5 ms·

fun fact did you know that in EU way back in imperial times some of the worker protection rules where not introduced by angry workers by companies which realiz

fun fact did you know that in EU way back in imperial times some of the worker protection rules where not introduced by angry workers by companies which realized that having well rested and healthy worker will long term produce much better results and then countries following up by enforcing it to boost their countries productivity (and internal stability)? (and yes I _very_ grossly oversimplified it including lumping all EU countries together even through they had very different inner political histories) The reason I'm pointing it out is because recently some people seem to be forgetting that at the core a lot of work protection isn't rooted in "being social/nice to your citizens" but in "having a more internal stable and international competitive" country.

dekhn 2y ago
Ernst Abbe at Zeiss played a big role in this- helping to introduce an 8-hour work day along with employer co-ownership.
damnitbuilds 2y ago
And the European equivalents of Tesla and Spacex's sucesses are where exactly? Paypal? X even? I am totally not hardcore, I value my free time, but driving the staff like this seems to have worked very well for Musk's companies.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Paypal is not some monument of success (how much did Adam Neumann make from WeWork?), nor is X, he just bought Twitter by borrowing against his Tesla shares at an inflated valuation (inflated by sentiment and hype). Is he good at slave driving people who mostly care about mission? Yes. Does that mean it is what we want to optimize for at scale? I argue no. Important to be mindful what we are and what is worth optimizing for collectively and how that changes over time. If I drive my workers to various flavors (emotional, physical, etc) of failure to succeed economically, are you going to look up to me? If so, you've failed the litmus test. Progress is nice, but so is a reasonable balance for our short existence on this rock. Be Woz, not Jobs or Musk. (high empathy human, early TSLA investor, own Teslas, know people at SpaceX, etc)
  - damnitbuilds 2y ago
    You did not answer my question. If Europe wants to be "more internal[ly] stable and international[ly] competitive", then its 40-hour-per-week, 5-weeks-holiday-per-year companies have to compete with Tesla, Spacex, Paypal, X etc. And they are clearly failing to do so.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Europe has SEPA for instant value transfer, they do not need paypal. AT Protocol can replace X, no need for Europe to have their own X ("protocols, not platforms"). Europe can eventually build EVs faster and/or better (~20 moving parts in a drivetrain) and improved space vehicles when they're ready, they're not trying to live on Mars. What has US tech built that Europe needs? Europe has services and great quality of life, the US has performance art capitalism paperclip maximizing for shareholder returns and is a third world country [1] [2] [3], broadly speaking. The race is not what you think it is. What are you building for? To just keep grinding or building? Or for people to live happy, healthy lives at scale? Engineering is fun, and leads to progress, but it is a means to an end, not the point of life. [1] https://worldhappiness.report/ https://worldhappiness.report/ [2] https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings [3] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-owns-americas-wealth/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o...
      - Aeolun 2y ago
        > Europe can eventually build EVs Bosch has been building EV’s for literal years. Just because they’re selling them as parts doesn’t mean they’re incapable.
        toomuchtodo 2y ago
        I don't disagree with this (love Bosch except my dishwasher IoT annoyances), but OP believes you need to be Tesla or BYD to be "successful." You can always succeed if you get to define success. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and life is meant to be lived, not brutish and short grinding for silly KPIs.
- dboreham 2y ago
  PayPal isn't necessary in Europe because banks are properly regulated and hence provide the same service for free.
  - SirMaster 2y ago
    You can pay at most online websites straight from your bank account in Europe?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - prybak 2y ago
