9 ms·

Tech workers' fight for living wages and a 32-hour workweek is a battle for all

86 points by robtherobber 1y ago

arresin 1y ago
32 hour work week? Meaning you don’t do anything work related outside the 32 hours? That seems very short.
nemomarx 1y ago
I admire the spirit but I think fighting for a 32 hour or 4 day or etc workweek needs to be a broader fight than in just one sector. The 40 day week wasn't established just for scribes on their own right
- aqme28 1y ago
  It has to start somewhere. I can hardly criticize them for trying.
  - add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
    It feels like they should start with a field that has harder work or below average wages. Tech has it pretty easy already, I never found 40 hours/wk oppressive.
    - aqme28 1y ago
      Tech is good precisely for that reason. Tech workers have a lot more leverage than many other workers who work in more oppressive fields.
      - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        Because tech workers aren’t being laid off by the tens of thousands in recent years? Tech work is the easiest to outsource.
        hitarpetar 1y ago
        well which is it, do tech workers have it easy or have no power?
        godihavetoshit 1y ago
        [dead]
        raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        If you have a job - you have it easy. It’s “easy” because I can roll out of bed at 8:45, brush my teeth, wash my face and walk over to home office, log in at 9:00 and do some combination of coding, zoom calls, etc. Get off at 5-6 and walk downstairs to the gym. But that doesn’t mean that I can demand more money [1], a 32 hour work week etc. if I had still been at AWS at the beginning of the year, I couldn’t have demanded to work from home. [1] Well I could make more money if I were willing to work in an office and/or go back to BigTech. I’m not willing to do either.
        aqme28 1y ago
        Sounds like now is the time for them to do this then. I feel like this point undermined your previous point.
        raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        Because unions are going to force companies not to lay people off?
      - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
        Everyone just forgetting the H-1B visa system was specifically created to bring down tech worker pay.
    - 0xEF 1y ago
      Manufacturing (my field) would be a good place to start. Most of the guys I work with work overtime not because we have a bunch of work to do, but to inflate their weekly paychecks that much more. I've stopped reminding them that nobody ever got rich by working overtime, and it's a tool designed to keep them toiling away. Odds are if something like a 32 hour week passed, it would take a ridiculous amount of convincing for them to adopt it since overtime is so deeply entrenched in the culture.
      - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        People don’t “get rich” by making more money and increasing the gap between income and expenses so they can put that toward investments to increase their net worth? What alternative are these factory workers going to do? “Learn to code and found a successful startup”?
        0xEF 1y ago
        What makes you think there's an alternative? Generally speaking, you are locked in the tax bracket you are born into. Sure, you might see a slight upward movement, here and there, but for the most part your wages will never outpace the economy around you unless: A. You are born into wealth B. You inherit wealth Most of us don't fall into either of those two things under an economic system that is designed to extract the most value from the people working in it, the profits of which bubble to the top and never trickle back down. This is why things like overtime are such an easy sell. If the company can afford to pay overtime, then there's no reason they can't afford to raise their workers hourly wages so they make the same money at 40 hours or less that they would working 50/60 hours. I'm here to tell you first hand that there's no increase in productive output of the company as a whole when everyone is working overtime versus when everyone is on 40 hours. That's a myth that needs to be quashed, especially with production being increasingly automated. As someone who visits our automtive and aerospace factories across the US frequently, the amount of guys I see standing around looking at smartphones is astounding, but so long as the company can post higher valuations by making it look like they're flush with both work and cash by offering copious overtime, they're happy. Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime and all that. Sorry, I forgot to address your part about investments. Those are another bit of snake oil sold to the middle class to sooth their financial woes. Fact is, unless you have a considerable amount of upfront capital, all you're doing is lending money for various fund managers to gamble with. They profit more than you do, even when you do see the marginal increases you might see.
- Jeff_Brown 1y ago
  Call me a slacker but 40 days a week really feels like too much.
  - jack_tripper 1y ago
    It is when you factor in commute as well.
    - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
      And after WFH became a thing, we realize that we really do need to factor that in. You want me in the office every day? I have a one hour commute. Pay me for 9 hours. Or let me WFH, and pay me for 8.
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    Just have to reach 25x efficiency by using AI... So not a big ask in future...
- 0xEF 1y ago
  I'd personally be more supportive of the 4-day 40-hour work week because I converted to that about six months ago, myself, and I'm not looking back. I find it works very well, for me. I'd be all about 32-hour work week, but provided either employers were required to pay us all more, or the price of _literally everything_ in the US consumer economy came down. Cutting my paycheck by 25% would be devastating to the arguably modest lifestyle I have built for myself, so I can't see that ever being offset by just being generally happier because I'm not wasting the single life I have making someone else rich.
  - nemomarx 1y ago
    Generally people mean the same pay for less hours when they advocate for it, yes
