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If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. As long as that's the actual acknowledged situation and not "most of your

If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. As long as that's the actual acknowledged situation and not "most of your job is pretending to work and making people think you're important". I wonder how successful a lot of companies would be if they openly cut required hours in half.

granshaw 4y ago
Yeah it’s the “pretending to work” part that’s soul crushing. If you could be explicit that “this is what I need to do this week, it’ll only take 4 hours. The rest of the time I’ll be available but I won’t do make-work”, that’d be awesome. Also a lot of people don’t realize that being available for questions or if something comes up IS work - it severely limits what you can do with that time even if working remotely. So were you near your computer 9-5 today and could respond on short notice? Well then you worked 8 hours basically. And that availability itself is hugely valuable to employers.
- tomuli38 4y ago
  Not only is the availability, but so is the image. I had a CEO who loved the image of an office full of people all day, all week. I've been working remotely since then. I think he just wanted to feel important.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    Happens a lot. It's also a problem with the Navy. More, smaller, near-coast ("littoral") ships would be much more effective tools for wartime and for maintaining peace on the seas. There are some. Acquisitions has been fraught with problems and weighty opinions of captains and admirals who want to feel important on enormous ships. Enormous ships which aren't as useful in the day to day operations in the Navy and would be extremely vulnerable at war with modern weaponry. A lot of what gets done around the world is heavily influenced by how a decision will influence the feelings of people in power.
    - trhway 4y ago
      >would be extremely vulnerable at war with modern weaponry. the point of those enormous ships is to minimize the chances of war happening. >More, smaller, near-coast ("littoral") ships would be much more effective tools for wartime Russia lost the big ship on the Black Sea and have the situation you're describing - ie. their fleet is several missile frigates, and such their situation is very weak. The fleet can't really operate. (And with recent successful attack on a Russian airfield in Crimea the air support for those remaining ships is expected to dwindle which will be a clear show case of how [in]capable fleet without air support (which we do actually know since WWII really), and that air support usually, until you operate near your shores, can only come from aircraft carriers)
      - rocqua 4y ago
        Frigates are much, much bigger than litoral ships.
        trhway 4y ago
        The US litoral ships are 3500 tons 115m length. Russian Black Sea frigates 4000 tons 125m (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Grigorovich-class_frigate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Grigorovich-class_frig...) Black Sea is deep everywhere, ie. there is no "litoral" area where those frigates wouldn't be able to operate due to their size. And their roles there are currently mostly those of "litoral" ships, like the land attacks.
- travisd 4y ago
  Required reading on this subject should be "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber.
refulgentis 4y ago
At a FAANG and I can tell you it's not nearly so positive as this. It was shocking coming from startup world. It's not so much "gee I only have 4 hours of work to do this week" It's...well, it's impossible to say how long it takes to do anything in particular, so I shouldn't feel stressed trying to get it done... oh there's actually no real management style/pressure to get things done here? Promo is seniority-based? There's silly unspoken rules like after you get promoted, you're _guaranteed_ a middling performance rating because its an easy horsetrade to do? Your manager doesn't have to argue $X was super important and strategic and this newly promoted character needs a better rating, and the other manager doesn't need to argue $Y needs to keep a high rating to show continued momentum in his growth, they just do it. There's no way to rebel against this system, or work within it, other than transfer companies? It's a rather horrific situation and I don't think it's helping anyone or anyone is particularly satisfied with it. The problem is, any other solution is worse and will hurt The Vibes in the short run. Interesting to see Zuck move towards Dark Zuck and say things I've never heard at FAANG
- nr2x 4y ago
  I don’t see how giving an up-leveled employee time to adjust to a new responsibility scope is a bad thing. Working under conditions of pressure and stress provides few long term benefits and is the refuge of those who don’t have the smarts to perform well and need to look like they do.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - baobabKoodaa 4y ago
    > I don’t see how giving an up-leveled employee time to adjust to a new responsibility scope is a bad thing. It's not a bad thing, but the parent you are replying to never said otherwise. They were talking about a fake performance rating that is given for political reasons.
    - Spivak 4y ago
onion2k 4y ago
If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. Would you take that over $300k to work 40 hours doing something you actually care about? I don't think I would.
- ummonk 4y ago
  Are you incapable of doing something you actually care about with the freed up 36 hours?
  - throwaway8829 4y ago
    For me it's less about "find a hobby/enjoy life" or more that we're likely in this field because we want to feel necessary and useful. I WFH with amazing TC and WLB. I do my hobbies all day and then work just a few hours. But I feel like an absolute piece of shit just coasting at work. Doesn't matter how well my hobbies are going, I'll always have the quiet stress of not contributing what I'm capable of doing. The times I feel good about myself are when I actually ship something cool with my team.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    People working 4 hours a week still have to pretend to be productive for the other 36 hours though. They still have to sit through meetings, and justify their time, and answer Slack messages, and have reviews. They're not free to work on their own projects - they're just 'not working'. That sounds far worse than spending time working on something you actually care about even if it's not your own idea.
    - ummonk 4y ago
      The comment that kicked this off was “ If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. As long as that's the actual acknowledged situation and not "most of your job is pretending to work and making people think you're important"”
- colechristensen 4y ago
data-ottawa 4y ago
From my experience with a temporary 4 day work week: the people who want to appear busy will still find a way to schedule in the same amount of pointless meetings into the fewer hours. If those people have control over the schedules of other workers, then those workers lose their focus time. You need guardrails to prevent org & overhead from overwhelming everything else.
geekbird 4y ago
"If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal." Oh, you're bucking for CEO! A lot of companies could have cut out four to eight hours of meetings a week and still maintained the same level of productivity.