      Yes, at least in Poland. You can either use Blik (mobile payments integrated with your bank account) or get redirected to your bank website for fast wire transfer.
    - tjelen 2y ago
      Umm, yes? Not sure about the rest of Europe, but here in Czechia most of merchants have a direct payment method based on QR code. Basically: 1) you select your bank at the checkout; 2) you're redirected to the bank's payment page with a QR code; 3) you scan the code from your banking app and confirm it; 4) the bank redirects back the merchants page with the payment status confirmed/declined. No payment processor involved and the money goes straight from your account to merchant's account.
      - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
        > the money goes straight from your account to merchant's account. For the financial systems version of straight away (2-3 business days, weekends & holidays excluded) ;)
    - DonHopkins 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - 2y ago
- stephenhuey 2y ago
  Confinity created its PayPal product in 1999 and Musk's company got merged into Confinity in 2000 because Thiel said they were both working crazy long hours and it would be more beneficial for everyone to join forces into a monopoly instead of compete with one another. Then Musk got kicked out of the company because they didn't think he was doing a good job, and he was fortunate to benefit financially when they sold to eBay. So it's a pretty classic case of survivorship bias, and the fact that he invested into an already innovative electric car company does not mean his taskmaster leanings are assuredly the key to success. For every one of Musk's companies, there are countless others enjoying a healthy amount of profit without the excessive hours.
  - CharlieDigital 2y ago
    The How I Built This episodes with Max Levchin are a good listen. https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-paypal-max-levchin-part-1-of-2/ https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-pay... https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/affirm-max-levchin-part-2-of-2/id1150510297?i=1000566031270 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/affirm-max-levchin-par...
- otikik 2y ago
  Yeah but we don't have a Musk either. One compensates the other.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  Musk's operational involvement in PayPal was 4 months (though he remained on the Board for a while, IIRC). He didn't create it, it was a (pre-release) working thing when his company (which was failing at building an online bank) merged. He was made CEO, and spent his tenure trying to throw away the working app because it was Java on Solaris for ASP because that's what he knew. Four months in, he gets married. The BoD attends his wedding on the Saturday, and on the Monday morning when he leaves for his honeymoon, they fire him in absentia. Not "other priorities", "family time", but "fired on your honeymoon". Since then, most of Musk's "contribution" to PayPal has been cashing the dividend checks.
- consteval 2y ago
  It works of course but it’s a short term solution. Because you’re trading off long term success for success right now. It’s like a cash advance on a credit card. Great for getting 500 bucks in your pocket, but the interest is steep. People, like most resources, can be extended past their maximum value at the cost of longevity.
- root_axis 2y ago
  Working long hours is not a sign of success, it means things don't get done on a normal schedule so everyone has to bust their ass to meet the deadline. Working this way in perpetuity is wasteful and totally stupid.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Healthy, happy, rested workers are more productive, full stop. Folks who force the grind are eating seed corn but don't care, they'll be gone by the time it matters.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  The Netherlands may have a per capita GDP of (only) $65000, but people tend to forget that we work on average 5.5h a day. Compared to the US’s $65875, and 6.7h worked on average.