- wiether 1y ago
  > Now we need to build a similar fighting movement for a 32-hour week and living wages for all workers.
- aklemm 1y ago
  The title says exactly that, does it not?
wtcactus 1y ago
[flagged]
- TimCock 1y ago
  [dead]
galacticaactual 1y ago
Why not a six hour work week. Anything less is capitalist cronyism.
- messe 1y ago
  Why shouldn't the greatly increased productivity over the past century translate into less of a need to work?
  - baggy_trough 1y ago
    It does! So long as you are willing to accept a commensurate relative reduction in salary.
    - messe 1y ago
      I'll bite. That'd be fine by me if wages had also kept up with those productivity gains, and they have not.
      - baggy_trough 1y ago
        Wages are the wrong metric; you have to look at overall compensation including benefits and offset for improved working conditions.
  - eru 1y ago
    You can work less, if you want to.
    - Ajedi32 1y ago
      Yes, I fully support people's desire to work 20% less hours, if they're willing to take a corresponding 20% cut to total compensation (note that's not the same as a 20% pay cut; benefits are often really expensive). Right now there are some cultural barriers to this. Many employers aren't willing to be that flexible, and I think that's a shame. I'd love to see 32-hour or even 24-hour workweeks become more normalized as possible options on the job market. There are also probably some legal barriers to this, with a lot of employment laws counting 40 hours as "full time" but I'm not sure how significant a factor that is.
tetris11 1y ago
Going forward, if we're going to be competing more and more with AI as tech workers, we do need to establish some kind of basis of agreeable working hours for humans. We won't win that fight 10 years from now, we might as well try winning the fight now.
thesmtsolver 1y ago
How does this work with other countries not enacting 32-hour workweeks? This will be a repeat of manufacturing going outside of US due to reduced standards (labor and pollution) and therefore cheaper manufacturing in China. And due to that blue collar work got destroyed in the long term. Logically, unless there are high trade barriers for software/services/goods from countries that don't have similar standards, long-term, these jobs will just shift there.
- throw-qqqqq 1y ago
  Many countries have <40 hours/week and are still thriving. There will always be someone willing to undercut. Should that be reason for us all to race each other to the bottom? I personally don’t think the negative consequences of working a little less (on paper!) are proportional to the positives.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - nakal 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - 650REDHAIR 1y ago
      Care to elaborate on that statement?
    - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
      Now, now... cocaine only accounts for an estimated 1 - 3% of GDP
  - Pungsnigel 1y ago
    Which countries have <40 hours/week and thrive?
    - matsemann 1y ago
ramesh31 1y ago
The time to do this was 10 years ago. Now there are a dozen people in line to take that 996 job off your hands for you.
- prettyblocks 1y ago
  I think this was true 10 years ago too if you consider the global talent pool.
SpaceL10n 1y ago
I work 32 hours per week. Rather, I work 4 days a week. This means I have 50% more free time than I used to. I fill that free time with dates with my wife while my kids are at school, or hiking, or just goofing at home doing whatever I feel like. One day a week is MINE. I cannot understate just how much this has improved my mental health and quality of life. Not to mention, when holidays fall on certain days of the week, I get 4 day weekends which is like a mini vacation. 48 hours is not enough time to fully decompress and feel human again. I am never going back to 5 days a week, if I can help it. Still, these numbers all seem arbitrary. More flexible opt-in work arrangements would be nice. My wife is a nurse and she can work "per diem" which is just amazing. She opts-in and chooses her schedule. I think society as a whole would be a bit healthier if that flexibility was extended to more of the population.
- skeeter2020 1y ago
  I don't think the push-back here is against a 4 day work week, but the idea that wages increase or stay the same as you reduce down to 4 days. I known several people who work 4 days for 80% equivalent. They seem like you who seek a more balanced, family & personal focused lifestyle. This is awesome and I agree with you that flexibility can be a huge competitive differentiator for companies that doesn't need to cost them a lot more money. It's kinda crazy that more don't seek out creative approaches like this.
  - Tade0 1y ago
    In my region, where the number of hours worked annually is 1800+ as per OECD, it's quite simply difficult. Employers expect full time availablity and would rather not have anyone fill that role than allow for this. My friend managed to do it by boiling that frog via taking Friday afternoons off. Everyone was happy with that arrangement, so he started taking entire Fridays off. Then he switched to Mondays. Meanwhile my SO got a hard "no" on any amount of reduction. She's looking for a part time job, but it's not something employers normally advertise.
    - euroderf 1y ago
stronglikedan 1y ago
Most tech workers I know would be happy with a 40 hour work week.
vessenes 1y ago
Productivity matters, both to the companies that pay these workers, and to people's wellbeing and mental health. I don't know the numbers today but in the 2000s, on average, corporate engineers had 35 hours a week of meetings. At 40 hours, this left 5 hours a week for coding. If you were willing to work 60 hours a week, then voila - you would be a 5x coder! Not to mention most coders get into it for the coding, not the meeting. This math isn't just arbitrary - it's embedded deeply in how organizations function, how people work, get promoted, deliver, all that. in a vacuum, a 32 hour workweek might push meeting times lower and leave the same or more engineering productivity time. It might also stress the system so hard that non-meeting work grinds to a halt, unfortunately just at a time when there's less time to notice it.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > I don't know the numbers today but in the 2000s, on average, corporate engineers had 35 hours a week of meetings Do you have the dataset for that? I'd be surprised by that number, unless it was all "engineers" irrespective of software taken into account.
