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While I agree with you in principle that a 40h week is arbitrary and ridiculous... > Employers pay for productivity and the value generated by employees, not h

by thunky 4y ago

While I agree with you in principle that a 40h week is arbitrary and ridiculous... > Employers pay for productivity and the value generated by employees, not hours in a seat. I'm not sure many employers see it that way. If they do, that's great. But I would guess that most think they should be getting 40 hrs worth of "work" out of their employees. What I imagine happens too frequently is that the employee hides the fact that they're actually working < 40 hrs a week, so the relationship with their employer is dishonest. That's why products like "mouse jigglers" exist, so employees can fool their employer.

Bakary 4y ago
The entire employer-employee relationship is predicated on power imbalances specific to our economic and legal system, so how tragic is mouse jiggling, really?
- thunky 4y ago
  "tragic" is a bit dramatic. It's just dishonest and a sign of dysfunction. I'm sorry but I'm not going to shed a tear for people that defraud their employer because they think they're more valuable than everyone else. Also just think of what a luxury it is to have the opportunity to fake it. People that do "real" work don't have that opportunity. Imagine a drive thru worker posing a dummy in the window.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    Slacking off can have moral implications in that it can make your coworkers' lives harder, or can be a problem for the public if it's a socially useful activity like healthcare. If those conditions aren't met however, I don't really see why the worker should let the employer extract additional value out of them for no benefit, especially if they do fulfill the terms of the contract set to them. Maybe it's a cultural difference but this seems like a Protestant-style fetishization of work and hierarchy for its own sake. The appeal to civility and honesty in the abstract is busted because the structural relationship is highly uncivil to begin with. There are less lucky workers out there, so other groups of workers should relinquish their cards? Seems like a non-sequitur. You could turn it around and ask why the employer isn't grateful that they can extract as much value as they currently can. In some EU countries, they're not even allowed to monitor workers or send them work correspondence after hours!
    - thunky 4y ago
      > I don't really see why the worker should let the employer extract additional value out of them for no benefit, especially if they do fulfill the terms of the contract set to them. I agree with this. My contention is that workers are not fullfulling the terms of their contract. I'm not defending the contracts themselves, or saying it makes sense for an employer to require butts in seats for 40 hrs, but I also can't sympathize with people that violate the agreement they entered into. You're defending "mouse jiggling". That is a deception. Why would they feel the need to fake work if their contract allows them to not work?
      - Bakary 4y ago
        I see what you mean. It's definitely true that the ideal solution would be to introduce this at the contract stage. The difficulty of doing that is in a sense what prompted me to respond earlier. For most workers in industries where it is physically possible, it is very difficult to negotiate 80% employment or time flexibility or working from home. Even some skilled workers on HN seem to have trouble with it as they testify to in this very thread, and anglophone coders are the cream of the crop when it comes to negotiating power, so we can only imagine what it's like elsewhere. The typical modern worker (with some exceptions) has to essentially request the privilege of trading the majority of their useful lifespan towards increasing the wealth of another person or face the prospect of the complete dissolution of their life. By contrast, most employers (though of course not all) who face mouse-jiggling type problems merely have to contend with the loss of some self-actualization and additional wealth as the worse case scenario. If Oliver Twist sneaks in an extra bite of bread from the coal mill's supply during a 12 hour workday, he is being deceptive to his employer when fulfilling a contract willingly entered into. Of course, comparing an office worker to a Victorian child laborer is ridiculous on the face of it, but only in a quantitative sense. In a qualitative sense, the power balance and the context of the deception means that we can't consider it in a vacuum or in comparison to an ideal world. In other words, if the environment were civil, the worker would be easily able to enter into the mutually beneficial contracts you alluded to, and the need for mouse jiggling would disappear on its own except for all but the most boundary-pushing workers. In Victorian times, the social norms justified child labor and asked workers to be thankful for their lot. Today, the conditions of workers has improved tremendously, but the norms are still designed (or rather, naturally emerged) towards extracting additional value in favor of the employer. The last 50 years have seen the bulk of productivity gains given to the owners rather than the workers, and wage theft is a huge concern all over the OECD. Hence the OP's Ask HN thread and the feeling of social dissonance regarding the work week.