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    GDP per Capita is a metric for value of production as a whole. Much of that GDP per Capita for NL can be attributed to high margin industries like Oil Refining (Royal Dutch Shell, Dutch Disease), Financial Services, and Biochemicals Manufacturing [0], which are not industries where at 5.5h workday is realistic. And once you remove part-timers, the hours worked in Netherlands are comparable to the US [1]. The bigger question should be why part-time labor participation is significantly high in Netherlands, as part-timers and youth appear to earn at least half of full-timers [1], but this could also be confounding due to age along with gender [2]. Imo this makes Netherlands' job market look similar to post 2010 Japan's labor market, which isn't a great thing. That said, it does go to show that median income and personal living standards are not tied with GDP per Capita. [0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/528/export-basket https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/528/export-basket [1] - https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/en/dataset/81431ENG/table https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/en/dataset/81431ENG/table [2] - https://theworld.org/stories/2014/10/01/why-do-so-many-people-netherlands-work-part-time-because-they-can https://theworld.org/stories/2014/10/01/why-do-so-many-peopl...
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      > And once you remove part-timers, the hours worked in Netherlands are comparable to the US [1]. Sure, if you remove 40% of all the people working (maybe more?) then you are left with the people working full weeks. That’s… not very surprising? The point is kinda that so many people work part time that it significantly skews the average number of hours worked. It’s kinda wonky that the average for full-time still sits at 40 hours though. I know very few people working 5 day weeks (e.g. 60 or 80%), and I’d assume they’re still classed as full-time due their contracts.
kolanos 2y ago
Here is an excellent video on the history of work. In short, the Dutch screwed it up for all of us. [0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo
Clubber 2y ago
Henry Ford was largely responsible for the popularization of the 40 hour work week and paid his factory employees nearly double of what they would ordinarily get. 1926: Henry Ford popularized the 40-hour work week after he discovered through his research that working more yielded only a small increase in productivity that lasted a short period of time. Ford announced he would pay each worker $5 per eight-hour day, which was nearly double what the average auto worker was making that time. Manufacturers and companies soon followed Henry Ford’s lead after seeing how this new policy boosted productivity and fostered loyalty and pride among Ford’s employees. Of course, this is a rarity. Most employee concessions in the US were earned with blood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
- hadlock 2y ago
  I don't think he did it out of the goodness of his heart, the calculus just happened to work out in favor of the worker in this singular case. With large factories you have training costs, retention costs etc. Paying higher than the going rate meant you had higher quality workers because you could select the best ones from a larger pool. This caused manufacturing defects to go down and remanufacturing costs (extremely expensive) to shrink. Paying more for better workers reduced costs. Limiting hours worked per week reduced costs as well as those workers made fewer mistakes reducing remanufacturing/rework costs. Stable employment, good wages and short(ish) work weeks resulted in worker retention going way way up which meant less churn, less training expenses etc. TL;DR Henry Ford realized car manufacturing was a semi-skilled job, not an unskilled job, and hired and paid for it accordingly, quality went up and costs went down. It's not rocket science.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Not just "in this singular case". I don't think Ford's assembly lines needed uniquely skilled people; most assembly line work would be the same, with the same calculus. And the calculus was not just "the most skilled workers". It was also "diminishing returns".
feoren 2y ago
> having well rested and healthy worker will long term produce much better results You said the two words which will ensure this never happens in the US: "long term". Most companies have zero decision-makers who care about the "long term". They are not the company's stewards, they are its parasites. Despite popular belief, most American corporations are not ruthless money-making machines, they are festering husks being ruthlessly parasitized by sociopaths while they slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean.