  - vessenes 1y ago
    okay digging in to my vague memories - it was claimed as 25 hours, and posted by a charismatic-ish internet gadfly in the early 2000s, Philip Greenspun: here's a slashdot link about the story: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/00/11/06/1448235/greenspun-on-managing-software-engineers https://developers.slashdot.org/story/00/11/06/1448235/green... but I didn't dig up the original. I have no idea if Philg referenced data in his essay, but I kind of bet he did, it was his style. Not that his style was to fairly reference data mind you.
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      Thanks for the context! 20-25 hours makes more sense - especially in an era before a lot of productivity tooling like Slack, Git, Zoom, Notion/Confluence, and Asana/Jira was created or normalized, and development processes were way less nimble and iterative than they are today. I'd be curious to see similar data today - my gut is saying that the hours spent in meetings for IC engineers (Staff and below) is probably lower today than it was 25 years ago because of the productivity gains and changes in management culture, but I'd need data to make such a qualification. It is also interesting to go thru that slashdot thread and see how similar the conversations were back then to those we still see today.
beeforpork 1y ago
Every time a robot or AI or whatever machine takes over the work of many workers, why not lower the average work week hours accordingly? The machine made the process more efficient, and the machine works instead of the worker. So less work is needed for the worker, and this could be averaged to pay out as a bonus for all workers. If you want to calculate this is money, you could also say that the machine does not work for free, but it is definitely cheaper than labor, so we could at least say that the difference of these costs is the gained efficiency, and this could be translated back to lowering the average work load of workers. And if you still want an incentive that more machines are introduced, you would say that 80% of the gained efficiency is translated back to lowering the average human worker's load. There is no reason why we should have unemployment if machines make work more efficient -- it just means that there is enough money to be earned to give back part of it so that we do not need all the manpower. What's wrong with this perspective?
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  It requires somebody who is in a powerful enough position to enforce the rule and also who doesn't become corrupted by their access to that kind of power. Or it lacks a mechanism by which we can enforce the rule collectively. By all means let's make it happen, it's a great idea, but how?
- philipallstar 1y ago
  It's the same as saying "people need food to live; why not raise the price of food indefinitely to have better wages for people who produce food?" The answer (thank goodness) is: competition. You are a consumer more than you are a worker. Every industry that brings in automation and reduced costs can offer you goods for less, or pay their workers the same for more. Competition means they tend to choose the former (or, given there's also competition for workers, actually wages go up a bit and prices come down a bit, but there are slightly fewer jobs).
- BobbyJo 1y ago
  Capitalism. Squeezing out that productivity for the company instead of the worker ensures your company has an advantage over competitors, either via reduced cost or higher margins. Pretty much all anti-worker outcomes are just corporate competition playing out.
lr4444lr 1y ago
When it comes to jobs where the skill growth and knowledge domain is fairly static and is hard on the body or dangerous, like the trades, I think these demands are a good idea. Not so much in IT. I've seen too many public sector tech employees atrophy and fall way behind in their skill set and productivity. Most would hardly make it past an initial tech screening at a startup or FAANG. I think it's great that those guys have a union to protect them, but we cannot run the entire industry this way and expect to keep the economic engine of these companies going.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  In the market, second place is "first loser"
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  The economic engine demands 80 hour work weeks and constant crunch?
  - infecto 1y ago
    Out of all the industries out there, tech work has historically been one of the least demanding. Where are these 80 hours coming from?
- gadders 1y ago
  >> When it comes to jobs where the skill growth and knowledge domain is fairly static and is hard on the body or dangerous, like the trades, I think these demands are a good idea. Likewise for raising the retirement age. I could carry on with my email job into my 80s (health permitting). Bricklayers not so much.
- Palomides 1y ago
  really? are their skills atrophying because they don't spend enough time at work?
  - mc32 1y ago
    People get complacent and think the thing they boootcamped ten years ago will carry the day for them. Knowing FrontPage, IIS6 or RHEL4 isn’t going to carry the day for them.
skeeter2020 1y ago
The idea of tech workers simultaneously saying they don't get a living wage and demanding a 32 hr work week completely undermines any sort of position they hope to establish. Those who make far less than tech already work more hours, and the people who have more wealth (talking about the majority of predominately the boomers, not the uber wealthy) worked more hours too. I'm not sure who this would resonate with beyond an echo chamber for the small group who are (I fear) going to be dismissed as lazy & entitled. This is a real shame, because there's work to be done against inequality and opportunities for (specifically) the young & educated who are struggling to get experience. Meanwhile the (admittedly glib) criticism here is being down voted into oblivion but I believe it represents the majority response. Swing and and a miss.
- robocat 1y ago
