11 ms·

> 20-30 hour work weeks need to be acceptable Yes, yes, yes. I am totally convinced that we can all start working 20 hours per week starting next Monday and th

> 20-30 hour work weeks need to be acceptable Yes, yes, yes. I am totally convinced that we can all start working 20 hours per week starting next Monday and the world will just keep going as normal. Only we will be healthier, happier and richer.

deadmutex 5y ago
Problem is that if one company works 20 hours a week, and another works 40 hours a week. The 40 hour/week company will get more done. Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  I doubt that. The point is that 20 hrs a week * 100% ~= 40 hrs a week * 50%. And most people top out at a few hours of productivity a day. Beyond that, we solve that problem with government regulation. If companies really need to run 24/5 they can just go to 6 shifts instead of 3.
- endlessvoid94 5y ago
  I used to think this. But, I've learned that it assumes a bunch of things that aren't really true at many, many companies: - Clear goals that the team is bought into - Productive people who can sustain emotional enthusiasm for extended time periods - An environment where intrinsically motivated people can thrive, and/or incentives for extrinsically motivated people - A healthy feedback loop so people know when they're improving and are rewarded for it - etc Looked at this way, a team of 5 people working 20 hours per week in this type of company can vastly outperform a team of people working 40 hours per week at a company that lacks the above items. (And I'm probably missing some)
  - PraetorianGourd 5y ago
    That isn't how comparisons work though. You can't compare a 20-hour/week company with good culture to a 40-hour/week company with toxic culture. You have two variables uncontrolled in that comparison. Compare both companies at 40 or both at 20. The good-culture-40-hour would outperform the both the good-culture-20-hour and bad-culture-40-hour so why wouldn't all companies aim for 40/hours with a good culture? It could be argued that it is impossible to have a good culture and 40 hours, but that needs a lot of analysis.
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      You can compare apples and oranges just fine. (You are working to argue that the comparison being made isn't useful and haven't gotten there. For instance, if I was going to build a company, I'd certainly want to know what parts of a culture were important to a company that compared so well against the longer working company)
    - endlessvoid94 5y ago
      I'm saying if you have the above items checked off, then you're ahead of many, many teams. (It feels to me like 99% of teams but that's just looking out my own eyes)
- upgrejd 5y ago
  I think he was being sarcastic.
- setr 5y ago
  By that logic, you should be enforcing a 60 hour/week, to achieve even better goals. The problem is that job != job, because different jobs have different requirements. A doctor needs to be available continuously, but he doesn’t necessarily need to be working continuously. An on-call doctor needs to be available 24/7. A general practitioner may only need to show up for scheduled appointments in strict timeslots. A programmer on a long term project needs to eventually put in hours, but precisely when he puts in those hours matters less. A senior developer is productive anytime he’s available for advice (and there are others working to be advised — with off-shore resources, this can mean extended availability) A warehouse worker is productive only when he’s explicitly doing labor. Being available for labor, but not doing any, is worthless. A programmer on a short term or last-mile phase of a project needs to put in the hours, but on a strict timeline — there’s no room to skip a day and make up for it tomorrow. Companies already acknowledge this, albeit implicitly. The higher you are in the hierarchy, the more valuable your availability and the less your labor. CEOs don’t get to have strict no-work vacations, but they also don’t have strict 9-5 work/life split, because they need to be available all the time. At the same time, they can go normal days without any real work to do, because they aren’t needed for anything.
- watwut 5y ago
  Yes. But then, people who work 40hours produce more then those who work 60, but it is not stopping teams overworking people. Meaning, productivity is not only factor.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  Why would I care about my doctor only working 20h a week? He could work 1h a week as long as he delivers what I need.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    This is the same problem as people working 40 hours a week have competing with people working 80 hours a week have; they mostly can’t. Even if the last 20 hours are so marginal that really, you might as well not have bothered the person who worked 80 hours a week got 1.5 times as much done, and in any job that isn’t totally routinised the knowledge and skills gained from working compound. They compound faster for those who work more hours.
- fastasucan 5y ago
