 4 10's first. If overtime is set at 32 hours as well this would push down hours per day. I can't foresee a cap on hours per day so this could be instituted by companies requiring 4 days in office. If the U.S. with a mine to universal healthcare I'm worried the wage decline would happen naturally anyway. However that may lead to more flexibility in hours with companies opting to allow more control over number of hours as extra costs more scale more slowly

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/QpjJc http://archive.is/QpjJc

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

marmaduke 7y ago

I work for 3.5h/day and the free time is worth the loss of pay.

sylk 7y ago
How do you even do this? Is it all remote?
- marmaduke 7y ago
  No I work in an office 9h to 12h30, officially at half time (with half pay). I'm not particularly efficient after lunch anyway, so it's better to just go home, in my case.

3u8Gf 7y ago

My cofounder and I switched to working 4 hours of "productive" work per day and it is pretty awesome. I use RescueTime to track what app is in front and when it ticks over to 4 hours I generally call it quits unless I am in the middle something I want to wrap up. I really like this because it incentivizes productivity over hours in seat. IE, right now this comment is being added to my "non productive" time and I am making no progress on getting my workday done. (I have 15m left at the moment) I am generally pretty focused, but sometimes that wanes and I find this keeps me on task. On the best of days I start around 7am and call it quits by noon, but occasionally that stretches into 2pm. I do occasionally hop on a bit in the evening and we are all basically all on call but our stack is pretty stable so that doesn't come up often. Has been absolutely awesome, I don't think I could ever go back. I am far happier, spend far more time outdoors and I honestly do not think my productivity has dropped much at all. I think it is far too easy to just use wall clock as a measure of working and fool ourselves that we are doing more than 4 hours of real work in an 8 hour day. Throwaway because I'm not sure my clients are ready to hear this.

sloopy543 7y ago
Yup. I suspect this sort of thing is going on all over the place but most people don't speak openly of it. All work is value-based. Never forget that. No clients care if you spent 80 hours a week not solving their problem, so why would they care if you spent 20 solving it?
- 3u8Gf 7y ago
  > No clients care if you spent 80 hours a week not solving their problem, so why would they care if you spent 20 solving it? This has not been my experience at all. It's a different subject entirely, but it is very common for clients to be much happier to pay for 20 days at $550 a day than 5 days at $2,200 a day, even if they got it two weeks earlier. People are not rational.
  - sloopy543 7y ago
    Right right. They have other weird concepts like "market rates" and average timeframe lodged in their heads. It's complicated and pardon me if I have glossed over the details somewhat. If you're smart, you get all of the work done in advance, then stage it over the course the next few days, providing a steady trickle to create the perception of steady progress and to have something to mention at the standup meetings. I suspect a good percentage of experienced developers with good customer management skills do something akin to this.

mig4ng 7y ago

I worked this schedule while I was studying, 5-hours a day 5 days a week (part-time) and to be honest my productivity was around 85/90% compared to working 8-hours a day 5 days a week. I would have the stand-up as 10/15 minutes after arriving, and then I would most of the times enter flow and work for 1h30 to 2h, make a break and work for more 1h to 1h30, sometimes longer if I got distracted with time. On those flow blocks I would only pause in intervals of 2-3 minutes for filling the water bottle or going to bathroom. Between those flow blocks I usually had a longer break to talk with my colleagues (work related or not), sometimes play a bit foosball or board/card games and eat. It was great, except when we had bigger meetings/workshops and other time consuming events. When those occured I had troubles getting into flow. In those days I managed to do it I would often get distracted with time and work 5h30 to 6h unintentionally. It worked really well, I think the lunch break has a large context switching cost, making it hard to have productive 8h. Making it feel like either the morning or the afternoon short on time. I would also love to try 8-9h (getting more hours after the context switch of lunch) a day 4 days a week. Getting 3 days to focus on you (your hobbies, chores, friends, family, whatever) and 4 days to focus on work might be a great alternative as well. I might suggest and negotiate it in the near future.

habnds 7y ago
I had a similar schedule studying. It works really well to focus productivity in the morning. In particular I found that It was very difficult to focus after lunch for a few hours. I stopped fighting this and embraced that it was a good time to exercise, socialize or get random stuff done that didn't involve focus. If necessary I could work for a few more hours between 4 and 10.

perl4ever 7y ago

I don't know, possibly I would rather work 10 hours four days a week. It's hard to say, but some days I don't feel really focused and others I have all sorts of ideas at 5 PM that I could stay and work on for hours more.