  > boomers Often used as a hateful word to justify some awful statement. It is mostly a synonym for retirees - something that hopefully we all have a chance to be. And for a fair comparison we need to compare our own future as retirees against the current cohort of retirees. I get it: "Baby Boomers owned 52% of the country’s net wealth despite comprising only 20% of the population" sounds terrible as an aggregate statistic. But individuals are not the group. It is hard to find a good statistic that is representative of a normal individual e.g. a median figure can be useful; yet a lot of American data is reported as averages per household (highly misleading). > people who have more wealth (talking about the majority of predominately the boomers, not the uber wealthy But the uber wealthy are what cause the problem with using aggregate statistics... The richest 1% of the global population owns approximately 82% of the world's wealth That's the issue, not the boomers. Retirees get fingered because they are an easy target, not because of any statistical facts. Don't you sometimes wonder if the things you say about boomers, will likely be said about you in a couple of decades by those younger than you? Perhaps consider those behind you, not just those in front. Disclosure: I'm not a boomer (and the label is somewhat nonsense in New Zealand anyways). Aside: I know millennials struggling to get a house, and I also know millennials that have got onto the housing ladder. There's no simple answer... Edit: "New figures show nearly 14% of all houses in Japan are empty" -- so maybe demographics will fix house prices in other countries (excepting high demand cities)?
liampulles 1y ago
I believe this is the official Kickstarter strike notice: https://www.opeiulocal153.org/news/kickstarter-united-opeiu-153-workers-authorize-strike-demanding-four-day-workweek-and-minimum-salary https://www.opeiulocal153.org/news/kickstarter-united-opeiu-... w.r.t 'living wages', quote: "...The call for a minimum salary of $85,000 corresponds with what is considered Low Income in New York City ($87,100 for 2024). "
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > The current 3-year agreement covering 59 community support specialists, trust and safety analysts, marketing professionals, software engineers, and other tech workers... Yeah they're going to just offshore to the UK and Singapore or offer remote first jobs domestically. Most Kickstarter jobs are now one of those 3 instead of in NYC. In fact, why are all the other non-SWE and Strategy roles in NYC at all?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Permit 1y ago
> Now, instead of meeting our demands for living wages, the CEO has announced a new round of jobs hirings internationally I’m convinced that in ~10 years we’ll look back on the work-from-home movement as a major own-goal by American tech workers. I would expect a lot more of this.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  I was crying hoarse about this on HN during that time and was constantly downvoted and flamed. 100% in-person is dumb, but a 2-3 day hybrid approach was good enough to both justify retaining a domestic presence as well as train new grads.
WaitWaitWha 1y ago
I would like to understand the first half of the demands, fight for living wages. How much do the union members currently make? It is very easy to understand 32 hours workweek in 4 days, but there is nothing I can find in the article about what is their current wages. I did find the minimum they are looking for is $85,000. On one of the pages the demand is written as "Codifying the 32-hour, 4-day work week that has been our reality for over three years". So they work 32-hour workweek just not codified in company policy? Are there US labour laws or health insurance agreements that doing 32 hours officially will create problems?
nextworddev 1y ago
From this article you would think tech workers were really struggling (they are not)
uvaursi 1y ago
> Striking Kickstarter workers outside of the Manhattan offices of venture capitalist Fred Wilson, a major investor in the company. Peak I don’t even know what. Have these people worked a day in their life?
UtopiaPunk 1y ago
John Maynard Keynes wrote an interesting essay in 1930 called "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren." It is very optimistic that the gains of the present time (his own time, that is) would lead to a future where individuals could work much less. He looks around in his own time with a cynical but clear-eye, calling out the moral contradictions and outright evils of the industrial age he is living in. But it seems he believes that the current period of evil will be worth it for a better future, his grandchildren's future. In that essay, he supposes that if people share equitably in what labor remains, a 15-hour work week should suffice to adequately take care of society. Like Keynes, I'm just as optimistic that such a future is possible, and that it could happen very soon if society willed it so. But just looking at the 95 years of history that have passed since Keynes wrote this essay, it is clear we are not natually, inevitably moving towards such a society. The technology is making such a future possible, but such as a society has to be demanded by the people, and it will not be gifted to us by benevolent rulers or captains of industry. "We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight. I look forward, therefore, in days not so very remote, to the greatest change which has ever occurred in the material environment of life for human beings in the aggregate." http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
ne8il 1y ago
I'm a bit confused by this as a union demand because I've followed 4dayweek.io for some time now and Kickstarter shows up there as a 4x8 company as of 2022. (https://4dayweek.io/company/kickstarter/jobs https://4dayweek.io/company/kickstarter/jobs). Anyone know if that's not still the case?
- neon_electro 1y ago
  According to [0] they mention "protecting Kickstarter’s existing four-day, 32-hour workweek". [0] https://www.opeiulocal153.org/news/kickstarter-united-opeiu-153-workers-authorize-strike-demanding-four-day-workweek-and-minimum-salary https://www.opeiulocal153.org/news/kickstarter-united-opeiu-...
apple4ever 1y ago
I think right now we are just fighting to either keep our jobs or find a job. How many hours doesn't matter.

