15 ms·

Can we have the day off?

• nemomarx 4mo ago
  the four day work week has been trialed many times and already would have been the same or higher productivity before agents, honestly. if agents get really good let's just go to 3?
  • Ancalagon 4mo ago
    If agents get really good maybe we can just not work?
    • jayknight 4mo ago
      We'll just be serfs of the AI billionaires.
      • neumann 4mo ago
        we already are son.
  • darth_avocado 4mo ago
    No because the shareholders want more value. The best the C suite can do is downsize the team from 5 to 4 (or 3 if you like)
  • _carbyau_ 4mo ago
    From an economic flow point of view: Time not spent working could be time working on spending.
    • euroderf 4mo ago
      Yes. The leisure industry is, in fact, a real industry, and it is a service industry that creates a lot of employment.
    • kelnos 4mo ago
      But if people's wages don't increase when we go from a 5- to 4-day work week, where do consumers get the extra money to spend on that extra day off?
  • k12sosse 4mo ago
    Cut it in half and double the workforce.
• maximinus_thrax 4mo ago
  > If AI is going to 10x our productivity across the board, that means that I should be able to produce the same amount of output by midday on Monday that, in the before times, would have taken all week. You must be new here. No, that's not how this work. If you are able to produce the same amount of work by midday Monday we expect you to increase the amount of output in the current system by 14 x. And the owners pocket the financial gain from this productivity delta and you should be happy you even have a job.
  • cat5e 4mo ago
    FYI, you've already lost with this mindset! I know you don't consider yourself a loser :P
  • cebert 4mo ago
    > And the owners pocket the financial gain from this productivity delta and you should be happy you even have a job. This is why it’s prudent for more of us to figure out a way to be our own owners.
    • gdulli 4mo ago
      What a community of temporarily embarrassed unicorns we have here.
• great_wubwub 4mo ago
  This reminds me of Ted Chiang's point that fear of technology is really fear of capitalism. https://kottke.org/21/04/ted-chiang-fears-of-technology-are-fears-of-capitalism https://kottke.org/21/04/ted-chiang-fears-of-technology-are-... "Most of the things that we worry about under the mode of capitalism that the U.S practices, that is going to put people out of work, that is going to make people’s lives harder, because corporations will see it as a way to increase their profits and reduce their costs."
  • mschuster91 4mo ago
    > It’s not that technology fundamentally is about putting people out of work. The problem is, it has always been that way - and not just in the US. The introduction of any kind of new technology or other way of disproportionately improving corporate bottom lines has always led to job losses, the key thing is what governments do in response to it. The Industrial Revolution for example led to widespread devastation, the shift from agriculture being the dominant employer to industry and service sectors did not (as the ag workers were absorbed by the rapidly growing other sectors), the globalization / offshoring wave of neoliberalism once again led to widespread devastation, and AI will probably again lead to devastation. And if Sam Altman isn't arrested for his blatant RAM market manipulation... I'm pretty sure there will be either people with pitchforks at the end or he will have ushered in, in retrospective, a new era of "stuff that uber rich people can get away with".
    • matchbok3 4mo ago
      All of those things also resulted in the massive increase in the quality of life for everyone. Nobody will suggest we ban cars and go back to horse and buggies so cowboys can have jobs.
      • mschuster91 4mo ago
        > All of those things also resulted in the massive increase in the quality of life for everyone. Yes, everyone has a modern smartphone now. Cool, thanks. But last time I checked, can't pay my rent with a smartphone when I'm out of a job. > Nobody will suggest we ban cars and go back to horse and buggies so cowboys can have jobs. Maybe not that, but have you looked at sustainable farming movements? In farming, there is a growing movement believing that the way we do farming - basically, ever larger and larger central operations running farms with tens if not hundreds of thousands of animals or acres upon acres of monoculture crops - is no longer sustainable, as the externalities get too serious to be able to ignore: Biodiversity loss, land erosion (when everything is just the same crop from horizon to horizon and no bushes, wind and rain has an easy time carrying away soil after harvest), an increasing vulnerability to all kinds of pests... But in order to get smaller, you need people again, because a tractor costing half a million dollars won't ever make the money back on a small farm.
• tantalor 4mo ago
  Star Trek post-scarcity economy when?? https://rickwebb.medium.com/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50 https://rickwebb.medium.com/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab...
  • Henchman21 4mo ago
    Not until aliens land and show us the way. I firmly believe we aren’t presently capable of allowing a post-scarcity economy to exist — too much stuff is based on scarcity. So much so that we create scarcity instead of giving away excess. I’m thinking of food specifically.
    • marcus_holmes 4mo ago
      If "stuff" === power over other people, then agree 100%. There are people out there who would rather other people starve than they have one iota less prestige, power, influence or luxury. And, unfortunately, they are the people who wield most of the power in our society. We have to solve that before we can solve the economics, which is the easy part.
      • Henchman21 4mo ago
        We agree.
  • irjustin 4mo ago
    What Star Trek doesn't show is how they got there. I promise you it's going to be extremely painful, but once we're on the other side it'll be worth it. I argue - there's nothing we can do to stop it; humanity, I mean. We will either achieve Star Trek or get wiped out as a species. As a Kardashev Type 3, we will have achieved full automation. I'll leave the door open for Elysium problems, but hopefully Mr. Damon will save us then too.
    • jfengel 4mo ago
      Star Trek predicted riots around now because of vast numbers of unemployed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Sp... A couple of years ago, in fact. We're running late.
• ZitchDog 4mo ago
  Shoot, I'd be happy with free health care.
  • avaer 4mo ago
    Many people would be happy with just a job in these times.
  • Helloworldboy 4mo ago
    [dead]
• NDlurker 4mo ago
  I work 3 days one week, 4 days the next week. Never more than 3 days in a row. It's 12 hour shifts, which sucked at first, but I got used to it pretty quick. The free time is amazing. I took 2 days vacation this week and ended up with 9 days off in a row because of the holiday.
  • yoyohello13 4mo ago
    What field? Medical? Those scheduled seem common for medicine and fire/police.
    • NDlurker 4mo ago
      I don't want to get too specific, but I'm a supervisor at a factory. Food stuff. My girlfriend had a similar schedule when she worked at a hospital. Good shoes like Brooks or Hoka and a good sleep schedule and it's doable. I only work 15 or 16 days a month. I work every other weekend, but the weekends I have off are 3 days.
      • jatora 4mo ago
        it seems like the lack of consistency would b a net negative in life quality and very annoying to schedule around
        • NDlurker 4mo ago
          Oh it totally is for some people. I don't have or want kids so that's not an issue for me. Scheduling things with friends isn't usually too hard, just have to be more intentional about it/schedule in advance. I like having days off during the week to get errands done when most other people are at work. And if I do need a weekend off that's usually fine because I accrue enough vacation hours where I usually end up selling back or rolling some over into the next year.
          • jatora 4mo ago
            ya overall i am net jealous as fuck of your schedule still lol
• kevmo 4mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
• insane_dreamer 4mo ago
  Sorry, not possible. The goal of AI is to build additional value for shareholders, not to improve anyone's else's lives.
• codemog 4mo ago
  How about you meet me half way and work 996 instead?
• awesome_dude 4mo ago
  When FAANG were over hiring, nobody was being given 4 day weeks, instead AIUI, people were just given meaningless work to waste their time with. Employers have two modes, waste peoples time, or sack them
• yadaeno 4mo ago
  You can have the day off. Don't think for a million years you will be paid for it.
  • ux266478 4mo ago
    One of the top 3 liberating experiences I've had was escaping wage labor. There's just something so utterly insulting about the whole affair.
  • bigbuppo 4mo ago
    Exactly. In the four days that you worked you produced 40 days of output, so you should get 40x the pay. It would be unreasonable for the company to pay you 50x what you were getting before... they do have shareholders to think about after all.
    • yadaeno 4mo ago
      I can promise you this is not how the MBAs are reading the situation.
      • bigbuppo 4mo ago
        The AI says MBAs aren't necessary.
    • quantummagic 4mo ago
      What are you talking about? Four days work = four days of output, by definition.