dekhn 2y ago

Ernst Abbe at Zeiss played a big role in this- helping to introduce an 8-hour work day along with employer co-ownership.

damnitbuilds 2y ago

And the European equivalents of Tesla and Spacex's sucesses are where exactly? Paypal? X even? I am totally not hardcore, I value my free time, but driving the staff like this seems to have worked very well for Musk's companies.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
Paypal is not some monument of success (how much did Adam Neumann make from WeWork?), nor is X, he just bought Twitter by borrowing against his Tesla shares at an inflated valuation (inflated by sentiment and hype). Is he good at slave driving people who mostly care about mission? Yes. Does that mean it is what we want to optimize for at scale? I argue no. Important to be mindful what we are and what is worth optimizing for collectively and how that changes over time. If I drive my workers to various flavors (emotional, physical, etc) of failure to succeed economically, are you going to look up to me? If so, you've failed the litmus test. Progress is nice, but so is a reasonable balance for our short existence on this rock. Be Woz, not Jobs or Musk. (high empathy human, early TSLA investor, own Teslas, know people at SpaceX, etc)
- damnitbuilds 2y ago
  You did not answer my question. If Europe wants to be "more internal[ly] stable and international[ly] competitive", then its 40-hour-per-week, 5-weeks-holiday-per-year companies have to compete with Tesla, Spacex, Paypal, X etc. And they are clearly failing to do so.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Europe has SEPA for instant value transfer, they do not need paypal. AT Protocol can replace X, no need for Europe to have their own X ("protocols, not platforms"). Europe can eventually build EVs faster and/or better (~20 moving parts in a drivetrain) and improved space vehicles when they're ready, they're not trying to live on Mars. What has US tech built that Europe needs? Europe has services and great quality of life, the US has performance art capitalism paperclip maximizing for shareholder returns and is a third world country [1] [2] [3], broadly speaking. The race is not what you think it is. What are you building for? To just keep grinding or building? Or for people to live happy, healthy lives at scale? Engineering is fun, and leads to progress, but it is a means to an end, not the point of life. [1] https://worldhappiness.report/ https://worldhappiness.report/ [2] https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings [3] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-owns-americas-wealth/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o...
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      > Europe can eventually build EVs Bosch has been building EV’s for literal years. Just because they’re selling them as parts doesn’t mean they’re incapable.
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        I don't disagree with this (love Bosch except my dishwasher IoT annoyances), but OP believes you need to be Tesla or BYD to be "successful." You can always succeed if you get to define success. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and life is meant to be lived, not brutish and short grinding for silly KPIs.
dboreham 2y ago
PayPal isn't necessary in Europe because banks are properly regulated and hence provide the same service for free.
- SirMaster 2y ago
  You can pay at most online websites straight from your bank account in Europe?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - prybak 2y ago
    Yes, at least in Poland. You can either use Blik (mobile payments integrated with your bank account) or get redirected to your bank website for fast wire transfer.
  - tjelen 2y ago
    Umm, yes? Not sure about the rest of Europe, but here in Czechia most of merchants have a direct payment method based on QR code. Basically: 1) you select your bank at the checkout; 2) you're redirected to the bank's payment page with a QR code; 3) you scan the code from your banking app and confirm it; 4) the bank redirects back the merchants page with the payment status confirmed/declined. No payment processor involved and the money goes straight from your account to merchant's account.
    - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
      > the money goes straight from your account to merchant's account. For the financial systems version of straight away (2-3 business days, weekends & holidays excluded) ;)
  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - 2y ago
stephenhuey 2y ago
Confinity created its PayPal product in 1999 and Musk's company got merged into Confinity in 2000 because Thiel said they were both working crazy long hours and it would be more beneficial for everyone to join forces into a monopoly instead of compete with one another. Then Musk got kicked out of the company because they didn't think he was doing a good job, and he was fortunate to benefit financially when they sold to eBay. So it's a pretty classic case of survivorship bias, and the fact that he invested into an already innovative electric car company does not mean his taskmaster leanings are assuredly the key to success. For every one of Musk's companies, there are countless others enjoying a healthy amount of profit without the excessive hours.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  The How I Built This episodes with Max Levchin are a good listen. https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-paypal-max-levchin-part-1-of-2/ https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-pay... https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/affirm-max-levchin-part-2-of-2/id1150510297?i=1000566031270 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/affirm-max-levchin-par...
otikik 2y ago
Yeah but we don't have a Musk either. One compensates the other.
FireBeyond 2y ago
Musk's operational involvement in PayPal was 4 months (though he remained on the Board for a while, IIRC). He didn't create it, it was a (pre-release) working thing when his company (which was failing at building an online bank) merged. He was made CEO, and spent his tenure trying to throw away the working app because it was Java on Solaris for ASP because that's what he knew. Four months in, he gets married. The BoD attends his wedding on the Saturday, and on the Monday morning when he leaves for his honeymoon, they fire him in absentia. Not "other priorities", "family time", but "fired on your honeymoon". Since then, most of Musk's "contribution" to PayPal has been cashing the dividend checks.
consteval 2y ago
It works of course but it’s a short term solution. Because you’re trading off long term success for success right now. It’s like a cash advance on a credit card. Great for getting 500 bucks in your pocket, but the interest is steep. People, like most resources, can be extended past their maximum value at the cost of longevity.
root_axis 2y ago
Working long hours is not a sign of success, it means things don't get done on a normal schedule so everyone has to bust their ass to meet the deadline. Working this way in perpetuity is wasteful and totally stupid.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

Healthy, happy, rested workers are more productive, full stop. Folks who force the grind are eating seed corn but don't care, they'll be gone by the time it matters.