nbrempel 7y ago

I’m a really big fan of this movement towards shorter workweeks. Personally, I enjoy working hard - usually more than 40 hours per week. But we should distinguish between working for others and working for oneself. Working for oneself can be education, passion work, or anything that energizes you. Working for others is also necessary for most people but reducing the weekly commitment gives people more freedom in their lives and makes them happier and more productive. For some, the extra time away from work gives them the freedom to spend more time with their family or children, or spend more time on their hobbies. But ultimately it makes these people better contributing members of society. One belief I certainly don’t agree with is the idea that working less for others makes you a lazy person or a less contributing member of society. People need free time to care for themselves and others, vote and participate in democracy, and do their laundry. We will be better off with less time committed to working for others. And of course I cant help but plug 30 Hour Jobs here since it’s very much relevant: https://30hourjobs.com https://30hourjobs.com

newswasboring 7y ago
> Personally, I enjoy working hard - usually more than 40 hours per week. The very first thing that needs to go is this glorification of working hours. Nobody should care how long you work. Time doesn't have any inherent value in a knowledge industry.
raxxorrax 7y ago
Contributing to society shouldn't even be the desired metric. With freedom it often comes as a byproduct.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  If you don't care about contributing to society, then: "shouldn't" -- according to who? "desired" -- by who? "freedom" -- with regards to what exactly? I guess ... enjoy your old age when you're unable to work but not part of any society you contributed to, I hope people will care enough to spare some "freedom byproduct" for you.

dclowd9901 7y ago

The simple fact is this: My company is not getting 8 hours of me a day. They just aren't. I'm not thinking about my job all day, I'm not working all day. About 3-4 hours of my day is spent dicking around online, eating lunch, having silly conversations on slack or texting my girlfriend. I would bet that this is the norm, not just in my job, but most jobs where it's not very simple to tell if someone's "working" or not (essentially all non-labor jobs). So they can either roll with it and just give me that time free, or I can sit there and pretend to be working with just as much effect, only I'm less happy because I have to sit in a chair for 3-4 hours a day just to warm it. I don't have the mental capacity or the patience or the energy to sit and think through difficult problems all day. I don't have any of that for meetings, for decision making, for groom sessions or anything else that requires that much extra attention. It's exhausting and pointless, as, even if I'm there, I'm at a diminished capacity for productivity. So, just agree that you're not going to get me to work those extra hours, give me that time back, take it yourself, and let's all just be happy and die someday.

andy_ppp 7y ago

I think this is fine for computer programmers but being a nurse or a policeman or even a founder requires a lot more than 25h per week unfortunately. I can't see a way to suddenly find nearly 40% more staff in these kinds of industries?

ClumsyPilot 7y ago
I can't see a problem with it?

BlameKaneda 7y ago

I work for about 8 hours every M-F. If there's something that I want to check out or do (except for meeting up with friends after work), then it's easier on the weekends. For instance, there's a world music store that I've been dying to check out. Since it's closed on Sundays, Saturday's the absolute best day for me to go. If I had to I could go after work, but I'm typically pretty tired by that time (not to mention the fact that it's in the opposite direction from my apartment). If I had an extra day off during the week then I could check it out sooner.

anm89 7y ago

I feel like there is this enormous fallacy baked into the attempt to make this some kind of movement which is that all of these specific proposals for how to do work need to be structural and enforced via laws or labor agreements. I am a huge supporter of an individual business opting for a 5 hour workday and if the reality is that this turns out to be the way to maximize productivity (I hear this argument all the time) then they are going to do it anyway. But it's not like the US (or anywhere else) needs to enforce this across the board in one big yes or no decision. Like this doesn't need to be advocated for at all at some grand political level or as a movement. If you want 5 hour workdays either convince your company to give it to you or find another company that will. It's the logical equivalent of having a political movement to ask for better snacks in the kitchen. It's an individual decision between you and your employer, no one else needs to care. I understand historically that it was important to have organized labor fighting against unhealthy/ unsafe/ or broadly manipulative labor practices but those days are long gone and there is no big ethical or human rights issues here, just personal preferences.

jimbob45 7y ago
The main barrier is the full time/part time barrier which is enforced in a way.
perl4ever 7y ago
"It's the logical equivalent of having a political movement to ask for better snacks in the kitchen." But if that mattered, you would need a political movement, because anyone reasonable is not going to make snacks a dealbreaker for accepting a job offer. Where's the mechanism for companies to compete? People imagine competition exists much more broadly, but you only get to choose between jobs as a package, and only when you have multiple offers in a brief window.
- anm89 7y ago
  Your missing the point. There is no correct answer to the question. Some people like brownies. Some people like chips. The idea that there is one correct answer that needs to be enforced on everyone is not only silly but inherently tyrannical. Turns out people don't need to pay people to organize votes and collect pensions for every decision in their lives. Sometimes you just need to knock on your bosses door and tell them what snacks you want. People are capable of dealing with problems without government

aaron695 7y ago

This is just pure garbage. We've been working for thousands of years. No culture or company has made this stupid meme work. Oh, there's heaps of pilots that ALLWAYS revert back. Microsoft killed a day and got 40% rise? Lol. No they obviously didn't. You can work 5 hours a day however and have double what your grandparents had if you just want less stuff.