granshaw 4y ago

Yeah it’s the “pretending to work” part that’s soul crushing. If you could be explicit that “this is what I need to do this week, it’ll only take 4 hours. The rest of the time I’ll be available but I won’t do make-work”, that’d be awesome. Also a lot of people don’t realize that being available for questions or if something comes up IS work - it severely limits what you can do with that time even if working remotely. So were you near your computer 9-5 today and could respond on short notice? Well then you worked 8 hours basically. And that availability itself is hugely valuable to employers.

tomuli38 4y ago
Not only is the availability, but so is the image. I had a CEO who loved the image of an office full of people all day, all week. I've been working remotely since then. I think he just wanted to feel important.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Happens a lot. It's also a problem with the Navy. More, smaller, near-coast ("littoral") ships would be much more effective tools for wartime and for maintaining peace on the seas. There are some. Acquisitions has been fraught with problems and weighty opinions of captains and admirals who want to feel important on enormous ships. Enormous ships which aren't as useful in the day to day operations in the Navy and would be extremely vulnerable at war with modern weaponry. A lot of what gets done around the world is heavily influenced by how a decision will influence the feelings of people in power.
  - trhway 4y ago
    >would be extremely vulnerable at war with modern weaponry. the point of those enormous ships is to minimize the chances of war happening. >More, smaller, near-coast ("littoral") ships would be much more effective tools for wartime Russia lost the big ship on the Black Sea and have the situation you're describing - ie. their fleet is several missile frigates, and such their situation is very weak. The fleet can't really operate. (And with recent successful attack on a Russian airfield in Crimea the air support for those remaining ships is expected to dwindle which will be a clear show case of how [in]capable fleet without air support (which we do actually know since WWII really), and that air support usually, until you operate near your shores, can only come from aircraft carriers)
    - rocqua 4y ago
      Frigates are much, much bigger than litoral ships.
      - trhway 4y ago
        The US litoral ships are 3500 tons 115m length. Russian Black Sea frigates 4000 tons 125m (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Grigorovich-class_frigate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Grigorovich-class_frig...) Black Sea is deep everywhere, ie. there is no "litoral" area where those frigates wouldn't be able to operate due to their size. And their roles there are currently mostly those of "litoral" ships, like the land attacks.
travisd 4y ago
Required reading on this subject should be "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber.

refulgentis 4y ago

At a FAANG and I can tell you it's not nearly so positive as this. It was shocking coming from startup world. It's not so much "gee I only have 4 hours of work to do this week" It's...well, it's impossible to say how long it takes to do anything in particular, so I shouldn't feel stressed trying to get it done... oh there's actually no real management style/pressure to get things done here? Promo is seniority-based? There's silly unspoken rules like after you get promoted, you're _guaranteed_ a middling performance rating because its an easy horsetrade to do? Your manager doesn't have to argue $X was super important and strategic and this newly promoted character needs a better rating, and the other manager doesn't need to argue $Y needs to keep a high rating to show continued momentum in his growth, they just do it. There's no way to rebel against this system, or work within it, other than transfer companies? It's a rather horrific situation and I don't think it's helping anyone or anyone is particularly satisfied with it. The problem is, any other solution is worse and will hurt The Vibes in the short run. Interesting to see Zuck move towards Dark Zuck and say things I've never heard at FAANG

nr2x 4y ago
I don’t see how giving an up-leveled employee time to adjust to a new responsibility scope is a bad thing. Working under conditions of pressure and stress provides few long term benefits and is the refuge of those who don’t have the smarts to perform well and need to look like they do.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- baobabKoodaa 4y ago
  > I don’t see how giving an up-leveled employee time to adjust to a new responsibility scope is a bad thing. It's not a bad thing, but the parent you are replying to never said otherwise. They were talking about a fake performance rating that is given for political reasons.
  - Spivak 4y ago

onion2k 4y ago

If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. Would you take that over $300k to work 40 hours doing something you actually care about? I don't think I would.

ummonk 4y ago
Are you incapable of doing something you actually care about with the freed up 36 hours?
- throwaway8829 4y ago
  For me it's less about "find a hobby/enjoy life" or more that we're likely in this field because we want to feel necessary and useful. I WFH with amazing TC and WLB. I do my hobbies all day and then work just a few hours. But I feel like an absolute piece of shit just coasting at work. Doesn't matter how well my hobbies are going, I'll always have the quiet stress of not contributing what I'm capable of doing. The times I feel good about myself are when I actually ship something cool with my team.
- onion2k 4y ago
  People working 4 hours a week still have to pretend to be productive for the other 36 hours though. They still have to sit through meetings, and justify their time, and answer Slack messages, and have reviews. They're not free to work on their own projects - they're just 'not working'. That sounds far worse than spending time working on something you actually care about even if it's not your own idea.
  - ummonk 4y ago
    The comment that kicked this off was “ If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal. As long as that's the actual acknowledged situation and not "most of your job is pretending to work and making people think you're important"”
colechristensen 4y ago

data-ottawa 4y ago

From my experience with a temporary 4 day work week: the people who want to appear busy will still find a way to schedule in the same amount of pointless meetings into the fewer hours. If those people have control over the schedules of other workers, then those workers lose their focus time. You need guardrails to prevent org & overhead from overwhelming everything else.

geekbird 4y ago

"If somebody wants to pay me $300k to work 4 hours a week, I'll happily take the deal." Oh, you're bucking for CEO! A lot of companies could have cut out four to eight hours of meetings a week and still maintained the same level of productivity.