  I think the point of the original post in this thread is that 40 hour weeks are in reality 20 hour productive weeks. So a company working 40 hour weeks where 20 hours are productive have the same output as a company working 20 hour weeks where 20 hours are productive.
  - walshemj 5y ago
    your assuming that these 20 hour will be 100% work which is unlikely
- eat_veggies 5y ago
  You're kind of begging the question when you take "The 40 hour/week company will get more done" as a given, because that is exactly what's at stake here, isn't it? People upthread are theorizing that those extra 20 hours a week really don't make us get more done, because (to quote one of the comments above), "the rest is socialization, pointless meetings, lunches, or trying to look busy"
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    I can't remember the last time I saw the phrase "begging the question" used in its traditional/philosophical form — how refreshing!
  - asiachick 5y ago
    Why 20? Why not 10? or 5, maybe 1hrs a week some how people will magically get more done than 40hrs a week.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week. I rather imagine I’d have two doctors.
  - kwdc 5y ago
    Given how many people die from medical mistakes, many of which can be traced to fatigue, maybe we'd be better off with two doctors instead of one tired/exhausted fatigue zombie.
- rodgerd 5y ago
  > Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week. That would be fabulous. Much better than doctors working to a regime designed by a cocaine addict that sees them punch-drunk from a lack of sleep by the end of their rosters.
- darepublic 5y ago
  I've come to believe that big software projects are like a marathon. Burning up your maximum energy every step of the way simply isn't going to yield better results. You need to create a pace and keep to it. Sometimes you speed up, sometimes you slow down, but saying 60 hours/week from start to finish is gonna be counterproductive.
  - kybernetikos 5y ago
    I remember reading some studies on this, I think it was in the world of game development. 60 hrs/week delivers more than 40 hrs/week for the first few weeks, but then it reduces and after about 6 weeks, you're delivering less working 60 hrs/week than you were at 40. Of course, there are lots of related issues, like are your employees getting enough sleep? Very varied work might tax employees differently. Is 8hr days, 5 on, 2 off necessarily the optimal pattern? Can people work more efficiently for longer if they're working on something they truly believe in?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- totorovirus 5y ago
  But isn't 20 hours/week or 40 hours/week a negotiated agreement when you got hired? If you want 20 hours/week, get paid less and stop whining about companies should pay more for less amount of mandatory work hours. The discussion should have been more like employees should have more options on choosing how many mandatory work hours they are willing to offer a week when signing agreement with a company. I am utterly surprised, though not all people here are from the capitalism driven world but majorities are talking like they are living in socialist world.
- rybosworld 5y ago
  This is such a silly thing to say. By that logic, our companies would be driving us to work as many hours as possible. The fact is, most (white-collar) places just don't have enough work to consume people for 40 continuous hours.
- lmm 5y ago
  > Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week. The reduction in misdiagnoses and straight up practical errors might give them better throughput overall?
phkahler 5y ago
>> Yes, yes, yes. I am totally convinced that we can all start working 20 hours per week starting next Monday and the world will just keep going as normal. Only we will be healthier, happier and richer. Well no. Because some people will use that to work 2 jobs and make twice as much money. Then inflation will take that into account, prices will rise, and everyone will end up working 2 20-hour jobs. If you ever want to work significantly less hours I suspect it will require laws forbidding people to work more than X, and even then people will take that second job under the table.
- api 5y ago
  This is called the hedonic treadmill, and is why we don't have a more leisurely lifestyle in general. John Maynard Keynes famously predicted something like a 10-20 hour work week by the year 2000. You can actually have that today... if you are willing to live at the standard of living of someone in the 1930s. That would mean a much smaller house, much less technology, a very cheap car or public transit, vanilla food, only a few suits of clothes, and bare bones health care. Instead we tend to use our gains to get more space (houses today outside dense cities are huge), more tech, more education, better health care, designer hipster food, more entertainment, and so on.
  - munificent 5y ago
    People lived at 1930 standards of living because technology at the time only gave them 1930 levels of productivity.
  - heterodoxxed 5y ago
    | a much smaller house, much less technology, a very cheap car or public transit, vanilla food, only a few suits of clothes, and bare bones health care. You would have to be highly skilled to do that, the average worker couldn't get anywhere close to that lifestyle on 10-20 hours a week.
    - the_only_law 5y ago
      At least I don't think so on the jobs that would actually allow you to work 10-20 hours a week.
onetimeusename 5y ago
I can't convince myself that would work. What if it isn't that people hit a peak of productivity at 20 hours of work per week, it's the minimum they try to do and still be acceptable to their boss. This could happen if bosses just assume that people work close to 90-100% of the time during working hours. I am sure no one is honest about it. If 20 hours were the new weekly target instead of 40 it could negatively impact people if productivity declines on crucial things. That could happen if the new minimum acceptable amount of work to management were, say, 10 hours. So people would similarly spend 50% of their 20 hour working week avoiding work. So there could be a temporary shock throughout the economy as supply of things decreased until things adjusted.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Your hypotheticals seem stretched; I see no reason they should apply. Let's try it and see?
mullingitover 5y ago
This is probably true - the problem with modern post-industrial economies is weak demand, not supply. We've juiced supply to the absolute hilt, but people are too busy spending their time at jobs and not consuming. We could easily scale down to 20 hour workweeks and the economy would keep on growing. It's a prisoner's dilemma situation though, as others point out. Some people are going to insist on wasting their new extra free time at another job. The solution would be to put a hard cap on labor hours per person, mandating an overtime pay requirement that follows the worker from job to job.
- munificent 5y ago
  > people are too busy spending their time at jobs and not consuming. You are sitting on a trillion dollar marketing opportunity here. The problem is that our culture does not strongly encourage consumerism during work hours. Beyond a couple of decorative trinkets on the cubible walls, people don't spend much on or at their workplace. Capitalism teaches us we must fix that glitch. The right solution is to create a culture of "office bling". You don't want to be the only person in your office without a gold throne, do you? Are you really writing on the whiteboard with a fucking Expo marker from Office Depot when you could show your worth by using the new $17,000 Montblanc Whiteboard Excelsior? Oh, you had a Starbucks latte on your break? Plebian. I had a flat white made with kopi luwak and gold flakes. Why should we only burn cash distracting ourselves from our miserable home lives, when we could also burn cash distracting ourselves from our miserable work lives too?
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    My point is that we don't need to waste irreplaceable moments of our lives so heavily focused on production in service of a consumption side that is wildly out of balance. We can produce far more than we can consume, and cutting back on labor would restore some balance and arguably increase prosperity and happiness across the board.
  - _blu 5y ago
    office bling is a good idea. But the problem is that usually the company pays for any expenses you have during work hours.
RC_ITR 5y ago
This is a very HN comment, because it ignores that a lot of people are paid for being physically present somewhere (not for their output). I love the idea of a 20 hour workweek, but I also understand that the harsh reality is that it would make things like construction, building security, janitorial services, etc. 2x more expensive. I personally think that would be a boon for society, but given how much everyone is worried about (largely transitory) inflation today, IDK how willing they would be to accept that inflationary pressure.
- hahajk 5y ago
  Nurses, firefighters, and military already work unusually bad hours but they don’t seem to be especially well-paid.
  - labster 5y ago
    In the US, nurses (at least RNs) and firefighters are well paid, but military are not. I imagine the well-paid jobs vary quite a lot per nation.
    - CobaltFire 5y ago
      As a member of the military: I'm compensated fairly, and my pension makes it actually quite well compensated. The career does suck and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but for someone needing mobility from generational poverty it can work. The career opportunities upon retirement are nothing to be trivialized either. Compensation there may not be SWE level, but it's WELL above median.
    - vostok 5y ago
      The military seems to pay pretty well considering the requirements.
      - Clewza313 5y ago
        That's because one of the requirements is willingness to get shot at.
spurgu 5y ago
Yes, yes, yes, yes! I've been doing 20 hour weeks (on average) for the past 1-2 years and I can say with great confidence that I finally seem to have achieved a sustainable work/life balance. And of those hours worked there has practically been zero waste. 20 hours at 100% efficiency is so much better than 40 hours at 60%, for all parties involved. Even if the latter has slightly higher overall output, when you look at it long term (health/happiness) the former wins hands down.

deadmutex 5y ago

Problem is that if one company works 20 hours a week, and another works 40 hours a week. The 40 hour/week company will get more done. Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week.

HWR_14 5y ago
I doubt that. The point is that 20 hrs a week * 100% ~= 40 hrs a week * 50%. And most people top out at a few hours of productivity a day. Beyond that, we solve that problem with government regulation. If companies really need to run 24/5 they can just go to 6 shifts instead of 3.
endlessvoid94 5y ago
I used to think this. But, I've learned that it assumes a bunch of things that aren't really true at many, many companies: - Clear goals that the team is bought into - Productive people who can sustain emotional enthusiasm for extended time periods - An environment where intrinsically motivated people can thrive, and/or incentives for extrinsically motivated people - A healthy feedback loop so people know when they're improving and are rewarded for it - etc Looked at this way, a team of 5 people working 20 hours per week in this type of company can vastly outperform a team of people working 40 hours per week at a company that lacks the above items. (And I'm probably missing some)
- PraetorianGourd 5y ago
  That isn't how comparisons work though. You can't compare a 20-hour/week company with good culture to a 40-hour/week company with toxic culture. You have two variables uncontrolled in that comparison. Compare both companies at 40 or both at 20. The good-culture-40-hour would outperform the both the good-culture-20-hour and bad-culture-40-hour so why wouldn't all companies aim for 40/hours with a good culture? It could be argued that it is impossible to have a good culture and 40 hours, but that needs a lot of analysis.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    You can compare apples and oranges just fine. (You are working to argue that the comparison being made isn't useful and haven't gotten there. For instance, if I was going to build a company, I'd certainly want to know what parts of a culture were important to a company that compared so well against the longer working company)
  - endlessvoid94 5y ago
    I'm saying if you have the above items checked off, then you're ahead of many, many teams. (It feels to me like 99% of teams but that's just looking out my own eyes)
upgrejd 5y ago
I think he was being sarcastic.
setr 5y ago
By that logic, you should be enforcing a 60 hour/week, to achieve even better goals. The problem is that job != job, because different jobs have different requirements. A doctor needs to be available continuously, but he doesn’t necessarily need to be working continuously. An on-call doctor needs to be available 24/7. A general practitioner may only need to show up for scheduled appointments in strict timeslots. A programmer on a long term project needs to eventually put in hours, but precisely when he puts in those hours matters less. A senior developer is productive anytime he’s available for advice (and there are others working to be advised — with off-shore resources, this can mean extended availability) A warehouse worker is productive only when he’s explicitly doing labor. Being available for labor, but not doing any, is worthless. A programmer on a short term or last-mile phase of a project needs to put in the hours, but on a strict timeline — there’s no room to skip a day and make up for it tomorrow. Companies already acknowledge this, albeit implicitly. The higher you are in the hierarchy, the more valuable your availability and the less your labor. CEOs don’t get to have strict no-work vacations, but they also don’t have strict 9-5 work/life split, because they need to be available all the time. At the same time, they can go normal days without any real work to do, because they aren’t needed for anything.
watwut 5y ago
Yes. But then, people who work 40hours produce more then those who work 60, but it is not stopping teams overworking people. Meaning, productivity is not only factor.
silicon2401 5y ago
Why would I care about my doctor only working 20h a week? He could work 1h a week as long as he delivers what I need.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  This is the same problem as people working 40 hours a week have competing with people working 80 hours a week have; they mostly can’t. Even if the last 20 hours are so marginal that really, you might as well not have bothered the person who worked 80 hours a week got 1.5 times as much done, and in any job that isn’t totally routinised the knowledge and skills gained from working compound. They compound faster for those who work more hours.
fastasucan 5y ago
I think the point of the original post in this thread is that 40 hour weeks are in reality 20 hour productive weeks. So a company working 40 hour weeks where 20 hours are productive have the same output as a company working 20 hour weeks where 20 hours are productive.
- walshemj 5y ago
  your assuming that these 20 hour will be 100% work which is unlikely
eat_veggies 5y ago
You're kind of begging the question when you take "The 40 hour/week company will get more done" as a given, because that is exactly what's at stake here, isn't it? People upthread are theorizing that those extra 20 hours a week really don't make us get more done, because (to quote one of the comments above), "the rest is socialization, pointless meetings, lunches, or trying to look busy"
- gnicholas 5y ago
  I can't remember the last time I saw the phrase "begging the question" used in its traditional/philosophical form — how refreshing!
- asiachick 5y ago
  Why 20? Why not 10? or 5, maybe 1hrs a week some how people will magically get more done than 40hrs a week.
Aeolun 5y ago
> Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week. I rather imagine I’d have two doctors.
- kwdc 5y ago
  Given how many people die from medical mistakes, many of which can be traced to fatigue, maybe we'd be better off with two doctors instead of one tired/exhausted fatigue zombie.
rodgerd 5y ago
> Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week. That would be fabulous. Much better than doctors working to a regime designed by a cocaine addict that sees them punch-drunk from a lack of sleep by the end of their rosters.
darepublic 5y ago
I've come to believe that big software projects are like a marathon. Burning up your maximum energy every step of the way simply isn't going to yield better results. You need to create a pace and keep to it. Sometimes you speed up, sometimes you slow down, but saying 60 hours/week from start to finish is gonna be counterproductive.
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  I remember reading some studies on this, I think it was in the world of game development. 60 hrs/week delivers more than 40 hrs/week for the first few weeks, but then it reduces and after about 6 weeks, you're delivering less working 60 hrs/week than you were at 40. Of course, there are lots of related issues, like are your employees getting enough sleep? Very varied work might tax employees differently. Is 8hr days, 5 on, 2 off necessarily the optimal pattern? Can people work more efficiently for longer if they're working on something they truly believe in?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
totorovirus 5y ago
But isn't 20 hours/week or 40 hours/week a negotiated agreement when you got hired? If you want 20 hours/week, get paid less and stop whining about companies should pay more for less amount of mandatory work hours. The discussion should have been more like employees should have more options on choosing how many mandatory work hours they are willing to offer a week when signing agreement with a company. I am utterly surprised, though not all people here are from the capitalism driven world but majorities are talking like they are living in socialist world.
rybosworld 5y ago
This is such a silly thing to say. By that logic, our companies would be driving us to work as many hours as possible. The fact is, most (white-collar) places just don't have enough work to consume people for 40 continuous hours.
lmm 5y ago
> Also, imagine if your doctor only worked 20 hours a week. The reduction in misdiagnoses and straight up practical errors might give them better throughput overall?