86 points by robtherobber 1y ago

32 hour work week? Meaning you don’t do anything work related outside the 32 hours? That seems very short.

I admire the spirit but I think fighting for a 32 hour or 4 day or etc workweek needs to be a broader fight than in just one sector. The 40 day week wasn't established just for scribes on their own right

aqme28 1y ago
It has to start somewhere. I can hardly criticize them for trying.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  It feels like they should start with a field that has harder work or below average wages. Tech has it pretty easy already, I never found 40 hours/wk oppressive.
  - aqme28 1y ago
    Tech is good precisely for that reason. Tech workers have a lot more leverage than many other workers who work in more oppressive fields.
    - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
      Because tech workers aren’t being laid off by the tens of thousands in recent years? Tech work is the easiest to outsource.
      - hitarpetar 1y ago
        well which is it, do tech workers have it easy or have no power?
        godihavetoshit 1y ago
        [dead]
        raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        If you have a job - you have it easy. It’s “easy” because I can roll out of bed at 8:45, brush my teeth, wash my face and walk over to home office, log in at 9:00 and do some combination of coding, zoom calls, etc. Get off at 5-6 and walk downstairs to the gym. But that doesn’t mean that I can demand more money [1], a 32 hour work week etc. if I had still been at AWS at the beginning of the year, I couldn’t have demanded to work from home. [1] Well I could make more money if I were willing to work in an office and/or go back to BigTech. I’m not willing to do either.
      - aqme28 1y ago
        Sounds like now is the time for them to do this then. I feel like this point undermined your previous point.
        raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        Because unions are going to force companies not to lay people off?
    - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
      Everyone just forgetting the H-1B visa system was specifically created to bring down tech worker pay.
  - 0xEF 1y ago
    Manufacturing (my field) would be a good place to start. Most of the guys I work with work overtime not because we have a bunch of work to do, but to inflate their weekly paychecks that much more. I've stopped reminding them that nobody ever got rich by working overtime, and it's a tool designed to keep them toiling away. Odds are if something like a 32 hour week passed, it would take a ridiculous amount of convincing for them to adopt it since overtime is so deeply entrenched in the culture.
    - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
      People don’t “get rich” by making more money and increasing the gap between income and expenses so they can put that toward investments to increase their net worth? What alternative are these factory workers going to do? “Learn to code and found a successful startup”?
      - 0xEF 1y ago
        What makes you think there's an alternative? Generally speaking, you are locked in the tax bracket you are born into. Sure, you might see a slight upward movement, here and there, but for the most part your wages will never outpace the economy around you unless: A. You are born into wealth B. You inherit wealth Most of us don't fall into either of those two things under an economic system that is designed to extract the most value from the people working in it, the profits of which bubble to the top and never trickle back down. This is why things like overtime are such an easy sell. If the company can afford to pay overtime, then there's no reason they can't afford to raise their workers hourly wages so they make the same money at 40 hours or less that they would working 50/60 hours. I'm here to tell you first hand that there's no increase in productive output of the company as a whole when everyone is working overtime versus when everyone is on 40 hours. That's a myth that needs to be quashed, especially with production being increasingly automated. As someone who visits our automtive and aerospace factories across the US frequently, the amount of guys I see standing around looking at smartphones is astounding, but so long as the company can post higher valuations by making it look like they're flush with both work and cash by offering copious overtime, they're happy. Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime and all that. Sorry, I forgot to address your part about investments. Those are another bit of snake oil sold to the middle class to sooth their financial woes. Fact is, unless you have a considerable amount of upfront capital, all you're doing is lending money for various fund managers to gamble with. They profit more than you do, even when you do see the marginal increases you might see.
Jeff_Brown 1y ago
Call me a slacker but 40 days a week really feels like too much.
- jack_tripper 1y ago
  It is when you factor in commute as well.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    And after WFH became a thing, we realize that we really do need to factor that in. You want me in the office every day? I have a one hour commute. Pay me for 9 hours. Or let me WFH, and pay me for 8.
- Ekaros 1y ago
  Just have to reach 25x efficiency by using AI... So not a big ask in future...
0xEF 1y ago
I'd personally be more supportive of the 4-day 40-hour work week because I converted to that about six months ago, myself, and I'm not looking back. I find it works very well, for me. I'd be all about 32-hour work week, but provided either employers were required to pay us all more, or the price of _literally everything_ in the US consumer economy came down. Cutting my paycheck by 25% would be devastating to the arguably modest lifestyle I have built for myself, so I can't see that ever being offset by just being generally happier because I'm not wasting the single life I have making someone else rich.
- nemomarx 1y ago
  Generally people mean the same pay for less hours when they advocate for it, yes
wiether 1y ago
> Now we need to build a similar fighting movement for a 32-hour week and living wages for all workers.
aklemm 1y ago
The title says exactly that, does it not?

wtcactus 1y ago

[flagged]

TimCock 1y ago
[dead]

galacticaactual 1y ago

Why not a six hour work week. Anything less is capitalist cronyism.

messe 1y ago
Why shouldn't the greatly increased productivity over the past century translate into less of a need to work?
- baggy_trough 1y ago
  It does! So long as you are willing to accept a commensurate relative reduction in salary.
  - messe 1y ago
    I'll bite. That'd be fine by me if wages had also kept up with those productivity gains, and they have not.
    - baggy_trough 1y ago
      Wages are the wrong metric; you have to look at overall compensation including benefits and offset for improved working conditions.
- eru 1y ago
  You can work less, if you want to.
  - Ajedi32 1y ago
    Yes, I fully support people's desire to work 20% less hours, if they're willing to take a corresponding 20% cut to total compensation (note that's not the same as a 20% pay cut; benefits are often really expensive). Right now there are some cultural barriers to this. Many employers aren't willing to be that flexible, and I think that's a shame. I'd love to see 32-hour or even 24-hour workweeks become more normalized as possible options on the job market. There are also probably some legal barriers to this, with a lot of employment laws counting 40 hours as "full time" but I'm not sure how significant a factor that is.

tetris11 1y ago

Going forward, if we're going to be competing more and more with AI as tech workers, we do need to establish some kind of basis of agreeable working hours for humans. We won't win that fight 10 years from now, we might as well try winning the fight now.

thesmtsolver 1y ago

How does this work with other countries not enacting 32-hour workweeks? This will be a repeat of manufacturing going outside of US due to reduced standards (labor and pollution) and therefore cheaper manufacturing in China. And due to that blue collar work got destroyed in the long term. Logically, unless there are high trade barriers for software/services/goods from countries that don't have similar standards, long-term, these jobs will just shift there.

throw-qqqqq 1y ago
Many countries have <40 hours/week and are still thriving. There will always be someone willing to undercut. Should that be reason for us all to race each other to the bottom? I personally don’t think the negative consequences of working a little less (on paper!) are proportional to the positives.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nakal 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - 650REDHAIR 1y ago
    Care to elaborate on that statement?
  - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
    Now, now... cocaine only accounts for an estimated 1 - 3% of GDP
- Pungsnigel 1y ago
  Which countries have <40 hours/week and thrive?
  - matsemann 1y ago

ramesh31 1y ago

The time to do this was 10 years ago. Now there are a dozen people in line to take that 996 job off your hands for you.

prettyblocks 1y ago
I think this was true 10 years ago too if you consider the global talent pool.

SpaceL10n 1y ago

I work 32 hours per week. Rather, I work 4 days a week. This means I have 50% more free time than I used to. I fill that free time with dates with my wife while my kids are at school, or hiking, or just goofing at home doing whatever I feel like. One day a week is MINE. I cannot understate just how much this has improved my mental health and quality of life. Not to mention, when holidays fall on certain days of the week, I get 4 day weekends which is like a mini vacation. 48 hours is not enough time to fully decompress and feel human again. I am never going back to 5 days a week, if I can help it. Still, these numbers all seem arbitrary. More flexible opt-in work arrangements would be nice. My wife is a nurse and she can work "per diem" which is just amazing. She opts-in and chooses her schedule. I think society as a whole would be a bit healthier if that flexibility was extended to more of the population.

skeeter2020 1y ago
I don't think the push-back here is against a 4 day work week, but the idea that wages increase or stay the same as you reduce down to 4 days. I known several people who work 4 days for 80% equivalent. They seem like you who seek a more balanced, family & personal focused lifestyle. This is awesome and I agree with you that flexibility can be a huge competitive differentiator for companies that doesn't need to cost them a lot more money. It's kinda crazy that more don't seek out creative approaches like this.
- Tade0 1y ago
  In my region, where the number of hours worked annually is 1800+ as per OECD, it's quite simply difficult. Employers expect full time availablity and would rather not have anyone fill that role than allow for this. My friend managed to do it by boiling that frog via taking Friday afternoons off. Everyone was happy with that arrangement, so he started taking entire Fridays off. Then he switched to Mondays. Meanwhile my SO got a hard "no" on any amount of reduction. She's looking for a part time job, but it's not something employers normally advertise.
  - euroderf 1y ago

stronglikedan 1y ago

Most tech workers I know would be happy with a 40 hour work week.

vessenes 1y ago

Productivity matters, both to the companies that pay these workers, and to people's wellbeing and mental health. I don't know the numbers today but in the 2000s, on average, corporate engineers had 35 hours a week of meetings. At 40 hours, this left 5 hours a week for coding. If you were willing to work 60 hours a week, then voila - you would be a 5x coder! Not to mention most coders get into it for the coding, not the meeting. This math isn't just arbitrary - it's embedded deeply in how organizations function, how people work, get promoted, deliver, all that. in a vacuum, a 32 hour workweek might push meeting times lower and leave the same or more engineering productivity time. It might also stress the system so hard that non-meeting work grinds to a halt, unfortunately just at a time when there's less time to notice it.