mesozoic 7y ago

Wow I've been ahead of the curve here!

macawfish 7y ago

I hope people can see that this is intimately related to the issue of inequality. They are essentially the same issue. Wealth redistribution is about allowing people the freedom to do locally valued work.

tr3ndyBEAR 7y ago

In 1966, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, in the famous "Man the Hunter" symposium coined the term "the original affluent" society which he ascribed to the hunter-gatherer peoples. His argument largely rested on studies conducted on the !Kung people of Southern Africa which found that the !Kung only needed to work about 15-20 hours a week to meet their daily needs. When compared to the 40 hour workweeks that (some) industrial nations enjoy (and have fought to achieve), they do indeed seem affluent However, a mistake in this analysis was quickly pointed out. That 15-20 hours figure only represented the time necessary to gather food. It ignored the time necessary to gather firewood, take care of children, prepare food, etc. So Sahlins went back to his analysis and took those factors into account. When taking those factors into account, the !Kung (and most San peoples that have maintained their traditional foraging societies) worked 40 hours to meet all their basic needs. However, when looking at the time spent by Western peoples outside of formal work doing informal work (laundry, cooking, etc), their workweek shot up to 80 hours. In the end, the San (and likely most foraging societies) worked half as much as us, enjoyed great health [1], and even had better food security [2] (contrary to common assumptions about foraging societies). The questions this opens up, in my view, are: 1) If our society is so much more efficient now than societies were before civilization, why is it that we have to work so much harder to meet our basic needs? 2) If it's not the majority benefiting from this increased efficiency, who is? 3) Is our industrial society more efficient after all? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30511505 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30511505 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917328/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917328/ edit: 15-20 hours a week not a day

McWobbleston 7y ago
In regards to number 2, it's those who do not need to sell their labor and instead purchase others. There is a power imbalance in the negotiation between those who sell labor and those who employ where those who sell their labor typically need employment to survive, but employers can survive without working. Because of this, those who employ are more likely able to set the terms where an employee produces more value than they personally need at a wage lower than the true value of the work. On a macro scale this means most of us are pushed towards working more than necessary at a lower pay while others accumulate the surplus

buboard 7y ago

The shortest work week is the remote one.

discordance 7y ago
Only when it’s done right. It can be easy to fall into bad habits like mixing work and non-work hours.

blackflame 7y ago

I'd much rather work fewer days with longer hours. This seems like it would introduce too much overhead in picking up where I left off each day

flukus 7y ago

I've had a 5 hour working day for my entire career. It's the 8 hour sitting day I've never been able to break free from.

madprops 7y ago

If you consider a work day as a movie, and say you go there 4 days a week, that's watching a 5 hour movie, 4 days in a row.

aaaronic 7y ago

I thought the title here read: "In praise of the 5-day Workweek and other 'radical' ideas" and I just assumed it was from the 1890s...

homerhomer 7y ago

I'm convinced that this will happen one year before I retire.

andrei_says_ 7y ago

I reread Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness annually and maybe you should, too. https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

glenvdb 7y ago

One of the best working periods of my life was when I was studying part time and working full time. I'd take one day a week to attend lectures/practicals, go to my day job the rest of the week, and study at home nights and weekends. I didn't have much free time, but that one day a week at university broke up the work week and made me more productive in both activities. Now that I've had a taste of it, I want to recreate it for the rest of my working life.

ltbarcly3 7y ago

Why stop there? Lets get it down to a 15 minute workday. Sure, you'll spend less time working, but you'll be so much more productive you'll actually get more done.

SlackThrowAway 7y ago

Throwaway here, some clients may not like it. I am having basically a 3-4 hours workday and have had for a few years now. As a freelancer doing most work remotely, I can easily set my schedule. I charge clients per day, and so far I have never had a complaint about being too slow or too unproductive. I seem to very often be more productive than "full-time" employees. A few years ago I was almost depressed because I thought I was very bad at work ethics. Doing other things during the day, spending some days as little as one or two hours on the client's project. Then I realized that the days where I would force myself to work 8 or 9 hours on a project usually end up with me staring at the screen and doing useless or even counter-productive things for hours. I then switched into accepting it. My quality of life improved, the quality of my work seemed to not have changed or even improved a bit (I spend more time improving myself actually, learning new things) and I managed to raise my rates. So technically, I raised my yearly productivity by halving my workday. Obviously, that's not the case for all jobs, but for software developers, I think I am not alone in that case: I can be productive 3 or 4 hours per day. After that, I can convincingly pretend to be productive but with very low value and probably a toll on my productive time on the next day.

fergie 7y ago
For sure- There is already a massive tech culture of working say 20-30 hours a week. Particularly in management and consulting. Its just that its kind of taboo to acknowledge it.