4 ms·

>If you were working 80% as much, they would probably only be able to pay 70% of your salary. ...why? Unless there's an implication that they'd need to hire m

by tw04 6y ago

>If you were working 80% as much, they would probably only be able to pay 70% of your salary. ...why? Unless there's an implication that they'd need to hire more people, why would they need to pay you less? If you're generating the same amount of revenue, just working fewer hours, their fixed profit should be able to cover your fixed healthcare whether you work 80% of the time or 10% of the time. As long as they aren't incurring additional expense by hiring multiple people to do the same job to facilitate fewer hours. A shorter work week obviously can't work for all businesses, but there are plenty that have tried it and found that workers spend more time working and less time socializing with a shorter work week (which would seem to be a win for everyone).

s1artibartfast 6y ago
>Unless there's an implication that they'd need to hire more people I think you hit the nail on the head. IF the company needs a someone M-F for 40 hours of Bug-fixed/widgets/ect, they will have to hire to fill the gap. If the last 20% of the worker's time is truly non-productive, then the company is already over paying and the worker is wasting their time.
- paulclinger 6y ago
  > If the last 20% of the worker's time is truly non-productive, then the company is already over paying and the worker is wasting their time. I think it's a misconception about worker productivity: you need to optimize the overall system, which will require having slack in some places that are not a bottleneck. "The Goal" by Goldratt is a good explanation on why that's the case. Any attempt to locally optimize to keep everyone busy sooner or later kills the overall productivity of the system. How this slack is used by the workers is a different question, but if someone wants to use it to improve the system, to improve themselves, or simply to recharge, I think it's up to the worker. The goal is not to keep everyone busy; the goal is to provide optimal results using available resources.
chii 6y ago
> If you're generating the same amount of revenue if you worked only 80% but is able to generate the same revenue as working at 100%, then surely one of the following must be true: you either slack off the 20% of the time, or the company is overpaying you for the work you do! Therefore, it must be assumed that if you worked only 80% of the time, you're only 80% effective. So the fixed cost of an employee doesn't decrease when they work only 80% of the time - so it becomes more expensive than just cutting the salary by 20%.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ElFitz 6y ago
  Depends on the type of work you do and what the company pays you for. It is the means (your time)? Or the outcome? Had quite a few clients and employers asking and haggling over trying to get it both ways. If you consider a creative job where you only care about the output, then the more creative it is, the less (above an undetermined threshold) time spent working and output are correlated. The means (again, time spent) not being an accurate predictor of the outcome, they don’t matter much, and there is no reason to tie the salary to them. If you consider a non-creative (factory / fruits picking) or vaguely creative (low-level factory-style coding, data input) job, then the less creative it is, the more time spent working and output are correlated (up to a physical / mental exhaustion threshold). Here, the means are a good predictor of the outcome, hence the salary being tied to the number of hours spent working. It really depends ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - geodel 6y ago
    > It really depends... And it really comes down to what most of the IT/Software people are. I have a feeling though most of them have are closer to fruit picker but a lot think of themselves penning great literature when writing 10 line comments on 2 line function summing a pair of integers.
    - appletrotter 6y ago

by tw04 6y ago

s1artibartfast 6y ago

>Unless there's an implication that they'd need to hire more people I think you hit the nail on the head. IF the company needs a someone M-F for 40 hours of Bug-fixed/widgets/ect, they will have to hire to fill the gap. If the last 20% of the worker's time is truly non-productive, then the company is already over paying and the worker is wasting their time.

paulclinger 6y ago
> If the last 20% of the worker's time is truly non-productive, then the company is already over paying and the worker is wasting their time. I think it's a misconception about worker productivity: you need to optimize the overall system, which will require having slack in some places that are not a bottleneck. "The Goal" by Goldratt is a good explanation on why that's the case. Any attempt to locally optimize to keep everyone busy sooner or later kills the overall productivity of the system. How this slack is used by the workers is a different question, but if someone wants to use it to improve the system, to improve themselves, or simply to recharge, I think it's up to the worker. The goal is not to keep everyone busy; the goal is to provide optimal results using available resources.

chii 6y ago

> If you're generating the same amount of revenue if you worked only 80% but is able to generate the same revenue as working at 100%, then surely one of the following must be true: you either slack off the 20% of the time, or the company is overpaying you for the work you do! Therefore, it must be assumed that if you worked only 80% of the time, you're only 80% effective. So the fixed cost of an employee doesn't decrease when they work only 80% of the time - so it becomes more expensive than just cutting the salary by 20%.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ElFitz 6y ago
Depends on the type of work you do and what the company pays you for. It is the means (your time)? Or the outcome? Had quite a few clients and employers asking and haggling over trying to get it both ways. If you consider a creative job where you only care about the output, then the more creative it is, the less (above an undetermined threshold) time spent working and output are correlated. The means (again, time spent) not being an accurate predictor of the outcome, they don’t matter much, and there is no reason to tie the salary to them. If you consider a non-creative (factory / fruits picking) or vaguely creative (low-level factory-style coding, data input) job, then the less creative it is, the more time spent working and output are correlated (up to a physical / mental exhaustion threshold). Here, the means are a good predictor of the outcome, hence the salary being tied to the number of hours spent working. It really depends ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- geodel 6y ago
  > It really depends... And it really comes down to what most of the IT/Software people are. I have a feeling though most of them have are closer to fruit picker but a lot think of themselves penning great literature when writing 10 line comments on 2 line function summing a pair of integers.
  - appletrotter 6y ago