• qihqi 4mo ago
  The author's https://mlsu.io/posts/llm/cheats/ https://mlsu.io/posts/llm/cheats/ is also pretty good.
  • paulhebert 4mo ago
    Thanks for sharing. Well worth the read. They’re a good writer
    • mlsu 4mo ago
      Thank you both! The comments in this corner of the thread made my day.
• krashidov 4mo ago
  > If AI is going to 10x our productivity across the board, that means that I should be able to produce the same amount of output by midday on Monday that, in the before times, would have taken all week. That would be true if you and only you are 10x more productive than anyone else. Since everyone is now 10x more productive it just means you have to work just as much as before since you're competition can outwork you. I don't get why people don't understand this.
  • lmm 4mo ago
    > That would be true if you and only you are 10x more productive than anyone else. Since everyone is now 10x more productive it just means you have to work just as much as before since you're competition can outwork you. Why? I don't need 10x more stuff. I'd far rather spend 10x less time working. If we're talking about an actual productivity increase, let's just produce the same amount of stuff in 10x less time.
    • themanmaran 4mo ago
      Sure the consumer won't consume 10x more, but they're still going to reach for the better products. And let's say that work is correlated with quality. Company A wants to spend 10x less time working, while Company B works 10x more. Company B therefore has a better product than Company A, so eventually Company A goes away. The consumer still consumed the same amount, but they switched to the better product.
      • lmm 4mo ago
        > The consumer still consumed the same amount, but they switched to the better product. Either the product was 10x better, which I don't think I need, or it wasn't really a 10x increase in productivity.
    • markive 4mo ago
      Because your competitor can now produce 10x more work with the same resources that your company can only produce 1x, therefore in short order your company isn't competitive and will cease to exist.
• matchbok3 4mo ago
  Sorry, I'd rather have a higher quality of living for most people (as evidenced by any huge development in technology) rather than humanity stagnating. This post is quite myopic.
  • mlsu 4mo ago
    I would be able to see my niece in person and hear her laugh if I could have this Friday off.
  • ux266478 4mo ago
    I'm deadly certain that routing more of society into producing SaaS webapp shovelware (and the infrastructure to support it) is not in fact going to improve quality of life, and will in fact cause us to stagnate.
    • matchbok3 4mo ago
      Please. Nobody is claiming that is the value here. Do better.
  • AngryData 4mo ago
    You think if people worked less technological progress would just completely seize up and humanity stagnate? I find that pretty hard to believe and see no evidence to support that.
    • matchbok3 4mo ago
      Um, yes?
• goosejuice 4mo ago
  The best way to take advantage right now is to consult. Take some time off and just do a little on the side. Then again the job market could collapse, so maybe keep your job?
• lo_zamoyski 4mo ago
  Labor saving tech doesn't lead to more free time, and certainly not in a way that's proportional to the gains of automation. Instead, companies will expect still more productivity. Why give you more time off if they can keep workdays fixed and add still more productivity? Certainly, the competition will do it. Appetite grows with eating.
  • 9rx 4mo ago
    > Labor saving tech doesn't lead to more free time It does when you own the tech. If you give the tech away then the people who you gave it to will continue to expect more of the same, naturally.
• kingforaday 4mo ago
  This is certainly a fun exercise in economics. By taking a shortened work-week, should the companies then pay us 80% of our current comp? Or maybe a little less since they will have to pay for the added tokens we are now using as part of our job that we used to do manually (i.e. time)? Or perhaps we are able to justify that now they can save overhead by reducing facilities costs by 20% as well. Oh but maybe their business lease has a continuous occupancy clause and now the reduction in foot traffic causes them to get penalized so they need to reduce our salaries even more. Slippery slope my friend.
  • BoorishBears 4mo ago
    Sorry, exactly what is a slippery slope? You wrote a lot of words, but none of them describe a slippery slope, or explain how a supposed 10x increase in productivity precludes a 20% reduction in hours worked.
  • bigbuppo 4mo ago
    No. They should give you 40x your current pay. The AI made you 10x more productive, and you worked four days, so you generated 40x the economic output. As such, you should get 40x in pay. At this point, you're doing the company a favor by taking a day off as otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford you.
    • 9991 4mo ago
      Sounds like the AI should get 36x the current pay. It's not as if the employee is bringing that to the table.
      • BoorishBears 4mo ago
        Oof, having a skillset so pedestrian that any incremental gain in efficiency needs to be kicked upwards must be tough.
      • cednore 4mo ago
        Who said AI doesn't request compensation? We are not sure yet. One day when GPT10.0 released, he might request dollars to people.
• bruce511 4mo ago
  I get where the writer is coming from, but it misses one very important point. >> If AI is going to 10x our productivity across the board, that means that I should be able to produce the same amount of output by midday on Monday that, in the before times, would have taken all week. You are thinking of productivity as "code written". And certainly that part of your job will get more productive. But that is just something you do when you're not in meetings. (or when you're in a meeting, but the camera is off, and you're not really listening). Your real job is to attend meetings. And unfortunately AI can't help with that (yet). (I'm not even being sarcastic. Most programmers don't realize that they have been hired to have meetings.) What it can do is free you up from the pesky code-writing part of your job, freeing you up to attend even more meetings. And this does indeed make management happy because (seriously now) their job is having meetings, and you being "unavailable" (because you know, you want to program) was hindering them in the first place. So no, you can't have Friday off, but now that you mention it, let's set aside that time for "team building" exercises...
  • lorecore 4mo ago
    AI definitely helps with attending meetings and writing documents that no one will read (both of which are huge parts of any modern job). The AI notes from any given meeting give you all of the content in 1/10th of the time.
    • bruce511 4mo ago
      I don't disagree that AI tools around meetings are cool. But they don't help you to "not attend the meeting". (not yet anyway). Many meetings have 0% content "that applies to you". But that doesn't stop you being "added to meetings".
• distantprovince 4mo ago
  I'm fairly certain a lot of people do this. They don't literally take a day off, but just work fewer hours or less hard. And this makes sense, there is a strong incentive to not give away all the productivity gains to your employer.
• zabzonk 4mo ago
  I was very happy working extra (I won't call them long) hours when I first learned about computing. A bit later on when I started working for financial entities I felt a bit different - the work was interesting, but I just wasn't prepared to sacrifice my time. And if we can have the day off, I think that can only be to the good.
• cattown 4mo ago
  This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should be seriously asking in our next all hands meetings if 10x’ing our productivity can get us some days off. Or when our paycheck is going to be multiplied accordingly. So far we’re all kind of being chumps about this, bragging on Linkedin about all of our new found AI productivity while accepting less job security and no increase in comp.
  • calvinmorrison 4mo ago
    well productivity gains are largely met with higher standard of living, quality of life and the upward movement of the lowest classes, for one.
    • p-e-w 4mo ago
      That hasn’t been true for decades in the West, even though per-capita productivity has been steadily rising since WW2.
      • MichaelZuo 4mo ago
        Are you sure? From the data I’ve seen the bottom decile Americans consume significantly more per capita compared to even 2006. e.g. plane travel was completely absent amongst the bottom decile in 2006, like so close to zero mileage per capita per annum it was a rounding error.
        • p-e-w 4mo ago
          Plane travel is a very poor proxy for quality of life. Home ownership, high-quality food, working hours etc. seem far more relevant.
• jdougan 4mo ago
  I was always partial to the “make Wednesday a second weekend” plan. No more hump day and 2 “Fridays”. Of course that is also 2 “Mondays”
  • hx8 4mo ago
    I have a similar wacky plan I like to call "Delete Thursday". Four day work week, and more weekends a year just by having six days a week instead of seven.
• cmuguythrow 4mo ago
  Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ the concern would be that this new ability will actually increase competition and give us less than we had before this is not something that can just be blamed on the "CEOs/execs/shareholders" of the world. it is evolutionary competition - unless we can ALL join forces to draw the line somewhere, someone will choose to defect from the agreement to "just work less", because doing so will make them succeed at the expense of others. even if everyone from one country agrees, the other competing country that defects and works 996 with agents will "win" and conquer the lazy country. I wish I knew what to do to fix it, doesn't seem sustainable but I don't know how to make all of humanity cooperate without doing something even worse
  • chipsrafferty 4mo ago
    Did you just link to a rat website as if that is a good source?
