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It is completely unsurprising to me that this could be true. If you look at efficiency gains over the years relative to wages, people are working more and earni

It is completely unsurprising to me that this could be true. If you look at efficiency gains over the years relative to wages, people are working more and earning less. I think the statistic is something like we should be working like 15 hours a week to get the same productivity as was the norm in either 1950 or 1970. I think a lot of people would love to work half the time to make something like 2/3 or 3/4 of what they are making now, especially considering what wages should be given productivity increases. Let's face it, the reason the 40 hour workweek exists anymore is a habit, not because it's the correct amount of hours to work. Everyone expects a 40 hour work week because that's just what full time employment is supposed to be right?

tokenizer 13y ago
One argument for the 40 hour work week is that we've simply built a complex global society around it. Almost every country in the world adheres to it more or less. We have set store hours at either 8 or 16 or 24 hours, again based on shifts of workers, and we have a complex economy that I'm sure our leaders would argue depends on it. Not saying I agree with that argument, or that something better isn't possible, just stating a potential defense to the "tradition" of our 40 hour work week. Any solution would take a ton of logistics and considerations in terms of wage parity during any transition period, less you want people starving because of bad policy. OR it would take one class of people, those who own the means of production, to create this policy on their own. I see no reason why they would.
- eru 13y ago
  In lots of poorer economies people are asked to work more than 8 hours. In which countries are store hours are usually set at multiples of 8 hours? (I have never see that being usual. But then, I grew up in Europe.)
  - kamaal 13y ago
    My Dad is a cab driver. He was, when he was young a Bus driver. He used to routinely put in over time 12-13+ hours scale and generally used to report to the Bus Depot around 3 AM in the morning. I'm not sure if that counts as creative work, but its very stressful though. Note, this is in India.
- weland 13y ago
  > One argument for the 40 hour work week is that we've simply built a complex global society around it. Which I passionately hate. Banks around here strictly adhere to the 40-hour work week, which obviously results in banks only being open when, you know, everyone is at work. Consequently, if you need to interact with a human at the bank, the only option you have is to skip lunch break.
  - entropy_ 13y ago
    The solution to that where I live(Lebanon), is that banks have 40hr weeks but instead of 8x5 they are 7x5 + 1*5. That is, they work 8am=>3pm on weekdays and 8am=>1pm on Saturdays. It's definitely less than ideal but at least if you need to interact with an actual human at a bank and it's not extremely urgent, you just go there on Saturday.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    Exactly; I need to take half a day off at work whenever I need to go to a bank. Or a barber. I don't understand why so many services have opening hours when most of the people are at work. Where do they get their clients from?
    - cclogg 13y ago
      It works because then it gives people an excuse to leave work lol!
  - pc86 13y ago
    Banks don’t exist to serve personal customers, they exist for business (the overwhelming majority of their profit comes from business accounts). To that end, they have no reason to be open outside of normal business hours.
xur17 13y ago
I'm curious to see what company is first to use shorter work weeks as a perk (if it hasn't happened already) with a lower salary. I personally would love to work 20 or 30 hours a week, and have more time for side projects, etc. I think part of the problem is that an employee has a set of fixed costs (healthcare, hr, etc) that don't decrease as an employee works less hours.
- xivzgrev 13y ago
  I agree, but man would it be tough for a company to offer this. As CEO you have shareholders, competitors, customers, blah blah blah all expecting growth or seeking to take your growth. So to do this, either a) everyone works more efficiently, but how many will hold themselves accountable to this? b) you hire more people, but creates more organizational complexity c) you ask people to work more hours Seems most companies would take C.
  - marcus_holmes 13y ago
    You do this by measuring productivity in terms of what each person actually achieves each day, not by how many hours they spend in the office. I have done this for a development team by agreeing milestones and targets for my team with both the developers involved and the internal customers. The devs are then responsible for hitting their targets, and notifying everyone else if they slip or are unable to meet them. The customers are responsible for notifying everyone if the requirements or context changes. I was responsible for notifying everyone if the priorities changed. It then became the dev's responsibility to determine how many and which hours they needed to work to achieve the goals set, with some simple rules (like a maximum of 8 hours coding per day and 6 days working in a row). We had some weekly meetings that the entire team needed to show up at, otherwise it was their call. They could work from home or from the office, although we generally preferred office because of the network effects. If they completed a task early, they got to go home if they wanted (some didn't). We got some flak from other departments because it appeared to them that we were never around, but they got used to it. The fact that we were consistently hitting deadlines was a HUGE plus to the whole thing; they could see this worked. As a bonus, we had decent support cover for some of the evening and night shifts as there were devs who preferred working those hours. TL;DR: Don't measure people on how long they sit behind their desks. Measure them on what they actually do. Then set targets based on what you expect someone to do in a week. Then send them home once they've hit target. To grow the company, set harder targets.
xivzgrev 13y ago
Unfortunately capitalism gets in the way. Suppose you're a factory owner with 4 workers working 40 hours per week. You invest in a new machine that lets everyone be twice as productive. If you don't have demand for the extra output, then do you cut everyone's hours in half or let two people go? Think the far more common solution is to let two people go. So even though productivity went up, hours worked per week stayed constant. And I think 40 hours per week is status quo. Suppose you get a job offer, and ask to work just 30 hours per week. There are a number of forces conspiring against you: 1) If you're salaried, the employer would see this as less efficient (even if you're actually more efficient) 2) If you're used to a particular way of living, 30 hours could entail pay cut 3) Others are willing to work 40 hours per week, and hence employer gets more "value" out of hiring someone else per week I think best bet to achieve that reality is to be your own boss. Friend of mine works as a UI consultant and bills out at $200 per hour, works maybe 20-30 hours per week. It's a brilliant gig.
- annnnd 13y ago
  I don't think the factory owner example applies here (the article is talking about creative workers. And I also think that a lot of stuff is negotiable - you just need to show your worth. It is all too easy to go the same path as all others did, just because we think this is somehow expected of us. But then again, I work 9-5 too and hate it (just the working hours, not the job), so I guess I should fix that first before I lecture others... ;)
  - xivzgrev 13y ago
    Totally agree that article is talking about creative workers. But the factory example is concrete and great for a basic discussion on the question of "why the hell are we working so much when productivity has increased". And completely agree stuff is negotiable. But as mentioned, if not here then above, I think being your own boss has the highest possibility for that. For example, the ONLY people working <40 hours at my job are all independent contractors. They come in, do exactly what is asked, and GTFO. My company doesn't want them to "take on this as well" because every hour costs a pretty penny :).
- 13y ago
Avshalom 13y ago
the reason the 40 hour week still exists is because (after much blood shed) we managed to make it difficult to expect a 50 hour work week or a 60 but I don't see any reason to think people wouldn't be sitting around writing essays about how maybe we should scale.down to 'just' 40 if we didn't have the existing labor laws in place.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
The 40 hour week is also enshrined in law because our labor laws are codified around the ideal of factory jobs. If you want a job that has benefits then that's a "full time" job at ~40 hours a week, a 15 hour/week job is considered to be a completely different sort of beast by the government (something more akin to a temp summer job).

tokenizer 13y ago

One argument for the 40 hour work week is that we've simply built a complex global society around it. Almost every country in the world adheres to it more or less. We have set store hours at either 8 or 16 or 24 hours, again based on shifts of workers, and we have a complex economy that I'm sure our leaders would argue depends on it. Not saying I agree with that argument, or that something better isn't possible, just stating a potential defense to the "tradition" of our 40 hour work week. Any solution would take a ton of logistics and considerations in terms of wage parity during any transition period, less you want people starving because of bad policy. OR it would take one class of people, those who own the means of production, to create this policy on their own. I see no reason why they would.

eru 13y ago
In lots of poorer economies people are asked to work more than 8 hours. In which countries are store hours are usually set at multiples of 8 hours? (I have never see that being usual. But then, I grew up in Europe.)
- kamaal 13y ago
  My Dad is a cab driver. He was, when he was young a Bus driver. He used to routinely put in over time 12-13+ hours scale and generally used to report to the Bus Depot around 3 AM in the morning. I'm not sure if that counts as creative work, but its very stressful though. Note, this is in India.
weland 13y ago
> One argument for the 40 hour work week is that we've simply built a complex global society around it. Which I passionately hate. Banks around here strictly adhere to the 40-hour work week, which obviously results in banks only being open when, you know, everyone is at work. Consequently, if you need to interact with a human at the bank, the only option you have is to skip lunch break.
- entropy_ 13y ago
  The solution to that where I live(Lebanon), is that banks have 40hr weeks but instead of 8x5 they are 7x5 + 1*5. That is, they work 8am=>3pm on weekdays and 8am=>1pm on Saturdays. It's definitely less than ideal but at least if you need to interact with an actual human at a bank and it's not extremely urgent, you just go there on Saturday.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Exactly; I need to take half a day off at work whenever I need to go to a bank. Or a barber. I don't understand why so many services have opening hours when most of the people are at work. Where do they get their clients from?
  - cclogg 13y ago
    It works because then it gives people an excuse to leave work lol!
- pc86 13y ago
  Banks don’t exist to serve personal customers, they exist for business (the overwhelming majority of their profit comes from business accounts). To that end, they have no reason to be open outside of normal business hours.

xur17 13y ago

I'm curious to see what company is first to use shorter work weeks as a perk (if it hasn't happened already) with a lower salary. I personally would love to work 20 or 30 hours a week, and have more time for side projects, etc. I think part of the problem is that an employee has a set of fixed costs (healthcare, hr, etc) that don't decrease as an employee works less hours.

xivzgrev 13y ago
I agree, but man would it be tough for a company to offer this. As CEO you have shareholders, competitors, customers, blah blah blah all expecting growth or seeking to take your growth. So to do this, either a) everyone works more efficiently, but how many will hold themselves accountable to this? b) you hire more people, but creates more organizational complexity c) you ask people to work more hours Seems most companies would take C.
- marcus_holmes 13y ago
  You do this by measuring productivity in terms of what each person actually achieves each day, not by how many hours they spend in the office. I have done this for a development team by agreeing milestones and targets for my team with both the developers involved and the internal customers. The devs are then responsible for hitting their targets, and notifying everyone else if they slip or are unable to meet them. The customers are responsible for notifying everyone if the requirements or context changes. I was responsible for notifying everyone if the priorities changed. It then became the dev's responsibility to determine how many and which hours they needed to work to achieve the goals set, with some simple rules (like a maximum of 8 hours coding per day and 6 days working in a row). We had some weekly meetings that the entire team needed to show up at, otherwise it was their call. They could work from home or from the office, although we generally preferred office because of the network effects. If they completed a task early, they got to go home if they wanted (some didn't). We got some flak from other departments because it appeared to them that we were never around, but they got used to it. The fact that we were consistently hitting deadlines was a HUGE plus to the whole thing; they could see this worked. As a bonus, we had decent support cover for some of the evening and night shifts as there were devs who preferred working those hours. TL;DR: Don't measure people on how long they sit behind their desks. Measure them on what they actually do. Then set targets based on what you expect someone to do in a week. Then send them home once they've hit target. To grow the company, set harder targets.

xivzgrev 13y ago

Unfortunately capitalism gets in the way. Suppose you're a factory owner with 4 workers working 40 hours per week. You invest in a new machine that lets everyone be twice as productive. If you don't have demand for the extra output, then do you cut everyone's hours in half or let two people go? Think the far more common solution is to let two people go. So even though productivity went up, hours worked per week stayed constant. And I think 40 hours per week is status quo. Suppose you get a job offer, and ask to work just 30 hours per week. There are a number of forces conspiring against you: 1) If you're salaried, the employer would see this as less efficient (even if you're actually more efficient) 2) If you're used to a particular way of living, 30 hours could entail pay cut 3) Others are willing to work 40 hours per week, and hence employer gets more "value" out of hiring someone else per week I think best bet to achieve that reality is to be your own boss. Friend of mine works as a UI consultant and bills out at $200 per hour, works maybe 20-30 hours per week. It's a brilliant gig.

annnnd 13y ago
I don't think the factory owner example applies here (the article is talking about creative workers. And I also think that a lot of stuff is negotiable - you just need to show your worth. It is all too easy to go the same path as all others did, just because we think this is somehow expected of us. But then again, I work 9-5 too and hate it (just the working hours, not the job), so I guess I should fix that first before I lecture others... ;)
- xivzgrev 13y ago
  Totally agree that article is talking about creative workers. But the factory example is concrete and great for a basic discussion on the question of "why the hell are we working so much when productivity has increased". And completely agree stuff is negotiable. But as mentioned, if not here then above, I think being your own boss has the highest possibility for that. For example, the ONLY people working <40 hours at my job are all independent contractors. They come in, do exactly what is asked, and GTFO. My company doesn't want them to "take on this as well" because every hour costs a pretty penny :).
13y ago

Avshalom 13y ago

the reason the 40 hour week still exists is because (after much blood shed) we managed to make it difficult to expect a 50 hour work week or a 60 but I don't see any reason to think people wouldn't be sitting around writing essays about how maybe we should scale.down to 'just' 40 if we didn't have the existing labor laws in place.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

The 40 hour week is also enshrined in law because our labor laws are codified around the ideal of factory jobs. If you want a job that has benefits then that's a "full time" job at ~40 hours a week, a 15 hour/week job is considered to be a completely different sort of beast by the government (something more akin to a temp summer job).