by thunky 4y ago

Bakary 4y ago

The entire employer-employee relationship is predicated on power imbalances specific to our economic and legal system, so how tragic is mouse jiggling, really?

thunky 4y ago
"tragic" is a bit dramatic. It's just dishonest and a sign of dysfunction. I'm sorry but I'm not going to shed a tear for people that defraud their employer because they think they're more valuable than everyone else. Also just think of what a luxury it is to have the opportunity to fake it. People that do "real" work don't have that opportunity. Imagine a drive thru worker posing a dummy in the window.
- Bakary 4y ago
  Slacking off can have moral implications in that it can make your coworkers' lives harder, or can be a problem for the public if it's a socially useful activity like healthcare. If those conditions aren't met however, I don't really see why the worker should let the employer extract additional value out of them for no benefit, especially if they do fulfill the terms of the contract set to them. Maybe it's a cultural difference but this seems like a Protestant-style fetishization of work and hierarchy for its own sake. The appeal to civility and honesty in the abstract is busted because the structural relationship is highly uncivil to begin with. There are less lucky workers out there, so other groups of workers should relinquish their cards? Seems like a non-sequitur. You could turn it around and ask why the employer isn't grateful that they can extract as much value as they currently can. In some EU countries, they're not even allowed to monitor workers or send them work correspondence after hours!
  - thunky 4y ago
    > I don't really see why the worker should let the employer extract additional value out of them for no benefit, especially if they do fulfill the terms of the contract set to them. I agree with this. My contention is that workers are not fullfulling the terms of their contract. I'm not defending the contracts themselves, or saying it makes sense for an employer to require butts in seats for 40 hrs, but I also can't sympathize with people that violate the agreement they entered into. You're defending "mouse jiggling". That is a deception. Why would they feel the need to fake work if their contract allows them to not work?
    - Bakary 4y ago
      I see what you mean. It's definitely true that the ideal solution would be to introduce this at the contract stage. The difficulty of doing that is in a sense what prompted me to respond earlier. For most workers in industries where it is physically possible, it is very difficult to negotiate 80% employment or time flexibility or working from home. Even some skilled workers on HN seem to have trouble with it as they testify to in this very thread, and anglophone coders are the cream of the crop when it comes to negotiating power, so we can only imagine what it's like elsewhere. The typical modern worker (with some exceptions) has to essentially request the privilege of trading the majority of their useful lifespan towards increasing the wealth of another person or face the prospect of the complete dissolution of their life. By contrast, most employers (though of course not all) who face mouse-jiggling type problems merely have to contend with the loss of some self-actualization and additional wealth as the worse case scenario. If Oliver Twist sneaks in an extra bite of bread from the coal mill's supply during a 12 hour workday, he is being deceptive to his employer when fulfilling a contract willingly entered into. Of course, comparing an office worker to a Victorian child laborer is ridiculous on the face of it, but only in a quantitative sense. In a qualitative sense, the power balance and the context of the deception means that we can't consider it in a vacuum or in comparison to an ideal world. In other words, if the environment were civil, the worker would be easily able to enter into the mutually beneficial contracts you alluded to, and the need for mouse jiggling would disappear on its own except for all but the most boundary-pushing workers. In Victorian times, the social norms justified child labor and asked workers to be thankful for their lot. Today, the conditions of workers has improved tremendously, but the norms are still designed (or rather, naturally emerged) towards extracting additional value in favor of the employer. The last 50 years have seen the bulk of productivity gains given to the owners rather than the workers, and wage theft is a huge concern all over the OECD. Hence the OP's Ask HN thread and the feeling of social dissonance regarding the work week.