phkahler 5y ago

>> Yes, yes, yes. I am totally convinced that we can all start working 20 hours per week starting next Monday and the world will just keep going as normal. Only we will be healthier, happier and richer. Well no. Because some people will use that to work 2 jobs and make twice as much money. Then inflation will take that into account, prices will rise, and everyone will end up working 2 20-hour jobs. If you ever want to work significantly less hours I suspect it will require laws forbidding people to work more than X, and even then people will take that second job under the table.

api 5y ago
This is called the hedonic treadmill, and is why we don't have a more leisurely lifestyle in general. John Maynard Keynes famously predicted something like a 10-20 hour work week by the year 2000. You can actually have that today... if you are willing to live at the standard of living of someone in the 1930s. That would mean a much smaller house, much less technology, a very cheap car or public transit, vanilla food, only a few suits of clothes, and bare bones health care. Instead we tend to use our gains to get more space (houses today outside dense cities are huge), more tech, more education, better health care, designer hipster food, more entertainment, and so on.
- munificent 5y ago
  People lived at 1930 standards of living because technology at the time only gave them 1930 levels of productivity.
- heterodoxxed 5y ago
  | a much smaller house, much less technology, a very cheap car or public transit, vanilla food, only a few suits of clothes, and bare bones health care. You would have to be highly skilled to do that, the average worker couldn't get anywhere close to that lifestyle on 10-20 hours a week.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    At least I don't think so on the jobs that would actually allow you to work 10-20 hours a week.