    • cmuguythrow 4mo ago
      Good source for what? I'm just trying to point to a concept, an idea. There's no "facts" here, just speculation. If you disagree with the point there, why don't you just say what you think is true instead, I'm happy to discuss the ways in which the article is wrong
      • chipsrafferty 4mo ago
        unless we can ALL join forces to draw the line somewhere, someone will choose to defect from the agreement to "just work less", > We already did draw the line and we can redraw it. We drew the line very strongly at 40 hours, 4 days a week. That is the "official" expected hours for most salaried employees. because doing so will make them succeed at the expense of others. > This already happens. People making salary, 40 hours, that work 50, 60, etc. to get ahead of their coworkers in a career sense. Or people taking optional overtime to get ahead financially or people who work hourly working extra hours or people who have 2+ jobs or a side hustle. even if everyone from one country agrees, the other competing country that defects and works 996 with agents will "win" and conquer the lazy country. > Didn't realize Japan is imminently going to conquer the US because they work more hours.
• alexpotato 4mo ago
  My dad was a stock broker in the late 1970s and remembers when most of trading was 100% manual and firms actually had "runners" who would take stock certificates back and forth between trading firms. He has this great quote about when computers came out: "We were told 'computers will save you so much time on work tasks that you won't even know what to do with your free time'. I spent the next 30 years working the same number of hours. "
  • paulddraper 4mo ago
    Because human nature it to want more, more than wanting idleness.
    • class3shock 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      • paulddraper 4mo ago
        That's also true, inclusively.
        • class3shock 4mo ago
          No, the average worker does not live to work. The average shareholder and executive lives to extract every ounce of work possible out of the average workers.
    • engineer_22 4mo ago
      Weird to be downvoted for obviously correct analysis...
      • paulddraper 4mo ago
        Never underestimate people’s desire to blame the environment.
  • 4mo ago
• 999900000999 4mo ago
  Best the powers that be can do is increase outsourcing since a 15$ an hour engineer + ai is most of the way to a 70$ an hour engineer + ai. If I was smarter I’d have 200k in my 401k now. Assuming I live cheap in Vietnam and a good yield I’d just live off 10k usd per year
  • hx8 4mo ago
    Where are you finding these $15/hr engineers that can pump out good PRs with Claude Code? I've taken a peak at a couple of firms and I am disappointed by their output.
    • 999900000999 4mo ago
      Who said anything about good? The overall code quality probably drops a bit, but as long as it still works the C level can call it a win.
• avodonosov 4mo ago
  And not be off completely...
• terminalgravity 4mo ago
  Benefits for extra productivity filter up to the shareholders not to the workers producing the extra productivity. This reminds me of the Luddite movement in England. Industrial machines were disrupting the textile industry. The Luddites were not anti technology they were against technology allowing employers to suppress wages and working conditions and for increasing the quality of life and more humane working conditions for the extra productivity. As we know their movement was not successful giving rise to the bleak images of industrial factory life in England. I think all that will happen is workers will expect to be more productive than before but their skills will be less compensated because “the machine” did most of the work. https://theconversation.com/im-a-luddite-you-should-be-one-too-163172 https://theconversation.com/im-a-luddite-you-should-be-one-t...
  • Aurornis 4mo ago
    > The Luddites were not anti technology they were against technology allowing employers to suppress wages and working conditions and for increasing the quality of life and more humane working conditions for the extra productivity. I’m seeing this talking point circulated a lot recently but it’s not really the whole story. Luddites weren’t on a selfless crusade to steal from the rich and give to the poor. They wanted to fight off competition for their specific jobs. They didn’t want anyone having access to cheaper fabrics and clothes and other things because that was their golden goose. They wanted to be in control and force you to go through the inefficient methods to get those things because it benefited themselves. A closer modern day analog would be something like the dock workers striking to keep automation out of ports. They have a sweet gig and they don’t want machines doing anything to jeopardize their stranglehold on ports, even if it would benefit literally everyone else in the entire country if we could modernize our ports like the rest of the world.
    • __loam 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      • Helloworldboy 4mo ago
• madrox 4mo ago
  The four day work week is a prisoner's dilemma. If everyone did it, then we'd all get a payoff, but if someone defects to a longer work week they tend to get ahead at work. Thus we all do it and thus we all lose. It's funny how underappreciated it is how the five day work week is powered by norms...at least in the US. People assume there are laws about it. The only laws dictate compensation past certain thresholds, and in the case of well paid knowledge workers those don't even tend to apply. If you ever read HR material referring to your role as "exempt" now you know what you're exempt from.
  • ranyume 4mo ago
    What do you mean? You just need to ban companies from doing 5 days work.
    • madrox 4mo ago
      Amusingly, there is literally not even a 7 day work week ban for companies in the US. You can require employees work every day. Employers are just required to pay employees overtime under various conditions beyond 40 hours / five days a week, which is why you don't see it. And what's more, software engineers are exempt from these rules because of their pay grades. If you're a SWE making a salary the odds are your employer could require you work on Saturdays without running afowl of labor laws. This is all powered by norms.
      • culi 4mo ago
        it's not powered by norms. In the US, if you want to employ someone more than 40 hours you have to give them extra overtime pay. It's called the Fair Labor Standards Act and it was passed in 1938
        • madrox 4mo ago
          Unless you are exempt. Guess what profession tends to be considered exempt? If you are a SWE, you don't get paid overtime for working that incident on the weekend or going over 40 hours in a week. The only reason you work five days a week is tradition.
• erelong 4mo ago
  4 day work weeks have a lot of potential benefits Instead of asking for the day off, some startups should just implement the practice and popularize it
• tap-snap-or-nap 4mo ago
  Did anyone ask for the 8 hour work day?
  • marcus_holmes 4mo ago
    Yes, activists fought and people died to achieve it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day_movement
• johnea 4mo ago
  The whole thing is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but sarcasm is a potent mode of communication. The joke, of course, being that every increase in productivity has ALWAYS gone straight to ownership. Economists have been predicting a boom in human leisure time since the dawn of economics. It has NEVER happened...
  • pdonis 4mo ago
    > every increase in productivity has ALWAYS gone straight to ownership. Which of course means that if you want to capture that upside for yourself, you need to be an owner. The real problem with AI is that it breaks that for programmers. Before AI, you actually could be an owner. Of course big tech companies tried to get you to centralize, to depend on their tools, but you didn't have to. You could always run your own open source tooling on your own hardware, and freelance if you absolutely couldn't accept the loss of upside in being an employee. But now AI has centralized a key tool, and that changes the game, at least if you think the game requires you to use AI to stay competitive.
• runako 4mo ago
  lmao Corporate had a hissy fit from people working full weeks at home. The 4-day work week will never* come to the US. * - not while any of us reading this are under 65.
• Finnucane 4mo ago
  1 And afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said unto Pharaoh: 'Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.'2 And Pharaoh said: 'Who is the LORD, that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, and moreover I will not let Israel go.' 3 And they said: 'The God of the Hebrews hath met with us. Let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice unto the LORD our God; lest He fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword.'4 And the king of Egypt said unto them: 'Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, cause the people to break loose from their work? get you unto your burdens.'5 And Pharaoh said: 'Behold, the people of the land are now many, and will ye make them rest from their burdens?'6 And the same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying:7 'Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore. Let them go and gather straw for themselves.8 And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof; for they are idle; therefore they cry, saying: Let us go and sacrifice to our God.9 Let heavier work be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let them not regard lying words.' 10 And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spoke to the people, saying: 'Thus saith Pharaoh: I will not give you straw.11 Go yourselves, get you straw where ye can find it; for nought of your work shall be diminished.'12 So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw.13 And the taskmasters were urgent, saying: 'Fulfil your work, your daily task, as when there was straw.'14 And the officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, saying: 'Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your appointed task in making brick both yesterday and today as heretofore?'
  • mlsu 4mo ago
    The plagues come later, I suppose.
• zephraph 4mo ago
  here, here.
