3 ms·

But then why work 4 day/week and not 3, when 4 days/week becomes the new normal that burns people out? And then why not work 2 days instead of 3? And so on. Ho

But then why work 4 day/week and not 3, when 4 days/week becomes the new normal that burns people out? And then why not work 2 days instead of 3? And so on. How do we decide which model is the sustainable one?

ssklash 3y ago
Shouldn't the goal be to work as little as possible? Infinite growth in a finite world just makes us all work harder than necessary, and instead of using productivity and efficiency gains to benefit people/workers, they just go to pad some company's stock price.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Shouldn't the goal be to work as little as possible? It's my goal indeed, but not the goal of my country, the economy and the businesses in it who provide the jobs I work for and also lobby for the labor laws my EU country has. Of course doing no work at all while getting paid loads would be the dream, but I wasn't talking about dreams, I was talking about reality. And the reality is way different than what you dream of. How do we make less working days a reality for everyone, instead of just ~60 companies form the UK?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Too bad the "government goal of X% employment (whatever that is)" couldn't be met by tuning the workweek up and down instead of futzing with interest percentages.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      So why haven't they done it? Seems like a good way to get votes. "If you vote for me you'll only work 4 days/week."
      - cellu 3y ago
        Labour tried in the UK and nobody voted for them lol
mrguyorama 3y ago
Because at a certain point it will be impossible to argue that "Knowledge workers can get as much done in X-1 days as in X days" because it's trivially untrue. The problem is that the brain is a muscle and gets really really tired solving knowledge problems all day because it is optimized to avoid doing that at as much as possible because it is energy intensive and the ancient human who solved everything perfectly rationally died of starvation while the one that relied on imperfect heuristics and belief got to eat. Solving super hard Sudoku puzzles 40 hours a week will take a toll on your brain that solving super hard Sudoku puzzles 1 hour a week empirically cannot. >How do we decide which model is the sustainable one? Through the exact science you say you "don't buy" because you seem to believe companies operating in a flawed market are better at finding ground truth than literal science.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Through the exact science you say you "don't buy" because you seem to believe companies operating in a flawed market are better at finding ground truth than literal science. I'm saying companies believe in science that leads to profit, as the market can stay irrational longer than companies can stay solvent. Same how science showed switching to EUV lithography is better than sticking to DUV and then all companies adopted that, if science would also show workers working 32h per week results in more profit for them than 40h, then they would all switch in a heart beat to capture all that money left on the table by their competitors still stuck in their ancient 40h workweek. But that hasn't happened.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Companies (currently) compete by offering more money - if the pool of applicants dried up enough, perhaps they'd begin competing by offering more time. The problem is if they pay you $x per year, they don't care how many hours you work, as long as the job gets done. So something that makes their life a bit more annoying (no replies on Friday) but makes your life amazingly better won't get done.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago

ssklash 3y ago

Shouldn't the goal be to work as little as possible? Infinite growth in a finite world just makes us all work harder than necessary, and instead of using productivity and efficiency gains to benefit people/workers, they just go to pad some company's stock price.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Shouldn't the goal be to work as little as possible? It's my goal indeed, but not the goal of my country, the economy and the businesses in it who provide the jobs I work for and also lobby for the labor laws my EU country has. Of course doing no work at all while getting paid loads would be the dream, but I wasn't talking about dreams, I was talking about reality. And the reality is way different than what you dream of. How do we make less working days a reality for everyone, instead of just ~60 companies form the UK?
- bombcar 3y ago
  Too bad the "government goal of X% employment (whatever that is)" couldn't be met by tuning the workweek up and down instead of futzing with interest percentages.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    So why haven't they done it? Seems like a good way to get votes. "If you vote for me you'll only work 4 days/week."
    - cellu 3y ago
      Labour tried in the UK and nobody voted for them lol

mrguyorama 3y ago

Because at a certain point it will be impossible to argue that "Knowledge workers can get as much done in X-1 days as in X days" because it's trivially untrue. The problem is that the brain is a muscle and gets really really tired solving knowledge problems all day because it is optimized to avoid doing that at as much as possible because it is energy intensive and the ancient human who solved everything perfectly rationally died of starvation while the one that relied on imperfect heuristics and belief got to eat. Solving super hard Sudoku puzzles 40 hours a week will take a toll on your brain that solving super hard Sudoku puzzles 1 hour a week empirically cannot. >How do we decide which model is the sustainable one? Through the exact science you say you "don't buy" because you seem to believe companies operating in a flawed market are better at finding ground truth than literal science.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Through the exact science you say you "don't buy" because you seem to believe companies operating in a flawed market are better at finding ground truth than literal science. I'm saying companies believe in science that leads to profit, as the market can stay irrational longer than companies can stay solvent. Same how science showed switching to EUV lithography is better than sticking to DUV and then all companies adopted that, if science would also show workers working 32h per week results in more profit for them than 40h, then they would all switch in a heart beat to capture all that money left on the table by their competitors still stuck in their ancient 40h workweek. But that hasn't happened.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Companies (currently) compete by offering more money - if the pool of applicants dried up enough, perhaps they'd begin competing by offering more time. The problem is if they pay you $x per year, they don't care how many hours you work, as long as the job gets done. So something that makes their life a bit more annoying (no replies on Friday) but makes your life amazingly better won't get done.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago