9 ms·

I'm always sceptical of these proposals. There are no free lunches in economics. Less production will result in less revenue. Companies are only going compensat

by kypro 6y ago

I'm always sceptical of these proposals. There are no free lunches in economics. Less production will result in less revenue. Companies are only going compensate employees for value of their labour, so less labour will eventually mean less compensation. Perhaps for some reason that I don't quite understand people get more (or an almost equalivent) amount of work done in four days as they do in five, but if not, this is just going to result in lower wages.

saberience 6y ago
I would take a lower wage for four days of work per week.
- 0_____0 6y ago
  I would happily take 3/5ths of my salary to only work 3 days a week. Yes, I know that productivity doesn't scale down cleanly like that. Just sayin'.
  - croon 6y ago
    Yeah, you're probably leaving money on the table at that point. You'll likely be >60% effective.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    The problem with the "knowledge economy" is nobody knows how to measure it. If you sit there making 600 dohickys in a 40 hour week, and reduce hours to 32 hours, and you make more than 480, your productivity has increased. If you make 300, it's gone down. If you work a 6 hour day or 10 hour day instead of an 8 hour day, do you have more or less output as a developer? If you're a sysadmin, what's more productive, the admin who automates everything and sits there on call in case something breaks, but otherwise watching TV or riding a bike, or the person who spends weeks doing repetitive work which looks busy but leads to a far worse outcome?
- thrawn0r 6y ago
  that's called part-time and where I live (Germany) it's your right as an employee to do it. I currently work 34h/week at Microsoft, fridays off. Instead of 40h/week 5day week. I threw in 2 extra hours per week because you end up checking your mails, going on a late night call w/ PST colleagues regularly anyways. Worst thing is to tell yourself you work 30h/week and get payed for it and then end up working 35-38 hours.
  - lnsru 6y ago
    There is no right for sure, just Microsoft is big enough and friendly to allow such model. Big Corp I work for was extremely hostile towards my intention to reduce work hours to 32 weekly. After European HQ intervention it happened, I made some enemies during the process. And when third of the group left this company I was forced to do 40 hours again.
    - ed_elliott_asc 6y ago
      What country are you in? In many countries it is a right
      - lnsru 6y ago
        I am also in Germany. I wouldn’t be so sure about right. Article in German: https://www.haufe.de/personal/arbeitsrecht/gesetz-zur-befristeten-teilzeit_76_413146.html https://www.haufe.de/personal/arbeitsrecht/gesetz-zur-befris... There are many conditions and practically impossible in smaller companies.
dtech 6y ago
Work doesn't scale linearly. If you'd work 7 days a week for 14 hours for a year you'd not get 3 times as much done as someone working a standard 40-hour week for a year.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  Depends on line of work - ie in software development, definitely not. In factory working on some conveyor belt, definitely. You will probably collapse from overwork at some point though
Jedd 6y ago
> I'm always sceptical of these proposals. At the risk of sounding trite, I suspect a hundred years ago some people were wary of the 5 day week too, and yet here we are, for the most part, enjoying <sic> the arrangement of two days off per week. > Less production will result in less revenue. I gather the intent is that there won't be 'less production', and consequently won't be less revenue. And/or perhaps the reduction in production won't be linearly correlated with the reduction in revenue. > Companies are only going compensate employees for value of their labour, so less labour will eventually mean less compensation. As with any large multi-national organisation, examining the remuneration of the exec layer may reveal some disparities with how profit is shared, and there may be some interesting options to explore there. > Perhaps for some reason that I don't quite understand people get more (or an almost equalivent) amount of work done in four days as they do in five, but if not, this is just going to result in lower wages. Consider that Unilever, a company valued at around $150b, likely has people that have already thought out the implications and risks of this plan.
perfunctory 6y ago
> I'm always sceptical of these proposals. Don't be. Working time has been declining for a century (especially in Europe) while GDP grew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
- throwawayay02 6y ago
  That does not imply there is an inverse causal relationship between working time and GDP, perhaps if the working hours had kept the same the GDP would have increased even further.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    Perhaps, but I'd certainly take increased leisure time over increased GDP, and I'm sure I'm far from the only one.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >Working time has been declining for a century (especially in Europe) while GDP grew. Depends if you're talking per individual or per household.
  - NeutronStar 6y ago
    Source?
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      Much has been written about the productivity gains of industrialization being erased at the household level when women started working in large numbers. The gist of it is we went from ~40hr a week of work outside the home at the household level to ~80 (obviously those numbers aren't exact because not all households are a married couple and the are people who are self employed, etc, etc). But obviously the home stuff is still getting done so the net amount of work being done is increased (less productivity gains from technology). Just google "women in the workforce macroeconomic impact" or something like that. Whether this is a net positive or net negative is basically boils down to whether you think people are better served working outside the home or better served doing household things. Also, all your comments are dead by default. You might want to make a new account.
jrockway 6y ago
Do you think that people are spending all 40 hours of their workweek working on the most important task to increase revenue? My theory, at least with software engineering, is that we all struggle with burnout. You can spend 40 hours "in the office" per week, but as you get burned out, the amount of value you add in those hours decreases. If you take a day where you don't open Slack or think about work, then you reset some of that burnout, and your next 32 hours will be significantly more productive than 40 would have been. (You can probably measure it sometime. Look at the 40 hours before someone goes on a two week vacation, and look at the 40 hours immediately after that vacation.) This isn't data, but my team has one person taking every Friday off. We do Thursday-Thursday oncall shifts, and outgoing oncall takes Friday off. I haven't noticed any change in productivity from myself or our team since we've implemented this policy. One person-day per week doesn't matter much; there is probably some tiny and low priority task that doesn't get done as a result. But the important stuff keeps happening, and the team is in a better mental state the rest of the time. I don't think that 32 hours of software engineering per week would look a lot different than 40 hours of software engineering per week, averaged on the scale of months or years. 40 is an arbitrary number that has nothing to do with the mechanics of thinking about software, or even the typing-in of software. It's probably worth another look. (I have no idea how it translates to other fields.)
dbbk 6y ago
Humans cannot sustain focus and productivity for extended periods of time. At 40 hours you're in diminishing returns.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
>Less production will result in less revenue. If you visit any Unilever factory you will find they are heavily automated. They really don't need many staff to run. The value creation in these sort of businesses has been shifting to knowledge workers for some time now. It would be foolish if Unilever and similar companies didn't start questioning all their traditional working practices.
bawolff 6y ago
> There are no free lunches in economics. Less production will result in less revenue. Ironically, the free lunch, is an actual example of a free lunch in economics that does exist (The free lunch was in olden days, where bars would provide a free lunch. This endeared it to its customer base driving traffic back for evening drinks. The cost of the free lunch was much less than the profit from the extra alcohol sales, resulting in $$$ for the bar) As far as a 4 day work week goes, there are tons of factors. Maybe the worker is happier with lower wages and more time off (i could make more money if i worked 80 hours a week, but i don't because the cost to me is more than the value of the extra mo ney). Maybe people have similar levels of production for 4 day work weeks. Maybe there's not enough work to employ everyone for 5 days but is enough for 4 and they think that is a better trade-off than laying peolle off. Maybe 4 day work week is non-monentary compensation that allows the employer to attract better talent. Etc.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Ha! "Compensate for the value of their labor"! Ha! If Americans were compensated for the value of their labor, the minimum wage would be around $28/hr. Labor is paid the 'going rate'. Whatever the employer can get away with. That's all. Btw the work week in America used to be 6 days, 12 hours a day. Went to 5x8 - didn't change pay much.

by kypro 6y ago

saberience 6y ago

I would take a lower wage for four days of work per week.

0_____0 6y ago
I would happily take 3/5ths of my salary to only work 3 days a week. Yes, I know that productivity doesn't scale down cleanly like that. Just sayin'.
- croon 6y ago
  Yeah, you're probably leaving money on the table at that point. You'll likely be >60% effective.
- iso1631 6y ago
  The problem with the "knowledge economy" is nobody knows how to measure it. If you sit there making 600 dohickys in a 40 hour week, and reduce hours to 32 hours, and you make more than 480, your productivity has increased. If you make 300, it's gone down. If you work a 6 hour day or 10 hour day instead of an 8 hour day, do you have more or less output as a developer? If you're a sysadmin, what's more productive, the admin who automates everything and sits there on call in case something breaks, but otherwise watching TV or riding a bike, or the person who spends weeks doing repetitive work which looks busy but leads to a far worse outcome?
thrawn0r 6y ago
that's called part-time and where I live (Germany) it's your right as an employee to do it. I currently work 34h/week at Microsoft, fridays off. Instead of 40h/week 5day week. I threw in 2 extra hours per week because you end up checking your mails, going on a late night call w/ PST colleagues regularly anyways. Worst thing is to tell yourself you work 30h/week and get payed for it and then end up working 35-38 hours.
- lnsru 6y ago
  There is no right for sure, just Microsoft is big enough and friendly to allow such model. Big Corp I work for was extremely hostile towards my intention to reduce work hours to 32 weekly. After European HQ intervention it happened, I made some enemies during the process. And when third of the group left this company I was forced to do 40 hours again.
  - ed_elliott_asc 6y ago
    What country are you in? In many countries it is a right
    - lnsru 6y ago
      I am also in Germany. I wouldn’t be so sure about right. Article in German: https://www.haufe.de/personal/arbeitsrecht/gesetz-zur-befristeten-teilzeit_76_413146.html https://www.haufe.de/personal/arbeitsrecht/gesetz-zur-befris... There are many conditions and practically impossible in smaller companies.

dtech 6y ago

Work doesn't scale linearly. If you'd work 7 days a week for 14 hours for a year you'd not get 3 times as much done as someone working a standard 40-hour week for a year.

saiya-jin 6y ago
Depends on line of work - ie in software development, definitely not. In factory working on some conveyor belt, definitely. You will probably collapse from overwork at some point though

Jedd 6y ago

> I'm always sceptical of these proposals. At the risk of sounding trite, I suspect a hundred years ago some people were wary of the 5 day week too, and yet here we are, for the most part, enjoying <sic> the arrangement of two days off per week. > Less production will result in less revenue. I gather the intent is that there won't be 'less production', and consequently won't be less revenue. And/or perhaps the reduction in production won't be linearly correlated with the reduction in revenue. > Companies are only going compensate employees for value of their labour, so less labour will eventually mean less compensation. As with any large multi-national organisation, examining the remuneration of the exec layer may reveal some disparities with how profit is shared, and there may be some interesting options to explore there. > Perhaps for some reason that I don't quite understand people get more (or an almost equalivent) amount of work done in four days as they do in five, but if not, this is just going to result in lower wages. Consider that Unilever, a company valued at around $150b, likely has people that have already thought out the implications and risks of this plan.

perfunctory 6y ago

> I'm always sceptical of these proposals. Don't be. Working time has been declining for a century (especially in Europe) while GDP grew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time

throwawayay02 6y ago
That does not imply there is an inverse causal relationship between working time and GDP, perhaps if the working hours had kept the same the GDP would have increased even further.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  Perhaps, but I'd certainly take increased leisure time over increased GDP, and I'm sure I'm far from the only one.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Working time has been declining for a century (especially in Europe) while GDP grew. Depends if you're talking per individual or per household.
- NeutronStar 6y ago
  Source?
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Much has been written about the productivity gains of industrialization being erased at the household level when women started working in large numbers. The gist of it is we went from ~40hr a week of work outside the home at the household level to ~80 (obviously those numbers aren't exact because not all households are a married couple and the are people who are self employed, etc, etc). But obviously the home stuff is still getting done so the net amount of work being done is increased (less productivity gains from technology). Just google "women in the workforce macroeconomic impact" or something like that. Whether this is a net positive or net negative is basically boils down to whether you think people are better served working outside the home or better served doing household things. Also, all your comments are dead by default. You might want to make a new account.

jrockway 6y ago

Do you think that people are spending all 40 hours of their workweek working on the most important task to increase revenue? My theory, at least with software engineering, is that we all struggle with burnout. You can spend 40 hours "in the office" per week, but as you get burned out, the amount of value you add in those hours decreases. If you take a day where you don't open Slack or think about work, then you reset some of that burnout, and your next 32 hours will be significantly more productive than 40 would have been. (You can probably measure it sometime. Look at the 40 hours before someone goes on a two week vacation, and look at the 40 hours immediately after that vacation.) This isn't data, but my team has one person taking every Friday off. We do Thursday-Thursday oncall shifts, and outgoing oncall takes Friday off. I haven't noticed any change in productivity from myself or our team since we've implemented this policy. One person-day per week doesn't matter much; there is probably some tiny and low priority task that doesn't get done as a result. But the important stuff keeps happening, and the team is in a better mental state the rest of the time. I don't think that 32 hours of software engineering per week would look a lot different than 40 hours of software engineering per week, averaged on the scale of months or years. 40 is an arbitrary number that has nothing to do with the mechanics of thinking about software, or even the typing-in of software. It's probably worth another look. (I have no idea how it translates to other fields.)

dbbk 6y ago

Humans cannot sustain focus and productivity for extended periods of time. At 40 hours you're in diminishing returns.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

>Less production will result in less revenue. If you visit any Unilever factory you will find they are heavily automated. They really don't need many staff to run. The value creation in these sort of businesses has been shifting to knowledge workers for some time now. It would be foolish if Unilever and similar companies didn't start questioning all their traditional working practices.

bawolff 6y ago

> There are no free lunches in economics. Less production will result in less revenue. Ironically, the free lunch, is an actual example of a free lunch in economics that does exist (The free lunch was in olden days, where bars would provide a free lunch. This endeared it to its customer base driving traffic back for evening drinks. The cost of the free lunch was much less than the profit from the extra alcohol sales, resulting in $$$ for the bar) As far as a 4 day work week goes, there are tons of factors. Maybe the worker is happier with lower wages and more time off (i could make more money if i worked 80 hours a week, but i don't because the cost to me is more than the value of the extra mo ney). Maybe people have similar levels of production for 4 day work weeks. Maybe there's not enough work to employ everyone for 5 days but is enough for 4 and they think that is a better trade-off than laying peolle off. Maybe 4 day work week is non-monentary compensation that allows the employer to attract better talent. Etc.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Ha! "Compensate for the value of their labor"! Ha! If Americans were compensated for the value of their labor, the minimum wage would be around $28/hr. Labor is paid the 'going rate'. Whatever the employer can get away with. That's all. Btw the work week in America used to be 6 days, 12 hours a day. Went to 5x8 - didn't change pay much.