• zackify 4mo ago
  As someone who negotiated 4 day weeks since early 2020 its been awesome. I get chores and yard work done and more family time every week. Wish it was standard.
• esafak 4mo ago
  Workers need to have more leverage for them to be able to independently assert their working hours. People with such luxury become contractors or proprietors. The rest need collective bargaining.
• eulgro 4mo ago
  Unfortunately that's not how it works. Productivity gains have already increased tenfold in the past, yet still all work full time. It used to be that 80+% of the population worked in agriculture. In developed countries that number is now around 1-2%. Some of the freed labour was funneled into improving living standards, some of it was funneled into new jobs created by the increasingly complex society (the "intermediate economy"). With AI, the same is true: labour is freed by the productivity gains (which I doubt are 10x sustainably but whatever), more labour is needed for power generation, mineral extraction, maintaining this new extra layer of complexity in the intermediate economy, etc. In the end we might see, say, a net 3% increase in global productivity per year over the next 10 years, which will be funneled into increasing living standards and increasing economic inequalities, but not in reducing working hours. If you accept living below average standards, you could easily work a single day of the week for the rest of your life. But why would an employer hire 5 people working one day a week, instead of one working 5 days a week? They won't, hence we don't see a reduction in working hours. The alternative is to work full time but retire earlier, much earlier, than you would otherwise, which in the end is the equivalent of having worked one day a week for your whole life. I highly recommend reading Lean Logic by David Fleming, it explores several of these concepts in a very interesting way.
• bdcs 4mo ago
  "Everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented ... a 15-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For 3 hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!" - Keynes, 1930 Though this was a 100-year prediction so we still got three and half to go!
• drsalt 4mo ago
  i really dislike lazy bums. you are in a position to use great tools for productivity and you're not inspired to work harder? you should be fired on the spot.
  • vlunkr 4mo ago
    Fired on the spot? The hyperbole doesn't help your argument. What inspires me to work harder is getting to work on things that I enjoy.
    • drsalt 4mo ago
      not an argument m8 it's an opinion
  • thin_carapace 4mo ago
    indeed those who engage in the capitalistic system without devoting the entirety of their soul to generation of profit, they are subhuman and therefore deserve to be subservient. true humanity is found in embodying our animal nature and maximizing the influence of individual genetics - money is a mere vehicle to express the totality of the human spirit. those lacking money clearly lack spirit and should be considered beneath humanity, effectively equivalent to livestock. baa baa black sheep, give me every last thread of your wool or be exiled
• al_borland 4mo ago
  I've worked 3x12, 4x10, and 5x8, without AI. I think I was most productive on the 3x12 schedule. On the days I worked, I was able to lock in and get a lot done, and had a significant amount of time outside of the normal working hours, which were free from meetings and distractions. During those 3 days all I really did was work and sleep. On the 4 days off I was able to rest and recover and actually have a life. It also gave my mind time to process issues in the background. When I had an ah-ha moment during my time off, I could note it down, and when I showed up on a work day, I was able to solve some of those problems I wasn't able to solve in the moment. It was a great system. I've been trying to figure out how to bring the idea up to my boss of going back to it... at least the 4x10.
  • Aurornis 4mo ago
    > During those 3 days all I really did was work and sleep. This is why 3x12 is not workable for average families. If you have kids and want to see them, 3x12 only works if you start really really early, then get to bed early when the kids do too. I enjoyed 4x10 when I did it, but there were some real problems with some employees trying to adapt. Anecdotally we were seeing a lot of people who would barely work until the 8 hour mark and then just zone out or socialize while they waited the clock out at the end of the day. Which is all too bad for those of us who work well with longer days.
    • chrisweekly 4mo ago
      IME most people don't have more than 4 (maybe 5) hours of effective heavy cognitive / creative energy in a given day. Of course YMMV, and it's common to have periods of sustained output when deeply committed to and energized by something, but over the long haul, week in, week out, splitting the workday into roughly 8h sleep, 8h work, 8h everything else, with 2/7 days off plus many holidays and some weeks of paid vacation seems like a reasonable default to me -- for the traditional salaried role. If your preferences deviate much from that baseline, the entrepreneurial / consulting / fractional approach would probably be better aligned.
      • deleted 4mo ago
• luxuryballs 4mo ago
  Instead they are going to say “oh you’re 10Xing?” sweet we can get rid of 9 people and you can keep working all week long qq
• ogundipeore 4mo ago
  I agree with the premise of time away being easier. I don’t think the models/harnesses are there yet. There’s still a good amount of human input required to generate quality work. So yes, take the day off but the models still need you to steer them when you’re back
• dwd 4mo ago
  Maynard Keynes posited a future 15 hour work week in 1930 based on the productivity gains after WW1, nearly 100 years ago now. http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
  • abyssin 4mo ago
    The average work time in European societies is probably that. The majority of citizens don’t work (too young, studying, sick, unemployed, retired). But it’s changing fast, the rich are no longer accepting this situation. The ones working get happily manipulated into believing others should suffer as much as they do, instead of organizing lifestyles into a more frugal fashion for the benefit of all.
  • randusername 4mo ago
    > For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-- how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
• hnthrowaway0315 4mo ago
  I'm very frustrated that I don't have time to learn stuffs on job. They basically assume the productivity I'm supposed to get from using AI on tasks I'm familiar with. And it definitely doesn't help when everyone hires "Seniors" only, so it's virtually impossible to switch tracks unless I sleep with the CXOs I guess. I have been nudging towards system programming for the previous 8 years, starting as a data analyst, to BI developer, and to data engineer -- well, I guess data engineer is my last stop for life.
• vanuatu 4mo ago
  Top professionals whose comp is tied to performance didn't work 40hr 9-5s in the first place - but their comp is tied to performance, so when they have 10x the output they are compensated accordingly Roles that come with a 40hr work week were already decoupled from performance, if AI made those workers 10x more productive they will rarely see the fruits of their productivity On an individual level it seems like the correct move is to either move to a role that rewards output or organize and get equity comp as part of everyone's package
  • hnthrowaway0315 4mo ago
    How can one move horizontally and then vertically? I have been thinking about getting into a more technical position. I work as a data engineer but essentially just a data modeller while manager and staff engineer took all the fun jobs -- it is even very hard to know what they are working on, so it is impossible to even ask for certain tickets. And now with AI coming out in hot, and companies only hiring seniors, I found it very hard to move horizontally. It is not like I can't take a pay cut, but people simply won't hire someone who takes some time to learn the rope. I might as well figure out how to increase my Charisma to 18 and sleep with someone at the top /s
  • paulhebert 4mo ago
    Do you know people who have gotten 10x raises due to increased output since AI came out? The one group I can think of is workers at AI companies but that seems more like a gold rush situation than anything
    • vanuatu 4mo ago
      AI companies have reaped the most benefit out of AI, so naturally most 10xers come from people who have equity in those companies that grow really fast I don't think the average person has even close to a 10x output increase due to AI.
• artursapek 4mo ago
  Salaried people think they get paid for their output. No silly, you get paid for your time. Just like an hourly worker.
• bwhiting2356 4mo ago
  What's preventing you from advertising your services as a contractor for 4 days a week?
• mandevil 4mo ago
  WFH alone, let alone compressed work schedules, can improve the "fertility crisis": https://www.nber.org/papers/w34963 https://www.nber.org/papers/w34963 Couples (in prime reproducing age) where both members WFH at least 1 day a week have 0.32 more live births per woman per lifetime than couples where neither does.
• _HMCB_ 4mo ago
  It’s all roses. AI is what exactly what the world needed. How can we not be grateful.
• philip1209 4mo ago
  Farm, and you won't have to scavenge for food. Get a tractor, and spend less time farming. The factory will save time making tractors, so everybody can have one. Computers will make the factories more efficient. AI will make the computers more efficient.
  • mordae 4mo ago
    Foraging was so good we only had to work like 2h a day. We had to start farming simply because the population growth from foraging was exponential and we have ran out of easy-to-forage ecosystems. We've also ran out of freedom at that point. We used to simply walk away from bullies, but that was no longer possible, with the farm and all. At some point bullies stopped charging for racket. They stole the land and told us we are now working under them, for them.