alephnerd 1y ago
> I don't know the numbers today but in the 2000s, on average, corporate engineers had 35 hours a week of meetings Do you have the dataset for that? I'd be surprised by that number, unless it was all "engineers" irrespective of software taken into account.
- vessenes 1y ago
  okay digging in to my vague memories - it was claimed as 25 hours, and posted by a charismatic-ish internet gadfly in the early 2000s, Philip Greenspun: here's a slashdot link about the story: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/00/11/06/1448235/greenspun-on-managing-software-engineers https://developers.slashdot.org/story/00/11/06/1448235/green... but I didn't dig up the original. I have no idea if Philg referenced data in his essay, but I kind of bet he did, it was his style. Not that his style was to fairly reference data mind you.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Thanks for the context! 20-25 hours makes more sense - especially in an era before a lot of productivity tooling like Slack, Git, Zoom, Notion/Confluence, and Asana/Jira was created or normalized, and development processes were way less nimble and iterative than they are today. I'd be curious to see similar data today - my gut is saying that the hours spent in meetings for IC engineers (Staff and below) is probably lower today than it was 25 years ago because of the productivity gains and changes in management culture, but I'd need data to make such a qualification. It is also interesting to go thru that slashdot thread and see how similar the conversations were back then to those we still see today.

beeforpork 1y ago

Every time a robot or AI or whatever machine takes over the work of many workers, why not lower the average work week hours accordingly? The machine made the process more efficient, and the machine works instead of the worker. So less work is needed for the worker, and this could be averaged to pay out as a bonus for all workers. If you want to calculate this is money, you could also say that the machine does not work for free, but it is definitely cheaper than labor, so we could at least say that the difference of these costs is the gained efficiency, and this could be translated back to lowering the average work load of workers. And if you still want an incentive that more machines are introduced, you would say that 80% of the gained efficiency is translated back to lowering the average human worker's load. There is no reason why we should have unemployment if machines make work more efficient -- it just means that there is enough money to be earned to give back part of it so that we do not need all the manpower. What's wrong with this perspective?

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
It requires somebody who is in a powerful enough position to enforce the rule and also who doesn't become corrupted by their access to that kind of power. Or it lacks a mechanism by which we can enforce the rule collectively. By all means let's make it happen, it's a great idea, but how?
philipallstar 1y ago
It's the same as saying "people need food to live; why not raise the price of food indefinitely to have better wages for people who produce food?" The answer (thank goodness) is: competition. You are a consumer more than you are a worker. Every industry that brings in automation and reduced costs can offer you goods for less, or pay their workers the same for more. Competition means they tend to choose the former (or, given there's also competition for workers, actually wages go up a bit and prices come down a bit, but there are slightly fewer jobs).
BobbyJo 1y ago
Capitalism. Squeezing out that productivity for the company instead of the worker ensures your company has an advantage over competitors, either via reduced cost or higher margins. Pretty much all anti-worker outcomes are just corporate competition playing out.

lr4444lr 1y ago

When it comes to jobs where the skill growth and knowledge domain is fairly static and is hard on the body or dangerous, like the trades, I think these demands are a good idea. Not so much in IT. I've seen too many public sector tech employees atrophy and fall way behind in their skill set and productivity. Most would hardly make it past an initial tech screening at a startup or FAANG. I think it's great that those guys have a union to protect them, but we cannot run the entire industry this way and expect to keep the economic engine of these companies going.

HPsquared 1y ago
In the market, second place is "first loser"
candiddevmike 1y ago
The economic engine demands 80 hour work weeks and constant crunch?
- infecto 1y ago
  Out of all the industries out there, tech work has historically been one of the least demanding. Where are these 80 hours coming from?
gadders 1y ago
>> When it comes to jobs where the skill growth and knowledge domain is fairly static and is hard on the body or dangerous, like the trades, I think these demands are a good idea. Likewise for raising the retirement age. I could carry on with my email job into my 80s (health permitting). Bricklayers not so much.
Palomides 1y ago
really? are their skills atrophying because they don't spend enough time at work?
- mc32 1y ago
  People get complacent and think the thing they boootcamped ten years ago will carry the day for them. Knowing FrontPage, IIS6 or RHEL4 isn’t going to carry the day for them.

skeeter2020 1y ago

The idea of tech workers simultaneously saying they don't get a living wage and demanding a 32 hr work week completely undermines any sort of position they hope to establish. Those who make far less than tech already work more hours, and the people who have more wealth (talking about the majority of predominately the boomers, not the uber wealthy) worked more hours too. I'm not sure who this would resonate with beyond an echo chamber for the small group who are (I fear) going to be dismissed as lazy & entitled. This is a real shame, because there's work to be done against inequality and opportunities for (specifically) the young & educated who are struggling to get experience. Meanwhile the (admittedly glib) criticism here is being down voted into oblivion but I believe it represents the majority response. Swing and and a miss.