onetimeusename 5y ago

I can't convince myself that would work. What if it isn't that people hit a peak of productivity at 20 hours of work per week, it's the minimum they try to do and still be acceptable to their boss. This could happen if bosses just assume that people work close to 90-100% of the time during working hours. I am sure no one is honest about it. If 20 hours were the new weekly target instead of 40 it could negatively impact people if productivity declines on crucial things. That could happen if the new minimum acceptable amount of work to management were, say, 10 hours. So people would similarly spend 50% of their 20 hour working week avoiding work. So there could be a temporary shock throughout the economy as supply of things decreased until things adjusted.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
Your hypotheticals seem stretched; I see no reason they should apply. Let's try it and see?

mullingitover 5y ago

This is probably true - the problem with modern post-industrial economies is weak demand, not supply. We've juiced supply to the absolute hilt, but people are too busy spending their time at jobs and not consuming. We could easily scale down to 20 hour workweeks and the economy would keep on growing. It's a prisoner's dilemma situation though, as others point out. Some people are going to insist on wasting their new extra free time at another job. The solution would be to put a hard cap on labor hours per person, mandating an overtime pay requirement that follows the worker from job to job.

munificent 5y ago
> people are too busy spending their time at jobs and not consuming. You are sitting on a trillion dollar marketing opportunity here. The problem is that our culture does not strongly encourage consumerism during work hours. Beyond a couple of decorative trinkets on the cubible walls, people don't spend much on or at their workplace. Capitalism teaches us we must fix that glitch. The right solution is to create a culture of "office bling". You don't want to be the only person in your office without a gold throne, do you? Are you really writing on the whiteboard with a fucking Expo marker from Office Depot when you could show your worth by using the new $17,000 Montblanc Whiteboard Excelsior? Oh, you had a Starbucks latte on your break? Plebian. I had a flat white made with kopi luwak and gold flakes. Why should we only burn cash distracting ourselves from our miserable home lives, when we could also burn cash distracting ourselves from our miserable work lives too?
- mullingitover 5y ago
  My point is that we don't need to waste irreplaceable moments of our lives so heavily focused on production in service of a consumption side that is wildly out of balance. We can produce far more than we can consume, and cutting back on labor would restore some balance and arguably increase prosperity and happiness across the board.
- _blu 5y ago
  office bling is a good idea. But the problem is that usually the company pays for any expenses you have during work hours.

RC_ITR 5y ago

This is a very HN comment, because it ignores that a lot of people are paid for being physically present somewhere (not for their output). I love the idea of a 20 hour workweek, but I also understand that the harsh reality is that it would make things like construction, building security, janitorial services, etc. 2x more expensive. I personally think that would be a boon for society, but given how much everyone is worried about (largely transitory) inflation today, IDK how willing they would be to accept that inflationary pressure.

hahajk 5y ago
Nurses, firefighters, and military already work unusually bad hours but they don’t seem to be especially well-paid.
- labster 5y ago
  In the US, nurses (at least RNs) and firefighters are well paid, but military are not. I imagine the well-paid jobs vary quite a lot per nation.
  - CobaltFire 5y ago
    As a member of the military: I'm compensated fairly, and my pension makes it actually quite well compensated. The career does suck and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but for someone needing mobility from generational poverty it can work. The career opportunities upon retirement are nothing to be trivialized either. Compensation there may not be SWE level, but it's WELL above median.
  - vostok 5y ago
    The military seems to pay pretty well considering the requirements.
    - Clewza313 5y ago
      That's because one of the requirements is willingness to get shot at.

spurgu 5y ago

Yes, yes, yes, yes! I've been doing 20 hour weeks (on average) for the past 1-2 years and I can say with great confidence that I finally seem to have achieved a sustainable work/life balance. And of those hours worked there has practically been zero waste. 20 hours at 100% efficiency is so much better than 40 hours at 60%, for all parties involved. Even if the latter has slightly higher overall output, when you look at it long term (health/happiness) the former wins hands down.