• ray_v 4mo ago
  Fine, we'll even call it "Elons Gambit" if that helps - in exchange for accepting AI in our lives 3 day weekends from here on out ...forever.
• laughing_man 4mo ago
  Oh, don't worry. The way things are going with AI you're going to get a lot of days off.
• dyauspitr 4mo ago
  On a tangent if you’re paying $6000 a month for your three children for childcare you are better off getting a Nanny for significantly lesser than that
• bparsons 4mo ago
  Different countries are going to distribute the benefits of automation in different ways. Northern European states will pursue shortened work weeks and lavish social services. China will reinvest the productivity gains into its industrial capacity. The United States will have five trillionaires.
• rjbwork 4mo ago
  No, gains of productivity exclusively accrue to the owners of capital. Learn your place, human capital.
• _moof 4mo ago
  Whenever a new way is found to improve efficiency, choices have to be made about how to distribute the new surplus. Choices are made by people who have power and imposed upon people who don't. The people with power under current systems don't care about the people who do the work. They care about getting rich. So if there's an efficiency gain to be had, all of that new efficiency is going to be put towards increasing output or reallocating work. None of it - under current power structures - will ever go towards allowing workers to work less, because workers aren't the ones deciding where it will go.
  • d4mi3n 4mo ago
    Unless one choses to bargain. Perhaps collectively.
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    • Avicebron 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      • quadrifoliate 4mo ago
        I don't understand why people make these hyperbolic jokes about guillotines. Violence is counterproductive; and not practical anyway. Joking about it just makes you feel great without actually doing anything. There is a simple alternative. Vote; and educate your family and friends. If you don't know what is on the ballot in the midterms, you are part of the problem. If you aren't starting a family conversation about how corporations are squeezing us, you are part of the problem.
        • iteria 4mo ago
          Everyone talks about MLK, but no one points out that people were willing to listen because Malcom X was a looming threat if MLK failed. Yes vote, but the threat of violence is what makes voting a delighted option. That's why protests exist. They are reminders that peace is a choice. Violent revolution has merit when peaceful means break down. The rise of the guillotine jokes are the first time that people are losing faith in the peaceful option. We should hope that our leaders don't make most of use disillusioned with the idea of a peaceful transfer of power.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• Grosvenor 4mo ago
  Back when I was a young lad I wanted engineering to be a real discipline - formal qualifications, codes, held to account, and limitations on who could call themself an Engineer(TM). But the money was so good we (The royal we) didn't think we needed it, that would just get in the way. Did you see how much FB employees were getting paid in 2015! Insanity! Now, even the skutters have a better union than us. A plumber, or an electrician has a better union, and hence rights and protection than us. But if you're building a brand new field you can still build a guild.
• zetalyrae 4mo ago
  Arguably this is what retirement is, no? Productivity gains did create extra leisure time. It's just we save all the leisure for retirement.
  • abyssin 4mo ago
    They mainly created extra value for shareholders
• sneak 4mo ago
  You can have any days off you wish when you run the company. If you’re an employee then you work the days you were contracted to work. Employees definitionally don’t get to choose their hours.
• rramadass 4mo ago
  My best experience of a good working-hours week comes from a school i studied at when a boy. The hours were 11:30AM to 4:30PM; i.e. 5 hours with only a 20/30min break in-between. We slept well, had a good brunch and went to school fresh and energetic. Played outside after school (i.e. exercise), came home at nightfall, did some study (i.e. work), had some entertainment and dinner before hitting the bed. In today's parlance, this was excellent "work-life balance". If you can, talk to your boss and see whether you can adopt such a work schedule (with slight shifting of the time window as needed).
• gogasca 4mo ago
  [dead]
• quadrifoliate 4mo ago
  The solution to this is political. Under hyper-efficient capitalism, if there is truly such a 10x productivity improvement, a large number of people will be laid off in response and the rest will be squeezed. This is already happening. The logical response should be to elect left-leaning politicians that recognize this; or educate your existing left-leaning politicians; or stand for office yourself with this as your platform. If there are huge fines on any AI-related layoffs, substantially higher taxes on the top 1%, and an extra wealth tax then maybe we can fund some kind of UBI or stopgap support for the masses that will lose their jobs.
  • __loam 4mo ago
    Also start a union at your company and sue them if they retaliate.
    • quadrifoliate 4mo ago
      Depending on your workplace and professional circle, influencing political opinions may be easier than unionizing. But both can be done.
• mrcwinn 4mo ago
  Capitalists moralize a lot about people becoming “lazy” or not having “direction” if society subsidizes not working - and yet their entire mission is centered around deploying money, letting money “work.” If capital is doing the work, why on earth are they getting paid?
• fg137 4mo ago
  I never understand why software engineers are so excited about AI as a whole. If you are excited about the technology, sure. But if you are excited about the increase in productivity, unless you are a manager, I don't really understand it. Like, why? You are not working one hour less than before. If anything, it's more likely you'll get laid off and have trouble finding your next job.
  • afro88 4mo ago
    Is the end goal to not work? Are we supposed to not enjoy what we work on? Do we not believe in what the company we work for is trying to achieve?
    • Jgrubb 4mo ago
      I don't know what's gonna happen man, but I'm gonna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames. - Jim Morrison
    • Chinjut 4mo ago
      Many of us do not particularly enjoy the work our employer has us do, nor believe in what the company we work for is trying to achieve. It's not like we get to choose its aims, and it's not like we have alternatives where we get to do so either. Our lives are spent working on someone else's goals.
      • tasuki 4mo ago
        > and it's not like we have alternatives where we get to do so either. You can and should choose your employers. Saying you have no alternatives is disingenious. It's possible (and often worth it) to trade a big salary for meaning. My employer significantly underpays us compared to the market, we could be (and many had been) earning multiple times more elsewhere, and yet we're happy to work there: we get reimbursed by meaningful work in a relaxed atmosphere.
        • Chinjut 4mo ago
• MinimalAction 4mo ago
  Given the pace of AI growth, it is quite possible to have years off if layoffs begin in many places. We are training AI to replace many jobs. It seems like entry-level jobs are the only ones affected, but that's for now. Anything short of executive level jobs are perhaps on the chopping block for time to come. Now, why wouldn't be execs be replaced? They could, but they wouldn't cut themselves off.
  • thefuture2023 4mo ago
    > if layoffs begin In the horrible, distant future known as 2023.
• jmward01 4mo ago
  We need to get creative in ways that help. I am personally for: - sabbaticals - flat out taking 2 years off every 5 to go back to school full time - the mid weekend (don't give me Friday. Give me Wednesday!) - Massive increases to new baby time off programs - early retirement -but- with the encouragement to start fresh in a new field after a transition break. - Of course, just more time off. But -require- it. If you don't take your yearly vacation time you miss out on the 'vacation bonus check'. You want to create jobs? Find ways to get people legitimately out of the workforce. By that I mean out of the workforce but still spending money and improving their skills for when they come back in.
• mil22 4mo ago
  Effective working hours are not set by absolute productivity - they are set by an equilibrium between two forces: 1. Competitive market dynamics. If you only work four days a week, other employees and companies who are willing to work five days a week will do so and get ahead of you, and you are more likely to get fired or to go out of business. This force pushes us all to work longer (and harder) so we have more money to enjoy in our leisure time. 2. A society's willingness to sacrifice days of leisure for days of work. There are only seven days in a week. The tradeoff between work and leisure - production and consumption - is ultimately what determines how hard we all work. This force pushes us all to work less so we have more time to spend our money. Economists think on the margin. It's easy to demonstrate these two principles to yourself by thinking through worked examples from different starting points. Whether the equilibrium lands at 2 days of work to 5 days of leisure, or 5 days of work to 2 days of leisure, depends on our collective preferences, which vary between countries and cultures but have tended to be relatively durable over time. No technology so far has shifted this balance much - not the steam engine, the industrial revolution, the invention of the personal computer, the internet - and there's no reason to believe "AI" will be any different. The logical conclusion of this is that - assuming we're all 10x more productive - we'll still be working 5 days and enjoying 2 days a week, but we'll consume 10x more, or everything we consume will be 10x higher quality. Hardly a bad thing.
  • hiAndrewQuinn 4mo ago
    First sensible take I've seen in this thread. People especially seem to forget the consequences of #1: The company where everyone is working 0.5 days a week will almost certainly get outcompeted, very quickly, by the company where everyone is working 5 days a week. In fact company #2 can probably precompute company #1 even if they have much lower quality staff on average.
    • lorepieri 4mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
  • 4mo ago
• nelsonfigueroa 4mo ago
  Historically, when a new technology enables workers to be more productive the baseline expectation goes up. We don't get time back.
  • alnwlsn 4mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin >This inadvertently led to an increase in the use of slaves. Whitney had hoped his invention would do the opposite by reducing the amount of labor needed to process cotton, but he never invented a machine to harvest cotton. That job still had to be done by hand. Cotton harvesting machines did not show up until the 1930s. So as cotton farmers expanded their plantations, they bought more slaves to pick the cotton.
    • nelsonfigueroa 4mo ago
      Yeah this is exactly what comes to mind when I think about new tech and productivity increases. I remember learning about this as a kid in history class and it's still relevant today.
• AngryData 4mo ago
  I think expecting worker rights to go up or working time to go down without laws/general strikes and more unions is naive. We have had massive productivity gains in every field since the 20th century, and in half of fields throughout the 19th century, and do we work any less or get paid better? No. In fact the entire goal of the last labor movement we had was to reduce working hours back to what peoples parents and grandparents worked. The 40 hour work week was merely a return to historical norms so the people didn't rise up and start hanging capitalists and politicians. Tractors didn't making farming more lucrative, it just meant less farmers. Automated loom technology didn't make textile workers wealthier, it made capitalists richer, and then still ultimately shipped the work to poorer countries. Powered drills and tools didn't make miners or construction workers wealthier or work less. Forklifts didn't make dock workers wealthier or work less. Women entering the workforce and nearly doubling the available labor didn't make us work any less. I don't see AI doing anything to help the working class in any way, just funneling more money into capitalists hands while the productivity demands increase. Even in programming, where AI is being shown to be the most useful, did any of you have your work demands decrease or wages go up? No, at best they just fired junior engineers and told them to go pound sand.
• tamimio 4mo ago
  Silly you, the 9-5 5days a week schedule was introduced by ford in his factories, did they change that when automation was introduced later? Internet? Nope. And this 9-5 is actually 7-6 if you count the commute. Speaking of AI, it’s been what, 3 years since it became mainstream? Did the employees wellbeing’s become better? Are the codes better? Do we have a breakthrough innovations that changed fundamentally in how we use/deal with xyz? All I hear is more work, more anxiety, more cost for some tokens, so I am not entirely sure about the “productivity increase” claim.
• spl757 4mo ago
  Channeling my inner-masteroftheworld, No.
• smashah 4mo ago
  No because the Epsteinist Class in charge have decided to make it zero sum. Therefore it's a fight to the death. Which is why with Ai we're 10x more productive and either 10x more busy or fired and on our way to food stamps
• nancyminusone 4mo ago
  You seem to be under the mistaken belief that AI (or insert technology) is here to make your life easier and not to make your company's owners richer.
• auggierose 4mo ago
  Brilliant. This is exactly what is needed. AI day, Saturday, Sunday. Across the work force, even those not directly impacted by AI. And obviously, those 3 days can be flexibly arranged, so that we can shop all week long.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• ChrisArchitect 4mo ago
  https://4dayweek.io https://4dayweek.io, a Show HN: project
• ixtli 4mo ago
  Marx showed this was an expression of one the central contradictions more than a century ago. Seriously it’s never too late to read about why our conditions only ever deteriorate under capitalism.
• sterlind 4mo ago
  Scott Alexander's 2014 essay, Meditations on Moloch, explains why we ended up in this rat king of human misery rather than a utopia. I recommend it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ basically, we can blame greedy corporate overlords, and that's cathartic, and somewhat correct, but we can (and have) ended up in a hell of our own making even with every individual wanting to do better. the boss that wants to let workers have the day off can't afford to, because the competition makes workers do 8x5. the competition lays off workers to pay for more tokens, because their competitors are. it's a bad game equilibrium. labor laws are the reason we have the five day work week. we needed overtime to dissuade employers from defecting from the policy. we need coordination to keep AI from turning out like children working the bobbins in old-timey textile factories.
• ChrisArchitect 4mo ago
  Meanwhile, a trend in the last year: AI Startup Founders Tout a Winning Formula–No Booze, No Sleep, No Fun https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45221423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45221423 996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45149049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45149049 New trend: extreme hours at AI startups https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45156674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45156674 SV AI Startups Are Embracing China's Controversial '996' Work Schedule https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44657480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44657480
• sibeliuss 4mo ago
  Maybe a lot of this comes down to people are having fun building stuff in a way they weren't before? But i imagine this will all die down.
  • Ifkaluva 4mo ago
    I like vibe coding for personal projects where the code is a throwaway, but I hate vibecoding at work when I later have to stake my reputation in validity of results, as well as maintain the resulting implementation.
    • sibeliuss 4mo ago
      Well the answer is easy, don't vibe code then?
      • Ifkaluva 4mo ago
        I would love to, but in some companies these days that’s really not an option
• noduerme 4mo ago
  So I freelance and I still write all the code by hand. I'm not sure how to honestly inject LLM code and bill for it. It would also probably cause me a lot of downstream problems if I did. But I asked my largest client if they were willing to begin donating $20k a year to my retirement fund if I'm going to be helping them to phase me out over some number of years. They did agree to that. The reality is that if you were already a 10x coder, you can't be 10x more productive even if the LLMs made you so, because there's only so much work. And even just using LLMs in my private projects, I feel my daily coding skills slipping. I want to ask Claude to do some dumb API integration instead of doing it myself. But I know if I don't do it myself, I'll be lost at sea and never able to debug it without more Claude. This is a drunk state of mind post, feel free to ignore it.
• nacozarina 4mo ago
  Read up on the Ten Hour Movement or the Bread & Roses strike. You are never going to get relief by asking politely.
• engineer_22 4mo ago
  Be happy if you can be 10x more productive and charge 1/10 per unit of productivity. There's no guarantee society needs 10x the productivity. Yesterday I built a bespoke time keeping and billing tool in my browser for my boutique consulting gig. I got exactly what I needed and I paid about $1. I think this piece of software could power my business for 2-3 years... If my business is very successful maybe I'll invest $2 to develop a GUI. No SaaS needed. Software demand was actually surpressed by AI. I don't need 10x more software. I need simple software at 1/100th the cost, on demand. And AI promises to give it to me. The most beautiful part is there's multiple market entrants competing for my bid. Imagine OpenAI invented ICE engines and the world was dotted with lakes of crude oil, all we needed was refineries. That's the world we're in. Now that should make you think.
• NiceWayToDoIT 4mo ago
  I am kind of late to comment, but let me try anyway. Can we have a day off? Yes and no, or yes, but at your expense. The problem is system design. If a company earned money for its contributors/workers, then each gain would be shared across the company, from the board to its employees. But a company earns money for its shareholders, and you, as an employee, are in the expense column. Therefore, a day off is either a mandatory legal right meant to help you rest so you can be more productive, or it is just additional unproductive time that does not create more value or maximize profit. Therefore, this is where the argument for a 4-day working week collapses. To get a 4-day working week would mean yes, but with less "expense", or a lower salary. For the same reason, taxing the rich would not help "the people" much, as it goes to the wrong pocket. Is there are fix, yes.
• vladsiu 4mo ago
  [dead]
• barumrho 4mo ago
  If we all 10x our productivity, then we also 10x the cost of taking a day off and theoretically progress is compounding, so it's even costlier...oh no.
• dlev_pika 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• mbgerring 4mo ago
  Here’s your occasional reminder that US software engineers should unionize.
• xyzal 4mo ago
  Everyone laments how everyone will get "a lot" of days off in the end, but regulation is still a dirty word in here.
• analog31 4mo ago
  It seems to me that cranking up the heat on developers would not be the only way to harness this increase in productivity, if it's real. For instance just let projects finish on time, or on a predictable timeline. End the "software crisis" that's been with us since the 1960s. This would result in a quality-of-life improvement for every manager, stakeholder, user, etc. Another idea: Alleviate some side effects of the crisis, such as vital functions being taken care of by "shadow IT" for decades. Abolish Excel as the front end for business computation.
• jack01234258 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• celpgoescheeew 4mo ago
  [dead]
• d--b 4mo ago
  That’s an idea that’s been around since 1883. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Be_Lazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Be_Lazy But that has never stuck enough for masses to fight for it. It’s a shame. Personally, the way I cracked it is by freelancing for an american company and living in France. I can totally take the day off.
• ms_menardi 4mo ago
  This is the most brilliant thing I've read all year. That note at the bottom... Amazing.
• jppope 4mo ago
  My Dad used to cover a territory in the Northeast where he was on the road for up to 2 weeks at a time. Sometimes we'd see him just long enough for him to grab a haircut and remember everyone's names in the right order. Everyday he showed up to work he needed to be in a full suit and tie. Everyone did. If those suits weren't in good shape, and you weren't on time they were probably picking a different guy for promotion. The expectation for him was to work 50-60 hours a week, not including commute, getting ready for work, and corporate social events. Time off was strictly 2 weeks until you hit a certain level and then you'd get 3 weeks. He didn't get sick often but if he was he still went to work. Dad had it good. I used to jump on landscaping crews during the summer in SoCal and watch 60 year old guys break their backs for 12 hours to get ~$250 a day. I'd do it on the weekends for spending money. I enjoyed the article but reading through all of the comments in this thread I'm genuinely surprised by the lack of appreciation for how good we have it. There's a "demographic" on HN and I'm pretty confident it aint the guys doing concrete work or running vampire hours at the local 7-11. Moving around some 1s and 0s in between some coffee and meetings even at the bad companies isn't that rough in the grand scheme of things. I get what the article is trying to say - with all the productivity improvements when do the grunts get a little bit of those gains back?Unfortunately thats not how it works. It's "Red Queen Theory"... when something new changes the game you adapt or die - "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."
  • Chinjut 4mo ago
    There's always a comment saying "Don't ask for better, because someone else had worse". Fuck that. I want better and I want everyone else to have it too.
    • jppope 4mo ago
      Ask for better. Find a way to make things better. Find a way to make things better for others. ... but appreciate what you have too
  • kelnos 4mo ago
    Just because someone else has it worse, it doesn't mean we can't want for something better for ourselves. And I personally would like that something better for the people who have it worse, too.
• kelnos 4mo ago
  Nearly 100 years ago, John Maynard Keynes said that by now we'd be working just 15 hours a week, because productivity gains would mean we could get a whole work-week of work done in that time. In reality, higher productivity just means companies can do more with the same amount of time/effort, and so nothing will change. Wage-slaving will still be wage-slaving. We won't move the bar toward more leisure time; we'll move the bar toward more work completed in the same amount of time. Then again, the labor movement gave us the 5-day work week, and the concept of weekends for resting from work. Maybe a new labor movement can give us more days a week off. Labor movements have been declining of late, of course, but perhaps that sort of thing can be reversed.
• culebron21 4mo ago
  There was an article here, 18 years ago, called The Gospel of Consumption. It also noticed that since 1950s, the productivity had gone so far, it would have been enough to work just 2 hours a day. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182425
• pjmlp 4mo ago
  The C suit would rather that everyone takes all days off. What they haven't yet explained is how everyone is supposed to earn money to buy AI produced goods.
• zx8080 4mo ago
  No. Because profit, and it's not yours one.
• eterevsky 4mo ago
  You can absolutely negotiate to work 4 days weeks and get 80% salary. I've been working like this for the last 3-4 years.
• agnishom 4mo ago
  This is the most important thing about AI, that the policymakers and AI companies need to discuss more. If AI is making us, as a race, more productive, who is reaping the benefits of that productivity?
  • kombookcha 4mo ago
    The AI companies and their investors. Full stop.
• liendolucas 4mo ago
  Excellent. Besides the article, I've always questioned myself many many times how is it that the whole world has agreed that we have to work 5 days and rest 2. Why is it that, why can't be 4 and 3? I truly wish that in general we work a bit less. Even if it is not a whole day off, then having a workday of around 6 hours would mean that you could still have some free time for yourself.
• dmje 4mo ago
  What strikes me a significant percentage of the time I see posts like this and the responses to it is how shit other people’s jobs seem and how unfair their employers appear to be. I don’t know if this is because it’s US centric or tech centric or just full of people under a particular HN-like duress. But, man, it sounds crappy out there. Is there anyone here who actually likes what they do, has a decent employer, has a nice life…?
  • demaga 4mo ago
    Sure, they're just less likely to comment about it.
  • hackertyper69 4mo ago
    Yes, many. People just don't complain about their lobster being too buttery or their steak too juicy.
• WesolyKubeczek 4mo ago
  As AI gets more successful in taking away bullshit makework, instead of having days off or doing something else meaningful for the company, the bullshit makework just multiplies to keep everyone and everything just as busy as before, like kipple. And then this phenomenon is being called 10x productivity and celebrated. This is why we cannot have nice things. /me is off to rewatch They Live
• josh-sematic 4mo ago
  You should not be asking Elon if you can work 4 days a week; he believes you should already be working 7.
• josh-sematic 4mo ago
  Sadly this won’t happen for the same reasons that the median salary hasn’t increased with increases in productivity over the past few decades. You are compensated (or given time off) based on what your employer can get away with, not based on what they get in return. The system is designed to accrue all excess value to shareholders, not employees.
• 0xbadcafebee 4mo ago
  Not saying we shouldn't do 4-day weeks (we should), but you can sorta do this for short periods. Take a vacation day every Friday through summer. For 14 vacation days that's 3.5 months of 4-day weeks. Block your schedule on Fridays with lots of random meetings ("meeting friday!"). If you don't tell anybody, nobody really notices.
• bob1029 4mo ago
  I feel like we're actually getting there with one of my clients. The business is very close to being constrained on the customer again. A lot of the paradox in productivity and labor may be attributable to a severe debt that needs to be paid down and now finally can be. Some of the 996 (or 007) working hour system stuff is coming from your peers feeling this new hope. The tone will continue to shift as backlogs get exhausted. If you are pure software play I think you are on track to get more days off than you bargained for, one way or the other.
  • abyssin 4mo ago
    In a capitalist system, the owners don’t owe you anything but your salary. And if they fire you, they no longer owe you a salary.
• wcfrobert 4mo ago
  This entire thread is drenched in class consciousness and I am here for it.
• charles_f 4mo ago
  But, have you thought of the shareholders?
• aiisahik 4mo ago
  Imagine only 10% of the white collar labor force were allowed to use AI. In that case, those 10% would be given 2 or 3 days off a week. Easy. Now imagine if only 10% of companies were allowed to use AI. Those companies would easily be willing to give 2-3 days off per week to their workers. Makes sense since those companies would easily outcompete the others and so they would have enough economic surplus to provide lavish benefits to their workers. However, because 100% of companies and 100% of workers have access to AI, the competitive pressure on the deployment of capital means that no days off can be given. New perks are only given to you if you, your company or your country has some sustainable systemic advantage over other employees, companies or countries. In the absence of those sustainable systemic advantage, any perk given would put you, your company or your country at a competitive disadvantage against some other employee, company or country who are willing to work without such perk. The only way to sustain such a perk in those situations is with anti-competitive practices: Labor Unions, protectionism, corruption, etc.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• jojobas 4mo ago
  > Childcare for 3 small children is six thousand dollars a month here in California. Maybe we could afford for women to not leave their kids with strangers for most of their waking hours? Crazy talk I know.
• Galaxeblaffer 4mo ago
  From experience, take Monday off instead of Friday and optimally also Wednesday.
• fullstackchris 4mo ago
  Its wild to me that the concept of working 80% (1 day off a week) or even 60% (2 days off a week) isn't even a concept in the US, while in europe such part time situations make up a huge share of the work force. In short, people have been having the day off for decades now. It's called part-time work.
• gib444 4mo ago
  People with more time on their hands start looking around their communities wondering what happened, start questioning politics, start reading statistics instead of headlines and so forth. Oh no, we can't have that Political disengagement is often "too damn tired"
• Dig1t 4mo ago
  This will never happen, the power dynamic between workers and employers is so skewed in favor of employers and it is only getting worse. Don't like your job? Fine leave, there are tens of millions of H1B's who will do your job for less money and they won't complain because they can't easily leave.
• swiftcoder 4mo ago
  The 4 day work week was already proven to improve productivity before LLMs. We could probably do a 3 day workweek with Claude Code!
• eeixlk 4mo ago
  Elon cares.
• sevenzero 4mo ago
  The AI ultralords dream is a world with a few billion less humans. We will work till we die and we wont own anything.
• jameslk 4mo ago
  > So can I just take Friday off? From here on out, I’ll work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then take Friday off. Yeah, if you switch to working as an independent contractor, you can work any amount of time you want. If you run your own business, you can work crazy hours or none at all. The world is truly your oyster I'm not being facetious either. That's exactly what I did, and I got what I asked for We can all talk about supply and demand here, whether companies should be forced to do X or Y, and how Keynes got his 15 hour work week prediction so wrong, ad nauseam. But if you truly want something beyond the talk, like a more flexible work schedule, there's real ways to get it right now
  • apt-apt-apt-apt 4mo ago
    Salary positions at most companies will have a nice laugh, then move on to the next candidate. I think being able to do this is exceedingly rare.
• alper 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• penguin_booze 4mo ago
  <sarcasm should_be="obvious"> When your employer lays you off, you can take as many days off as you want! </sarcasm>
• cawksuwcka 4mo ago
  [dead]
• npw55036 4mo ago
  The issue of productivity and demand has existed for a long time, but the explosion in productivity caused by the AI trend has made it even more apparent: in most markets, demand can grow indefinitely, and products always have room for improvement. Increased productivity only intensifies competition, and while actual workers are not truly liberated, their products do benefit consumers.
• mbf1 4mo ago
  No. You can't have the day off. AI might make you and everyone else more productive, but that just means we need 10% as many employees, and 1 to 8 of your 10 closest peers are producing more slop than you, and so we're going to let you go. Security is going to show you out in 3, 2, 1...
• unglaublich 4mo ago
  Did we get days off when industrialization bumped output? Days off when industrial agriculture made food supplies abundant? Did we get days off when computers automated administrative office tasks?
• poulpy123 4mo ago
  Under capitalism is a question of either the benevolence of your employer (rare but it may happen), or your capacity to impose a day off In turn, your capacity to impose a day off is a question of either your personal power or of class struggle. Of course when you arrive at the question of the class struggle, the discourse becomes funny
• CalRobert 4mo ago
  Until we fix the artificial scarcity of necessities (particularly housing), peer competition ensures that people will work as hard as they practically can in order to outbid their peers for said necessities. We could have abundance, but then people might not have to maximize their efforts to produce wealth for capital holders. My wife and I work full time so we could outbid other people who wanted our house.
• coolThingsFirst 4mo ago
  Yes, the next year off as well because they will fire you.
• irundebian 4mo ago
  Yes, you can take the day off, but your pay will be reduced by 20%. Just because technology and productivity are advancing doesn’t mean you can work less and still get the same pay. By that logic, hardly anyone would need to work today, as productivity has increased many times over compared to previous centuries. If one company works less, then other companies that work more have an advantage. That’s why it doesn’t work.
• amelius 4mo ago
  > Can we have the day off? Yeah, like when the steam engine was invented?
• atoav 4mo ago
  Well. It all boils down to one simple truth: Any gains in productivity are extracted by the rich. Any losses of productivity shall be covered by the poor. It is a one-way rachet.
• triceratops 4mo ago
  > So can I just take Friday off? ... And like, this would apply across the board, of course . So you, the board of directors, and the C-suite, you guys could take Friday off to go to play an entire 18 holes at the golf course Joke's on you peasant. They're already playing golf on Fridays.
• XpEUCc2gsT 4mo ago
  [dead]
• skelo 4mo ago
  Yeah, no kidding. I want AI work for me during I'm traveling
• aarjaneiro 4mo ago
  No, you'll need to be on call to fix all the slop falling apart
• tracker1 4mo ago
  First, I don't think the productivity gains are nearly what they are claimed to be, and shouldn't be... I think way to many people are getting really lazy and letting a lot of slop through that they shouldn't. Human review takes time and mental overhead. I've mentioned a few times, that I actually appreciate an aspect of Claude's 5 hr API window... I generally watch, stop, re-prompt and review what comes out. I'm not running a bunch of separate prompts and instances all at once. I'm using AI to plan and do a lot of work... I am getting a lot more output and a lot more value for that time than I could without it. It takes a toll... and the few times I've hit the window on API usage actually aligns with that toll in when I need a break. I also assume I'm not going to be productive all day... I'll review mail, checkout articles on HN, comment, etc. I'm generally actively in a productive flow about 5 hours a day... with AI, I can be a lot more productive. That said, my current job is pretty locked down and I'm unable to leverage AI for most things... I've been able to use my own computer to write a few libraries/utils that I can then leverage in-job... but that's about it. Mental work can be more tiresome than physical work, depending on the individual jobs. You aren't "on" all the time. This isn't a statement against or for a 4 day work week, only countering part of the narrative. Right now the job market is a mess... developer wages are severely suppressed and almost everything is "contract" based and lacking basic benefits like good medical insurance, vacation time, etc. It pretty much sucks. AI is not a panacea, and it's not a replacement for skilled developers. Not only that, but a junior developer + AI can literally be several steps backward compared to a skilled developer without AI or with. I'm seeing a lot of cool things happen on GitHub projects I follow, a lot of it allowed by leveraging AI... most of the best stuff not left to AI alone. It's a tool. On the flip side, I do think a lot of major employers need to return to actual employees with actual, meaningful benefits and even start implementing profit sharing... There are a lot of people pushing for outright Communism, and they're winning elections in some places. Just from a CYA point of view, it's time to treat the workforce a little better. I'd rather not have communism become prominent in the US... it won't be pretty.
• tkel 4mo ago
  This is a problem fundamental to capitalism. Capitalist organizations are organized as dictatorships, with capitalists as the dictators. Captialists have their own class interests that is opposed to the workers'. And they also are the ones who unilaterally decide how increased productivity gains (revenue/profit) are distributed. They are not going to decide to give you another day off. They are going to maximize profit. ALL technological progress under capitalism goes through this same conflict. It's why workers are sometimes pressed into reactionary positions like opposing self-checkout lanes. Capitalists decide to deploy the technology in a way that is worse for the workers. Technological progress could be liberatory. Technology could be used to make workers' lives better, like working less, if workers were in charge of the organizations in which they worked.
• m463 4mo ago
  I think there is a paradox here - more time off makes you "dispose" of more of your "disposable cash"
• sambuccid 4mo ago
  I read some time ago about the idea of "redistribution of work", which given the current low level of employment(at least for young people here in UK) and the introduction of AI, it seems to me probably a better strategy than "universal income". I'm worried the absolute absence of a job would have a big impact on the mental health of the average person (we need to feel useful somehow).
• nrlucas 4mo ago
  (Yo, Elon: I’m trying to increase the fertility rate. Childcare for 3 small children is six thousand dollars a month here in California. Do I have to go into the office all five days this week? Why not four?) This is just ripe for a response "leave California". Which Elon likes to bite on. But it's expensive everywhere and not just that, fundamentally time with your child is important and cannot be fixed by throwing money at it. I know this isn't about Elon's hypocritical stance on fertility, sorry.
• damirkotoric 4mo ago
  No we can't because that's not how capitalism works. Marx called it exploitation for a reason.
• mikeyrayvon 4mo ago
  Woah slow down! These are the kind of dangerous ideas that won us the 8-hour work day and the 5-day week.
• zhouquanxi 4mo ago
  [flagged]