robocat 1y ago
> boomers Often used as a hateful word to justify some awful statement. It is mostly a synonym for retirees - something that hopefully we all have a chance to be. And for a fair comparison we need to compare our own future as retirees against the current cohort of retirees. I get it: "Baby Boomers owned 52% of the country’s net wealth despite comprising only 20% of the population" sounds terrible as an aggregate statistic. But individuals are not the group. It is hard to find a good statistic that is representative of a normal individual e.g. a median figure can be useful; yet a lot of American data is reported as averages per household (highly misleading). > people who have more wealth (talking about the majority of predominately the boomers, not the uber wealthy But the uber wealthy are what cause the problem with using aggregate statistics... The richest 1% of the global population owns approximately 82% of the world's wealth That's the issue, not the boomers. Retirees get fingered because they are an easy target, not because of any statistical facts. Don't you sometimes wonder if the things you say about boomers, will likely be said about you in a couple of decades by those younger than you? Perhaps consider those behind you, not just those in front. Disclosure: I'm not a boomer (and the label is somewhat nonsense in New Zealand anyways). Aside: I know millennials struggling to get a house, and I also know millennials that have got onto the housing ladder. There's no simple answer... Edit: "New figures show nearly 14% of all houses in Japan are empty" -- so maybe demographics will fix house prices in other countries (excepting high demand cities)?

liampulles 1y ago

I believe this is the official Kickstarter strike notice: https://www.opeiulocal153.org/news/kickstarter-united-opeiu-153-workers-authorize-strike-demanding-four-day-workweek-and-minimum-salary https://www.opeiulocal153.org/news/kickstarter-united-opeiu-... w.r.t 'living wages', quote: "...The call for a minimum salary of $85,000 corresponds with what is considered Low Income in New York City ($87,100 for 2024). "

alephnerd 1y ago
> The current 3-year agreement covering 59 community support specialists, trust and safety analysts, marketing professionals, software engineers, and other tech workers... Yeah they're going to just offshore to the UK and Singapore or offer remote first jobs domestically. Most Kickstarter jobs are now one of those 3 instead of in NYC. In fact, why are all the other non-SWE and Strategy roles in NYC at all?

deleted 1y ago

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Permit 1y ago

> Now, instead of meeting our demands for living wages, the CEO has announced a new round of jobs hirings internationally I’m convinced that in ~10 years we’ll look back on the work-from-home movement as a major own-goal by American tech workers. I would expect a lot more of this.

alephnerd 1y ago
I was crying hoarse about this on HN during that time and was constantly downvoted and flamed. 100% in-person is dumb, but a 2-3 day hybrid approach was good enough to both justify retaining a domestic presence as well as train new grads.

WaitWaitWha 1y ago

I would like to understand the first half of the demands, fight for living wages. How much do the union members currently make? It is very easy to understand 32 hours workweek in 4 days, but there is nothing I can find in the article about what is their current wages. I did find the minimum they are looking for is $85,000. On one of the pages the demand is written as "Codifying the 32-hour, 4-day work week that has been our reality for over three years". So they work 32-hour workweek just not codified in company policy? Are there US labour laws or health insurance agreements that doing 32 hours officially will create problems?

nextworddev 1y ago

From this article you would think tech workers were really struggling (they are not)

uvaursi 1y ago

> Striking Kickstarter workers outside of the Manhattan offices of venture capitalist Fred Wilson, a major investor in the company. Peak I don’t even know what. Have these people worked a day in their life?

UtopiaPunk 1y ago

John Maynard Keynes wrote an interesting essay in 1930 called "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren." It is very optimistic that the gains of the present time (his own time, that is) would lead to a future where individuals could work much less. He looks around in his own time with a cynical but clear-eye, calling out the moral contradictions and outright evils of the industrial age he is living in. But it seems he believes that the current period of evil will be worth it for a better future, his grandchildren's future. In that essay, he supposes that if people share equitably in what labor remains, a 15-hour work week should suffice to adequately take care of society. Like Keynes, I'm just as optimistic that such a future is possible, and that it could happen very soon if society willed it so. But just looking at the 95 years of history that have passed since Keynes wrote this essay, it is clear we are not natually, inevitably moving towards such a society. The technology is making such a future possible, but such as a society has to be demanded by the people, and it will not be gifted to us by benevolent rulers or captains of industry. "We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight. I look forward, therefore, in days not so very remote, to the greatest change which has ever occurred in the material environment of life for human beings in the aggregate." http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

ne8il 1y ago

I'm a bit confused by this as a union demand because I've followed 4dayweek.io for some time now and Kickstarter shows up there as a 4x8 company as of 2022. (https://4dayweek.io/company/kickstarter/jobs https://4dayweek.io/company/kickstarter/jobs). Anyone know if that's not still the case?

neon_electro 1y ago
According to [0] they mention "protecting Kickstarter’s existing four-day, 32-hour workweek". [0] https://www.opeiulocal153.org/news/kickstarter-united-opeiu-153-workers-authorize-strike-demanding-four-day-workweek-and-minimum-salary https://www.opeiulocal153.org/news/kickstarter-united-opeiu-...

apple4ever 1y ago

I think right now we are just fighting to either keep our jobs or find a job. How many hours doesn't matter.