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Many good points, but I think there are some major errors. > For the salary cost of 4 employees at 40 hours, you get 5 employees at 32 hours. The real costs o

Many good points, but I think there are some major errors. > For the salary cost of 4 employees at 40 hours, you get 5 employees at 32 hours. The real costs of paying 5 people 80% salary is much greater - benefits, many overhead costs, etc. do not get cut by 20%. > You get the combined experience of 5 people instead of 4. At most margins, having more human beings is NOT a clear win. Communication overhead, diffusion of responsibility, etc. create major diseconomies of scale in the sort of office work that this post was framed to be about.

Freak_NL 3y ago
The communication overhead seems more than balanced by the extra redundancy you have when people do become unavailable (which they inevitably do) and people not burning out in quite as high a rate. But hey, I'm a Dutchman working 80%, so I'm sure I'm biased.
- Communitivity 3y ago
  I'm all for an 80% week. In my career I've known six people who suffered burnout, one of whom committed suicide. Too many corporations push our IT and devs too hard, then replace them when they get used up. I don't see the U.S. companies going for an 80% week though.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  You might enjoy reading about Brooke's Law and Parkinson's Law.
Communitivity 3y ago
It's even worse in defense consulting. - I've seen people billed at 2x salary because overhead includes work area cost, management chain cost, passthrough percentage, etc.). None of that overhead is likely to be at 80%. - Defense consulting often involves combined staffing from different companies. For example, if BigCorp partners with ThreePhdsInABox on a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project, then the rules are often interpreted to mean 51% or more of the staffing has to come from the small business (usually). This is measured in terms of number of people on a project, not total cost of each person. - For classified efforts, the cost of a clearance can run up to $50,000 per person, depending on the clearance. This is the same whether the person is 10%, 80%, or 100%. If they are already cleared at the needed level then this isn't an issue. I don't see this happening in defense consulting until/unless the government goes to a mandatory 32 hour work week. That said many government projects have a mandatory 40 hour week, and some defense companies have an unwritten expectation of 50 hours per week, so the new unwritten will likely be a 40 hour week.

Freak_NL 3y ago

The communication overhead seems more than balanced by the extra redundancy you have when people do become unavailable (which they inevitably do) and people not burning out in quite as high a rate. But hey, I'm a Dutchman working 80%, so I'm sure I'm biased.

Communitivity 3y ago
I'm all for an 80% week. In my career I've known six people who suffered burnout, one of whom committed suicide. Too many corporations push our IT and devs too hard, then replace them when they get used up. I don't see the U.S. companies going for an 80% week though.
readthenotes1 3y ago
You might enjoy reading about Brooke's Law and Parkinson's Law.

Communitivity 3y ago

It's even worse in defense consulting. - I've seen people billed at 2x salary because overhead includes work area cost, management chain cost, passthrough percentage, etc.). None of that overhead is likely to be at 80%. - Defense consulting often involves combined staffing from different companies. For example, if BigCorp partners with ThreePhdsInABox on a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project, then the rules are often interpreted to mean 51% or more of the staffing has to come from the small business (usually). This is measured in terms of number of people on a project, not total cost of each person. - For classified efforts, the cost of a clearance can run up to $50,000 per person, depending on the clearance. This is the same whether the person is 10%, 80%, or 100%. If they are already cleared at the needed level then this isn't an issue. I don't see this happening in defense consulting until/unless the government goes to a mandatory 32 hour work week. That said many government projects have a mandatory 40 hour week, and some defense companies have an unwritten expectation of 50 hours per week, so the new unwritten will likely be a 40 hour week.