Aeolun 2y ago
The Netherlands may have a per capita GDP of (only) $65000, but people tend to forget that we work on average 5.5h a day. Compared to the US’s $65875, and 6.7h worked on average.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  GDP per Capita is a metric for value of production as a whole. Much of that GDP per Capita for NL can be attributed to high margin industries like Oil Refining (Royal Dutch Shell, Dutch Disease), Financial Services, and Biochemicals Manufacturing [0], which are not industries where at 5.5h workday is realistic. And once you remove part-timers, the hours worked in Netherlands are comparable to the US [1]. The bigger question should be why part-time labor participation is significantly high in Netherlands, as part-timers and youth appear to earn at least half of full-timers [1], but this could also be confounding due to age along with gender [2]. Imo this makes Netherlands' job market look similar to post 2010 Japan's labor market, which isn't a great thing. That said, it does go to show that median income and personal living standards are not tied with GDP per Capita. [0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/528/export-basket https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/528/export-basket [1] - https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/en/dataset/81431ENG/table https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/en/dataset/81431ENG/table [2] - https://theworld.org/stories/2014/10/01/why-do-so-many-people-netherlands-work-part-time-because-they-can https://theworld.org/stories/2014/10/01/why-do-so-many-peopl...
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    > And once you remove part-timers, the hours worked in Netherlands are comparable to the US [1]. Sure, if you remove 40% of all the people working (maybe more?) then you are left with the people working full weeks. That’s… not very surprising? The point is kinda that so many people work part time that it significantly skews the average number of hours worked. It’s kinda wonky that the average for full-time still sits at 40 hours though. I know very few people working 5 day weeks (e.g. 60 or 80%), and I’d assume they’re still classed as full-time due their contracts.

kolanos 2y ago

Here is an excellent video on the history of work. In short, the Dutch screwed it up for all of us. [0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo

Clubber 2y ago

Henry Ford was largely responsible for the popularization of the 40 hour work week and paid his factory employees nearly double of what they would ordinarily get. 1926: Henry Ford popularized the 40-hour work week after he discovered through his research that working more yielded only a small increase in productivity that lasted a short period of time. Ford announced he would pay each worker $5 per eight-hour day, which was nearly double what the average auto worker was making that time. Manufacturers and companies soon followed Henry Ford’s lead after seeing how this new policy boosted productivity and fostered loyalty and pride among Ford’s employees. Of course, this is a rarity. Most employee concessions in the US were earned with blood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

hadlock 2y ago
I don't think he did it out of the goodness of his heart, the calculus just happened to work out in favor of the worker in this singular case. With large factories you have training costs, retention costs etc. Paying higher than the going rate meant you had higher quality workers because you could select the best ones from a larger pool. This caused manufacturing defects to go down and remanufacturing costs (extremely expensive) to shrink. Paying more for better workers reduced costs. Limiting hours worked per week reduced costs as well as those workers made fewer mistakes reducing remanufacturing/rework costs. Stable employment, good wages and short(ish) work weeks resulted in worker retention going way way up which meant less churn, less training expenses etc. TL;DR Henry Ford realized car manufacturing was a semi-skilled job, not an unskilled job, and hired and paid for it accordingly, quality went up and costs went down. It's not rocket science.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Not just "in this singular case". I don't think Ford's assembly lines needed uniquely skilled people; most assembly line work would be the same, with the same calculus. And the calculus was not just "the most skilled workers". It was also "diminishing returns".

feoren 2y ago

> having well rested and healthy worker will long term produce much better results You said the two words which will ensure this never happens in the US: "long term". Most companies have zero decision-makers who care about the "long term". They are not the company's stewards, they are its parasites. Despite popular belief, most American corporations are not ruthless money-making machines, they are festering husks being ruthlessly parasitized by sociopaths while they slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean.